ALSO BY DAVE BARRY AND RIDLEY PEARSON
Peter and the Starcatchers
Peter and the Shadow Thieves
Peter and the Secret of Rundoon
Escape from the Carnivale
Cave of the Dark Wind
Blood Tide
Science Fair
ALSO BY RIDLEY PEARSON
Kingdom Keepers—Disney After Dark
Kingdom Keepers II—Disney at Dawn
Kingdom Keepers III—Disney in Shadow
Steel Trapp—The Challenge
Copyright © 2009 Dave Barry and Page One, Inc.
Illustrations copyright © 2009 by Greg Call
All rights reserved. Published by Disney • Hyperion Books, an imprint of Disney
Book Group. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form
or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording,
or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission
from the publisher.
For information address Disney • Hyperion Books, 114 Fifth Avenue, New York,
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Printed in the United States of America
First Edition
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data on file.
Reinforced binding
ISBN 978-1-4231-4091-7
Visit www.hyperionbooksforchildren.com
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
First, we thank all the readers—especially the young readers—who kept asking us to write another Starcatchers book. We really hadn’t planned to, but you talked us into it, and we’re very happy you did. It was great fun to bring the familiar characters back, and to introduce them to some new ones.
We appreciate all the great people at Disney • Hyperion Books, especially our wise and ever supportive editor, Wendy Lefkon, and our unflappable publicist, Jennifer Levine. We promise them that at future book-signing events, we will try to make sure that there are no snakes.
We salute the amazing, brilliant, ever enthusiastic archaeologist Patrick Hunt of Stanford University for digging around the world of swords and museums for us. That there’s a character in this book named Patrick Hunt is, of course, purely coincidental. We also thank Sam Thomas of the London Underground Customer Service Center for helping us with historical research for scenes set in the Underground. Any inaccuracies in those scenes, or any others, are completely our fault.
We thank Judi Smith for her diligent research and ruthless proofreading.
And hats off to our wives, Michelle Kaufman and Marcelle Pearson, for letting us do this instead of getting real jobs.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Page
PROLOGUE PART 1: The Sword
PROLOGUE PART 2: The Eyes
CHAPTER 1: Disappearance
CHAPTER 2: The Skeleton
CHAPTER 3: The Visitor
CHAPTER 4: The Rescue
CHAPTER 5: Revile’s Report
CHAPTER 6: Molly Goes Looking
CHAPTER 7: Troubling Questions
CHAPTER 8: Wendy Learns the Secret
CHAPTER 9: The Bishop’s Miter
CHAPTER 10: The Cab
CHAPTER 11: Darkness
CHAPTER 12: The Glow
CHAPTER 13: Uncle Neville
CHAPTER 14: The Prize
CHAPTER 15: Alone
CHAPTER 16: “For Good”
CHAPTER 17: A Familiar Face
CHAPTER 18: Uncle Ted
CHAPTER 19: A Tiny Shooting Star
CHAPTER 20: Foo
CHAPTER 21: Only Blackness
CHAPTER 22: Danger Coming
CHAPTER 23: Signposts in the Sea
CHAPTER 24: Breakthrough
CHAPTER 25: Lifeline
CHAPTER 26: Tug-o’-War
CHAPTER 27: The Last Bit
CHAPTER 28: One Last Push
CHAPTER 29: Nowhere Else
CHAPTER 30: The Call
CHAPTER 31: The Plan
CHAPTER 32: IceCoffin
CHAPTER 33: Worries
CHAPTER 34: It’s Here
CHAPTER 35: Deasy’s Tale
CHAPTER 36: A Second Bowl
CHAPTER 37: A Big Puff
CHAPTER 38: Good News and Bad
CHAPTER 39: The Signal
CHAPTER 40: The Plan
CHAPTER 41: An Odd Report
CHAPTER 42: Someplace Safe
CHAPTER 43: No Worse Fate
CHAPTER 44: Almost Here
CHAPTER 45: A Whisper Down the Tunnel
CHAPTER 46: One Light and One Dark
CHAPTER 47: The Launch
CHAPTER 48: The Scotland Landing
CHAPTER 49: The Mission
