Sarah put on her most confused expression. “How… how can you make something so bizarre seem so easy?”
Kay smiled and shrugged his shoulders. “Well, what other explanation is there? Now if you don’t mind, I’ve caught my breath, and I plan on doing some more running. Right about… now.”
With no more warning than that, Kay began running again, despite the clumsiness of his oversized robes. He didn’t get far, though. A group of horsemen had broken off from the main army and started galloping after the pair. Sarah realized that even if Kay was trying to be careful, his purple robes and pointed hat probably made it difficult to hide from anybody for very long.
The thundering of horses’ hooves felt like hammers pounding against Sarah’s inner ear. In a matter of moments, a group of four mounted warriors had them surrounded just beyond the edge of a small clump of woods. Each of them held dull gray swords, drawn and ready for battle. Their shields bore the mark of a black eagle outlined in gold—a symbol that Sarah could only assume to be the crest of the warlord Baelan.
Sarah’s mind flashed to all the battles she had read in her stories. Those heroes always had a sword and some armor. They stood proud, knowing what they were about to face. She had never read any story that involved a twelve-year-old girl in blue pajamas.
The horsemen formed a circle around the pair. Kay backed up until he bumped into Sarah. She turned herself, placing her back against her companion’s. Whatever the odds, fights always seemed to go better if two warriors fought back to back. Although, she thought, squirming uncomfortably, such a fighting style would probably be much easier if her companion wasn’t wearing unnaturally scratchy robes.
One of the soldiers urged his horse a few steps forward and lifted the visor of his helmet. His face was unshaven, and his eyes had a wolfish glint to them. When he spoke, his words echoed so loudly and deeply that other warriors in the area took notice and began moving in as reinforcements. “Apprentice Kay, you and any companions are to surrender now, under orders of the Lord of Castle Greystone.”
Those last words seemed to get under Kay’s skin. He took a sharp breath and stepped forward, ignoring the fact that he was talking to an armed soldier who was much larger than him. “He’s not lord of Castle Greystone or anything else! He can’t even get through the castle’s front door!”
The soldier’s expression darkened. He pointed the sword at Kay menacingly, touching the sharp tip against the boy’s chest. “You can surrender now, or you can meet your death at the end of our swords. Baelan doesn’t need you alive.”
Realizing his situation, Kay stepped away from the blade and seemed to mull over his options. Sarah looked about frantically for a weapon, in case she got caught in the middle of the fight. All she could find was a few dead sticks that wouldn’t last a moment against the warriors’ sharp blades.
“I take it you’re surrendering, then?” the soldier asked.
“I don’t think we have a choice,” Sarah whispered to the boy.
“I’m not giving up the spellbook,” Kay said defiantly as he opened it.
At the same time, the head soldier signaled the others and charged toward the pair. Sarah shouted and threw herself to the ground, narrowly avoiding a sword stroke that could have taken her arm off. The stamping of hooves kicked up enough dirt and dust to choke her. For a moment, she was sure the last thing she would ever know would be the smell of the unwashed horses and the glint of the steel weapons bearing down at her.
Then, overshadowing the clank of armor and the shouts of distant battle, came Kay’s voice. The boy shouted a spell at the top of his lungs, and the world began to change. A flash of light followed by thick gray smoke filled the area. The trample of hooves and the shout of swordsmen faded into the distance.
With a sickening sensation, Sarah realized that the ground had disappeared from underneath her feet. Unable to see through the thick smoke, she felt herself falling without end. After what seemed like hours, she finally landed hard on the rocky ground. Her head hit a stone, and blackness filled her vision. The last thing she remembered before falling unconscious was silently cursing Kay and those stupid spells of his.
Four
Sarah woke up with a groan. The sounds of battle had disappeared, leaving her in silence. As she opened her eyes, she found herself in a rocky outcropping of hills. The ground was uneven and full of stones. Nearby, she saw the boulder that she must have hit her head on. She could feel an aching lump, which had already grown soft and sore, on her skull.
“Another black and blue,” she muttered. “Mom’s not going to believe me when I tell her how I got all these bruises.”
Even though her body ached, she managed to push herself onto her feet and take a look around. She could see the assembled army in the distance. With Kay gone, they were breaking away and moving on. She was glad to see that they were leaving the villagers in peace. Kay’s spell had whisked them away from trouble there, even though the magic hadn’t been at all gentle. Next to her, lying in a heap of purple cloth and lanky limbs, was the bumbling sorcerer himself.
“Five more minutes,” mumbled the boy when Sarah shook him.
Unfortunately for him, Sarah was in no mood to let him rest. “No, you get up now! Get up, or I’ll go find a cold river to drop you into.”
Kay’s eyes fluttered, and he sat up. He surveyed the area and then stood up to look down the hill. Finally satisfied that he was safe from the battle, he got up, dusted himself off, and smiled. “Well, I guess I showed them.”
“What did you show them, other than that you can throw us half a mile in any direction? What spell did you cast from that book, anyway?”
