

"The Lofty Goals of Bommy Giffitt"

By Stanley Bruce Carter

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2017 by Stanley Bruce Carter

ONE

The ten-ton chunk of granite hovered in the gray sky, clutched in the powerful grasp of Bommy Giffitt's mind.

Bommy arched an eyebrow and the stone rotated to the left. He twitched a pinky finger and the stone rotated to the right. He blinked and it began to wobble. He blinked again and it stopped.

The King of Darkness sat astride his mechno-steed, sneering at Bommy, oblivious to the massive slab of doom floating fifty feet above his haughty head. If Bommy shut his eyes for more than an instant the stone would plunge to earth, squashing the king like a bug.

Not a bad idea.

Bommy had already splatted an entire legion of the king's finest soldiers – not just any old garden variety soldiers, mind you, but gargoyle-men and demon-guys and blood-crazed Berserker tribesmen who had spread terror and death across seven continents until Bommy beat them in a single epic battle. Now all that remained of the fearsome invading force was the king himself.

His face was covered with laser-sword scars. A sneer clung to his cruel lips like a big canker sore. Evil gleamed in his beady black eyes. He was the kind of man who started wars just for fun, who sent thousands of men to their deaths to relieve his boredom – and paid them half the wages other despots gave their troops. He was mean to his cat, too, and never wrote to his mother, not even a postcard. And he hated chocolate ice cream.

No one would blame Bommy for splatting a creep like that.

But a king deserved respect, even an evil king, so Bommy didn't drop the boulder; he lowered it slowly, a foot at a time (a very difficult task, even for a Master Lifter), till it dangled mere inches above his foe's head.

The King of Darkness still didn't get it. He blustered about, waving his arms and bellowing threats and curses, gesturing at Bommy with his auto-dagger and his scepter-rifle, but Bommy remained calm, smiling a smug little smile of his own. He could release the boulder at any moment, or fling it harmlessly to one side and spare the king, or keep it in the air all day if he wished; all week if he felt like it; all year if he wanted. It was child's play for the legendary Bommy Giffitt, greatest Lifter in the whole world. Child's play...

And then Bommy's nose began to itch and he took his mind off the little blue-and-pink eraser for a split second, just long enough to scratch, and the eraser slipped from his mind, plunging toward the bald spot on Mister Cheeth's head. Frantically Bommy twitched his eyelids, sending out a puff of magic that swatted the eraser to the left, just in the nick of time. It missed Mister Cheeth by a hair and landed on his desk with a soft plop, which Mister Cheeth didn't hear over the steady drone of his own voice.

He was delivering one of his mind-numbing lectures – on the Great Wool Blight of Year 864-K and how it led to the economic instability which indirectly contributed to the Farm Wars a decade later – and everyone in class was about ready to pass out from boredom, everyone but Amalissa, of course, who was dutifully taking notes and nodding from time to time, as if she actually understood what Mister Cheeth was saying and found it all very interesting.

When the eraser landed on Mister Cheeth's desk she paused in her note taking just long enough to give Bommy a dirty look over her shoulder – one of those snooty "Why don't you act your age?" looks – then turned around before Bommy could stick out his tongue at her.

She took an amazing number of notes, more than anyone else in class, and her handwriting was impeccable. Bommy could watch her write for hours, mesmerized by the graceful way her hand moved across the page. His own notebook was blank except for drawings and doodles and some hastily scrawled words that even he couldn't read. He wasn't lazy, mind you. Not at all. He just didn't see the point of writing things down when he knew darn well they were already written in a book somewhere by some historian who probably had better handwriting than him anyway.

But Bommy knew he had to learn stuff in order to pass, and if he didn't pass he'd have to sit through the same lectures again next year, so he forced himself to stop staring at Amalissa and focus on the blackboard and the chart Mister Cheeth was now drawing, which showed the various categories of foodstuffs carried aboard steamships in the Unclaimed Territories during the First Great Westward Migration...

By the time Mister Cheeth got to barley, Bommy's mind had drifted off again and his eyes strayed to the teacher's desk. Where was the eraser? There, behind a stack of books on the corner. He could see a little bit of blue sticking out, but not enough to get a grip on. Bommy couldn't Lift anything unless it was in plain sight.

A really good Lifter could've done it easily – Blind Lifts, Multiple Lifts, Bi-Directional Lifts, nothing was beyond them. His dad could do it without even trying: Lift the eraser and all the other stuff on the desk at the same time – and the desk along with it, and all the other desks too, and the students sitting in them.

Someday Bommy would have that kind of power too. Someday. But for now he preferred to focus his meager skills on easy objects, like the paperclips in the little glass cup on the other side of Mister Cheeth's desk.

He Lifted out a clump of them and arranged them into a roughly humanoid shape and made them swagger across the blotter, headed toward Mister Cheeth's ballpoint pen...

The War-Bot had already destroyed a dozen cities with its 4000-megawatt projectile-vomit autocannon, and now it was heading straight through the heart of downtown Keps, sweeping mechazoids aside with its gigantic arms like they were toothpicks, stomping entire platoons under its gargantuan steel feet. The commander of the city's defense forces ordered all units into full scale retreat. Mechazoids and troops and tanks turned and fled, and soon there was no one left to battle the War-Bot, not one person standing in its way.

Except Bommy Giffitt.

Super-heated dum-dum bullets from the War-Bot's nose-mounted roto-gun blasted Bommy's mechazoid to smithereens and he clambered from the ruptured cockpit just in the nick of time, landing on a pile of rubble that had once been City Hall. He had no short-range missiles to fire now, no electrostatic gauss rifle, no antimatter grenade pods. Nothing to defend himself. Except his magic.

For Bommy Giffitt, that was enough.

The War-Bot bore down on him, jacking up its fuel-injected plutonium engines to full power. Pistons the size of elevators hissed; gears as big as merry-go-rounds clanked. Helium-neon laso-guns spit their deadly beams at Bommy, searing the concrete to either side of him. Bommy didn't even blink. The thunking beast bellowed its stereophonic battle cry and lowered its head and kicked into fifth gear. Turbines screeched. Exhaust manifolds belched. Its deadly autocannon swiveled like a giant tongue, zeroing in on the lone figure atop City Hall.

Calmly standing his ground, Bommy raised his hands above his head and an intense blue blob of light materialized in the smoke filled air, congealing into the shape of a giant hand...

Amalissa raised her hand and waved it urgently at Mister Cheeth. The teacher stopped in mid-sentence, a bit annoyed at the interruption, and peered at Amalissa through the spectacles perched on the end of his aquiline nose.

"Is there a question?"

Amalissa glanced at Bommy, a spiteful look on her face. She was going to tell!

His mind released the clump of paperclips and they collapsed into a heap on the desk.

Amalissa smiled sweetly at Mister Cheeth.

"No sir," she said. "I was concerned about something, but it's all right now. Please continue the lecture."

Mister Cheeth nodded. "I'm delighted _someone_ in my class is paying attention today." He scowled at the other students. "Never hesitate to ask if you don't understand. That's the mark of a good student. Questions are not a sign of ignorance, they are a sign of wisdom. Only a fool never asks a question."

As Mister Cheeth said the word "fool," he looked directly at Hoshua Nirolo, who was hunkered down in his chair like a rocktoad, a blank expression on his broad, beefy face. Mister Cheeth shook his head, then looked at Bommy, who hastily picked up his own pen and began jotting down the information written on the blackboard.

Mister Cheeth sighed and resumed the lesson.

Amalissa smirked at Bommy, triumphant yet again. He stuck his tongue out. She flipped her hair at him and looked away. He stared at the back of her head, wondering how anyone so pretty on the outside could be so nasty on the inside.

She _was_ pretty, too. Her hair was the color of sugarbirds; her eyes as blue as the Second Biggest Sea. And she always wore such nice clothes, frilly dresses imported all the way from Faronce, and fancy socks that cost more than a bicycle, with tiny flowers on the tops – not fake flowers, mind you, but miniature roses and posies conjured up by Nirisha, the legendary Dotch garden sorceress. (Amalissa's parents could afford that kind of thing; they owned the biggest skin-tinting salon in the entire city of Keps.)

Bommy had never seen the tops of the socks – proper young ladies wore their skirts long, and never allowed more than a bit of shoe to show – but Elyno had seen them once, and swore there were little live flowers on them, and Elyno never made up stories so it had to be true.

But hearing about something and seeing it yourself are two different things. Bommy wanted to see for himself. And today, as luck would have it, the back of the hem on Amalissa's blue dress was caught on the book rack under her desk, and a bit of petticoat was peeking out beneath it, swaying slightly in the breeze from the little oscillating fan whirring in the open doorway of the classroom. And beneath the petticoat Bommy could see her red patent leather shoes. And a little bit of sock.

And that got him to thinking. Which wasn't good.

It would be so easy to Lift the petticoat and peek at the little flowers. Child's play. A petticoat weighed next to nothing. And if anyone noticed the petticoat moving, they were bound to blame the breeze.

Somewhere inside his head, a voice told him to pay attention to the lecture and forget about the socks. But Bommy didn't care about the plague that had wiped out the musk cows, leading to higher tariffs on milk products during the Low Calcium Crisis of 201-Z. He wanted to see the socks – had to see them, right now.

It was one of those strange cravings that sometimes come over you without warning, like when someone has some strawberry gum and they won't share, and you hate strawberry gum but all of a sudden you've just got to have some.

So Bommy focused his thoughts on the bottom of the petticoat – he could almost feel the frilly cloth tickling his mind – and got a good grip on it and waited for the right moment, when the fan in the doorway rotated his way.

He glanced at his classmates. No one was paying any attention to him. Jayk Pirvetta – who sat next to Amalissa and was the only boy she ever smiled at – was doodling in his notebook; a picture of a swordsman, no doubt, since that's all Jayk ever thought about. Hoshua, who sat behind her, was focusing every ounce of his limited mental capabilities on the little yellow insect on his desk, which he was torturing with a pencil.

Hoshua was a lousy student, but the best gouger on the Keps High ovalball team, and he had a Talent for summoning insects. How did he do it? Even he didn't know. But he could clench his fists and wave them over a spot and a little hole would open in the air and something would fly or crawl or wiggle through it, a bug no one had ever seen before, and Hoshua would proceed to dismember it and dissect it and shred it, sometimes for hours at a time. Some said he had the makings of a great coroner, perhaps a Portal Master or entomologist, but those jobs required one thing Hoshua lacked: a brain.

No matter. Hoshua and Jayk were the only ones who might notice what Bommy was doing, and they were preoccupied. The breeze from the fan was headed his way. Time to proceed with operation petticoat.

Bommy's mouth went dry, and he suddenly realized he was nervous as all get-out. He'd Lifted lots of things in his time – pebbles and twigs and dead bugs and erasers and pens, and even a toad once or twice, but never a girl's skirt. This was uncharted territory. He took a deep breath to steady his nerves, and then began the Lift.

One inch. Two.

No one noticed.

Three inches, and Amalissa's ankles came into view. Pretty ankles. Elyno said they were too thick; Bommy didn't think so.

The magical energy swirling in his head felt funny all of a sudden, all warm and tingly. He took another deep breath, then Lifted the petticoat higher. Little dots appeared. Were those the flowers? They didn't look like flowers, more like lint pills. He Lifted another inch...

And then Hoshua looked up and bellowed like a buffalump: "Whoa! Get a load of those feet!"

Startled, Bommy lost his grip. The petticoat fell. Amalissa jumped. She looked down at her swaying skirt, then at Bommy. He turned his head, but not fast enough; she saw the Lifting look in his eyes.

She leapt to her feet, her face flushed.

"Bommy Giffitt, you stop that!"

The class woke up. Half-lidded eyes flew open. Drooping heads snapped to attention. Everyone stared at Bommy and Amalissa. Including Mister Cheeth.

"Whatever seems to be the matter now?" the teacher said testily.

Amalissa pointed at Bommy, who sank down lower in his seat, wishing he were in a submarine and could crash-dive out of sight.

"He ... he Lifted the bottom of my dress!" she sputtered.

Mister Cheeth turned to Bommy.

"Mister Giffitt," he said sternly, "were you levitating again?"

Bommy tried to look innocent and insulted and hurt, all at the same time, which contorted his face into a mask of absolute guilt.

"No sir," he said.

Mister Cheeth frowned. "No? Did you say no? Are you saying her skirt lifted itself?"

"No sir, I think the breeze must've done it."

"Breeze my eye!" Amalissa said. "I felt a cold tingle on my ankles. Breezes aren't tingly."

"They are in wintertime," Bommy retorted.

"Is this wintertime?" Mister Cheeth asked patiently.

"No sir," Bommy said. "Not here, anyway. But it's wintertime in the Snowlands."

"Are we in the Snowlands?" Mister Cheeth asked, a trifle less patiently.

"No sir."

"Then why, pray tell..."

"But back in the dinosaur age it was winter all year long, on account of glaciers. There were glaciers all over the place, great big ones" – he spread his arms out as far as they would reach – "as big as this entire schoolhouse."

"Really?" Mister Cheeth said in mock astonishment. "I had no idea. Thank you for enlightening me."

"Oh, no trouble at all."

"Now kindly tell me what that has to do with you levitating a young lady's dress."

"It wasn't me, sir, it was the glaciers. I'll bet this room was full of glaciers back in the dinosaur age, and every time the wind blew it must've tingled like crazy."

"Mister Giffitt, we are no longer in the dinosaur age."

"Yes sir. I know that."

"Then tingly winds rolling off glaciers really have nothing to do with what we're talking about, now do they?"

"Yes sir ... Because it's, uh ... it's ghosts, that's what it is."

Mister Cheeth raised an eyebrow. "Ghosts?"

"Yes sir. There could be ghosts of glaciers, couldn't there? They're probably all around us, drifting in and out of our dimension, and when they drift in they make the air tingly."

The classroom erupted in laughter. Bommy blushed. It was bad enough getting caught red-handed without everyone making fun of him to boot. He glanced at Elyno, sitting in the far corner of the room. At least she wasn't laughing. She wouldn't do that to Bommy, she was his friend. In fact, she was staring down at her notebook with a stony expression on her face, as if she was the one who'd gotten in trouble, not him.

And that made Bommy feel even worse. Elyno rarely smiled these days and he was always trying to cheer her up, and now she'd gone all grim and gloomy.

"I swear I didn't do it," he said, looking at Mister Cheeth again. "I haven't Lifted anything in a long time, ever since you told me not to."

"That's a lie," Amalissa said. "He was flying your eraser around the room earlier, and playing with the paperclips on your desk. Everyone saw."

Some of the kids nodded (the little suck-ups!). Others studied the ceiling or the floor. A few, like Hoshua, snickered, pleased that someone else was in trouble for a change. No one rose to Bommy's defense.

Mister Cheeth studied Bommy for a moment, like he was some math equation that didn't quite add up, then he walked over to his desk, glanced at the paperclips strewn all over the blotter, then pulled open a drawer and took out a big timeglass.

The other kids said "Oh-ohhh." Bommy's heart sank.

"Mister Giffitt," the teacher said, "after class you shall remain here and write an essay for me, about the perils of telling lies and the impropriety of lifting the skirts of young ladies. You shall work on this essay until the sands drain from the timeglass, which shall take approximately two hours and thirty four minutes."

Some kids tittered. Others grinned. A few cringed. Amalissa, looking completely vindicated and just a bit smug, sat down daintily and folded her hands on her desk like the proper young lady she was, her honor now restored.

"In the meantime," Mister Cheeth said, "I suggest you pay attention to the rest of the lecture."

"Yes sir," Bommy said.

As Mister Cheeth resumed the lesson and the other kids shot smirks at him over their shoulders, Bommy stole another glance at Elyno. She was still staring down at her notebook, her face grim, and something, a tear perhaps, twinkled in the corner of her eye.

Bommy picked up his pen and started scribbling notes like mad, focusing on Mister Cheeth's dry and dusty facts, blotting everything else from his mind.

TWO

" _...and thinking maybe a spider had crawled onto Amalissa's shoe, my one desire was to scare it away by Lifting her dress and shooing it off. Since I wasn't entirely sure it was a spider, I didn't wish to alarm Amalissa by telling her about it, and cause a general panic in the classroom, so I tried to use my Lifting skills, meager as they are, to save her without any undue commotion. Now I realize the spider might have been just a bit of dust, and in any event, my proper course was to inform the teacher, who is yourself, and let you deal with it, and I never should have told that story about ghost icebergs, but again, I felt that revealing the presence of a big, hairy spider in the room might cause great alarm, but I now realize it is better to be honest, even if it causes my fellow students to stampede from the classroom and many are trampled and injured, than to take matters into my own hands, and for this I apologize, and under the circumstances I see no need for this unfortunate incident to go on my permanent record._

Yours Truly

Bommy Giffitt"

Bommy leaned back in his chair and read over what he'd written and smiled, pleased with himself. It could easily be the truth. What if he really had seen a giant spider? Would he have acted any differently? It wasn't his actions that were deplorable, merely his motives, and who could say what his true motives were? Could anyone really know the inner workings of their own mind, let alone another's? It was a question best left to philosophers – or the Psychics Guild.

Bommy looked up at the timeglass, glistening in the late afternoon sun slanting in through the windows, and his smile broadened. Only a flew grains left.

He stood up and his smile was replaced by a grimace as the blood rushed back into his butt, which had fallen asleep a half hour ago. He rubbed it a few times – discreetly, of course – then walked toward the front of the classroom.

Mister Cheeth had been sitting at his desk the whole time, over two and a half hours, not once getting up to stretch or go to the bathroom, not once leaning back to gaze out the window, just sitting there in the same position, quietly reading a book. He must have a cast-iron butt.

"Aren't you a bit premature, young man?" he said, glancing at the timeglass as Bommy came up to his desk.

"Premature, Mister Cheeth?"

"The time has not expired."

"Close enough."

"I'm afraid 'close enough' is not a scholarly concept. Precision is important, in all things."

"Yes sir. It's just that I've got this awful cramp" – he grabbed his right hand and winced – "and if it gets any worse I might tear a tendon or something, and then I couldn't take notes in class tomorrow."

"You never take notes anyway. What difference would it make?"

"I've turned over a new leaf, sir."

"That's what you said the last time."

Bommy started to answer, but Mister Cheeth raised his hand.

"All right, all right. I think you've had adequate time to write a most profound essay, and I'm eager to see it."

He took the paper from Bommy. His gray eyes darted back and forth over the deathless prose. After a few seconds he looked up, arching an eyebrow.

"Pretty good, huh?" Bommy said hopefully.

Mister Cheeth was not impressed.

"Repeating the phrase 'I'm sorry and I won't do it again' a hundred times is hardly an essay, young man."

"But that's what you had me write the last time."

"I am well aware of your previous efforts. Those were apologies. This time I specifically asked for an essay. I was hoping you would go beyond mere rote expressions of regret and reflect in depth on the ethical issues involved in your misconduct."

"Oh, I did that. All the deep reflection is on page four."

Mister Cheeth turned to page four and read it over. His frown deepened. He took off his glasses, rubbed the bridge of his nose, and looked up at Bommy with weary eyes.

"This is not reflection, Mister Giffitt, it's obfuscation."

"Uh, is that good?"

The teacher sighed. "No, it is not good. Please don't insult my intelligence by expecting me to believe that your motive in levitating Miss Ammalee's dress had anything to do with the presence of a large arachnid. You were bent on pure, unadulterated mischief."

"Well..."

"No 'Wells.' In the future, when I ask for an essay, I want the truth. I want introspection. I want genuine regret. This is not a fiction writing class. Do I make myself clear?"

"Yes sir. But if there had been a giant spider, I wouldn't have done anything different. So if you think about it, it wasn't my actions that were wrong, just my motives, and who can really..."

"You know, Bommy, you have the makings of a fine politician."

Bommy grinned. "Really? Thanks."

"It wasn't intended as a compliment."

"Oh. So I guess that means you want me to do my essay over?"

"No, there's no point in prolonging the agony."

Mister Cheeth opened up a drawer and placed the essay inside, on top of a whole stack of "apology papers," most of them written by Bommy and Jayk and Hoshua. He shut the drawer and stood up. Much to Bommy's amazement, he didn't wince or anything.

"I think it's time we both went home," he said.

"All right!" Bommy cried.

He dashed for the door and flung it open.

"Do not run, Mister Giffitt. This is not a playground."

"Yes sir."

Bommy headed down the hall, his elation quickly turning into trepidation. The worst part of detention was leaving the schoolhouse afterward, because it was a spooky place in the evening. His footsteps echoed loudly in the hallway, and as he passed the darkened rooms he heard other, stranger sounds: soft whispers and the scratch of pencils on paper and the steady drone of teachers' voices – as if the ghosts of everyone who'd ever taught or learned within those walls were still there, trapped in a class that would never end.

Or maybe it was just a rickety old fan someone had left on. But how could you ever be sure?

Bommy walked faster, continually glancing over his shoulder, and it was a great relief to finally trot down the stairs and push open the big double doors and burst outside.

The day's heat had given up and gone home for the day, and the sun was settling into the horizon, the shadows laying down across the playground. Bommy started down the worn concrete steps.

"It's about time," said a voice behind him.

Bommy jumped and spun around, expecting to see a ghost playing hooky from its eternal lessons. But it was just Elyno.

"What are you doing here?" he said.

"Waiting for you. I always do, don't I?"

"Yeah, but I've never had to stay this long before. I must've set some kind of record. You should've gone on without me."

"I don't like going home alone."

Kids sometimes waited for Elyno after school. They followed her home and teased her and called her names. If Bommy walked with her they teased her anyway, but at least she had company.

It didn't used to be that way. When Elyno was a little girl she was pretty, as pretty as Amalissa, and had lots of friends, and no one ever teased her, except Bommy, who would drop little pebbles on her head and fly spiders past her nose, but only because he liked her. When he and his friends played in the big wooden crate in Saem's back yard – which was a space fighter one day, a castle or time machine the next – she was their damsel in distress, and she played the part to the hit, moaning and wailing and begging to be rescued from whatever evil alien or wicked warrior was menacing her at the moment. Bommy didn't like girls as a rule, but Elyno was different. She wasn't afraid to get dirty and she never got upset when Bommy said bad words in the heat of battle.

And sometimes, when the playing was over and he was alone in his room at night, he'd imagine the two of them all grown up and married, off on some strange world fighting dragons or vampires together.

But all that changed when Elyno turned eleven and fell victim to the family curse.

And it was all her grandparents' fault. Uro and Gargia Telves were Kubbyds, people who could leave their physical bodies and inhabit inanimate objects – an impractical Talent in a mechanized age, until the Great Misunderstanding broke out. The enemy employed War-Bots, superior to anything Celton's armed forces could throw against them. Electronic jamming had no effect on them, but it was soon discovered that Kubbyds could "possess" the bots' control circuits and take control of the giant machines, turning them against their creators.

Uro and Gargia were among those Kubbyds drafted to fight in the war and gladly did their patriotic duty. They left their physical bodies behind at an army hospital in Binnsrukah, where Caretakers were supposed to tend them. But the chief Caretaker was killed and her army assistants were undertrained. They bathed the Kubbyd bodies in full-strength potions and left them out in the sun too long and changed the crystals around their necks every week instead of once a month, and when the Kubbyds returned – worn out from the fighting and desperate to get back into their real bodies – they found shells of hardened flesh that resembled giant prunes, dark and waxy and wrinkled and hideous to behold. The Kubbyds had exhausted all their powers in the war, and had no choice but to reenter their old bodies and live out the rest of their lives as best they could.

When Uro and Gargia returned to Keps they wanted to start a family. They prayed their offspring would be spared their curse, but Fronk was born with the same taint as his parents. When Fronk grew up and married, he warned his wife, Nilla, that they must never have children, but ten years later, despite all precautions, Nilla had a baby. Elyno.

At first Elyno was as normal as any little girl, but when she turned eleven she began to change, and soon she looked like her father. Her parents took her to every Healer they could find, even Melliata herself, head of the Guild, but to no avail.

Unlike most of Elyno's "friends," Bommy didn't shun her after the change; she was still pretty on the inside, and that's what mattered. But he no longer thought of marrying her. These days he dreamed of different things.

"I got a cramp in my hand from all that writing," Bommy said as they walked across the playground. "And one in my butt too."

"Serves you right," Elyno said.

It was hard to see her mouth amid all the wrinkles, but her voice was smiling. Whatever had made her gloomy in class was gone now, like yesterday's rain cloud.

"I guess I did a dumb thing, huh?" he said.

"Yes."

"Hey, you don't have to agree with me."

"You were dumb, there's no two ways about it. Whatever possessed you to do it?"

"I got bored. I wish Mister Cheeth would talk about fun things."

"But did you have to Lift _her_ skirt? What you see in that prissy little twerp is beyond me."

"Why don't you like her? What's she ever done to you?"

"Nothing. She's never done anything to me – never invited me to her parties, never let me play her games, never talked to me for more than five seconds, except once when she showed me her socks, and she only did that to lord it over me because she can afford stuff like that and I can't."

"Hey, a popular girl like Amalissa can't be best friends with everyone. She doesn't have the time."

"I don't want to be best friends. I just want her to treat me like she treats everyone else. If she accepted me, maybe the other girls would too."

"Aw, you can't blame her for every..."

"Would you quit defending her all the time? Cripes, Bommy, she's not some fair damsel in an ogre's tower you have to rescue day after day. Quit sticking up for her. She's stuck up enough as it is!"

"You're just jealous," Bommy said, and instantly bit his tongue, trying to take the words back. Too late.

"Why?" Elyno said sharply. "Why should I be jealous? Because she's popular and pretty and I'm not?"

"I didn't mean it that way."

"You think I envy her?"

"Heck no."

"For your information, Bommy Giffitt, a person can be pretty on the outside and ugly on the inside, and I'd rather have my ugly on the outside, any day!"

She stomped off. Bommy started after her, then thought better of it. Sometimes Elyno got in a mood, and it was best to let her vent on her own.

He followed her at a safe distance, making sure no one bothered her, and when she got to her house (slamming the door as she went inside) he turned around and headed home.

He arrived just in time for supper. His dad was making stew again, although you couldn't tell by looking at him – he was sitting on the couch, arms folded behind his head, engrossed in the ovalball game on TV, but his left pinky finger was twirling around and around, levitating the ladle in the kettle out in the kitchen. Someday Bommy would be able to do his chores like that, using magic instead of muscle, just like his dad. Someday.

"Who's winning?" Bommy said as he sat down next to his dad.

"You'd know if you'd been home on time," his dad replied. "Where have you been?"

"Oh, around and about," Bommy said breezily. "You know, here and there, doing this and that."

"Mister Cheeth kept you after class again, didn't he?"

"I was writing a story. Funny how time flies when you're doing something creative, isn't it?"

His dad gave him a skeptical look. "A story? For two and a half hours? What kind of story was it?"

"Oh, it had to do with glaciers. And ghosts. It was a very good story." He leaned forward and stared intently at the TV. "Who's ahead?"

His dad glanced at the screen. "Huskers, one to nil. Don't change the subject. Why did you get the sudden urge to write a story? You only tell stories when you're trying to get out of trouble."

Bommy shrugged. "Who can understand the creative process? The urge just hit me, that's all."

A cabinet door in the kitchen slammed open and a big pot flew out into the living room and hovered over Bommy's head: The punishment pot. It was an ugly iron thing, dented and blackened with scorch marks and encrusted with yucky greenish-brownish-yellowish stains, and it smelled like barf and rotting cabbages and dog poop all rolled into one. According to the family legend, a wizard had killed a demon many, many years ago and cooked its heart in the pot, and the smell was so bad the wizard's nose fell off his face and he sold the pot to a scrap metal dealer, who tried to melt it down but failed. The dealer sold the pot to Bommy's great-great-grandfather, who collected annoying artifacts as a hobby. And to this day, whenever anyone in the family told a lie or misbehaved, the demon's heart came alive and filled the pot with its rancid smell.

Bommy didn't believe the story, but the pot smelled real bad just the same.

"Tell me the truth, Bommy," his dad said. "Unless you'd like to sleep with the pot in your room tonight."

"No, no!"

"Then tell me. Why did Mister Cheeth keep you after school?"

"Oh, it was nothing. I just did a little Lifting, that's all."

"Lifting in class again, huh?"

"Aw, Mister Cheeth's lectures are so darn boring, especially that old history stuff. He never talks about battles and cool stuff like that, just blah-blah like agriculture and economics and elections."

His dad held up his hand. "Never mind the why, give me the what. What were you Lifting this time?"

"Nothing much. A little bit of cloth."

The punishment pot hovered lower, right over Bommy's head. Green slime oozed over the edge and dribbled down the side. A tendril dangled in the air in front of Bommy's face, curling itself into an upside-down question mark.

"Out with it, Bommy," his dad said. "The whole truth and nothing but the truth."

Bommy sighed. "OK. I think maybe it was Amalissa's petticoat."

"What!"

"You see, Dad, it was like this. There was this spider, at least I thought it was a spider, and..."

The punishment pot shook and hissed, and a brown cloud of thick steam puffed from its depths and swirled around Bommy's head. He gagged and waved his arms to drive it away, but it coiled around his hands like itchy gloves.

"I want you to listen to me," his dad said sternly.

"I'm listening," Bommy said, scratching at the fuzz on his fingers.

"Levitation is a gift, like any Talent. You should never abuse it. It is not to be used for Lifting ladies' petticoats. That is not the way a Lifter behaves. Nor a gentleman."

"Aw, I just wanted to see her stupid socks, that's all. What's the big deal?"

His dad's face grew grimmer still.

"Up to your room," he said.

"Now?" Bommy said incredulously. "But we haven't had supper yet, and the game's still on."

"Right now."

His dad stood up and stretched out his arm, pointing at the stairs. "March right up there, and I'd better not see the light on either. No reading comic books or playing with your GameBox, just go straight to bed."

"Aw cripes."

"Don't 'Aw cripes' me. Get moving."

"Yes sir."

Bommy took one last longing look at the TV, where Daion Blanders was twisting between two defenders and bursting toward the goal zone.

"Do it now, Bommy," his dad said.

Bommy got up and trudged toward the stairs, his head held low. The punishment pot followed him every step of the way, making strange, hissy, gurgly noises that sounded for all the world like the unearthly chuckles of a demon.

THREE

The G-9 pulverizer pod hurtled toward the Kragon Star Wall, piloted by Cormi Zaia himself, first prince of the Altarone Rebel Alliance. Star Walls were impenetrable – six strips of reinforced densitometer steel sunk into a precast armor-foam dome surrounded by a pool of radioactive death tar – but Prince Zaia had to penetrate this one, and fast, or all hope was lost.

An intergalactic tanker ship containing the compressed essence of all sentient life in the galaxy was, at that very moment, rushing toward Warp Portal 1 on its way to an annual pilgrimage on the other side of the universe, scarcely suspecting that the portal had been blocked by a Star Wall erected by the ill-tempered Kragon Protectorate Forces for no particular reason. If the Star Wall wasn't destroyed in the next few milliseconds, the tanker would smack right into it, and humanity would be doomed.

Prince Zaia's steely eyes narrowed as his hand gripped the control stick and gently tweaked the steering rockets, nudging the G-9 slightly to the left. There was no room for error; if he didn't hit the Star Wall dead center with his four-pronged carnage claw, he'd miss the weak spot and the pod would explode. No time for practice runs or nozzle calibration. It was now or never.

Prince Zaia twisted the throttle dial to Full Speed Ahead and braced himself for impact. Nanoseconds later the pod smacked into the Wall with a resounding crunch...

And the strips of bacon tore loose from the mound of pancakes and toppled over, tumbling into the pool of maple syrup with a soft splat. Bommy's fork banked to the left and zoomed skyward, narrowly missing the rim of his milk glass. Mission accomplished!

Bommy smiled. It was a good day to be a pulverizer pilot. But then, Saturday was always a good day: nothing to do but play with your food, play with your toys, play with your friends, and forget school even existed.

Still, there were tough decisions to be made: Should he hang out in the back yard and fool around with his Y-Man action figures, or go over to Saem's house and help blow up the Activi-Toy BattleCruiser that Saem got for his birthday? This was an important decision, and Bommy was so deep in thought it took him a few seconds to notice what his dad was doing over on the kitchen counter: making TWO sack lunches, not just one.

