Quest for the King (5 page)

Kurt sighed. "I know. I wish I had half her brains. She's an absolute
whiz at computer studies. The teacher says her programs are `models
of elegance and economy,' whatever that means. She's way ahead of
anything they teach us at school. And as for hacking..."

He didn't have to complete the sentence. Mary had once hacked
her way into the University main computer, and left a number of
insulting messages about the sloppiness of the computer's security
system.

For a time the three children continued to climb in silence, commenting occasionally on the few flowers and blossoms that remained here and there. They had long since left the stream behind, and for
a time were unable to see anything of the hill above them, shut in as
they were by two walls of bushes and trees.

Kurt felt uneasy. "I wish this feeling would go away," he said. "But
it's getting worse. Something's going to happen."

"Something nice?" Lisa asked.

"N-no. Something drastic. It's a scary feeling. It began when we got
on the train."

"You said it had to do with Anthropos." Wesley frowned.

"Why should Anthropos be scary?" Lisa asked.

"It's not that Anthropos is scary-though lots of scary things happened when we were last there-the scary part somehow has to do
with Lion Rock ... I don't know what I mean. But I'm scared."

They continued to climb. The air was still, and the only sounds they
heard were the sounds of their own footsteps and their own heavy
breathing. Eventually they stopped to rest, squatting on the side of the
path.

But Wesley, who was anxious to get there, said, "Let's hurry on a
bit. We can rest later." They quickened their pace as they resumed
their walk, and quite suddenly the sounds of traffic below began
again. They rounded the shoulder of the hill and the vegetation
dropped away sharply.

"This is the dry side," Wesley said. "The prevailing winds hit the
side we've just come up. That's why there's more vegetation there."
Ahead of them the lion Rock itself towered majestically. Kurt had
never seen it close up before. "Wow, is that ever something!" he cried.
"Though it doesn't look too much like a lion now. But how do we get
up? Y'know, I really am scared. It looks horribly open and exposed."

Wesley said, "What's got into you, Kurt? You're not usually like this.
Look, the path we follow is easy. It winds behind the rock again. You
have to scramble a little bit at the end, but it's kid stuff, really."

Kurt said nothing.

Their trail now ascended more steeply, sometimes with cement
steps to help, and at other times not. The terrain was almost bare, but here and there low bushes bloomed with a fiery red blossom.

No one spoke for a moment or two. Lisa gasped, "My musclesfeel-like water. Can't we-go-a bit slower?"

"Sorry," Wesley apologized, slowing his pace. Kurt, secretly glad that
he had not needed to complain, made no comment.

At last they reached the foot of the rock and began to scramble up
a gully, then behind the rock along a narrow pathway, and finally, at
its far end, a place where they could climb up fairly easily. A cement
fence, molded so as to look rustic, protected them from the face of
the rock, and a notice warned them of danger. Before long they stood
at the summit. Wind chilled them, so that they began to pull on their
sweaters again.

"Look down there-the airport-and oh, just look-there's an aircraft coming in to land-an' it's below us!" Lisa cried. For several
minutes they looked on the scene beneath them. Wesley and Lisa
began to point out the landmarks. Below them crowded apartment
buildings jutted vertically like clusters of white and gray dominoes.
They could see the main streets and avenues, watch the traffic crawling along them, see the harbor beyond and Hong Kong Island on the
far side of the channel. Lisa was fascinated with the planes, especially
those taking off. "You hear the roar of the engines several seconds
after they actually begin to barrel down the runway," she said excitedly.

"Yes, it takes that long for the sound to reach us," Wesley explained.

"I know that, Wes! I'm not dumb."

She turned, and for some minutes began to look in the opposite
direction. Then, with fear in her voice she shouted, "Oh, look!"

The urgency of her tone made the others turn around.

Lisa pointed at a funnel that curled down serpentlike from one of
the low-lying clouds. "Surely they don't have twisters here!" she said
in amazement.

"Uh-huh. Here we go!" Kurt cried. "This is it. They sure don't have
twisters in Hong Kong. There's only one explanation for what's about
to happen. This thing's coming for us!"

Suddenly, far more suddenly than it takes me to tell it, the writhing
monster swooped at them like something alive.

"Down!" Wesley shrieked. "Lie flat!"

They flung themselves on their faces, and with the roar and thunder of a thousand waterfalls the funnel fell upon them. Horrified, they
felt their bodies being sucked from the ground. Light-brilliant, pale
blue light-dazzled them. Their breath seemed to be torn from their
lungs.

Then came silence.

Mary sat before the computer screen at the Chans', writing a program.
The Chans were out, and she had told them she would walk back to
the Shah Tin Mall and get the train home. She assured them she knew
her way. Kurt had often said, "Mary's amazing. Sometimes she goes
to pieces completely. But the next minute she seems sort of hard and
tough-the toughest person around."

The Chans had seemed uncertain about Mary being alone in Shah
Tin, but they could hardly stop her if they were not at home. And if,
she thought, if the program worked, it would serve Uncle Fred right
if it did. 'Cos then she'd have disappeared from Shah Tin to join her
Uncle John in Anthropos. And nobody but the other kids would know
where she'd gone.

