The Lost City of Faar

CLORAL

We found the gate easily enough by following the signals sent from my ring. I opened the trapdoor and let Spader go down first into the crevice that led to the flume, then followed right behind.

When I was halfway down, I heard something off to my right. Remember, we were climbing down using footholds that were dug into the rock walls. It was like descending through a black cave. The crevice was only wide enough for one person, but it stretched off to either side for I don’t know how far. It was too dark to tell. So when I heard something move off to my right, I froze. It wasn’t a loud sound, it was more like a small pebble had been knocked into the crevice. Though it was a small sound, something had caused it. Something was out there in the darkness.

I cautiously looked to where I’d heard the sound, and was faced with two yellow eyes staring right back at me. Yikes! They were small, but that didn’t matter. We were near a flume and that could mean only one thing: quigs. I had no idea what kind of beastie was behind those nasty eyes, but it wasn’t going to be some harmless teddy bear.

My fear was that the slightest movement would push it into attack mode. My brain locked. I didn’t know what to do.

Luckily Spader did. I felt him shoot up from below and reach out toward the yellow eyes. Before I could warn him, the yellow eyes were gone! I heard a loudcrack, and that was it.

“W-What just happened?” I asked shakily.

“I got it, mate,” answered Spader.

We both hurried down the rest of the way until we reached the cavern. There, lying at the foot of the rock wall, was the quig. It was the nastiest lookingsnakeI had ever seen. It was about four feet long with a hooded head. All along its back were smaller versions of the sharp spines that the bear quigs had on Denduron. But most important, it was dead. Spader had snapped it like a whip.

“I’m used to those wogglies,” he said casually. “They end up on the habitats every so often. All you gotta do is crack ‘em good.” He took a closer look at the fiendish thingy and frowned. “Never saw a sea snake looking like that before though.”

And he never would either. Except here on Zadaa. The gruesome truth was that the quigs on Zadaa were snakes. I’d bet they were poisonous, too. I hated snakes more than anything. More than cannibal bears or wild dogs or even monster sharks. Snakes did something to me. Maybe because they were so quiet and sneaky. As I stared down at that creepy reptile, I hoped that Loor would do a really good job in keeping the Batu and the Rokador apart, because I didnotwant to come back to Zadaa.

Spader and I then changed back into our Cloral clothes and hit the flume. He went by himself this time. I showed him how to call out the name of the territory he was headed for, and just before the sparkling lights took him away, I warned him that the drop into Cloral was going to be wet.

Believe it or not, I was beginning to enjoy my trips through the flume because while I was flying I felt completely safe. Nothing to do but kick back and enjoy the ride. When I got to the end of this trip, I even spun around and tried to imitate Uncle Press’s headfirst swan dive into the pool. But I timed it wrong and ended up landing on my back with a huge splash. It hurt, too. Hello, Cloral. So much for a cool entrance.

Spader was already standing on the edge of the pool.

“I’ll lead from here,” he said.

We were on his turf again, or should I say, in his water. He was back in charge. That was okay with me so long as we both agreed on the plan.

“What about the sharks?” I asked.

Spader grabbed his air globe and water sled.

“No worries there,” he said. “Stay close to the bottom. Those beasties don’t attack down. The only time you get into a natty-do is if you’re on their level.”

“Yeah? What if they come down to our level?”

Spader reached behind his back and pulled out his large, silver knife.

“Let ‘em,” he said with confidence.

“Whoa, did you bring that knife to Zadaa?”

“Didn’t think I’d go someplace strange without my trusty, did you?”

“You gotta understand something, Spader,” I said nervously. “Maybe I didn’t explain this and if I didn’t, it’s my fault. But you can’t bring things from one territory to the next. It’s like… like… an infection. Believe me, I made that mistake and it was a disaster.”

“It’s just a knife, Pendragon,” he said dismissively. “Couldn’t do no harm.”

With that he popped on his air globe and dove into the water. This was bad. Spader said he would learn from me, but the first thing I tried to tell him, he blew off. This was going to be tough.

But there was nothing I could do about it now, so I popped on my air globe and followed him under. I didn’t want him to get too far ahead of me. After all, he had the knife. We both skimmed the bottom, traveling side by side with our water sleds. I kept glancing around, looking in the distance for the shadowy killers. And it wasn’t just quigs that worried me. When we left for Zadaa there were four raiders after us. I had a brief hope that maybe the quigs ate the raiders, but that would have been hoping for too much. When we broke out into open water from under the rock overhang, I felt even more vulnerable. I kept glancing around, checking our backs. At one point I thought I saw a shadow moving several yards off to our right. I was about to tell Spader, when the shadow suddenly twisted and shot away. There was definitely something there all right. But if it was a quig, or a raider, it had decided to leave us alone.

Once we had traveled a few minutes I began to relax. As Spader said, the sharks only hung around that reef. I stopped worrying about getting eaten and began to worry about what we might find back on Grallion. When we left, we had just jammed up the raiders’ battle cruiser and signaled to the aquaneers that the big guns wouldn’t fire. The question now was, what had happened after that? Had the aquaneers boarded the cruiser? Had the raiders boarded Grallion? Had there been a battle between the good guys and the bad guys? Most important, was Uncle Press okay?

At least one answer came to us quickly. As the water sleds sped us closer to Grallion I saw something in the distance that wasn’t there when we left. At first I didn’t know what it was because we were so far away. It just looked like a dark mass. But as we got closer it began to take shape, and it was big. Really big. Spader recognized it for what it was first.

“Hobey-ho!” he exclaimed. “They had a natty-do all right!”