CHAPTER 50: The Third Element
CHAPTER 51: Only Darkness
CHAPTER 52: The Velvet Sack
CHAPTER 53: Until Tonight
CHAPTER 54: A Minor Mishap
CHAPTER 55: The White Starfish
CHAPTER 56: A Flash of Lightning
CHAPTER 57: Prisoners
CHAPTER 58: Visitors
CHAPTER 59: The Cave
CHAPTER 60: Another Way
CHAPTER 61: The Sandal
CHAPTER 62: The Cave
CHAPTER 63: The Glowing Pool
CHAPTER 64: An Awful Scream
CHAPTER 65: Trapped
CHAPTER 66: “He seems to want more”
CHAPTER 67: Very Warm
CHAPTER 68: Tonight
CHAPTER 69: The Four
CHAPTER 70: The Tunnel in the Tunnel
CHAPTER 71: Whole Again
CHAPTER 72: The Woman Looking Back
CHAPTER 73: Like Some Strange Comet
CHAPTER 74: The Promise
CHAPTER 75: The Sword from the Sky
CHAPTER 76: Standoff
CHAPTER 77: The Empty Sea
CHAPTER 78: Safe Passage
CHAPTER 79: The Smile
CHAPTER 80: Another Boat
CHAPTER 81: Out to Sea
CHAPTER 82: So Close
CHAPTER 83: Concerns
CHAPTER 84: The Last Sound
PILOGUE: Three Months Later
PROLOGUE PART 1
THE SWORD
The Palatine Chapel, Aachen, Germany, A.D. 811
CHARLEMAGNE, CONQUEROR OF EUROPE, knelt before the stone altar. He was seventy, but with his reddish beard and full head of hair, he looked much younger. His lanky frame still held much of the strength that had made him a feared warrior.
Although usually surrounded by his knights, he chose to pray alone. He prayed for the peace to continue. And, as always, he prayed for forgiveness for his son, now forty, but still a boy in his father’s eyes—a foolish boy. He had killed the son of Ogier the Dane, who had been one of Charlemagne’s most trusted knights. Charlemagne regretted that any man should lose a son, but especially a man who had served him so well.
Charlemagne bowed his head, his lips moving as he recited the Scripture.
He sensed something behind him. Instantly, with an instinct honed in battle, he ducked his head and hurled himself sideways. A sword cleaved the air where his neck had been and struck an iron candle stand, slicing it cleanly in two as though it were a stick of kindling.
As Charlemagne scrambled to his feet, the burning candles fell onto the linen altar cloth, setting it ablaze. In the glare of the flames, Charlemagne recognized his attacker: it was Ogier the Dane, and the sword he held, known as Curtana, had been a gift from Charlemagne himself. Its blade—some said it had been forged from magical metal—had a distinctive notch six inche
s from the tip, a notch created forty years earlier, when Charlemagne and the Dane had been young men, and the best of friends. …
Charlemagne did not want this fight. If he could have stopped it with an apology, he would have done so. But the look in his former friend’s eyes told him that words would be useless. Ogier wanted blood. Blood for blood.
Charlemagne drew his sword, known as Joyeuse. Both men grunted as they swung their weapons, the blades glinting in the firelight, the clash of metal echoing off the chapel’s stone walls.
The two old knights, breathing heavily, circled each other warily in the swirling smoke, each looking for an opening. Ogier swung his sword, just missing Charlemagne’s jaw but slicing off a piece of the king’s beard.
Ogier swung again and Charlemagne jumped back, holding out Joyeuse to block the strike. The swords clanged together. Charlemagne stumbled backward, tripping on a prayer rug that had bunched beneath his feet. He fell to the stone floor, sprawled on his back, helpless. Ogier began to raise his sword, preparing to strike the fallen king. As he did, Charlemagne saw a brilliant light. He thought at first it was firelight reflecting from Ogier’s blade, but in the next instant, the light, dancing in the swirling smoke, seemed to form itself into…Could it be?