Uncle John. She had to win him back, and she would do it! He was
all she had ever longed for, the father she never had. He was better
than all her stepmother's boy-friends put together. She needed more power. Power was real. It tingled deep within her whenever it came
on her. She had never experienced anything like it before-and now
she had a use for it. Even the witch's power in Anthropos was nothing
but the means by which the woman got her to do whatever she wanted.
But the power she had now received was something she could use for
herself. She could manipulate people with it. Control them. She would
now be able to make Uncle John love her as he had before. (It did
not occur to her to ask whether a love that you controlled was what
she was after.)

She checked her computer program carefully, making sure the
words and symbols of the ancient spell were properly included. It
ought to work. Maybe she was going to be the first person ever to
move across space and time using a witchcraft spell programmed into
a computer! She drew in a breath and struck the ENTER key.

At first nothing happened. Then the screen went blank and there
was total silence. She stared hard at it. Did it-or was she imagining
it-no, there was a blue tinge ... Yes, it was definitely getting larger.

Or was she getting smaller? She glanced down at herself, only to
discover that the darkness on the screen was all about her. She could
see nothing anywhere except vaguely swirling pale blue mist. She
could not even feel the stool under her. Was she floating? When she
looked up at the screen, she could no longer see it.

Yes, it was working. She smiled. "Anthropos, here I come! And by
my own magic. I come when I want, not when you fetch me, Gaal! I'll really
surprise Uncle John!"

She began to fall, down, down, down ...

Mary hit the ground hard, and for a few moments the wind was
knocked out of her. When she got her breath back she sat up and
muttered, "Well, I did it anyway! I knew I could, an' now I've really
done it! That'll teach 'em."

To her surprise, the jeans she had been wearing had been replaced
by a long dress of rose-colored silk. It had long, tight sleeves. Her
fingers sparkled with jeweled rings, while her feet found themselves
inside boots of the softest dark green leather. She stared at herself for the longest time. Then she said, "Wow! I really did it properly!" There
was a strong smell of lavender, and she could not tell whether it came
from the dress or from herself.

She checked her surroundings cautiously. She was sitting in a forest
glade on a summer morning, with diamond dew still sparkling on the
grass. The sun was behind her, so that as she moved her head she
was aware of pale greens, yellows and an occasional ruby red from
the fractured reflection within the dewdrops.

Twenty yards away, near a tall tower of pinkish stone, two men and
a young woman sat around a small wooden table. They were too busy
talking to have noticed her arrival, and in any case she was mostly
concealed from them by a low bush. She crouched behind it, peering
at them and straining to hear what they might be saying.

Who were they? Would they know where Uncle John was? It
seemed unlikely-but one never could tell. She decided to make no
move until she could size them up. She could hear the sound of their
voices clearly, and sometimes the actual words when the breeze died
down. At one point they dropped their voices, leaning toward one
another. One of the men and the woman seemed to be disagreeing
with the third, an unusually big man. Then, after a while, they leaned
back in their chairs again, smiling at one another.

On the table lay a simple repast of fresh fruits and oat cakes, along
with a silver flagon of wine. Mary's mouth watered. She had not eaten
since lunch-and that seemed hours ago. A little distance beyond the
table a magnificent war horse and two smaller palfreys were munching grass. All were equipped like those horses of bygone days that
carried wealthy nobility.

One of the men was obviously very tall, even though he was sitting.
He was dressed simply, wearing a sleeveless tunic of purest white with
a leather belt. His legs were bare, apart from the crisscrossed leather
thongs that held his sandals in place. He might have been any age
between twenty and two hundred, yet there was a vitality about him
which seemed to dominate the forest glade. A sword lay on the bench
beside him. "I guess the biggest horse is for him," Mary thought.

"You could not have chosen a better place, Risano!" the shorter
man addressed the giant.

The short man picked up another sword and held it in front of
him-a sword with a jeweled hilt and a jeweled scabbard. He examined it carefully and then nodded, as if satisfied. Mary's pulse quickened, wondering if she recognized it, even from twenty yards. Surely
it couldn't be! Yet the hilt, to say nothing of the scabbard, looked
awfully like it! How the stones sparkled in the sunlight!

A strange nostalgia softened her heart as she remembered how
only months before she had carried the sword triumphantly into the
kitchen of the house on Grosvenor, and of Wesley's awed whisper,
"It's the Sword of Geburah!"

The man who was looking at it was young, perhaps twenty-five. He
wore his red velvet cape with a dashing air, and was generally a model
of medieval fashion. His hair was long and his beard was neatly
trimmed. He wore a blue satin tunic that (she later discovered)
matched the deep blue of his eyes. Its wide sleeves were gathered
tightly at the wrist, so that the sleeves ballooned elegantly around his
lower arms. The light was so clear that she could even see beneath
the table that he wore blue pointed shoes of soft leather, and wrinkled
plum-colored stockings above them.

"Bit of a popinjay," Mary decided. "I wonder what his name is."

Risano smiled, and his smile embraced both of his companions. "I
rejoice that the tower pleases you, my Lord and Lady Nasa of the
Chereb, but this place was not my choice. The Emperor ordered me
to prepare it for you."

"So that is his name," Mary muttered to herself. "Lord Nasa of the
Chereb." The wind had died down, making it easier to listen.