The Mask of Maliban Read online

  Title Page

  Dedication

  1: A Little Extra Help

  2: Mountain of the Firefrogs

  3: In the City of Magic

  4: Hob, the Impish Imp!

  5: A Great Idea?

  6: What the Evil Ones Are Wearing

  7: The Magic in the Mask

  8: The Big Chase

  9: Welcome to the Dark Lands!

  10: The End of Tortu’s Tail

  The Adventure Continues …

  Also Available

  Copyright

  “Ahhh!” screamed Eric Hinkle as he raced down the empty hallway at school.

  He was running because he was being chased.

  By hundreds of tiny green birds.

  Quawk! Eeeep! Cheeeeep!

  Eric knew these were no ordinary birds chasing him. They had sharp green wings and stubby pink beaks. And they came from another world.

  The magical world of Droon.

  Kraw! Kraw!

  The birds zipped and swooped and fluttered and flitted up to the ceiling lights. Then they dived for his head, screeching all the way.

  The amazing part was that he — Eric Hinkle, regular kid — had made the birds appear!

  Quawk-awk-awk —

  Out of breath, Eric slid into Mrs. Michaels’s classroom and tumbled behind a desk.

  He searched his memory to find what he had done wrong. Earlier that day, he had arranged with Mrs. Michaels to get extra math help. She said they could do it during last period when the rest of the school was in assembly.

  Then at the end of the day as he headed to her classroom, a mysterious word had popped into his head, just like that.

  Topa-popa-snabbo.

  “That’s it!” Eric groaned to himself. “I shouldn’t have said that word!”

  But he had said it.

  And suddenly — quawk! — birds were everywhere. They chased him down the hall. And now they were all over Mrs. Michaels’s classroom. And they just kept coming — more and more and more of them!

  “Get away!” he cried. Shielding his face with one arm, he swatted them away with the other, when another word popped into his head.

  “Ya-ya-boko-mesh! I mean, huh — ?”

  Kkkk — blam!

  His fingers shot out a sudden spray of blue sparks and — poomf! — the birds vanished. All of them. As if they had never been there at all.

  Eric slumped to the floor, exhausted. “What is going on? I mean, I can make stuff appear. I have these sparks coming out of my fingers. And I’m even having, sort of, visions!”

  Yes, visions. That was another thing.

  For several days he had found himself seeing and hearing things that were happening somewhere else. It was truly weird. Now sitting on the classroom floor, he tried to make it happen again.

  He closed his eyes.

  Suddenly, light flashed in his head, and he “saw” Mrs. Michaels pulling open a door somewhere in the school.

  He opened his eyes and — poof! — she was gone. A vision.

  Eric smiled to himself and said aloud what he’d been thinking. “I have … magical powers.”

  He remembered exactly when he got the powers, too. It was on his last visit to Droon. He had been thrown into a deep cavern by a whispering evil spirit named Om.

  To save Eric, his friend Princess Keeah had directed a blast of blue wizard light at him. It had saved him, all right. But it had done something else, too. Keeah’s light had entered into him, filling him with its glow.

  She didn’t know it, but his fingers had been sparking ever since. Well, almost ever since.

  Eric never knew when he would have the powers. In fact, every time he tried to show his friends Neal and Julie, his hands turned normal again. No sparks. No powers. No nothing.

  “What if my powers go away when I tell people?” he asked himself. “I mean, I like being … Eric Hinkle … kid wizard!”

  He laughed. Whirling around, he pointed his fingers at some blackboard erasers on the desk, and a new word came to him.

  “Lev … ta … lem!”

  Amazed, Eric watched as a stream of sparks left his fingertips and drifted over to the erasers. The erasers wobbled once, then rose from the desk.

  “I’m doing it!” he cried. “I’m doing it —”

  The door squeaked.

  “Oh, no!” He shoved his hands in his pockets, and the erasers crashed to the floor in a puff of dust.

  Mrs. Michaels entered the room. She started to cough. “My goodness, Eric, what are you doing?” She waved the chalk dust away from her face.

