Dedication
For Katherine, Jake, and Julia
Contents
Dedication
Not Far from the Earth’s Molten Core (Present Day)
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-one
Twenty-two
Twenty-three
Twenty-four
Twenty-five
Twenty-six
Twenty-seven
Twenty-eight
Twenty-nine
Thirty
Thirty-one
Thirty-two
The End
A Note to Fans
About the Author
Also by Michael Grant
Back Ads
Credits
Copyright
About the Publisher
Not Far from the Earth’s Molten Core (Present Day)
Princess Ereskigal, whose friends (she had no friends) all called her Risky, was having a very difficult conversation with her mother, the Pale Queen.
“Are they destroyed?” the Pale Queen nagged. “Are the new Magnificent Twelve all dead?”
The Pale Queen could appear in just about any form she chose, but for the purposes of this particular conversation she was wearing one of her favorite forms: as tall as a moderate redwood tree, with a gigantic head—a quite beautiful head in some ways, but with skin so translucent that in the right light you could see the bones of her skull and her jaw and the individual teeth in her head, thirty-six of them in all, each long and sharp and curved back to facilitate the swallowing of large, whole, usually living things.
Her hair was white. Actually it was colorless if you looked at an individual strand, but taken all together it was white (like a polar bear’s). It went down to her bony shoulders, from which hung a floor-length robe made out of screams.
Not the sort of outfit you find for sale at your local mall. But the Pale Queen wove reality out of fear and loss and despair.1
The dress had a cutaway so that you could see her powerful calves filling boots as tall as city light posts. The boots were dragon skin and used human skulls to make a row of buckles. The toes of the boots were about as big as canoes—sharp, barbed-steel canoes.
Frankly, Risky thought, the outfit was a bit “young” for her mother. But she wasn’t going to say anything about it unless her mother really annoyed her. She was holding that in reserve.
“Mother, I said I would do it, didn’t I?” Risky huffed.
“So, the new Magnificent Twelve have been destroyed?”
“Are you saying you don’t trust me?” Risky crossed her arms over her chest and actually stamped her foot.
Like the Pale Queen, Risky could take any form. But generally she preferred to appear as an extraordinarily attractive teenage girl with luscious red hair and eyes so green there was no way they could possibly be entirely human.
Her dress was a simple, formfitting thing with a neckline that was daring without being “too much.” And she most often went barefoot.
“I trust . . . NO ONE!” the Pale Queen raged. And when she raged, her minions—Skirrit, Tong Elves, Gudridan, Lepercons, and so on—were blown back like action figures in the blast of a leaf blower.
Risky wasn’t blown anywhere.
She feared her mother, as any sensible daughter would. There wasn’t a lot of motherly love in this family, and the Pale Queen could absolutely decide to gobble her daughter up like a shrimp. Which was exactly what she had done to Risky’s father.
Like a shrimp.
But at the same time, the Pale Queen needed Risky. For another few days the Pale Queen was bound by a powerful spell and could not escape the World Beneath and go romping around up top where all the tasty humans lived.
Risky, however, could.
Which meant Risky could take on jobs like eliminating the terrible threat posed by the Magnificent Twelve. A task she had so far failed to accomplish despite several attempts.
“I don’t think you’re taking this seriously,” the Pale Queen said more quietly, her tone larded with guilt-inducing disappointment.
“I am so,” Risky countered.
“No, you’re not.”
“Uh-huh!”
“No.”
“Yah-ha-ah!”
“I just don’t want you being distracted. Remember the last time?”
That was unfair.
That was a cheap shot.
A low blow.
Because yes, Risky did remember the last time she’d made a promise to her mother, a thousand years ago. . . .
. . . And as you can see by the ellipses, the three little dots there, we’re going to tell that story. Later. But first, on to chapter 1.
