The Invisible Tower (12 page)

Yes. They were both carrying swords.

Plus, Artie seemed to be carrying a rabbit.

Thankfully, Kynder couldn't make out Thumb. If he had, he would have passed out on the spot.

Artie and Kay smiled at Kynder in spite of the howling wind, and Kay held up Cleomede in salute. When they reached him, Kay gave her dad a short but strong hug.

Then something in the air changed. A sound like a freight train bearing down on them came from their right.

They looked. A funnel cloud had touched down in the field across the little river.

“
We have to go now!
” screamed Lance.

They took off for the parking lot, thinking they were about to pull a Dorothy-and-Toto.

As they ran, Kynder yelled, “Who is this kid? Why do you two have swords?”

“Not now, Kynder!” Artie and Kay both implored.

The noise got worse, changing from a low rumble to a medium-high pitch. They heard a series of knee-knocking cracks. Artie glanced at the funnel, an awesome black scar joining earth and sky, and saw it lifting and eating whole trees from the ground.

They managed to reach the parking lot in once piece. There was Lance's cab, and next to it was Kynder's car—an imported 2007 turbocharged Land Rover Defender—which happened to be the perfect vehicle for dodging tornados.

They threw the doors open. Artie and Kay chucked their stuff into the cargo area and climbed in with Vorpal and Thumb. As Kynder moved to the driver's side, Lance screamed, “Let me drive!”

“What? I don't even know you!”

“Name's Victor X. Lance. It's nothing personal, sir, but I was a Humvee driver in Iraq and I personally guarantee that if you let me operate your vehicle, nothing bad will happen to you or your kids!”

Kynder believed him. He traded Lance the keys for the bow and arrows and climbed into the passenger seat. While Lance ran around to hop behind the wheel, Kynder passed Lance's weapons to the kids, who fed them into the back with the swords.

It was hardly any quieter inside the car, but at least they didn't have to yell at the top of their lungs. Lance said, “Strap in, muchachos, I'm gonna take y'all for a ride!”

He fired up the car, threw it in reverse, and took off. They peeled toward the exit, and right before reaching the gate, Lance executed a perfect J-turn. Everyone erupted in hoots and hollers. Lance laughed heartily and took off down the road.

For a few moments the storm was at their back and its awful howl got quieter. But then, like a giant blindly stamping his foot across the countryside, a funnel touched down in front of them about a quarter mile away.

Lance slammed the brakes, and everyone was thrown forward.

The car idled eagerly.

Thumb, who'd moved up to Artie's shoulder, exclaimed, “Heavens. That is not good, lad.”

Kynder whipped around. “Who said that?” It was just too much. Kynder finally saw Thumb, and he finally fainted.

Kay reached for his shoulders and tried to shake him awake. Lance, checking Kynder with a hand to his neck, said, “He'll be fine, Kay. His pulse is strong.” His voice was so calm that she couldn't help but sit back.

Artie asked, “What's not good, Tom?”

Thumb said, “The thing with tornadoes is that sometimes they're like a tear betwixt the worlds, which means that while they are occurring here, they might have some manifestation there as well.”

The tornado in front of them milled around the road like it was looking for something.

“What are you getting at, Tommy?” breathed Kay.

“That perhaps this particular one is—”

“Being controlled by something over there,” finished

Artie.

“Quite right, lad,” Thumb admitted.

“Or some
one
,” added Kay.

“Quite right, lass.”

Lance barked, “We'll have to go back the way we came, then.” He threw the transmission into reverse and executed another gut-wrenching turn. But as the car spun around, another funnel smashed into the road, even closer than the other.

Now they had
two
tornadoes to deal with. They were caught.

Thumb demanded, “Kay, can you reach Kynder's phone?”

She answered by leaning forward and fishing in Kynder's pocket, coming up with his cell phone. She handed it to Artie.

Lance asked, “You calling the old man, Tiny?”

“Correct.”

“I'll buy you some time then,” Lance said. On their left was a large soybean field. “Hold on!” Lance put it back in gear, crashed onto the shoulder, and took off across the field.

