The Passage to Mythrin 2-Book Bundle (31 page)

Never mind, there was still time. She stopped and closed her eyes. Wayland's Prism floated there in the darkness, more than ever like a great crystal sword.
Where?
She pivoted, she found the direction — it was unmistakable, like sunlight beating on her forehead.
That way.
She took a step, still with her eyes shut. Somebody ran into her and bounced her to the ground. “Sorry!” they yelled as she picked herself up.

Pier limped on in the direction of the pull. Her right
knee hurt. She left the noisy field behind and crossed a hard-paved road. People raced past her this way and that, but little by little the street emptied. The noise of the games dropped away behind her.

The street curved and rose up a long hill. The houses here were big and old and sprawly, and there were trees around them that made the air cooler. In front of the houses were little meadows of short grass like green rugs, and flowers thick as snowdrifts. She wished she knew their names. One kind smelled like roses, but the blossoms were too big and had too many petals.

Still the Prism pulled and pulled, and Pier followed. She no longer had to close her eyes to feel it, even to see it, thank the heavens, because she'd already tripped and fallen twice. As she limped up the street, the direction of the pull changed. Now it came from the northeast. Now … a few more steps … it came from the east!

What was going on? Was it moving again?

Then she understood, and laughed aloud. “I have found it!”

A house stood just off the roadway. It was even bigger and more sprawly than the others, with peaked windows and porches and little towers sticking up. And so much wood! Even the roof was made of rounded wooden shingles instead of slate. She shuddered, thinking of dragon fire.

The Prism Blade was in that house.

Pier walked up the stony path to the front door and turned the handle. The door was locked. She tried sinking her mind into it, but knew at once this was just an ordinary lock, the kind you can't think your way through.

She circled the house, looking into the windows. The bright sun outside made the inside of the house dark. Strange, you'd have thought the Prism being there would fill the place with light. Perhaps its light was the kind you could only see with your mind.

But it was there, all right. No doubt at all.

Around the back there was a low platform of square stones next to the house, then another meadow of short grass stretched back, and more flowers grew in patches, and more big trees arched overhead.

It was nice here, sweet-smelling and cool, not stinky and choking like those streets down near the bridge. She would have liked to lie down on the grass and look up through the stirring leaves, up into this soft, hazy, blue sky — a sky where metal machines might fly, but never a dragon.

There was something special about this garden, too. Something in it called to her, sang to her. But there was no time now to listen. The other song was stronger.

On this side the house had tall, wide windows that went down to the ground. They looked like doors all of glass, although Pier couldn't imagine why anybody would want a door so easily broken. She put her face close to the glass and cupped her eyes to screen out the glare. And there it was, right in front of her. If not for the glass she could have taken three steps and put her hand on it.

What her eyes saw was a box. Just a plain, polished, wooden box — about three feet long and half that high and wide — sitting on a table. It looked as if it would open like a chest. A small metal lock kept it closed. Hard to believe something that ordinary-looking could hold the opener of doors, the unanswerable riddle, the sword that would pierce Wyrm's heart.

When she closed her eyes, her mind filled with rainbows. She opened them again. She pressed her hands together to stop their trembling. Gulped air. She'd been holding her breath.

Now. All I need is something to …

She looked around, reached down, and picked up a little stone statue that was standing at the edge of the stone platform. It was meant to be a dragon, but plainly the carver had never seen a real one. Such silly little wings!

She stepped back to the window, took firm hold of the dragon's neck, and swung her arm up and back.

It took Simon ten minutes, running around on the sun-baked field, asking people if they'd seen a little kid with bright red hair, before he picked up Pier's trail. For ten minutes more he sweated up and down the hilly streets north of the high school, looking this way and that for a flash of that particular shade of brilliant red. Twice he thought he'd seen her and darted into a backyard only to find roses climbing a wall or poppies swaying in the breeze.

