by E. G. Foley
“What do you think?” Amused at Jake’s confused revulsion, Tex sent Derek a glance, his wild blue eyes dancing. “Kid’s a hoot. Just like his daddy, ain’t he?”
“I know,” said Derek.
“After a student has gone through all the Lightrider trainin’, the final step is the surgery. And you have to think hard about it ’cuz it’s a lifetime commitment and it can’t be undone. They knock ya out, then go ahead and embed one o’ these doodads under the skin. That way, nobody can steal it.”
“Looks painful,” he said with a grimace.
“Ain’t too comfortable, you’re right.”
“What is it?”
“It’s called the Flower o’ Life. A Lightrider’s ‘open sesame’ into the Grid. It’s a flat, two-dimensional representation of the Grid’s icosahedron. The wood elf at least mentioned that much?”
Jake nodded, staring at it. “What’s it made of? Stone?”
“Mainly iron pyrite.”
“Fool’s gold,” Dr. Plantagenet informed him.
“Fool’s gold?” Jake echoed in surprise.
The Green Man nodded. “Iron pyrite has very special paramagnetic properties. It is then encased in the same Preseli bluestone from Wales used in Stonehenge.”
“Really?” Jake murmured.
“Indeed,” the doctor said. “Something about the crystalline structure of that particular rock deposit resonates with the frequencies of the Grid. Why else would the ancestors bother carrying all those gigantic boulders over two hundred miles, from Wales to the Salisbury Plain?”
“Yep,” Tex concurred, nodding. “That’s how it works. So, when I need to open up a portal, I just punch in my destination on these here buttons—chips of quartz crystal, by the way.”
“Mysterious stone, quartz,” the Green Man remarked. “It’s been revered since ancient times, but we’re only just beginning to discover the range of its properties. It, too, resonates in harmony with the frequencies of the Grid, and we’re beginning to find that, in fact, quartz stores all kinds of information.”
“How can a stone store information?” Jake asked.
“No idea,” said Tex. “I gen’rally leave the technical parts to the wizards. They’re the ones who figured out how to make the thing an implant. In the old days, see, Lightriders used to wear the Flower on a chain, like a locket or a fob watch. But bad folks was always trying to steal ’em.”
Derek nodded at Jake. “The Dark Druids would love to get into the Grid and subvert it for their own purposes.”
“I’ll bet they would,” Maddox murmured.
“So now, by a blend of science and magic,” the Green Man said, “they’ve figured out how to embed the Flower under the skin, instead. The body accepts it almost like another organ, when the Lightrider dies, the Flower dies, too. Then it’s of use to no one.”
“They could still try to steal it,” Maddox pointed out, glancing at Tex. “Capture you and carve the device out of your arm.”
“Our wizards thought of that and took measures against it,” Dr. Plantagenet told him. “Pyrite and the poison arsenic often form together in nature, which is handy. If anyone tries to surgically remove the implant, a flood of arsenic seeps out of the pyrite and straight into the bloodstream, killing the Lightrider within moments. As soon as he or she dies, the Flower of Life dies, too. The device becomes unusable.”
“The Dark Druids wouldn’t be able to fix it?” Maddox asked skeptically. “I hear they have some of the most talented warlocks on Earth among their number.”
“Don’t matter,” Tex said. “The Grid knows her Lightriders like her own kin. She don’t let nobody else come a-callin’. You don’t have a Lightrider with you, you ain’t gettin’ in.”
“You make it sound as though the Grid is alive,” Jake remarked.
Tex hooted, and the Green Man chuckled, looking askance at him.
“It’s not as though you can have a conversation with her, Jake, but of course she is alive,” Dr. Plantagenet said.
“She?” he echoed in surprise.
“My people have always worshipped her as Mother Earth,” the Green Man added with a reverent bow of his leafy head.
“’Course, y’all are pagans,” Tex said in a philosophical tone. “Well, y’are! No offense.”
The Green Man huffed. “Colonials.”
“Anyhoo, the Flower o’ Life is a flattened representation of what actually exists out there in three or more dimensions. The Grid itself, in miniature. Right here in my dad-gum arm,” Tex said. “Can’t never get rid of it, neither, like I said. Once it’s in there, you die if it’s removed. It’s a security measure.”