  “Sorry, Mrs. Michaels. I’m here for the extra help we talked about.” He put the erasers back on the desk.

  “Then let’s get started, shall we?”

  For the next thirty minutes, Mrs. Michaels went over math problems while Eric did his best to hide his sparking fingertips.

  “I think I understand the problems now,” he said finally.

  She smiled. “You can always get extra help when you’re having trouble with something.”

  “Extra help. I sure need that.” What Eric really needed was extra help controlling his powers.

  “Next time, don’t keep it such a secret.”

  “No secrets,” he said. “Right. Got it.”

  He suddenly felt bad about not telling Julie and Neal about what was happening to him.

  Friends don’t keep secrets from friends.

  Brrrinnng! The final school bell rang. Eric thanked Mrs. Michaels, grabbed his books, then jumped into the hallway. It was already crowded with kids coming back from the assembly.

  “Eric!” called a loud voice. “Today’s the day!”

  He turned to see Julie and Neal trotting toward him. He grinned. “The day for what?”

  Neal grabbed Eric’s arm and tugged him close to the lockers. “The three of us are going back to you-know-where!”

  “Really?” said Eric. “Today? Are you sure?”

  Julie laughed. “Keeah said our dreams tell us when we’re needed in Droon, right? Well, it was so hot in the auditorium —”

  “And the assembly took forever,” said Neal.

  “—that we both fell asleep, and guess what?” said Julie. “We both dreamed of the same creature! He was all furry with red and yellow spots. He was very cute.”

  “But mostly weird,” Neal added, making a face. “And Droon is the only place with weird creatures … besides the mall, I mean!”

  Eric laughed. “That’s for sure.”

  After their bus had been called, they left the school, got on the bus, and plopped down in their seats.

  “We figure we’re being called back for a special mission,” said Julie. “I wonder what Galen’s got cooking up for us this time!”

  Galen Longbeard was the very old and very powerful first wizard of Droon. Eric wondered what Galen would say if he knew that Eric had powers, too. Would he make him give them up?

  Eric decided not to tell anyone his secret until he could learn more. And the only place to do that was Droon.

  The bus started up and pulled onto the street.

  “I can’t wait to see Keeah again,” said Julie. “And Max, of course. He’s so funny!”

  Neal nodded. “But there are some folks who aren’t so funny. Lord Sparr, for instance. Yuck.”

  Lord Sparr.

  Just the name made the kids shiver. Sparr was a sorcerer who wanted to take over all of Droon. He would have succeeded, too, but Keeah had turned his own wicked creation, the Golden Wasp, against him. Sparr had been stung by it.

  Since then, people told stories about the terrible monster Sparr had become. The kids were sure they had seen him recently. If it was him, “monster” was certainly the right word. Instead of a man with a
black cloak and fins behind his ears, Sparr was all dark and scaly with a red snout and long teeth. Yep, “monster” was the word.

  Eric shivered for another reason, too. He was remembering what the spirit Om had whispered.

  He said Eric would help Sparr. Help him!

  Just then, the bus stopped at Eric’s house.

  “To the basement!” he cried.

  They scrambled into his house and headed down to the basement. Moving some boxes, they revealed a small door under the stairs.

  “Last one in is a rotten egg,” said Eric.

  “Wait!” Neal froze. “Did you say … egg? Egg is food. Food is good. I’m suddenly hungry!”

  “Neal!” said Julie, rolling her eyes.

  Eric was about to say that there was a box of doughnuts in the kitchen when another word popped into his head and right out of his mouth.

  “Bubb-zee-doo —”

  Neal looked puzzled. “Is that a new kind of snack food?”

  Splop! A jelly doughnut — a fat, powdery, jelly-filled doughnut — appeared behind Neal’s head. Another popped up behind Julie’s head.

  Soon, more and more of them appeared. The doughnuts began to spin in circles.

  Eric’s eyes bugged out. “How about we catch a meal in Droon? Now!” He pushed his friends into the closet before they could see anything.

  “Somebody wants to get there fast!” said Julie as Eric slammed the door behind them.