"What's up with the bags, Dad?" he said.

"Don't talk with your mouth full," his dad replied.

Bommy swallowed, then repeated his question.

"It's our lunches," his dad said, picking up a Winky Wanky and shoving it into one of the sacks. "What did you think it was?"

" _Our_ lunches?" Bommy said.

His dad nodded. "You're going with me."

Bommy's heart sank. His dad always worked on Saturdays, but he usually went alone and left Bommy behind to "guard the house."

"Aw, Dad, I got things to do," he said.

His dad twitched a finger and two bananas flew out of the fruit bowl on the other end of the counter. He caught them in mid air and shoved them into the bags.

"They'll just have to wait," he said. "I want you to watch the Lifters."

"Aw, I've seen all that stuff."

"I know, but apparently you've forgotten what it means to be a Lifter. You seem to think the Talent should be used for teasing your classmates and making fun of your teachers. Today you'll see how professionals behave. Maybe it'll sink in this time."

"Aw, gee, Dad.."

"Don't 'Aw gee' me. Come on, quit dawdling and finish your breakfast. We've got to get going."

Bommy looked down at his plate, then pushed it away. He'd lost his appetite.

The Kragons had won.

* * *

Just before they left the house, the phone rang. Bommy was in the can, and when he came back downstairs he heard his dad hanging up the receiver – slamming it, to be precise. His face was troubled.

"Have they called off the shows?" Bommy asked hopefully.

His dad glowered at him. "No, Bommy. They have called off nothing."

His dad stormed to the front door and flung it open.

"Come on," he said. "Let's get out there. You need to see how the great and noble Guild conducts itself."

There was a strange inflection in his dad's voice that Bommy didn't understand, but he knew better than to stand around asking questions when his dad was in a hurry. He ran out the door and practically leapt into the car.

They rode in silence. Bommy glanced at his dad a time or two, wondering what was bugging him, but decided to hold his tongue. Whatever it was, it was bad, and he'd already heard enough bad news for one day.

As the Chavy pulled into the Templex parking lot, the engine began to sputter. Mechanical things never worked very well at the Templex due to the magic fallout – residue from spells generated by sorcerers and priests over the centuries that still radiated from the ancient stones and the very earth itself. The residual energy made Lifting easier, but was tough on the tour buses and cars – much to the delight of the tow truckers and buggy drivers who circled the Templex like vultures, waiting for over-spelled engines to conk out so they could swoop to the rescue (for a hefty fee, of course).

Bommy's dad pulled into his designated space and killed the struggling engine. They climbed out and headed down the main walkway.

The Templex was like a big park, with acres of perfectly manicured lawns and neatly trimmed hedges. There were fifty temples and tombs scattered around the place, some of them dating back thousands of years, others much younger. The really old ones were boring, boxy things made of gray stone, mottled with moss and covered with cracks. These were built by Celtonic kings and priests during the Early Age and the Era of Origin. Bommy preferred the newer monuments – which were built by foreign missionaries during the Influx Age – because they were prettier and came in odd shapes. His favorites were the red quartz pyramid that blazed like a fireball when the sun hit it right, and the gold-plated dome topped by blue crystal minarets, and the cluster of obsidian towers that resembled a giant spider, and the teakwood temple that looked like a spiral staircase wrapped around a giant bowling pin.

The only fun thing about the gray Celtonic temples was the cool pictures carved into their sides – dog-headed hippo gods and three-headed snakes and sword wielding hawks and ladies with five arms who were bare from the waist up. Bommy liked the ladies the best, because – unlike the naked ladies in the magazines at the drug store – he could look at them without getting yelled at.

He was doing just that as his dad turned right onto the narrow path leading down to the tomb of Hokmasifu. Bommy had expected him to go left, following the winding walkway into the new section like he usually did, and he had to make an abrupt U-turn to follow him.

Hokmasifu was the oldest building on all of Celton, constructed over 10,000 years ago, yet it drew few tourists. It was always cloaked in shadows, even on sunny, cloudless days, and if you stood in those brooding shadows long enough, a dank, cold draft settled around you like a clammy hand. The tourists who did stop by couldn't see much, because the interior had been closed off for years, ever since a chunk of ceiling fell on a woman photographer, killing her instantly.

Bommy didn't care much for the place, except for one thing that made it very special: the legend.

Mister Cheeth had told it to them in class one day, nearly two years ago, and Bommy had actually paid attention to the entire lecture, from beginning to end; that's how good it was.

It had to do with a humble peasant girl named Cammaleila, who lived way back in the Early Age. One day she was brought before King Ecorakaza to perform the Dance of the Swirling Hankies (The "Hokmasifu"). Kings spent a lot of time summoning peasant girls to do that sort of thing back in those days, but in over two centuries no one had ever done it perfectly. There were a dozen hankies involved, and a lot of spinning and bobbing and weaving which went on for nearly twenty minutes, and it was simply impossible to keep all the hankies in the air the whole time without dropping even one.

But Cammaleila did it.

The minute her flawless dance was over, the stunned onlookers burst into wild applause, and the king got off his throne and knelt before her and begged her to be his wife. No humble peasant girl could turn down a chance like that. The two were soon wed, which made her the queen, and the first thing she did after the honeymoon (a barge trip to the Gnuje Islands) was redecorate the palace, summoning skilled craftsmen to construct hanging gardens and ponds and even a waterfall, all of it indoors, and then she filled the place with exotic trees and birds imported from all over Celton.

The palace became famous and drew lots of visitors, who spent a ton of money on souvenirs, which gave the local economy a much needed boost. The people prospered. The king and queen were happy. Everything was great. It lasted about ten years. And then, of course, tragedy struck. One fateful night a baby cockatoo fell out of its nest in one of the imported trees and landed on a network of vines hanging between two balconies above the fake waterfall. The queen, whose gardeners and bird tenders had retired for the evening, took it upon herself to try and rescue the bird, and leaned out too far from a balcony and fell to her death. The king was devastated, and died soon after from a broken heart. The palace became their tomb.

Nowadays, weeds hung in the gardens, and common magpies and grackles nested in the balconies, and the only time water fell was when it rained through the holes in the roof.

Even tourists who knew nothing of the legend sometimes swore they heard the plaintive cry of a baby cockatoo echoing within the walls, or glimpsed something through the windows, a white filmy object floating and twisting through the shadows, which some locals claimed was Cammaleila's hanky, still performing the legendary dance that had won the heart of a king.

Bommy's dad laughed at such stories (although he certainly wasn't in a laughing mood today), and said it was just the wind whistling through chinks in the stones and tossing around bits of wastepaper. Bommy wasn't so sure.

Today he saw no hankies and heard no baby cockatoos, but there was mystery in the air just the same. Why had his dad come here? Why was he just standing around, staring sullenly at the tomb? What was he waiting for? Wouldn't he be late for the show?

The other Lifters – a half dozen men clad in white robes like his dad's – were already positioned in the center of the Templex a hundred yards to the east, standing in a circle in front of the gold-domed temple as a crowd of about two hundred tourists looked on.

"They're starting, Dad," Bommy said as the Lifters joined hands, but his dad didn't seem to hear him.

Braska Kushex, head of the Lifters Guild, turned toward the crowd and launched into his well-rehearsed spiel – telling how his ancestors had helped build the temples during the olden times, moving the huge blocks of stone out of the quarries and transporting them to the Templex and stacking them together like building blocks. There was no mortar in those days, no laser welding machines, nothing to hold the stones together except friction and balance (and perhaps a touch of bonding magic which the architect-mages might apply until the stones had a chance to settle in and get comfortable with each other). It was painstaking, dangerous work, requiring great skill and precise coordination between stone cutters, architects and Lifters.

"Observe now, gentle visitors," Braska said in his booming, pompous voice, "as the Lifters of today honor our forebears by reversing the process. Once again the ancient stones take flight."

The Lifters bowed their heads, and a blue minaret atop the dome rose into the air, slowly, majestically, like a rocket ship blasting off. The tourists said "Oohh!" Dozens of cameras clicked.

Then another minaret rose, and another, until all twelve were in the air, hovering at fifty feet. The crowd burst into applause.

Bommy held a hand up to his eyes to shield them from the sun and squinted at the minarets. They floated motionless for a few seconds, then twisted around and joined together at one end and fanned out, like the spokes of a wheel. Slowly they began to rotate, a big rimless wheel rolling across the sky. More applause. More camera clicks.

The Lifters bowed in unison to the crowd, then straightened up and clapped their own hands. The minarets broke formation and dove toward the ground, returning to their niches in the top of the dome.

The Lifters made it look so easy, but Bommy knew such a maneuver took years to master. Someday he would be out there with them, giving shows and competing in tournaments – and working major construction jobs during the building season, raising the high iron on office towers and suspension bridges. But in his heart of hearts, what he truly longed for was the olden days, when Lifters fought wars with huge battle boulders and built magnificent temples for mighty kings. His dad often told him he should be thankful to live in a world of peace and democracy, where there were (for the moment, at least) no wars and no kings, but Bommy couldn't help getting a bit wistful at times.

Not that he didn't enjoy the show. He applauded right along with the tourists as the Lifters went through their routine – the Kicking Keystone, the Dipping Dome, the Pirouetting Portcullis. And then it was over and the crowd dispersed, moving on to other attractions. Braska spotted Bommy and his dad and waved at them. Bommy waved back. His dad did not. He was still gazing up at the tomb and hadn't even turned his head to watch the show.

The Lifters crossed the green toward them, Braska leading. He was a tall, broad shouldered man who should have been burly but wasn't, because he ate very little and frequently fasted, just to give himself that lean and hungry "Lifter Look."

It was an old tradition in the Guild: How could a man think light and airy thoughts if he himself was heavy? Bommy's dad said that was a crock – levitation was mental, and your mind had nothing to do with the size of your body – but Lifters were expected to look the part, so he often scolded Bommy when he snuck seconds at supper or raided the cookie jar.

"Hello, Dalan, hello Bommy," Braska said with a smile as he came up to them.

"Hi," Bommy said.

His dad nodded at Braska, but did not return his smile.

Braska looked up at Hokmasifu and put his hands on his hips.

"Been studying her, eh, Dalan? Good, good. I'm anxious to get your thoughts on the matter. What would be the best approach for moving the old beast?"

Dalan glared at his boss.

"I can't believe the Council actually decided to sell."

Braska smirked. "Of course they did. Last night's vote was merely a formality. The offer was too good to turn down and everyone knew it."

He patted Dalan's arm. Dalan stiffened.

"Come, come," Braska said, "don't look so glum. It means more work, for all of us. And it won't be easy either." He glanced at the tomb with a contemptuous sneer. "An old eyesore like this, unstable and unpredictable; we'll have to dismantle it carefully so nothing breaks."

Bommy's jaw fell open. Dismantle it? Sell it? Could they really be talking about Hokmasifu? It was unheard of. The old Celtonic monuments were untouchable – never taken apart, never Lifted, never part of the shows. And no monument, not even a foreign one, had ever been sold.

His dad's face turned dark as a storm cloud, and his eyes flashed like lightning.

"I still can't believe we're doing this. It makes no sense."

"Heh, heh. It's not cents, it's dollars. A lot of dollars. The Liosians' latest offer is fifty million, and the Council would be fools not to take it. Think of it. Fifty million dollars. By heavens, with that kind of money in the city coffers, they might even lower our taxes!"

The other men chuckled. Bommy's dad did not.

"We gain money, but what do we lose? Has anyone thought of that? We're selling our past. You can't put a price on your heritage."

"It's a dead past, and we're well rid of it." Braska waved a hand at the tourists roaming around the Templex. None were near Hokmasifu. "In case you hadn't noticed, this tomb isn't exactly a hot attraction. Never has been."

"You think of it as an attraction? Nothing more?"

"You had your chance to say these things during the public hearings, and I'm sure the Council considered them carefully before reaching their decision."

"Pah. The Council..."

Braska put his hand on Dalan's shoulder. His smile froze to his face. "It's a dead issue, Dalan. Drop the matter." He nodded at the tomb. "What we have to decide now is, how exactly do we go about it? You've studied the old beast more than the rest of us. Where are the keystones and the weak spots? Should we Lift the roof first, or begin with the pillars around the portcullis?"

"Neither," Dalan said. "We should reconsider."

"And I've told you the matter is decided. Besides, it isn't up to us. We are merely craftsmen. The Council makes these decisions."

"But if we refuse to Lift it, who will?"

"Refuse?" Braska snorted. "Lifters do not refuse commands from the Council."

"Lifters have never been asked to take..."

"Dalan," Braska warned, "please remember that I am head of the Guild."

Dalan looked like he wanted to put Braska across his knee and spank him, but instead he turned to Bommy.

"There's no point in you hearing any more of this," he said, pointing west. "Go over to the training field and move the Heads for a while."

"Aw Dad..."

"Just do it."

"Aww."

Bommy wanted to stick around and see the fireworks, but his dad's tone of voice left no room for argument.

Grumbling to himself, he left Hokmasifu and went up to the main walkway and headed for the training fields on the far side of the Templex. On his way he passed a knot of pale-skinned tourists gaping up at the "spider temple." Southlanders, from the looks of them. There was little magic in their homeland, which was, by all reports, a cold and dreary place.

Bommy stopped, eying a plump, middle-aged woman, whose brown hair was fixed in a weird do, all twisted around and piled high on her head like a stack of hot cross buns.

"Hey lady," he said.

She looked down at him and smiled. "What is it, young'un?" she said in a thick drawl.

"Wanna see a trick?"

"A trick? What sort of a trick?"

Bommy Lifted a strand of hair off her head, intending to tie it into a bow. It was a simple stunt, but Southlanders were easily impressed by any kind of magic, especially from a cute kid, and the lady would coo with delight when he was done and give him a quarter, maybe more.

At least that was his plan. But as he tugged on the strand, the rest of her hair came with it, popping right off her head, revealing a mop of gray underneath with a bald spot in the back.

He'd pulled off her wig!

The woman shrieked.

"Oh my gosh," Bommy said, "I'm sorry lady."

He dropped the wig onto her head. It slipped down to her shoulder and fell to the ground with a fuzzy plop.

"Oh!" she cried. "You wretched boy!"

A man standing beside her cussed at Bommy and made a grab for him and Bommy took off running and didn't stop till he was in the middle of the training field. He ducked down beside one of the Heads, panting like crazy, and cautiously peeked around its chin, watching for pursuers. The Head's pupil-less eyes twisted in their stone sockets, fixing him with a nasty stare as its rocky lips crunched into a sneer.

There were twenty Heads in the field, all told, each measuring about four feet tall, and they were very, very old – as old as Hokmasifu, maybe even older. They were made of white stone that had darkened considerably with age and was pitted and covered with specks of green moss, like alien acne, and they wore sourpuss expressions on their faces that rarely changed. According to legend they were the embodied souls of the original Lifters, the founders of the clan, who grew so powerful and proud that they refused to die when their Time came, and when Quad demanded they obey Death's summons, they dared try to levitate heaven itself, moving it closer to the world so they wouldn't have so far to travel, and this angered Quad, who returned the Lifters' souls to the world encased in stone to teach them a lesson in humility.

Bommy didn't believe the entire story, but the Heads were definitely not normal sculptures, and they did act awfully uppity at times.

"You again," the Head said.

"Yep. It's me," Bommy said.

"Get off my cheek."

Bommy crawled a couple of feet away and sat down.

"Why are you breathing hard?" the Head asked.

"I'm not."

"You were a minute ago."

"Was not."

"Got yourself in trouble again, did you?"

"None of your business."

"Shouldn't you be with your father?"

"He sent me here."

"Why? It's not time for a lesson."

"They wanted to argue in private, I guess."

"Who's arguing?"

"The Lifters."

Bommy rose to a crouch and peered to the east. He could just barely see his dad and the other Lifters in the distance. Braska was gesturing emphatically at Hokmasifu. Bommy's dad was shaking his head, just as emphatically.

"I can't believe they sold it," Bommy muttered.

"Sold what?" the Head said.

"Hokmasifu. It's been sold to the Liosians for fifty million bucks."

The Head sniffed disdainfully. "Do tell? People have such little regard for tradition these days. Pretty soon they'll be selling me. I wonder how much I'd fetch."

"Not much. You're just a head, and not a pretty head either. Hokmasifu is a whole building."

"I am not a head, I am a Head, with a capital H. Show some respect."

"Why should I? You're not a teacher or a dad or an elder."

"I am older than any elder."

"You're no better than me."

"Am too."

"Am not. You did bad things and got yourself in trouble."

"Just like you."

"Only you made Quad mad."

"I thought you didn't believe those old stories."

"If it's bad and it's about you, I believe it."

"Be nice now."

"Why? I used to talk nice, and you were mean to me anyway."

"You do better at your lessons when I'm mean. Nice doesn't work with a bad student like you. Only nastiness motivates an underachiever."

"I'm not an underachiever."

"Are so."

"Am not. I always try hard."

"Ha!"

"I do."

"Pah."

"Shut up. You're just a head."

"That's Head, with a capital H. Now try and Lift me, and do it right. Show me you've learned something since last time."

Bommy sighed. He hated moving the Heads. They made his mind hurt. But no rookie Lifter could move on to advanced classes until he'd mastered the Head drills. He stared at the stone and narrowed his mind and focused his thoughts, visualizing the energy as a giant hand, reaching out and grabbing the Head and squeezing tight. The stone felt cold and gritty in his mind. He tried to Lift it. Pressure filled his head, pushing on the backs of his eyes. His skull throbbed. He grit his teeth and clenched his fists.

"Your mind is fuzzy," the Head said as it rose a half inch off the ground. "It tickles."

"Don't be such a crybaby."

"Your mind should be hard, like stone."

"I'm doing the best I can."

"No you're not. Your thoughts are spread out all over the place. You're not focusing."

"Am too."

"Am not. You lack intensity. Imagine I'm Amalissa's dress. Does that inspire you?"

"How did you find out about that?"

"I know lots of things."

"Yeah, annoying things."

"Think of Amalissa."

"I don't want to. Shut up about her, will you?"

"You're a rude boy."

"And you're the meanest Head here. I think I'll try Lifting one of the others."

"You can't. I am your assigned Head."

"Then quit picking on me."

Suddenly the stone felt lighter inside Bommy's mind. It shot a foot into the air.

"See how easy it is?" the Head said. "I'm Lifting myself with the magic inside you, Bommy. The energy is there, but I have to go in and get it. You're not giving it to me."

"I'm trying."

"Try harder."

Bommy shut his eyes and bit his lip and pressed his fists against his chest and imagined the stone soaring into the sky. He felt it rise, heard the wind rushing past, felt the clouds brushing its rough-hewn face, saw the training field dwindling, saw himself, a mere speck a hundred feet below.

Encouraged, Bommy opened one eye. But the Head was still there in front of him, only inches above the ground.

"Aw nuts," Bommy said. "I thought you were way up there."

"You were dreaming, Bommy, not Lifting. There's a difference."

"You're not helping me. You're dragging your feet."

"I don't have any feet."

"You know what I mean."

"Focus your mind. If you concentrated on me the way you do Amalissa, I'd be a mile in the air by now."

"Quit talking about her."

"Why does she occupy so much of your mind? Surely you don't think she's pretty. Her ankles are as thick as fence posts."

"Don't say that!" Bommy snapped.

With a look of total shock on its face, the Head suddenly zipped thirty feet into the air, and just as suddenly plunged to earth. It hit the ground with a loud whump, gouging a big dent into the earth, and toppled over onto its face, muttering something unintelligible as Bommy got to his feet and stomped off.

FOUR

By the time Bommy got back to Hokmasifu, the argument was over.

The Lifters were gathered in a circle, their hands joined, eyes focused on the roof of the tomb, faces scrunched up in total concentration. Bommy's dad looked none too happy, but was trying just as hard as the others (he was never one to shirk his duty once the talking was over and the work began).

At first the tomb didn't budge. Dust slid down its sides and weeds fell from hanging gardens as the energy vibrated through the stones, but nothing more. Then a spiked bulb on one corner of the roof suddenly twisted a few degrees to the left, and the Lifters let out a collective sigh, as if that one small movement had drained all their strength.

"Good work, men, good work," Braska said. "All right, let's take a break."

The men broke the Circle.

"Ooowee!" said Zyro, the balding Lifter with the bad teeth. "That was a tough one!"

The others nodded.

"Yes, it seems the old girl isn't going to give up without a fight," Braska said. "There must be a bit of bonding spell still left in her stones, eh? Even after all these centuries. But we've broken through, and that's the important thing. We'll rest a minute and then nudge the next stone over – one nudge at a time, till they're all loosened up. That's how we'll do it."

"Why don't we just take off the bulb now, since it's loose?" asked Larag, the youngest of the Lifters.

He had a bushy red mustache and wore earrings in his eyebrows, and some said he wasn't a natural born Lifter at all, but a pirate who acquired his Talent from enchanted jewels he'd found in a shaman's hut while plundering a village on a remote island. The other Lifters didn't seem to like him much, but respected his abilities.

"I agree with Larag," said Taffet, the one with the slicked back hair that smelled like a candy store. He always agreed with Larag.

Cyrin and Xith looked at each other but said nothing. They seldom did.

"This isn't some tourist temple we've moved a hundred times before," Braska said condescendingly. "A tomb like this, well, it's like an old woman. She's cantankerous and set in her ways. We've got to loosen up her limbs a bit before she'll agree to go gallivanting around."

"Humph," Larag said. "I think we're the ones acting like old women. A job is a job. Get on with it, I say."

"Yeah," Taffet said.

"And I make those decisions in this Guild," Braska said sharply.

Larag nodded curtly, pressing his lips into a thin line, keeping his smart remarks penned up in his mouth. He'd been chastised too many times before and couldn't afford more demerits.

Braska turned to the others. "Very well then. If there are no other objections, we'll move on to the next stone."

By late afternoon every piece of the tomb had been nudged just a little, the bonding spell thoroughly broken. And then, as the late afternoon sun retreated into the treetops, it was time to remove the first stone. The men joined hands, once again focusing on the spiked bulb, and slowly it rose into the air, hovered a moment, then drifted sideways and gracefully settled to earth.

"Well done, men," Braska said, pulling his hands from the Circle. They were clammy with sweat.

"Phew," Zyro said.

Braska started forward. "Come on, let's have a look at it."

The Lifters walked across the lawn and gathered around the bulb. Bommy joined them, eager to see the ancient artifact up close.

It was sort of a letdown.

From a distance the bulb appeared perfectly smooth, the spike sharp enough to shred clouds, but up close it was a different story – the surface of the stone was covered with dimples, drummed into it by ten thousand years worth of raindrops, and the spike was as dull as an unsharpened pencil.

"It's not in real good shape, is it?" Bommy said, a trifle disappointed, as he pushed his thumb against the tip of the spike.

Zyro snorted. "Better shape than WE'LL be in, ten thousand years from now."

The other men nodded.

"Is it real heavy?" Bommy asked.

"Very," Larag said.

"Gee, if it's this tough to move one piece, it'll take forever to move the whole tomb, won't it?"

"Nonsense," Braska said. "Now that we've got the old gal loosened up it will go quite swiftly, I'm sure."

"But we won't be doing any more today," Bommy's dad said, nodding at the darkening sky.

Heavy Lifting was rarely done at night. Other magics ruled the darkness, magics that interfered with levitation.

"Yes, yes," Braska said. "We've done well for our first day. Let's call it quits before the blackwinds come."

* * *

As Bommy and his dad rode home in the Chavy, Bommy watched Hokmasifu recede in the side-view mirror. It looked more forlorn than ever in the twilight, its classic silhouette changed now, forever.

"Dad, how come the Liosians want Hokmasifu so bad?" he asked.

"They don't have any tombs or temples of their own any more," his dad said. "Not big ones like this. They need Hokmasifu as a replacement."

"What happened to their tombs?"

"They were blown up in a war."

"Blown up? Cool!"

His dad scowled at him. "There's nothing cool about war, Bommy."

"Aw, I didn't mean cool, exactly, I meant it's interesting."

"It's a part of history, that's for sure. Sooner or later every world has a war."

"So what was the war about? The one on Lios?"

"I have no idea. But the monuments were in the battle zone and they were accidentally destroyed. Armies don't much care what gets in the way when they're out to annihilate each other."

"So why don't they just rebuild them?"

His dad smiled. "I asked the Council the same question at the public hearing. Apparently there's nothing left to rebuild. The tombs were reduced to dust in the explosion."

"Wow. That must've been some weapon to cause that kind of explosion."

His dad's smile went away. "Must've been."

"Good thing we've always used battle boulders in our wars, huh? They don't cause so much damage."

"I suppose. But the best way to settle disagreements is with words, not weapons."

"Oh. ... So how come the Liosians don't build new tombs from scratch and make them look like the old ones that got blown up? Wouldn't that be easier?"

"The Liosians want something genuine, not a copy. At least that's what they told the Council."

"But Hokmasifu isn't a Liosian tomb. Its ours. It doesn't belong there."

His dad shrugged. "I guess they don't care where it comes from, as long as it's old."

"And they don't mind spending all that money to get it?"

"The Liosians have lots of money."

"So if they'd rather have the tomb than the money, how come we'd rather have the money than the tomb? I mean, if it's so valuable to them, why isn't it valuable to us?"

Bommy's dad looked at him sadly. "I wish you were on the Council."

Bommy laughed. "Me? Aw c'mon, Dad, I don't know anything about politics and government and all that stuff. I'm just a kid."

"But you've got common sense." He reached over and rubbed Bommy's head. "Believe it or not, somewhere in that silly noggin you've got common sense, more than all those politicians put together."

* * *

On Monday, Bommy went back to school. Unfortunately, he left his common sense at home.

The morning was uneventful, but then came recess, and that's when the trouble began. Bommy and Elyno were sitting under the buobab tree eating their lunch. Bommy had peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and a chocolate bar. Elyno ate pears and figs. They talked about the relative merits of various computer games. A cool breeze stirred the tree leaves, which rustled and whispered to themselves, enjoying their own private conversation. A few of the leaves fell to earth, then hopped along the ground to the trunk of the tree and crawled back up to their limbs. Bommy and Elyno watched them for awhile, and Bommy Lifted some of them and made them do a dance, till the tree got annoyed and spit acorns at him.

Grag, Hoshua, Jayk and Berot were on the basketball court, fencing with their blunt-tipped swords, making a frightful racket, whopping and hollering and clack-clack-clacking.

Grag and Jayk were the sons of SwordMasters – the clan that protected the world from vampires with weapons made of magical steel (the only thing that could kill the Undead). Since there were no vampires left in the modern world (and hadn't been for over a century), SwordMasters spent most of their time competing in tournaments, and Jayk had already won several blue ribbons at county and state fairs. Hoshua wasn't the son of a SwordMaster and had little talent for fencing, but he liked to hit things and make noise, and he was bigger than the other boys, so they let him play too.

Amalissa was on the other side of the playground, sitting by the rose bushes eating little cucumber sandwiches and sipping tea she poured out of a ThermalBottle into a china cup. In between bites and sips she gazed at Jayk and wrote in her poetry book – though she spent more time rummaging around in her pencil box (trying to choose between all the quills and ballpoints and fountain pens and felt markers) than actually writing.

When lunch was over, Bommy and Elyno headed back toward the schoolhouse. Amalissa was ahead of them on the sidewalk, also heading back. The fencers were still hacking and clacking away on the court. As Amalissa passed them, Jayk whipped around and yelled:

"Hey Bommy Blobby! This is how you lift a girl's skirt!"

He stuck the tip of his sword underneath Amalissa's dress – a green one today, with little ladybugs on it – and flipped it up a good foot, and Amalissa shrieked and spun around and dropped her pencil box. Pens flew everywhere. Jayk and his friends doubled over laughing.

Bommy took a step toward them. Elyno grabbed his arm.

"Bommy, don't," she said.

He shrugged her off and stomped over to Jayk.

"Leave her alone!" he snarled.

The boys straightened up, their laughter subsiding to snickers.

"What are you so up about?" Jayk said. "You played with her skirt the other day. Now it's our turn."

"Yeah, Giffitt," Hoshua grumbled. "You think you're better than us or something?"

He had that glint in his eye, like Bommy was an insect that had just landed on his desk.

"I only Lifted it an inch or two, not a whole foot," Bommy said to Jayk. "What you did was rude."

Berot put a horrified look on his face. "Oooh! What we did was ruuuuude!"

"You would've done it too," Grag said, "if you'd had the guts."

"It wasn't guts he lacked," Jayk said. "It was skill. He couldn't Lift a flea off a dead dog's ass."

The boys roared. Bommy balled up his fists, struggling to control his temper. He'd gotten himself in enough trouble lately and didn't need any more. Besides, he was outnumbered. Best to keep his cool and walk away.

And that's just what he tried to do. But Amalissa was blocking the sidewalk in front of him, bending over to pick up her pens, and as he tried to go around her Jayk lunged forward and poked her in the rear with his sword. Maybe the blow was aimed at Bommy and missed, or maybe Jayk found his true mark. In any event, Amalissa shrieked again, louder this time, and sputtered indignantly at Jayk, yet there was a strange twinkle in her eyes – like she really didn't mind it that much after all.

Bommy stepped between them and grabbed Jayk's wrist.

"Get away from her," he growled.

Jayk yanked his arm free and assumed a fencing stance, one arm raised in the air behind him, his sword leveled at Bommy, the tip describing a small circle in the air an inch from Bommy's nose.

"Fight!" Grag cheered. "They're gonna fight!"

"Fight! Fight!" the other boys chanted.

"Give him a sword," Jayk demanded. "Somebody give him a sword."

He was enjoying this immensely, like it was some sort of game. Bommy didn't want to play. But he couldn't turn tail and run. Not with Amalissa watching.

"I said give him a sword," Jayk repeated, his voice taking on a harder edge.

He glared at Grag, who glared at Hoshua, who looked at his own sword, not sure he wanted to part with it.

"Give it to him!" Jayk hissed.

Hoshua shrugged and tossed the sword to the ground at Bommy's feet.

"Pick it up, knave," Jayk said.

Bommy shook his head.

Jayk poked his sword into Bommy's gut. It hurt, but Bommy refused to wince.

"I said pick it up," Jayk said.

"No, I've got better things to do."

With a flick of his wrist Jayk brought up his sword and slapped the flat of the blade across Bommy's cheek.

"Ow!" Bommy said.

"Pick it up!"

"No."

Another slap.

"Ow!"

Bommy snatched up the sword.

It was huge, and heavy as a sledge hammer, its handle so thick Bommy could barely grip it.

"En guard!" Jayk cried, resuming his silly fencing stance.

Bommy raised the sword clumsily, using both hands. Jayk gave him a disgusted look.

"What do you think you're doing, bunting in a baseball game? That isn't a bat, you dumbduck."

The boys laughed. Bommy's face reddened.

"Leave him alone!" Elyno said.

Jayk turned to her, an ugly leer on his face. "Stay out of this, Uglyo."

"Don't call her that," Bommy said.

Jayk turned to him. "Who you talking about? Old Uglyo here?"

"Uglyo!" Hoshua said with glee. "Hey, that's funny. Uglyo! Ha ha!"

Elyno stiffened, but her face betrayed no emotion. She wouldn't give them the satisfaction.

"Don't call her that," Bommy repeated, his voice a low growl.

"My, my," Jayk said. "Look at the gallant hero here, sticking up for old Ug..."

Bommy chopped at Jayk with his sword, bringing it down like an axe, but Jayk dodged the blow easily and swung his own sword under Bommy's outstretched arms, whacking him in the ribs. Bommy yelped with pain and his sword fell from his hand. Jayk pirouetted like a ballet dancer – a totally unnecessary maneuver, considering his opponent – then ducked down and swept his sword along the ground, trying to knock Bommy's feet out from under him. Bommy jumped to avoid the blade, landed off balance and fell on his ass. Jayk pounced on him, planting one foot on Bommy's chest, sticking the tip of his blade against Bommy's throat.

"Surrender, you corpulent beast," Jayk said.

"Up yours," Bommy panted.

Scowling, Jayk ground his boot into Bommy's chest.

"I said surrender, you foul fiend, or I shall run you through!"

"Run him through!" the other boys chanted. "Run him through!"

Bommy knew Jayk couldn't run him through – not with a blunted sword – but he could poke him real hard and it would hurt like blazes. He couldn't surrender, though. Not in front of Amalissa.

