Discover the Destroyer

by K. A. Applegate

  She welcomed me, let me settle beside her, let me lean back against her shoulder, let my cheek rest against her, let me breathe her, let me glow with the power that came from her, let me close my eyes and imagine her in a different world.

  She leaned down, raised my head just a little, and kissed me, and I thought. Ah, then she is scared, she is worried, she does need me still, maybe just for awhile.

  Her lips withered my strength. Her touch tightened the handcuffs. She had put the collar around my neck and held the leash in her hand.

  I knew what she was doing. I knew she was binding me closer to her. I felt the ruthlessness of her will, never doubted it, never was fooled, never believed there was a moment of real feeling for me, and yet, and yet . . .

  I knew that I had to choose. I could be my own man. Or hers.

  She pushed me away. She wanted to sleep. I didn't resist. It was all part of the program. She wanted me to feel the sudden cold, the absence, the emptiness. She wanted me to feel how alone I was without her.

  I felt it.

  I felt.

  But in my mind I saw towers.

  Chapter

  XVIII

  From first light of dawn we stalked our prey. It wasn't hard. The fairies had no problem with ostentatious displays of wealth. The poor ones were wearing other people's uniforms: blue for tax collectors, black for cops, red for traders who worked directly for the "royals."

  The rich fairies liked to dress the part. Fantastic outfits of red and purple, green and orange, feathers everywhere, fur trim, heavy gold chains, massive diamond rings.

  We wanted someone with money. Someone young enough to still be on the make.

  We found him working the inner ring, using silent hand signals to control his own boys, three guys who shouted orders for sheep, lumber, and copper.

  Once we saw the interest in copper we knew we had our guy.

  I approached him. He ignored me. I stood in his line of sight, blocking his view of his boys.

  "Kindly step aside."

  "Five seconds of your time."

  He arched a brow. "For what purpose?"

  "For the purpose of making you richer than the king."

  He started to laugh. Caught himself. Looked sharply at me.

  "Are you mad or a fool?"

  "Five seconds of your time, and you can decide that."

  "What do you want?"

  "I want you to place this small tip in your ear." I held the small earpiece of a set of headphones.

  "Do you propose to work some magic on me?" he demanded.

  "No magic. Better than magic: technology."

  He jerked his head and a guy I hadn't noticed before came rushing over. To me he said, "This member of my staff will place his sword blade against your throat. If this is some sort of trick he will remove your head from your neck."

  "Fair enough," I said.

  The sword appeared. The blade was a millimeter from my jugular.

  "Just place this in your ear, like I'm doing. See?"

  The fairy raised the earpiece. Settled it in his ear. And heard a sound that had never been heard in Fairy Land before: Johann Sebastian Bach.

  He jerked in surprise, then realized what he'd done and grabbed his retainer's sword hilt a split second before my head was doomed to go rolling.

  Holding his man's hand, he listened. I handed him the other earpiece and he listened in stereo. And his eyes went wide. And his mouth hung open. And his face shone as if a light had come down from heaven to be his personal spotlight.

  At last he took the earpieces out of his ears and looked greedily at the CD player I held.

  "What will you take for this?"

  I shook my head. "It's not for sale. Look, it will work maybe four hours before it goes dead. That was just to get your attention. Just to convince you to listen to our proposal."

  "I'm listening."

  Jalil stepped forward, with Christopher and Senna not far behind.

  "We have a piece of technology," Jalil said, "It can communicate faster than the fastest fairy can run. It can send information over hundreds of miles instantaneously."

  The fairy looked blank.

  Christopher stepped in. "Mr. Fairy, what we're saying is that, look, you buy or sell some sheep, right? You buy a flock of sheep for a dollar and sel them for a dollar ten. Because you figure more sheep are coming, right? Coming to the market and they'll sell for the same price, give or take. But. But, what if you knew that there weren't going to be any sheep for a week, or a month? If you knew that, then you could charge more for your sheep, right? Law of supply and demand. More sheep mean cheaper sheep. Fewer sheep, more expensive sheep."

