Ozzie swallowed, then glanced over his shoulder, hoping that someone—anyone—might be around to help him. How was he going to defeat her? I just need to stall her, he thought. Need to find the right moment. Get the key, then call the wizards. Then they can open the door and deal with Crogus . . .
“How did you get the key anyway?” he demanded, taking a cautious step forward. “I lost it in Glibbersaug.”
“You didn’t lose it,” Salamanda sniggered, her tongue still flicking. “My glibbers snatched it from you. I had to send a quirl to go fetch it. Hardest part was convincing my minions not to devour the little beastie but to send it back here intact, with the key.”
“Why didn’t you just use your key to Glibbersaug to open the door and let in all of those freaky fish?” Ozzie asked. “Isn’t that the ultimate plan? So they can engulf the multiverse?”
“The glibbers are nothing without their master,” Salamanda replied with a glint of menace in her eyes. “Without him, they might easily be repelled. But with their king to lead them . . . well, that’s a different matter.”
“Because he’s not just a king. He’s a wizard.”
“A very powerful wizard.”
She thrust the key into the door, but before turning it, looked back at Ozzie for a final moment of gloating. “Truth is, you were never supposed to make it back alive from Glibbersaug. I got a little worried after you discovered me brewing my potion, and then you ended up seeing Nymm’s memory and I thought you might add everything up. So, I devised the perfect plan to solve two problems at once: get rid of you while at the same time stealing the key I needed—without raising alarm or suspicion. Because, trust me, stealing Lady Zoone’s would have been a lot more complicated. But you? No one would have cared about your key if you had never returned from Glibbersaug. They would have just assumed it was in the belly of some glibber, along with the rest of you.”
“You’re . . . repugnant,” Ozzie muttered, grasping for the heaviest Aunt Temperance word he could think of. “But I did come back. And I did figure it out. And Fidget knows, and Tug knows—soon everyone will know who you really are.”
Salamanda clapped her flippery hands together in mock congratulations. “If only it weren’t too late.” Then she tilted back her head and laughed maniacally.
It was the opportunity Ozzie had been waiting for. He rushed to snatch the key from the door—but the moment his hand touched it, Salamanda was there. With clammy fingers, she grabbed Ozzie’s wrist and cranked it sharply, forcing the key to turn in the lock.
The door quivered. It bulged. Then, suddenly, it burst open—so violently that Ozzie thought it might be ripped from its hinges. The shock of it sent him stumbling backward. But not Salamanda. Ozzie watched in horror as she fell to one knee and bowed in reverence before the doorway.
Something began to wriggle through the opening—something huge and repulsive. It was like watching a fish squirm its way out of the narrow neck of a bottle.
“Crogus,” Ozzie murmured.
He had seen the glibber king in Nymm’s memory, and the statue of him in Glibbersaug. But there was no comparison to seeing him in real life. The vile creature had two huge eyes bulging crookedly from the sides of his head, reminding Ozzie of a hammerhead shark. Long strings of drool dripped from his corpulent chin. And the teeth! There seemed to be thousands of them, tiny and sharp, pointing in different directions and layered in rows. His body was all scales and fins, like a thousand creepy-crawlies had somehow been mashed together to form one hideous monstrosity. All this time, the sinister king so feared and loathed by the council had been hiding in Ozzie’s world. Like an eel lurking in its cave, he had been biding his time, taking his potion, trying to look human.
He didn’t look human now. Not remotely.
Because he’s been trapped on the track ever since the door collapsed, Ozzie reasoned. All that time, he’s had no potion.
Crogus lurched onto the grass, pale and slimy, his bulbous eyes twitching with ravenous hunger. Then he opened his gigantic maw and shot out his long black tongue to snatch an unsuspecting buzzle from midair. He gulped it down, then began firing his tongue in rapid succession, sucking down buzzle after buzzle, and even two or three unfortunate quirls.
The bell began to ring from the command tower. It meant, Ozzie knew, that the crew had detected the opening of the door to Eridea. It meant they had seen the glibber king.
“The wizards,” Crogus snarled, finally pausing from his feast and looking sharply at Salamanda. “Where are they?”
