Queen of Shadowthorn Page 5

  “Salamandra tricked everyone!” said Gethwing, laughing icily. “It was never Ko who was up here! It was never Ko you were following. While you have been joyriding in your rolling thorn boat, my trap has been closing around you. And as for Ko, well, she’s deceived him, too, by joining together with me. Poor Ko doesn’t even know. Look.”

  They looked. And Julie screamed, “No!”

  On the distant plains below, a terrible finger of fire crawled toward Jaffa City.

  Ko’s armies stormed across Droon, marching, marching, unstopping, unstoppable. And visible at its head were the twin spouts of green flame Eric knew so well, leading the beasts right to the great walls of the capital.

  “Ko?” cried Max. “It’s Ko! Attacking Jaffa City!”

  Gethwing snickered. “I told him I would distract you, and I have. But now Salamandra and I will wait until he has fought King Zello and demolished the city, then attack him!”

  “No!” cried Keeah. “My city! Jaffa City!”

  “Ko isn’t good for much,” said Gethwing. “But he does know how to destroy. Soon your city will be ablaze! His army will be spent, and I will rule. Clever plan, no? My sons!” he cried out. “Wait for me in the pink mountains. We attack from there!”

  The young moon dragons flew up and away, a black swarm of thundering wings.

  Even before the dragons had faded from view, Keeah shot a stream of sparks at Gethwing, but Salamandra caught the blast in her staff. It fizzled and faded.

  Galen hurled a gigantic thunderbolt at the dragon, but the thorn queen thrust out her staff and absorbed it the same way.

  “Salamandra!” cried the wizard. “You traitor! You betrayed us. You —”

  “Oh, get over it, old man!” snarled the queen. “You said yourself that I work only for myself. Go and protect your tower. I imagine Ko wants to toss a torch on that himself!”

  With that, she blew Galen and Max right off the mountaintop. They fell through the air until a dust storm from Batamogi sent them aloft again. Galen quickly produced the flying carpet and he and Max leaped onto it. But every time they approached her, Salamandra whirled her staff, and the Portal of Ages spun faster.

  The children were awestruck. In the coiling funnel of air they saw giant masses of land, mountains, deserts — whole continents crashing toward, then away from one another. A sea of fire drowned them completely. Then came snow, then rain and forests and animals. Dwellings came next — caves at first, then desert huts, then pyramids, then palaces. Fire swept over everything, to the sound of wings flapping. The whole history of the world spun around in the roaring wind.

  Eric read Salamandra’s eyes. He saw what Gethwing saw. That the future belonged to the moon dragon.

  It was his.

  In that moment, he tried to remember what had first brought Salamandra to Droon. Had he and his friends really forced her to flee to Droon?

  Or was there another reason she was here? A reason buried in the mists of past time that only she knew? Or a reason waiting to be discovered in some unknown future?

  Before he could move, before anyone could move, Salamandra pointed her staff at the four children. They were dragged across the mountaintop toward Gethwing.

  “No!” shouted Keeah. “Stop this —”

  Gethwing grabbed Julie as if she were no more than a feather. Smiling cruelly, he tossed her toward the spinning Portal.

  Julie cried out for a second, then disappeared into the roaring wind.

  Neal shrieked, “Oh, my —”

  Laughing, Gethwing snatched Neal next and threw him over his massive shoulders and right into the Portal. Neal was gone, too. Then the moon dragon turned to Keeah, who was blasting with all her might, and heaved her into the spinning funnel.

  “Keeah!” Eric yelled, flailing his arms to reach her, but she was sucked into the dark hurricane like the others.

  Gethwing leaped to the ground next to Eric. His face wore a stone-cold expression of hatred. “You, boy, will be lost in the past now. Not me. You will suffer. Not me. You will never rule Droon. I shall. Droon is mine —”

  “But the boy is mine!” said Salamandra. She aimed her staff at Eric, and he was pulled across the ground to her feet.

  “Salamandra!” Eric screamed over the Portal’s roaring winds. “Why are you doing this?”