An angel.
Charlemagne stared, transfixed, at the face smiling at him, shimmering through the smoke with unearthly beauty. Charlemagne smiled back at the angel; if this was death, he welcomed it. Ogier, disconcerted by the man’s smile, paused. Then, with a grunt, he swung Curtana down toward the head of his former king. As he did, Charlemagne reached toward the angel, using the right hand in which he still held Joyeuse.
The two blades met. Charlemagne lost his grip. Joyeuse tumbled to the stone floor. The king was now unarmed; Ogier’s next blow would surely be fatal. Holding Curtana in both hands, the Dane raised it for a stabbing, downward thrust. And then he stopped, staring at its blade.
Curtana had lost its tip, broken off at the notch that Charlemagne had put into the blade all those years before.
The sword was blunt now, useless for stabbing. The tip, a piece six inches long, lay on the floor by Charlemagne’s shoulder.
Ogier, panting, stared at his sword—the sword that had served him faithfully for decades, in fight after fight. Then he looked at Charlemagne.
“It is not your day to die,” he said. “Curtana does not want to kill you.”
He laid the sword on the stone floor at Charlemagne’s feet.
“It was your sword at the start,” he said. “Now it is yours again.”
Charlemagne looked at the sword, then back at his old friend.
“You must go,” he said. “Before my knights pursue you. Go, and live in peace.”
Ogier nodded. “And you,” he said.
Charlemagne looked down at the sword’s broken tip. He picked it up, seeing light reflected in its smooth surface. He looked up, hoping to see the angel again, but saw only smoke drifting in the glow of the fire.
The angel was gone. So was Ogier.
Only Curtana remained.
PROLOGUE PART 2
THE EYES
Osborne House, Isle of Wight, England, January 22, 1901
QUEEN VICTORIA LAY DYING.
At eighty-one years old, she had reigned over the vast British empire for sixty-three years and seven months, longer than any other British monarch. She had assumed the throne as a teenager, in an age of sailing ships and horse-drawn carriages; she was leaving a world that knew telephones, electric lights, and motorcars.
The queen lay on a large four-posted bed, her eyes closed, her face peaceful. Close by stood her physician, Sir James Reid, and the white-haired Bishop of Winchester, who murmured a prayer. Gathered around were members of the royal family, including the queen’s son, Crown Prince Albert Edward; upon her death, he would become king. The only sounds in the room, aside from the archbishop’s soft voice, were the ticking of a clock and the whispers of some of the smaller children, too young to feel the sorrow of the moment.
Almost everyone stood near the queen’s bed. The lone exception was a tall, extraordinarily thin man, standing alone in a gloomy corner of the room. The man’s gaze appeared to be focused on the crown prince. There was no way to know for certain, because the man wore eyeglasses with wire rims and lenses tinted a dark shade, almost black. He always wore these glasses, even at night. This was one of a number of strange things about him.
People avoided the tall man.
The archbishop finished his prayer. Sir James stepped forward and bent over his patient. The room went utterly silent now, save for the ticking of the clock.
At exactly 6:30 in the evening, Sir James stood and solemnly raised his hand. The onlookers immediately understood the meaning of this gesture.
Queen Victoria was dead.
Some gasped; some moaned; others simply bowed their heads. The archbishop began the benediction.
From inside the cluster of mourners, one of the younger children, a girl of five, peered around her mother’s dress at the tall man in the corner. She had been keeping an eye on him. Like most children who found themselves in his presence, she felt afraid of him, though if pressed she could not have said why.
As the little girl watched, the tall man beckoned toward the open doorway. A second man entered: short, bald, and stocky. The girl could tell by the hesitant way in which the shorter man approached that he, too, was wary of the tall man.
The man with the dark glasses leaned over and said something quietly to the short man, who then nodded and quickly left the room. Still bending over, the tall man turned toward the mourners, and as he did, his dark eyeglasses slid about an inch down the bridge of his long, thin nose. Immediately, he pushed them back up.