Salamanda, who had been bowing this entire time, quickly scrambled to her feet. “They’re locked inside the conference chambers,” she replied in a voice that was sounding more and more amphibian. “Lady Zoone and her pesky captain, too. They were called to trial by the wizards. Now they’re all trapped by my spell, just like a nest of worms. Helpless. Waiting for you to devour them with your magic.”
“You’ve done well, Sala,” Crogus praised, drool frothing from his mouth as he spoke. “You’re a fine apprentice. I remember when you were a wee tadpole, gobbling up all your brothers and sisters before they even had a chance to hatch. I knew then you were something special. A daughter to be proud of.”
“D-daughter?” Ozzie stammered. Now he was definitely going to throw up.
“My papa,” Salamanda said, seeming to relish in Ozzie’s disgust. “My dear old Glibba! The most powerful wizard in the multiverse! Truth is, I would have never succeeded without this foolish boy. He’s so gullible. So easily manipulated. He made our plan so much easier, Glibba—to bring you here and destroy the council.”
I’ve been so stupid! Ozzie berated himself, even as Crogus paraded in front of him.
“Delightful screwup of a worm!” Crogus reveled. “All this time, I’ve been searching for a way to Zoone. After I escaped from my cell, I discovered a long-forgotten door in the badlands of Morindu, a door that led to Eridea—one even the wizards don’t know about. Which made it easy to pry open and slither through. Ah, Eridea. Such a pitiful place, so empty of magic that I could barely brew a potion to disguise my shape. I was weak there. Sooooo weak. But now . . . NOW!” He paused and took a deep breath, gulping down Zoone’s fresh night air. “I’m in a world alive with magic. I can feel it coursing through me again. The wizards will soon meet their doom!”
“No,” Ozzie said meekly. “You can’t . . .”
“No?” Crogus sneered, glaring at Ozzie. “Who are you to say no, worm? I shall rule Zoone. I shall rule the entire multiverse. What will you do to stop me? Why, you’ll be in my belly, worm, a mere and insignificant appetizer before I move on to my main course.”
“Hurry, Glibba!” Salamanda urged. “Slurp him down—quickly! We should deal with the wizards. The spell I put on the conference hall won’t last forever. If the wizards break through—”
“Patience, Sala!” Crogus croaked, licking his lips. “It’s not only the worm’s meat I want. It’s his magic. And if I’m to steal his magic, I need to break his heart first, need to crack it open like an egg and suck out its precious yolk.”
Crogus towered over Ozzie and stared deep into his eyes. It was how Ozzie imagined a snake would look just before sinking its venomous teeth into its prey. At that moment, he knew the glibber king could see inside him. It was as if Crogus was surveying his soul, trying to find the most important parts of him, the parts he could destroy.
This is what he tried to do to me back in The Depths, Ozzie thought. He tried to break me, tried to poison my thoughts and make me feel worthless and small. That had just been the smallest of doses, Ozzie realized. Because, as Crogus himself had said, he had been weak then, with a dearth of magic to draw upon.
But not now. Now the glibber king was bursting with power. Ozzie could almost see it writhing through his giant glibberish body. The amount of venom that he was about to unleash . . .
I survived him before, Ozzie thought as he fell to his knees. But I won’t this time. I’m finished.
2
7
A Clash of Magic
As Crogus loomed over Ozzie, a voice suddenly called out from the shadows, “Hey, fish-face! Why don’t you go squirming back into the mud?”
Ozzie turned and made out the vague outlines of Fidget and Tug approaching through the forest. In a moment, they were standing alongside him.
“Nice look,” Fidget taunted Salamanda. “It suits you.”
“Does it?” Salamanda cackled, revealing her mouthful of needle teeth. “Good. Because this is what I really look like. Not like a little Gresswydian girl. Or an old woman in Snardassia.”
Fidget gasped. “That . . . that was you? You’re the one who cursed me?”
Salamanda threw back her head and began to chortle loudly, but Crogus threw a nasty glare at her. “What is this, Sala? You said you locked everyone inside the conference chamber.”
“Everyone important,” Salamanda claimed. “These are just children. Nobodies.”
“We might be nobodies,” Fidget retorted as she helped Ozzie to his feet, “but we’re together.”
“That’s right,” Tug said bravely, though Ozzie could hear a tremble in his voice. “Just to tell you, we’re a team,” he added before licking Ozzie on the cheek with his long blue tongue.
Ozzie rubbed the moisture on his skin and blinked. Then he looked up at Crogus.