“Um… well, truth be told, I’m not quite sure.” Kay scratched the back of his neck innocently. “I meant to cast a spell that would summon up a ball of fire, but I think I might have misread the text a bit.”
“How do you misread things that badly? At least when you turned yourself into a frog, you were somewhere close to what you wanted to do.”
Kay opened the spellbook and started thumbing through its pages. “It’s not as easy as just reading the spell I want, you know? Well, it would be that easy, if the words were written in a language I understood. But who’s to say what some of these old runes mean?”
“You… you can’t even read that book?”
Kay stepped back and clutched the spellbook defensively against his chest. “Of course I can read it!” He blinked and then shrugged. “Well, I can read some of it, at least. My father never really got a chance to teach me all the runes. But I can still cast spells, and that’s all that matters!”
“You haven’t managed to get any of those spells right! If it weren’t for me, you’d still be a frog. And who’s to say you won’t mess up even more someday and light yourself on fire or something?”
Kay sniffed and shrugged his shoulders. “That would never happen. Sorcerers are immune to their own magic. Or, if they’re not, they should be.”
Feeling quite cross, Sarah didn’t feel like talking about what should and shouldn’t be. She had already jumped out a window, been attacked by men with swords, and gotten thrown halfway across the countryside—all while still in her pajamas. If things were the way they should have been, someone would at least have given her a decent change of clothes before forcing her along this adventure.
“Anyway,” continued Kay, growing more cheerful as he spoke, “what’s done is done. I got us to safety, and we’re hardly any worse for wear at all.”
Sarah sat down on the very boulder that she had hit her head against. She watched the army in the distance scatter into several smaller groups, each going in a different direction. It didn’t take her long to figure out what they were doing.
“They’re forming into search parties,” she said. “They’re going to come looking for you.”
“Of course they are,” responded Kay grimly. “Baelan will never stop looking for me.”
“Why not?”
“Because I hav
e the spellbook.” Kay proudly held up his old tome. “It contains every piece of magical lore ever studied. With it, Baelan could finally open up Castle Greystone.”
“What’s Castle Greystone?”
Kay blinked at Sarah and gave her a perplexed look. “Wow… you really aren’t from around here.” Clearing his throat, he continued. “Castle Greystone was the home of the oldest wizard in Greystone Valley. It’s the gateway to all the other worlds that the valley connects with. People like you and Baelan come here from lands beyond the mountains, but only Castle Greystone holds the key to returning to your own world.”
“You mean Baelan’s not from here, either?”
“Right. No one knows exactly where Baelan came from. He appeared from somewhere beyond the valley’s mountains about a year ago and started raising an army right away. He bought as many human mercenaries as he could. Worse than that, he allied himself with the beast-men of the northern foothills.”
“Beast-men? What are those?”
“They were one of the first peoples to live in the valley. They’re very ill-tempered. They’ve got the body of a man, but the head and hooves of an animal.”
“That doesn’t seem too bad.”
“Maybe not to you, but you’ve probably never met a goat with a bad attitude who could talk and swing a club.”
Sarah pursed her lips and tried to imagine such a creature. Her parents had taken her to her uncle’s farm in the country once as a vacation. The cows were heavy and smelly, so she avoided them. The horses, though, got her attention. She particularly liked one black mare… until it bit her on the shoulder. She still had a small red mark from the teeth. “OK,” she said, “I can see how those could be a problem.”
Kay nodded. “Greystone Valley is small, though—too small for a warlord like Baelan to find any satisfaction. There are no great kingdoms for him to conquer here. All we have is a scattering of towns and villages.”
“Then why did he come here in the first place?”
“Before he died, the wizard of Castle Greystone cast many strange spells on this valley. Now, Greystone Valley pulls people in—people from other worlds and other times. Baelan probably turned up here in the same way you did. And once you’re in the valley, there are only a few ways out. The mountains are too high and treacherous to climb, and the tunnels underneath them are too dangerous to crawl through. Getting into Greystone Valley is easy—getting out is the hard part.”
Sarah shifted nervously. It was starting to dawn on her that she wasn’t just going to wake up. She really was stuck here with this strange boy. But she didn’t know whether to be afraid of never going home again or happy. This was the excitement she had always wanted—a world where magic really existed and where adventure could be found anywhere. She wouldn’t have to spend her days locked away reading about such stories. Now she could make them happen. But would the thrill of adventure be enough to make up for never seeing her mother or her friends again?
“So… Castle Greystone,” mused Sarah. “That’s the key. Baelan wants to go there so he can lead his armies into other worlds.”
“Yes,” Kay answered. “And you probably want to go there so you can return home.”
Sarah didn’t respond. Was that really what she wanted?
“Either way,” the boy continued, “my spellbook holds the secrets to entering the castle. The gates are sealed to everyone without it.”
Sarah cast a glance back down the hill. It wouldn’t take long for the patrols to find them if they didn’t get moving. “So what do we do now?” she asked.
“Well, I know what I’m going to do,” the boy responded. “As for you, I don’t even know why you’re still following me.”