Maddox was still pondering various enemy moves. “But what if they left you alive and simply cut your arm off? Might the Flower still work then?”
Tex turned to him in astonishment. “Well, ain’t you a ray o’ sunshine, boy! I don’t partick’ly care to try it and find out. Shoot! Where’d you find this one, Stone?” Tex grinned. “He’s mean, ain’t he?”
“I told you he was good,” Derek said proudly.
Maddox arched a brow at him, pleased.
“Well, suffice to say, nobody can open the Grid but a Lightrider, and let’s just leave it at that.” Tex punched a final button embedded in his arm, still chuckling. “Heh. Wouldn’t wanna make an enemy outta you, boy.”
Maddox smiled coolly.
Jake changed the subject before everybody started talking about how great Maddox was again. Between Archie, Dani, and, above all, Isabelle singing the older boy’s praises, he was a little tired of that subject.
“So you can go anywhere you want with that thing?” he asked Tex, nodding at the Flower. “Just tell it where to go and it takes you there?”
“Long as your end point’s pegged to one of these here waypoints.” Tex tapped the toe of his boot on a circular brass plaque sunk into the ground, like a poor man’s gravestone.
Jake hadn’t even noticed it there, overgrown with grass around the edges. Even if he had, though, he never would’ve thought it had anything to do with the Grid. It looked like a part of the palace grounds’ waterworks system, like an ordinary metal cap over an underground pipe where the gardener could hook in a hose.
“Waypoints like this one here are sunk deep in the ground at regular points around the globe, anywhere we want to have quick access to. At ground level, you barely notice ’em, but y’see, these pegs run some twenty feet deep into the earth. The metal in them collects the Grid’s energy.”
“Like an underground lightning rod,” Dr. Plantagenet offered.
“Ohh,” Jake murmured in wonder.
Tex nodded. “That’s what generates the gateway when I call for one. All right now, folks. If y’all done jawin’, we should be ready to jump. We got sick dracosaurs to tend. So stand back and hold on to yer hats—and yer molecules. Portal should be poppin’ open right about…now.”
Tex certainly knew his business, for as soon as he finished speaking, a sudden flash of light blinded them, heralding the opening of the Grid.
Jake winced and tried to shield his eyes, but the burst of brilliance was gone as quickly as it appeared. When his vision readjusted, he saw once again, as yesterday, a pulsating circle of thick, clear, almost liquid-looking energy before them, like a hole in the fabric of reality, shimmering with delicate colors, as if to beckon them in.
Perfectly round, the portal reminded Jake of a manmade pond filled with very pure water, little waves and ripples playing across its surface—except that it stood upright rather than lying flat.
Through this watery window, a strange silver tunnel opened up. Beyond it, he could just make out a rugged landscape of misty mountains and forests waiting for them.
The Green Man peered over Derek’s shoulder into the portal. “See any dragons basking near our landing point?”
“Don’t worry,” the Guardian replied, “there’s a barrier around the waypoint to keep them off.”
“They’re still dragons,”
the veterinarian muttered.
“Aw, settle your branches, Doc. We’ll be fine.”
“So what do we do?” Jake asked Tex.
“Just step in. She won’t hurt ya, long as you’re with me.”
Derek shrugged the sack of equipment higher onto his shoulder, then stepped up to the portal. “See you on the other side, boys.”
Jake watched, heart pounding, as Derek’s body blurred into streaks and disappeared in the twinkling of an eye as he went shooting off through the Grid.
Maddox and Jake glanced at each other in alarm.
Jake stepped back. “You’re next, not me.”
“Go on, kid. Time’s a-wastin’,” said Tex.
“Yes, sir.” Maddox visibly braced himself, then went up to the portal.
Cautiously, he poked his finger into the swirling energy field to test it. But with a sudden yelp, Maddox went flying into the tunnel, as though the Grid itself had caught him by the arm and thrown him down the ley line’s energy highway.
Tex just chuckled as Maddox blurred and whizzed off into the distance.
