The Passage to Mythrin 2-Book Bundle (32 page)

“No?” He gaped at her. “Why not?”

“Why
not
? Are you nuts?”

“But she wants to kill all the dragons! She is an enemy!”

“I know, but … you just can't. I won't let you.”

“And how could you stop me?” He laughed and ran his nails over the wooden shingle between them. It shredded into toothpick-sized pieces. “Still … to please you, I'll just take away a piece of her mind so she forgets all about it. That would work as well.”

“Not that, either! You can't mess with her mind, especially not about that. It would hurt her too much.”

“Ah, I know all about this. The chief told me you ardini all have minds like cobwebs. Not to worry. I have a light touch.”

“No,” she said again, and turned and looked him straight in the eyes. For a moment, it was like looking into the sun. Her mind was full of glare. Then she thought,
I won't let him do this
. Something in her head shuttered down and cool darkness fell. She could see again.

He blinked slowly.
That surprised him!
she thought cheerfully, and saw him frown. “You learn fast, ardin child.” He shrugged. “But you still shout like a hatchling.”

“Never mind that. Just get this: you're not going to do anything to Pier! Promise you won't!”

“Promise?
Promise?
” He looked down his nose at her, and suddenly it was a long and pointed nose. “Who are you to tell me to promise?” A wisp of smoke floated out of one nostril. Amelia waved it away.

“
I'm
the one Mara gave this job to. She gave it to me, not you. So that means
I'm
in charge.” Then she thought of something. Her heart sank. “Unless … she …. She didn't send you here because she thought I couldn't stop Pier, did she?”

“Uh ….” He looked away. “No. In fact, she didn't send me at all. I … just came.”

“What, all on your own? Why?”

“Why not?” He laughed and leaped to his feet. “For the adventure! Who among the Urdar have been here, to this demon world we left so many ages ago? Three or four, no more. Each one a hero.” He poised on the edge of the roof, his Doc Martens airy-light on the shingles, sunshine bouncing off his spikes and studs and rings. He looked like he could dance. Or fly.

Amelia astonished herself by standing up beside him. Astonished, yet she couldn't resist. While her stomach curled up in horror at the sight of the paved driveway forty feet below, another part of her, a part that had always been there, knew she could lift off any minute now.

“Besides,” Ty added, “who among the warriors would dare? None! Except me. Wait till I go back and tell them!”

“So that's it.” Amelia teetered on the edge of the roof. “You're doing this to impress your buddies! That's so not cool.”

“And because you need me. You can't destroy the Great Bane on your own.”

“Wha—? I
need
you?” She widened her eyes at him. “Like h—”

“Hey! You kids!” a voice called from below. A woman across the street was waving a straw hat at them. “You get down from there right this minute!”

“Right, we'd better get down.” Amelia no longer felt like flying or dancing. She sank to a crouch and quivered. The pavement looked miles away. “I'll break my neck!”

“Not to fear.” Ty reached, hoisted her up, and pinned her under one arm. She squawked, but didn't dare struggle. Ty walked up the slope of the roof to the peak with Amelia tucked against his jacket like a long, droopy parcel, and then walked down the other side. When he came to the eavestrough he stepped out into air and dropped. Amelia shut her eyes and opened her mouth, but before the scream could escape she felt herself spun upright and plunked on her feet.

She opened her eyes. They were standing on the patio behind the house. She swayed, then caught her balance. Took a deep breath. Faced Ty, who stood grinning at her.

“You're insane. What did you do to those punks?”

“Do?” He looked surprised. “Nothing. I liked their looks, so I watched them for a time, to know how to shape myself and how to speak, and then I came where they were. ‘Where you from,' they said. ‘I am from another world,' I said. ‘I am not human.' ‘Cool,' they said.”

“Yes, well, you keep it like that. Cool.” Amelia headed around the house to the front, waved to the woman who frowned across the street at them, and started back
towards the games field. “Remember, we're going to do this the way Mara would.”

“She is a great chief.” Ty looked serious. “She is one of the wisest ever, some say, even though she is still young.”