With Artie's help, Thumb dialed Merlin. Artie held the phone on the backseat and Thumb, once connected, had to move his body across the phone in order to hear and then talk.

Thumb's side of the conversation went like this: “Yes, that's right. You see it then? Two, possibly three of them. Pretty big, yes. No, I can't see much rain. No lightning. Yes, I can keep it open. How far? Got it. Got it. Okay. Um, north I think. There should be a state road not far. Yes, yes he did. We also have an Otherworld phone. Okay, I'll tell the boy.”

He scrambled up Artie and perched himself on his shoulder, leaving the phone connected.

The way across the field was incredibly bumpy.

Artie reached to turn off the phone when Thumb yelped, “Don't touch it!” He took a breath and explained, “We need to leave the phone on so he can pinpoint our position. He's going to run some interference. Whoever is doing this in the Otherworld doesn't have a very good picture of where we are exactly. If we can put enough distance between the crossover point and us, then we'll be safe. They won't be able to see us at all if we can get about five miles distant. Can you make that happen, Mr. Lance?”

“No problemo.” He ripped the wheel, and they turned due west, spraying soybean debris and dirt in their wake.

The larger funnel was at their back. The other one, which was no wimp, was on their left and gaining.

Thumb said, “Artie, you need to call Bercilak.”

“What?”

A flash of blue lightning broke to their left between them and the funnel. It splintered into a thousand veins then fizzled out.

“Whoa!” Kay said.

Thumb clarified: “On the Otherworld phone, Artie. You need to call him and tell him to open the gate!”

“The gate?” Artie asked.

The funnel on their left jumped a few hundred feet in their direction. The car banked violently toward it, but Lance caught it and swerved away. “We've made it two miles, Tom!”

“Excellent!” the little man yelled.

More electricity crackled around them. It was like they were traveling inside a cage of lightning.

Artie asked, “This lightning—it's from Merlin?”

“That's right, lad. It can't hurt us,” Thumb said impatiently. “Call the green one! Do you still have the number?”

“Yeah.” Artie fished in his pocket and felt the scrap of paper.

The funnel off to their left suddenly disappeared. The electrical storm surged around them, lighting the inside of the car in a thousand points of light. They could see a paved road through a thin line of trees about a mile off.

Then,
boom
! A twister crashed down to their right. Lance whipped the wheel hard to the left, and for a moment they were airborne.

Artie's face was pressed against the window, and he couldn't help but look outside. Everything there was gray and green and black. It was terrifying.

But then he saw something even more terrifying, and his body went cold. Inside the twister was the image of a person shrouded in purple and black and reaching out for the car. The face was obscured by the violence of the storm, but he could see its pointed, pale chin, and its gaping mouth. He felt its desire and its power. It reached and reached and reached…

The lightning surged and the form recoiled. The car's wheels hit the ground and dug hard as they vaulted forward. The Otherworld phone was tossed into the backseat, right at Artie's feet.

“Call him, lad! Open the gate!”

Artie willed himself to forget the face in the tornado and grabbed the clunky phone. He dialed the number on the note. The earpiece made an intermittent clicking sound, like a cricket warming up its legs. Artie assumed this was its ring.

Thumb asked, “Is he answering?”

“Not yet.”

“How far, Mr. Lance?” Thumb barked.

“One more mile!”

A crackly voice finally came over the other end of the phone. “Hello, good sir. I'm glad you found—”

“Not now, Bercilak! Open the gate!”

“The gate?” He paused then blurted, “So soon? Are you sure?”

“Yes, I'm sure! If you don't, we're going to get eaten by a—”

And then it was there, with a sonic boom that crushed the air around them, stealing their very breath. The lightning disappeared, along with no small amount of Artie's courage.

“Holy smokes,” Kay yelped.

The twister churned in front of them. The hood of the car flew open and they lifted into the air, front wheels first, and started to spin like a top. Artie kept his eyes shut as he pressed the phone to his ear and screamed, “Open the gate! Open the gate! Open the gate!”

He could only hear snippets on the other end: “I don't—sir—are you—what.”

Then there was a huge crash that shook their backs and legs. It took a few moments for them to realize that it was quiet, and that they were still.

