Only then did he truly see where he was. The lights he had noticed seemed like emergency lighting, flickering on and off, giving off a low, electric glow.
There was a glass panel in front of him, though it had not cracked with the impact of his crash. But it was what was behind it that took his interest. There, floating in liquid … were the pantheon.
It had to be, for he counted twenty-one of them. Living creatures, so deep inside their ship. They could be nothing else.
The sight sickened him.
In his mind’s eye, he had imagined malevolent figures in black hooded robes, cackling on ancient stone thrones and rubbing their decrepit hands with glee.
These things … they might hardly count as alive at all. They were featureless. Like the torsos of deboned pigs—blobs of pink, semitranslucent flesh, hanging in liquid. Pickled meat, bereft of appendages or senses.
Each one was plugged into a mess of tube and wires, running into the walls of the ship. Metal antennae studded the walls, and the flesh twitched horribly as he swept his headlamps from one to the next.
Eons of time relying on machines had rotted away their limbs. Electric senses had robbed them of their corporeal ones. They were the ghosts in the machine. The ghosts of life.
As he pressed his hand against the wall, he felt something. A vibration. Not constant, but intensifying and ebbing. It was almost as if … he leaned his helmet against the glass.
“… will give you riches beyond your imagining. Immortality, should you want it. We can make you a member of the pantheon. I never lie, Cade. I never lie. Do not do this—”
Cade had always wondered what Abaddon sounded like. And now he knew. It was the Codex’s voice. The electric one. There was no humanity to be had. Nothing even close to it.
“Can you hear me, Abaddon?” Cade said.
The voice stopped. Then:
“I can send you home. You and your friends. We’ll let the world know what you’ve done. Do not do this. You’ll never survive the blast.”
“Your game ends here, Abaddon,” Cade whispered, tasting the bitter tears trickling down his cheeks. There was nothing he could do now. Nothing but give Abaddon the fright of his immortal life.
“You’re right, Cade,” Abaddon wheedled. “It’s over. I see that now. But think of what we could do for humanity. Life eternal. A whole universe to explore. I cannot lie, Cade. Make one last deal with me.”
Cade laughed, half in despair. Perhaps he should make a deal. After all, he was bluffing. There was no way to set off the bomb now.
“This is my game now, Abaddon,” he hissed, his anger hot in his belly. “How does it feel to play?”
“Don’t do this!” Abaddon shrieked, and now it was the little girl’s voice, trembling and plaintive. “Did I not hold my end of the bargain each and every time? Did I not give you the bomb and timer? You can trust me, Cade. We can both get what we want. You must want to make a deal if you’re still here.”
And that was when Cade realized. He didn’t need the figurine at all. Abaddon didn’t even understand its importance.
Because the fool had already given him exactly what he needed: the timer.
Cade reached into his pack, giving a silent prayer. He grasped the timer Abaddon had given him, holding it up to the light. He closed his eyes … and pressed the button.
Nothing happened, and he pushed his head against the glass once more.
“There’s no self-destruct, Cade,” Abaddon’s voice came. “The timer lasts five minutes at least, and by then we’ll be back online. I’ll rip you to shreds, Cade. You and your friends. Your family. Everyone you’ve ever loved. Every human. Every animal. Every blade of grass. An eternity of torture. Make a deal with me now, and you’ll have everything. Ignore me and die. I never lie, Cade.”
Cade clicked the dial up, once. Saw the five minutes on the little screen.
“I’ll take my chances,” Cade said.
He pressed the button.
CHAPTER
67
Cade pushed off from the glass, gliding over the bomb and deep into the corridor. He had no plan. No inkling of what he would do next.
The corridor was an escape hatch—of that he was now certain. There could be no other reason for there to be a tunnel that led directly to the outside world. It seemed the pantheon had detected the EMP and almost triggered their ejection in time, machinery within the ship slotting their little ecosystem into position. But the EMP had put a stop to their ejection sequence before it had completed.
