They walked between scattered herds of herbivores with heads as big as small cars, resting on bodies as big as garbage trucks that made the heads look small by comparison. The creatures ignored them, grazing on grass, raising their heads to pluck branches from thorny bushes, or stomping down trees with their massive legs so they could gnaw on the branches.
That evening, as they rested, plump, hamster-size critters with glowing red eyes skittered around at the perimeter of their campsite. Periodically, many-legged wolverine sized creatures dashed in from the shadows and swallowed the red-eyed beasties whole before bolting away from the light cast by the campfire.
Mayberry stroked Co-Co’s fur and tried to ignore the hungry predators.
CHAPTER 37
THE NEXT DAY, as they approached a deep clump of thorny bushes, Co-Co started chittering excitedly. In two lightning-fast kangaroo hops, she positioned herself directly in front of Mayberry. A venom-dripping stinger popped out of her tail, which whipped forward like a scorpion’s,
poised to strike. Uuth loosed a low nasal grunt and took a few steps backward, wiggling the spiky ball at the end of his tail. They both were ready for action.
Monga turned his head to see what was causing the commotion. Just as he did, a two-headed beast with copper-colored scales leaped from the bushes, nearly landing on top of Marshall. Its long ears flattened, the deep black pupils in its four yellow eyes widened, and its massive jaws opened, revealing vicious rows of curved teeth.
Marshall went statue-still as his fingers started to glow white. Instead of attacking, though, the creature flicked out two thick, moist yellow tongues and licked Marshall’s face like a happy dog, leaving behind a thin layer of goo.
“Don’t move,” Marshall screamed to Mayberry, whose fingers had lit up with red miasma. “His name is Mirrt.” He reached out to pat the beast, who lowered his heads to give Marshall easier access. After receiving a few more encouraging pats, he rewarded Marshall with sloppy licks to the face. For a few seconds, Marshall’s mind was flooded with flashing lights and bright colors, and then his core flooded with warmth. His own familiar had arrived at last, bringing the boldness and confidence he’d always wished for.
Monga sniffed disgustedly and turned away. Mayberry strolled over to welcome Mirrt, who seemed excited to join his new family.
They started walking again. By later that afternoon, they’d left the grassy hills behind and entered a narrow canyon, its steep walls glistening with crystalline veins of purple, green, and dusty rose quartz. The canyon became wider as they penetrated farther into it, and it finally flattened out into a broad, rock-covered desert valley.
In the distance, Marshall saw a gleaming temple with a Byzantine-style domed roof. The edifice was set on a stone island in the middle of a glistening pool of dark blue water, peppered by brown rocks and surrounded by trees. The bright midday sun shimmered off the stark white building. A hundred feet beyond was a wide ribbon of placid water. It was broad and slow, which meant that it wasn’t the river they’d been looking for.
“Hurrey, yu.” Monga’s voice rumbled with palpable excitement. He fast-trotted in a circle around them, loudly smacking his four hands together. “Mak fastre.”
As they got closer to the oasis, Marshall was amazed by the stately temple and its surroundings. The “trees” weren’t trees at all, but massive pillars carved from the same green crystal he’d seen embedded in the canyon walls. Their apexes blossomed into long, twisted spikes that spread out like palm leaves. Over forty of the pillars were perfectly spaced around the circular pond. The structure covering the island was a wondrous architectural feat, whose elegance matched that of ancient Greek temples. Columns flared up to sculpted cornices that supported the red-tiled dome; the peak of the whole edifice soared elegantly at least sixty feet above the ground. A bluish-gray stone staircase encased its entire elevated base.
“What is this place?” Marshall stuttered, astonished.
“I have no idea,” Urrn replied quietly, perplexed. “I’ve never been here.”
“Innit steeck. Ya, innit steeck,” Monga proclaimed, clapping his four hands excitedly. “Soon wives.”
CHAPTER 38
SEEMS LIKE A STRANGE PLACE to find a stick,” Marshall said.
