Treasure of the Orkins

by Tony Abbott

  “Please, no!” he cried. “Don’t deal with the Captain of the Snitchers. It’s Smeed! Smeed is really to blame —”

  “Not me!” cried Smeed. “I’m as dumb as a bag of rocks! I don’t know anything!”

  There was no battle this time. No big attack. The Snitchers did little but run. With another stinging blast from the moon dragon, the bandits leaped to their ponies and galloped quickly down the twisted pass.

  But even as they escaped, Plundit’s boldness seemed to return. “After today, you can call us General Plundit and Major Smeed!” he yelped. “This was a great victory!”

  “I hear a song coming!” replied Smeed.

  The Snitchers vanished down the mountain to the sound of the troubadour’s nervous rhyming on the word “escape.”

  The dragon swiveled toward the friends. “And now … to deal with you!”

  The children were rooted to the spot.

  The lone fire blazed brightly, and the dragon stepped toward them. But when it did, the shadow of its wings and horns dissolved into the uplifted cloak of a robed man.

  “My friends,” he said.

  “Galen!” cried Max. “You are safe!”

  “Safe and sound and glad to see you!” said the wizard, beaming at the children.

  Keeah ran to him. “We needed you so much today!”

  Still smiling, Galen looked around. “Perhaps not so much, after all.”

  “How did you get here?” asked Julie. “The last I saw, you were trapped in a chasm. The storm was pushing you deeper into it.”

  “Ah, that,” said the wizard. “We were trapped, as you saw. Yet who should we meet in the midst of all that frozen world but a friend? He turned out to be an expert on the Great Passages themselves! He brought me here. People, say hello to … Mudji!”

  An Orkin, blue-faced but with gray hair, stepped out from Galen’s shadow.

  Djambo squealed and rushed to hug the old Orkin. “After one hundred years, this is a true reunion! You are my great-uncle Mudji!”

  “And you must be my grandnephew, Djambo!” said Mudji. “Together at last!”

  The wizard laughed. “For all its many miles and centuries, Droon is a small world, after all.”

  “So, Galen,” said Eric, “you heard me when I spoke to you?”

  “Every word,” said the wizard. “And now, my Orkin friends, please do us the honor?”

  Mudji bowed. As Djambo held the treasure box, the older Orkin produced a silver key and unlocked the chest. When he lifted the lid, bright blue light shone on his face. He held the chest up, and everyone saw a snowflake as large as a silver dollar. It glistened deep blue.

  Galen basked in the light of the treasure and breathed deeply. “Strange for such a tiny thing to be both full of joy and fear. If my brother wizards and I do unite, it will be a wonderful moment. And yet … one of us is fated to fall.”

  “But the prophecy could be wrong,” said Eric. “It could be. There’s always hope.”

  “This is Droon,” said Keeah. “Anything can happen.”

  “True.” Galen nodded slowly. “All things are possible. We shall see what we shall see.”

  The wizard smiled at Eric, but it was a sad smile. It was clear he doubted that Ko’s prophecy was wrong.

  “In the meantime, I predict the Snitchers will be back,” said Max. “We will straighten things up for them, as they did not straighten up Khan’s royal village. Who knows, but one day Captain Plundit and Corporal Smeed — excuse me, General Plundit and Major Smeed — may no longer do nasty chores for Ko, but join our side in the battle to save Droon.”

  “We can only hope,” added Djambo.

  Hope. That word again. Eric had always liked the sound of it. But now, looking at the snowflake that promised so terrible a fate, he wondered if hope was their only weapon.

  The little band of friends made their way down to the foot of the mountain.

  “Now what?” asked Neal, looking all around. “It’s usually time for us to go home right about now. But the rainbow stairs haven’t come yet.”

  Galen smiled. “I think the answer is clear. You can’t go home. The hundred-year snowstorm is in the north. The passage between our worlds is in the north. The mystery of the snowflake is in the north. So why are we still here?”

  “You mean we’re all going?” asked Eric.

  “As quickly as we can!” said Galen.

  At that moment, they heard the sputtering of an engine. It was the Dragonfly, soaring through the night sky toward them. As it came in for a landing, Eric felt his heart thump to the rhythm of the plane’s engine.

  All day, he had wanted to go north. All day, he had wondered why he should dream about one thing and do another. Now the answer was plain. The two journeys were really different parts of the same one. As he looked north, he knew he would soon be in the land of blue snow.