We sped closer, and that’s when I saw the eight long tubes sticking out from the huge mass. Though the proof was right before my eyes, I could barely believe it. The long tubes were cannons. The dark mass… was a sunken ship! It was the raiders’ battle cruiser. A minute later we glided and slipped right by the immense hulk. It was lying on its keel, tipped to one side. Being that close to something so big always took my breath away. It reminded me of the video footage I’d seen from the wreck of theTitanic. But this ship had only been on the bottom for a short time. It hadn’t rusted out yet.

Whatever happened topside after we jammed up its guns, it was pretty clear that the raiders had gotten their butts whipped. Now I wanted to get to Grallion as soon as possible to hear the victory story.

We drove our water sleds past the huge sunken ship and continued on to Grallion. We stayed underwater the whole way and didn’t surface until we had slipped into the dock area where we had launched the skimmers.

An aquaneer was on the dock, tinkering with an engine. He saw the two of us surface and his eyes grew wide.

“Spader?” he said with. awe. “Spader!” The guy jumped up and started yelling for joy. “They’re back! They’re alive! Hobey-ho, Yenza, they’re back!”

We were greeted with a hero’s welcome. The aquaneers mobbed us on the docks and all but carried us topside. I got smacked on the back so much, I ended up with black and blue marks. No kidding. But I didn’t care. This was great. When we got up into the sun, I took a quick look around to see there was absolutely no hint that a battle had taken place here. That’s because it all happened on the water, and on the raiders’ cruiser. The aquaneers took turns telling us what happened.

Just before the deadline that Zy Roder had given them for firing his guns again, Yenza quickly passed an order to every aquaneer. She said they were to attack soon as they saw a flare fire from beneath the water. The aquaneers thought she was crazy, but they followed orders. Sure enough, they saw our flare and went after the raiders with everything they had. They sent several boats loaded with aquaneers to swarm the cruiser and caught the bad guys completely by surprise. ThePursuit’sbig guns were useless and the raiders weren’t prepared for close-in fighting. Before they could rally to defend themselves, the aquaneers had boarded the cruiser and had little trouble taking command.

The only bad thing was that so many of the raiders escaped on small speedboats. Worse, their pilot, Zy Roder, had escaped as well. Yeah, Saint Dane got away. When I heard this, I glanced to Spader. I could tell that this news had tweaked him. He knew that Roder was really Saint Dane, and I’m sure he hoped to hear he had been captured. No such luck.

The aquaneers then scuttled the battle cruiser so no one could use it in anger again. While listening to them recount their victory, I split my attention between the aquaneers and Spader. I wanted to see Spader’s reaction to what had happened. What I saw, I didn’t like. This wasn’t like the time at Grolo’s where he was the center of attention, telling tales and buying everyone sniggers. No, if Spader was happy about the victory over the raiders, he didn’t show it. He listened to the group intently, then after they finished their story he gave them polite congratulations. The old Spader would have jumped up and shouted: “Hobey-ho! Nobody challenges Grallion! Sniggers are on me!” But not this new Spader. This was a darker Spader, and it had me worried.

That’s when I saw a welcome sight behind the group of ecstatic aquaneers. It was Uncle Press. He smiled and waved me over. I ran to him and the two of us hugged.

“You’re becoming a legend around here,” he said with a chuckle. “Next they’ll be writing songs about you.”

“Trust me, I wasn’t all that heroic,” I said. “I almost bought it down there.” It sounded modest, but I meant it.

“Where have you been?” he asked.

I gave him a quick rundown on our trip to Zadaa and our meeting with Loor. I explained how Spader was getting up to speed on being a Traveler, but he wasn’t handling it well. I said how his one and only concern was to get revenge on Saint Dane, and it was going to be hard to hold him back. I also told Uncle Press about the most important discovery of our trip: the symbol and the half of a map that might lead to the Lost City of Faar, as the legend referred to it. Uncle Press agreed that Faar, if it indeed existed, would be a perfect target for Saint Dane.

Spader then broke away from the celebration and joined us.

“Saint Dane got away,” he said with no emotion, though I knew he was burning up inside.

“Don’t worry,” said Uncle Press. “We’ll see him again.”

I had been thinking a lot about what our next move should be, and it was as good a time as any to throw it out there.

“I think we should go to Panger City,” I said.

Spader shot me a surprised look and said, “No. Leave my mum out of this.”

“I’m afraid your mum may already be in it,” I said, trying not to sound too harsh.

“Why? How?” Spader demanded.

“Spader’s dad gave half of the map to Osa to give to Spader. That means the other half is still out there somewhere. We didn’t find it with Spader’s dad, so I’ll bet you anything it’s with Spader’s mum.”

Spader reached into his pocket and pulled out the half map. Uncle Press took it and examined it.

“These numbers on top,” he said. “They could be partial coordinates.”

Spader grabbed the map back angrily.

“I don’t care about your fantasy games. Leave my mum alone.”

“You don’t get it,” I said urgently. “Maybe this whole Faar thing is a fable and we’ve got nothing to worry about, but if it isn’t and Saint Dane is trying to find that lost city, then he’ll want this map. If your mum has the other half, she’s in trouble.”

This hit Spader hard. I couldn’t have shocked him more if I had thrown ice water in his face. I hated to do it, but he had to understand what was at stake here. He looked at the half map, then jammed it into his pocket.

“Yenza,” he said. “She’ll give us a boat. We can be in Panger City by nightfall.”

He took off running toward the aquaneer barracks. Uncle Press watched him run off and then said, “He’s hurting.”

“This is bad. When he finally comes face to face with Saint Dane — “

“We’ll worry about that when it happens. Right now let’s get ready for a treasure hunt.”