The familiars were agitated. Uuth stomped his feet, repeatedly smacked his spiked tail into the ground, and wouldn’t move a step forward, in spite of Urrn’s best efforts to coax him. Co-Co darted wildly back and forth in front of Mayberry with her stinger exposed, screeching. Mirrt bent into a low defensive crouch facing the water, like a lion on the prowl. His claws scraped deep lines in the earth. The low, emphatic buzzing noise in his mind told Marshall that Mirrt was warning him to back away.
Monga blithely ignored the familiars’ erratic behavior and motioned the humans toward the stepping-stones in the water, making bouncing signals with his hands to indicate that they needed to traverse them to get to the temple.
Mayberry surveyed the curious stones, which were ridged like ancient ammonites. Even though their enormous size implied an equally enormous weight, they bobbed sedately in the water, drifting in a nearly imperceptible clockwise direction.
Monga stepped onto the nearest stone, as surefooted as a mountain goat. The stone wobbled and sank slightly under his weight, but didn’t capsize.
“Com fasst,” he ordered urgently, then jumped agilely onto the next stone, delicately juggling his bulk so that he didn’t skid and fall into the water.
Urrn didn’t stop to think. Leaving Uuth on the shore, he jumped aboard the closest stone, then took long agile leaps from stone to stone toward the temple.
Marshall halted at the pond’s edge. He guessed the stones floated in their orderly pattern because they were tethered together below the surface of the murky water.
He jumped cautiously, balancing on the edge of the nearest stone. “It’s easy,” he said to Mayberry. “Just do it.”
The stone rocked slightly beneath him. It felt like being on the deck of a big ship. There was a slight swaying, but no sense that he was about to be pitched overboard. Marshall boldly leaped onto a different nearby stone, then another and another. In less than thirty seconds, he was a third of the way to the temple. Monga was nearly there, and Urrn was close behind.
As he watched the two of them racing ahead, Marshall realized that the water beneath each stepping-stone that had been touched was beginning to bubble, and the bubbles were rapidly expanding into plumes of aerated fizz. Behind him, Mayberry was finally starting to amble her way across. She showed no sense of urgency as she jumped, and stopped on each rock to gawk at the beautiful scenery.
Like a missile launched from a nuclear submarine, a brown stepping-stone suddenly burst out of the water behind Mayberry. Before Marshall could process what was happening, the stone warped into a monster: a sharp-scaled purple beast zooming directly for the back of Mayberry’s head. Her heightened senses must have warned her, because she immediately ducked, and Marshall heard a whoosh as the creature zipped by and its ugly toothy head plunged back into the water with a huge splash.
Before he and Mayberry could speak, another stepping-stone burst from the water with a loud sucking sound, targeting him this time. As soon as the words get back entered his mind, a power spell shot from his fingers, deflecting the stone-creature. Its wicked teeth clicked together on air as it ricocheted off another beast that had launched upward.
By now, every stepping-stone that had been touched by the travelers was sputtering to life. The idyllic scene became a chaotic pinball game, with the two humans remaining on the pond’s surface serving as fragile glass balls being attacked by the steel ball defenders.
Without panicking, Marshall conjured the defensive spells he needed as the monsters swirled around him. He leaped, ducked, dodged, and swerved while deflecting the barrage of stone-beasts cascading toward him and Mayberry. Zigzagging from stone to stone, he fina
lly leaped off the final rock and onto the temple steps just as a stone-beast reached the spot he’d just left.
He collapsed on the steps, panting, and then wheeled to find Mayberry. A humongous stone-beast was speeding toward her, with its fang-filled mouth agape.
As soon as her foot touched the next stone, it burst up and rocketed her twenty feet straight up into the air. She somehow managed to balance on the creature’s back with her legs clutching its sides like a rodeo bull rider. The other beast targeting her raced past and twisted its massive head, trying to chomp into her flesh, but instead flew harmlessly beneath her new mount, which dodged right to protect its prize.
The stone-beast she was riding shook wildly, trying to turn its head far enough to bite into Mayberry’s body, but before it could, it fell back down into the pond. A huge jet of water splashed up as the beast’s body pierced the pond’s surface, and both rider and mount vanished.