"Shove it," he replied.

"Leave him alone," Elyno said. "Or I'll tell Mister Cheeth!"

Jayk looked up, sneering. "Be silent, you dried up bag of prunes."

Hoshua studied her a second, a dim light flicking on inside his dullard brain. A slow grin spread across his face.

"Hah!" he said. "A bag of prunes. She _does_ look like that, don't she? An old bag of prunes! Ha ha!"

"Hey Uglyo," Grag said, "can I have some prunes?"

"Pruuunes," Berot said. "Gimme a bag of pruuunes, Uglyooo!"

Elyno shut her eyes as the words battered her like a tidal wave, washing away the underpinnings of her self-respect. The boys howled with laughter. Amalissa put a hand up to her mouth, trying to hold it in, but a little giggle peeped out.

And that hurt most of all.

Elyno stared at her. Tears welled up in her eyes. She turned and ran away, choking back a sob.

And that's when Bommy lost it.

Totally.

He wasn't sure what happened next, or how he managed to do it, but suddenly Jayk rocketed ten feet into the air and his sword flew out of his hand and spun around and whacked him in the butt, again and again and again, and Jayk yelped and wailed like crazy and waved his arms and legs like windmills and the other boys stood there gaping up at him like he was a balloon puppet in a holiday parade.

And none of them were laughing now.

Mister Cheeth came storming out the back door of the schoolhouse with a half-finished sandwich still clutched in his hands.

"Bommy Giffitt!" he roared. "What in heaven's name do you think you're doing?"

"Nothing, sir," Bommy said, as a whimpering Jayk slowly settled back to earth.

FIVE

This time, Bommy had company.

Jayk sat on the far side of the deserted classroom, writing two essays – "How a Gentleman Should Treat a Young Lady" and "The Proper Use of Swords" – while Bommy sat on the near side, penning a treatise on "The Appropriate Uses of Levitation."

They had been in the classroom for nearly an hour, neither one saying a word; the only sounds were the hiss of the sands pouring through the timeglasses, the scratch-scratch of their pens on their tablets, the shouts of kids on the playground outside wafting in through the open windows, and the occasional swish-swish as Mister Cheeth turned the pages in his book.

It was the same book he'd been reading the other afternoon, "The Economic Factors Contributing to the Decline of the Paddleboat Industry in Eastern Celton Circa Y-2-T." How could he stand it? It wasn't like he _had_ to read it. School was over for the day, and teachers could read whatever they wanted to after-hours – a mystery or a sci-fi novel or a celebrity tell-all bio. Was it possible Mister Cheeth actually _wanted_ to read such a dreary thing, just for fun? The thought made Bommy shiver.

As the first hour dragged to a close, Jayk's timeglass expired and he walked up to the front of the room and handed his essays to Mister Cheeth, then bolted for the door, casting a surly look at Bommy on his way out. Mister Cheeth read over Jayk's handiwork, wincing now and then, then put the essays in his desk and went back to his book.

Bommy kept writing, saying the same things on page four that he'd said on page three – which were the same things he'd said on page two and page one, only he kept changing the words around. At last his timeglass ran out too. Mister Cheeth glanced at it and then set down his book and began writing something on a piece of paper. Bommy came up to his desk and placed his essay on the blotter. Mister Cheeth looked up, nodded, and kept writing. Bommy turned to leave.

"Just a minute," Mister Cheeth said.

Bommy stopped. Mister Cheeth jotted down a few more words, then handed the note to Bommy.

"Take this home to your father," he said.

Bommy read the note. His eyes bugged out.

Mister Giffitt,

This is to advise you that there has been another incident at the school. During a playground altercation, Bommy levitated one of his classmates approximately ten feet into the air, and struck him on the posterior with the blunt side of a practice sword, not once but several times. Although the other student was not seriously injured, and must assume some responsibility for precipitating this fracas, we simply cannot condone this kind of behavior from your son. Bommy has become a disruptive influence on the other students, and has been repeatedly warned and disciplined, to no avail. Thus I am requesting that you keep him at home until further notice. If and when you are satisfied that he is prepared to return and conduct himself in an appropriate, non-magical and gentlemanly manner, then we shall reevaluate his standing...

Bommy grinned. "No more school? All right!"

"I doubt your father will share your sentiments," Mister Cheeth said coldly. "This will put quite a burden on him, young man."

"Huh?"

"You didn't finish reading the note, did you Bommy?"

"Uh ... no."

"Do so now, please."

Bommy did. The note mentioned a lesson plan to be followed at home, and a testing schedule, and a reading list ... including, "The Economic Factors Contributing to the Decline of the Paddleboat Industry in Eastern Celton Circa Y-2-T."

Bommy gulped.

"Cripers, how am I gonna find time to read all this stuff?"

"I'm sure your father will find the time for you. Now that you have no classmates to distract you, your concentration is bound to improve."

"Aw gee."

"If you'll wait a moment, I'll get you what you need."

Mister Cheeth got up and left the room. He returned a few minutes later with a stack of textbooks.

"Hold out your arms."

Bommy did. The books settled into them. They weighed a ton.

"Thanks," Bommy said glumly.

Mister Cheeth smiled.

"Pleasant reading, Mister Giffitt."

* * *

When Bommy got home his dad took one look at the clock on the wall – it was five thirty – and the books in Bommy's arms and the look on his face and knew something bad had happened.

Bommy set the books on the coffee table and plopped down on the sofa and stared at the TV.

"Who's winning?" he said.

His dad reached for the remote and turned off the set.

"Never mind who's winning. What happened at school?"

"Oh, you know..."

"None of that 'you know' stuff. Out with it."

"It wasn't my fault, dad. I..."

"Bommy, I want no lies, no spin, no stories. Just the truth. Quick and simple. Right now."

Bommy dug into his pocket and pulled out the note from Mister Cheeth and handed it to his dad, then stared at the darkened TV screen, studying his own grim-faced reflection.

When his dad finished reading the note he let out a long, tired sigh.

"What in Quad's Name am I going to do with you?"

Bommy shrugged. "I dunno."

"As if I didn't have enough problems at the Templex. Now I've got you to contend with."

"I'm sorry."

"You're always sorry. The time to feel bad about doing something is before you do it, not after."

"But Jayk had it coming, dad. He was picking on Amalissa. And Elyno. He was real rude. I was just trying to defend their honors."

"Honor."

"I was trying to defend their honor."

"You're a student, not a knight in shining armor. If there's a problem on the playground, you should tell your teacher, not take matters into your own hands."

"Ah, gee, dad, if you'd been there you'd understand. Jayk needed someone to take him down a peg or two."

His dad leaned forward and his voice got lower.

"I have been there, Bommy. I was a kid once too, you know."

Somehow Bommy couldn't imagine his dad ever being a kid.

"There have always been schoolyard bullies," his dad said, "and always will be. You should never sink to their level. That only proves you're a ruffian like them. If you walk away you show you're above all that. You prove you're the better man."

Bommy grinned.

"Did I say something funny?" his dad said.

"No sir."

"Why did you smile like that?"

"I was just thinking about Jayk. I sure put him above all that – ten feet over the playground and howling like a baby. _He_ sure wasn't acting like a man then."

One look at his dad's face told Bommy he'd said the wrong thing.

"All right, Bommy," he said gravely, "if that's your attitude, you can just march right up to your room and tackle those books right now."

"But I'm hungry, dad."

"Right now. I've reached the end of my rope with you."

"But..."

"Right now."

"Yes sir."

* * *

The textbook was as dry as desert sands and Bommy was marooned in its pages, slogging through the word-dunes, hoping and praying he'd find an oasis before his mind dried up entirely – a picture, a map, a chart, anything to relief the trackless waste of words. But there was no relief in sight.

It was morning and he was at the Templex, sitting on the grass under the blazing sun, trying to study. He'd read an entire chapter the night before in his room, and was nearly through a second one now, yet there was so much more to go. The schedule was impossible. Inhuman. Ghastly. Mister Cheeth must be a vampire or a ghoul or a demon or a beast-thing or something. Only monster spawn could devise such a devious lesson plan.

Bommy looked enviously at the Lifters nearby, working in the cool shade of Hokmasifu. It must be nice to have a job, to master a skill and go out and _do_ it, not just read about things and study and practice all the time. Lifters got paid well too, and had fans. No one paid you to study; no one watched you read a book and cheered when you finished a chapter.

He scanned the crowd. It was growing bigger all the time. Word had spread that the old landmark was coming down and everyone wanted to witness the spectacle. Barricades had even been set up, manned by constables, to keep the crowd from getting too close. There must be over two hundred tourists standing there, and at least a dozen reporters – including camera crews from Celton Network News and even Univideo – and protestors too, young men with beards and women with braids, brandishing picket signs demanding the tomb be saved. At first their chanting bothered the Lifters, so the constables ordered them to "chant quietly." Now they were whispering their defiant slogans and seemed to be running out of steam.

Bommy was running out of steam too. The dreary details of the keelboat hull modification regulation debates in the Maritime Council Hearings of 448-d were frying his brain cells. He could feel them dying with every word he read. He needed a break.

He set down the book and strolled over to Hokmasifu, keeping behind the crowd so his dad wouldn't see him.

"How in blazes do they think they're going to move it all the way to Lios?" said one tourist, a large, orange skinned man from Mercatroia.

"I'm sure I don't know," said his companion, a pretty, ginger-skinned woman with beads dangling from her hair.

Bommy paused to eavesdrop.

"I mean, look at the size of some of those stones," the man said. "They're too big to fit inside a space freighter, not unless they cut them up, and I can't imagine they'd want to do that, not with something this historic. It would be tantamount to vandalism."

"It's certainly a thorny problem, but I'm sure they'll figure it out."

"I don't see how. Even if they do cut up the pieces, freighters can't land in a place like this." He waved at his surroundings. "The rocket blast would fry the grass."

"Perhaps they'll take them to the Army air base and load them on the freighters there."

"And how will they get them to the air base?"

"Won't the Lifters just fly them there?"

"You mean levitate them?"

"Sure."

The man shook his head. "A long Lift like that over populated areas? Too dangerous."

"But they did it in the old days, when they flew the stones in here from the quarries."

"That wasn't that far away, and they didn't have a big city full of people to fly over back then."

"Maybe they'll use a truck."

"They can't do that either." The man held up his crumpled guidebook. "Says right in here that heavy machinery doesn't work for long in the Templex. The engines get over-spelled, or something like that. Remember the trouble our tour bus had, and that was just hauling people, not heavy stones. Even helicopters steer clear of the air space. Says so right here."

"I'm sure I don't know, dear."

Bommy tugged on the sleeve of the man's pea-green jerkin. The man looked down at him.

"I know how they'll do it," Bommy said.

The man smiled. "Do you now?"

"Yes sir. They're going to bring in a mega-hauler with synchronized multi-engines, the kind they use to dig crystal mines in the Magelands. When one engine loses power, the next one takes over. It costs seventy five thousand dollars, just to rent one, and they're really cool. Then they'll haul the pieces out to the army base and load them in a great big cargo net, like the kind the Bymokas use to catch crabwhales in the Gargentine."

"Will they now? And how will they get the pieces inside freighters without cutting them up?"

Bommy grinned. "I'll tell you for a quarter."

The man frowned. "Now listen kid..."

The woman giggled. "Oh, come on, Egroga, give the boy a quarter. He's earned it already."

Smiling ruefully, the man reached into his wallet and took out a plastic AllCoin, the kind most tourists carried, and handed it to Bommy. (It was worth more than a quarter – about 34 cents in Celtonic money – but Bommy saw no reason to tell the man that unless he asked.)

"OK," Bommy said as he shoved the coin into his pocket, "the way they're gonna do it is, they'll string the net between _three_ freighters, under an insulated Zyrofoam tarpaulin, and then all the freighters will take off together, kind of like the asteroid miners work their trawlers in the Spekkels Belt."

"My," the woman said, "isn't that interesting, Egroga?"

"I suppose," the man said skeptically. "And how do you know so much about it, boy? None of those details were in the articles I read."

(True enough. In fact, no one had actually worked out the details yet – but Bommy figured they'd do it just the way he said, if they were smart.)

"Oh, my dad's one of the Lifters," he said. "He's practically in charge of the whole operation."

"My, that must be interesting work," the woman said.

"Oh it is," Bommy said. "My dad's done all kinds of neat things. Wanna hear about them?"

"Why yes, I..."

"Gimme another quarter."

"Forget it, Sharma," the man said sternly. "If you shell out money to every fast talking 'urch' we won't have any left to buy souvenirs." He turned to Bommy. "Peddle your tall tales elsewhere, kiddo."

Bommy shrugged. "Suit yourself."

He moved on to fresh pickings, selling his "information" three more times, till he'd earned enough for a candy bar or two. He was near the front of the barricade by then and, fearing his dad might spot him, retreated back to his textbooks on the green.

Around two o'clock the Lifters suddenly stopped working and gathered around the stone they'd just finished moving. It was roughly the size and shape of a freight elevator and made of pinkish marble. The back side had a hole in it, revealing a hollow place inside. The Lifters peered into the hole with puzzled looks on their faces, then they all trooped over to the tomb itself and gazed up at the spot where the stone had come from, then returned to the stone and stared at it some more.

Bommy ran over to his dad.

"What is it, Dad? Did something break?"

"See for yourself," he said, his voice tinged with excitement. "Only don't go inside."

Bommy walked over to the hole and looked in.

"Jeepers!"

There were two people inside, wrapped in cloth from head to toe like giant bandaged thumbs, sitting in ivory chairs that looked very uncomfortable. Bommy had seen pictures of people like that in books.

"Mummies!" he cried.

"That's right, Bommy," his dad said.

"Cool! Hey, who do you think it is? Could it be the king and queen?"

"Could be," his dad said.

"Wow!"

Braska Kushex scowled at them. "Pah. There's nothing 'cool' or 'wow' about it. We don't have time for this kind of delay."

Larag joined them. "Let's press on then," he said impatiently.

"We can't," Bommy's dad said. "Not till the archaeologists have had a look."

Larag snorted. "A look at what? It's a tomb. It's got dead people inside. Duhhh. What a surprise. They've had thousands of years to look at them."

"But they never _have_ looked at them," his dad said. "They didn't know they were in there. Everyone assumed the mummies were stolen centuries ago, because they never found them. Now we know they were in there all along, only the burial chamber was cleverly hidden."

"It's nothing to do with us," Larag retorted.

"It's everything to do with us. There could be more hidden chambers inside, full of Quad knows what – artifacts, jewels, more mummies, who knows?"

"Who cares?"

"They could be damaged if they're handled wrong. This is a job for archaeologists."

"I say it's a job for us and we'd best be getting on with it."

"You're not in charge."

Braska held up a hand.

"For once I agree with Dalan," he said reluctantly. "The Liosians might pay extra for mummies, and any other knickknacks we find, but only if they're in good condition. The Council will want to tread carefully here. Remember that incident during the exhibition at the zoo? The sparrow-dactyl eggs? We don't want to repeat that unpleasantness."

Larag glowered at Braska for a second, then nodded. "As you say."

Braska turned to Bommy's dad. "We should contact Mister Cheeth at the school and ask him to come out here and examine the mummies. He can advise us on the best way to proceed."

"That's a good idea."

"Aw gee!" Bommy said.

His dad looked at him. "What did you say?"

"Nothing," Bommy mumbled and walked away, rolling his eyes.

As he headed toward one of the concession stands, he noticed a tall, dark haired man lurking at the edge of the crowd. He was dressed in funny robes and had a weird beard – maroon in color and twisted into a dozen strands that resembled drill bits – but that wasn't what attracted Bommy's attention. It was the look in his eyes. He was staring intently – not at Hokmasifu or the Lifters or the TV crews or the protesters – but straight at Bommy. And the odd smile on his face sent a shiver up Bommy's spine.

SIX

Mister Cheeth was a magician. Had to be.

He couldn't turn lead into gold or make a frog into a prince, but he had the uncanny ability to take anything – no matter how exciting or amazing or thrilling – and transform it into absolute, total, one hundred percent dull.

The mummies were a perfect example. Mister Cheeth was inside the stone vault examining them, a big smile lighting up his normally dour face, his eyes burning with intensity, his nostrils flaring with exhilaration, yet even at a moment like this, the words coming out of his mouth were a steady drone of mind-numbing humdrummy mush.

"Notice the texture of the linen," he said. "The gray cotton-twill threads in rows of twenty, cross-thatched with perpendicular brownish threads of a hemp-like material in rows of thirty. This pattern is unique to the loom masters of Leehang Province, which is fascinating because up till now everyone assumed that imported linens were unknown during the Cammaleila Period. This would seem to indicate that the papyrus boats from this era, thought to be merely fishing vessels, could indeed embark on lengthy voyages, which could explain the disparate pottery shards found in the Chango Digs, which some have attributed to extraterrestrial influences. I think we can now debunk that as pure poppycock."

Bommy looked at the Lifters. They were nodding at Mister Cheeth as if they understood what he was saying, but the vacant glaze in their eyes gave them away.

"That's all very fascinating, Mister Cheeth," Braska said when the teacher mercifully paused to take a breath, "but would you kindly postpone the rest of the lecture till a later date and get on with the business at hand?"

Mister Cheeth blinked at him. "The business at hand? What business is that?"

"The inspection, sir. Don't tell me you've forgotten why you're here."

Mister Cheeth was supposed to climb up the hastily erected scaffolding on the side of Hokmasifu and inspect each stone as the Lifters raised it, checking for hidden compartments. If more mummies or artifacts were found, he would supervise their removal to ensure they weren't damaged – at least that's what Braska had asked him to do a half hour ago, but Mister Cheeth seemed in no hurry to leave the vault.

"Forgive me, Mister Kushex," he said. "I know you're pressed for time, but a truly significant archaeological find like this is so rare these days. I'm afraid I got a bit carried away."

"Quite."

Mister Cheeth climbed out of the vault and turned toward the looming hulk of Hokmasifu.

"Do you really think there may be more mummies in the tomb?"

"I sincerely hope not, but if there are, we certainly don't want them damaged. The Liosians only pay top dollar for top quality. Every little flaw could cost us thousands."

Mister Cheeth scowled. "Liosians, you say? Top dollar? Surely you're not suggesting the mummies will be sold."

"Of course they'll be sold. What good are they to us?"

"My dear sir, their historic value alone is so obvious I don't see any point in mentioning it. In fact, their presence here casts significant doubts on the entire dismantling operation. In my opinion, the tomb is far too important to be shipped off to Lios. The fact that it is occupied means we have an entirely new avenue of inquiry that has not previously been explored."

Braska shook his head. "I'm afraid not, sir. You scholars have had ample time to explore your avenues – thousands of years, in fact."

"Pah. Archaeology was in its infancy when..."

"The fact remains, the tomb has been sold. It is a done deal. If we were to renege on the agreement now, the Liosians would be extremely displeased."

"I couldn't care less if the Liosians are displeased or not," Mister Cheeth said acidly. "The discovery of occupants in the tomb totally..."

"Occupants? You make it sound like we're demolishing an old house with squatters trapped inside. These are dead bodies."

"Dead royalty, sir. Royalty. Which means they are due the utmost respect."

"I'll bow and curtsy later," Braska said drily. "The matter is settled."

"It is not settled. Allow me to draw you an analogy, if I may."

"Is there any way to stop you?"

"Please bear with me. Suppose you possessed an abandoned gold mine, presumably tapped out, and then a vein of conjure crystals or a pool of mage oil was discovered within it. Would you blithely go ahead and..."

"You're overlooking an important fact, Mister Cheeth. The Liosians nearly destroyed their own world, and over something a lot less important than a fifty million dollar investment. They are a very militant civilization. I would not wish to anger them."

"That is no concern of mine."

"It is a concern of the Council, and they have decided the matter."

"They don't know about the mummies. I think it's important they be informed before any more work is done."

"There isn't time for that," Braska said. He waved a hand at the sky. "The witching weather will be here in a fortnight, and levitation becomes infinitely more difficult then. We have to be done with this as soon as possible."

Mister Cheeth spun around and marched away from the tomb.

"Enough of this," he said, raising his voice so loud that some nearby tourists turned and gawked at him. "I'm going to see the Council. They shall make this decision, not you. And if work on the dismantling proceeds in my absence, and any artifacts are damaged, I shall hold you personally responsible."

Braska put his hands on his hips and glared at the teacher until he was out of sight, then turned to the other Lifters.

"Pompous ass," he said. "He's got enough hot air in him to lift the GoodTire blimp."

"What do we do now?" Zyro said uneasily.

Braska rubbed his chin. "Cheeth is well thought of by some members of the Council – he taught their kids. If he gets their ear, he might put fool notions into their heads. We'd better tag along. If we're there to talk sense, the Council won't make some silly decision they'll regret later."

Larag snorted. "To hell with the Council. Let them jibber jabber all they want. Let's get back to work and to blazes with them."

"I agree," Taffet said.

"No," Braska said. "We can't risk angering the Council. Our best move is to go to City Hall and keep an eye on Cheeth. Come on."

Larag rolled his eyes. "Another chance to listen to Cheeth blather."

The other Lifters headed toward the parking lot. Bommy's dad stood there a moment, then started after them, with Bommy trotting alongside, tugging at his sleeve.

"Are you going too Dad?"

His dad nodded. "Yes, I think I'd better. Mister Cheeth could use some moral support."

"Do I have to go?"

His dad looked down at him.

"Why? What else do you have to do?"

"I want to stay here and look at the mummies."

"You've already looked at the mummies."

"But not up close. I couldn't get near 'em with all you grownups in the way."

"I don't want you in the vault. Those mummies are very delicate."

"I wouldn't touch 'em, honest. I just want to see them up close."

"No, I'd rather have you with me."

"But I'm supposed to be studying and learning stuff, remember? Mummies are educational."

"Since when do you want to study?"

"It beats sitting around City Hall listening to Mister Cheeth and those old fogies on the Council talk and talk and talk."

"Won't that be educational too?" his dad said with a smile. "You'll get to see our government in action."

"I'll be bored stiff."

"Boredom is part of life, Bommy. The sooner you get used to it, the better off you'll be."

"But when I'm bored my mind wanders, and when my mind wanders sometimes I start Lifting things."

Alarm flashed in his dad's eyes. "Oh no. You mustn't do any Lifting in the Council chambers!"

"Oh, I wouldn't _mean_ to do it. But it might happen by accident. And I sure would hate to disrupt an important meeting by making a gavel fly off a table or papers dance around a desk or something like that."

His dad sighed. "OK. You win. You can stay here."

"All right!"

"But don't touch the mummies."

"No sir."

His dad glanced at the constables. "I suppose you can't get into too much mischief with all the guards around."

Bommy looked toward the barricades. Suddenly he remembered the man with the weird beard he'd spotted earlier. He scanned all the faces in the crowd, but the man was nowhere to be found. He smiled.

"I'll be OK, dad" he said. "Don't worry about a thing."

* * *

As his dad's car drove out of the lot, Bommy walked over to the vault and stepped through the jagged opening. It was quiet inside, shadowy and cool, the air thick with the smell of old spice – kind of like your fridge smells when you leave leftover take-out chicken in there too long.

Bommy crept up to the mummies, widening his eyes to see in the dim light. They were sitting in big chunky chairs made from ivory, with hieroglyphics carved all over them, even on the seat. His chair at school looked comfy by comparison.

He bent down over the first mummy, the one closest to the opening, and peered at its face. He could see its eyes through a gap in the bandages. The lids were halfway open, the eyeballs glassy and sunken.

Bommy leaned closer, scrunching his nose against the smell of moldy linen, and gazed deeply into the eyes. What sights had they seen so many centuries ago? Things no living person could even imagine. What memories lay dormant inside the long-dead brain? Or had the embalmers removed the brain? Mister Cheeth had explained the embalming practices of ancient Celton in one of his lectures, but Bommy wasn't paying attention that day. Now he wished he had.

One thing he did remember was the _reason_ they embalmed the dead. (That was in another lecture, one Bommy actually listened to.) It seems the ancient Celtonites believed the dead would use their earthly bodies in the Hereafter, so they had to be well preserved – especially the king and queen, because once they woke up in Paradise they were supposed to revive the sleeping souls of all the spirits and lead them back to the world. When they got here they would find nothing but wickedness and corruption, and the Army of the Dead would destroy the living in a single night so the world could start over from scratch.

Fortunately, none of that was supposed to happen till the kings and queens reached Paradise in the first place, and that would take eternity, or a good portion of it, so mankind still had time to clean up its act.

Bommy took a step back and studied the mummy's body – a woman, judging by the shape. The queen herself? She looked pretty frail, incapable of raising herself, let alone an army, especially after sleeping in a hard chair for ten thousand years.

He bent down and peered at her hands. The bandages had decayed a bit and the fingers were showing through – blackened and shriveled flesh adorned with bright, shiny rings that looked brand new. They must have cost a fortune. He crouched and looked at her feet. Withered toes protruded from the rotting linen, still bearing traces of pink nail polish.

Bommy shook his head. They sure had gone to a lot of trouble to doll up a corpse. The ancients must have been a little nutty, or else they had too much time on their hands. That's what happened when you didn't have any TV to watch or video games to play.

But it proved one thing: This was the queen. Mister Cheeth might not be absolutely convinced yet, but Bommy was. Who else but a queen would merit this kind of treatment?

The thought entranced him. He was standing before an actual monarch. Cammaleila herself. The greatest of them all.

He straightened up and gazed into her eyes once more. Did her soul still dwell behind those lifeless lids, drifting in the sea of time, dreaming her endless dream, biding her time till her Moon Boat docked in Paradise?

He thought he detected a glimmer in her eyes, one that hadn't been there before. Maybe a spark of life still burned inside her, like the ancients believed. Could she see him? Was she watching him, just as he was watching her?

Bommy shuddered and averted his gaze, focusing on her nose. He spied a little bit of nostril between the bandages. There was crumbly stuff in it.

Boogers?

Bommy blinked. Did kings and queens get boogers? He couldn't imagine a queen picking her nose – or blowing it, for that matter. Maybe they had servants do that for them. But if a king or queen were dead, would anyone bother cleaning out their nose? Not likely.

So it was altogether possible he was looking at boogers. Ten-thousand-year-old boogers.

Cool.

He leaned closer, trying to get a better look. If only he had a flashlight.

And suddenly that old feeling came over Bommy, that burning curiosity that kept getting him in trouble. He was an explorer at heart, an adventurer; he should be climbing mountains and hacking his way through jungles with a machete, like Bolumbo or Ponso DeLao. They never got in trouble, because they did their exploring in the middle of nowhere. He was an urban explorer. That was the only difference. It was the spirit of exploration that had compelled Bommy to lift Amalissa's skirt, the same spirit that now wanted to pull away the bandages over Cammaleila's nose, just a tad.

His dad had forbidden him to touch the mummies, but he never said anything about Lifting a bit of bandage, just a tweak or two. That wasn't touching, was it?

A little voice inside him said, "Don't do it, you idiot." His dad often told him that little voice was his conscience and he should listen to it more often, but the more he thought about not moving the bandage, the more he wanted to.

So he did. He squinted his eyes and imagined a little pinky finger gently tugging up on the linen. The bandage moved, just a tad. A little flake of something fell off and landed on the mummy's cheek. Bommy Lifted a little more and the bandage slid up about an inch, revealing the nose beneath. Bommy leaned forward, his own nose nearly touching hers. He stared hard.

Boogers, no doubt about it. Royal boogers. Ancient snot. You never heard about boogers in history class, never saw them on display in a museum. Did all mummies have boogers, or was this a first in the annals of archaeology?

Bommy crouched down a little to get a better view.

And that's when the mummy's nose fell off.

"Yipes!" he cried, jumping back.

The nose landed in the queen's lap, rolled across her knee and tumbled to the floor.

Bommy stood there for the longest time, just staring at it, his mouth wide open.

This meant trouble. Big trouble.

If only he had some glue he could stick the nose back on and make it good as new, but there was no way he could do that without touching it – he wasn't good enough to use levitation alone, not for something like this – and if he touched the nose with his fingers he'd be breaking his promise to his dad. And his fingerprints would be all over it.

Maybe no one would notice the nose was gone. It was dark in the vault and the mummy's face was in bad shape anyway. Could anyone swear she'd had a nose to begin with? It might have fallen off centuries ago. Or maybe vibrations knocked it off, all the tourists walking around outside with their big heavy feet. Or a gust of wind. Yes, that made sense.

"The wind did it," Bommy muttered, backing toward the opening in the vault. "The wind and big feet."

He was halfway out of the opening when everything unraveled.

The strip of linen over the queen's nose – the one Bommy had Lifted just a tad – suddenly broke apart, and all the bandages on her head loosened, and shifted, and sagged, and sunk, exposing the top of her head.

"Aw, cripes!"

Bommy stomped over to the mummy and grabbed hold of the loosened linen. He was breaking his promise, but now he had no choice. This was an emergency. He had to fix things, and quick, or he'd be in an awful jam. No way could he blame this on the wind or big feet.

He pulled and tugged on the bandages for a good ten minutes, trying to put them back into place, but they just got looser and lower and messier and finally he just gave up and started cussing. Why did these things always happen to him? What the heck was he going to do? How could he explain this to his dad?

Maybe he could say he saw a rat crawling all over the mummy's face and chewing on its nose. No, that was an out-and-out lie. He'd told too many lies lately. But maybe he'd heard a funny sound that _might_ have been a rat. Yes, that was it. And if he told his dad he'd heard a rat scurrying around in the vault somewhere, and his dad jumped to the conclusion that a rat had gnawed on the mummy's face, it certainly wasn't Bommy's fault, now was it?

Besides, if the ancient embalmers had wrapped the queen's head tighter he never would've seen the boogers in the first place and none of this would have happened.

Bommy smiled. Rats and embalmers. They were to blame. That was his story and he was sticking to it.

It was almost as if the queen heard his thoughts and disapproved of his alibi, for suddenly the bandages fell from her head in one big blob, draping themselves around her neck like a muffler, revealing her head in all its grisly glory.

The flesh was dark and sinewy, like a big piece of beef jerky, mottled with greenish yellow mold. The cheekbones were sunken, the teeth yellow and crooked. Her hair, such as it was, resembled a cap composed of matted cobwebs

"Man, that is one ugly lady," Bommy muttered.

The mummy nodded in agreement.

"Yaaaag!" Bommy screamed.

The mummy's neck bent forward, then snapped like a dried twig. Her head toppled off her body and landed on the floor with a loud crunch. Something flew off – An ear? An eye? Bommy shrieked and stumbled out of the vault, tripping and falling and getting up and running, running, running...

The constables gaped at him as he zoomed by. Tourists pointed at him and muttered. Bommy was so scared he didn't notice them, didn't notice anything, not even the man with the weird beard, standing next to one of the news crews, staring at him with that same odd smile on his face.

SEVEN

The Lifters returned around 4 p.m., smiling and chatting amiably – all but Bommy's dad, who trailed the others by a step or two and wore a sullen expression.

The men sauntered into the vault. A second later the shouting began. They rushed out, their smiles gone, their eyes full of anger, peppering the befuddled guards with questions.

Bommy was hunkered down in a niche behind the balustrade at the "bowling pin temple," watching the commotion from a reasonably safe distance, wishing he could flee to the familiar hiding places in his own neighborhood – but that was ten miles away and he didn't have enough money for bus fare. He was stuck at the Templex. Stranded. Good thing there were dark nooks and crannies all over the place, where a kid could lose himself if he had a mind to.

The Lifters fanned out across the green like a pack of ravenous vampyrehounds, calling his name in very unfriendly tones, getting closer and closer. Now was an excellent time to start getting lost.

Most people who toured the Templex took their time, strolling around in a leisurely manner, dawdling at each temple to read the inscriptions on the plaques and carve their initials into the keystones (when the guides weren't looking) and take bad pictures of their loved ones striking corny poses beside naughty pictographs and beastly statues. Bommy's "tour" was a little different – full of dashing and sprinting and ducking and crouching and creeping.

He narrowly escaped Zyro in the Red Pyramid, eluded Braska easily in the Arched Horn of Grendadala, then ran straight into Cyrin and Xit near the Cistern of Plechtka – but they winked at him and turned their backs and he slipped out again.