  The fairy considered this for a moment. "Yes, this is true."

  "So if you knew, knew for a fact that you had the only flock of sheep within fifty miles, hell, you could charge a lot more for sheep.

  Am I right?"

  "How would I know such a thing was to occur?"

  "It's called a telegraph. And that's only the beginning, my brother, because, see, the same technology can warn you if bad weather is coming or tell you if there's an enemy army heading your way. It can be used to send messages to your people far away."

  It took another half hour to lay the whole thing out. To convince the fairy, whose name was Ambrigar, that the CD player was not the thing that made it all happen. Even then he didn't get the whole magnitude of the deal we had for him.

  "Yes, this would confer a great advantage on me in my trading business. If I knew what others did not, I —"

  Christopher interrupted. "Dude. Ambrigar. The others will know it, too. Everyone will know. I mean everyone would want to know what the corn crop over in Cowtown is like, or whether there's a drought in Mootown, or how many wagonloads of beets are coming up the road. And everyone is going to want to be able to communicate with their brother or cousin or employee out in Trolllle, right? Everyone is going to want this same power you'll have."

  "Yes, but . . . then how . . ."

  "You charge them."

  "The king wants to send a note to some other king? You charge the king a dollar. Some bread baker wants to order some special flour from Clodkicker City, you charge him a dollar. Some chick wants to send a love note to her love muffin way out on the frontier, wherever, you charge her a dollar." Christopher smiled. "That's where the money is, man. You can be AT&T and Dow Jones and AOL, all rolled into one."

  "Everyone who wishes to use my magic wire . . ."

  "You charge them a magic dollar."

  "By the gods," the fairy whispered.

  "That's right, my friend, you'll be able to buy the gods."

  Then, and only then, did we tell him our price.

  He stomped off. For an hour or so we thought we'd lost.

  Then Ambrigar stomped back. "Show me this magic wire.

  Make it work. Prove this magic to me."

  Jalil nodded. "We need carpenters, we need lumber, we need a small amount of iron or steel, a blacksmith, a jeweler, and a lot of copper wire."

  "Copper wire? What they use for ear adornments for ladies?"

  "Capitalism," Christopher said with a happy laugh. "It's a beautiful thing."

  Chapter

  XIX

  We surveyed the route we'd take. From a point on a fairly swift stream that ran more or less parallel to the fairy road, roughly a quarter mile to the near side of the marketplace. Ambrigar owned a small smithy there. Ambrigar owned quite a bit, it turned out.

  But like Jalil had said, even too much wasn't enough. Ambrigar had the vision thing now. Ambrigar was smelling the cash.

  Blacksmiths? He had blacksmiths. Jewelers? No problem.

  Copper wire, steel ingots, lumber, no problem at all. He promised us anything we needed.

  Jalil was running the show. Jalil had some vague idea what he was doing, which was more than I had. Jalil was high. Jalil was whipping out diagrams and doing calculations, scribbling with blunt pieces of chalk on wooden planks or scraps of parc
hment.

  "Fairies!" Jalil snapped at one point. "All the workmen have to be fairies. They'll speed things up. Humans won't do. Get me fairies!"

  Ambrigar protested. Fairies would charge more. But Christopher was handling Ambrigar, building him up, hurrying him along, playing the salesman. Ambrigar agreed to hire fairies.

  I grabbed Jalil at one point, almost had to shake him to get him to look up from a diagram he was drawing,

  "What?" he snapped.

  "Can we do it? Tick tock. Can we do it in time?"

  He had a wild look in his eyes. "Yeah. We can. Maybe. Maybe if everything goes just right and you don't waste my time."

  "Can I help?"

  "What? No. Yes. Go into the market, find something nonconducting we can use to hold the wire. Like, uh, I don't know, like made out of pottery or porcelain maybe. Glass. Have to be able to thread a wire through them and attach them to a wooden pole. We need . . ." He tore through a few pages of paper covered with figures. "We need fifteen, minimum. Better double that if you can. Go!"

  He pushed me away. Not angry just mainlining adrenaline.