One
It turned out the Punjab was in India. Did you know that? No, you didn’t; don’t pretend. But don’t feel bad, either, because David “Mack” MacAvoy also had no idea where the Punjab was until very recently. He’s learned a lot about the Punjab lately.
For instance, he learned that the Punjab2 is a warm, sunny place, at least at this particular time of year. Mack noticed how sunny and warm it was because he was on the ground staring right up at that warm sunny sun.
He was on the ground because creatures called Brembles were keeping him there.
Do you know what a Bremble is? Probably not, because Brembles no longer exist. (The last Bremble died in 1797, and he was quite old by then.) Brembles were a hybrid species, not something that occurred naturally, but a species created by evil forces. Imagine a large gorilla. No, twice that big. Now imagine that instead of being a peaceable plant eater, that oversized gorilla was extremely unpleasant. Now imagine that instead of fur, that extremely unpleasant oversized gorilla was covered in something very like porcupine quills. So, already: not good.
But now imagine that the porcupine quills were the least of it, because where a gorilla would have hands, Brembles had what looked like some terrible explosion of thorns, spikes, and razor wire. From the center of this melee of thorns, spikes, and razor wire protruded one spike, longer than the others, which was known as a chulk. This chulk was split so that it was really two spikes with a narrow gap between them, rather like two tines of a fork.
It was these chulks that the Brembles used to pin Mack in place. They had driven their chulks deep into the ground in such a way as to pin his four limbs down.
In addition to being staked out, he was also stretched a bit so that the muscles in his chest felt almost as if they might tear. This made it hard to breathe, which in turn made it hard to scream, which was okay because there was no one to come to his rescue.
Did he want to scream? Definitely.
Mack was utterly unable to reach a hand to his face, which was a shame because there were red ants crawling into his ears and nose and scouting around his eyeballs. These were not the little ants you might see at a picnic. These ants were not trying to get at the coleslaw. Unless coleslaw is a euphemism for Mack’s brain.
Mack had a pretty good view of one ant in particular that was walking right across his eyeball—his left eyeball, as it happened. Mack blinked furiously, hoping to discourage the ant, but each sweep of his eyelid just knocked the ant around a little, which is no way to discourage an ant.
Seen in extreme close-up, the ant was like some fuzzy, out-of-focus, terrifying alien robot. It had six legs, a carapace,3 and a rounded-off pyramid of a head wit
h huge, elongated pincers on the front. It had little black BBs for eyes. And its tail had a stinger like a combination claw and shot needle that would squirt painful venom if stabbed into something.
Like, say, an eyeball.
In all honesty, the ants were not as creepy as the giraffe-necked beetles that had been exploring Mack’s face just minutes before. But Mack had gotten rid of the beetles using his enlightened puissance—the mystical power possessed by only a few—and some words from the Vargran language—known to even fewer.
All he’d had to do was yell, “Lom-ma fabfor!”4 and the beetles had disappeared. Mack had been studying his Vargran. He was all Vargraned up. He had come to the Punjab ready for trouble. Just one little problem: the enlightened puissance isn’t some endless water faucet with power just flowing out like, well, water. No, it’s more like a drip drip drip of water. It comes, then it stops, then slowly, sloooowly it builds back up until there’s enough to drip. A treasonous Tong Elf had once told him it took a full day, but Tong Elves lied. Still, it took a while, and while you were waiting for it to build back up . . . you’d find that ants had replaced the beetles, and now where were you?
Well, you were staked out by the chulks of Brembles in the Punjab with ants in your eyeballs, that’s where you were.
“Ahhhh!” he gasped because right then an ant bit him. Not the eyeball ant. An ear ant. An ant just inside his ear. The bottom part of the ear canal, if you want to be really specific.
It felt exactly like someone had heated a needle over a fire and then stabbed it into his ear canal. Not good.
“Ahhhh!” Mack cried again, straining for breath. “That hurts!”