“Right. Well, Mara wouldn't kill Pier. That's not her way. She wouldn't just throw her weight around. She'd think of the smart way out.”

“Then that's what we'll do.” Ty swaggered beside her, clinking and flashing. “And then what?”

“What do you mean, ‘and then what?”

“When we have the Great Bane, what will you do? How will you destroy it?”

“Good glory,
I
don't know! One thing at a time!”

“You see?” said Simon. “That's what was in the box.”

Kids jostled each other in front of the platform. Simon held his place like a boulder in a stream and stuck out an arm to keep Pier from getting squashed. Everybody wanted to gawk at the Hector Manning Trophy. In Dunstone, only the Stanley Cup would make more of a stir.

It was out of its wooden box now and inside a heavy Plexiglas case, which sat on a table on the platform, next to Mr. Manning's chair, so everybody could see it — the slightly dented but brightly polished silver cup, really more like a wide, deep bowl with handles, on top of the two-foot-high round wooden base, also highly polished and almost completely covered in small silver plaques.
The four beefy teens, football players all, stood guard, one at each corner of the case.

The newest plaque on the bottom tier of the base was engraved with Kevin Purcell's name and last year's date. The one next to it was blank, but Simon could easily imagine his own name there. Ike's too, of course.

“You see, that's what we're all competing for. To have our names on that trophy.” He looked at Pier. “You, um, get that, right? About competing, I mean?”

“Of course!” She shot a frown at him, then switched her eyes back to the trophy. “The warriors compete often, the weavers too, when there is no danger from dragons.”

“Okay, so now you see ….” He waved up at the trophy.

“I see what you see.”

“Oh, good —”

“
When
my eyes are open. But when my eyes are closed,” and she closed them, “I see then what it really is.”

Simon watched Pier's face. You'd think a light had turned on under her colourless skin. “You're saying that's a disguise,” he said flatly.

“What's a disguise?” asked Ike, edging in next to Simon with a large watermelon under his arm.

“That.” Pier dipped head and shoulders respectfully at the trophy.

Simon whispered in Ike's ear, “She says it's Wayland's Prism.”

“The Hec Manning Trophy?” Ike giggled. Pier just kept gazing up at it. Ike's grin faded.

“Not all of it,” she said. “Not the bottom wooden part. Just the silver thing like a cup.”

“Huh.” Ike stared at it. “Well, you know what Mr. Manning always says — how his grandfather dug that cup out of lava from a volcano. I always thought that was made up. Anything silver that got stuck in hot lava would have melted, you'd think.”

“Wayland Smith himself forged it. Nothing can harm it, not even dragon fire. That is why Wyrm hid it, and disguised it. Just as the story says.” Some kids next to them were giving Pier funny looks, but she didn't seem to know they were there. She switched her eyes back to Simon's face. “You will win it for me. I will wait here until you do.”

“Second senior event in five minutes!” Mr. Manning was at the microphone again. “Competitors to the starting line!”

“Come on!” Ike dumped the watermelon into Simon's arms and dragged him towards the centre of the field. “We're ahead, no thanks to you, so let's keep our lead.”

“We're ahead?” Simon looked back at the platform, but he couldn't see Pier's small shape in the crowd. He felt uneasy leaving her alone. He felt still more uneasy when he saw Amelia staring after him. She'd been standing close to him and Pier. She could have heard all that about the trophy. Still, guarded the way it was, there was no chance she could steal it.

Something else about the trophy bothered him, but he didn't have time just then to work out what it was. He set the problem aside and told himself he'd dig it out later and give it a good think. “What's with the watermelon?”

“That's for the next event. Your turn now, Hammer.
I
won the first event!” Ike turned around and trotted backwards ahead of him. “Ran out of time looking for you, so I just did the quickest thing I could think of. See, the challenge was to carry a drop of water from the south-west corner of the field to a bucket in front of the platform without using hands or an artificial container, and without spilling any. All the others were rigging up fancy ways of carrying water. Like, the Gingrich brothers tried carrying the smallest of them with water in his belly button. Silly things like that. Know what I did? I just ran to the bucket and spat!”