  We were in the third day of a six-day count down. Jalil had to construct a waterwheel that would generate current. String a wire along a quarter mile of poles that had yet to be cut or trimmed.

  Invent a couple of telegraph keys out of available materials. Do it all and leave enough time for us to ransom April, buy the Daghdha's stuff, arid get back to Nidhoggr before the rubies in our chests turned into little volcanoes.

  Assuming the ransom was big enough. Assuming somehow that we could outbid Ka Anor using Ambrigar's resources.

  Assuming.

  The unspoken but definite probability was that we might not be able to outbid Ka Anor. That was the problem. Ransom Nidhoggr's crap, save our own lives? Yeah, that, maybe. But April?

  In our minds we'd already come to that point. We already knew, see. Subtly our efforts had become about saving our own asses, not rescuing April. But that couldn't be the way it was.

  I cruised the market looking for I didn't know what, with one of Ambrigar's retainers shadowing me, ready to lay down cash for whatever I needed.

  So we'd get the Daghdha's toys back to Nidhoggr. Maybe.

  And he'd give us back our hearts. Maybe, And April would be hauled off to Ka Anor, who would demand she do what she could not possibly do.

  And on the sixth day her unexchanged ruby would burst into flames.

  I noticed what looked like the same beet wagon we'd shadowed earlier on the way into fairy land. It was loaded up with various goods. Mostly rolled carpets piled high. They looked in a hurry to leave.

  Past them I spotted an armorer. There were several trays laid out on a table. "Arrowheads," I said.

  "Yes, but those are not the finest, perhaps," the armorer replied.

  "These are merely cheap porcelain, useful for hunting large game that may run off carrying a more expensive bronze arrowhead.

  But note the cunning placement of this small hole that allows them to be attached firmly to the shaft with a tiny nail that I also happen to sell."

  "Yeah. I'll take thirty."

  "Thirty! Then perhaps the good gentleman would care to see my lines of bronze arrowheads?"

  "No, just those thirty, please. This guy will — ah-ah-ah! Of course!" I actually slapped my hands together in excitement at the sudden realization. "That's why they put up the hedge. Towers, my ass."

  "Sir?"

  "Nothing. Wrap 'em up." Hopefully my outburst hadn't been noticed. Ambrigar's retainer didn't seem interested. No one else, either. The armorer just wanted to sell me some arrowheads.

  I got back to Jalil as quickly as possible.

  Strangely, he was trying to fall asleep inside a tent that had been put up near the river construction site.

  "I need to cross over, back to the real world, check out some designs on some of this stuf . Christopher wil wake me up two hours after I fall asleep."

  "You could cross over and be in class."

  "I can handle that. I'm more worried about being asleep over there and not being able to wake up."

  "Listen, I think we need a plan B."

  "Thanks for that vote of confidence."

  "Jalil, be honest: If I told you I had a serious plan B would you tell me there's no way we'll need it?"

  He shook his head. "No. Too much could go wrong with plan A. Everything could go wrong. So what's plan B?"

  "Bring Nidhoggr here," I said.

  "Good plan. Let's hope to hell plan A works."

  "Look, Nidhoggr was suspicious that the fairies were setting him up, right? He figured if he showed up here looking for his stuff the fairies had some way of taking him down so they could grab the rest of his fortune. Right?"

  "So far. I'm still waiting for the part where you get Large and Crusty to fly over here."

  "Nidhoggr was right," I said, lowering my voice to a whisper.

  "The fairies were waiting. I saw these narrow towers back in the city, back in the palace itself. You wouldn't see them from the city streets, the walls of the castle are too high given the angle. But from the road where we stopped to take a leak? You can see them from there, and the fairies planted that big hedge to keep people from doing that."

  "I don't have a lot of time, man," Jalil said, tapping an invisible watch.

  "The towers are arrows. Huge arrows. Big enough to nail Nidhoggr. I don't know what they're using to launch them but that's what they are. Several of them. Nidhoggr would have come scoping down on the palace, on the city. They launch the towers, kill Nidhoggr, and bam, his whole treasure is up for grabs and the Hetwan don't have to watch their backs if they invade the Underworld."