  She stared at him, her eyes flashing. Then she thrust her staff at him as if to pick him up and toss him into the Portal.

  Hardly knowing what he was doing, Eric grabbed the clump of thorns at the staff’s head with both hands to keep it from striking him. The sharp thorns cut into his flesh. They stung him. He nearly cried out. But the moment he grabbed the staff, his mind exploded with an image.

  The image of an apple tree.

  It was nearly fruitless, its branches bare and black. All around the tree it was late autumn, nearly winter, but still warm.

  A small boy — Eric knew at once it was himself — sat on a branch of the tree. His face was turned away, watching a man approach him slowly.

  The man was old, frail, white-haired, white-faced. “Eric …” the man said, “we’re together again … let me help you….”

  The man reached out his hand, withered and white. When Eric touched it with his own, the branches around him turned silver as if moonlight had splashed down suddenly.

  Eric knew as sure as anything that this was no vision. It was a memory from his youth.

  When the image faded, Eric turned his eyes to Salamandra.

  What does this mean? he asked silently, knowing that only by holding the thorn staff did he have the power to speak so.

  Reki-ur-set, the thorn queen responded.

  Eric frowned. I don’t know languages —

  You should. It is your own.

  “Sister Salamandra,” said Gethwing. “Enough of this silent staring. If you can’t get rid of him fast, I shall. We have business to do. We have a pact. Good-bye forever, Eric Hinkle!”

  Gethwing pushed Eric toward the portal. The force of the wind was staggering. Eric’s feet left the ground and dangled into the funnel. The only thing keeping him on the mountaintop was his grip on the thorn staff.

  Feeling his strength leave him, he stared at Salamandra one last time. He saw in her eyes one thing only. And he heard in his mind four simple words.

  You can do it!

  Eric looked at his helpless fingers and realized that they were no more helpless than anyone else’s. He could still open closets. He could still lift veils away and see what lay behind them. He could help his friends up when they fell. If he couldn’t understand languages, he could still understand his own. If he didn’t have visions, he still had vision.

  It didn’t matter if he was as ordinary, as normal, or as plain as anyone else. Because like anyone, he could think and feel and say what he believed.

  And he could do something about it.

  “Good-bye, former wizard!” Gethwing bellowed with laughter. He began to pry the boy’s hands loose from the staff.

  “Good-bye, yourself!” Eric said. “And wizard or not, I’m still Eric Hinkle! You’ll never conquer Droon as long as I’m around —”

  Releasing one hand from the jagged thorns, Eric reached out and clutched Gethwing by the neck. Then he pulled the moon dragon as hard as he could.

  Gethwing stumbled on his feet, howling in surprise, but he could not fly against the wind. The Portal swept around him, and he was sucked, wailing, into the depths of time.

  Gethwing was gone.

  The thorns piercing his fingers sent pain shooting through Eric’s body. “Salamandra, help me! Return my powers!” he cried.

  The queen’s eyes flashed and were suddenly wet with tears. Then, as she jerked her staff away from him, she said, “Remember, Eric. Remember. Reki-ur-set!”

  Eric couldn’t take the pain any longer. The thorns slipped away, and so did he. The last thing he saw before the Portal closed over him was Galen and Max flying toward the flaming storm on the plains below.

&nb
sp; “Droon!” he cried out. “Droooooon!”

  Then his eyes closed, he fell away, and all was darkness.

  “Hurry up for breakfast, dear!”

  Eric Hinkle didn’t answer his mother’s call. He was in bed, fast asleep and dreaming.

  In his dream, a blinding snowstorm whirled all around him. It showered him with icy cold snowflakes.

  Icy cold blue snowflakes!

  “Waffles!” called his father.

  Eric didn’t hear him, either. “This must be Droon,” he said to himself as he watched the flakes fly over his head. “Where else would I see blue snow?”

  Droon was the magical world that he and his friends Neal and Julie had discovered one day under his basement stairs.

