The Guardians of Zoone Page 16

  Us, Ozzie thought, his heart bursting with pride.

  “You must obey our customs!” Ku cried, scrambling forward on his knees, clasping his hands together in desperation. “Slay me! Else you leave us in chaos. This is the way of the Valdune. This is the way it has always been.”

  “You will have to find a new way,” Cho declared solemnly. “As I once did.” He turned from the groveling man. Blood dripped from his chin, and the sleeve of his jacket was soaked red.

  “Captain,” Aunt Temperance started.

  “Mere scratches,” Cho assured her as he stooped to inspect Tug’s wing. “I’m afraid it’s broken, cub. When we are free of this place, I will splint it for you. Can you walk?”

  “Oh, sure, Cho,” Tug said, licking the captain’s cheek. “But, just to tell you, I’m starving.”

  Cho stroked the top of the skyger’s head. “I know a cave not so far from here. I used to go there as a boy; it is a hidden place, a comfortable place. Once there we can rest, eat.” He glanced at Scoot. “And repair.” Then, gathering himself to his full height, he added, “Let’s leave this wretched arena. Scoot, lead the way.”

  The moto gave him a salute, passed Aunt Temperance’s bag to her, then escorted them to the entrance to the slot canyon. The pathway in front of them was as black as a ninja’s gi, but Scoot pressed a button on the side of her metal cap and out came an accordion arm holding a small flashlight.

  “Here we go!” the moto beckoned as she rolled into the crack.

  The others followed, though Ozzie paused to cast a final look at the arena. Ku was still on his knees, staring dejectedly at the ground. The rest of the Nedra had erupted into animated arguments with one another.

  “Do not linger, lad,” Cho said, doubling back to grab his arm.

  Ozzie gaped at the giant man. “Your sword, Cho. You stopped them. All of them.”

  “No, lad,” Cho told him. “We stopped them. Together. I could not have done it without you.”

  Ozzie followed the hulking man into the throat of the long-dead dragon. Scoot was up ahead, leading the way with her light beam. Aunt Temperance knelt on the ground, scavenging through her bag.

  “Everything’s still here,” she said, standing up and turning on her own flashlight. Then she looked at Cho with a worried expression. “Will they pursue us?”

  “I do not think so,” he replied.

  “But, Cho . . . are you sure you’re okay?” Ozzie persisted. “Did you really lose your fingers to the chieftain? I thought it was a fight with a Thrakean lizard.”

  “The lizard gave me this,” Cho said, pointing to the scar on his face. “But the Nedra took my fingers.”

  “And the chieftain . . . that was . . . is he your dad?”

  “I have no father. Not anymore. I am Y’Orrick. Alone.”

  “Not alone,” Aunt Temperance said quickly. “As you said, Captain, you have a new clan.”

  Cho managed a melancholic smile. “You two go ahead. I’ll take up the rear.”

  Ozzie hesitated, but Aunt Temperance put her hand to his back and steered him forward. “Leave him be,” she whispered into his ear.

  “I’m worried,” Ozzie said. “He’s bleeding.”

  “He’s lost more than blood,” Aunt Temperance said, half to herself.

  “What do you mean?” Ozzie asked as they rounded a curve in the path.

  Aunt Temperance sighed. “He does have a new clan, Ozzie. But it’s a monumental task to leave your old one behind. And now he’s had to do it twice.”

  She said no more after that, but Ozzie had an inkling that she knew something of what Cho was feeling.

  20

  A Door to Many Places

  Cho let them rest the night in his hidden cave, only to press them on the very next morning. There was a lot of exhaustion and grouchiness to go around. Even Tug was more sedate than usual. It wasn’t because of his injured wing, Ozzie knew. Cho and Aunt Temperance had worked together to splint and bandage it; what they couldn’t do, however, was find a way to satisfy the skyger’s bottomless appetite.

  “I never thought I’d say this, but I’m getting a little tired of Arborellian nectar,” Tug confided to Ozzie and Fidget as they trudged across the sand. “I sure miss the proper meals we get at Zoone.”

  “Me, too,” Ozzie agreed. He noticed Scoot wobbling ahead of them, swinging her arms and humming a peculiar song, which prompted him to add, “Sometimes I wish I was a machine.”