It was all just a guess, and Cade wished there was some way of hijacking the system to get to safety, but he had no time to figure out how it worked. Better to return to the Gray ship and try to figure out how to make it fly. At the very least, he’d be outside the pantheon’s ship when the bomb blew.
His mind raced as he hurtled down the corridor, watching the timer on the remote in his hand. This was the first time he had willed a timer to go faster.
3:14
3:13
3:12
He had been plummeting for almost two minutes, and it was only by good fortune he spotted the hatch in time. He did everything in his power to slow down, kicking off one wall to rattle back and forth between the walls, scraping his hands against the smooth surface, the remote shoved back into his pack. He stopped a few feet from the hatch’s entrance, after a herculean effort. He was battered but alive. More alive than he’d ever been in his life.
Cade pushed himself out the hatch, knocking the ship gently in the process. The thing moved, drifting into space.
Panicking, Cade leaped after it, passing in through the back before it drifted out of reach. He slammed into the ceiling and set the thing spinning.
Dizzied, Cade shoved off the wall of the rotating ship, his fingertips hooking onto the chair. He managed to take a seat, looping his arms through the belt there.
The ship was dead. He knew it as soon as he sat down. The console in front of him was bereft of the dancing lights he had seen before, just plain black glass.
He tentatively pressed at it with his fingers, then his palms, then slammed his fists down in an attempt to do … something. Anything.
But instead, the ship drifted on. And shook.
Slowly at first, then more and more, until Cade’s teeth rattled in his head. Was this to be his end? Drifting into oblivion until his oxygen ran out?
It almost didn’t matter. All that mattered was that the timer hit zero. He sat there, one hand clutching the timer, another still prodding desperately along the console of the ship.
2:11
2:10
2:09
The ship shuddered, and Cade looked up. The spinning stopped, and the outside of the cockpit was flaring orange.
He had reentered the atmosphere.
Flames erupted outside the ship, flaring along the dark glassy material of the cockpit. His body pressed into the seat, at first gently, then harder and harder. His vision was filled with fire outside the ship, and he could hear a roaring that reverberated in his chest.
The pressure ramped up higher and higher, until Cade could hardly breathe. He counted down from ten. And passed out at eight.
* * *
Cade woke up falling. Still strapped into his seat, the world spinning and flipping. Blue, then yellow, blue, then yellow.
The ship was flipping, over and over. Dropping, fast. By some miracle, the Gray ship’s exterior had acted as a heat shield. He was alive. Half-dead, but alive.
But he wouldn’t be if he crashed into the ground, and they were now in the atmosphere.
Cade looked up, if you could call it that, and saw the back of the ship was still open. He undid the strap … and leaped.
There was pain as he slammed into a wall and slid down its surface. Then, he was out, into the bright light of the sky. Spinning into nothingness.
Far beneath him, he saw the patchwork quilt of Acies, and the ship seemed to tumble up and past him. And far above, he saw the flash.
00:00
He’d done it. The gods were dead … and Cade was finally free.
EPILOGUE
Cade fell and fell.
It felt like hours of falling. He threw out his arms and legs to catch as much friction as he could to slow him down.
Above him he had seen the pieces of the pantheon ship falling through the atmosphere, blazing like meteorites before burning to nothingness. The streaking of the smaller pieces strobed out light, and great lumps of material left behind smoking trails, crisscrossing the sky as they burned slowly toward the planet’s surface.
Whatever material the Gray ship had been made from, it was sturdier stuff than the pantheon’s.
He knew at some point he would need to open his parachute. But he needed to decide where he would land first.
He knew what he was looking for. It was just one patch among the hundreds spread across the world below him. A drop of blue, in a sea of green, within an ocean of desert.
Once he found it, he pulled the cord on his parachute. Yanked the guide straps to take him left, take him right.
He drifted on the wind, breathing the suit’s oxygen. There was no cold. No pain. The suit kept him safe.
The parachute spiraled, and Cade prayed he would land in the right place. Prayed he would survive the impact.
Fiery debris flamed past him. Dozens of metal shards, raining like a meteor shower around him.