They opened their eyes. The hood of the car had closed again, and they found themselves looking out the windshield—miraculously not cracked—at the sky. And there, far above them, was the diminishing form of a tornado, viewed from below, ruptured by blue lightning.

The car sat in the field on its backside, teetering on the spare tire.

Thumb asked, “Is everyone okay?”

Artie, Kay, and Lance took turns saying yes.

Artie heard Bercilak faintly over the phone. He pressed it to his ear. “Sir, are you all right?”

“I think so, Bercilak. Whatever you did, it worked.”

“Thank the leaves! That sounded quite harrowing, whatever it was.”

“It was.” Artie was still in shock. “What did you do?”

“Why, I opened the gate.”

“The gate to what?”

“The gate at the back of your court-in-exile, of course. Next time you are here, you will be welcomed home properly!” Bercilak sounded triumphant. Before Artie could say anything else, their connection broke off.

Exhausted, he let the phone fall from his ear.

Artie looked at his sister. She raised her eyebrows and smiled weakly. Thumb, who'd fallen into Artie's shirt, was patting him on the chest. Lance let out a primal “Whoo-hoo!” They started to chuckle, which swelled into laughter, and after twenty seconds of this they realized that Kynder was laughing too.

As they settled down, Kynder asked desperately, “Will someone please tell me what on this green earth is going on?”

They laughed some more. They just couldn't help themselves.

With a bone-rattling thump, they
managed to rock the car back onto its wheels. It had been through a lot but it was still in one piece. Lance put it in gear and headed toward the road, which, without an evil gang of tornadoes chasing them, they arrived at in a few minutes.

Thumb moved to a cup holder by the gearshift and introduced himself to Kynder properly.

Kynder shook his head. Not because he was talking with a man who was only a few inches tall, but because
he knew who this man was
.

“Oh my God! You're the Mr. Thumb from when Artie came to us!”

“That's correct, sir!”

Kynder let out a small laugh and then asked, “So you and the kids—you're friends?”

“Very much so. May I bring you up to speed? I give you my word that I'll only tell the truth.”

“Why not. Go ahead.”

And so, with a few flourishes from Lance, Thumb told Kynder everything. By the time they pulled up to the Invisible Tower, Kynder had learned that there was a place on earth called the Otherworld; that Artie was
King Arthur the Second
; that Merlin was
the
Merlin; that Thumb and Artie had traveled via moongate to this Otherworld place; that his son had yanked an ancient sword from a stone and slain a baby dragon with it; and that Thumb, Artie, Kay, and the jackrabbit had just been on a crazy adventure—involving a million pigeons, a canoe, a girl who lived underwater, a giant bird, and an angry green dragon—to retrieve the legendary sword Excalibur.

Kynder sat in the car taking it all in as Lance and Thumb got out and went into the store. Artie and Kay saw how dazed Kynder looked. Kay reached out to her dad and put a reassuring hand on his shoulder.

“Pretty weird, right?” Artie asked.

“Yes,” Kynder said wearily.

“Just wait, Kynder,” Kay said. “Just wait until you see Merlin again. Then it'll be
really
weird.”

Without another word they got out of the car and entered the Invisible Tower.

Kay was right. This time Kynder saw all of Merlin's mysterious tattoos. And this time Kynder got past the first room of Merlin's vast enchanted underground home.

They spent the next few days with the wizard and Thumb recharging. They ate, slept, and bathed. They read, practiced sword fighting, and did nothing. They looked at flowers in the greenhouse rooms, weapons in the armories, maps in the libraries. They played video games and watched the news, which had a really high number of stories about strange storms ravaging the Midwest.

Mostly, though, the Kingfishers talked.

Kynder repeatedly asked both of his children, “What do you think about all of this?”

Both were too mentally exhausted to lie. So they each told him, “I don't know.”

On the second night the Kingfishers found themselves in a plush living room with a fire roaring in the hearth. Merlin and Thumb were off doing whatever it was they did in the evening. Kay broke the silence when she said, “You know, Kynder, I overheard what you told Artie about how we got him—and about Mom.”