“What do you think you’re doing, worm?!” the glibber king croaked.
“Ozzie,” Ozzie said.
“What?!” Crogus snapped.
“Ozzie!” he repeated, now with more defiance. “That’s what everyone calls me here.” He paused, almost as if to dare Crogus to call him a liar, like he had down in The Depths. But the glibber king just glared at him. It’s the truth this time, Ozzie thought. Emboldened, he said, “That’s right. Here. You tried to poison me back home, said I didn’t fit anywhere. But I found this place. Found where I fit. Found friends. Your poison didn’t work before—and I’m not going to let it work now.”
“Who cares?!” Salamanda screeched. “Just eat them, Glibba! We have to destroy the wizards before it’s too late!”
But Crogus ignored her. “Oh, it’ll work, worm,” he seethed, prowling in an ominous half circle around Ozzie and his friends. “My poison always works. Because now I see you have someone to care about . . . and that makes it all the better. Because nothing makes your own heart shrivel up faster than seeing it happen in someone you care about.”
He released a long, ominous chuckle and lumbered to a stop in front of Tug. He locked eyes with the magnificent cat and, when the glibber king next spoke, his voice had taken on a completely different tone. Moments ago, he had looked like a snake to Ozzie. But now he sounded like one, too.
“Foolish beast,” Crogus hissed in a hypnotic voice. “I’ve seen skygers fly across the sky, glorious and powerful as dragons. But that’s hardly the case with you, is it? The first time I saw you down in the cellars of Eridea, I knew you were nothing more than a pitiful pile of fur. And here you are, dreaming that you’ll meet skygers in Azuria. Thinking that you’re one of them. That you’re like them. But you aren’t. As a matter of fact, you aren’t anything like them.”
“Wh-what do you mean?” Tug stammered, his fur turning white.
“You’re different,” Crogus answered. “Do you know what different makes you? Lonely. Out of place. How are you going to fit in with a bunch of hunters? A bunch of killers. Why, they’ll kill you.”
“No!” Ozzie cried, clutching at Tug’s neck. “Don’t listen to him!”
“How do you think you ended up with wings like that, all stubby and useless?” Crogus continued.
“Ozzie?” Tug mewled, stumbling backward.
“Just ignore him,” Ozzie tried to say, but his words floated away, overwhelmed by the power of the glibber king’s spell. He looked pleadingly over at Fidget, but she was just standing there, shocked and speechless.
“There’s only one way skyger kitties end up with wings like that,” Crogus hissed, almost dancing as he spoke. “It means even your own mother didn’t want you. She bit your wings off herself. She booted you from the nest. She left you to die.”
“NO!” Ozzie shouted.
He wanted to tell Tug that it was a horrible lie, that Crogus had made it up, just to wound him. He wished he could take that truth, terrible as it was, and bury it a thousand miles beneath the ground. He would have done anything to stop Tug from hearing it.
But it was too late. The poison had found its target. Ozzie could tell it was worming its way into the skyger’s heart. He could tell by the way Tug’s tail drooped, by the way he wobbled on his feet. Next, his fur began to turn a pale and sickly green.
“Your own kind didn’t want you,” Crogus crowed in savage delight. “Not even your own mother!”
Then, as if all the strength had been suddenly drained from his enormous body, Tug collapsed to the ground in a heap of fur. A quiet, pitiful whimper left his throat. Then his eyes fluttered shut.
“Yes . . . ,” Crogus uttered, his cheeks hollowing as he sucked in the skyger’s essence. His eyes glazed over with a look of intoxication as he added, “Such pure, innocent magic. Such . . . power! It’s unlike anything I’ve ever feasted on. I feel strong . . . so strong.”
And he looked it, too. Even as he spoke, the glibber king was swelling in size, his skin crackling with magic—the magic he had siphoned from Tug. Trembling, Ozzie gazed up at Crogus and saw a gluttonous gleam in the glibber king’s eyes. As powerful as Crogus now was, Ozzie knew he was not yet satiated.
“Who’s next?” Crogus chortled, turning from the skyger. “Ah, yes . . . you, my little, purple-haired pretty . . .”