But for a half-second, the little girl caught a glimpse of what lay behind the tinted lenses.
She let out a scream.
Her mother, embarrassed, quickly swept up her daughter and carried her, still screaming, from the room. The rest of the mourners assumed that the child had been overcome by grief.
Later, when the girl had calmed down, she told her mother what she had seen. The mother dismissed it. A trick of the light, she said; an overactive imagination. No, insisted the girl. It was true. She had seen it! Finally the mother, embarrassed by her daughter’s outburst, ordered the girl to speak of it no more.
And so the girl spoke of it no more. But she could not rid herself of the memory of the tall man’s eyes. It came back to her over and over. It would come back to her for years, in her nightmares.
CHAPTER 1
DISAPPEARANCE
London, 1902
JAMES SMITH, SURROUNDED BY A THRONG of home-bound commuters, climbed the steep stairs leading out of the South Kensington Underground station. Reaching the top, he felt the chill of the night air and pulled his overcoat tighter around him. He got his bearings and started toward Harrington Road. As he passed a newsstand, his eyes fell on a blaring black headline in one of the evening papers:
FOURTH DISAPPEARANCE
LINKED TO UNDERGROUND
James stopped and examined the illustration accompanying the story. It was a drawing of a middle-aged businessman in suit and tie, a man who looked like many in the crowd flowing past James now. James already knew the details of the story. Two nights earlier, the man had stayed late at his job at a bank on Surrey Street. He left the bank at 8:30 and was last seen by a coworker descending the steps to the Temple Underground station. The banker’s usual route home was to ride the train to Westminster, where he would leave the Underground and board one of the new motorized omnibuses for the rest of his journey.
But he never reached his home. As far as the police could determine, he never emerged from the Underground. He was the fourth passenger to vanish this way in the past two weeks.
All four of the missing had been on the District Line—the same line James had just ridden. And while Londoners were generally a stoic lot, James had sensed an unusual level of tension in
his fellow passengers—wary glances, an uneasiness as the train rocked its way through the dark tunnel, a general eagerness to get back up to the street.
James was not a fearful person. By the time he was twelve years old, he had survived ordeals more deadly and frightening than most people, of any age, could ever imagine. In his current job he was routinely exposed to London’s dark and violent underworld. He remained calm in the face of danger; he was viewed by his coworkers as an exceptionally levelheaded man.
But even James had felt something in the tunnel. He wouldn’t call it fear, exactly. But there had been a feeling at the back of his neck as the train rumbled along a particularly dark stretch of track, and a jerk of his head when he thought he’d seen, out of the corner of his eye, something through the window: a quick and fluid movement; a shifting shadow.
It was nothing, he’d told himself. A trick of the light. But the image had stayed in his mind—the flicker of shadow. It awakened memories he did not welcome, memories that had slept for more than twenty years—memories of other shadows, in another place. …
James shook his head as if to fling these thoughts away. He had urgent business to attend to. This was no time to wallow in unpleasant memories, or in the mysterious Underground disappearances. Whatever unfortunate fate had befallen the banker and the other three, it could not possibly have anything to do with the purpose of James’s trip to South Kensington tonight.
He turned away from the newsstand, pulled his coat around him tighter still, and set off along Harrington Road.
CHAPTER 2
THE SKELETON
Liege, Belgium, 1902
FOUR FIGURES SWEPT ACROSS the cobblestone plaza like wraiths, wrapped in heavy wool cloaks with pointed hoods that obscured their faces. A cold mist hung in the air, along with bitter smoke from coal fires. Of the hundred or so people crisscrossing the plaza, not one was smiling this foul day.
The figures—a man in the lead, followed by a woman, then two much larger men—approached St. Paul’s Cathedral, said to be modeled after Notre Dame. Its spires rose into the endless gray. Life-sized ornate carvings of saints, Popes, and revered patrons, stained by centuries of neglect, occupied recesses in the massive wall, judging all who entered.
Peter and the Sword of Mercy Page 1