  “I sure do,” said Eric. “Everybody ready?”

  He flicked off the ceiling light.

  The closet went dark, then — whoosh! — the cold gray floor vanished. In its place shimmered the rainbow-colored staircase to Droon.

  “This is my favorite thing,” said Julie excitedly. “I mean, where else besides Droon can life be so … magical?”

  Eric thought about the doughnuts flying around his basement and smiled. “Right. Where else?”

  Together, the three friends climbed down the stairs. Lower and lower they went. But with every step, dark shadows fell over the staircase.

  “I know the stairs always lead to someplace new,” said Neal. “But let me be the first to say it’s blacker than night down there. I just hope it’s not a trap set by Lord Sparr.”

  The steps wound down into total darkness.

  “Or by some new creepy villain,” added Julie.

  Crunch! The ground was rough under their shoes.

  “We’re at the bottom,” said Eric. “We must be in a tunnel — holy cow! — what’s that?”

  Splop! Splop! There was a strange sound and a flash of green. Then out of the distance came a rolling, hopping, boiling swarm of creatures.

  Splop! They looked like frogs but had big purple eyes and were as large as cats.

  Their skins were blazing with bright green flames that lit the tunnel with a fantastic glow.

  “Back up the stairs!” yelled Julie.

  Eric glanced behind them. “Too late. They’re fading. We’ll find them when it’s time to go home.”

  “But I want to go home now!” cried Neal.

  They took another look at the frogs bounding wildly at them. And for the second time that day, Eric started to scream.

  Eric was still screaming — “Ahhh!” — when a voice shouted from the darkness.

  “STOP!”

  The army of fiery green creatures slid to a halt inches from the kids. Their tongues flicked in and out.

  “Eric? Julie? Neal?” said a soft voice from the shadows. “Is that … you?”

  The kids peered into the gloom and saw a young girl in a blue tunic walking toward them.

  “Princess Keeah!” Julie exclaimed.

  “That’s me!” said Keeah, smiling in the glow of the frogs. Her long blond hair was encircled by a golden crown. “I’m so happy to see you!”

  “We had to come,” Neal said. “We dreamed of a furry little dude with yellow and red spots —”

  “His name is Hob!” chirped a tiny voice.

  Scrambling up the tunnel wall was Max, the spider troll. He had eight twitching legs and a plump grinning face. “Hob is the very imp we’re searching for,” Max said. “He escaped his mountain prison. Now you can help us find him!”

  “Too bad these tunnels are empty,” said Keeah. “Firefrogs, let’s report to Galen at once.”

  The frogs hopped about excitedly. Tiny flames sprayed off their heads as they followed Keeah and the children upward through the tunnels.

  “In my dream, Hob looked sort of cute and fuzzy,” said Julie. “Is he really so bad?”

  Max scurried alongside. “He wasn’t always bad. Hob was famous as a maker of masks.”

  “Masks?” said Eric. “What kind of masks?”

  “Like Halloween masks?” asked Neal.

  The princess shook her head. “Hob made masks for the royal theater of Jaffa City. He was the finest mask maker in all of Droon.”

  “Until five years ago,” the spider troll added. “That’s when Hob began carving magical symbols on his masks. Magical symbols from the evil empire of Goll!”

  At that moment the tunnels opened out onto a mountaintop in broad daylight. On the mountain was a small village of squat green buildings.

  “Hob’s masks suddenly had powers,” Keeah went on. “So Galen banished him to this mountain, where he was watched over by the firefrogs.”

  Banished? thought Eric. For having powers? Will I be banished, too?

  In the center of the village stood a tall man in a blue cloak. His long white beard whirled in the wind sweeping across the mountain.

  It was the great wizard Galen.

  Galen turned sharply, greeting the children with a hasty smile. He glanced a second time at Eric, his old face tense and gray, as if he were about to say something.

  Eric wondered if Galen sensed his powers.

  But the wizard turned to Keeah. “I see in your face that Hob is gone. Now the trouble begins!”

  Neal raised his hand. “Could this have anything to do with, you know, nasty old Sparr?”