He could do no more than stare at the canopy above him. That thin, ancient stretch of canvas, half-rotted by seawater and the jungle heat. Any second, a flaming ball of death could end him.
So it was with some surprise when he found himself circling above what he thought was the caldera, honing down into the square he had called home for so long. It was painstaking work, keeping himself centered, and twice he spiraled out of control, kicking at the rat’s nest of strings tangling above him.
Somehow, they held.
He knew where the keep was. Had stared at the Codex’s map for so long, he knew it as well as the freckles upon Amber’s face.
Pulling the straps, he angled toward it. Past it, into the salt flats, then back. The ground was growing closer and closer now. Beyond him, he could see the entrance to the bone fields.
And tiny figures, streaming out from the keep.
Down he went, the wind whipping at him. He was going so fast. Too fast. He felt giddy, as if it couldn’t be real.
He hit the ground, tumbling over and over, sinking into the salt-sand crust. His legs screamed in agony, then his ribs, his back.
Cade smelled the air as he stared into the wide blue sky, marred by a fresh crack in his helmet. It smelled familiar. Smelled like home.
Yes. His new home. He watched the black trails of the pantheon’s wreckage, and the flashes of light. He had set the sky on fire.
Hands lifted him. Twisted off his helmet.
Amber and Quintus were there, clutching him close. He could hear his name, distantly.
“It’s okay,” he whispered as Amber clutched him close. “We’re going to be okay.”
He lay back, letting them lift him. Letting them carry him back to his home.
Back to a new world.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
There have been a great many people who I owe a debt of gratitude for their contribution to the creation and publication of The Champion.
I would like to thank my agent, Juliet Mushens, for all her hard work, teaming up with many amazing publishers around the world. She has been my guiding light throughout the entire process, and my life would not be the same without her.
Thank you to the publishing teams at Feiwel and Friends and Hodder Childrens for helping bring a beautiful book to as many readers as possible. They have done fantastic work and have stuck with me from start to finish. In particular, I would like to thank:
Jean Feiwel, Emily Settle, Liz Szabla, Kim Waymer, Dawn Ryan, Ilana Worrell, Julia Gardiner, Mariel Dawson, Trisha Previte, Kathleen Breitenfeld, Katie Quinn, Morgan Dubin, Katie Halata, Ruth Girmatsion, Naomi Greenwood, Sarah Lambert, Tig Wallace, Michelle Brackenborough, Naomi Berwin, Dominic Kingston, Nic Goode, and Liza DeBlock.
I would like to thank my friends and family for their ongoing support, guidance, and patience. Vic James, Sasha Alsberg, Dominic Wong, Michael Miller, Brook Aspden, as well as Liege, Jay, Sindri, and Raj Matharu, you guys rock.
Finally, thank you, the readers, for all you have done. Your comments, reviews, messages, and encouragement have meant the world to me. It is ultimately you who made me a success, and you who keep me writing. I will be forever astonished, honored, and grateful for your support.
Thank you.
TARAN MATHARU
Also by Taran Matharu
THE SUMMONER SERIES
The Novice
The Inquisition
The Battlemage
The Outcast
The Summoner’s Handbook
THE CONTENDER TRILOGY
The Chosen
The Challenger
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Taran Matharu is the author of the Contender trilogy and the New York Times–bestselling Summoner series: The Novice (Book One), The Inquisition (Book Two), The Battlemage (Book Three), The Outcast (the prequel), and The Summoner’s Handbook; the series has been compared to the Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings series. Taran Matharu lives in London. You can sign up for email updates here.
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CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Also by Taran Matharu
About the Author
Copyright
A Feiwel and Friends Book
An
imprint of Macmillan Publishing Group, LLC
120 Broadway, New York, NY 10271
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Copyright © 2021 by Taran Matharu. All rights reserved.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.
First edition, 2021
Feiwel and Friends logo designed by Filomena Tuosto
ISBN 978-1-250-13878-1 (hardcover)
eISBN: 9781250138798
The Champion Page 27
