The Fortress of the Treasure Queen Page 5

  Names like Nroth and Bleakwold, Myrgings and UnderEarth.

  “Oh, my gosh!” whispered Keeah. “What is this?”

  “A map of Ko’s ancient empire of Goll, when the Dark Lands ruled,” said Sparr. “Now that Ko is back, these places will come alive again, one by one.”

  “The Dark Lands are huge!” said Julie.

  “And how do you even say N-r-o-t-h?” asked Neal.

  “There are many things to learn, now that the beasts are back,” said Sparr. Rolling up the mysterious scroll, he added, “I know you probably don’t completely trust me yet. But maybe, if I worked with you, we could do some good —”

  At that moment, the palace doors burst open and — roowooo! — Sparr’s two-headed pet, Kem, leaped down the steps and charged to the boy, nearly knocking him over.

  Sparr laughed a bright laugh and ran off with Kem, tossing sticks with both hands.

  Eric took a breath. “Sparr helped us a lot today. It’s a good thing he’s with us.”

  “A very good thing,” said Julie.

  Eric, Julie, Neal, Max, Keeah, and her parents looked down to the harbor below. In the distance, they saw the rolling waves of Droon’s great ocean.

  “We won today,” said King Zello. “Against Ko, that’s very good.”

  “Today,” Keeah repeated. “But Sparr said Ko has lots of plans. I think we should have a plan, too. Something Ko might not expect.”

  “What do you mean?” asked the queen.

  Keeah held up the map of old Goll. “Since the beginning, we’ve been trying to keep half of Droon free. Maybe that’s not enough. Maybe we should try to free all of Droon.”

  “All of Droon?” Neal looked at the shadows on the map. “You mean go into the Dark Lands?”

  “And make them light again,” said Keeah.

  “Princess, do you think we can?” chirped Max. “Ko is very powerful. Not to mention that terrible moon dragon Gethwing!”

  Keeah smiled. “It won’t be easy.”

  Eric watched Sparr and Kem race to the city wall and back again. “Sparr saved my life today,” he said. “That’s what the bird was sent to make sure of. Everything that happened was about getting Sparr and us together — for Droon to survive. Maybe if we trust him, we can do this.”

  A moment later — whooosh! — the familiar glow of the rainbow stairs appeared.

  Neal sighed. “I can’t believe it’s time to go already. It was so cool today!”

  “Droon will call you back soon,” said Keeah with a smile. “I know it will.”

  “Then we’ll be back in a jiffy,” said Julie. “You can count on it.”

  As the three friends ran up the stairs, they waved at Keeah and her parents until clouds covered the staircase.

  When they reached his basement, Eric sighed. “What an awesome day!”

  “Yeah, we did good,” agreed Neal, taking the jar from him. “Not bad for a day without cookies! Which reminds me. I have some cookies to test —”

  “To deliver,” said Julie, snatching the jar from him. “To the new family, remember?”

  Minutes later, they were bringing the cookie-filled jar to a big house up the street.

  Eric slowed as they passed a large moving truck. “Guys, the bird said I was meant to bring him here, so that the jar would go to Droon.”

  “Right,” said Neal. “If you hadn’t taken the bird, Sparr would never have helped us get the jar back, steal the sub, or saved your life. Pretty nifty mission, I’d say.”

  Eric paused in the driveway of the big house. “Yeah, but I keep wondering. Who sent the bird to find me in the first place?”

  Julie stopped next to him. She frowned. “Here’s another question. Did anything else go between here and Droon? I mean, was it just the bird and the jar? Or did something else go? Is Droon still a secret —”

  “Quiet!” whispered Neal, looking at an upper window of the big house.

  The curtains fluttered for an instant, then closed with a twitch.

  Eric’s heart began to pound.

  “Someone was listening to us!” he whispered. “Someone heard us talking about Droon!”

  “That was incredibly awesome!”

  “Awesomely incredible!”

  “Plus, extremely cool.”

  Eric Hinkle and his friends Julie Rubin and Neal Kroger stumbled a little as they made their way out of the dark and into the bright, sunlit lobby of the movie theater.

  “The most amazing part,” said Neal, squinting at the light, then slipping on a pair of sunglasses, “was that elf guy with the dark spectacles and the funny name —”

  “Sneaky!” said Julie. “I loved his green boots.”

  Neal grinned. “I loved when he put on his elf glasses and did all that incredible action stuff. I could do that —”

  “The wizard was very cool, too,” said Eric. “It was amazing the way his magic freed the trolls.”