At last he glimpsed, off to one side and behind trees, something poppy-bright that moved along like a person, not a poppy. Up Hill Street he raced, hung a sharp right at Elgin Crescent, shot past the first house, across a close-mown lawn, along a brick wall, and round the corner of a house, sneakers skidding on grass.

And there she was. All set to smash a window and get herself in terrible trouble.

“Pier! No!”

She looked at him, then back at the window. Instead of dropping the statue she took a firmer grip and restarted her swing.

And froze. Eyes wide and startled … and unfocussed, as if listening. Then the statue fell and clattered on the stone patio. At the same instant, Pier dropped to the ground and vanished.

Vanished
. Simon drew a long, slow breath. He let it out when he remembered. After a moment he also remembered to shut his mouth.

“Simon!” came a whisper from near the ground. “Get away! There's a dragon!”

“Wh— where are you?”

“Just get away! I'll follow.
Go
!”

Simon rubbed his eyes, then his head. He took one more good look around. Still no Pier. And no dragon, so far as he could tell. Maybe the dragon was invisible, too.

He backed away, turned around and walked on clumsy legs back out to the street, invisible eyes boring holes in his back. A vaguely familiar brown-and-cream station wagon, a huge antique thing from the 1960s, was parked in the driveway, where there hadn't been a car before. He was too staggered to give it more than a glance.

He stopped at the corner of Elgin and Hill and waited, but Pier didn't show up. After a couple of minutes he headed on down Hill Street towards the games field.

Halfway down the block she popped into view beside him. Simon yelped and stumbled. “How did you do that?”

“It was a baffle spell, that's all.”

“A spell.” He frowned. “Like what Gram did.”

“Yes, but much more simple. It was nothing.” She waved a hand. “Simon, there was a dragon near us! I think it was on the roof of that house. It was trying to squirm its way into my mind.” She shivered. “To stop me getting Wayland's Prism.”

“Pier, we don't have dragons here.”

“Maybe you had none before. You have one now. It came through the gate last night.”

“Okay, okay. But ….” He stopped. “Wayland's Prism. You don't mean —”

“Yes!” She glowed. Her mouth shaped something that was as close to a smile as he'd seen yet. “I found it! It is in that house. Now I must go back to it and … and ….” She frowned, then turned her head slowly, like radar tracking an incoming plane.

“What?”

“It's moving again, but how? Moving fast!”

They looked back up the street. The brown-and-cream station wagon rounded the corner and sailed down the street towards them. As it passed, a face nodded out the driver's window, a hand waved, and then it was gone. Pier turned as if she was on strings.

“It's in that machine!” she breathed. “Quick! Follow!”

Simon trotted after her. “That was Mr. Manning's car,” he said between strides. “That was Mr. Manning driving. And … and four guys, and … some kind of …”

“Car? He has the Prism in there with him,” Pier tossed over her shoulder. “It was in a box inside his house. Now it is inside his car. I saw it. I felt it.”

“In a box? Pier — you know what? Pier!” He grabbed her arm and slowed her to a walk. “Was it a wooden box, about so long?” He held his hands a metre apart. “With a steel lock?”

“Yes. The Prism Blade is inside there. I cannot lose it now!”

“We won't lose it. I know that box. I know exactly where it's going.” He laughed. “Pier, you don't know how wrong you are. That's not Wayland's Prism. It's —”

“I know what I know!” Pier marched on.

“All right, stubborn. I'll just have to show you.” They were nearly at the games field. Kids were still running around in all directions. Simon wondered how
much of the first event he'd missed, and how mad Ike would be.

“Ty, eh?” Amelia studied the boy who sat beside her on the roof. “That's it? Just Ty?”

“That is all you need to know.”

This close, there was no mistaking it. Those cat-slit amber eyes were not contact lenses, the knife-sharp teeth were not filed, and the blue-green mohawk shimmered like dragon scales. “You didn't even try to make yourself look human. How come?”

“But I do look human.” He blinked his dragon eyes at her. “I look like my friends, Erwin and Jeff and Xenon. They are human.”