“Aha! I see they are biting,” Valin gloated. “That’s very bad news, Mack, my timeless foe, because once one ant starts, they all get into it. Within a minute, a hundred ants will sink their painful stingers into you! You will cry out in pain. Then you will swell up. And of course die. And thus will my family’s honor be avenged!”
“I am not your timeless foe, you lunatic!”
Valin was standing over him but providing no shade from the blazing sun above. He was dressed flamboyantly in puffy zebra-striped pantaloons, black leather boots that rose to his knees, and a purple vest over no shirt. To top it all off, he had an amazing hat that looked like the kind of thing Puss in Boots or maybe a pirate might wear. It had an actual pink feather. From his wide belt hung a dagger and a short sword.
It was an eccentric look.
Beyond Valin stood the terrible Nafia5 assassin Paddy “Nine Iron” Trout. Paddy was an elderly gentleman dressed all in green. Green suede shoes, green slacks, a green-and-yellow waistcoat over a very pale green shirt but beneath a bright-green sport coat. And on top of his shiny, bald head, there was a green bowler hat.
Even in India, which is a diverse and tolerant country known for interesting clothing, Valin and Paddy stood out. It’s not every day you see a pantalooned twelve-year-old with a sword traveling with a green-clad hundred-year-old Nafia assassin.
“Just let me kill . . . ,” Paddy wheezed. He stopped, pulled a clear plastic respirator mask from his inside coat pocket, put it over his mouth and nose, and drew a deep breath. Then another.
And . . . another.
And . . .
. . . one more.
“Him,” Paddy said finally, concluding the sentence which had begun, “Just let me kill.”
Valin shook his head. “You are my mentor, Nine Iron, but this is a matter of family honor. First he must endure a hundred fiery stings!”
“As you . . . ,” Paddy began.
And . . . breathed.
Okay, one more . . .
“Wish,” Paddy concluded.
“Let me go!” Mack cried. He pulled at the chulks, but no, he wasn’t pulling his way out of this one. The Brembles had him. Valin had him.
And the ants had him.
A second ant stung.
A third.
And now the stinging signal went out through all the ants.
Mack was about to die a most terrible death.
Really.
A fourth and fifth sting made Mack yell and thrash wildly. But now there was no more counting: the stings came fast and furious, a wave of them, pain upon pain, and already Mack felt himself swelling up, felt his airway constrict, felt his heart hammering way too fast, felt . . .
. . . felt death itself approaching, extending its bony claw to snuff the very life from him.
He pulled at the bony chulks, but each tug was weaker . . . weaker . . . until . . .
But before you’re subjected to the awful details of the death of a heroic young boy, you should probably be told just how we got to this terrible situation.
So, for the moment just put that whole death-by-ant thing on hold. We’ll get back to it. First we need to fill in a few details. Now, where were we when last we checked in with David “Mack” MacAvoy and the Magnificent Twelve?
I’ll tell you where we were: we were in trouble. So much trouble you would not believe it. If we were to pause right here and explain all the many kinds of trouble Mack was in (not even counting the ants!), we would never be able to get on with the exciting (and deadly) conclusion of the story.
So we’ll just do the short version.
In just a few days the Pale Queen would rise from her underground prison to destroy all freedom, crush all hope, deface all beauty, litter the landscape, cause the previously blemish-free to break out in unsightly pimples, and so terrorize the human race that even the bravest of folks (combat soldiers and sixth-grade teachers) would wet their pants in sheer, gibbering panic.
That’s what the bravest of folks would do, but Mack was not counted among the bravest of folks. Mack had twenty-one identified phobias. Phobias are not regular fears; phobias are irrational fears. Crazy fears. So fearing the Pale Queen? That was not a phobia, that was just sensible. But being deathly afraid of beards? Well, that would be a phobia.
Mack had that fear of beards, which was called pogonophobia. Arachnophobia, a fear of spiders; dentophobia, a fear of dentists. And of course pupaphobia, a fear of puppets. Pyrophobia, which is a fear of fire; selachophobia—sharks; vaccinophobia,6 a fear of shots.