  “Sparr!” Galen’s eyes flashed. “Sparr does not meddle with such imps as Hob. No, since Sparr was stung by the Wasp, he is weak, hiding away many miles from here. Look!”

  From a pocket deep inside his cloak the wizard took out a small mirror. It was a tiny version of the large magic mirror Galen kept in his tower. Using it, he could see across all of Droon.

  “I see him, even now,” Galen said, tracing his finger over the foggy surface of the glass.

  Eric peeked at the mirror, but saw nothing. He saw Keeah squinting at the mirror, too.

  “Sparr is in his volcano palace on the far side of his Dark Lands,” said Galen. “We need not worry about him today.”

  Neal grinned. “Then I can relax. A day without old fish fins is a day of fun!”

  “Do not be so sure,” said the wizard. “Hob has his own mischief to do. And we must find out what. Firefrogs, which of you saw Hob last?”

  One by one the frogs quieted and stepped aside. In their midst crouched a tiny frog, her purple eyes bulging with worry.

  “Forgive me, Sir Galen!” she warbled. “It was my first day. Hob was too clever for me!”

  Galen’s stern expression remained for a moment, then softened. He knelt next to the tiny frog. “Now, now, my little friend,” he said. “I’m sure you’ll grow into a fine watcher one day. For now, just tell me what happened.”

  The creature sniffled once, then began to speak. “Hob said he was hungry. He asked for a bowl of stew. So I gave him one.”

  “A bowl? A bowl!” said the wizard. “Yes, I begin to see. What happened next?”

  “Before I could take it back, Hob shaped the bowl into a mask. It was like the head of a bird.”

  “A bird,” said Galen, stroking his chin. “Certainly a good choice. What did Hob do then?”

  “He made circles and lines all over the mask,” the frog whimpered. “Strange they were! And when he put on the mask he flew right out of the village! And
he boasted he was going to make another mask, even better!”

  “Another?” questioned the wizard. “For whom?”

  “Someone named Prince Maliban —”

  “A minor spell caster,” said Galen. “I’ve heard of him. Like many others, he saw his chance for fame when Sparr went into hiding!”

  “He lives now in Tortu,” said the frog.

  “Tortu!” Galen boomed, bolting to his feet. “The city of the turtle! Oh, a terrible den of dark spells, magic, and mystery, Tortu is! A city of evil and danger!”

  “Evil? Danger?” said Neal, gulping loudly. “Guess where we must be going?”

  The wizard chuckled. “Right you are, Neal. Now, Keeah …” The wizard scanned the distant horizon. “Tortu is east of the Kubar River, on the Thousand Mile Plains, near the pink mountains of Saleef. Do the honors, if you will.”

  “Certainly!” said the princess.

  Eric watched closely as Keeah shut her eyes and made a swirling motion with her hands. A funnel of blue air twinkled up around them.

  It suddenly felt as if they were moving.

  An instant later — poomf! — the light was gone. They were standing at the foot of a hill on the edge of a great rolling plain. The sun shone down on miles and miles of tall grass. Far in the distance was a range of pink-topped mountains.

  “Cool,” said Neal. “Nonstop express to … to … hey, I don’t see any city of evil and danger. Not that I’m complaining, but Galen, sir, did you get the directions wrong?”

  “My master is never wrong!” chirped Max. “And the proof is there —”

  Thwump! Thwump!

  The earth rumbled beneath their feet.

  “The city of Tortu,” said Galen. “It’s coming!”

  Eric frowned. “The city is … coming?”

  Then, over the crest of a hill behind them came an enormous brown foot. Thwump! It planted itself heavily on the earth. Then another foot reached over. Thwump!

  Finally, a giant drooping head, with two huge blinking eyes, bobbed up over the hill.

  “A … a … turtle!” gasped Julie, her mouth dropping open. “A giant, giant, giant turtle!”

  And soaring up from the turtle’s vast shell was an entire city of towers, walls, turrets, and bridges.

  “Behold Tortu!” said Galen. “City of magic!”