By then most of the Lifters were nowhere to be seen – apparently they had given up and gone home – but Bommy could still hear his dad's voice, booming across the greens.

"Bommy! ... Bommy Giffitt! ... Get your butt out here, and I mean right now! ... No use hiding, young man; you're just making things worse. ... Bommy, where are you? ... BOMMY!"

Bommy took refuge among the Heads in the training field. It wasn't a great hiding place, but most of the buildings in the Templex had gates, which the guards would soon be locking as closing time neared, and Bommy had no desire to get trapped inside a pitch black tomb at night. He felt naked out there in the open and glared at the slowpoke sun, wishing it would hurry up and set. He could sneak out of the Templex under cover of darkness, but that wouldn't come for another half hour or so.

"In trouble again, Bommy?" his Head said.

Bits of mud still clung to its face, a souvenir from its last encounter with Bommy.

"Shh!" Bommy hissed. "I'm hiding."

"Do tell. I never would have guessed."

"Pipe down, will you?"

"You're telling ME to pipe down? Your father's making enough noise to raise the dead."

Bommy shuddered. "Don't mention the dead. I've had enough of the dead to last a lifetime."

"And what's wrong with the dead, pray tell?"

"Shh!"

"Have you ever talked to a dead person?"

"Of course not."

"If you've never even talked to one, why don't you like them?"

"They fall apart too easy, that's why."

"Fall apart? You mean they decay?"

"I mean their darn heads come off, you dope!"

"And what's wrong with a disembodied head? I'm a disembodied Head."

"You're a butt-Head. Shut up, already!"

"You're so rude."

"I'm stressed out. Leave me alone."

"Oh? You weren't under stress earlier when you shoved my face into the dirt. What was your excuse then?"

"I did no such thing."

"Did too."

"Did not."

"Bommy Giffitt!" his dad roared. He sounded much closer now. "I know you can hear me, Bommy! Come out here now!"

"No thanks," Bommy whispered.

Footsteps came down the sidewalk. Bommy hugged the ground and shut his eyes tight. How he wished he could Lift himself into the sky, beyond his dad's grasp. But Lifting your own body was a special art requiring great skill – not to mention a Pilot's Guild card and flight plan approval from the Civil Air Authority – so Bommy stopped wishing and started praying, asking the Quad to send the spirit of forgiveness into his father's heart, preferably within the next few seconds.

The footsteps got closer ... closer ...

And then a second set of footsteps came down the sidewalk from the other direction.

"Excuse me, sir," his dad's voice said, "have you seen a boy about thirteen years old hereabouts?"

"No, I haven't," a man replied. He had a deep, booming voice, like a boulder rolling down a tunnel. "And I'm sure I would have noticed such a person."

"I see," said Bommy's dad. "Well, thanks anyway."

"You're quite welcome."

One set of footsteps faded. The other set got louder, then turned off the sidewalk and swished through the grass, coming toward the Heads. Who was it, his dad or the other man? Bommy was too scared to look.

The steps stopped.

"Ahem," a voice said.

Bommy opened his eyes and saw a pair of weird shoes, size fourteen or maybe even bigger, with bizarre swirls carved into the dark green leather. He raised his head and saw a cobalt-blue silk robe adorned with strange golden symbols. Big hands protruded from puffy sleeves and there were three rings on each finger, with blood-red gems mounted in ornate settings. Bommy's gaze rose even higher, beholding six black octagonal pendants on silver chains dangling from a thick neck, partially obscured by a spiky maroon beard.

"I believe the coast is clear now, Bommy," the man said, staring at him with piercing violet eyes.

Bommy sat up. "You know my name?"

"Your father has been trumpeting it to the heavens for several minutes now, like the horn of Gerabril. I should think everyone in the Templex knows it by now."

"How did you know I was over here?"

"You did not select an ideal place for concealment. In fact, I daresay your father would have spotted you easily if he had ventured down the path another few paces. But he didn't – thanks to me."

"You saved my butt, mister. I'm grateful."

"Glad to do it. And now that I've performed this small favor for you, I'm hoping you will do a small favor for me. It is a simple task, yet very important. Are you interested?"

"Sure. But if you don't mind me asking, who are you?"

The man knelt next to him. "My name is Sogologodogo. I am a practitioner of the magical arts, much like your father."

"Oh. Pleased to meet you, Mr. Sogologodogo."

"You may call me Mr. Sog if it would fit better on your tongue."

"OK, Mister Sog. So what exactly do you want?"

"I need a bright and capable lad to perform a very simple yet vital task, and..."

Bommy laughed. "Bright and capable? You must be thinking of some other kid."

Mr. Sog chuckled (a sound like a forest snake sucking on leafhoppers). "There is no mistake. I have been watching you, ever since they began to move the stones of Hokmasifu – which is a fool's venture, I might add. I am pleased you and your father do not share the others' enthusiasm for this madness."

"Yeah, my dad tried to talk them out of it, but Braska wouldn't listen."

"Braska is a fool."

"He's the boss, though. My dad's got to do what he says."

"Of course. It is his job. We all have to earn our keep. Speaking of which..."

Mr. Sog reached into a pocket and pulled out a gold coin. Bommy's eyes got as big and glittery as the coin, and bigger still when Mr. Sog placed it in his palm.

Bommy had never seen a gold coin before, not in person, anyway, just in treasure-hunt shows on the Documentary Channel. It was much heaver than a quarter and about twice as big. An old hag's face was embossed on one side, a three-headed bird on the other. The bird was prettier.

"Wow," he said. "How much is it worth?"

Mr. Sog shrugged. "That depends. Melted down, the gold would fetch about twenty of your dollars on the current market."

"Twenty bucks!"

"Its numismatic value is a more subjective judgment."

"Its what?"

"Never mind. Do you wish to keep the coin?"

"Sure. What do I have to do to earn it?"

Mr. Sog waved his hand casually. "Oh, nothing much. A trifle. A mere piffle."

He reached into his other pocket and brought out a small glass vial, about three inches high, containing a thick, dark liquid.

"What's that, motor oil?" Bommy said.

"It is a drink. A potion. A tonic, if you will."

"I ain't drinking that stuff. It looks yucky!"

Mr. Sog chuckled. "It's not for you, it's for the mummies."

Bommy sucked in his breath. "The ... the mummies?"

"Yes. All you have to do is give half the tonic to one of the mummies, and half to the other."

Bommy shook his head. "Oh no. No way. I don't ever want to go anywhere near those dumb things again."

"Don't you wish to extricate yourself from your woes?"

"Extricate?"

"Get out of?"

"Sure. I'm in an awful jam."

"Well this drink will rejuvenate the mummies. They will be as good as new. The damage you did shall be undone."

Bommy eyed him warily. "How'd you know I broke one?"

"Heh. One need not be Pythazim to put two and two together and derive a four."

"Uh huh. Well I hate to tell you this, Mr. Sog, but I don't think Python or anyone else can put that mummy together. I knocked its head clean off its body – accidentally, of course."

Mr. Sog tapped the vial with a bony finger. "This potion can fix that. Just place the mummy's head back upon its body and pour the drink into its mouth – only half of it, mind you. And give the rest to the other mummy. That is all I ask. It is a very simple task. The merest of piffles."

Bommy peered at the vial. "What's in it, some sort of glue?"

Mr. Sog smirked. "You could call it that, I suppose."'

"Is it as strong as NuttyGlue?"

"Stronger."

"Really?"

"Truly. Do we have a deal, then?"

Bommy scratched his head. "I don't know. This whole thing sounds kind of wacko to me."

"Wacko? How so?"

"No offense, mister, but a guy who carries a bottle of mummy glue in his pocket is ... well, it just ain't natural."

"It is not exactly a glue. It is a restorative agent. I have used it on many mummies, in many tombs, on many worlds. It works wonders in returning them to their pristine state."

"Pristine State? Where's that?"

"Heh. How droll. What I mean to say is, it cleanses them of the corruptions imposed by the grave."

"Oh. And you've used this stuff before?"

"Many times."

"You some kind of archaeologist or something?"

"Or something." He glanced over his shoulder. They were alone in the training field, but he lowered his voice anyway.

"I come from a land where the old beliefs linger," he murmured. "Beliefs that have been abandoned on Celton. In my land we continue to mummify our dead and construct colossal tombs in which to house them. We preserve our heritage. We do not allow it to deteriorate and then sell it off like a used car to the highest bidder."

"Where did you say you were from?"

"I didn't. It is a land you have never heard of."

"Oh. There's lots of those. Is this one far away?"

"Indeed."

"So you came all the way to Celton to ... what, exactly?"

"To honor your dead as we honor our own."

Mr. Sog leaned closer. His eyes were on fire, his voice intense, like he was talking about his favorite ovalball team or something. "You see, Bommy, there are no borders in the land of the dead. All spirits dwell together across the Far Shore. To slight one of them is to slight all. My people often go on pilgrimages to other lands to venerate their dead, and if we find them slighted by neglect or the ravages of time, we restore them to their proper glory."

"Huh. Sounds like a lot of work. Wouldn't it be easier to put flowers on some shrine somewhere? That's what we do here. We call it Remembrance Day."

"Heh. You see things through the wonderfully clear prism of youth. Yes, it would be easier, but my work is too important to be easy." He cupped his hands together. "Think of it this way. All humanity is aboard the ship of life, one big ship with a thousand thousand sails. Only the foolhardy sailor mends the sail above his own head and ignores the others. He must climb into the rigging and work his way across the masts and crosstrees and mend the rips in the canvas, or the ship shall lose the wind and drift off course."

Bommy knew little of sailing ships, so he let that pass.

"So how come you don't give the mummies the drink yourself?" he asked. "Why do you need me?"

Mr. Sog scowled. "People such as I are not welcome on Celton. The narrow-minded wish to deprive us of our right to worship as we please. They fear what they do not understand." He gestured at Bommy. His smile returned. "A boy, on the other hand – especially a local boy – will have little trouble gaining access to the mummies and administering the potion without attracting undue attention."

"I sure am attracting a lot of undue attention now," Bommy said ruefully. "They're hunting me like a doggoon."

"As I said before, you are bright and capable. I'm sure you shall find a way. I am large and my appearance is, shall we say, distinct. Stealth is not my forte."

Bommy shook his head. "Gee, I'd like to help you, Mr. Sog, but I don't know. What if this juice eats a hole in the mummies?"

"Impossible."

"Well ... maybe I should ask Mister Cheeth first. He's my teacher. He's sort of the local..."

Mr. Sog grabbed Bommy's arm. His fingers were icy cold and hard as steel. Bommy winced.

"You cannot do that. You must tell no one! If word got back to the Guilds they would send me into exile and..."

"But if you want to fix up the mummies and ventilate them..."

"Venerate them."

"...venerate them and all that good stuff, why would anyone mind?"

Mr. Sog's eyes narrowed to slits. "The Guilders are jealous, small-minded souls – like the harbeeks of Wrenland, pecking at a mountain they cannot fly over, till it crumbles and falls into the sea. They resent my magic because it is different than their own. They would banish me from Celton, given half a chance. It is imperative they remain ignorant of my activities until my work is done."

"I don't know about this..."

The man's grip tightened on Bommy's arm. "I kept your secret, when your father sought your hiding place. If you won't help me, the least you can do is repay me with your silence."

Bommy licked his lips. "You got a point there," he said slowly. "OK, I won't tell. I promise."

Mr. Sog let go of his arm. "Good. You are an honorable lad."

Reluctantly, Bommy held out his hand, the one with the coin.

"I guess you'd better take this back," he said.

Mr. Sog took the coin and spun it around on the tip of his forefinger like a top, then pinged it with his thumb. It arced through the air and landed in Bommy's shirt pocket.

"Wow, that's a slick trick," Bommy said.

"Thank you. I did that because the coin belongs to you now. Please keep it as a token of my regard."

"But I haven't done anything."

"Your silence is as golden as that coin, and twice as valuable to me. And here is another gift."

He placed the vial of tonic into Bommy's pocket, next to the coin. Bommy started to protest. Mr. Sog held up a hand.

"Keep the vial for a night and a day," he said. "Think about my request very carefully. If you still feel you can't help me, then return the potion, but keep the coin. Fair enough?" He stood up. "You can find me at the Keps Hotel. Room 613."

A voice inside Bommy whispered a warning: _Take nothing from this man. He's bad news. Return his money and his magic and get away from him, far and fast. Do it, Bommy. Do it now."_

For once, Bommy listened to the voice in his head. He took the coin and vial from his pocket, intending to hand them back, but the coin caught the light, shimmering so prettily – as if a chunk of the sun had broken off and fallen into the palm of his hand – and it took all his willpower to wrench his eyes away.

When he looked up, Mr. Sog was gone. Bommy glanced left and right, but the training field was empty, the sidewalk deserted. Some tourists were walking toward a bus in the distance, but none of them had beards.

Bommy turned to the Head.

"Where did he go?" he said.

The Head did not reply.

EIGHT

As night descended, Bommy left the training field and snuck out of the Templex. It was easy. A cinch. But he still had a big problem: how to get home. He could afford bus fare now, thanks to Mr. Sog – heck, he could even take a cab if he wanted – but that would mean parting with his pretty gold coin, and that was out of the question. He thought about hitchhiking, but no telling what kind of person might pick him up at this time of night.

So he set off on foot. He knew he couldn't possibly walk ten miles, but maybe he'd run into some tourists who were out on the town and needed a guide or something, and he could earn enough loose change to pay for the bus.

After trudging a mile, with not a tourist in sight, he stopped at a bus bench to rest his weary feet. A No. 2 Crosstown came by and an elderly woman got on. The driver looked at Bommy, but he shook his head and the bus started to pull away.

On impulse, Bommy bolted to the rear of the bus and climbed onto the back. The bus was one of the older models with a big bumper and a chuggy engine that didn't go very fast, or Bommy surely would have fallen off. He clung to the taillight nacelles, the only handholds he could find, and tried not to look down at the asphalt rushing by below him. Instead he glanced anxiously at passing motorists, afraid one of them would spot him and honk to alert the driver, but no one did. Maybe he wasn't that noticeable in the dark.

At 72nd and Dodge, Bommy transferred to a No. 4. It was a newer bus with a faster engine and a smaller bumper, but at least there were handles on the access panels of the magic-repeller pods below the engine compartment; he grabbed them and held on tight.

Soon he was back in his own neighborhood and hopped off, grateful to be standing on solid ground again. He considered waiting for the No. 52 that would get him within three blocks of home, then decided to walk instead. He was in no hurry to face his dad.

As he came up the driveway an hour later, he noticed a light on in the living room.

Drat. His dad was still up.

Bommy crept around the side of the house to the kitchen window. It was halfway open. He lifted it the rest of the way, as slow as he could, and hoisted himself up onto the sill, then wriggled through, cussing under his breath as he fell into the sink, ramming his butt on the faucet. He clambered out of the sink and lowered himself noiselessly to the floor.

The smell of stew still lingered in the air. Bommy's stomach growled at him, demanding to be fed.

"Pipe down," he muttered.

He tiptoed to the kitchen doorway and paused, listening to the sounds coming from the TV out in the living room. Some old movie was on.

_Please be a good movie,_ he prayed. _A really good movie, the kind people get so engrossed in they don't answer the door or the phone or notice little things like soft footsteps on the stairs._

And Quad must have heard his prayer, for Bommy got up the stairs with no problem.

Now all he had to do was get into his room and shut the door. His dad would come up later, when the movie was over, and find Bommy in his bed, fast asleep, with a tired, hungry, contrite look on his face, his body tossing and turning as nightmares wracked his soul. His dad would feel sorry for him and decide not to wake him, and in the morning he'd come downstairs and find Bommy in the kitchen, making breakfast like a dutiful son, and he'd realize Bommy had suffered enough and learned his lesson and there was really no need for a lecture or the punishment pot or extra chores or more school work, and Bommy would be forgiven and all would be well.

Yes, that's exactly the way it would play out – if only Bommy could get to bed now without getting caught. That was the key.

He clutched the doorknob and gently twisted it and pulled. The door swung open, softly, slowly, making just one itsy-bitsy squeak...

"Bommy Giffitt!"

Bommy flung the door open and dashed into his room as the footsteps pounded up the stairs.

"Bommy, don't even think about closing that door!"

Double drat!

Bommy came out of his room and smiled up at his dad.

"Hello, Dad," he said. "I was just going to bed without my supper. I'm tired and hungry and contrite. No need for you to bother yourself. I know the routine. Good night."

"Not so fast, young man. You're not getting out of this that easy."

"Get out of it?" Bommy said innocently. "Who said I was trying to get out of anything?"

"Spare me the wide-eyed innocent look."

"Yes sir," Bommy said, narrowing his eyes.

His dad put his hands on his hips. Not a good sign.

"You had me worried sick, young man. I had the constables out looking for you. Where in Quad's name have you been?"

"Oh, I was in one of the, uh, temples."

"Where? I looked all over for you."

"I forget which one."

"What were you doing in there?"

"Well, it got so noisy at Hokmasifu, what with all the tourists milling about and all that, so I went to one of the other temples to get away from the noise so I could study. I guess I lost track of time, huh?"

"You were studying?"

"Yes sir."

"All this time?"

"I think I went to the training field and practiced with the Heads a little too."

"I see. And what about the mummies?"

"Oh, I looked at them, like I said I would, but I got bored after awhile so I..."

"What happened to the mummy's head, Bommy?"

"Mummy's head?"

"Don't play dumb. When I left you with the mummies, they both had heads on their shoulders. When I came back, one of the heads was lying on the floor. What in blazes did you do?"

"Oh, really? On the floor? My, that is peculiar. But now that you mention it, I do believe I heard a rat or something running around in the vault. Maybe it chewed on the mummy's neck."

"There were no signs of bite marks on the mummy."

"Well maybe..."

His dad bent down till his eyes were level with Bommy's.

"I'm in no mood for your stories. Understand? If you know what's good for you, you'll tell me the truth. What happened in that vault?"

"I didn't mean to do it, honest, dad," Bommy blurted, talking as fast as he could. "I just Lifted a little bit of bandage, that's all, so I could see inside the mummy's nose, and the bandages all came loose because the embalmers didn't wrap them tight enough in the first place, and then the head fell off on account of its neck was too thin because the queen must've been anorexic or something. It could've happened to anyone."

His dad held up his hand. "Whoa. Why were you looking up the mummy's nose in the first place?"

"I was checking for boogers."

His dad's jaw fell open. He was speechless. Bommy forced himself to giggle. Maybe if his dad saw the humor in the situation ... no, judging by the look on his face, he was in no mood to see the humor in anything. Ever again.

"Boogers," his dad said.

"Yes sir."

His dad put a hand to his temple, like he suddenly had a headache.

"I'm almost afraid to ask this, but why in Quad's name did you want to look for boogers in the mummy's nose?"

Bommy shrugged. "It was a scientific experiment."

"Did I tell you to perform scientific experiments on the mummies while I was gone?"

"No sir."

"Do you know how much one of those mummies costs?"

"No sir."

"A hundred thousand dollars, by Mister Cheeth's reckoning."

Now it was Bommy's jaw that fell open. "No way. For those old things?"

"Yes. And it's quite possible the Council will fine the Guild to make up the lost revenue."

"On account of me?"

"On account of you."

Bommy stared down at the floor.

"Look at me, Bommy."

He looked up.

"You've caused a lot of trouble today, young man," his dad said. "And a lot of damage. Not just to the mummy, but to the reputation of all the Lifters."

Bommy winced. "I'm sorry."

His dad straightened up. "It's easy to be sorry. It's not so easy to make amends. Since you cost the Guild a lot of money, I think it's only fair you help pay it back."

Bommy thought of the gold coin – and all the candy he could've bought with it, all the comic books and trading cards. Gone now.

He reached into his pocket. "I've got this coin..."

"It'll take more than one. It'll take a whole bunch. So I'm cutting off your allowance, as of now."

Bommy shoved the coin deeper into his pocket.

"My whole allowance?" he said, incredulously.

"Yes."

"For how long?"

"A long time. Maybe forever."

"Forever! How am I gonna buy stuff?"

"You can do without."

"But I'll never pay off a hundred thousand dollars, not if I live to be a million."

"This isn't about money, it's about responsibility. It's a way of reminding you that actions have consequences, and costs."

"Aw, gee..."

"Don't 'aw gee' me. And another thing..."

"There's _another_ thing?"

"You bet there is. Since you like to study so much, you can read up on mummies and write me a paper about how rare and valuable they are and why amateurs shouldn't conduct experiments on them."

"Crimanee cripes."

"And another thing."

His dad flicked his wrist. Down in the kitchen a cupboard door slammed open. A moment later the punishment pot floated up the stairs and came whooshing down the hall, gurgling with fiendish glee.

"Oh no," Bommy groaned. "Not again. Not on top of all that other stuff!"

"You'll sleep with this in your room tonight, and every night until further notice, and if your nose falls off you'll have only yourself to blame."

"Draggledik!"

"And watch your language or you'll be washing your mouth out with soap."

"Yes sir."

"Now I'm going downstairs and call the police station so the constables can stop looking for you, and I want you to go in your room and get into that bed, and tomorrow at the crack of dawn you'll get to work on that essay, and it better not have anything in it about ghosts or glaciers, understand me?"

"Yes sir."

His dad turned and stormed toward the stairs. Bommy shuffled into his room. The pot followed. It plunked itself down on his dresser, green slime oozing down its sides. Within seconds the whole room stunk like crazy. Bommy's eyes watered. His stomach lurched. His nose began twitching, like it wanted to rip itself off his face and run away and hide.

Bommy lay down on his bed and stared at the ceiling, imagining he was floating up into the clouds, drifting aimlessly forever, free of care. And fathers. After awhile he tired of daydreaming and got to thinking ... Of men with weird beards, and golden coins, and little glass vials full of magical potions.

He pulled the vial out of his pocket and gazed at it. What if Mr. Sog was right? What if it really could restore the mummy? The Liosians would buy it then, and the Guild could keep its hundred thousand dollars, and Bommy would get his allowance back.

He set the vial on his nightstand and rolled over onto his side – smiling now despite the ghastly stench swirling around him – and waited for his dad to go to bed...

* * *

Bommy's bike shimmied from side to side as he rode it down the driveway.

"Quit it!" Bommy whispered, slapping its front fender.

He rarely rode his bike to school, preferring to walk the eight blocks rather than put up with a bunch of guff, but the Templex was too far away for that.

"Where go we?" the bike squeaked as Bommy pedaled up the street.

"The Templex."

"Why?"

"None of your business."

"Brat."

"Creep.

The bike was made from disenchanted metal, melted down from a spell-cannon used by the rebel army during the War of the Pinecone Kings, and it still held traces of the sorcery – and attitude – it possessed before its transformation.

As Bommy turned right and headed up 22nd Avenue, puffing from the exertion, he clicked the power lever on the handlebar. The bike shook its front fender, refusing to cooperate.

"Aw, c'mon," Bommy gasped. "I can't make it all the way up the hill by myself."

"Help you I don't," the bike replied. "Sound sleep was I in, till woke up by you."

"You're just lazy," Bommy said. "I wish I had a Schweng."

"That I wish also."

Most kids had Schweng ten-speeds, but Bommy's dad was a frugal sort who shopped at the Sorcery Surplus Store (where Guild members got a ten percent discount) and they didn't sell Schwengs, just reconstituted junk like Bigmouth.

"If you ever want me to oil your chain again, you'll help me pedal," Bommy said.

"Threaten not me, boy. Fought in war I did. Big magic had I. Turned soldiers into balloons. All go pop, pop. Tanks turned to chocolate. Melt in summer sun. Puff-spell, candy-spell, many spells. Rifles into broomsticks. Sweep, sweep, sweep. Enemy flee. All fear me. Cannon was I. Best cannon of all. Much fear. Much fun."

"That ... was ... then," Bommy panted. "This ... is ... now. ... Shut up ... and ... help me ... or ... I'll ..."

"Baby cryer. Gladly I help, if mouth you upshut."

"It's a deal."

The wheels began spinning on their own. Bommy took his feet off the pedals and the bike shot to the top of the hill with ease, then headed down the other side. They turned onto Padific Street and accelerated, keeping pace with traffic, then passing it.

"Hey, slow down a little," Bommy said. "You'll wreck us!"

"Tell me not how bike be, and I tell you not how boy be."

Bigmouth kicked it up yet another notch, rocketing through the streets, running red lights, hopping over cars that got in its way, weaving in and out of traffic, while Bommy hung on for dear life. The ride seemed to last forever (though they probably made record time), and Bommy offered a silent prayer of thanks when they finally arrived at the Templex.

The bike swerved into the parking lot and skidded to a halt, nearly hurling Bommy over the handlebars.

"You stupid metal monster," Bommy sputtered as he leapt off. "You nearly got me killed a dozen times!"

"A dozen and one," the bike said proudly.

"Why do you act like this?"

"Kings I served. Now serve boy. Unfair."

Bommy rolled his eyes. "Whatever. Hey listen, I'll be back soon. Don't let anyone steal you while I'm gone, OK?"

The bike's front fender curled upward, the tip twisting into a sharp point resembling a giant wolfoyle fang.

"Worry not," it said.

Bommy shook his head and headed up the sidewalk.

It felt creepy walking through the Templex at night. It was deathly still and eerily empty, with no tourists milling about, no vendors barking or buses rumbling. The old gray temples glowed dully in the moonlight like forgotten ghosts, adding to the gloom – but at least the foreign temples were cheery, their crystal facades shimmering brightly under the security lights in a dozen colors, like huge HolidayTree bulbs.

And then Bommy got to Hokmasifu. There was nothing cheery about that place. During the day it was spooky enough, but at night it was downright grim, and the thought of going inside the vault all by himself filled Bommy with a terrible dread. But he couldn't let it get the best of him. He had a job to do.

There were two constables guarding the tomb. The first was sitting on the grass, leaning against a barricade, his head resting on his chest, eyes closed. Getting past him was a cinch. The guard farther down was wide awake and pacing back and forth, constantly glancing over his shoulder at the tomb, as if he feared it might rise up and pounce on him when his back was turned.

Bommy ducked behind a light pole and Lifted up a nearby pebble and floated it high over the second guard's head, then lowered it to the sidewalk a dozen yards behind him. He tapped it on the cement, moved it about a foot and tapped again, repeating the pattern over and over, trying to sound like a peg-legged ghost out for a stroll. The constable spun around and trained his flashlight on the sidewalk as Bommy flung the pebble into the grass, out of sight.

"Who ... who goes there?" the guard whispered.

As he stared into the darkness, his back facing Hokmasifu, Bommy sprinted across the lawn and jumped into the vault and ducked down. He'd made it! So far, so good.

Now for the really scary part.

He turned around and approached the mummies. They were barely visible, gray outlines wrapped in moonlight and shadows. Good thing he'd remembered to bring a light. He took it out of his pocket: a detachable ray pistol off his DestructoBot toy, about the size of his pinky finger. He switched it on. A thin beam of blue lit up the vault.

Perfect – just enough light to see (sort of), but not enough for the guard to notice.

Bommy swept the beam across the floor, looking for the queen's head.

Gone.

Someone must have moved it, probably Mister Cheeth. What if he took it away for safekeeping, or gave it to the college so they could do tests on it or something? That would ruin everything.

Wait a minute. What was that in the corner? A cardboard box?

He walked over and knelt down by the box and pulled open the top. Something round lay inside, wrapped in tissue paper. He reached in and picked it up and peeled back the paper, then grunted with relief – and revulsion.

He'd found the head. But one eye was missing.

Bommy peered into the box. No eye. It was probably lying on the floor somewhere, but he didn't relish the idea of looking for it, especially in the middle of the night. He had the head and that was the important thing.

He carried it over to the queen and placed it onto her thin, ragged neck, twisting it a little till it was level, then slowly took his hand away.

"Stay put," he said.

It stayed put.

Quickly Bommy reached into his shirt pocket and took out the vial and pulled out the stopper. With shaking fingers he brought the vial to the mummy's chapped lips and tilted it. The thick liquid oozed out, dribbling onto the queen's crooked brown teeth.

And then his little light flickered and went out – just as clouds passed across the moon, plunging the vault into total darkness.

"Yipes!"

Frantically Bommy whacked the light against the side of his leg. It winked on again, its blue glow bathing the mummy's face.

And Bommy couldn't believe what he saw. The queen's skin was smooth and clear now, her lips red and moist, her eye swelling to normal size, filling with bright intensity.

He wanted to run. To run like hell. But his job was only half finished. Mr. Sog said both mummies should drink.

Bommy turned and approached the king.

"Hi, your highness," he said timidly. "Care for a drink?"

He poured a few drops into the wrinkly mouth. The king's eyelids fluttered. No, it must be a trick of the light.

"Come on," Bommy muttered, wishing the tonic would seep out of the vial a little faster. "Come on already."

He couldn't wait any longer. This was getting too spooky. He stuck the stopper back in the vial and started to turn around.

And a hand grabbed his wrist.

A thin, bony hand. Wrapped in linen.

For a moment Bommy was frozen to the spot, just staring at that hand, then he forced himself to look up, straight into the mummy's face.

The king was peering at him through half-lidded eyes, his mouth slowly opening, opening...

Yawning.

"Oh my Quad!" Bommy gasped.

He jerked his arm, trying to pull free of the king's grasp. He wanted to scream, but could only manage a whisper: "Lemme go! Lemme go!"

The king leaned forward, his body creaking, joints clicking, bandages rustling. He grabbed the vial from Bommy's hand, his fingers trembling almost as much as Bommy's own. He brought it to his mouth, pulled out the stopper with his teeth, spit it out, then tilted his head back and poured the tonic down his throat.

Bommy wrenched himself free and dashed from the vault, screaming bloody murder.

As the king let out a loud, happy belch.

NINE

Bommy pounded frantically on the door of Room 613. It was after midnight and he was making enough noise to ... well, to wake the dead, but he didn't care. There was no time to waste. No time at all.

The door of 611 flew open and a gray-haired man in a brown bathrobe poked his head out and scowled at Bommy.

"What in hell's bells is all the ruckus about, boy?"

"Sorry," Bommy said. "It's an emergency."

"Is it now? Well have your emergency at a decent hour, you rude brat."

Bommy stuck his tongue out at him. The man slammed the door shut. Bommy knocked on 613 again.

"Mr. Sog?" he whispered as loud as he could. "It's me, Bommy Giffitt! Wake up!"

He was about to knock a third time when Mr. Sog opened the door. He was wearing a long, red silk nightgown covered with weird cream-colored symbols and his hair was mussed up, like he'd just gotten out of bed, but his eyes were alert and the TV was still on, so he must not have been asleep yet. Bommy felt a little better about coming there so late.

"Yes, Bommy, what is it?" Mr. Sog said.

"I gave the drink to the mummies and they woke up! They're alive!"

Mr. Sog held a finger to his lips. "Shh. We don't want to disturb the other guests. Come in, come in."

He ushered him inside and closed the door. The room smelled like musty books and incense, but Bommy saw no sign of either. The flickering glow from the TV cast strange patterns of light across one side of the room, stirring the shadows, but the volume was muted, the room silent save for the soft tick-tick of a clock Bommy couldn't see. There was a small desk over by the window, with a ballpoint pen lying on it, uncapped, atop a piece of hotel stationery, and the chair was pushed away from the desk at an angle, indicating Mr. Sog had been sitting there writing something when Bommy knocked.

"Now then," Mr. Sog said, clasping his hands together, "what seems to be the problem?"

"You've gotta do something," Bommy said. "The mummies are alive!"

"Nonsense. That is not possible."

"I saw it with my own eyes. One of them grabbed my arm and..."

"I gather you went to Hokmasifu and administered the tonic, as I requested?"

"Yes sir."

"What made you change your mind about helping me?"

"My dad. He..."

"You didn't tell him about me, did you?" Mr. Sog asked in alarm.

"No sir. But he was mad about me damaging the mummy in the first place, real mad. He was gonna cut off my allowance forever. So I figured the best way to make amends was to fix the mummy like you said."

"Ah."

"Only something went wrong. The mummies woke up and attacked me."

"Attacked you?"

"One of them grabbed my arm, but I fought it off and got away. No telling what they'll do next!"

Mr. Sog smiled. "A ten-thousand-year-old mummy isn't likely to do much of anything."

"No, no, you're wrong about that. Whenever mummies come alive in the movies they always go around killing everyone they can get their hands on, and they have superhuman strength!"