Sarah thought about it for a second and then responded, “Well, because you’re all alone. I mean, those people back in the village were about to turn you in to Baelan just because he threatened them. That just seems… wrong to me.”
Kay put a hand on Sarah’s shoulder. “I think you’re the first person who has actually sided with me instead of against me. Thank you.”
They hesitated there for an awkward moment, neither one knowing exactly what else to say. Then, with a manic energy that surprised Sarah, Kay hopped backward and put a madcap grin on his face.
“Well, then,” he said, “if you’re going to team up with me, the first thing we need to do is dig a nice, deep hole.”
“What? Why would I do something like that?”
Kay had already turned over a large rock and was digging through the soft dirt underneath. He ignored the spiders and ants that lived under the rock, pushing them gently to the side whenever they crawled onto his hands. “I just realized that I forgot my staff back in my room. I need to hide the spellbook, just in case any of Baelan’s soldiers find us sneaking back there.”
Sarah cocked an eyebrow, but she moved to help Kay despite her doubts. The ground was soft and cold, and the bugs made her jump back a couple of times out of fright. “But won’t the book get eaten by bugs and worms if we bury it?”
“Of course not. What part of ‘magic’ don’t you understand?” Kay opened the book to a random page and pulled at it with all his strength. The seemingly fragile page didn’t tear in the least. “There’s nothing in the entire valley that can destroy this book. The only real danger is letting Baelan find it.”
“What about your staff? Is that magical, too?”
This time it was Kay’s turn to look confused. “A magical staff? Of course not. Who ever heard of a magical staff?”
“Then why are you so worried about getting it back? It’s not a good idea to go back for it, anyway. Those men wanted to turn you in, remember?”
They finished digging the hole. Kay dropped the book in and covered it up. Then he pushed the heavy rock back on top. He looked aggravated. “I just need it, is all! I wouldn’t be much of a wizard if I didn’t have a staff, would I? You might as well ask me to shave my beard.”
“But you don’t have a beard,” Sarah said.
Kay jumped back defensively. “Yes, I do! It’s just taking time to grow in! See?” He stuck his head forward and pointed at his chin.
Sarah squinted, but she only found three short brown hairs on an otherwise naked chin. “Um… yes,” she said. “It’s quite… lovely.”
“You bet,” Kay said, going back to his energetic self. “In another few months, it will be down past my neck. Then we’ll see who’s the proper wizard, eh?”
Without another word, he spun around and began walking down the hillside toward the distant village. He moved in a zigzag pattern, ducking behind trees and rocks in hopes of keeping out of sight of Baelan’s troops.
Sarah hesitated, looked at the rock that covered the spellbook, and then jogged after him. “What an odd boy,” she muttered before she caught up with Kay. “I wonder if I know what I’m getting myself into, following him around.”
Five
Except for a few fields on the edge of town that had been trampled by horses, the village seemed unharmed by Baelan’s armies. Already, the people were quietly going back to their business. A few of them saw Kay and glared or hissed at him, but no one actually approached the pair to say anything. Kay lowered his head nervously but kept moving back toward the inn.
“If Baelan’s really a warlord, why doesn’t he just conquer this village and lie in wait for you?” asked Sarah.
“He and his army come and go as they please in the valley, but they never get too greedy. He sends his troops on missions, and they keep to their task. Even the more stubborn beast-men know that they can’t just kill and plunder as they wish. If they did, the folk of the valley would finally join together and raise an army of their own. Even the greatest warlord in the land can’t afford to fight everybody.”
“Why don’t they raise the army anyway?” Sarah stepped carefully through the streets, avoiding sharp rocks that could cut into her bare feet. “These people can’t enjoy having an entire army tromping through their village at the drop
of a hat.”
“What land do you come from?”
“Me? Um… America.”
“And does everyone get along in this America of yours?”
“Of course!” Sarah immediately felt foolish for blurting out the poorly thought-out answer. “Well… not really. It’s complicated.”
“It’s complicated here, too. The valley hasn’t had a king in over fifty years. It’s mostly just tiny villages like this one. Each town has its own way of doing things, and none of them likes having someone else telling them what to do. When people can’t even agree on what side of bread to butter in the morning, how are they supposed to cooperate on something more important?”
“Aha!” Sarah clapped her hands so loudly that she startled Kay into stopping. “I know why I’m here now!”
“And why’s that?” Kay regarded her skeptically.
“You said the valley doesn’t have a king, right?” Sarah knew her eyes were lighting up as she spoke. She was excited—she had read enough of the old stories to know how things went by now. “There must be a prophecy about someone uniting the valley again, right?”
Kay pursed his lips in thought, but then shook his head. “Nope. If I remember the histories right, the last king had all the seers and most of the wizards in the land executed. Seems someone accidentally put some of their magic ingredients into his soup one day. His skin was blue for a week and a half.”
“Oh.” Sarah touched her finger to her chin and thought of some more old stories. “Then there must be a legend of some lost heir out to reclaim the throne, right?”
“Nope,” said Kay, shaking his head. “The king never got married, and he hated children.”
Greystone Valley Page 3