  The plane bumped to a stop at the foot of the volcano. Together, the friends piled in next to Friddle and Relna, in whose hand glowed the Sapphire Star.

  “You know,” said Neal, “ever since I heard that troubadour, I’ve been thinking we should have songs, too.”

  Julie shook her head. “Neal, don’t —”

  “Okay, I will!” he said with a laugh. Taking a deep breath, he raised his voice in song.

  Let’s fly into the northern snows.

  We may meet friends, we may meet foes,

  But one thing’s sure, this genie knows,

  Our journey goes and goes and goes!

  With that, the four-winged plane lifted from the ground, soared high over Zoop, and motored as swift as an arrow toward the ice fields of the frozen north.

  “Hold on tight, everyone. We’re going in!” cried Keeah as her four-winged, dome-topped flying ship, the Dragonfly, plunged into the thickening snows of Droon’s far north.

  Sitting snug inside the ship next to Keeah were Eric Hinkle and his friends Neal and Julie. Behind them sat Keeah’s mother, Queen Relna, and the blue-faced Orkins, Djambo and his gray-haired elder, Mudji.

  The friendly spider troll, Max, was in front next to Galen Longbeard, Droon’s oldest and most powerful wizard. And hunched in the very nose of the ship was the frizzy-haired and bespectacled pilot, Friddle.

  Making the ship all the more cozy was the fact that each passenger was dressed from boots to cap to mittens in the thickest winter furs.

  The snowy north of Droon was unlike anywhere in his world, Eric reflected as he gazed out the Dragonfly’s round portals. Droon was the land of adventure and magic that he, Julie, and Neal had discovered one day under his basement. They loved Droon. The three had even developed wizard powers like those of their Droon friends Galen, Relna, and Keeah. But they had never traveled so far north before.

  “And there to your left,” said Friddle, busily working the controls, “is the treacherous Paraneshi Iceway, home of the legendary Nesh ice warriors. We’re far past Silversnow now, my friends. Below us lies a forbidding and uncharted wasteland.”

  “A wasteland indeed,” said Galen. “But one that holds mysteries and secrets.”

  “And treasures!” said Mudji.

  Each of the Dragonfly’s passengers knew exactly what the old Orkin meant. The treasure pouch on Eric’s belt was the reason they were flying into the stormy north.

  According to Mudji, a hundred years before, a storm just like the one they were now entering had split the sky in two, creating a rare passage between the worlds.

  A strange blue serpent entered Droon through the passage. It crashed in the storm, and one of the serpent’s snowflake-shaped scales fell to earth. Sensing that the blue snowflake contained magical power, young Mudji hid it away from those who might use it for evil. The snowflake became known as the “Orkin Treasure.”

  For years the treasure lay buried. And so it would have remained, but Ko, the fierce ruler of the beasts, found it.

  Only through Galen’s cleverness was Ko foiled and the treasure now in their hands. But the wizard feared that th
e passage would open again, and he was convinced that the snowflake and the legend of the serpent were but two elements of a larger story. So now Galen was leading this expedition into the north to discover the truth.

  “Can we go any faster?” asked Relna, looking out the window ports to the ground below. “The storm will soon be at its peak and we must be there to protect the passage.”

  Friddle nodded. “Strap yourselves in, my friends. Faster means rougher!”

  As the ship rattled and shook, Eric opened the pouch and drew out the strange blue snowflake. Keeah, Julie, and Neal looked on as the glow of the plane’s wall lamps played over the treasure’s shiny surface.

  If the flake were made of snow, Eric imagined that it was some sort of magic snow, for it didn’t melt. The treasure was the size of a medallion, bore twelve crystalline points, and was very thin. But when he held it, it felt heavy, and it seemed to breathe with a power he could only guess at.

  “It’s beautiful,” said Max. “What magic do you think it has? What does it do?”

  Keeah shook her head. “I wonder if we’ll ever know. It may always be a mystery.”

  “I think it has powers,” said Neal, his turban perched on his head like a dollop of whipped cream. “Don’t ask me what kind.”

  “What I don’t get is how a serpent entered Droon from our world,” said Julie. “We don’t have serpents. We never had serpents!”

  “Unless you count Mr. Higgens,” said Neal. “He hisses whenever I cut across his yard.”

  To Eric, the flake was more than magical and otherworldly. It enticed him and frightened him at the same time, just as its power simultaneously warmed and chilled his skin.