Stunned, Marshall clamped his hands to his head in dismay, but milliseconds later, Mayberry spurted up out of the gusher. She landed feet first on a stone that was just sputtering to life, but skipped off into a forward handspring so fast it seemed her feet had barely touched it.
She stuck the perfect landing on the temple’s steps, soaked but unscathed.
CHAPTER 39
WHEN MAYBERRY’S FEET touched the stone steps, it was as if a giant off switch had been hit, turning the living beasts back into rock. They plummeted into the water, pockmarking the pond with a series of huge splashes.
“How did you do that?” Marshall asked breathlessly.
“No idea,” she replied, her lungs still sucking for air.
A sharp snort broke her out of her thank-God-I’m-alive moment. It was Monga, pacing in an agitated circle. He was stopping at the same place again and again before continuing his rounds. Mayberry and Marshall followed his gaze toward the temple. From shore, the space between the building’s tall white columns had seemed to be open and unobstructed. Now Mayberry saw that a solid black wall filled each space between the columns. There was no visible entryway.
Marshall turned to address Mayberry, who was squeezing the water out of her vest. “Well, we barely survived that. I wonder what’s next.”
“Me too. I’m guessing that’s where the stick is . . . I wonder how he thinks we’re going to get inside.”
Even though she was wet and cold, her unfathomable victory over the stone-beasts had left her adrenaline pumping—she felt nearly euphoric. When they reached the black wall, she rapped her knuckles gently on its surface, expecting the feel of stone or metal. Instead, it was smooth and rubbery.
“We opeen,” Monga declared.
“We open,” she repeated. “As in, we?”
“Yes. Yu, yu, yu,” he said, pointing to each human in turn. “Opeen, geet steeck.”
She watched, mesmerized, as Monga swept his fingers over the surface of the featureless black wall. One of his lower hands touched something and froze.
“Hans giv,” he ordered.
“Hands?” Marshall repeated in surprise.
Monga impatiently grabbed Marshall’s hand, nearly jerking Marshall off his feet as he pulled him forward and pressed his hand against the wall.
As Monga fit Marshall’s hand into the impression, Marshall turned to Mayberry. “This indentation had to have been made by a human hand—he’s putting my five fingers and palm into an imprint.”
“Do you think your hand is part of a key or something?”
“Something. It felt pretty solid when I first put my hand on it, but now I can push into it a little, like clay. It’s getting sort of warm and tingly, too.”
Monga guided Marshall’s right hand into another indentation on the wall, parallel with the left.
“Marcha, stey. Maybear, Urrn, com.”
Mayberry followed Monga as he clomped around the curved black wall. At another location between the pillars, he stopped and felt around on the black wall.
“Han.”
She reached out, and Monga’s giant hand pushed her small left hand into an indentation. She could feel the spaces for four fingers and a thumb, in exactly the right proportions, so she slid her right hand over the wall and found the other spot easily enough.
“Maybear, stey,” Monga said, trotting off with Urrn in tow.
Moments later, she heard his booming voice echoing from the other side of the temple, rhythmically chanting in his language. A spurt of kinetic energy sprang into her hands and rolled through her body. She struggled to keep her body upright and her hands firmly in place. It’s a good thing I’m leaning in against the wall for support, she thought, disoriented, Because I’d fall without it being here.
Monga’s voice droned on. Finally, it stopped. “Hans off,” he bellowed.
A rainbow of colors flowed from the wall’s edges and undulated inward toward its center. Wow, this is . . .
But before she could finish her thought, the wall became translucent, then disappeared. She spotted Marshall, staring in astonishment with his hands still up but nothing to press against. Urrn was visible in the other quadrant, wearing a rapt expression.
Monga smiled and snapped his jaws energetically.
CHAPTER 40
STEECK!” MONGA SCREAMED with unabashed joy, scampering headlong into the open atrium.