Fidget shrank before the glibber king, shrieking as he thundered toward her. Ozzie felt completely helpless. Then a glint caught his attention. It was his aunt’s key, still sticking out of the door. He suddenly remembered what had happened back in The Depths, when Mr. Crudge had tried to snatch the key. For some reason, it had burned him, as if he was forbidden to touch it.
Ozzie didn’t waste another second. Before Crogus could start gushing his poisonous words upon Fidget, Ozzie dashed to the door and wrenched the key loose.
“What’re you doing, worm?!” Salamanda snarled. She opened her mouth and out shot a long black tongue, just like her father’s. Ozzie leaped out of the way, but in doing so he stumbled backward and landed flat on his back. “It’s all over now, worm,” Salamanda cackled, looming over him. “You, the princess, the kitty—you’re all dead m—”
She didn’t finish her sentence. At that moment, a burst of blinding light illuminated the woods, accompanied by a resounding boom. The whole ground shook; it was like a meteorite had crashed in the middle of the woods. Amid a swirl of smoke, Master Nymm and a conjuring of wizards appeared. There was at least a dozen of them, and they were accompanied by Captain Cho and Lady Zoone. Cho raised his blazing blade of Valdune. The tiny creatures in Lady Zoone’s hair squawked in a frenzy.
“CROGUS!” Nymm boomed.
Ozzie saw Crogus flinch with fear—but just for a moment. With a snarl of determination, the glibber king slammed his webbed hands against the ground, unleashing an explosion of green fire that roared toward the conjuring, instantly incinerating two of the wizards and sending others fleeing for cover. It felt as if the blaze would engulf the entire forest; Ozzie screamed at the heat and instinctively scrambled backward on his elbows—but instead of devouring him, the fire suddenly fizzled out.
The wizards were fighting back.
Master Nymm, his robe now tattered and scorched, was spinning his staff to bombard Crogus with orbs of blue light. Adaryn Moonstrom was transfiguring into different creatures—first a lustrous owl, then a silver stag, next a majestic unicorn—thrusting at Crogus with talons, antlers, and gleaming hooves. Dorek Faeng, master of charms, summoned spells of lightning and wind, battering Crogus from every direction.
But the bravest attacker, at least in Ozzie’s opinion, was Cho. The captain stormed forwar
d, deftly ducking and dodging the sparks of magic that sizzled from the glibber king’s webbed fingers. Crogus shot out his deadly tongue, but Cho rolled underneath and rose up right in front of the glibber king to plunge his white-hot blade of Valdune into the monster’s thigh. Crogus bellowed in pain, only to yank the sword from his flesh and cast it aside. Then he struck Cho with the back of his hand, so hard that the captain was sent sprawling across the grass and into the nearest tree.
Ozzie had been lying on the ground all this time, but suddenly Fidget was there, pulling him to his feet. “We have to do something!” she cried over the tumult.
That’s when Ozzie realized he was still clenching his aunt’s key in his hand. “This can help!”
Fidget looked at him in confusion. “How?”
“Well—”
“It doesn’t matter!” Fidget told him. “Whatever you’re going to do, do it now!”
Ozzie nodded, drew a deep breath, and turned to the fray. Bolts of light and fire were flying everywhere. He took a moment to time his path through the crossfire, then charged full speed at the glibber king. When Crogus caught sight of him, his eyes flared with amusement, but he didn’t say anything—he just walloped Ozzie with his tongue.
It was like being struck by a giant rubber dart. Except this dart had suctioned itself like glue to Ozzie’s chest and was now reeling him toward a gaping mouth lined with hundreds of teeth, and the long black tunnel that led to the glibber’s king stomach. Ozzie stared down into that dismal dark hole. He could smell the rank heat radiating from it.
“Do it, Ozzie!” he heard Fidget scream.
Just before he was sucked inside, Ozzie hurled the key into the monster’s cavernous throat.
Crogus screeched in agony as the metal slid down his gullet and into his belly. The air filled with green smoke and a putrid stench—at the same moment, Ozzie tumbled to the ground, released from the glibber’s grip. He rolled over to see Crogus writhing on the ground, his long black tongue thrashing about like a whip. There was the sizzling sound of burning flesh—then, suddenly, green fire flared from every orifice of the glibber king’s face: his nose, his ears, and even his eyes. There was a thunderous boom—then all that was left of Crogus was a pile of glaucous, smoldering ash.
The Secret of Zoone Page 21