  The lobby was full of people, some lining up for the next showing of the movie, others still straggling out of the dark theater.

  Julie sighed. “Remember when the princess said that every adventure is a journey and every journey is an adventure? How fabulous was that?”

  Eric couldn’t help but smile. The movie they had just seen was fabulous. It was full of adventure and action and magical special effects.

  But it wasn’t as fabulous as their real lives.

  Their real lives in Droon, that is.

  Droon was a world of wizards and sorcerers, of strange creatures, gleaming cities, misty islands, and endless seas. It was a realm of magic and adventure the three friends had discovered one day beneath Eric’s basement. Since then, they had gone to Droon many times, descending an enchanted staircase that connected the two worlds.

  On their very first journey to Droon, they had met Keeah, a real princess who turned out to be a wizard just learning her powers. She had become their best Droon friend. Together with Keeah, an old wizard named Galen, who was now on a long journey, and a friendly spider troll named Max, Eric and his friends had helped Droon battle its enemies many times. Eric and Julie had even gained magical powers. Julie could fly, and Eric was turning into a full-fledged wizard himself.

  As he looked around the lobby, Eric saw some other classmates from school. He waved to them. He knew that if he ever told any of them about Droon, it would sound made up. It would sound like a movie.

  But he, Neal, and Julie wouldn’t tell anyone. Long ago, Galen had told them that Droon was a secret they had to protect. If anyone in the Upper World ever found out about it, there was no telling what strange things might happen.

  “Okay, guys,” said Julie, checking her watch. “My mom expects us in five minutes. We’ll have supper at my house.”

  “Supper in five minutes?” said Neal. “Perfect. That leaves just enough time.”

  “Time for what?” asked Julie.

  “To get a snack, of course,” said Neal.

  Eric chuckled. “Neal, you’re supposed to get popcorn going into the movie, not when you come out.”

  Neal shrugged and trotted off to the food counter. “Call me a rebel….”

  Shaking their heads, Eric and Julie followed their friend and waited while he stood in line.

  “Eric,” whispered Julie, “did the sorcerer in the movie remind you of anyone?”

  “Of course,” he said in a low voice. “Lord Sparr. Before.”

  Right. Lord Sparr. Before.

  Sparr was a sorcerer. Always dressed in black, he had real purple fins growing behind his ears. As long as the children had known Sparr, he had been trying to take over all of Droon for himself.

  Until now.

  Not long ago, on the creepy Isle of Mists, Sparr had used a spell to wake up Emperor Ko from his charmed sleep. Ko had been the terrible leader of the dark and frightening beasts of Goll. He had kidnapped Sparr from the Upper World when Sparr was only an infant and brought him up in Droon’s Dark Lands. For years, Sparr’s goal had been to wake the sleeping em
peror. Together, the two powerful sorcerers would be impossible to beat.

  But when Sparr woke up Emperor Ko and brought him into modern Droon, something unbelievable had happened. In the middle of the spell, Sparr himself had been zapped back into a boy.

  Lord Sparr was now … Kid Sparr!

  And after being Droon’s enemy for ages, Sparr was now helping Keeah to stop Emperor Ko’s plans. On their first adventure together, Kid Sparr had even saved Eric’s life!

  Eric still couldn’t believe it. “With Sparr on our side now,” he whispered, “things in Droon sure are strange.”

  “Uh, they’re a little strange here, too,” said Julie, making a face. “Is Neal really talking to his food?”

  Eric turned to see his friend staring down into a jumbo container of popcorn.

  “Could you say that again, please?” asked Neal.

  Julie and Eric quickly pulled Neal to a corner of the crowded lobby. There, they bent their heads to the popcorn, too. As they listened, they heard a faint but very clear voice whispering from the buttery kernels. It was saying the same thing over and over.

  Find … the … dragon!

  Neal peered around the lobby through his dark glasses. “I don’t think there are any dragons here.”

  “Not here,” said Eric. “That voice is from Droon. It must be.”

  He glanced through the lobby doors to the late afternoon sky outside. Barely visible over the library across the street was the outline of a nearly full, silver moon.

  He said what they were all thinking.

  “Could the voice be talking about the moon dragon?” he whispered. “You know, Gethwing?”

  They all knew about Gethwing.