"Heh. Those shows are fiction, Bommy. Besides, these are royal mummies. They would have much better manners than the movie mummies you speak of."

"OK, but even so, they might run into things and hurt themselves and knock off body parts, and then I'll be in worse trouble than ever!"

"Calm yourself, lad," Mr. Sog said soothingly. "What you witnessed in the vault was merely a muscle spasm."

"A what?"

"The embalming fluids used by the ancient priests of Celton contained certain minerals which, over time, produce gases inside the bodies. This puts pressure on the muscles and tendons." (He placed a hand inside his fist, simulating a gas bubble pressing against a muscle, or maybe it was supposed to be a tendon.) "If the mummies are subjected to sufficient vibration, the gas pockets shift and the pressure points are altered, causing the mummies to 'move', so to speak."

"Really? I never heard that."

"It is not common knowledge. I should have warned you earlier."

"But this couldn't have been just a muscle spasm. The mummy grabbed the vial out of my hand and drank the potion all by itself, and then it burped!"

Mr. Sog laughed out loud. "You have the imagination of Edazeresh. I think you heard nothing more than the venting of gases, for that is what a burp is. I assure you the tonic merely restores, it does not revive."

"But I saw it..."

Mr. Sog touched the top of Bommy's head. His fingers were like ice. Bommy's panic subsided. He felt a little dizzy.

"You saw moonlight, and starshine, and shadows," Mr. Sog said softly. "You felt your own fear clutching at you. People often see what they wish to see – or what they dread to see. Our emotions warp the prism through which we view the world, and this distorts our reality."

"Hey, I wasn't _that_ scared. Those mummies moved, I tell ya. I think that juice you gave me was made by some neckromantic."

Mr. Sog blinked. "A neckromantic?"

"Yeah. Those guys who go around turning dead bodies into zombies."

"I believe the term is necromancer. And such dark wizards no longer exist. Their practices were outlawed over a century ago, thank heaven."

"But their potions could still be around. They could be sitting on some shelf in the back room of a conjure shop in unlabeled jars with no expiration date and the druggist might've run out of stuff to fill your order so he grabbed one of those old jars by mistake and..."

"I don't purchase my potions from conjure shops. I make them myself."

"You do?"

"Yes. From fresh ingredients, following an old family recipe."

"Oh."

"Now I grant you, there may be people today who possess latent necromancic Talents, and if such a person got hold of my tonic they might imbue it with resurrective energies without even knowing it, and those energies might instill the spark of life into the mummies, albeit very briefly, but that is a highly unlikely scenario."

"Hey wait a minute. I gave the mummies that tonic. Are you saying I might be a ..."

"Of course not. You have a clean and innocent soul, hardly the kind to harbor such a sinister Talent. That is one reason I selected you for my task."

"Clean and innocent? Me?"

"All things are relative. Yes, you are innocent, and that is nothing to be ashamed of. Be thankful for your youth."

He put his hand on Bommy's shoulder and shepherded him toward the door.

"Now if you'll excuse me, I'm afraid it is late and I wish to retire."

"I hope you're right about all this," Bommy said. "I'd hate to think there were murderous monsters running around loose because of me."

Mr. Sog patted his head. "Rest assured, those mummies have no more life than that desk over there."

Bommy looked at the desk Mr. Sog was pointing at. It appeared to be shimmying back and forth, doing a perverse jig, but it was just an optical illusion caused by the swirling light from the TV screen.

"What are you watching?" Bommy asked.

"I was attempting to tune in the news, but the picture tube is ailing. These hotels really should buy decent televisions for the rooms, or else lower their rates a bit, don't you think?"

"I guess."

Mr. Sog put his hand on the doorknob. "Oh, I almost forgot."

He reached into his pocket and took out a gold coin and handed it to Bommy.

"Wow, another one?" Bommy said. "What's this for?"

Mr. Sog smiled. "You have done me a great service. The mummies have been restored to their rightful state. All who behold them from now on shall marvel at the transformation you have wrought this night."

"I must admit the queen looked pretty good after I gave her a drink. She was almost pretty."

"Of course. And the transformation was so astonishing your mind could not fully grasp it, and your imagination took over."

"I guess so."

Mr. Sog pulled the door open. "Now if there's nothing else, I think we should both turn in."

Bommy hesitated. A weird idea had just jumped into his head.

"Uh, now that you mention it, there is something else."

Mr. Sog arched an inquisitive eyebrow. "Yes?"

"Does that potion only work on the dead, or could you give it to a living person?"

"The living? I don't understand."

"I've got this friend, see. Her name's Elyno. And her grandparents used to ... well, it's a long story, but she used to be pretty and now she's got this skin condition that ... I mean, I still like her, but the other kids laugh at her on account of her looks."

Mr. Sog clucked his tongue. "Children can be so cruel."

"Yeah, so I was thinking, if this tonic could take the wrinkles out of mummies and make them look good, maybe I could get some for Elyno and it would fix her too?"

Mr. Sog nodded. "You are a clever lad, Bommy. And a compassionate one."

"You think it would be safe to drink?"

"Certainly."

Mr. Sog crossed the room and knelt down by the foot of his bed, and for the first time Bommy noticed a big old trunk sitting there. Mr. Sog opened the lid and rummaged around inside and took something out and came back.

"Here you are," he said, handing Bommy a second vial.

Bommy grinned. "Thanks, Mr. Sog."

"You can thank me by remembering to forget."

"Huh?"

"Tell no one about the vials, or where you acquired them, or anything else that has transpired between us."

Bommy gave him a thumbs-up. "Oh sure. Mum's the word. You can count on me."

Mr. Sog gently but firmly pushed Bommy through the doorway.

"You are a good lad," he said. "Now go home and go to bed."

Bommy stepped out into the hall.

"Thanks again," he said.

Mr. Sog nodded. "Pleasant dreams, Bommy Giffitt."

"Same to you."

Mr. Sog chuckled, as if Bommy had said something funny, then swiftly closed the door.

* * *

"Did you sleep well, Bommy?" his dad asked as he poured oatmeal into Bommy's bowl the next morning.

"Sure did," Bommy said. "Except that stupid old pot smelled up my room so bad it gave me nightmares. It'll sure be nice to spend the day outdoors and get some fresh air."

"You're not coming with me today."

Bommy paused with the spoon halfway to his mouth. "Why not?"

"You're confined to your room, remember? After what happened yesterday, the Lifters would have a fit if they saw you at the Templex."

"But the mummies have been..."

Bommy bit his tongue. He wasn't supposed to talk about that. He'd promised Mr. Sog.

"Don't argue with me," his dad retorted. "You'll stay here today and work on your lessons, and when I get home tonight you'd better have a full day's worth of notes to show me. And I'm taking the tuning crystal with me, so don't even bother turning on the TV."

"Yes sir," Bommy said, pretending to be miserable, but inside he was smiling.

When his dad came home that night he'd be singing a different tune. And Bommy could hardly wait.

TEN

Bommy tried to act nonchalant as he greeted his dad at the front door.

"How did things go at the Templex today?" he said, as if he had no idea his dad was about to tell him amazing and wonderful news.

He had already rehearsed his reaction – a mixture of stunned surprise and glee – standing in front of the mirror for a good half hour to get it down pat. It was very convincing. But the amazing news his dad gave him wasn't what he expected, and his reaction turned out to be genuine – full of stunned surprise, but no glee.

"The mummies," his dad muttered. "They're ... they're gone."

"Gone?"

His dad walked into the kitchen and set his lunch bag on the counter. Bommy followed him.

"What do you mean, gone?" he said.

His dad let out a tired sigh and ran a hand through his hair. He looked like he had a headache, worse than the one last night.

"Just what I said, Bommy. Gone. Vanished."

"Wow. So they really did come to life!"

"What did you say?"

"Oh, I said they ... uh ... they really did look lifelike ... That one time I saw them ... They looked so lifelike I thought they might walk off at any minute. Remember me saying that, Dad?"

"No, but that's exactly what happened. Or, to be more precise, someone walked off _with_ them."

"Huh?"

"They were stolen. Near as we can tell, a couple of kooks did it."

"Kooks?"

His dad crossed over to the fridge and took out a pop. He twisted off the cap and took a sip.

"When we got to the tomb this morning there were two weird characters in the vault, a man and a woman wearing strange getups. They were sleeping, and there was no sign of the mummies, except for some crumpled up bandages lying on the floor."

"Wow."

His dad shook his head sadly. "The two guards on duty swore to Braska that no one came near the place last night. Ha! I bet they were both fast asleep."

"Only one..."

"What?"

"I said, I only wonder what happened to the mummies."

His dad shrugged. "We put the question to the two kooks, but they didn't understand a word we said. Foreigners, most likely."

"So you think they stole the mummies and took them somewhere?"

"Either that or they ate them."

Bommy's eyes bugged out. "Ate them!"

"These two looked like they hadn't had a decent meal in years, and their clothes were all ratty and musty. Probably homeless vagabonds who sleep anywhere they can find shelter and grab discarded clothes out of trash cans and eat anything that doesn't eat them first."

"Gosh."

His dad took another sip of pop, then looked down at Bommy and smiled. "I don't think they really ate the mummies."

"I hope not."

"More than likely they took them downtown and sold them to some unscrupulous antiquities dealer. Anything to get a little money."

"But why would they come back to the tomb?"

"The chief constable says criminals always return to the scene of the crime."

"Seems pretty dumb to me."

"Well, like I said, they're kooks. The temples have always attracted some pretty strange people with pretty nutty ideas."

"So what happened to them? Were they busted?"

His dad nodded. "The chief constable took them off to jail. Mister Cheeth wants to question them and try to find out what they did with the mummies, but I'm afraid we've seen the last of the king and queen – if that's who the mummies were. We'll never know for sure." He shook his head. "It's a real shame. And it never would've happened if we hadn't been dismantling the tomb in the first place."

"So what happens now? Are you gonna put it back together again?"

His dad smiled sadly. "No, we're back on schedule. The Council decided to go ahead with the original plan."

"So they didn't listen to Mister Cheeth?"

"Nope. And now that the mummies are gone he really doesn't have a leg to stand on."

"What if you find more mummies?"

"Mister Cheeth doubts that'll happen. He's pretty sure the two missing ones were the king and queen, and since Cammaleila didn't have any children there wouldn't be any princes or princesses buried in there, just the royal couple, unless there's a servant or two still hidden somewhere, but they wouldn't have much historical value."

He took another drink, then leaned his back against the fridge, staring at the bubbles rising from the bottom of the bottle.

"Dad?" Bommy said after a while. "Do you think the mummies might be gone on account of magic maybe?"

"Magic? What kind of magic?"

"I don't know. Maybe someone Lifted the mummies out of there or something."

"Now who would do a thing like that?"

"Well, maybe Braska or that Larag guy wanted them all for themselves."

"A levitationist wouldn't so such a thing," his dad said sternly.

"Oh."

"Besides, that doesn't explain the two kooks we found in the vault."

"Maybe they're sorcerers."

His dad chuckled. "If you'd seen them, you wouldn't think such a thing. They could barely walk, let alone cast spells. The poor wretches were probably the _victims_ of magic, if anything. My guess is they're refugees from the Spell Wars who were caught in a cloudship barrage or something like that, and it addled their brains."

He finished off the pop and set the empty bottle in the cardboard box on the floor next to the fridge.

"Well, no use fretting about that now," he said. "Tomorrow's another day. Let's go upstairs and look at your homework."

Bommy headed for the hallway, then suddenly stopped. His dad nearly ran into him.

"What's wrong?" his dad said. "Don't tell me you didn't write that essay on mummies."

"Oh sure, Dad. I wrote it. But I've got one more question about the kooks."

"OK, Bommy," his dad said with a sigh, "but only one more. I've had enough of kooks for one day. What's your question?"

"Did either of them have only one eye, by any chance?"

His dad looked puzzled. "No. Why would you ask a thing like that?"

"How about a funny looking neck?"

"What, do you think you know these two?"

"Not exactly."

His dad frowned. "Now that you mention it, one of them did have a stiff neck. The woman. She couldn't turn her head very well and had to twist her whole body to look at us." He rubbed his chin. "And come to think of it, she had a lazy eye too."

Bommy's hair stood on end. "A lazy eye?"

"Yeah, you know, one that points in a slightly different direction than the other? How in heavens did you know she had something wrong with her eye?"

Bommy smiled queasily. "Oh, just a guess, dad. Just a lucky guess."

* * *

The green surrounding Hokmasifu was strewn with stones – pieces of the tomb laid out in neat rows, each one numbered with a felt-tip marker. The place resembled a graveyard, and Mister Cheeth a mourner. He was sitting on a pedestal (Part No. 28-A), hands clasped between his knees, gazing forlornly at the empty vault nearby, paying no attention to the Lifters, who were raising an ornately carved lentil off the third tier of the tomb. Mister Cheeth was supposed to be up on the scaffolding, supervising things, but his heart just wasn't in it.

Bommy had to clear his throat several times before the teacher noticed him.

"I thought you were banished from the Templex," Mister Cheeth snapped.

"That was before the mummies disappeared. My dad said there's no point keeping me away from something that isn't here anymore."

"I see. Well kindly keep yourself away from me. I'm in a miserable mood as it is."

"Aw, don't be sore just because I knocked the mummy's head off..."

"Just! Did you say, 'Just'?"

"OK, OK, so maybe it was a big deal. I already told everybody and his brother I'm sorry."

"And now you've told me. Thank you. Good day."

"But I gotta ask you a question, Mister Cheeth. It's about..."

"Your homework, I suppose?"

"No sir."

"No, of course not. You would never waste time thinking about your homework, now would you?"

"No sir."

"What?"

"I mean, yes sir, but this is about the mummies."

"I don't wish to talk about the mummies. What's done is done."

"But that's just it, Mister Cheeth. I think I know where they are."

Mister Cheeth's attitude suddenly changed.

"Where?" he said eagerly. "Where are they?"

"I gotta ask you a question first, Mister Cheeth. Those two kooky vagabonds. Did you get to talk to them?"
The excitement drained out of Mister Cheeth's face. "Yes, the chief constable let me in to see them for a few minutes. They're completely mad. Spoke in some mishmash that resembled the ancient tongue of Celton." He sniffed contemptuously. "They probably spend most of their time hanging around tombs trying to read the hieroglyphics because they can't afford newspapers, and drinking dust out of ancient canopic jars, pretending its cheap booze. Absurd, wretched people."

"I think maybe I know what's up with them, Mister Cheeth."

The teacher regarded him skeptically. "Oh you do? Well that shouldn't surprise me. Oddballs often understand the tortured inner workings of each other's warped and deluded minds. Tell me, Bommy Giffitt, what is 'up,' as you put it, with the vagabonds?"

"I don't think they're _odd_ , I think they're _old_."

"Pah. To you a senior in high school is old. I don't think senility has quite set in on them yet, young man. Malnutrition, perhaps, but..."

"No, Mister Cheeth, I mean they're real, _real_ old. Older than anyone can imagine."

"Humph. And how did you reach that remarkable conclusion?"

"Because I don't think they took the mummies anywhere. I think they _are_ the mummies."

Mister Cheeth laughed, a great big belly laugh that drew stares from nearby tourists.

"My dear boy," he said when he'd regained his composure. "During my long career, students have told me some astonishing things, but what you just said has to be, by far, the most breathtakingly ridiculous utterance I have ever heard."

"But it's true," Bommy said. He glanced over at his dad. "I can't tell you the whole story right now, but you've gotta know one thing: It was magic that did it. The mummies drank a potion that brought them back to life, but they can't tell anybody who they are because we don't speak their language. Heck, they probably don't even know they're mummies. I bet they think they never died in the first place and they're still the king and queen of Celton."

Mister Cheeth stared at him. "You're serious. My Quad, you've gone off your nut. You're as kooky as those two vagabonds."

"It's true, Mister Cheeth. You've gotta believe me. Go talk to those mummies – I mean, those vagabonds – again. Ask them about the potion. If anyone can communicate with them, it's you."

"And how do you know so much about it? How can you possibly know such a thing?"

"Because I gave them the potion, Mister Cheeth. It wasn't supposed to revive them, but it did, on account of I'm a necromancher and don't even know it!"

"A what?"

"A necromancher."

"You mean a necromancer?"

"Shh!"

Bommy cast an anxious glance at the circle of Lifters. "Please don't tell my dad. I'm already in enough trouble as it is. If he finds out about this..."

"Don't worry," Mister Cheeth said soberly. "I won't. He wouldn't believe it anyway." He stood up. "But I suggest you get into the shade and have a cold drink. I think you're suffering from heatstroke!"

ELEVEN

Ensign Giffitt scampered along the crosstree of the mizzenmast high above the brigantine's poop deck, dodging the billowing foresails and snapping spinnakers. The rigging hummed with the song of the surging trade winds, and seabirds peeped happily as they wheeled around the crow's nest, and the ocean waves lapped hungrily at the brigantine's barnacles, but Ensign Giffitt's ears were attuned to a more sinister noise: the chuff-chuff-chuff of a hovercraft, diving out of the clouds at breakneck speed.

As the black-beaked craft zoomed past the ship, a pirate leapt off its prow and landed on the topgallant. The targeting reticule in his fiber-optic eye patch zeroed in on Ensign Giffitt, who drew his flintlock pistols and fired just in time, striking the pirate in his armor-plated bandana...

And Elyno came around the side of the house just then and saw Bommy bobbing and weaving between his fluttering sheets, brandishing his clothespins at nothing in particular. She giggled and he spun around, blushing as he dropped his "pistols" into the laundry basket.

"Hi, Elyno," he said sheepishly.

"Ahoy, bucko," she said, giggling again.

She was wearing her light blue dress today, his favorite, and her hair was done up in ringlets with little pink flowers in them. It always broke Bommy's heart to see her like this – trying her best to look pretty, like any girl would do, while her wrinkly, twisted face made a mockery of it all.

"What are you doing?" she said. "Your sheets giving you a hard time?"

"Naw. It's just a little windy."

"I thought Saturday was your day to do laundry."

"It is, most of the time, but that darn pot stunk up my bedding last night – and the clothes in my closet too."

Elyno scrunched up her nose.

"I was wondering what that smell was. I caught a whiff of it half a block away."

"Heh, you should've smelled it an hour ago. Peeyew!"

"So why did your dad give you the pot this time?"

"I did something real bad."

"Again?"

"Hey, my dad doesn't know the half of it. I'd hate to think what he'd do if he knew the whole story!"

Bommy told her about his adventures with the mummies and Mr. Sog (he'd promised not to tell anyone, but Elyno wasn't just anyone, she was his best friend). He didn't mention the extra vial of tonic, though. He was saving that for later.

By the time he'd finished his story, all the laundry was hung on the line and Elyno was sitting in the grass, clipping the leftover clothespins together to form a perfect scale model of a dragophant skeleton.

"You're amazing," she said as she tweaked a mandible. "You can get into more trouble without even trying than most people do on purpose. It's a true Talent."

Bommy frowned. "It's my other Talent I'm worried about."

"Oh, you don't actually believe you're a necromancer, do you?"

"What am I supposed to think?"

"I know you. You're not a necromancer."

She held up her finished dragophant and admired it for a couple of seconds, then twisted off its tail and plopped it back in the clothespin basket.

"How do you know I'm not?" he said.

"I just do. You're not the type."

"Maybe it's a latex talent."

"You mean latent?"

"Whatever. Maybe there was a necromancer in my family and my dad never told me about him. My grandpa used to ... why are you laughing."

"Bommy Giffitt, dark lord of the dead. It's just too funny."

"OK, smarty girl, what other explanation could there be? Mr. Sog said the only way the tonic could've..."

"Gee, Bommy, did you ever think that maybe, just maybe, this creepy Mr. Sog guy possibly could have, you know, lied to you?"

"Why would he do that?" Bommy said indignantly.

Elyno yanked off the dragophant's jaw. "Why does anybody lie? Why do _you_ lie?"

"I don't lie. I tell stories."

"Yeah, because the truth would get you into trouble. And it's the same with Mr. Sog. He said the potion wouldn't bring the mummies to life because if he'd told the truth you wouldn't have helped him and he knew it."

"But why would he want to revive the mummies at all? So they can get busted and end up in jail? What good does that do him?"

"No good. That's the point. He's up to no good."

She started dismembering the dragophant's ribcage. Bommy knelt down beside her and joined in.

"If he was an evil sorcerer he wouldn't pick a kid to help him," Bommy said. "And if he did, it would be a creep like Hoshua or Jayk, not some smart kid like me who'd see right through him."

Elyno rolled her eyes. "Oh Bommy, you're so full of fantasies sometimes you can't see the nose in front of your own face. You believe what you want to believe. You're just the kind of boy I'd pick if I were an evil sorcerer."

"He's not evil."

"Is so."

A gust of wind blew into the clothesline and the laundry flapped up high in the air, like ghostly specters waving a warning. Elyno cringed and made the sign of Quad.

"You see?" she said. "The wind knows. It's an omen."

"Oh yeah? Well if he's so evil, how come he gave me two gold coins, huh? Evil sorcerers are mean to their assistants, and real stingy too."

"How do you know? Have you ever met an evil sorcerer before?"

"Aw, everybody knows about evil sorcerers. They're in books and movies all the time."

"Those are just stories."

"But if he gave me all that money, that means he's generous, and generosity is one of the Seven Virtues."

"Paying someone hush money isn't generous. It's wily."

She got up, brushed off her skirt, then picked up the basket of clothespins and headed toward the house. Bommy grabbed the empty laundry basket and trotted after her.

"Hey, wait up," he said. "I've got something to show you, and it'll prove Mr. Sog isn't evil. I was gonna save it for later as a surprise, but now..."

She turned around. "What is it?"

"Something Mr. Sog gave me, to give to you. And it's free, too."

"Something for me?" she said dubiously. "Why would he give me something? He doesn't even know me."

"I told him about you. Well, I didn't actually tell him about you, I just said I needed something to help a friend of mine, and he gave it to me for free. Would an evil man do that?"

Elyno regarded him warily. "What is it?"

Bommy glanced toward the house to make sure his dad wasn't watching, then pulled the vial out of his pocket. Elyno leaned close and peered at it, scrunching up her nose.

"Eww, what's that?"

"The tonic."

She straightened up and glared at him. "Bommy Giffitt, I am not a mummy!"

"I know, I know," he said hastily, "but this stuff's supposed to rejuvenile things."

"You mean rejuvenate?"

"Yeah. And if it worked on mummies, it'll work on you. It'll cure you, Elyno. Don't you want that?"

Her eyes grew soft. And sad. "You don't like me the way I am?"

"Aw, sure I do. But you're not supposed to be this way. You were changed by magic, and now I've got something that can un-change you and make you like you were before."

She smiled. "It's nice of you to think of me. It's very, very sweet."

He blushed.

"But you're too trusting," she said. "You believe too easily."

"If you'd met Mr. Sog, you'd believe in him too."

"I'm sure he's very charming in person. Evil people often are."

"He's not evil."

"Is so."

"So you won't even try the tonic? Not even a little bit?"

"I can't."

"Why not?"

She looked at him for a long moment, then took a deep breath before she spoke.

"You've got to understand. My parents tried to cure me, real hard. They took me to all kinds of healers who tried all kinds of treatments, and they were awful. If they didn't make me sick to my stomach they burnt my skin, and in the end none of it worked. Even Melliata couldn't help me. And the worst part of it was, I'd get my hopes up, and then they'd be dashed again. That hurt more than anything."

Bommy saw the pain in her eyes. It made him hurt too. He shoved the vial back in his pocket.

"OK," he said. "I won't bring it up again. Promise."

They walked up to the back door.

"You want to join us for supper?" he said.

"No, I've got to get home."

"Want me to walk with you?"

She giggled. "No, your stomach's growling something fierce. You better feed it right away before it does something drastic."

"You sure? I don't mind walking you home. Honest. My stomach can wait."

"I'll be all right."

"OK. I'll call you later, if the wizard winds aren't fuzzing up the phone lines."

"All right."

He started to open the door.

"Bommy?" Elyno said.

He turned around.

She kissed him on the cheek.

Her lips were rough and dry, but it was a kiss just the same. Bommy had never been kissed by a girl before. He wasn't sure he liked it. It was kind of yucky and kind of neat at the same time.

"Aw, geez," he said, his face turning beet red.

Elyno giggled and scurried off.

* * *

Bommy woke up with a start. What was that noise? He looked around his bedroom, staring into the moon-streaked darkness, then turned toward the window.

Tap ... tap ... tap

There it was again. Something rapping on the glass. Bommy climbed out of bed and crept over to the window and stared out into the night sky. Nothing there.

"Bommy!"

He looked down. Elyno was standing beneath his window, clutching a handful of pebbles.

"Elyno!" he whispered back. "What are you doing here?"

"I couldn't sleep. I want to talk to you."

"What's wrong? Is there trouble?"

"I've been thinking."

"Oh no. When girls think, that _does_ mean trouble."

"Smart ass. Come on down."

Bommy sighed. He was getting good at sneaking out of the house, but sooner or later his dad would catch him.

Not tonight, though. He made it outside with no problem and tiptoed around to the side of the house.

Elyno was still in her pajamas.

"Cute pandas," Bommy said.

"Never mind that," she whispered. "Do you still have that potion?"

"Sure I do. But I thought you weren't interested."

"That was before."

"Before what?"

Her eyes sharpened to sword tips. "Before that wicked Jayk poked his head out his window when I was passing by his house and threw those prunes at me and called me those horrid names."

"I knew I should've walked you home."

"Oh, that wouldn't have made any difference."

"So what did he call you?"

"I don't want to talk about it. I just want that potion."

"I thought you didn't believe in it. You said Mr. Sog was a liar."

"Maybe he is and maybe he isn't, but I don't care anymore. I just want to try it. It's the one thing I haven't tried and I've got nothing to lose."

"That doesn't sound like you, Elyno. You're always telling me to ignore creeps like Jayk. Why are you letting him get to you now?"

Elyno looked down at her feet, her voice soft as the night breeze: "I get tired sometimes, that's all. I lie in bed and I try not to think about all the things the kids say, and I blot it out by focusing on something else, like flowers or birds or music. But tonight all I could think about was what you'd said, and that little bottle you had in your hand."

"But what if it doesn't work?"

She shrugged. "What have I got to lose?"

"But suppose Mr. Sog made it too strong?"

"I thought you wanted me to take it."

"Yeah, but I've been thinking. Maybe it revived the mummies because he made it too strong and doesn't know it. Everyone makes mistakes, even wizards. And if you take something that wasn't mixed right, Quad knows what it might do. You could get real sick or ... or worse."

"I've been real sick. That's nothing new."

"Yeah, but it might do more than make you sick. It might even ... well, you know..."

"What? Kill me?"

"Yeah."

"I don't care."

Bommy stared at her. "You don't care if you die? Elyno, that's a terrible thing to say!"

Her lower lip quivered. She shut her eyes and turned her back to him and choked back a sob. He put a hand on her shoulder.

"Aw, come on, Elyno. I hate it when you go all gloomy."

"Try living in this face for awhile and see how gloomy you get."

Bommy had no reply to that. He couldn't imagine what it was like. And didn't want to.

"OK," he said after a long moment of silence. "I guess maybe I could give you some. But only a little bit!"

She spun around. Tears were running down her cheeks, falling into the crevices in her face, trapped there like tiny stars in a crinkly nighttime sky.

"You'll do it?" she said, her eyes lighting up.

"I guess so."

The wind picked up just then, rippling through the grass, making the dandelions sway to and fro – like golden-haired fairies shaking their heads from side to side.

Telling them, "No ... no ... no ... no ... no ..."

TWELVE

The world seemed to hold its breath as Elyno pulled the stopper from the vial. The crickets fell silent and the warm wind calmed and the dandelions ceased their frantic waving and even the clouds scudding across the sky paused in their flight, giving the moon an unobstructed view.

Elyno leaned back in the lawn chair and brought the vial to her lips. Bommy, standing next to her, bent down and peered at her face as she took one little sip.

"Ugh," she said.

"Shhh," Bommy said, glancing up at his dad's darkened bedroom window. "Not so loud."

"Ugh," Elyno whispered.

"What does it taste like?" he asked.

She made a face. "Like liver sausage and old slimy lettuce and brown bananas and moldy limburger cheese and blackstrap biscuits all mixed together."

"Yuck."

He leaned in closer. "So how do you feel? Is the potion doing anything?"

She shut her eyes a second, then looked up at Bommy. "I don't feel any different."

"Huh. Maybe we..."

She drank some more.

"Easy!" Bommy hissed. "That's nearly half the darn bottle!"

She grimaced and shuddered, then bent forward as if she wanted to get out of the chair, then settled back again with a long, low sigh. Her head lolled to one side and her eyes turned up toward the moon, returning its unblinking stare.

"You OK?" Bommy said.

She didn't answer.

Bommy touched her shoulder.

"Elyno?"

Her face began to change. A pallor spread across her skin, swirling and expanding – like a cup of coffee when you pour in the cream. The crinkles in her flesh broke apart and bobbed up and down as the pallor passed through them, like lumps of brown sugar, then sank beneath the surface, leaving her face smooth and clear.

Bommy's eyes widened in amazement.

"Gazeepers! It worked, Elyno! Good Quad it really worked! Your face is back, your real face. You're..."

He almost said, "You're pretty again," but that was like saying "You were ugly before," so he bit his tongue.

Elyno didn't say anything at all. She just sat there, staring up at the night sky, the vial slowly slipping from her fingers. Bommy caught it before it hit the ground.

And still Elyno didn't budge.

Bommy squeezed her shoulder.

It was stiff as a board.

He took her hand and patted it. It was hard and shiny and slick to the touch, like ...

No. It couldn't be.

He touched her forehead, her neck, her arm, her leg. They were all the same, not flesh and blood anymore, but something else.

Plastic.

Bommy's mind reeled. Elyno had turned into a giant action figure – and not even a good one with movable parts, but the cheap kind made from one solid piece.

"Oh Quad!" he said.

Desperately, he grabbed her by the arms and shook her, shook her, shook her, yelling, "Elyno! Wake up! Wake up, dammit!"

No response.

He let her go. She thumped against the back of the chair and tilted sideways and nearly toppled over, but he caught her and set her upright again, then slowly let go again.

For a good minute he just stood there, staring at her, frozen to the spot just like she was, and then the panic engulfed him and he dashed into the house and pounded up the stairs, sobbing, panting, crying out for his dad.

He was about to burst into his dad's bedroom when he came to his senses and stopped short. How could his dad help Elyno? He was a Lifter, not a Healer. If Bommy told him what happened he'd just yell a lot, and that wouldn't help Elyno any. She needed a Healer, but what did the practitioners in Keps know about potions made in ... wherever Mr. Sog was from?

No, there was only one person who could undo the damage, and the sooner Bommy talked to him, the better.

He hurried down to the living room and snatched up the phone so fast he nearly knocked it off the end table. He touched the Directory icon on the screen and typed in "Keps Hotel," then hit Dial.

After the tenth ring, a man finally answered.

"Keps Hotel."

"Get me Room 613 and quick!"

"Sorry," the clerk said in a yawning monotone. "We can't put through a call this time of night."

"But it's an emergency!"

"Is it now?"

"Yes sir. It's a matter of life and death!"

"Heh. You're darn right it is. If I wake someone up in the middle of the night they'll probably kill me."

"I'm serious. I swear to Quad."

"Oh yeah? So what's the big emergency, kiddo?"

"There's no time to go into that now."

"Can't think up one that fast, eh? Look kid, why don't you go to bed and quit annoying your elders, OK?"

Bommy sighed. "You've got to believe me, mister. This is urgent. My friend's been turned into a giant plastic action figure and..."

"Ha! Nice try. Call again when you come up with something I can halfway believe, OK?"

Click.

Bommy muttered a few words that can't be printed here, then slammed the phone down and rushed from the house, heading for the garage.

Bigmouth bitched all the way to the Keps Hotel, but at least he got there quick. As Bommy rushed into the lobby, the clerk behind the counter – who looked even stupider than he sounded on the phone – shouted something at him but Bommy ignored him and kept going, and soon he was up on the sixth floor, pounding on the door of room 613.

The door of 611 flew open.

"You again!" the gray haired man said.

"It's an emergency, mister," Bommy said. "I need help!"