Jake turned anxiously to the Lightrider. “Is he going to be all right?”
“’Course he is. Doc, you go next.”
The Green Man let out a large sigh and gazed at the portal for a moment. “Go easy on me, Gaia.” Clutching his doctor bag, he closed his eyes, stepped into the circle, and swiftly vanished like the others had.
“Your turn, kid.”
“Er, all right.” Heart thumping, Jake stepped up nervously to the pulsating circle of energy. “That’s all I have to do, then? Step in?”
“I gen’rally find it helps to yell ‘Yee-haw.’”
“Why? What does that mean?”
“No idea.”
“Is it a spell?” he asked hopefully.
“Naw, it’s just fun to say. Now go on, boy! Quit stallin’. You’ll be there in two shakes of an armadillo’s tail. Go on, now, make yer daddy proud.”
“Right,” Jake forced out, but still, he could not force himself to go. Odd to find himself so terrified. This was, after all, a foretaste of his greatest dream in life. Yet his very knees were shaking.
What if something went wrong?
He cleared his throat. “Yee-haw,” he attempted, his voice barely a whisper, dry-mouthed as he was with mingled fear and excitement.
“Whatcha waiting for, son, the Rapture?”
“Huh?”
Tex’s shrewd stare homed in on him. “Now, I ain’t one to criticize. But I’d go, if I were you. Otherwise, that other kid, he’s gonna think yer yella.”
Jake slanted him a sharp look. Tex grinned.
Oh, that canny Lightrider knew just what to say. But maybe it was good to have a rival because, without further hesitation, he kicked his fear away and leaped at the portal, yelling out the words the cowboy had suggested.
“Yeeeee…”
To his confusion, time slowed down to an inchworm’s crawl just inside the tunnel, and silence blotted out the birdsong.
No, not silence, Jake realized as he floated in mid-jump. He could hear a deep hum, a pulsating rhythm of energy like a heartbeat. The very frequencies of the planet.
In that first sliver of delayed non-time, even his own voice came out slow and distorted.
But it didn’t last. Time snapped back on itself; his molecules blurred into long colored streaks, as did the grounds of Merlin Hall behind him.
Then—whoosh!
The Grid sent him careening headlong at the speed of light nearly to the other side of the Continent.
“…haaaaaw!”
He was still shouting the cowboy’s silly phrase when he tumbled out of the Grid onto a desolate hilltop in Romania. He rolled across the rocky ground and stopped himself a few feet from the waypoint sunk into the earth.
The others were there, too, but Jake was too much in shock to pay them any mind. He felt foggy-headed and shaken as Derek picked him up by one arm and moved him out of the way.
“D-do I have all my m-molecules?” Jake mumbled, glancing down at himself. Two arms, two legs. All his bits seemed to have arrived in the right place, properly connected.
He noted that his companions were likewise intact when the nausea suddenly caught up with him. Perhaps his stomach had been the last to arrive, for it revolted without warning. He stumbled a few feet away from the others and vomited into the underbrush.
Belatedly, he remembered what Finnderool had said about the first few jumps making someone queasy.
Happy birthday to me, Jake thought, then puked again.
It was somewhat mollifying, though, to notice that Maddox was leaning on a nearby boulder, also retching his guts out. Ha. Not so tough now, are you, Mr. Invincible? Still, Jake couldn’t help seeing a certain humor in them both being sick.
“You knew we’d puke, didn’t you?” he accused Derek a few minutes later, after he had recovered and rejoined their party.
“It’s nothing to be embarrassed about,” he answered. “Most people do.”
Dr. Plantagenet offered the boys a piece of candied ginger. “Here. It’ll help to settle your stomachs.”
“Thanks.” Maddox and he both took a piece.
Then Tex arrived, stepping out of the watery-wavy circle as smoothly as you please. He pulled up his sleeve again and punched a quartz crystal button in the middle of the Flower of Life implant, closing the portal behind them. “So, how’d we all do? You boys look a little green around the gills.”
They muttered that they were all right, though Jake still felt woozy and discombobulated.