A few others.
The worst of all the fears, the king of all fears, was claustrophobia, a fear of small, enclosed spaces. Small enclosed spaces that you’re inside of. Like, say, a coffin. Or if someone locked you in a box.
Or a coffin.
People with claustrophobia really, really don’t like coffins. Most people don’t. But a person with claustrophobia will start sweating if you even just mention something like being buried alive.
I know! What a wimp, right?
And yet, to be shoved into a tiny space, unable to move your arms or legs, to feel yourself closed in, not enough air, all noise muffled, to hear perhaps the sound of dirt being shoveled onto . . .
So, maybe not so crazy, right?
Oddly enough, while Mack was afraid of all those things, he was not afraid of much else. He was irrationally terrified of many things but, no, Mack would not be among the wet-panted if he were to face the Pale Queen. If the Pale Queen had a beard,7 then, sure, Mack would be paralyzed with fear. Or if she was carrying a shark. Otherwise, no. He was brave . . . except for where he was scared.
But isn’t that the case with most of us?
Mack had been given a weighty task: he was to assemble a new Magnificent Twelve to face and defeat the Pale Queen. The first Magnificent Twelve had defeated the evil one three thousand years ago but had, sadly, given her a fixed sentence of banishment, which was now up. The Pale Queen was coming back, baby, and she was looking to bring the pain and the horror and the devastation and the utter ruin of the human race.
Why was a Magnificent Twelve needed? Couldn’t the marines just deal with the Pale Queen?
No, they couldn’t because the Pale Queen had powers beyond anything the marines could imagine. With her magic she could stop a bullet in midair. She could m
elt tanks. She could cause jets to go off course and fire their missiles at coffee shops. And she had minions, millions of them in a dozen evil species, from Skirrit to Bowands to treasonous Tong Elves to massive Gudridan. All of them would die for the Pale Queen. The marines were totally unprepared for the stuff she and her minions could do.
Plus, she had a secret weapon: her daughter, a goddess of evil who had troubled many civilizations down through history and earned many dark names. To the ancient Greeks she was Hecate. To the ancient Welsh she was Skatha. The Norse called her Hel, and the Norse knew what they were talking about. Her original name came from the most ancient of civilizations, which called her Ereskigal. She was known to Mack (and to you) as Risky.
Prior to his first encounter with Risky, Mack had never really noticed girls all that much. But she, in her evil way, had caused him to notice. Which was a terrible thing. When Risky was around, Mack would notice her quite a lot and then he would sweat and stammer and his voice would change and, basically, well, she had a disturbing effect on him.
Also, she was always trying to kill him, which definitely heightened the disturbance Mack felt. On the one hand, the unsettling effects of puberty; and on the other hand, attempted murder. It’s just not a good combination no matter how you look at it.
The list of people trying to kill Mack was pretty impressive. Certainly Paddy “Nine Iron” Trout was trying to kill him. And so was Valin, his student. And so was Risky. And behind it all, her mother, the Pale Queen.
It was also the case that Thor had beefs with Mack.
Oh, and also William Blisterthöng MacGuffin.
Oh, and the Loch Ness Duck.
Oh, and the whole world had seen YouTube proof8 that something very strange was going on with Mack, so the paparazzi were after him.
Oh, and Le Bureau parisien de la gloire, la magnificence, et la défense de la langue française9 wanted Mack to put the Eiffel Tower back where it belonged. But only if he could do it in French.
You’re probably getting the wrong impression now. Mack was a very nice person. Really.
On Mack’s side he had the Magnifica, six of them so far in addition to himself: Jarrah, Xiao, Dietmar, Sylvie, Rodrigo, and Charlie. They were from, respectively, Australia, China, Germany, France, Argentina, and Britain. Each was twelve years old. Each had the enlightened puissance. Each had learned at least a little of the magical Vargran tongue.
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