"You can say that again, but you won't get it from an empty room."

Bommy gaped at him. "Whadaya mean empty?"

"I mean the guy in there checked out."

"Checked out? Whadaya mean he checked out?"

The man snorted. "Are you deaf or just dense? I mean he left the hotel and took his stuff with him. I should know; that clumsy bellhop must've banged that trunk of his against the wall a dozen times getting it down the hall. Damned incompetence if you ask me."

"But Mr. Sog can't be gone. He just can't be!"

The man scowled. "I won't have some guttersnipe calling me a liar. Your friend is gone. Checked out. Moved on. It's a funny thing that happens a lot in hotels for some reason. Now pipe down or I'll call the manager and have you pitched out on your ear and then you'll _really_ have an emergency on your hands!"

He slammed the door.

Bommy put his ear to the door of 613 and listened, but all he could hear was his own pounding heart. He grabbed the knob and turned it.

Unlocked.

He flung the door open and burst inside, fumbled for the light switch, turned it on.

"Damn!"

The bed was freshly made and there was no trunk at the foot of it. The TV was off – with a little sign taped to the front saying "Out of Order." Bommy ran to the closet and opened it. Empty. He went to the writing desk, hoping to find a note or a letter, some clue.

Nothing.

He sank down on the edge of the bed, blinking back tears.

"What am I gonna do?" he said. "Oh Quad, what do I do now?"

* * *

The homes in West Keps were big, fancy mansions set in the middle of big, fancy lawns, some as large as ovalball fields. No cheap birdbaths squatted on these lawns; they were full blown fountains complete with statues of naked people spouting water from their mouths and other places. And instead of garages there were carriage houses – some even had carriages in them, but mostly it was cars (GMW's and Trolls Royces, of course, not Chavys and Forgs).

This was where the hoity toities lived, the Keps councilmembers and the business owners and the guild chiefs.

And Melliata Taruce.

It was easy finding Melliata's place; Bommy just looked for the one yard that didn't resemble a billiard table, a yard full of unmowed grass, untrimmed trees, unpruned bushes, untamed flowerbeds.

"Turn in here," he said to Bigmouth.

"No," the bike replied.

Bommy put on the brakes.

"Come on," he said, "I haven't got all night. Turn in here."

"No."

"Why not?"

"Dumpy place this. At a fancy house I belong. Down the street we should go."

Bommy whacked him in the fender.

"Turn in here or I'll paint you pink when we get home and put training wheels on you and turn you into a baby bike."

"Ech."

Bigmouth turned into the narrow driveway and reluctantly rolled up to the unassuming cottage. Bommy climbed off.

"Who in this dump lives?" Bigmouth said.

"Melliata Taruce."

"Of her I have never heard. Down the street I go now and mingle with GMW's. Fine metal in GMW's. War stories I tell them. Impressed they all be."

"Just stay here, dammit," Bommy said. He was in no mood to argue.

"Grouch," the bike replied.

As Bommy headed up the walk toward the front door, pungent smells hit his nose, herbs and spices and flowers – like he'd fallen into a giant potpourri bag. He stepped up onto the porch, scanning the darkened windows for signs of life. He glimpsed a glimmer of light somewhere in a back room, then it went out.

"No, wait," he cried, knocking frantically on the door. "I've gotta talk to you! Don't go to bed!"

The light went on again. Footsteps approached the door.

"I'm coming, I'm coming," a voice said. "Hold your horsehairs."

The door opened and a short, plump woman looked out. Her hair was a tangled gray mess that resembled a bird's nest (built by a very sloppy bird). Her smock was covered with grass and berry stains. A single pendant dangled from her neck, containing a periwinkle stone that matched her eyes.

A black cat poked its head out between her bunny-slippered feet and gaped at him – which was quite disconcerting, since it had only one eye. In the middle of its forehead.

"Melliata?" Bommy said.

"The one and only," she replied. "What brings you here this time of night, young'un?"

"Sorry to bother you, ma'am. My name's Bommy Giffitt, and..."

"Giffitt, you say? Is Dalan your father?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"I think I met you once when you were just a baby." She looked him up and down. "My, you've grown faster than a trooplant sprout."

"Yes, ma'am."

"What seems to be the problem? Has Dalan taken ill?"

"It's my friend, Elyno. She's in trouble, and I don't know where else to turn."

"Elyno? That wouldn't be Elyno Telves by any chance, would it?"

"That's the one."

"She has a wasting disease inherited from her father, as I recall."

"Yes, ma'am."

Melliata shook her head. "Such a lovely girl, more's the pity. Has she taken a turn for the worse?"

"Yeah. I gave her a potion to cure her, and it kind of backfired."

"Did you now? You have Healers in your family tree, do you?"

"No, ma'am. We're all Lifters."

"Then what made you think you had a knack for potions?"

"I just wanted to help."

"Heh. They always do. And where did you come by this potion of yours?"

"A man gave it to me. Well actually, he gave me two bottles – those little bottles they call vials. The first one I took to the mummies at Hokmasifu, because..."

"Mummies?" Melliata chuckled. "What good would a potion do a mummy? They're past all point of curing."

"He said it would restore them so they'd look nice. He's part of a religion that worships the dead."

"Is he now?"

"Yeah, but something went wrong and the potion brought them back to life."

The chuckle died in Melliata's throat. She made the sign of Quad on her forehead.

"Saints preserve us! You've been dealing with a necromancer!"

"No ma'am," Bommy said sadly. "I'm afraid I'm the necromancer, but I swear I didn't know it. It must've been a latex talent."

"You, a necromancer? Heavens, boy, don't be daft. It's the man who gave you the potion I'm talking about. Who is he?"

"Mr. Sog? Oh no, he can't be a necromancer. He's a cool guy. Only I can't find him now, and..."

"Mr. Sog?" she said sharply. "Is that his full name?"

"No, ma'am. It's Sogologodogo, but..."

The cat arched its back and hissed. Melliata looked like she wanted to do the same.

"Quad protect us!" she said, rolling her eyes to the heavens.

"You know him?"

"Oh yes. I met him years ago, when I was in Healing School. He's a necromancer, all right."

Bommy's heart sank. "Are you sure? Maybe you're thinking of some other guy with the same name."

"Now who else in the world would have a name like that? Oh no, it's him, all right. He's not the kind of man you get confused with anyone else. And if he mixed you up a potion, you can be sure it won't do anyone any good."

"But I thought evil wizards always picked mean, stupid people to be their assistants."

Melliata gave him a pitying look. "You poor boy. You've watched too many movies. Evil wizards can't stand mean, stupid people any more than the rest of us can. They'd much rather pick some innocent lad and dupe him into doing their dirty work and lead him to ruin."

Bommy clamped his hands to the sides of his head. "Oh Quad, how could I be so stupid?"

"Don't feel too bad. If you were wise to the ways of wizards he wouldn't have picked you in the first place. So how did he talk you into giving his noxious potion to Elyno?"

"He didn't. I asked him for it."

Melliata raised an eyebrow. "And why in heaven's name did you do a thing like that?"

Bommy squirmed. "Well, I figured if the potion made the mummies look good, it could do wonders for Elyno. It made a lot of sense at the time." He bowed his head. "Now I feel like a complete doofus."

"Well, you _are_ a complete doofus."

Tears welled in Bommy's eyes. "I'm sorry."

Melliata cupped a finger under his chin and lifted his head up.

"But you're a kind-hearted doofus. And there's lots worse things in the world than that. You're not the first lad to be fooled by a dark mage, and you won't be the last, I'd wager."

She wiped a thumb across his wet cheek. The tears vanished from his eyes.

"So tell me," she said, "what happened to Elyno, exactly?"

Bommy sighed. "The potion took away her wrinkles, and made her pretty again – only now she's turned into a big piece of plastic, like a Y-Man, only her arms and legs don't move."

"Gracious sakes. That poor girl. As if she didn't have enough troubles."

"Yes, ma'am."

She ruffled his hair. "Cheer up, Bommy. All's not lost. We'll go take a look at her and see what we can see."

Bommy's mood brightened, at least a little. "So you think you can make her better?"

Melliata smiled sadly. "There's no guarantees in magic. I've already failed once with Elyno, you know."

"I know."

"That doesn't mean I'll fail this time, but don't be getting your hopes up, you hear?"

"I won't," Bommy said, but already he felt better.

"We'd best be off then. How'd you get here?"

"On my bike."

"Well my body isn't built for bikes, not any more. We'd best take my car."

Bommy started squirming again. "Uh, before we go, ma'am, there's a little problem with the fee. I, uh, don't exactly have a lot of money to pay you with."

He dug into his pocket and took out his two gold pieces.

"All I have is this. I know it's not much for a Healer like you, head of the Guild and all, but I was thinking maybe you could take it as a down payment and I can owe you the rest?"

She took the money and held it up to the moonlight. The cat craned its neck to peer at the coins, then hissed and retreated inside the cottage.

"Gaggadechian gold," Melliata said sourly. "No thank you."

She took Bommy's hand, twisted the palm upward, and dropped the coins into it.

"I'll tell you what, Bommy. I work on a sliding scale. For you and Elyno, I'll slide all the way over to Free, at least for now. If I ever need a favor, or if you grow up to be a wealthy man, you can pay me proper. Is it a deal?"

Bommy grinned. "Sure."

She disappeared inside the cottage, returning a few seconds later with a wicker medical bag in her hand and Beboks on her feet.

"Watch the place while I'm gone, Button," she said to the cat, then shut the door.

They headed down the walk. Bigmouth backed away from them as they approached.

"Two people on me ride? Happen this will not. Weight too much."

"Don't be rude!" Bommy said.

Melliata chuckled. "Gracious, an enchanted bicycle. I haven't seen one of these in ages."

"Like me there are no others," the bike said proudly. "From cannon came I. Pinecone kings served I. Feared me did all men."

"I'm sure," Melliata said. "It's nice to meet such a distinguished bit of metal."

"Really?" Bigmouth said.

Melliata turned to Bommy. "We can load it – uh, him – into the trunk of my car if you'd like."

"No," the bike said, backing up another few feet. "Warriors in back of trunks do not ride. Home by myself go I."

It turned around and rolled down the driveway, disappearing into the night.

"Finicky, isn't he?" Melliata said.

* * *

"Can I ask you a question?" Bommy said as they drove through the quiet streets.

"Surely," Melliata replied.

"What happened when you met Mr. Sog, back when you were in Healing School?"

"Ah, now that's an interesting tale. You see, it all started when a bunch of us girls from the school were out at the cemetery over in Karnsey one night, paying our respects to some of our patients – oh, I guess I should explain that there was a withers plague in Karnsey that year, and our midterm final was to try and cure a bunch of hard cases, and needless to say we flunked, but that's how it goes – so anyway, there we were, paying our respects to the departed, linking our lenses and drinking our true brew and reciting the salutations, and in the middle of our ruminations out pops a portal – and us girls being young and naive, we thought we'd done it, and that wasn't good, since you're not supposed to make portals unless you're in the Teleportation Guild. And then this handsome, strapping young man comes through the portal, and we realized he had made it himself, and we were very impressed with that. He had a couple of bottles of hooch with him and he asked us if we wanted to go up to Gaggadech and party. That's on the Other Side, you know."

"I've never heard of it. Gaggadech, I mean."

"Few people have. It's not the kind of place you'd ever want to hear of. Anyway, to make a long story short, when Sogo found out us girls were alive and just visiting the cemetery, he gave us the brush and vamoosed. He was on the prowl he was, cruising for deadheads to liven up and party down with, since that seems to be his natural predilection – or unnatural, I should say – only he was just as young as us and nearly as naive and didn't know the difference between permanently stiff and temporarily plastered, but that's neither here nor there. He took a fancy to me, although I was still breathing, and asked if I wanted to come with him, and me being a fool I nearly said yes, till Janni talked me out of it. Hoo, what a narrow escape that was! Later on I heard a little about his further exploits, mostly on the Other Side. He's wanted by the Astral Police in five realms for soul snatching, grave robbing, fomenting insurrection, dream stealing and memory smuggling."

She shook her head. "I tell you, if I'd known that night what he'd turn into, I would've done by best to pop his portal, with him halfway through it, if you know what I mean."

"Not really," Bommy said.

"Well the bottom line is this: He's bad news, but he does have a certain way about him."

Melliata got an odd twinkle in her eyes – a dreamy, happy-sad kind of glimmer – and became lost in her own private thoughts. They drove on in silence.

THIRTEEN

Bommy's dad burst out the back door, his nightshirt flapping in the breeze as he stormed angrily toward his son.

"Bommy Giffitt, what in blazes are you up to now? Out past your bedtime again and..."

He stopped short. "And what's this? A young lady, too?"

His eyes adjusted quickly to the moonlight, and bulged at what they saw.

"And wearing pajamas? Young lady, that isn't proper attire for..."

"Oh pipe down, Dalan, I'm trying to do some healing here."

Dalan jumped. He hadn't seen the third person, kneeling on the far side of the girl. Melliata stood up. Dalan gulped.

"Oh, Melliata. I didn't know you were here."

"Obviously."

"What are you doing?"

"I already told you, trying to heal poor Elyno."

"Elyno?"

He looked around. "Where? I don't see..."

"That's Elyno, dad," Bommy said sadly, pointing at the girl in the chair.

His dad stared at her, then leaned closer and stared some more. It was a toy, a giant action figure that resembled Elyno – the way Elyno used to be before the curse took hold.

"What the..."

"We've no time for prattle now," Melliata said. "I've got work to do."

She knelt down again and pressed a finger against Elyno's shiny cheek and peered at her through a crimson crystal.

"Pores," she said. "There are pores in the plastic. That's good. She could absorb medicine into her body – if we had medicine to give her, which we don't."

She rummaged around in her bag and took out a greenish-yellow crystal and brought it up to her eye.

"Hmmm," she said. "Hmmm."

"Well?" Bommy said impatiently. "What do you think? It's not hopeless, is it?"

"Be still. This requires some deep thought."

She put the crystals away and sat there gazing at Elyno for the longest time, tapping a finger against one of her chins.

"I suppose I could try some moonsleaf extract," she muttered at last. "That's good for people who've been turned to stone. And I've got some essence of toad's root, which works wonders on tundralytics – that's people who've been frozen solid by close contact with reagabos. But I'm not sure either one would work on a body turned to plastic, unless I mixed them together, and that would burn a hole clean through her."

She picked up the half-empty vial sitting on the armrest of the lawn chair.

"Maybe we could give this potion to a healthy person in small doses, so they built up a tolerance to it, and then bleed them and filter out the antibodies and mix that with diluted moonsleaf and toad's root, but there's no time for that."

She tapped her chins again.

"I suppose I could feed a big dose of potion to some animal with a strong constitution, a morkhog or fadger, and if it fought off the effects there'd be antibodies in its blood that ... but you don't want to give blood from a morkhog or fadger to a human being unless you're desperate, because it would cure them but they'd more'n likely be dead, and..."

Her face lit up. She jumped to her feet.

"That's it! Dead people! Why didn't I think of this before? We don't need morkhogs or fadgers, we have mummies!" She turned to Bommy. "You said you gave this potion to mummies and they came alive, right?"

"You what!" his dad roared.

Melliata held up her hand. "Easy now, Dalan. I was speaking to your son."

She turned to Bommy, who was cowering behind the lawn chair. "Well? Out with it, boy."

"Yes, ma'am," he said meekly, then turned to his dad. "It's a long story dad. We really don't have time to go into it now."

"I'll decide what we have time to go into, young man."

"Dalan, please," Melliata said. "Act like a father later. Right now I need to get to those mummies and draw some blood. It's just what we'll need for an antidote. Well, one of the things we'll need. Tell me, Bommy, are the mummies still at Hokmasifu?"

"No," Bommy said, crouching even lower.

"Then where are they?"

"In jail."

Melliata and Dalan stared at Bommy, their jaws dropping open.

"It's kind of hard to explain," he said.

Melliata recovered first. "Well save the storytelling for later. Time's a wasting. Right now we've got to get Elyno inside out of this witchy wind, and then we'll head on over to the jail."

* * *

Constable Pote Farol opened the door of Cell 6 and let the three visitors in, then quickly shut it behind them, locked it and returned to the front desk.

He didn't like hanging around the two vagabonds. They spent most of their time sleeping, thrashing about and groaning as if plagued by bad dreams, and when they woke up they talked gibberish to each other and rattled the doors of their cells and babbled at him in voices that were indignant one moment, pleading the next, as if they actually expected him to let them out – and worst of all they looked at him like _he_ was the crazy one.

Strong drink had ruined many a poor soul, but this was the worst case he'd ever seen.

Why was Melliata the Healer visiting the likes of them? Abstinence was the only thing that cured drunks, not nostrums. And why had she brought that Lifter with her, and with a kid in tow – in the middle of the night, no less? The boy had the look of a rascal about him; maybe they wanted to show him what happened to people who wandered off the straight and narrow.

Oh well, it was no concern of his. He put his feet back on his desk and picked up his newspaper and returned to the box scores.

Back in Cell 6, Melliata, Dalan and Bommy gathered around the bunks where the two vagabonds were sleeping – or trying to, anyway. Both of them were tossing and turning, churning their legs as if running away from something, grasping at the air with their thin, bony hands, fending off Quad knows what.

Melliata opened up her bag and brought out a small bottle full of green crystals. She uncorked it and waved it under the woman's nose, then the man's.

The vagabonds awoke with a start, thrashing about for a few seconds till their dreams finally fled. They rubbed their eyes to clear their vision, then stared up at their visitors with befuddled looks on their faces.

Bommy stared right back at them. He couldn't believe the two dried-up old mummies he'd seen in the vault at Hokmasifu were lying before him now, alive and whole again. The man didn't look a day over sixty, and had a regal face, the kind you see on stamps, with a peppery gray beard and bushy eyebrows. The woman appeared to be about thirty, and was very pretty for someone that old, with auburn hair cascading over her shoulders in little ringlets, and eyes the same color as Amalissa's – only Cammaleila's were deeper somehow, oceans compared to wading pools. The left one was a bit cockeyed, and the lid over it drooped slightly, but that did little to mar her beauty.

The woman's good eye locked onto Bommy and a strange chill went through him – excitement and dread all mixed together. She was beautiful, and she was a queen, and alive again, thanks to him. And that was very cool. But she was a dead person, too, who should've been sleeping peacefully in her tomb, and still would be if it weren't for his meddling. Now she was stuck in a jail cell. Did she know it was all his fault?

"Oyu rea ta oboto morof ta rothe meard," she said.

Bommy looked at his dad. "What did she say?"

"Damned if I know," his dad replied. "Drunk-tank talk, most likely."

Bommy didn't know what to do, so he bowed to the queen and said, "Glad to meet you, your highness."

His dad sniffed disdainfully. He didn't believe the story Bommy had told him in the car, about Mr. Sog and the tonic and the mummies coming to life; he thought it was just another one of his fibs, concocted to cover up the truth, whatever that was.

Melliata rummaged around in her wicker bag and took out something that resembled a pickled owl's head.

"What's that?" Bommy said.

"A pickled owl's head," she said. "Just the thing for translating gibberish. It was given to me by a handsome young man in the diplomatic corps – back in the days when handsome young men gave me things. He got it from a sorcerer in Adina, or so he said."

"Cool," Bommy said.

Melliata turned to Cammaleila, who was giving them all very strange looks, holding her head at an odd angle due to her stiff neck. The Healer smiled and placed the owl's head in the queen's hands. The queen studied it a moment, then brought it to her mouth. Melliata grabbed her wrist.

"Begging your pardon, your majesty," she said, "but it's not for eating. It's for talking."

The beak in the owl's head moved up and down, and odd sounds came out. The queen seemed to understand them. She gaped at the head in amazement.

"The owl will translate what we say," Melliata said, "so we can talk to each other."

"Nac oyut areha emh?" the queen said.

"You understand what I'm saying?" the owl's head repeated.

Melliata beamed. "Perfectly."

"Trepfka," the owl said.

The queen sighed. "At last. Someone to talk to."

"Talk away, your highness," Melliata said. "I'm sure you have some questions, and so do we."

"Very well. Who are you? And where is my royal guard? Where are my handmaidens?"

"Handmaidens?" Bommy's dad muttered under his breath. "Get real, sister."

Melliata tossed him a harsh look over her shoulder, then smiled again at the queen.

"You'll forgive me for asking this, but I don't want to assume anything. Am I truly speaking with Queen Cammaleila herself, and is this King Ecorakaza?"

"Damn right," the king said grumpily, trying to rub the sleep out of his eyes. "Who the hell are you?"

The queen glared at him. "Hush, Vonar. I shall handle this."

The king started to reply, but a yawn overtook his mouth. He shut his eyes again.

"We're friends, your highness," Melliata said. "We've come to help you."

The queen rose to a sitting position, wincing as her ten-thousand-year-old joints creaked in protest.

"Relax, ma'am," Melliata said. "You've been out of circulation for awhile. Better take this lying down."

The queen sighed. She looked very tired.

"Very well," she said. She lay down again. "Now will you please tell me why we've been imprisoned, and by who? Is it that no-good grand vizier of mine?"

"No, your highness. It's a long story, and it's not really mine to tell." She nodded at Bommy. "It's his."

The queen tried to turn her head, but it pained her to do so, so she twisted her entire body to look at him. Recognition dawned.

"Now I know you," she said, smiling. "The boy in the other dream."

He smiled back. "Pleased to meet you ... again."

The queen's smile faded. "I wish you were in my latest dreams. They trouble me so."

"I noticed you tossing and turning, your highness," Melliata said. "Are you having nightmares?"

"I thought we were interested in their blood, not their dreams," Dalan said. "Though I don't see how blood from these two can help Elyno. It's probably ninety proof, and she's still a minor."

"Hush, Dalan," Melliata said. "Go on, your highness. Tell me about your dreams."

Cammaleila frowned. "There are bad spirits in this place. They come to me in my sleep. I used to dream such lovely things, when I slept the sleep of the endless night. But now there is no rest in my sleep, because a horrid man comes to me, a wizard from the looks of him, all covered in arcane symbols and dark crystals. He is a bristly man. The hair upon his chin and the eyes in his head, they bristle at me like quills of a scorupine."

"That sounds like Mr. Sog," Bommy said.

The queen placed a finger against her temple. "I know not his name, but he is a wicked man. He acts like he is the king, and I am a member of _his_ court. He speaks of Paradise, and an Army of the Dead which he is raising even now, like a garden full of weeds. He talks of fighting a war, but I have no love of war and never did."

"A war?" Melliata said, leaning forward. "A war over what?"

The queen looked at her sadly. "I know not his meaning or his motives. He talks to me in a hundred different languages and a thousand different voices and ten thousand faces, but through it all I see only his face and hear only his voice, and always the message is the same. I must lead his army into battle, and destroy the enemy."

"What enemy are you talking about?" Dalan said.

"The world," the queen said. "That is the enemy. The world and everyone who dwells upon it. They all must be destroyed."

"Oh dear," Melliata said.

"Uh-ohhh," Bommy said. "It's the ancient Doomsday Prophecy. He's trying to make it come true!"

FOURTEEN

"Now isn't that a fine kettle of salamanders," Melliata said.

Dalan snorted. "A kettle of kooks, if you ask me."

He put the Chavy in gear and drove away from their parking space in front of the jail.

Melliata cast a sideways glance at him. "And what do you mean by that?"

"I mean I don't believe a word they said."

"But what about those little details they mentioned?"

"What details?"

"About life on Celton ten thousand years ago. And those obscure historical figures they knew about?"

"Heh. They could've gotten that out of history books if they dug hard enough."

"Do vagabonds read history books?"

"These two apparently do."

"And why would they go to all that work to pull off some sort of charade?"

"It's not a charade. They honestly believe they're royalty. It's called delusions of grandeur. They even admitted it. That so-called queen said she doubted her own sanity, remember?"

"That was after I told her she'd been dead all this time. Anyone would doubt their sanity if they heard that."

"Yes, because it _is_ insane. You actually believe that a couple of ten-thousand-year-old mummies were brought to life by a potion mixed up by a guy named ... oh, what's his name?"

"Sogologodogo."

"Mr. Sog," Bommy said helpfully.

"And this guy is so powerful he can raise the dead," Dalan said, "yet he needs a thirteen-year-old boy to help him? Get real."

"I'm a bright and capable lad," Bommy said.

"We've been through all that, Dalan," Melliata said. "Evil men are users. They let others do their dirty work."

"OK," Dalan said, "so let's say he needed a boy to do his dirty work. What does it accomplish? He's got two vagabonds in jail – oh, excuse me, the king and queen – and he comes to them in dreams to convince them to lead an army of dead guys into battle. Doesn't that seem a bit convoluted? Why doesn't he just lead the army himself?"

"He can't lead an army," Bommy said, "he's a civilian."

Melliata nodded. "The lad's right about that. Dead soldiers are like any other: They take their orders from generals – or a king or queen who's leading them into battle – but not a wizard, unless he's a full-blown sorcerer king, and you can't just appoint yourself to that position, you have to be born one."

"Oh come on," Dalan said. "The average..."

"Hey listen, I dated a soldier once – back when soldiers found me a beachhead worth invading – and whether they're conscripts or career men, they're all the same at heart, and they'd no more cast off their rules and regs than their boots and rifles. Oh sure, any competent evil wizard can scrape the bottom of the graveyard and get some no-goods to follow him, at least till they tire of hearing his line of malarkey, but that's a gang, not an army. Besides, the prophecy specifically states that royalty will lead the army of the dead, and Sogo can't invoke the prophecy unless he sticks to the script."

"The whole idea's nuts," Dalan said. "If it were possible to raise an army of dead and conquer the world, someone would have tried it long before now."

"How do you know it hasn't been tried?" Melliata said. "The Other Side is full of broken spells and fractured magic that wizard wannabes couldn't quite pull off. And just because no one's done it in our lifetime doesn't mean it can't be done."

"Well if this Sogologodogo can raise an army of the dead, I'll tell you one thing. There's no way those two vagabonds will lead them to anything but drink."

"It isn't booze they've been drinking, Dalan. It's potion. And unless I miss my guess, there was Brain Wash and Hate Juice in that tonic."

"So?"

"So the king and queen will fall under Sogo's spell sooner or later, and if they do, that's bad news for all of us."

"Aw, Cammaleila wouldn't help Mr. Sog destroy the world," Bommy said. "She's nice."

Melliata turned around and smiled at him. "You're a trusting lad, Bommy, and a gentleman. You don't want to think ill of a lady. But if Sogo gets his hooks into their heads, they won't be able to help themselves."

Dalan chuckled. "Unless that jailer leaves their cell door unlocked by mistake some night, they're not going anywhere, Brain Wash or no Brain Wash."

"I hope you're right," Melliata said pensively.

"What about Elyno?" Bommy said as the car turned onto 44th Street. "When does she get her medicine?"

"I'm afraid she'll have to stay a statue for the moment," Melliata said. "Or an action figure, as you put it. We can't risk giving her tainted blood."

"Aw, nuts."

"I'll run tests on the samples we took, just to be sure, but I'm afraid I already know what I'll find."

She reached into her bag and took out the two test tubes filled with the royals' blood. The king and queen had donated it quite willingly, much to Bommy's amazement, not even flinching when Melliata stuck in the needle – but then again, after lying around rotting for centuries, maybe nothing made them squeamish.

"So what do we do with Elyno?" Dalan said. "Fronk and Nilla will be wondering where she is, come morning."

Melliata sighed. "Yes, I suppose we should take her home tonight. I was hoping we could bring her back to her parents all healed up and fit as a fiddle, but Fate has decreed otherwise." She shook her head. "I can't say I'm looking forward to breaking the news to them. Quad knows how they'll handle it, after all the other misfortunes they've endured."

Bommy's dad glared at him in the rearview mirror. "That's what happens when we mess with things we shouldn't. Innocent people get hurt."

"Yes sir," Bommy muttered, feeling lower than a labyrinth worm, which is about as low as you can get.

When they got home he ran inside to take a look at Elyno. They had placed her on the couch and covered her with a blanket before they left for the jail, and Bommy had turned on the TV, selecting a show about forest birds because he knew Elyno liked that kind of thing and he figured maybe, just maybe, she'd be able to hear it and might even wake up to watch it.

But there was no change. She lay there staring up at the ceiling, oblivious to everything, as a commercial for synthetic conjure crystals droned in the background.

They should never have brought her inside. Out in the darkness she was nothing but glimmers and shadows, not quite real – but inside, under the harsh glare of electric lights, there could be no doubt about her condition, her utter lifelessness. It was the saddest sight in the world.

Melliata and Dalan bundled Elyno up and took her out to the car and put her in the back seat. Bommy watched from the window as they drove off – glad, for once, that it was way past his bedtime and he couldn't go with them. He had no desire to face Elyno's parents.

* * *

Bommy slept fitfully that night, dreaming of plastic mummies swimming through big vats of blood. In the morning he came down to breakfast and found Melliata in the kitchen with his dad, making flapjacks.

"What are you doing here?" he said.

"Thought I'd go out to Twisted Bog today and try to rustle up the makings of an antidote for the king and queen," she said cheerfully. "Care to come along, Bommy?"

"An antidote?" Bommy said. "You mean you can stop Mr. Sog from taking them over?"

"Hopefully. I thought about it most of the night, which is when I do my best thinking anyway, and I scrounged around in some old magical books and I think I came up with a recipe that just might do the trick."

"Really? Cool."

"And if I can cleanse the royals' blood, then I can use it for Elyno's medicine."

"Even cooler," Bommy said.

She smiled. "So are you coming along?"

"Me? You don't think I'd botch things up?"

"Heavens no. Besides, it would be good for what ails you."

"Me? I'm not sick."

"You don't have a bug, but you're ailing just the same. Guilt can be a terrible affliction, lad, as bad as any physical illness, and I don't want you going through life with your conscience all twisted up in a knot."

Bommy looked at his dad. "Is it OK?"

His dad nodded. "I don't place much store in this notion about vagabonds threatening the world, but it would do you good to see how a master Healer goes about her work."

Bommy grinned. He'd never been to Twisted Bog, but it sounded like a fun place.

"Let's go!" he said.

Melliata laughed. "Not so fast. Better eat first."

She flipped some flapjacks onto a plate and set them down in front of him.

"Eat hearty, Bommy. Your stomach won't be in much of a mood for grub once we get you into the bog."

* * *

Twisted Bog was about fifty miles southeast of the City of Keps, between Bottomless Valley and OneSided Mountain. According to legend, the waters in the bog originated in Hell itself, where the Devil peed and defecated endlessly into the River of Hades, which flowed through channels deep within the world before rising through fissures to the surface, where it spawned evil things in bogs and swamps, creatures that flew off at night to spread corruption and sin in the hearts of man.

As Bommy and Melliata trudged through the bog's thick black water, clad in thigh-high rubber waders, Bommy wondered if the legend might be true. The water stunk worse than the punishment pot, and big bubbles rose constantly to the surface, bursting with farting sounds. The mud on the bottom sucked at Bommy's legs, trying to pull him under, and even the water itself seemed to grab at him with cold, slimy fingers. Melliata said it was just swamp weeds beneath the surface, but Bommy had his doubts.

The bog got its name from the trees that lived there, stunted black things with spindly limbs twisted into odd shapes – curlicues and figure-eights and spirals – and draped with swamp moss that dangled down like scraggly, unwashed hair.

Bommy turned wary eyes on the low-hanging branches and drooping tendrils, fearing they might try to grab him. At one point a gust of wind caused a cluster of branches to dip and sway, scratching the top of his head, and he yelped and jumped back and stumbled, nearly falling into the water till Melliata caught him.

"The trees are trying to eat me!" he said.

"Silly lad," she said. "It's just the wind."

"No, no, they were grabbing at me! They were!"

"Heh. The only thing grabbing at you is your own imagination."

They came to a mossy rock, about four feet in diameter, squatting in the middle of the bog, and Melliata climbed onto it. Bommy hesitated.

"What's bothering you now?" she said.

"It looks like a great big face," Bommy said. "Like a giant with his mouth open, screaming up at the sky."

"Looks like a rock to me."

"What if it really _is_ a giant that some wizard turned to stone a long time ago and he wakes up while we're sitting on him?"

"Then we'll apologize profusely for getting in his face. Come on and climb up."