Simon laughed. “Smart!”

“Yeah, and I even got us a ten-point bonus for ‘elegant simplicity.'”

They were at the starting line now. Only ten competitors were there, all boys, milling around in front of a sand pit. They all had watermelons. Simon hefted his in both hands. It had to weigh at least ten kilos. What the heck would he have to do with it? The loudspeaker crackled again. “Oh, no,” Simon muttered as he listened.

It was the shot-put.

Long before the spectacularly messy end of the Watermelon Shot-put event, Amelia realized that winning the trophy was not going to be as easy as she'd expected. As a team, Ike and Simon turned out to be surprisingly sharp, even though they made mistakes. Kevin and Dinisha weren't so clever at thinking up new ways of solving the challenges, but they hardly ever messed up the running and throwing parts. Those two teams were her main competition, Amelia decided.

It didn't help a lot, at first, that Ty was faster and stronger than anybody else. He threw his watermelon twice as far as Simon. When it hit the ground it exploded. Pink melon flesh and black seeds sprayed all over. Ty ran around with his fists in the air, like a soccer player at the World Cup, and Oscar took his picture with the other
three punks. They had forgotten all about being cool and were jumping up and down and cheering him.

It would have been great,
except
. Except the challenge said you were supposed to
cut
the watermelon open before eating the flesh and
spitting
the seeds at the target.

Simon and Ike must have figured out the trick in that challenge before they started, because when Simon hurled the melon, Ike leaped and caught it just before it hit the ground. He rolled in the sand, but the melon wasn't even cracked. Then they got busy with the cutting, eating, and spitting.

“So we're in second place on this one,” Amelia said after the scores were announced. “Never mind, good start.” They were sitting on the grass in the shade of a tree, eating chunks of watermelon.

A few yards away, the other three punks sat or lay with their leather jackets off and their T-shirts tied around their heads against the sun.

Erwin, Jeff, and Xenon. Amelia couldn't keep them sorted in her mind, except that Erwin was the one with the bleached-blond mohawk and the slashed jeans. They were way too cool to actually take part in these games. They thought Ty had signed up for a joke.

“Second place!” Ty hissed with disappointment. “It would be so much easier if you could just
take
the Bane. There it is, out in the open for all to see.”

“And guarded,” Amelia reminded him. “And no, you can't mess with those guys' minds.”

“I wouldn't hurt them. I would just make them want to go away and leave it. It would be so easy!” Ty raised his head with a snaky motion and stared at the platform. “And then —”

“No! You can't mess with people's minds. It's wrong.”

“Why wrong?”

“Because it feels awful. I know, I had it done to me once.” She pulled at his arm. “Look at me, Ty.” She thought of something Celeste said sometimes. “I want you,” she said sternly, “to give me your word!”

Ty went very still. “Do not ask.”

“You mean, you won't.”

“Just do not ask.”

“But you won't hurt them, right?”

“Does the eagle eat mosquitoes?”

“I don't know. Does it?” He talked very strange, sometimes. “Anyway, we can't just
take
it — that would be stealing. When we win it, you can carry it for me. It looks heavy.”

Ty gave himself a full-body shake. All his chains and zippers clinked. “I almost think there is another dragon here, messing with
my
mind, making me clumsy and stupid.”

“Why? Cause that's the only possible reason you could've come second?” She laughed and poked his arm. It felt as if it was made of steel rods and leather.

He snorted. “Here, among ardini? Of course I should win! So, I wonder ….” Ty curled in closer on himself and squinted around the crowded field. “Only there can't be another dragon here, because I would know.”

“Well, that's a relief!”

“That is, I would know unless … unless that one was very, very good.”

The third event was the Shoe Tree Salvage. Everybody handed over their shoes and sandals, which were hung on hooks tied to the limbs of a huge chestnut tree near the back of the school. Most of the footwear dangled more than twenty feet off the ground. Then everybody had to get their shoes back. You won points for speed, creative thinking, and “economy of means,” which meant getting the job done with the least amount of work. You lost points for getting the wrong shoes.