  Jalil didn't tell me I was full of it. Which worried me. I guess I'd been hoping he'd poke holes in my theory. Plan B was not going to be a party.

  Jalil just said, "Okay, so you do what?"

  "I sneak out of here, get back to him, and say, 'Look, man, you want your stuff? I know how you can make it safely in and out of fairy air space. I know how you can scare the fairies into giving up your stuff. Just one thing: We have something we want to get back, too.'"

  "April."

  "No one gets left behind."

  Jalil nodded. Yawned. "You taking Senna?"

  "Yeah. She's my responsibility."

  Jalil laughed. "That's your curse, David: Everything is your responsibility."

  Chapter

  XX

  I went back to the abandoned stall we'd made our unofficial home. Ambrigar had sent over some rugs for the ground, some pillows, and necessities.

  Senna was outside the stall talking to a man in a leather apron.

  She had her hand on his arm. He was smiling a goofy half smile and chattering away.

  "Say good-bye," I snapped. Was I jealous? No. I knew Senna was just using her unique power on the man. Making the contact that allowed her to lower the man's defenses and inhibitions.

  It was what she did to me. Not jealousy, that's not what I felt.

  Embarrassment. Seeing my own weakness on that stranger's face.

  Like seeing a videotape of yourself drunk.

  Senna followed me inside meekly enough.

  "We have to get out of Fairy Land," I said.

  "Do we?"

  "Yeah. You have to come with me."

  She raised her gray eyes to me. "I like it here. Merlin can't touch me here. Loki can't touch me here. I've been learning about this world-within-a-world. This marketplace is vital, and because of that it's treated as neutral territory. The gods leave it alone. Known wizards — or witches — are followed from the time they arrive, and unlike me, Merlin is well-known. I can stay here and learn all I need to know to . . . to go on with my life. I can make alliances. I can raise forces. This is as close to civilization as Everworld gets. I can grow stronger here. Strong enough to leave. But not now."

  "You can come back here when I'm done," I said.

  She frowned just a little. Like she coul
dn't quite understand me.

  "I'm not leaving, David. Neither are you. I need you. I need all of you, I see that now. Here you and Jalil can amass a fortune. I'll need that wealth to —"

  "What makes you think we'd help you? Maybe me, maybe you think you have me whipped. But Jalil isn't going to do what you say."

  "I think he will."

  "And you know I will, huh? You know I'll do whatever you tell me."

  "You love me," she said simply.

  "I'm getting April out."

  "Forget April. She's gone."

  "Maybe you're right," I said.

  I hooked my right arm upward from my waist, fist clenched. I caught Senna under the point of her chin. Her head snapped back. For a moment she wavered, eyes crazy, rolling, then her knees gave way.

  I caught her as she fell.

  "I love you," I whispered. "And maybe you do own me. But I'm getting everyone out of this alive. Even you."

  I straightened her out, tied her hands behind her back, tied her ankles. Stuffed a wad of cotton cloth into her mouth and used more of the cloth to wrap around her head and hold the gag in place.

  I dragged her into place and wrapped her up slowly, carefully, in the rug. I tied the rug. Checked to make sure she was getting air.

  Then I hefted her onto one shoulder and set off in search of the former beet wagon I'd spotted earlier. Senna wasn't heavy.

  Neither was the rug. Together they weighed a ton. I was sweating by the time I got back to the wagon. It was already in motion.

  I ran, huffing and wheezing and panting. I caught the tailgate and flung Senna aboard. Not gently. I didn't have time for gentle.

  I grabbed the rough wood and managed to climb up, scrambling over the still-unconscious Senna. The driver couldn't possibly see us. But I had to be worried about fairies. Particularly the black-tunics. If they noticed me it was all over. "Can't control that," I told myself. I stacked Senna on a pile of rugs. And I began to worm my way down between her rug and the others.

  It was hot very quickly. Airless. Miserable. But no one stopped us. And I hadn't noticed outgoing wagons being searched at the thorny gate.