Bommy climbed up, careful not to sit on the giant's mouth, just in case he woke up hungry.

Melliata opened her wicker bag and took out a glass jar, unscrewed the lid and dipped the jar into the bog. The water refused to enter.

"Come on," she said, "don't be stubborn."

A few drops reluctantly trickled inside.

"Come on. Come on."

More drops followed, then a thin stream, until finally the jar was full. Melliata screwed on the lid and put the jar back in her bag, then took out a second one and handed it to Bommy.

"Hold this please," she said.

She took out a knife and scraped some stringy yellowish-brownish glop off the side of the rock and dropped it into the jar.

"Cap it up good," she said.

"What's that stuff?" Bommy said, scrunching up his nose.

"You don't want to know."

She took the jar and put it in her bag, then adjusted her waders and climbed into the bog again. Bommy followed. They made their way to a nearby tree, where Melliata pointed at something perched on the end of an exposed root. It looked like a cow pie with eyes.

"A bog toad," she said happily. "Get out that third jar."

Bommy did. She skewered the toad with her knife and dropped it into the jar. It gaped at Bommy, its purple eyes bugging out, its forked tongue protruding from its wart-covered lips, and Bommy looked away, cringing, as he put the lid back on.

"Poor guy," he said. "Did we have to do that?"

Melliata smiled. "I'm afraid so. Just remember, everything we're doing here will help the king and queen, and that will help Elyno."

"I know that, Melliata. I just wish the toad knew. He looked so sad."

"Have you ever seen a _happy_ toad?"

"No, I guess not."

"Well there you go. Now kindly hand me that fourth jar."

She waded into a cluster of brown lily pads and picked up one of them. There were blackish-blue tendrils trailing below the thing, writhing and twisting like worms. She dropped the lily pad into the jar. It pushed up on the bottom with its tendrils and tried to climb back out. Bommy whacked it with the lid a couple of times and knocked it silly.

"Sorry," he said, tightening the lid.

"OK," Melliata said, "I think we've mucked about as long as we should. We'd best be getting back now, before the bog tries to claim us."

"Good idea."

They started toward the shore.

"So is this all we need to make the antidote for the king and queen?" Bommy asked, nodding at Melliata's basket.

"Oh heavens no," she said. "A fancy recipe like this has oodles of ingredients – saliva from an enraged bull, the spleen of a hanged man, hair from a mad dog with bad teeth, bloody grass from a battlefield where the outcome was decided by treachery, powder off the nose of a wronged wife, things like that."

"Aw geez, it could take forever to collect all that junk."

"Oh, I already have most of the things I need. They're standard stock in any Healer's medicine chest. And as luck would have it, I got in a shipment of powdered spleens just the other day. Bought them at half price from a wholesale conjure shop on the Web."

"Huh. Couldn't we order this yucky bog stuff off the Web too?"

"Oh no. In a potion like this the key ingredients have to be fresh. Besides, do you know what they're charging for freeze-dried bog toads these days? It's outrageous."

* * *

By the time they got back to Bommy's house it was mid-afternoon. As they pulled into the driveway, Bommy's dad came out to meet them. He had a grim look on his face.

"I wonder what's eating him," Bommy said.

"I hope Elyno hasn't taken a turn for the worse," Melliata said.

They exchanged a worried glance, then climbed out of the car.

"What is it, Dalan?" Melliata said. "You look awful."

He shook his head. "Bad news, I'm afraid."

Bommy's heart froze. Melliata clutched her pendant.

"Oh Quad," she said. "Please tell me it's not Elyno."

"She's dead, isn't she?" Bommy said.

His dad frowned. "Dead? Elyno? Heck no. She's the same as she was before, no better or worse."

Bommy and Melliata sighed with relief.

"But there's trouble at the jail," his dad continued. "They had a news bulletin on TV just now."

"What sort of trouble?" Melliata said.

"There's a mob gathering outside, and they're after the vagabonds."

"In the name of Quad why?" Melliata said.

"I don't know. The reporters say it looks like an old-fashioned lynch mob. The guards are having a hard time holding them back."

"Gracious me."

"Why don't they use tear gas on them?" Bommy said.

"They already tried that," his dad said soberly. "But it didn't bother them. In fact, they actually seemed to enjoy it."

FIFTEEN

"For the last time, you're not going," Bommy's dad said.

"Aww, why not?" Bommy whined.

"A lynch mob isn't the kind of thing a boy your age should see," Melliata said.

She climbed into the Chavy and Dalan shut her door, then headed around to the other side.

"But it's on TV already," Bommy said. "I'll see it anyway."

"Yes," his dad said, "but from a safe distance. Mobs are very dangerous."

"Then why are you going?"

His dad paused by the driver's door. "The army can't be mobilized in time, so the mayor's made a public appeal for all mages to come to the jail and help out. Some PeaceMakers are there already, but their Love Spell isn't working, and the Battle Wizards are all at a reunion in Guernsey City."

"All the more reason for me to go. You'll need all the mages you can get."

His dad opened the door and climbed in. "You're only a boy. This is a grownup job."

Bommy put his hands on his hips. "How come you keep telling me to grow up, and the minute I wanna do a grownup thing, you tell me I'm a kid?"

"We'll discuss it later, Bommy," his dad said. He slammed the door and started the car.

Bommy pointed at Melliata. "If it's so darn dangerous, how come you're letting a lady go?"

"Don't be a piggot, lad," Melliata said. "Some of the greatest warriors in history were women."

"You're not a warrior, you're a Healer."

"Don't argue," his dad said. "If you really want to help, you'll stay here and keep out of trouble."

"Aww."

Bommy kicked at a clump of grass and scowled as the Chavy backed out of the driveway and roared up the street, then he marched back into the house and stormed into the kitchen, grabbed a bag of CornBalls and returned to the living room and plopped down on the couch to watch the news reports on TV.

The constables wouldn't let the camera crews get very close to the action, so it was hard to see the mob. It didn't look very scary from a distance, just a dozen or so shabbily dressed men milling about in front of the jail. The reporter, Tadd Hadda – one of those chiseled-chin handsome types that reminded Bommy of Jayk – kept repeating the same sparse facts over and over and then cutting to other reporters who knew even less but had just talked to officials who barely knew anything at all but were trying to find out more.

Then an air-cam arrived, hovering over the jail and showing a much closer view, but the picture was so jittery it made Bommy dizzy.

The coverage switched back to ground level as the harried chief constable, Danar Ganua, finally found time to lumber over to Hadda and give him a brief interview. Chief Ganua was a meaty, red-haired man with a barrel chest and a growly voice. He obviously had little patience with reporters.

"What's going on up there, chief?" Hadda said.

"The situation has stabilized," Ganua said gruffly.

"If the situation has stabilized, why have you called in more men?"

Ganua looked at him like he was some kind of moron.

"To keep the situation from getting destabilized," he said.

"Why hasn't the tear gas had any effect?"

"That I can't answer."

"What about the love spells?"

"Those things never work."

"Any idea what sparked this riot, chief?"

"They're not rioting, they're storming the jail. Big difference between rioting and storming. Not even the same section of the penal code."

"I see. And can you tell us why the mob is after the two prisoners?"

"There's no point trying to understand the rationale of a mob. But I can tell you this: They're not getting what they want, and you can count on it."

"The mob seems to be calling the prisoners 'King' and 'Queen.' Any idea why?"

"The mobbers are probably foreigners and they're too stupid to know we've got a democracy in this country."

"The mob doesn't seem to be dispersing, chief. In fact, from my vantage point it looks to be getting bigger. Does this concern you?"

The chief poked Hadda in the chest. "What concerns me is people in the media sensationalizing these kinds of incidents. Most of the people out here are gawkers who aren't even part of the mob."

He grabbed the mike and looked directly into the camera. "And I appeal to the public to stay away from here. There's nothing to see and we have everything under control, and if you do come out here we cannot guarantee your safety."

He turned the mike upside down and stuck it in the breast pocket of Hadda's suit and stormed off. Hadda retrieved the mike and turned to the camera.

"Well, there you have it," he intoned. "Total disarray. A crisis spinning completely out of control as governmental forces struggle to cope with the worst civil unrest of recent years."

Bommy switched to another channel, where a phone interview was in progress with a guard inside the jail, who reported that things were pretty quiet in the cell block and he really didn't know much about the situation outside and he hoped the mob didn't get in, but if they did he'd try to deal with them as best he could.

Rolling his eyes, Bommy switched back to the first channel just as Hadda melodramatically reported a new development.

"And word now reaches us that several Lifters and Healers and a couple of Firestarters have arrived..."

Hadda touched his earpiece with a finger and bowed his head slightly, his eyes narrowing dramatically as he listened.

"And ... and we now get further word that the mob is dead. I repeat, the mob is dead. Well, the sorcerers certainly made short work of them. Despite the..."

He fingered his earpiece again, listening even more intently, a muscle flexing in his rugged jaw.

"Uh, I'm now receiving a clarification ... It seems the mob was, uh, already dead to begin with. I repeat: The mob is composed of deceased persons."

They switched back to the air-cam. The picture was much steadier now, showing the first clear view of the mob.

They were dead, all right. Their faces were pasty and moldy, their bodies suffering from various stages of decay – some seemed nearly whole, while others swarmed with maggots and still others were little more than skeletons. But despite their differences, the dead all possessed the same nasty orange glow in their eyes – or in the sockets where their eyes should have been – and they moved and spoke in unison, like some sort of grotesque pep club.

"Give up the kingggg!" they chanted. "Give up the queennn. This issss your finallll warningggg."

The chief stood defiantly in the doorway of the jail, flanked by a phalanx of constables and mages. He snatched up a bullhorn and brought it to his mouth.

"We have no kings and queens here, you foreigners!" he blared. "You want a king and queen, go back where you came from. And let me give you _my_ final warning. Disperse or we'll Lift you out of here and dump you in the East River."

The mob cackled. "You cannot defeat usss. Release the kinggg. Release the queennn. Give them to usss. Or feellll ourrrr wrathhhh."

The chief's face turned red. "Sure hope you sorry-assed mothers can swim!"

He turned to three men standing on his left and barked an order. The men stepped forward. The camera zoomed in on their faces.

"Hey, it's dad!" Bommy said.

And Larag too. And maybe Braska, cowering behind the other two.

Larag and Dalan joined hands, then turned toward the mob.

"Let 'em have it, dad!"

Bommy perched on the edge of his seat, licking his lips in anticipation. The Multi-Person Lift had been a staple in tournaments and shows thirty years ago, but a few "dropsies" had resulted in lawsuits and sky-high insurance premiums, so it was rarely seen these days. In ancient times it was a standard combat maneuver, of course – until the invention of the crossbow, when the army mages discovered (the hard way) that Lifting enemy archers into the sky gave them an excellent – if brief – vantage point to shoot at you. Fortunately, the lynch mob wasn't armed, and they were already dead and not likely to sue anyone, so there was no reason not to Lift them.

Only why wasn't it happening yet? The mob was just standing there, arms folded over their chests, giving off a raspy, rattling laugh.

Chief Ganua yelled something at the Lifters that the mike couldn't quite pick up. Bommy's dad shrugged, looking puzzled and embarrassed. That sent the chief into a tizzy. He shoved the two Lifters out of the way, then wheeled around and jabbed a finger at the Firestarters, two red-haired women who looked like mother and daughter.

"Get up here!" he roared.

The women scurried to his side.

"Burn the bastards!" the chief said.

The daughter muttered a reply Bommy couldn't hear.

"No, not yet," the chief said, "just singe 'em a little."

The women joined hands, spreading out their arms to form a circle, then bowed their heads, their lips moving slightly as they chanted the Ignition Spell. A ring of flames erupted in the center of the circle. The women twisted their bodies sideways and the ring shot out like a discus, headed straight for the mob. The zombies sucked in their breath, making a horrid sound like a huge bellows, then exhaled, snuffing out the flames as a giant smoke ring floated harmlessly skyward.

The zombies laughed.

"Full force, dammit!" the chief roared.

The women knelt down on the ground, lifting their arms above their heads...

And the station cut to a commercial.

"Crappamuk!" Bommy spat.

He grabbed the remote and switched to another channel just in time to see a ball of white-hot flame rocket into the mob like a cannon ball. It burst apart, igniting the zombies' clothing and hair. Clumps of burning maggots fell from open wounds and writhed on the asphalt, but the dead themselves seemed unimpressed with this calamity, casually swatting at the flames like they were brushing off dandruff.

"Aww," they taunted, "surelyyy you can do betterrrr thannn that."

"Don't worry," the chief blared. "We will!"

"Do not botherrr. We have becommme borrrred playinnnng with youuuuu. The time hassss commme to take what we wannnnnt!"

The mob started forward.

"Halt!" the chief said.

The mob ignored him.

Constables wearing riot gear stepped in front of the chief and raised their shields. The mob crashed into them. The constables fell back ... stumbled ... went down. The zombies pounced. Bony hands grabbed throats. Teeth bit into necks. Larynxes snapped. Arteries tore. Blood spurted. Constables screamed.

The zombies laughed.

A second group of constables on the chief's left shouldered riot guns and opened fire without waiting for orders. Bullets tore into the mob, making "pupf, pupf" sounds, like a pencil poking through paper. Undaunted, the zombies came on.

More constables fired. The chief drew his sidearm and joined in the gunplay, aiming at a zombie charging toward him. Big chunks of rotting flesh flew off the dead man's head and part of his skull caved in, but he kept coming. The chief ran out of ammo and raised the gun over his head, intending to use it like a club, but the zombie grabbed his wrist and twisted it and the gun fell from his hand and he sank to his knees, his face contorted with agony. The zombie butted him in the head, smashing the chief's nose, then bit into his ear, tearing off a big chunk and chewing on it with great relish as blood sprayed everywhere.

A couple of PeaceMakers – young men with shaved heads and peach colored robes – pushed their way to the front of the phalanx, frantically blowing kisses at the mob and tossing flower petals. Two enraged zombies lunged at them, delivering rapid-fire kicks to their crotches, hearts, mouths. Yelping in pain, the PeaceMakers turned and fled. The two Firestarters were right behind them, but ran too slow; the mob brought them down.

Bommy tried to find his dad in the melee. He couldn't. He clicked the remote, switching channels, but the pictures were all the same: the mob surging toward the jailhouse doors, the doors cracking and giving way, the mob pouring in – emerging thirty seconds later, carrying the king and queen.

"They're raising them up on their shoulders," Hadda reported with a bewildered tone in his voice. "Treating them more like heroes than prisoners. This is not typical lynch mob behavior."

The mob marched down the street. No one dared follow, except a police chopper which pursued the bizarre procession a few blocks and then turned back after something – witch wind, maybe – nearly knocked it into the side of a building.

The TV stations began running replays from various angles, some in slow motion, and Bommy knelt in front of the set, peering at the screen. He thought he glimpsed Melliata once, kneeling over a bleeding constable, but where was his dad?

Then Hadda came on again. He was standing in front of the jail now, surveying the carnage. His face was grim.

"While the whys and wherefores remain unresolved," he said in ponderous tones, "and the final cost is still to be tallied, we know a few grim statistics: a dozen people dead, brave souls who sacrificed their lives in the line of duty. More have been injured and taken to area hospitals. Property damage will no doubt run in tens of thousands of dollars, perhaps more. But the most fearsome cost exacted here today is on the psyche of the citizenry, which has seen the civility and order of our tranquil society torn asunder in a way not witnessed since the last war. How to calculate that cost? Is any man or woman truly wise enough?"

Hadda droned on, but Bommy wasn't listening anymore. That one statistic kept echoing in his head: a dozen people killed. A dozen.

He got up and started pacing back and forth, then sat down again and surfed through the channels, hoping for fresh news, then got up and paced some more, then crossed over to the window and looked out at the empty driveway, praying that the old Chavy would pull in, just like normal. If only he could hear the sounds of the car door thumping, his dad's footsteps coming up the walk, his keys jingling as he worked the lock – those ordinary, everyday sounds Bommy had heard so often, and never even thought about.

Would he ever hear them again?

SIXTEEN

Bommy tackled his dad the minute he got out of the car, wrapping his arms around his neck and squeezing hard.

His dad hugged him back, then held him at arm's length, a worried look on his face. Bommy hadn't hugged him in years. That was something little kids did, and Bommy was too grown up for hugs and kisses from daddy – or so he kept telling him. What was he up to?

"Why the big greeting?" his dad said. "You act like I've been gone a couple of years, not hours."

"I thought you were gone for good," Bommy said. "On TV they said a dozen people were killed."

His dad smiled sadly. "Oh, so that's it. You thought one of them might've been me?"

Bommy nodded and shut his eyes. His dad patted his head.

"Well I'm safe and sound, son. No need to fret."

Melliata climbed out of the car.

"You're lucky you weren't there, Bommy," she said wearily. "It wasn't a very pretty sight."

His dad shook his head. "Damnedest thing I ever saw."

"You and me both," Melliata said. "And I've seen plenty of damned things in my day."

"Well I might as well say it now and get it over with," Dalan said. "You were right, Melliata." He smiled at his son. "You too, Bommy. About everything."

"Well I take no joy in proving you wrong, Dalan," Melliata said. "I wish to Quad you'd been right. Now we've got an army of undead on our hands."

"Well it isn't an army yet. As tough as they were, there weren't more than a dozen zombies outside that jailhouse."

"Aye, but the army's coming, sure as we're born."

They lapsed into silence. Bommy looked at Melliata's grim face, then his dad's. He cleared his throat. They looked at him. He couldn't face them; turned away.

"I, uh ... I'm real sorry about all this," he said with a catch in his throat. "I mean, if it hadn't been for me, none of this would have happened, and all those people would still be alive."

Melliata knelt down beside him. "Now don't go blaming yourself. You had no way of knowing. A sly old devil like Sogo knows a hundred ways to trick a trusting soul."

"But he didn't trick just anybody. He tricked me. I'm to blame."

Images from the TV news flashed through his mind, the frightened faces, the blood and screams. He burst into tears.

His dad came over and shook his shoulder. "Cut it out," he said roughly. "How many times do I have to tell you not to take things that don't belong to you."

Bommy looked up. "Take things? What are you talking about?"

"Blame. You're taking blame that rightfully belongs to this Sogo fellow. Put it back where it belongs. Now."

Bommy wiped his wet cheeks. "Yes sir," he said.

His dad turned to Melliata. "The question isn't who started it all or who helped who, but what do we do to stop it?"

"Agreed," Melliata said.

"So what _do_ we do?" Bommy said.

"Damned if I know," Melliata said. She looked at Dalan. "I suppose the first thing to do is find the king and queen."

"Heh, easier said than done. They could be anywhere. If Sogo was powerful enough to get into our world, and all the way from Gaggadech, he's capable of opening up portals to all kinds of worlds, and he could be hiding out in any of them."

"But we've got to find him," Melliata said. "No matter how big the haystack, this is one needle we can't leave lying about."

"Why don't we use Spellhounds?" Bommy said. "They can sniff out evil wizards a mile away, and shatter them like glass with a superbark."

"That's just a cartoon show," his dad said. "There are no Spellhounds in real life."

"Oh yeah," Bommy said. "I know that, I just forgot for a second."

Melliata's face brightened. "I know how we can find him. His army isn't much at the moment – like I said, it's more of a gang. He's going to have to drum up a bunch of followers if he intends to conquer the world, and that means he'll be hitting the cemeteries on a major recruiting drive. So if we watch for him there..."

"But which ones?" Dalan said. "What are we supposed to do, post guards at every cemetery on Celton? And who's to say he won't recruit from some other world?"

Melliata thought a moment, then snapped her fingers. "I know: Static!"

"Static?"

"Yep. It just so happens I dated a necromancer once – not a full fledged one like Sogo, just a wannabe. His name was Nilis. He never revived any people, just hamsters and mice and road-killed cats, that sort of thing, and I only went out with him a couple of times because all he ever talked about was death, all the time death, till he bored me stiff – no pun intended – but the point is, I remember his neighbors griping about all the static he generated in his experiments."

"How would necromancy generate static?" Dalan asked.

"The way Nilis explained it to me, when you raise the dead, you need more than just the body. You need the life energy that was left behind when the person, or animal, died. You can't animate them without it. And..."

"I thought our souls went to heaven when we died," Bommy said. "Or the Other Place, if we've been bad."

"You're right, Bommy," Melliata said. "The soul never stays behind, but the Lingerings do."

"Lingerings?"

"They're kind of like the echoes of the soul."

"So what does that have to do with finding the king and queen?" Dalan said.

"If we had a radio that could tune into the proper wavelength," Melliata said, "it could hear the static Sogo generates when he revives the Lingerings, and we could trace it back to the source, which would be whatever cemetery Sogo happens to be in at the moment."

Dalan snorted. "Yeah, _if_ there was a radio like that."

"But there is," Melliata said. "It's called an astral radio."

"I never heard of that," Bommy said. "Is it something we can buy at Radio Shed?"

Melliata laughed. "Not exactly. You can't buy it anywhere. You have to build it yourself. And you can't build it yourself unless you know how, and if you know how to build an astral radio, you're a very rare bird – and probably a weird one to boot. It's not the kind of thing normal people do – eavesdropping on the dead."

Bommy rolled his eyes. "So where do we find someone like that?"

Melliata grinned. "I know just the person."

"That ex-boyfriend of yours?" Dalan said.

"Oh no. Nilis has been dead for ten years. Sends me a postcard now and then; wants to get back together. What a pest. Anyway, it's not a necromancer we need now, it's a necrotalker."

She grabbed Dalan's hand. "Come on. Why don't you drive me over there. After that business at the jail my nerves are a little jangly; I don't think I could handle city traffic."

Dalan smiled. "Glad to oblige. Just tell me where to go."

They headed for the car.

"Hey, wait for me!" Bommy said.

* * *

Edo Varasta sat on an ugly brown couch in his living room, clad in purple pajamas that had seen better days, and slippers with holes in the toes. Sitting in front of him on the lopsided coffee table was a black box the size of a suitcase that bristled with funnels – some of them as big as old-fashioned gramophone speakers, others only a few inches long, and each one made from a different material: tin, plastic, bone, stainless steel, assorted crystals, various woods...

Edo was hunched over the device, a harried look on his face – trying to talk into, or listen to, all the funnels at once. His hair stuck out from his head like it was charged with static electricity. He looked so funny that Bommy laughed, till his dad nudged him in the side.

They stood in the foyer watching him for about a minute, but he seemed oblivious to their presence.

"Maybe we should've knocked first," Bommy said.

He wasn't used to barging into people's houses unannounced, but that's exactly what Melliata had done.

She shook her head. "Wouldn't have done any good. Edo's too busy talking to his spirits to pay any heed to the living most of the time."

"Is he talking to them now?" Bommy asked.

"Yup."

"Gosh."

Bommy wasn't sure if that was cool or scary. Maybe both.

"What's the name of that contraption?" his dad asked, nodding at the box.

"It's called a spiritelephonium," Melliata said. "Much faster way to chat up the spooks than the old séance routine."

They waited another minute. Edo still didn't notice them.

"This is getting us nowhere," Melliata said. "We'll just have to interrupt. Come on."

She crossed the living room, with Bommy and Dalan following, and stood right in front of Edo, close enough to smell the sweat permeating his pajamas. He didn't look up.

"Yes," he shouted into one of the funnels, "I'll tell them you said it was OK to sell the ranch ... Oh, I concur. Not much call for dragon mulch these days. ... Yes, I'm sure they'll get a good price. ... What? Speak up. ... Oh no, probably condos. That's the big thing these days out in those parts, condos. ... Yes, I'll make sure they dig you up first. ... No one's going to put a hot tub over your head, Izaia, trust me."

A second later he was at another pair of funnels.

"What do you mean there's no sign of the gold? I thought you said the captain buried it under the palm tree ... How can it be gone; that island's been deserted for a hundred and fifty years. Who'd take it? ... Well keep looking."

He turned to another funnel, listened a moment.

"No, your reincarnation's been put on hold. ... Look, I don't decide these things, I'm just the messenger. The parents they selected have decided not to have a baby for another year. ... Well the job market's bad and they want to get a little more settled in before they start a family, so ... Look, it's not up to me, OK? Lighten, up ... Cripes, what a whiner!"

On to another funnel. "Oh, thanks for returning my call, Lozenda. Dandroe asked me to intervene on his behalf. He'd like you to please stop haunting him. ... Yes, but he insists it really was an accident. ... Well, you'll have to take that up with him, only please, not till he's back from his honeymoon. You're scaring the wits out of his new bride ... Now is that any way to talk? Remember where you are."

He glanced up at his visitors, as if it was no big surprise to suddenly find three people standing in his living room.

"Be with you in a minute," he said.

He pressed his ear to an odd, corkscrew shaped funnel, looking even more peeved than before.

"No, I can't deliver a message like that. I'd get my face slapped. ... Look, why don't you forgive and forget? Let her get on with her life and you get on with yours." He rolled his eyes. "I know that. It was just a figure of speech. Talk to you later."

He leaned back on the couch and ran a hand through his damp hair. It flattened a moment, then popped back up again. He sighed heavily and looked at his visitors.

"Spirits," he said bitterly. "They're nothing but a big pain in the..."

"Uh, I don't believe you've met young Bommy Giffitt," Melliata said. "And his father Dalan."

"Pleased to meet you, Mister Varasta," Bommy said.

"Same here," Dalan said.

"Whatever," Edo said, his eyes still on Melliata. "So what can I do for you?"

"Bommy and his father are assisting me in a matter of extreme importance."

She told Edo the whole story, but he didn't seem very impressed – like it was a common, everyday thing for evil wizards to revive mummified kings and queens so they could lead an army of the dead and destroy the world.

When she was done Edo simply nodded and said matter-of-factly: "No problem. Static is easy. It's getting _rid_ of the static that's hard. I shouldn't have any trouble picking it up. I'll just set my scanner on the 'launch pad' freqs and when the buzz comes through I'll triangulate and call you with coordinates, right?"

"That's right," Melliata said.

"Piece of cake."

Melliata nodded. "Thank you kindly, Edo."

"Whatever."

She turned to Dalan and Bommy. "Let's go."

"Nice to have met you," Bommy said.

"Same here," his dad said.

But Edo didn't hear them; he was already hard at work again, hunched over his black box, engaged in a half-dozen spirited conversations.

* * *

Bommy gazed out the side window as the Chavy drove down Highway 730. Dark, castle-shaped clouds drifted across the sky near the horizon, another sign that witch weather was near. Soon winter would descend upon the land, and good magic would reach its low ebb. Strange beast-things would emerge from their dens at night, joined by forest wraiths seeking mischief – a perfect time for an army of the dead to march across the world.

Bommy shuddered.

"Dad," he said, "if this Edo guy does find Mr. Sog and his army, what do we do then? I mean, how do we beat him once we find him?"

His dad and Melliata exchanged a somber look.

"I really haven't the faintest idea," she said.

"Me neither," his dad said.

"Terrific," Bommy muttered, gazing out the window again, tracking the dark clouds which seemed so ominously near.

SEVENTEEN

When Bommy was a little kid, he often dreamed about his mother. The dreams started out in different ways, but always ended the same. One time he was lying on a metal slab inside a dungeon made of melting fudge as insect-like aliens tried to dissect him; another time he was sliding down a moonbeam, unable to stop, as stars scraped his face with their razor sharp points – but in the end his mother always appeared, smelling like freshly baked bread and warm clothes just out of the dryer, her kind smile melting the horrors. She would pick him up and carry him back to his bed and tuck him in, singing a little song to help him sleep, and when the song ended Bommy would open his eyes, and for a second he could still see her, bending over him, and then she was gone and he was alone, except for the faint scent of her, which lingered in the air for a moment before it, too, vanished.

Bommy would roll over and shut his eyes and drift off to sleep, feeling sad and happy all at once, because he had seen his mother one more time...

Bommy was all grown up now, and hadn't dreamed of his mother in quite awhile. But tonight, as he lay in bed, looking up through sleep-blurred eyes, he could swear he saw a woman bending over him. There was no aroma of clothes or bread about her, no soft song to send him back to sleep. He rubbed his eyes and looked again, but her face was just a blur.

Bommy closed his eyes and turned away. He had no time for strange dreams. Real life had become strange enough.

He tried to ignore the woman, but he could still sense her presence hovering over him; could feel her breath now, blowing on his neck – cold as a winter wind, smelling like bog water.

He shut his eyes tighter and pulled the covers up to his nose and wished real hard for the dream to go away, but it didn't go away and finally Bommy sat up and glared at the woman and said: "Get out of here, I'm trying to sleep!"

And her face snapped into focus, and he saw her clear as day...

A one-eyed mummy with a mouth full of maggots and bloody boogers pouring from her nose.

Bommy screamed and pushed her away from him, his fingers sinking into her dry, crumbly flesh. Her head snapped back. Her neck cracked. The head fell off, landing in Bommy's lap. He screamed again and tossed the covers off and scrambled out of bed, landing on his butt on the ice cold floor. The head jumped off the bed and rolled across the floor and bit him on his big toe. He kicked it away and it sailed toward the window. The mummy caught it with one hand – a catch worthy of Villie Maiz in his prime – and began dribbling it like a basketball, first with one hand, then the other, then between her legs, behind her back, as teeth and bits of skin flew off. She spun around and made a turnaround jump shot and the head soared into Bommy's wastebasket in the corner.

"Swissshhhh!" the mummy said, the sound coming out of the center of her chest.

She turned toward him. "Yourrrr turnnn, Bommyyyyy."

Did she mean it was his turn to shoot a basket, or to lose his head? He wasn't sticking around to find out.

He bolted for the door, flung it open, hurtled into the hall.

"Dad! Dad!"

He skidded to a halt.

This wasn't the hallway in his house. It was the one at school. Sort of.

Moonlight shone through the windows in the empty classrooms on either side of him, spilling into the hall, giving the linoleum a pale, silvery tinge. The air smelled of floor wax and chewing gum, like it always did, only tonight there were other smells mixed in: bog water and freshly upturned earth.

The locker doors resembled coffin lids.

Bommy retreated toward his bedroom. The mummy appeared in the doorway, beckoning. Bommy turned tail and ran the other way. He heard voices as he passed one of the classrooms. He stopped ... backed up ... peeked inside.

A man was standing by the blackboard, a pointer in his hand, lecturing a roomful of students. The moonlight glistened off the tops of the old wooden desks, but all the faces were cloaked in shadows. Bommy recognized the teacher's voice, though: Mister Cheeth. Yet there was something different about his delivery. Usually he talked in a dull but forceful style – like a hammer driving nails of knowledge into the thick heads of his pupils – but tonight his voice had a sly, seductive edge, the words slithering into Bommy's ears like snakes.

No way Bommy was going into that classroom. No way. He backed away from the door.

"You are late for class, Bommy Giffitt," said the teacher, only now he had a different voice: Mr. Sog's.

Bommy spun around and sprinted down the hall, back toward his bedroom. The mummy was leaning against the doorway, balancing its head on the tip of an index finger, spinning it around and around and around.

"Yipes!"

Bommy reversed course, dashing past Mr. Sog's room, galloping down the stairs at the far end of the hall, rushing down the main corridor toward the exit sign, bursting through the double doors and down the concrete steps and onto the playground. He headed toward the street. If only he could get home. If only...

The swing set cut him off, scuttling toward him on spindly metal legs like a spiderbot. Bommy moved to his left, toward the slide. It wrenched itself free of its moorings and wriggled toward him like a giant worm. Bommy dodged it and spun around. The whirligig rolled his way, blocking his path. He retreated. The playground monsters converged, grabbing at him with cold metal limbs, lifting him off the ground, carrying him back toward the schoolhouse. They dumped him in front of the main entrance. The double doors swung open.

Bommy slowly got to his feet. There was no point trying to run any more. He couldn't escape. He knew that.

He walked back inside...

As he entered Room 13 the students slowly turned their heads toward him. He still couldn't see their faces, but their eyes glowed with an eerie orange light.

"Come in, Bommy Giffitt," Mr. Sog said sternly.

Bommy's legs were wobbling so bad he could barely walk. He looked around for an empty chair. In Mister Cheeth's class he always sat near the back, but no way would he walk down the aisle of _this_ classroom, past all those orange eyes. There was one seat up front. He headed toward it.

"You presume you have earned the right to sit at the head of the class?" Mr. Sog said haughtily.

