The Passage to Mythrin 2-Book Bundle (27 page)

One of the warriors pointed westward. “That way. To begin. It could have circled.”

Standing in the dark, alone among strangers, Simon saw how hopeless this was. Even if he knew which way the dragon had gone, that left him with half a world to search. And it could already be too late. Ammy could be … might be …

But what else was there to do?

The east was definitely lighter now. He was starting to see people's faces. A crowd of leather-shirted warriors stood around him. They didn't look unfriendly, just curious. As if he was some rare and very weird animal they'd found. He nodded around at them, trying to look as if he knew what he was doing.

“Okay. Thanks.” He started off westward. A grey ridge reared up ahead, the same ridge where the building with the stained-glass windows (and the one that led home) stood halfway up. He picked a way up the rocky slope, sometimes on hands and knees. The warriors followed him silently. He wondered if they meant to come with him, or shoot him, or what?

He climbed onto the level place where the building was, and stood there catching his breath. A shout blew down the wind. “One comes!” Instantly the warriors swarmed past him to the ridge. One? Simon thought. One what? One dragon? He edged towards the building.

Then a tangle of voices broke out, and one of them made him laugh out loud.

A minute later Amelia arrived, struggling in the grip of two warriors. She looked as if she'd survived an explosion — just barely. Her hair stuck out in all directions, and there were twigs and grass in it. Brown stains nearly wiped out the “Girls Rule” slogan on her tank top. She was all over dirt and — was that blood?

“Ammy!” Simon jumped at her. “Are you hurt?”

She yanked free. “It's
Amelia
! Why can't you
remember
?”

Simon grinned. She was all right. “Um, sorry.”

“So, you are alive after all.” Pier stood beside him.

“Yeah, no thanks to any of you! That dragon dropped me twice!”

“But did not kill you,” Gram said from his other side. “A marvel, truly!”

“They only wanted me to take a message.” Amelia rubbed her left shoulder with one grubby hand. “You have till the next full moon to get out of here. Off this
world, I mean.” She looked from face to face, and fixed on Yulith, who stood behind Pier. “One cycle of the moon is twenty days. After that, if you're still here, the dragons will come and kill you.”

“You
spoke
with dragons, did you?” Gram said, feather-soft.

“Yes! And I'm telling you, this is the real deal! You've got to leave!” She waved her hands. “Go back where you came from! You don't know what dragons can —”

“We know,” Yulith broke in. “Better than you!”

“See, we cannot go back,” Pier added. “The passage is broken behind us. We can only go forward.”

“Right, do that. Find another world, one with no dragons.”

“Ah. Like your world?” Gram smiled.

Simon exchanged a startled look with Amelia. He hadn't thought of that.

“You said there are no dragons on your Earth,” Yulith said. “Would they take us in, your people?”

“Well ….” Simon looked at Amelia. She was scowling and shaking her head at him. He scowled back at her. “If you come as refugees, sure. Why not? I don't see how they'd be able to send you back, anyway.”

“Only, nobody would believe their story,” Amelia said. “They'd think they were lying. They'd put them in a refugee camp.”

“No!” Gram was suddenly sharp. “That world is not for us. Not unless we have no other way out.” He was looking at Amelia. “It has dragons, but we will not see them.”

She frowned back at him. “I'm not a dragon in human shape, if that's what you mean.”

“If you have spoken with dragons, it has been inside your head,” Gram said. “You have a snake's tongue now. The truth is not in you.”

“But, wait a minute!” Simon flared. “
You
were inside
my
head! You lied to me. You made me see a bunch of things that weren't true.”

“That was not the same. We are human, so we mean you no harm.”

“No harm!” Simon didn't get mad all that often, but this steamed him.
Sneaking into my head, playing games with my mind!

Amelia's hand caught his wrist. “Get ready to run,” she muttered in his ear. “If we can reach the window —”

“Yes, and then what?” he muttered back. The circle of faces looked hard and unfriendly in the dim light. “How do we get back? Do you still have the ring?”