  “Why would you like to be like that?” Fidget retorted, gesturing at the strange moto.

  “She doesn’t need food or sleep,” Ozzie said. “Look how cheerful she is—she doesn’t have to feel things the way we do.”

  “I wouldn’t want to be some bucket of bolts,” Fidget said. “Though I do envy her not having to go to the bathroom—I’m tired of squatting in the bushes every time I have to go. It’s a real pain.”

  “Maybe you should choose places with less cactus,” Tug suggested.

  Fidget rolled her eyes. “That’s not exactly what I . . . never mind.”

  Cho guided them across the foreboding desert of Ru-Valdune for a day and a half, until finally they arrived at a narrow passageway in the cliffside of a valley.

  “We are about to leave the wild lands,” the captain revealed. “On the other side of this tunnel is the Land of Thrak.”

  Ozzie exhaled in relief. Then he felt something swish past his ear. He instinctively swatted at the air and felt the sharp sting of metal.

  “Moto probe!” Fidget shrieked.

  She swung at the robotic flying death bug with her fist. She missed, but her attack caused it to veer out of the way—right into the path of Tug’s unpredictable tail. The next instant, the probe was lying in a crumpled heap on the ground.

  Ozzie knelt to examine the now-defunct machine. It looked exactly like the one he and Aunt Temperance had seen in The Depths. “Why is it here?”

  “Part of the motos’ expansion,” Cho said grimly. “They’re sending their probes into every corner of the ’verse. Preparing for . . .”

  “Multiversal motonization,” Fidget finished for him.

  Ozzie exhaled. “We really need to get to Zoone. Fast.”

  The cavern was dark, but they had Scoot’s and Aunt Temperance’s flashlights to guide them. Still, the trek was long and boring, and Ozzie was thankful when the monotony was finally disrupted by the roaring sound of water coming from up ahead.

  “Is there a river down here?” he wondered.

  “That,” Cho answered, “is one of the fifty-seven wonders of the multiverse: the Thrakean Leaps.”

  “The Thrakean Leaps?” Aunt Temperance echoed dubiously. “What exactly is doing the leaping?”

  “The water,” Fidget replied for the captain. “Most places in the multiverse, water falls. But in Thrak, it goes the opposite direction.”

  “Sorry—are you trying to tell me the waterfalls are going up?” Aunt Temperance questioned.

  “Maybe it’s best that you see it in person,” Cho told her.

  They continued on for several more minutes until a blurry light shone from up ahead. With every step, the sound of rushing water grew louder. Cho led them through the opening in the mountain and onto a shelf of rock. Ozzie gaped in awe. They were facing a concave wall of surging water, almost a complete circle of it, and, just as Fidget had explained, it was going straight up—not like a geyser, but like a waterfall simply going in reverse.

  There were no railings on the ledge, but Ozzie mustered the courage to peer over. All he could see were clouds of cool steam billowing up from the source of the leaps, somewhere far below. They were standing about halfway up the falls; Ozzie had to crane his neck to see the water spilling away at the top.

  It’s almost like standing in a drain, Ozzie thought as he felt water spray against his cheeks. Well, a reverse drain? What did you call that? Just a pipe?

  Aunt Temperance would have certainly known, but he couldn’t ask the question out loud. The deafen
ing rumble of the waterleaps obliterated all other sounds in the pit.

  That included Cho’s normally loud and authoritative voice. Ozzie could see the captain’s lips moving, but he couldn’t hear him. The captain must have realized this, because he began motioning for Ozzie and the others to follow him.

  Into the pit? Ozzie wondered. But Cho was already on the move, so Ozzie took a deep breath and stepped forward.

  As it turned out, the ledge was actually an all-too-narrow bridge of rock that jutted over the mind-boggling drop; it was just that it was obscured by the clouds of mist. As he walked, Ozzie decided to keep his gaze planted on the rocky path. It was damp and slippery, and the mist was writhing around his feet. One misstep and—well, he tried not to think about it.

  Finally, Ozzie was at the opposite end of the leaps, next to Cho. The same circle of water was hurtling upward here but, somehow, it was quieter on this side.

  “A bit of magic is at work here,” Cho explained as everyone congregated. “Now we can hear each other.”