“But they ….” She thought of explaining about punk styles, then decided it would take the rest of the day. “So, what's your real name?”

She realized, next moment, that it was the worst possible thing to say. Dragon names are never given just for the asking, and the asking can be dangerous. But this one didn't go all claws and fire; he just winked at her.

“The chief warns me about this. She tells me all about you ardini and your world. She says you don't understand
our ways
or
our names, and even if you did you couldn't wrap your clumsy tongue around them.”

“Clumsy! When it was me who taught her how to speak English!”

He laughed. His human laugh was low and rusty, squeaky in spots, like his voice. His voice sounded like he wasn't all the way grown up, she thought.

“Anyway, next time
ask
before you fly anywhere with me, okay? I
hate
being grabbed like that!”

He arched a sea-green eyebrow at her. “Next time you can fly yourself, then. See how far you get.”

Amelia shifted position to keep her bare legs off the hot shingles. She'd expected it to be cool, up here on the highest peak of the house, next to the little round tower with the cone-shaped roof.

From her perch she watched four husky teenage boys wearing “Proud to be a DAWG” T-shirts come out of Mr. Manning's house, followed by Mr. Manning. Two of them carried a big wooden case between them. They loaded it into the car, with Mr. Manning fussing around them like a stork herding four bison. Then they drove away. None of them had looked up at the roof.

“This must be Mr. Manning's house,” Amelia said. “I wonder what was in that box?”

“Something the little pale one wants very badly. I caught that much from her thoughts before she set up
that shield. Maybe it's the Great Bane out of the tales.” He turned his head to study her with his amber eyes. She looked away. She felt uncomfortable looking him right in the eyes. Unsafe.

“Tales? You have old stories, too?”

“All our stories are old. Dragons have long memories.”

“So, what's this Great Bane? You gonna tell me?”

“Why not?”

In the beginning (said a voice in Amelia's head, a voice that sounded like Mara's.
That is because she was the one who told me this, when I was little,
Ty said.) In the beginning was All-mother, and she was alone. All-mother paired with Night, and the first hatchlings were fire and water and earth and air, and so the world was shaped.

Then All-mother paired with Sun, and the first dragons were hatched. First and wisest was Draum Dreamshaper. As soon as Draum broke from the egg he ate all the others of that clutch, and so he grew strong.

Then All-mother paired with Moon, and the first humans were hatched. First and cleverest was Volund Swordmaker. After Volund broke from the egg he waited
until his brothers and sisters hatched, and then he made them work for him. And so he grew strong.

Now, each brother ruled half the world, and for many long years there was peace.

But Volund was not content. He said, “Why should I rule only half the world?” So every morning he lit his fire and took his hammer and hammered out a new sword. Each sword was stronger and more terrible than the one before.

One day, Volund made the strongest and most terrible sword of all. And Draum knew it in his dream. He named it the Great Bane. That night as Volund slept, Draum stole the Great Bane. And because he could not destroy it, he hid it.

Years passed, and Volund's children grew clever and strong and many, and their weapons grew more deadly. Then the children of Draum departed, because their home had become Ardrin, a world of demons, and they came to a new world and took it for their own. They named it Mythrin — Our World.

The Great Bane that Volund made and Draum hid was never found. But to this day it troubles the dreams of the Urdar.

Amelia opened her eyes. Mara's voice faded from her mind. “Never found,” she murmured. “But now Pier's found something. Could this be it?”

“She thinks it is,” Ty said.

“Then we'd better go after her. Just in case she's right.” Amelia gripped the hot metal roof peak with flinching hands. How was she going to get down from here?

“You know what we have to do, of course. We have to kill her.”

“Wha—!” Amelia lost her grip, slid down the steep pitch, scrabbling all the way, and came to a stop with her heels in the eavestrough. She sat breathing hard, her heart pounding. Ty slid down beside her.

“No,” she said, very quietly, when she had enough breath to speak.