“The … uh … shoot!”

Gram laughed gently. “Your way has failed, you see,” he said to Pier. “Let me try my way.”

“No.” It was the first thing Pier had said in a while. Simon had almost forgotten she was there. It was easy to overlook her, she was so small and quiet. But when she said “No,” everyone else fell silent. She stepped out in front of them, facing Amelia.

“I will give you a gift.” Pier held out her hands like an empty plate. “This is a thing you need to know.”

“Well?” Ammy demanded. Her grip on Simon's wrist tightened.

“I don't know how you got here without knowing anything at all, but then you are strange,” Pier said. “There are three ways to open a world gate. Seekers can do it, in time, if they are skilled. Dragons can do it in the blink of an eye. And then there is the third way, and that is if you have something or someone who comes from the world beyond the gate.”

“Something or …” Amelia began.

“Mara's ring!” Simon saw it now. “That's how it opened the gate. It came from here. It wasn't that it was magic or anything.”

“… or someone,” Amelia finished. She stared at Pier. “Like me.”

“Or like him.” Pier nodded at Simon.

“You mean,” Amelia said, “we can get home just by touching the window?”

“Yes. If it is the gate to your own world. No other.”

“Like calls like,” Simon murmured. This was fascinating. He needed to get away somewhere quiet by himself to think about it. He needed to think about a lot of things. Then something else jumped at him, something Pier had just said. “Someone or something,” he repeated.

Pier nodded, eyes fixed on his face.

“And you still want to look for this Prism thing on our world?”

“What Prism thing?” Ammy demanded.

Pier ignored her. “Nothing will stop me.”

“But you don't really need
us
to open that gate. You could use, like …,” he picked at his T-shirt, “a piece of this.”

Amelia's nails dug into his wrist. “Idiot!” she hissed at him. “You had to say it!”

“That
was
our plan,” Gram said gently.

Simon's stomach curled up inside him. We're just as much use to them dead, he thought.

Amelia tugged on his wrist. She was trying to nudge him towards the building with the windows. Everybody watched them. Nobody smiled. Nobody spoke. Nobody moved. Not even the children who peered from behind the grownups.

“Um, but, you,” Simon stammered, “you said that
was
your plan.”

“Not mine,” Yulith growled. “We do not make war on our own kind. Not for time out of mind have we done that. We fight dragons. Not humans.”

“To use you so, or your people,” Pier added, “that would be war.”

“Okay, good,” Amelia muttered in his ear. “Let's
go!
”

“Wait.” He pulled his wrist free. “Let me look.”

Amelia sighed.

The sun was almost up now, the sky above the valley was blue over a band of gold. He could see every face.

He saw a crowd of ragged people with not an ounce of spare fat to share among them. They looked as if they had been living on mint tea and stale bread for weeks. The children weren't so bone-thin, but none of them were fat, not even the baby one of the warriors was holding in her arms.

Many of the Casseri were old, or looked old, their eyes small, dark pebbles in wrinkled hollows. Still more of them were very young. Some of the warriors looked younger than anybody you'd expect to see holding a weapon. Like that boy in the too-big leather shirt, he'd be fourteen at most, Simon was willing to bet — but even he had half-healed scars on his face.

Always at war, he thought. For thousands of years,
always fighting dragons. With crossbows! It's a wonder there are any of these people left.

He looked at Gram, at Yulith, at Pier. Pier was studying his face like a book. “How many are you?” he asked.

“Two hundred and thirty-one,” Pier said. “Last midwinter day, in Cassar, we were twice that number.”

“Are there more people on your Earth? Or are you the last?”

“There may be more,” Yulith put in. “There is no way to know. The people are cut off from each other. The dragons rule there now.”

Amelia was scowling at her hands, being very careful not to look at the faces. Simon poked her on the arm. “You see?” he said. “We've got to help them. If we don't we'll be just like murderers.”

The moment Amelia saw the baby in that woman's arms, it was all over.
What will happen to that little kid when the dragons come?
she thought.
What will happen to all of them?