  “I think I prefer the tightrope,” Aunt Temperance complained as she wiped her glasses. “Was this treacherous route necessary, Captain?”

  “Aye,” Cho said, pointing to the waterleap in front of them, “because this is our doorway.”

  “The door’s hidden?” Fidget ventured. “Behind the waterleap?”

  “No, the waterleap is the door.”

  Ozzie frowned. During his time at Zoone, he had encountered many types of doors—ones made of wood, of steel, even of stone. What he hadn’t seen was a door made of water. But now, as he stood there, staring at the leaps, an image began to shimmer into view. At first it was bleary, but it eventually began to sharpen. What Ozzie saw was a long stretch of arid, cracked earth, fiery red in color.

  “Is that it?” Ozzie wondered. “The world on the other side of this door?”

  Cho nodded. “No handle, keyhole, or even hinges, but a portal nonetheless.”

  “Oh!” Tug exclaimed. “The image just changed. It’s like watching TV. Cool.”

  “Quoggswoggle!” Fidget gasped. “It’s a ripple door! I thought they were a myth.”

  Cho chuckled. He had been sullen the past couple of days, ever since the duel, but now his eyes were shining with familiar warmth, as if leaving behind Ru-Valdune had lifted a weight from his heart. “It is a ripple door, lass,” he said. “It’s real, and it can lead us to any number of destinations, depending on where it’s pointing to at any given moment. It’s also free.”

  “What do you mean, ‘free’?” Aunt Temperance questioned.

  “It doesn’t require a key,” Fidget relayed in excitement. “There aren’t many free doors left in the ’verse. The Council of Wizardry controls most of the tracks, and they added all the doors and locks and rules. But this one—anyone can take it.”

  “Will it lead us to Zoone?” Ozzie asked.

  “With any luck,” Cho answered. “We have to watch the worlds revealed in the doorway. When Zoone pops up, then we go through.”

  “But will it?” Ozzie pressed. The door was currently showing a dense jungle with rainbow-colored foliage.

  “Ripple doors aren’t known for their consistency,” Cho conceded. “Sometimes a location shows, sometimes it doesn’t. Even if a world does appear, it might only be for a brief moment. Or it will appear several times in one hour. Or once in a year. Or never.”

  “Doesn’t seem like a very efficient system, if you ask me,” Aunt Temperance decided. “Didn’t you use this door previously?”

  “Yes, but I didn’t take it to Zoone,” Cho said. “If the nexus doesn’t appear as an option, we’ll need to travel to another land first, one we know has a door that will lead us directly to the nexus.”

  “What if we make an oopsy?” Scoot beeped in alarm.

  “That’s not going to happen while I’m here,” Fidget insisted, elbowing her way past the moto. “If there’s one thing I’m pretty good at, it’s multiversal geography.”

  She plopped down, put her chin on a hand, and gazed into the rapids. Ozzie leaned over her shoulder. The portal was still showing the jungle with multicolored leaves.

  “That’s definitely not Zoone,” Ozzie said.

  Fidget hushed him, so Ozzie settled for pacing behind her, glancing up every now and then to check if the scene had changed. Some of the worlds stayed for several minutes; others, as Cho had warned, appeared for only a few seconds. None of them came back.

  “If we find a sure bet, we’d better take it,” Cho advised.

  The scene shifted to show a series of mountain peaks encircled by clouds—though for all Ozzie knew, they could have been islands floating in the sky. Then, weaving gracefully between those islands, he saw a greenish speck. One of the rocky mounds of land erupted in a wave of movement, and he suddenly comprehended that there was some sort of crowd assembled there. The spectators were cheering on the green specks—because now, there wasn’t just one, but a whole line of them. And then they weren’t even specks anymore; as they approached at what seemed like breakneck speed, Ozzie saw that they were dragons with long, diaphanous wings—and each one had a rider!

  “Oh, this is Selvanas,” Fidget said nonchalantly. “They’re known for racing.”

  “Dragon racing?!” Ozzie exclaimed.

  “We don’t want to go there, then,” Aunt Temperance said. “What?” she added, when Ozzie fired a look in her direction. “It looks dangerous.”

  The door rippled again, and a world of water and waves appeared. Amid this gentle turquoise sea, tall limestone islands jutted toward the clouds, each capped with an ornate building.

  “Quoxx!” Fidget cried out.