  It was a land of strange and fabulous places and people, a world of adventure and mystery, and it was the only place where the snow would ever be bright blue!

  Whooosh! Sudden gusts of wind magically spun the snowflakes around Eric’s head into a crown of glittering blue.

  “How cool!” he said, his breath becoming visible, then fading in the frosty air.

  As a magical world, Droon was full of strange secrets and odd mysteries.

  What had happened to the once-evil sorcerer called Lord Sparr?

  Did the word Reki-ur-set, which the sorceress Salamandra had told him again and again, mean something special to him or was it just nonsense?

  Was the moon dragon Gethwing alive, or had he perished in Droon’s Underworld?

  And perhaps most important of all, what did the future hold for him and his friends?

  Strangely, Eric loved the mystery of these questions. He almost didn’t want them to be answered. Once they were answered, he thought, the magic of Droon might come to an end. And that was something he couldn’t bear to think about.

  Ever since he had developed his own powers, magic had become a part of Eric’s life that he never wanted to go away.

  His friends had developed magical abilities since then, too. Neal had become a genie, and Julie could fly like a bird.

  Eric sometimes felt that together, the friends’ powers were nearly as strong as those of the old master wizard, Galen Longbeard.

  Wait … Galen? Galen!

  As Eric peered through the whooshing snow of his dream, he thought he saw the great wizard himself, trekking slowly through the deep blue drifts.

  Eric took a step. “Galen? Is that you?”

  The figure stopped and turned. It was Galen. His face was pale, his long white beard blown wildly by the wind.

  He fixed Eric with his eyes.

  He opened his lips to speak.

  “Eric, hurry. Hurry —”

  Eric jumped from his bed, completely awake. “Galen?”

  “— or I’m going to eat your breakfast for you!” his father called up from the kitchen.

  Eric blinked awake, then laughed. “Whoa! My dad’s words in Galen’s mouth. It’s like Galen called me himself! And blue snow? We’re totally being called to Droon. I need to get dressed right away —” He hurried to his closet door and pulled it wide open …

  … only to see the face of his friend Neal, hanging upside down from the ceiling.

  “Did somebody say ‘waffles’?” Neal asked.

  “Ahhhhhh!” Eric screamed.

  “Shhh!” hissed Julie, whose face bobbed down right next to Neal’s. “Don’t let your parents hear you!”

  Eric staggered back. “You guys scared me! What are you doing up there?”

  “I floated through the attic window,” said Neal, pointing up. “Did you know that there’s a trapdoor in your closet ceiling?”

  Eric looked up. Sure enough, there was a door there. “No, I didn’t know that. Listen, we have to go to Droon. I just had a dream about blue snowflakes. Galen called me, sort of. There’s a new adventure waiting for us.”

  “Cool,” said Neal. “I’m so ready to be a genie again.”

  “Wait,” said Julie. “It’s Saturday. Don’t your parents have chores for you to do?”

  Eric groaned. “I forgot about chores.”

  “So let’s float back outside and then sneak in your basement window,” said Neal.

  Eric shook his head. “My mom and dad are waiting for me. But I have an idea. You guys come over and pretend to surprise me. If you really beg me to hang out, maybe I can get out of doing my chores for a while.”

  Julie smiled. “Sounds like a plan. But first, take that oversized blueberry off your head, Neal. People will talk.”

  Neal pulled his genie turban off, folded it into a bite-size shape, and slid it into his pocket. “Don’t be scared. I’m just me again.”

  Julie laughed. “Now I’m really scared!”

  After checking to make sure that no one could see them, Neal and Julie linked hands and drifted through the attic window and down to the ground. Eric quickly washed and dressed, then ran into the kitchen.

  He plopped down at the table with his parents and waited anxiously for Neal and Julie to come to the door.

  “One more minute and that waffle would have been mine!” his father said as he set a plate in front of him. “Besides, you’ll need your strength. It’s chore day, after all.”

  Eric frowned. “Thanks. Did you hear anyone at the back door?”