“Of course we'll help them!” she snarled.

“All right,” Simon said. Then, and not a minute too soon, he showed a speck of caution. “But what is this Prism? What does it do? You never said.”

“I … do not know. No one knows for sure. It opens doors, the stories all say.” Pier tiptoed between words. “The dragons in this place are so many and so strong, and we are so few. The Prism will give us a chance. Maybe it will open the door for us to a world without dragons.”

She flicked her eyes at them, and Amelia had a sudden mental picture of something terrifying. Like a light that could blind you at a glance. Or a blade that could cut
you at a touch. Then the image was gone, as if Pier had slammed a box down over it.

What had Mara said, back in that meadow?
She holds a terrible danger in her mind. I fear her.
Who was this kid? When had Mara ever feared anyone before?

Amelia jammed her hands in her pockets. “You think it's something that'll kill dragons. Don't you?”

Pier offered a look clear as glass. “I have no idea.”

“All right, then, we'll go.” Simon looked Pier over. “Where are your things?”

“I have no things to take. I am ready.”

Yulith gave Amelia a chainsaw stare. Then she set herself in front of Pier, hands on hips. “You will not go alone, child!”

“Two would be too many. And I am not a child.” Pier stood as tall as possible, which was not very tall. “I am the Seeker. This task is for me.” Her fists at her sides trembled.

Scared to go, and who wouldn't be? But she's going anyway
, Amelia growled under her breath. It was impossible not to admire the kid. She hated that.

A lightning slide down a sapphire sky, then a hard and dusty landing. Simon was almost ready for it this time.
He staggered up, rubbing his elbows. Looked at his watch first thing. “It's just two o'clock!”

Amelia was already up. The stained-glass window was still in its frame. She touched it. “See?” The dragon did have a ruby ring on one claw.

Pier climbed slowly to her feet. She was staring at nothing. As if it was the most fascinating nothing you could imagine.

“We're here,” Simon told her. “What … um … what do you see?”

Her eyes snapped into focus. “Nothing clearly. But I feel it.”

She gave the window no more than a glance, even when Simon told her it would soon be gone. Instead, she stared around, amazed, at the pale plaster walls and wooden steps. She ran a hand down the stair railing. “So much wood! Easy to see there are no dragons here at all. They would burn all this up.”

“Is that what they did on your world?”

“Always. So we lived in stone. Wood is for small, precious things.”

Simon led the way down the stairs. “I've been wondering,” he said over his shoulder. “You're from another Earth, but you speak English. How come?”

“English? I speak Casserine. So do you, in a way.” She snuffled the air, then made a face. “This place, it stinks.”

“Sh!” said Amelia. She led the way down to the first-floor landing. Voices sounded beyond the stairwell door, but not near. “We're incredibly lucky,” she whispered at Simon. “I thought for sure we'd be cau—”

The door burst open. Ike's father shouldered through. Pier shrank back, and Simon didn't blame her. It had to be a shock to come face to face with Oscar Vogelsang suddenly and for the first time. He looked like a grizzly bear, if a grizzly happened to have reddish fur all over its head and face, black-framed glasses on its snout, and a vast T-shirted chest crisscrossed with the straps of two small leather cases.

Right now he held a pen and spiral-bound notebook in one hand, a large flashlight in the other, and a digital camera in both, and was squinting at the camera. When he saw the three of them he dropped the flashlight. Pier snagged it out of the air.

“Cripes! Where'd you two spring from? You
three
, I mean.” He goggled down at Pier from almost twice her height. “Who's this? New kid in town?”

Pier held out the flashlight but kept her eyes down.

“Not telling, eh? Very wise.” Oscar stuffed his gear into pockets and cases, pulled open the door, and scooped the three of them out of the stairwell ahead of him. The main floor of the library was deserted, but the front door stood open and voices and engine noises came from
outside. “We've been scouring the place for hours! Began to think you'd vapourized. Where were you hiding?”