  “Oh!” Tug purred. “Your home world.”

  “Yeah, but we can’t go there,” Fidget said with a sigh. “Not unless . . . unless I want to turn myself over and deal with the Quoggian crown prince.”

  With a wistful glint in her purple eyes, she sat back and crossed her arms. She stewed in this position until the image in the doorway changed to depict a vast desert landscape. Yellow sand stretched as far as the eye could see, dotted with enormous bell-shaped temples made of stone.

  “The tombs of Dossandros,” Fidget announced. “Another one of the fifty-seven multiversal wonders, by the way.”

  “I’ve been to Dossandros,” Cho said. “We can definitely find a door there that will take us to Zoone.”

  “Let’s just wait,” Fidget argued.

  “What if it’s our best chance?” Ozzie worried. “We don’t want to miss out.”

  “They’ve got spiders in Dossandros,” Fidget warned him. “Big ones.”

  Ozzie grimaced. “It might be worth the risk if—”

  “When I say big, I mean the size of houses,” Fidget told him. “They hide their webs by burying them just beneath the surface of the sand. One minute, you’re trudging across the desert, then—BAM—you’re all entangled, and it’s lunchtime.”

  “Just to tell you,” Tug said, perking up, “that’s my favorite time of day.”

  Fidget groaned. “Not lunchtime for you. For the spiders.”

  “Oh,” Tug said, swishing his tail. “Well, I saw this one story on the TV where a house was infested with bugs and they used BuzzzzKill to get rid of them. By the way, have you ever noticed that ‘Z’ is really popular on the TV? ‘X,’ too, but mostly ‘Z.’”

  “Ooh!” Scoot chimed. “I want to be Scoot-ZX! Can I be Scoot-ZX, Creator?”

  “You could try being quiet, Grease-Brain,” Fidget retorted. “How about that?”

  “Will you just stop it?” Ozzie said. “You don’t have to be so . . .”

  The scene in the waterfall had changed again, and this time it showed something completely different. Something breathtaking. Something that had stolen the words right off Ozzie’s tongue.

  Before them was a palatial blue building with fanciful towers, raindrop spires, and gabled arches. In front of that, there were doors—hundreds upon hundreds of doors.

&nb
sp; They were looking at Zoone.

  21

  Zoone’s Most Unwanted

  Ozzie wasn’t about to waste another second. How many hours had he spent sitting on the cold cement floor in The Depths below Apartment 2B, staring at the broken door to the nexus? He had endured pirates, motos, magic hunters—even a flea-bitten Revellian monkey—and now, here at last, was Zoone, glimmering in front of him like a dragon’s treasure hoard. He sped past Fidget and plunged through the ripple door.

  The first thing that struck him was that he didn’t get wet, even though he was stepping through a rush of water. The second thing that struck him was a wall—or, to be fair, he struck it. He had assumed there would be some sort of track beyond the ripple door, but there wasn’t. There was just him, racing through the leaps and immediately face-planting into bricks.

  “Careful!” he shouted over his shoulder, but Tug was already plowing into him, turning Ozzie into the central ingredient of a wall-and-skyger sandwich. By the time he extricated himself, everyone else had come through the door and was mumbling in surprise at their surroundings. Ozzie still couldn’t see anything, but he could smell that the air was stale and close. He had this sense that they were deep underground.

  “I thought we were supposed to end up in Zoone,” Ozzie said, his heart sinking. “What happened? Where are the platforms? Did the ripple door change on us?”

  “I hope not,” Fidget said. “We could be any—OW! You just rolled over my foot, Bucket-Head!”

  “Oopsy!” Scoot beeped apologetically.

  Aunt Temperance clicked on her flashlight, offering some meager relief from the darkness. She waved the beam about, revealing a narrow passageway built of ancient, roughly hewn bricks. Murky alcoves leered at them from the shadows.

  “Looks like a crypt of some sort,” she said.

  “I’m detecting motos!” Scoot reported. “Far uppy-up, but they’re definitely here.”

  “We’re back in Moton?!” Ozzie cried.

  “No,” Cho reassured them, brushing his hand along the nearest wall. “This is Zoone. We’re in the original foundations of the station house, sunk beneath the ground after so many centuries. We call it the catacombs now.”