  Eric, Neal, and Julie had crossed paths with the creature once already. Strange and terrifying, Gethwing was a four-winged, powerful dragon and the right-hand beast of Emperor Ko. He had taken care of young Sparr when the boy was growing up in Ko’s palace.

  Find … the … dragon! the voice repeated.

  Eric felt himself tense up. Suddenly, the hair on the back of his neck tickled. His heart began to pound. As he carefully scanned the crowds lining up for the next movie, he said, “It feels like someone —”

  “Is watching us?” said Julie, lowering her voice. She, too, glanced around.

  “A spy?” said Neal. “There was a spy in the movie. That fishy-looking creature.”

  “I felt it yesterday, too,” said Eric. “I’ve been wondering whether somebody in the big house on my street heard us talking about … you-know-where.”

  “Somebody might think it’s weird that we’re listening to popcorn, too,” said Julie. “Either way, we have to go to you-know-where right now. If someone is watching us, we need to throw them off our trail. We need to be sneaky —”

  “Sneaky?” Neal grinned. “I love when you call me that!”

  Finishing his popcorn and tossing the box into a container by the doors, Neal darted out of the lobby to Main Street. He crouched low, glanced both ways, then scampered behind the nearest mailbox, leaped over a bench, and dashed into the park. “Forward, elves!” he called back.

  Laughing, Julie and Eric ran after him.

  Zipping past the library, they headed down a side street, sprinted in front of the pizza place, and dodged behind the supermarket into a neighborhood of houses.

  Weaving across front yards and along driveways, they were out of breath when they finally reached Eric’s back door.

  “There was probably an easier way to get here,” said Julie. “But I guess adventure heroes never take the easy way!”

  As they tumbled through Eric’s back door and into the kitchen, Julie and Neal peeked out the window into the backyard.

  “No one,” said Julie. “I think we lost him.”

  Neal nodded, then grumbled. “I think I lost my sunglasses, too.”

  “We’ll hunt for them later,” said Eric. “For now, let’s go find a dragon!”

  The three friends tramped down the basement stairs. Nearly hidden under the staircase was a small door blocked by large cartons. The kids quickly pushed the cartons aside, opened the door, and piled into a tiny closet.

  “Ready to find a dragon?” asked Eric.

  “Ready,” said Julie.

  Neal nodded. “I guess I’d rather find a dragon than have a dragon find us!”

  Eric closed the door and gave a tug on the string of the ceiling light. It clicked off, and the little room was dark for a second. Then it wasn’t.

  Whooosh! The floor became the top step of a glittering staircase, curving away from the house. Descending through the clouds, the kids entered a bright, warm afternoon. The sun shone over a wide blue sea and on the fluffy bushes and squat green buildings of a small village clinging to the top of a mountain. The village was surrounded by a wall.

  “Firefrog Mountain!” said Neal. “We’ve been here before.”

  Firefrog Mountain was the home of the green-flamed animals known as firefrogs. They watched over creatures and people who had made trouble in Droon.

  The kids leaped off the steps and onto a narrow path snaking up the mountainside toward the village at the top. At the same moment, a creature came barreling down the path toward them.

  “Hurry! Hurry!” it cried.

  “Oh, my gosh!” said Julie. “A … a … dragon!”

  It was a dragon, all right. But as it came closer, the friends could see that it wasn’t the frightening moon dragon they had feared. This dragon was plump and squat, with spiky brown skin, a thick tail, and two small wings. It was wearing an apron covered in fruit stains and there was a puffy chef’s hat on its knobby head.

  “It’s Jabbo!” said Eric. “The pie maker!”

  “Jabbo, stop!” called Neal.

  A humble pie maker in the Upper World, Jabbo had once come upon an ancient spell and used it to try to take over Droon. After the kids had helped stop him, Galen had sent him here, to Firefrog Mountain.

  When the little dragon saw the children now, he screamed, turned, and hustled right back to the village. “No more pie!” he growled. “No more anything! Jabbo is done! Jabbo is escaping! Good-bye!”

  Text copyright © 2004 by Robert T. Abbott.

  Illustrations copyright © 2004 by Scholastic Inc.

  All rights reserved. Published by Scholastic Inc.

  SCHOLASTIC, LITTLE APPLE, and associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc.

  First printing, October 2004

  Cover art by Tim Jessell

  e-ISBN 978-0-545-41836-2

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher. For information regarding permission, write to Scholastic Inc., Attention: Permissions Department, 557 Broadway, New York, NY 10012.