Mayberry followed him across the polished hardwood parquet floor toward a beautiful crystal obelisk that stood at the chamber’s center. Monga paused and stopped a few feet in front of it, mesmerized. Milky drool dripped from his mouth, and his purple eyes bulged. Mayberry squinted into the cloudy depths of the obelisk.
Something was floating inside. An iron hammer—one that looked much too heavy to lift—was suspended in the crystal, its handle wrapped in intricately inscribed leather.
“It’s Excalibur!” Marshall shouted as he stepped next to her.
“Excalibur? But Excalibur’s a sword.”
“Right. That’s not a sword,” Urrn said, stupefied. “It’s a ring . . . no, not just a ring. Look, you can read what it is right there. It’s the Seal of Solomon. The seal was supposed to give King Solomon power over demons and djinns, and the ability to talk to animals. It’s one of the most sacred artifacts in—”
“You guys are mental,” Mayberry interjected. “It’s clearly a hammer.” As she stared, the inscriptions on the hammer suddenly became perfectly clear to her. “Mjölnir,” she read, struggling with the pronunciation. The text said it could knock down mountains and be thrown for miles and still return to the thrower’s hand. Thor had wielded it against giants and monsters. “Dude, that is definitely Thor’s hammer. The mighty Thor, like in the Marvel comics.”
“Mayberry, you must be hallucinating,” Marshall said. “I am telling you it’s King Arthur’s sword. It says so right there on the hilt,” he insisted. “Look, the inscription is all about Camelot, Arthur, and Lancelot . . . It’s all true.”
“Stee . . . eee . . . ck, stee . . . eee . . . ck,” Monga trilled, as transfixed as if he were drugged. His head swayed back and forth as he stared blank eyed into the crystal.
Perhaps there were mirrors inside the crystal that partitioned the obelisk, and they were each looking at the reflection of different objects. Mayberry slid over to see the view from Urrn’s vantage point, but kept seeing the hammer . . . or, wait a minute, could it be a sword?
A deep velvety voice touched her mind, saying, “The objects you see were once a part of me. I am also in the mind of Four-hands. He dreams of vengeance, conquest, and riches—greed is paralyzing his will. You, however, are speckled with light. If you act now, you can accept the object and its power before the dark one does.”
Mayberry’s hand moved involuntarily toward the obelisk, driven by a will of its own. Her hand punctured the surface, and she was instantly sucked inside.
Time stopped.
Floating betwee
n earth and sky, she was bound by neither. Everyone outside the obelisk had been frozen in an immobile tableau. The obelisk’s inner chamber was enormous, many times as big as it seemed from outside. She peered up through the obelisk’s transparent walls to study the temple’s arched ceiling. It was decorated with mosaics that depicted images of centaurs, hydras, harpies, and other mythological beings she recognized, but most of the art represented creatures and objects she’d never seen before. The artists’ reverence for their subjects shone through the work. The temple was a cathedral, built by worshipful followers for the purpose of honoring a higher power.
Suddenly, a beam of light enveloped an object and floated it in front of Mayberry.
For a moment she saw a sword—Marshall’s Excalibur—and was able to read the same description of Camelot that he’d seen.
Then the object transformed. It was a spinning ring of brass and iron, slightly tarnished and very old, set with four square-cut red stones. The Seal of Solomon.
She blinked, and it was the Cup of Jamshid, a Persian chalice in which the whole world was reflected.
It was the Bone of Ullr, upon which thousands of powerful incantations were carved.
It was Merlin’s wand.
It was the Smoking Mirror that Tezcatlitopa used to view the universe.
It was Mercury’s caduceus, then the Yata no Kagami, a sacred relic of Japanese myth.
And then, as it transformed again and again with every beat of her heart, she could sense only words like Sampo and Amenonuhoko and Vitthakalai and Draupnir.
All these objects flashed by at warp speed. Without comprehending the reason, she understood that she was seeing an infinite number of mystical artifacts from Earth and even other worlds.
The velvety voice spoke again. “These objects of power have all existed somewhere in time and space. Your mind will select the object that is most suitable for you. After it does, your spirit will be free to determine its own path.”
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