  “Maybe the serpent needs it in order to fly,” he said. “Maybe it’s been waiting a hundred years for the passage to open again, and it needs this scale to fly home.”

  Galen’s forehead wrinkled in thought. “Very possible, Eric. No doubt we shall discover this and more secrets very soon.”

  Too soon, thought Eric.

  For there was something else about the treasure. It was more than simply a mysterious object. The snowflake held a terrifying prophecy.

  Thinking back, Eric recalled the frightening words of Emperor Ko.

  “This tiny treasure will do no less than unite all the sons of Zara in a single place and time. A place and time when they are most vulnerable. And one of them … one of them … will fall….”

  The sons of Zara! thought Eric. As he watched Galen, whose eyes were fixed on the treasure, he knew the wizard feared the danger to himself and his brothers, Sparr and Urik, if the prophecy were to come true.

  Of course, the friends had discussed the prophecy over and over on the long way north and had decided that it really was impossible. It was inconceivable that all the sons of Zara could gather in the same place and time.

  Due to the odd magic of time travel, Lord Sparr was now very old and blind, and had been missing for months and months.

  And Urik was trapped in time, not in Droon at all, but in the Upper World. The last thing anyone knew, Urik was lost between 1572 and 1904, when Sparr fought him for the magical Moon Medallion.

  The prophecy didn’t add up.

  And Eric was glad it didn’t.

  And yet … and yet … he couldn’t get it out of his mind. As he held the snowflake in his palm, he felt that this journey to the north was no less than a race against time, in which all the elements — the snowflake, the storm, the serpent, and the prophecy — would combine in a way no one could imagine.

  “There it is!” Mudji said, pointing to a snowcapped ring of mountains below the ship. “That valley is where the serpent fell!”

  “Circle and land, Friddle, if you please,” said Galen.

  “Aye-aye!” said the pilot, and the Dragonfly plowed downward through the battering winds.

  “Mudji,” said Keeah, still gazing at the blue snowflake, “before we land, please tell us again what you know about this treasure.”

  “Ah, yes!” Closing his eyes, the elder Orkin began to recollect his past of a century before. “As you know, Orkins were once Ninns,” he said. “And I was still a young Ninn warrior on patrol in the far north when a wild storm suddenly flared up. The sky cracked open and a great blue serpent flew into our world!”

  “You must have been scared,” said Max.

  “Terrified!” said Mudji. “All at once lightning flashed — baboom! — and the serpent fell. I tried to run but was struck on the shoulder by this very snowflake, which I believe is no less than one of the serpent’s scales!”

  “Did it hurt?” asked Neal.

  “Hurt, nothing!” said the Orkin. “No sooner did it strike me than — poof! — I lost my Ninn shape and became … an Orkin!”

  The Dragonfly dipped suddenly. Wind rattled its windows. Gusts of blinding snow slammed it from every direction.

  Leaning forward, Friddle gripped the wheel tightly. “My friends, we must land now, or be forced to land. And by that I mean crash!”

  “Crash is not my favorite word,” said Neal. “I say land.”

  “We all say land,” said Relna. She pointed to a stretch of flat ground leading to the crest of the valley. “Can you put us there?”

  “I’ll try,” said Friddle. At once, he banked the Dragonfly and brought it in swiftly.

  Just before they touched down, however, something flashed through the air and struck the plane’s windshield — blam!

  The object shattered upon impact.

  “This storm is crazy!” Eric gasped.

  A second object struck the airship.

  Then another and another. Blam! Blam!

  “This is not the storm,” said Galen, scanning the hills below. “Those shots came from … down there!”

  Another powerful shot blasted the ship, and the engine began to sputter.

  “It’s … it’s … an icicle!” cried Friddle. “We’re being attacked with icicles!”

  “Icicles?” said Neal. “You mean the kind that break off rooftops?”

  Cling! Plink! Clonk!

  “No, I mean the kind that crash planes!” said Friddle.

  “Our enemies are already here!” said Relna, holding tightly to her seat.

  Another volley of ice daggers struck the plane, and the engine flamed out.

  “Friddle was right about a rough landing!” said Max. “Hold tight to whatever you can find!”

  And the Dragonfly, crippled and powerless, fell to earth amid a hail of ice daggers.

  Text copyright © 2008 by Tony Abbott.

  Illustrations copyright © 2008 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, June 2008

  Cover art by Tim Jessell

  e-ISBN 978-0-545-41845-4

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