“You git used to it,” Tex assured them. “That’s just your molecules settling down again where they’re supposed to be. So, what’s the plan, Doc?”
“The dragon pox is highly contagious,” the Green Man said as he untied the top of his big rope-netting bag. “And I regret to say, it tends to make a dragon very grumpy. Not that they need any help in that department.”
“This virus, it doesn’t spread to people, does it?” Maddox asked.
“Not a virus, a bacterium. If this were a virus—in a lizard species—we’d be in real trouble. And no, it doesn’t.”
“Bacterium?” Jake echoed. He recalled Archie rambling on in his laboratory back home about some newfangled “germ” theory of disease.
It was hard to believe that people in hospital could get sick enough to die from something as insignificant as surgeons not washing their hands between patients. But that was the latest, shocking claim by the scientists.
“The only thing worse than an especially grumpy dragon,” the Green Man said as he passed out stinkberry bracelets, “is a whole colony of them.”
Jake put it on but winced at the smell.
“So,” the veterinarian continued, “we need to scout them out and quarantine the infected beasts to stop the pox from spreading to the rest. Because if that happens…ho, ho.” He shuddered with dread. “There’ll be dragons attacking villages all along the edges of these forests faster than you can say St. George. Here, everybody take one of these, too.” He pulled a stack of round shields out of the rope sack. “They’re fireproof.”
Derek nodded to the boys, who each accepted a shield, just in case. As for himself, he was starting to look a little concerned. “Don’t dragons usually crawl into one of their caves or retreats and hide when they’re feeling ill?”
“Normally, yes,” Dr. Plantagenet replied while Maddox practiced lifting the shield, getting a feel for its weight. “But, er…this particular infection also tends to stimulate the appetite.”
“What?” Tex turned to him and stared. “Now he tells us! Extra-hungry dragons on the loose? Aw, that’s real nice, Doc.” The Lightrider waved off the offered shield with a scowl. “You coulda told us that before we brought these boys along, ya overgrown broccoli! I should turn around and take these two young’uns back now.”
“No! Please!” said Jake. “It’s my birthday!”
“You wanna live to see the next one?”
Tex retorted.
“Don’t worry, Munroe, they’re not getting anywhere near the dragons,” Derek assured him. “That’s what you and I are here for. The boys will stay back. You and I can assist the doctor.”
“Huh.” Tex still frowned and looked from Derek to the boys. He rested his hands on his hips, pushing back his long coat just enough to reveal the gleaming pair of Colt revolvers holstered at his hips.
Of course, the pistols wouldn’t do him much good against a dragon, Jake supposed. He had seen one before, in Giant Land. Even the giants had been afraid of Old Smokey.
Nevertheless.
“If Derek says we’re safe, then I’m sure we are. He’s saved my life loads of times,” Jake assured the frowning cowboy.
And himself.
Derek nodded. “I’m not worried. The dracosaurs are one of the tamer dragon species, and the colony here is used to seeing people from the Order moving through.”
“Well, you don’t have to worry about me,” Maddox said coolly. “I can take care of myself.”
“Me, too!” Jake chimed in. “I’ve already dealt with giants, after all. And Loki, a crazy Norse god, and his fire wolf, who was as big as a building! And Gar—” He almost mentioned Garnock, but caught himself at the last moment, remembering that nobody outside their main group was supposed to know about his recent battle against the founder of the Dark Druids.
The long-dead (sort of) alchemist had almost made it back from the grave with the help of some unholy black magic.
“Never mind,” Jake mumbled, dropping the subject.
Derek looked at Tex. “With reasonable precautions, I’m confident the boys will be quite safe.”
“Well, it’s your call, Stone. They’re your charges.”
“And the dracosaurs are mine, and I must see to them. Come. Time is of the essence,” said the doctor. “We mustn’t waste the light.”
“He’s right,” Derek said. “We’ve got a lot of forest to cover. Let’s go find our patients.”
With that, he picked up the rope-sack again, slung it over his shoulder, and marched out past the dragon-proof barrier.
Maddox immediately followed him down the mountain into the forest. Jake clutched his fireproof shield, heart pounding, and hurried after them.