  “I don’t think so,” said his mother. “But speaking of chores, you won’t believe what I found in the basement.”

  Eric grew nervous. “The basement? What did you find in the basement?”

  Mrs. Hinkle set an old photograph by his plate. It was a picture of a middle-aged man standing by a large white building. Eric pretended to be interested, but all he could think about was getting to Droon.

  “Do you know who this is?” she asked.

  Eric shook his head. “No. Hey, did anyone hear a knock?”

  “It’s my grandfather’s grandfather,” Mrs. Hinkle went on. “He flew a racing plane. It had funny curved wings and was painted blue. He won a lot of races in his day.”

  Eric remembered hearing about him. He had once done research on his great-great-great-grandfather for a school project. He was interested. He really was. But Galen had called him to Droon. Wasn’t that more important right now? “Uh-huh … that’s neat….”

  Using silent words, he called to his friends. Neal! Julie! Where are you guys?

  Knock! Knock!

  Eric jumped up and tore open the back door. “Oh! Neal and Julie!” he said. “What a surprise to see you here!”

  “ERIC!” Neal practically shouted. “Can you hang out? PLEEEEEEASE?”

  “Oh, I’d love to!” said Eric, turning toward his parents. “But I have chores to do.”

  He nudged Julie secretly.

  Julie smiled sweetly at Mr. and Mrs. Hinkle. “Is it all right if the three of us go to the basement for a little while?” She smiled again.

  There was a pause as Eric’s parents stared at the three friends.

  “Actually,” said Mrs. Hinkle, “I want you to go downstairs. That’s where Eric’s chore is. It’s finally time to clean the basement!”

  “Clean the basement?” repeated Neal. “This is like déjà vu all over again!”

  The three friends remembered that their first visit to Droon began when they were supposed to be cleaning the basement.

  “But, Mom —” Eric started.

  “No buts,” said Mrs. Hinkle. “Your father promised to remodel the basement a long time ago. And he’s decided to start today!”

  Mr. Hinkle looked up from his newspaper, chewing his last piece of waffle. “I habbb?”

  “You have,” said Mrs. Hinkle. “It’s time that we built a proper playroom down there.”

  Mr. Hinkle swallowed his waffle. “You know, you’re right. I’ll start this morning, or maybe just after lunch. This week, for sure —”

  “Today is part of this week,” said Mrs. Hinkle, smiling. “I’ll get your work gloves.”

  As his parents began to get things ready, Eric took his friends downstairs. “This i
s the worst! What are we going to do?”

  “I’ve been afraid of this since the beginning,” said Julie. “If the basement is remodeled, the magical staircase in the closet will be revealed. And Droon won’t be a secret anymore! We have to think of a way to stall your dad.”

  Neal whipped out his turban and planted it on his head. “Thanks to my thinking cap, I already have an idea.”

  Eric looked at him. “What?”

  “Let’s say we do ‘help’ your dad,” said Neal. “But we do such a bad job helping that we get nowhere. With all of us doing our worst, it will take forever!”

  Julie smiled. “That just might work! Let’s think it over in Droon. Since no time passes here once we’re down there, we’ll work out the details in a flash.”

  “Good idea, guys,” said Eric. “Let’s move.”

  The three friends piled into the small closet under the basement stairs. Eric switched off the light and — whoosh! — the floor became the top step of a stairway leading through a bright pink sky to the world of Droon.

  But as soon as the kids started down the stairs, winds buffeted them this way and that. Clouds barreled out of nowhere and thickened the air around them. They heard blasts of thunder and the crackle of lightning.

  “A storm!” cried Julie. “Hold on tight —”

  Rooooarrrr! A terrifying noise filled the air.

  Before the children could move, a huge shape with fluttering wings dived from the clouds with amazing speed — and charged right at them!

  Text copyright © 2007 by Tony Abbott.

  Illustrations copyright © 2007 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 2007

  Cover art by Tim Jessell

  e-ISBN 978-0-545-41844-7

  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.