Bommy looked at him. "You once said I was a bright and capable lad, remember?"

Mr. Sog nodded. "So I did." He looked at the other students. "Any objections if Mister Giffitt sits up front?"

None of the students moved a muscle. Mr. Sog nodded. "Very well, Bommy, you may sit up front."

Bommy sat down, licking his lips. His throat was dry as a grulf's skin. His voice croaked as he spoke.

"Why ... why am I here?"

Mr. Sog smiled, his teeth gleaming in his shadow-shrouded face. "I missed you. Your youth, your smiling face, your boyish ways. You were like a tonic to me. I enjoy having young people around. I simply couldn't proceed without you."

"Thanks, but no thanks. I want to go home."

"But you've so much to learn, and there's so little time."

"My dad and Mister Cheeth can teach me everything I need to know."

Mr. Sog chuckled. "They cannot teach you what I can. Keep an open mind. You may enjoy tonight's lesson."

He strode over to the blackboard, picked up a piece of chalk and began to draw.

He was a much better artist than Mister Cheeth – who hardly ever drew pictures on the board, and when he did he always labeled them so the class knew what they were supposed to be. But no labels were necessary for Mr. Sog's drawing. It was very realistic. Too realistic.

A cemetery. With scraggly trees and a full moon shining down and open graves wreathed by swirling mist. But how could mist swirl in a drawing on a blackboard? Maybe it was just chalk dust, drifting in the air.

Mr. Sog stepped back to admire his work.

"Not bad," he said. "Not bad at all."

He returned to the board and drew coffins in the graves, with open lids. And people inside. Rotting corpses in ratty clothes. He added maggots and a rat or two. Then he tapped his chalk against the slate, rat-a-tat-tat like a machine gun, putting stars in the sky and pupils in the corpses' eyes. He stepped back again.

Pungent smells filled the air – upturned earth and wildgrass, and rotting, wet wood and decaying flesh. Crickets chirped. The dots in the sky began to twinkle. The corpses' eyes filled with infernal light. The tree branches swayed and clattered. Bommy felt a cool breeze brush his face.

Mr. Sog gestured at the board with his pointer. "Tonight's topic is: interference."

He pointed at a corpse in one of the graves. "This is Body Y." He moved his pointer to a spot above the grave. The mists gathered around the tip, growing thicker.

"And this is Energy X," he said. "When X and Y combine, what do they form?"

He looked straight at Bommy.

"Z?" Bommy said.

Mr. Sog beamed. "Excellent, Bommy. Yes, they form Z. And if you gather enough Z's, you can put the entire world to sleep."

He chuckled at his joke. The sound fell flat in the silent room. He glared at the other pupils. They laughed, half-heartedly, then stopped abruptly.

Mr. Sog drew a wavy line from one end of the picture to the other, his chalk screeching across the slate. Bommy cringed and hackles rose on his neck. None of the other students even batted an eye. Bommy gaped at them and shuddered.

"When Z is formed, this also creates Wave One," Mr. Sog said, gesturing at the wavy line with his pointer. "When Wave One strikes Wave Zero, or the Base Energy Pattern, this creates Reaction R, which is known in colloquial terms as static."

He looked over his shoulder at Bommy. "Are you with me so far, Mister Giffitt?"

"No sir."

"Pity. Now, if someone were to attune themselves to the wavelength of the Base Energy Pattern they might detect Reaction R, and attempt to triangulate from that, tracing it back to its point of origin, which in this case would be Location B."

He paused. His eyes gleamed with malice. His voice went cold. "Do you agree with my hypothesis, Mister Giffitt?"

Bommy shrugged. "I dunno."

"You dunno?"

"No sir."

"That's odd. I was under the impression you had done some independent study along these lines."

"No sir."

"I'm delighted to hear that. Because there is one small problem when people attempt to trace Reaction R back to Location B."

He whacked the pointer against the blackboard. The wavy line began to wiggle, like the band on an oscilloscope, fanning out into a butterfly shape that got brighter and brighter till it hurt Bommy's eyes. A screeching sound filled the air, a hundred times worse than scraping chalk. Bommy clamped his hands over his ears and shut his eyes and turned away.

At that very moment, in Edo Varasta's living room, the spiritelephonium exploded, flinging shrapnel into Edo's face and neck and hands. He jumped onto the back of his couch, shoving his fingers into his ears, trying to blot out the hideous screeching sound ripping through his head. His legs churned, ripping up the raggedy sofa cushions, flinging stuffing everywhere as he backed away. He fell off the end of the couch, landing on the floor. He rolled over onto his belly and crawled toward the front door on his knees and elbows, jamming his fingers into his ears as hard as he could.

The screeching got even louder, tearing through his house like a mini-tornado, shattering windows, cracking mirrors, busting plates, disintegrating vases. Sharp shards rained down on Edo, slicing into his skin. Whimpering, trembling, he struggled to his feet and took one hand away from his head just long enough to grab the doorknob.

His eardrums exploded.

EIGHTEEN

One by one the dead "students" rose from their chairs and shuffled up to the blackboard – but these students didn't try to diagram sentences or solve math problems; instead they climbed onto Mr. Sog's chair, which he had placed next to the wall, then stepped up onto the chalk tray and walked right into the blackboard as if it were an open window. They emerged moments later inside the picture, transformed into chalk drawings themselves, and marched down a crooked path through the center of the cemetery, coming to a halt by an old wrought-iron gate.

After the last student had departed, Mr. Sog turned to Bommy and crooked a finger.

"Come," he said.

"I ain't going in there!" Bommy said.

Mr. Sog approached him. Bommy jumped up and backed away.

"Why Bommy, whatever is the matter? Don't you wish to join our little field trip?"

"No sir. I want to go home."

Chuckling, Mr. Sog waved an arm toward the doorway. "Certainly, Bommy. Go straight down the hall to your bedroom. Your mummy is waiting to tuck you in."

Bommy looked at the door, then the blackboard, then Mr. Sog. He sagged in defeat.

"No thanks," he mumbled.

"I suppose you could stay here, but I should warn you, it will be a very long time before I hold classes here again. Centuries, perhaps. I know you're used to staying after school, but isn't that a bit much, even for you?"

Bommy sighed. "I guess you win, Mr. Sog."

Head bowed, he walked up to the blackboard, acting like he was totally beaten. He put one foot up on the chair, then suddenly snatched the chalk from Mr. Sog's hand and sprinted toward the other end of the board. If he could draw a real quick picture of a mechazoid shooting laser beams at Mr. Sog, maybe...

The wizard caught him and wrested the chalk from his fingers. Frantically, Bommy Lifted another piece off the chalkboard. Mr. Sog batted it with his arm and it sailed out the window.

"I'm pleasantly surprised, Bommy," he said. "That was a nifty bit of spur-of-the-moment Lifting, considering your dreadfully limited capabilities. You are not quite the total doofus I presumed you to be. But your antics are holding up the field trip, and that isn't fair to the other students, now is it?"

He pocketed the chalk, then grabbed Bommy around the waist, lifted him up and shoved him into the blackboard. For a second Bommy felt like he was falling through ice into a swiftly flowing river, then he landed in the graveyard.

It didn't look like a drawing anymore. It was solid and three-dimensional and full of textures and colors, muted but very real. The grass was wet beneath his bare feet, the air thick with the smells of earth and wood and decay.

Mr. Sog suddenly appeared next to him, emerging from a hole in the air which lingered a moment, then got all wavy and wrinkly and vanished with a soft "click."

"Now that we've left that dreary classroom," the wizard said, "the real learning can begin. I shall teach you the fine points of the necromancer's art."

"I don't want to," Bommy said.

"But you must, you must. How will you ever amount to anything if you don't educate yourself?"

"I don't need this kind of education. It's wrong to raise the dead."

"But you're a natural. The way you revived those mummies was astounding. You have the Gift, no doubt about it."

"I do not. You tricked me into thinking that."

Mr. Sog chuckled. "All magic is a trick, of one sort or another. Come now, watch how I do it. Watch the master and learn. You may enjoy it."

He bent down next to an open grave containing the corpse of a middle-aged man dressed in an old-fashioned business suit. A pair of glasses perched lopsidedly on the remnants of the man's nose. A rusted watch clung to one withered wrist, the hands pointing eternally to twelve o'clock.

Mr. Sog reached into his pocket and took out an onion-shaped atomizer with a pink squeezy bulb. He squirted the corpse's head.

"Only a small sprinkling is required for a body this young," Mr. Sog said. "I would estimate he's been dead a mere half century or so. Wouldn't you agree?"

"I wanna go home," Bommy said.

"Heh. Have you never heard the old saying, home is where the heart is?"

"No."

"No? Well it's true. Allow me to demonstrate."

Mr. Sog passed a hand over the body, tracing odd patterns in the air and muttering strange words that sounded like someone gargling. The corpse's eyelids flew open. Its empty sockets filled with orange goo that lit up like lava. The man sat up slowly, gazing at Mr. Sog. The wizard pointed at the sky. The man stood up, wobbling a bit.

Mr. Sog leaned down and fingered the man's tie. Once it had been bright red, but mold now gave it a yucky greenish tinge.

Mr. Sog shook his head. "Not a wise choice in neck apparel. I wouldn't be caught dead in a thing like this."

He yanked on it. The rotten fabric tore easily. He tossed the tie aside, then ripped open the man's shirt. Buttons popped off, clattering into the coffin. Mr. Sog shoved his hand into the rotting chest cavity. It caved in with a sickening crunch. He seized the man's heart. Veins and arteries stretched and snapped as the heart came loose. He took it out and offered it to Bommy.

"As I said, home is where the heart is."

"Get it away!" Bommy cried.

He knocked it out of Mr. Sog's hand and it fell back into the grave. The corpse bent down and stared at it, a slightly puzzled look on his face.

"You're at attention!" Mr. Sog snapped.

The corpse straightened up.

Mr. Sog smiled. "That's better." He turned to Bommy. "Now what have you learned from this little demonstration?"

"I don't wanna learn. I wanna go home!"

"But we need you. The king and queen especially. They miss your boyish charm. You are like a mascot to us. Without you, who will inspire us to victory? Hmm?"

Bommy gave him the dirtiest look he could muster. "I hope you burn in hell!"

Mr. Sog chuckled. "Been there. Done that."

He stood up, brushing dirt from his robe, then turned to the corpse and gestured toward the gate.

"Go join the others."

The man climbed awkwardly from the grave, making a ghastly wheezing noise – Bommy could see his lungs (or what was left of them) inflating and deflating inside his ribcage. The man tripped on something and fell against his tombstone. Maggots tumbled from his body. One of his shoes came off. He stared down at his bare foot. The toes were all chewed up, like something had been gnawing on them. The corpse shrugged and shuffled on down the path, like he was out for a Sunday stroll.

Mr. Sog turned to Bommy.

"Would you be so kind as to sprinkle the other graves? Just the newer bodies, though. If you find any that are really far gone, leave them to me."

"No sir. I won't do it."

"No? Even this small task you begrudge me? You're lucky compared to my previous assistants. Back then I made them dig up the graves with shovels, until I discovered the charmed chalk and sorcerer's slate, which make the process ever so much easier. Unfortunately, the potion can't be administered that way, so you'll have to do it. Am I really asking so much?"

"Yeah, you've got a point there," Bommy said. "OK, I'll help you. Give me the bottle."

Mr. Sog beamed. "That's a good boy."

He handed it to Bommy, who promptly spun around and cocked his arm, intending to hurl it against the nearest tombstone and smash it to bits. Mr. Sog clutched at his arm.

"Naughty boy," he said. "Now why would you want to break my atomizer? It's very expensive, and older than I am. Belonged to the mistress to the king of Dersia during the Era D'Rouge. You young people have no respect for old things."

He pried the bottle from Bommy's grasp.

"Ah well, I suppose I'll have to do it myself."

He walked over to a nearby grave and knelt down, spraying the body and muttering incantations. The corpse opened its eyes.

Mr. Sog grinned. "Rise and shine, sleepy head."

He moved on to another grave, then another and another, sending a steady stream of dead people lurching down the path to join the others at the gate. Soon the army had grown to fifty. The light from their eyes suffused the air around them with a sickly orange glow.

When all the graves were empty, Mr. Sog climbed onto an old, weathered tombstone flanked by little angel statues, using their wings as footholds, and turned toward the gate.

"The time has come," he said in a loud, sharp voice that cut through the quiet night like a sword. "Your king and queen are now prepared to meet you. This may or may not be the greatest moment of your lives, but it is most certainly the greatest moment of your deaths."

He clapped his hands. The gate swung open on creaking hinges and King Ecorakaza and Queen Cammaleila entered the cemetery. They were decked out in fancy brocaded robes made of silk with silver filigree trimming, the king in crimson, the queen in royal blue. The army of the dead bowed in unison as they passed.

Mr. Sog jumped down off the tombstone as the royals approached. He bowed deeply, then glared at Bommy over his shoulder.

"Bow to your king and queen," he commanded.

Bommy didn't like the idea of taking orders from Mr. Sog, but Ecorakaza and Cammaleila were royalty, and it was only good manners to show them some respect, so he compromised and gave them a little nod.

The royals halted. The king seemed half asleep and grumpy, like he wanted to go back to bed. Cammaleila was wide awake and looked lovely, younger than Bommy remembered, her hair all done up in ringlets and braids, with blue makeup on her eyelids, just like the queens in the pictures at the Templex. When she saw Bommy her vacant stare focused a bit, and a ghost of a smile played across her lips. Bommy smiled back.

A twitch from Mr. Sog's pinky brought the assembled dead out of their bow. They stumbled up the path and gathered in a semicircle behind the royals and stood at attention as best they could, some of them listing to one side, others wobbling to and fro, a few leaning against tombstones to keep from falling down. Mr. Sog flicked an index finger and the king and queen turned around to face their followers.

"You newcomers are no doubt curious as to why you've been awakened from your eternal slumbers," he said with great solemnity.

Bommy looked at the dead. He saw no curiosity on their faces, no emotion at all.

"Well I shall tell you," Mr. Sog continued. "The king and queen who stand before you have just completed the journey to Paradise. As the ancient prophecy predicted, it is the beginning of the End Time, the moment when the dead are resurrected and return to the world to destroy the wicked and begin the New Order. It is doomsday for the living. And a new life for all of you."

He raised his arms into the air. His fists shook. His voice quaked. "Go forth and sweep the living off this world! Your king and queen shall lead you. It is your duty to follow. Obey them, or the fires of hell shall consume you anew!"

Slowly, the dead turned their gaze from Mr. Sog to the king and queen. Cammaleila took a deep, nervous breath, then spoke, using strange words Bommy had never heard before, yet somehow he understood their meaning.

"Obey ... me," she said. "We ... must ... destroy ... this ... wicked ... world."

Bommy darted to her side and tugged at her robe. She looked down, startled.

"Don't do it, queen," he said. "Mr. Sog's a creep and a phony and a liar. You never got to Paradise. That was a lie. It's not time to come back and destroy the world. It's not the End Time!"

At least that's what Bommy _tried_ to say, but the words he heard coming out of his mouth were completely different: "Ton oddit, neeq. Asim reecop. Ou reve didog esidrapa."

The queen bent down, frowning at him.

"What is it, Bommy?"

Mr. Sog put his hands on Bommy's shoulders.

"He says he is glad to be with you again, your highness. And he wishes you well in your recruitment of followers. He is pleased to play a small role in the coming of the New Order and has dreamed his whole life of this wonderful day."

"That's a lie!" Bommy meant to say.

"Hata ga elili!" he said.

Mr. Sog chuckled. "He's all tongue tied. The excitement and all." He looked down at Bommy, a nasty smile on his face. "You're overwrought, Bommy. I knew I shouldn't have kept you up past your bedtime."

Bommy tried to break free, but Mr. Sog's hands dug into his shoulders like dentist's drills, cold and piercing. The frigid feeling crept down into his arms, his chest, his legs.

"There, there," Mr. Sog said soothingly, with an ironic twist to his voice the queen didn't seem to notice. "I know you're excited, but you mustn't bother the queen now. She has much to do."

Bommy turned his head from side to side and frowned and winked and blinked and grimaced, trying to signal the queen that he was in trouble, but she just smiled at him tenderly and then turned back to the crowd, her voice stronger now, more confident.

"We shall gather an army," she said, "and reclaim the world!"

"Yeah, an army," the king said, stifling a yawn.

"Will you obey me?" the queen said. "Will you obey the queen of the underworld?"

"Yesssss," the assembled dead replied, sounding like a giant snake creeping up from the bowels of the earth. "Yessss, myyy queeeeennnnnn."

Mr. Sog knelt down next to Bommy, who was beginning to feel more like a giant IcyTreat than a person.

"The queen was so listless before," Mr. Sog said. "But now look at her. Behold the spark in her eyes and the color in her cheeks." He squeezed Bommy's arms. "You are a tonic, Bommy. An absolute tonic. And we shall all draw on your youth to invigorate us for the battles to come."

The wizard rose quickly and walked away with a spring in his step, as if touching Bommy had given him fresh energy.

"Come, my king and queen," he said. "There are many more graveyards to visit, and many more slumbering dead to be awakened. Eternity ends tonight!"

He took his chalk out of the pocket of his robe and drew a line across the horizon, like a comet streaking through the heavens. Chalk dust fell from the line, sprinkling the low sky with new stars. He reached up and took hold of the line with both hands and pried it open, forming a big triangular hole in the air. Gray light seeped in from the other side. He ducked his head and climbed halfway through the opening, then beckoned to the queen. She came forward. He took her hand and led her through. The king followed, rubbing his eyes and yawning.

Then came the zombies, humming odd, discordant notes that might have been a battle song. They passed single-file through the portal, and soon the graveyard was empty. Except for Bommy Giffitt.

Mr. Sog crouched in the opening, studying him. "Would you like to come along, or be left behind?" he said softly.

Bommy looked at the empty coffins in the open graves, the desolate moon above him, the rolling black hills beyond the gate – hills that seemed to stretch into infinity, unbroken by roads or towns or telephone polls or any sign of civilization. There were no planes in the sky, no crickets in the grass; even the rats and maggots had fled. There was nothing left but the breeze. And the portal, leading into Quad knew what.

"I guess I'll come along," Bommy grumbled.

Mr. Sog beamed. "You do learn quickly."

He walked over and picked Bommy up, put him under one arm, and hurried toward the portal.

NINETEEN

The night seemed to go on forever.

Bommy visited so many graveyards he lost count of them all. Some were as big as ovalball fields – filled with generic cement markers laid out in neat rows like a miniature city. Others were much smaller, nestled on lonely hilltops overlooking the ocean or farm fields or forests, full of weathered stone monuments adorned with ornate images of angels, gargoyles and cherubs. Mr. Sog even broke into a few morgues – he called it "raiding the fridge for a midnight snack."

The wizard went through a lot of potion, but apparently he had an inexhaustible supply of the stuff – whenever his atomizer ran low he'd summon his trunk, which rose out of the ground like a submarine surfacing from the ocean, and he'd take out a big earthenware jug and fill the atomizer, then return the jug to the trunk, which promptly dove out of sight.

The wizard's army grew and grew, until it was large enough to fill a major league stadium, and after awhile Mr. Sog began to slow down a bit, his voice losing some of its fervor – and he even yawned once, which made Bommy glad because he'd been stifling his own yawns for hours and feeling guilty for pooping out when the world was in danger.

"I think perhaps it's time to call it a night," Mr. Sog said as he leaned against the gate of a sad little graveyard outside an abandoned mining camp somewhere in the ShaftLands. "One more stop and then we'll grab some shuteye."

Bommy smiled to himself. Even evil wizards couldn't stay up all night. He found the notion strangely comforting.

Mr. Sog opened his portal once more, and soon they arrived at the last stop on the itinerary. It was a dreary place, even for a cemetery. The ground was hard-packed reddish clay, totally devoid of grass, with rocky outcroppings jutting from its surface here and there, full of little fissures that belched out thin streamers of yellow gas. Mustard colored clouds drifted low in the sky, filtering the moonlight and giving it a jaundiced pallor. One lone tree occupied the middle of the graveyard, a sickly looking thing that must've been related to the ones in Twisted Bog. There was no sign of a town nearby, just a rutted dirt road stretching into the distance.

The grave markers were nothing more than plain, round steel posts with little numbers stamped into them, and brackets mounted on the side that held identical bouquets of plastic flowers with gray and black petals. The zombies that climbed from the graves were over seven feet tall, with big tufts of white hair sticking out of their ears.

The minute Bommy saw them he knew where they were. There was only one place in the world where the people looked like that and the rocks gave off such gasses – the EndLands, the second-most desolate area of Celton, one step removed from The Impabiles, where no man nor beast had ever dwelled.

Bommy tried to remember his geography lessons. How far was it from Keps to the EndLands? Twelve thousand miles or so? Such a long way from home. The thought made him even more depressed.

Mr. Sog, on the other hand, was in the best of spirits, humming a happy tune as he went about his work, untroubled by the dreary desolation of his surroundings. When the last grave was empty he let out a contented sigh as he surveyed his latest recruits.

"I believe we are done," he said. "This force should be sufficient to overcome any resistance we're likely to encounter anywhere on Celton, don't you agree, Bommy?"

Bommy looked around. The "soldiers" were everywhere, as far as the eye could see, an ocean of dead.

"You'll never have enough," he said, trying to sound as if he meant it. "We'll fight you every step of the way."

Mr. Sog laughed. "Your loyalty is admirable, my young friend, but I'm afraid it's wasted. The victory is assured. The battle is merely a formality. Already I'm planning bigger and better conquests. Celton is only the first step."

"How come?" Bommy said.

Mr. Sog blinked. "I beg your pardon?"

"How come you want to wage wars and kill people? Why don't you just leave everyone alone?"

Mr. Sog seemed puzzled by the question. "Why do hawks attack wrens? Why do dogs bite cats? Why do grackalecks devour demonfish? It is the way of the world. The strong eat the weak. It has always been so."

"Oh yeah? The queen will figure out what you're up to. You can't fool her forever."

Mr. Sog glanced behind him. The queen was sitting on the ground nearby, leaning against a gravepost, gazing up at the moon with a slight smile on her face. The king lay in front of her, fast asleep, his head resting in her lap.

"The queen will do as she is told," Mr. Sog muttered. "The power of my will may be finite – at the moment – but it is certainly strong enough to control the mind of a ten-thousand-year-old woman."

"Don't bet on it."

"Heh-heh. Your spirit is indefatigable. How I envy you your youth." He yawned again, not bothering to cover his mouth. "Alas, I lack your stamina. Age will do that to a person, you know. You'll find that out someday, assuming you live that long. But enough talk. Time for bed."

He snapped his fingers. The ground at his feet bubbled like water and the trunk rose from its depths and bobbed to the surface. He stuck in a key and unlocked the latch and raised the lid. Chunks of clay slid off the top. He placed his atomizer inside the trunk, then took out a small red sponge and lay it on the ground.

"Are you tired, Bommy?" he asked.

"Never felt better," Bommy said.

"Heh. Your eyelids betray you. But don't consider it a sign of weakness. Even the dead must rest at times. Did you know that? The energies with which I've imbued them are not inexhaustible. They too shall sleep tonight."

He waved a hand and the army knelt down. He bent his thumb and their eyes shut, tens of thousands of orange lights winking out, like a Holiday tree when someone pulls out the plug. The queen looked up at Mr. Sog for a moment, then leaned her back against the gravepost, folded her hands in her lap just above the king's face, and slowly shut her eyes.

Mr. Sog turned to his sponge and clapped his hands. It swelled up, transforming into a king-size mattress.

He took a small cotton ball from the trunk and tossed it onto the bed.

Poof. A pillow.

He took out a dark blue hanky and lay that on the bed as well.

Poof. A blanket.

He walked over to Bommy, who was propped up against the side of the tree like an axe handle.

"Comfy?" Mr. Sog said, patting his head.

Bommy just grunted.

"Better get some sleep, my friend. You must be exhausted from plotting my downfall. Honestly, you've been wracking your brain so hard I could hear it rattling from clear over there."

Although Bommy couldn't move his arms or legs, he did manage to lift one finger on one hand. His middle finger.

"Naughty, naughty," Mr. Sog said.

He returned to the bed and sat down on the edge, then reached into his trunk and took out an alarm clock. He twisted a big key in the back to wind it up and the clock began to tick, a sinister sound that echoed ominously off the graveposts and reverberated from the rocks. The sound of time running out. A countdown to oblivion for the human race.

Mr. Sog shut the lid of the trunk and set the clock on top of it. He looked at Bommy. "We shall attack at dawn. And by noon we shall rule." He lay down and pulled the blanket over himself. "Pleasant dreams, Bommy Giffitt."

Within seconds he was snoring.

Bommy felt as helpless as a firefly in a spitfrog pond. There was nothing he could do to save himself, let alone the world. His dad could've hurled Mr. Sog clear across the cemetery, or dropped him from a great height, or bashed his head in with a rock, but Bommy could barely Lift someone Jayk's size; a big hulk like Mr. Sog would be impossible. And the rocks all seemed to be fused together. He'd already tried to pluck something loose from the outcroppings, to no avail.

He eyed the nearest gravepost. One more time he tried to Lift it, but it was heavy and firmly planted in the ground and refused to budge. He studied the little metal flower holder dangling by one rivet on the side of the post. The three metal strips were thin and spotted with rust. They must be a cinch to bend. What if he twisted one of them back and forth till it snapped off? The end would be jagged and sharp, maybe sharp enough to cut Mr. Sog's throat or gouge out an eye.

Bommy winced. The thought of doing that to anyone, even an evil wizard, made him sick to his stomach. But he couldn't be squeamish at a time like this.

He Lifted out the plastic flowers and dropped them on the ground, then focused his mind on the center strip of the holder, imagining it wagging back and forth like a robodog's tail. But it was sturdier than it looked; it trembled slightly, nothing more.

"Jeepers, you related to Bigmouth or something?" he said. "Don't be so stubborn."

He worked on it some more, eventually managing to break off a piece, but it was only a half-inch-long chip, too small to get a good grip on, too light to have any heft – more like a razor blade than a knife. A dull razor blade. What could he do to Mr. Sog with that, nick him to death?

He dropped it on the ground in disgust and turned his attention to the tree branches above his head. A good sharp stick would do the trick. Heck, that was just as good as a knife.

He tugged on a branch and it bent easily. Too easily. He twisted it every which way he could, even tied it into a pretzel shape, and still it wouldn't break.

Great. Terrific. Pretzels and chips. Maybe he could invite Mr. Sog to a party and he'd choke to death on the snacks.

Despairingly, Bommy scanned his bleak surroundings, looking for something, anything, that would make a good weapon. He noticed Mr. Sog's clock, ticking so annoyingly atop the trunk. It was the old fashioned kind of clock, with metal hands shaped like arrows – tiny arrows, but better than nothing. The pygmies of the Malion Islands could kill a man at three hundred yards with arrows smaller than that – of course theirs were tipped with irradiated pathogens and fired by blowguns equipped with auto-choke breeches and telescopic sights, but the principle was the same.

Bommy grabbed the clock with his mind and twisted it around so the hands faced him. The glass crystal popped off easily. Now for the tough part, focusing part of his energy on the clock itself to hold it in place, while pulling forward on the minute hand at the same time. It was known in the trade as a Bi-Directional Lift, one of the toughest in levitation. Even experienced Lifters who could hoist huge boulders with ease often failed at the Bi-Di. It had knocked many a promising competitor out of tourneys.

Bommy's dad had taught him the theory behind the Bi-Di. It helped to be a little schizo – think out of both sides of your brain and imagine your hands reaching out, the left hand controlled by the right side of the brain, the right hand controlled by the left side. Don't let the imaginary hands touch each other. Cross your eyes a little and then slowly...

The clock's hands began to spin. Counterclockwise. Its body spun in the opposite direction. It would've been a remarkable Lift in a tournament, enough to win the purple ribbon, but it wasn't what Bommy wanted. He let go of the clock to regroup his thoughts and try again. It toppled off the trunk and fell to the ground.

Out of sight.

And what Bommy couldn't see, he couldn't Lift.

"Damn!"

OK, now what?

The blanket on Mr. Sog's bed caught Bommy's eye. Of course. Why didn't he think of that before? He'd wrap it around the wizard's head and strangle him!

He Lifted a corner of the blanket. Mr. Sog groaned softly in his sleep and clutched it tightly to his chest like a Taddy bear.

"Come on," Bommy muttered. "Give it up."

He tugged harder. Mr. Sog tugged back, grunting and snorting, his eyelids fluttering. Bommy let go. The wizard calmed down.

So much for strangulation.

Bommy glared at Mr. Sog's trunk. There must be all sorts of goodies in there, knives and swords and guns and bombs and shrink rays and maybe even a blowgun with an auto-choke barrel and telescopic sight. But the trunk was closed up and locked tight – and even if it weren't locked, the latch was on the other side where Bommy couldn't get at it.

In a fit of pique, he scooped up every speck of dirt he could get his mind on, plus a couple of ants that happened to be passing by, and pelted Mr. Sog. The wizard mumbled something in his sleep and pulled the blankets up to his chin.

_Easy now,_ Bommy told himself. _Don't get all unhinged. You'll wake him up and then you'll really be screwed._

The words echoed in his head: Unhinged ... Screwed ...

Hinges and screws.

Yes, that was it!

Eagerly, Bommy scanned the ground around the nearest gravepost, hunting for the little chip of metal he'd broken off earlier. He found it and Lifted it up, brought it over to the trunk lid, positioned it over the left hinge, zeroed in on the top screw, and slowly eased the chip into the slot. It fit. Perfectly.

Bommy twisted his little makeshift screwdriver, using all the energy he could muster, and eventually the stubborn screw yielded, turning a few degrees.

What happened next was very boring and took a long, long time. Bommy kept dropping the screwdriver and picking it up and putting it back in the slot and turning it a little and dropping it again, but at last the screw came out, hitting the ground with a satisfying little plop.

Success!

And only eleven more screws to go.

After the first three, Bommy's head ached and his eyes hurt and his clothes were soaked with sweat. He needed to rest. But he didn't dare. Mr. Sog might wake up in the middle of the night to take a leak or something. Or it might take all night to get the screws out. He had to keep going...

Several agonizing hours later, the twelfth screw finally fell out of the hinges. Bommy barely saw it happen before his eyelids closed and his chin sank onto his chest and sleep claimed him.

When he woke up he didn't remember where he was at first, or what he'd been doing. Then it came back to him. He looked around frantically, first at Mr. Sog, who was snoring loudly, then up at the sky. Was it getting lighter? He couldn't tell.

Bommy's head felt like it was full of lead, but somehow he marshaled his magical energy and Lifted the back of the trunk lid. The latch on the front bent in ways it wasn't supposed to and popped off with a loud crack. Mr. Sog stirred, but didn't wake up. Gently Bommy lowered the lid to the ground, leaning it against the side of the bed.

He let out a long sigh, pleased with his victory, sad because he couldn't savor it. It was like the tests Mister Cheeth gave in class – no matter how many of them you passed, there were always more, each one harder than the last.

The trunk was open now, but Bommy couldn't see inside. In order to get at the contents he'd have to tip the trunk over. Easier said than done. The trunk was even heavier than the Head, and he was so very, very tired.

Bommy shoved the doubts out of his mind and grabbed at the trunk with all his might. It slid forward. One inch. Two. But didn't tilt.

_Come on,_ Bommy chided himself. _You Lifted the Head. You Lifted Jayk. You can Lift the front half of a trunk, just enough to tip it over backward. It's all a matter of leverage..._

Jayk is such a jerk. What a big, dumb jerk. I should've splatted his face all over that stupid playground for what he said to Elyno...

Stop thinking about Jayk!

What a creep he is, embarrassing Amalissa like that, and her with that gooey grin on her face and those puppy-dog eyes – what does she see in that dungbutt anyway?

Focus, Bommy.

My stomach's growling again. Quad, I'm hungry.

Focus.

I need to pee...

The trunk. Lift the trunk. Tilt the trunk. Tip it over. You can do it. You have to do it. Come on.

Quad, it's heavy. Heavier than that stupid Head or that rotten Jayk...

That dirty lowdown creep. If he hadn't thrown those prunes at Elyno she never would've taken the potion. If she dies it'll be all his fault. And I'll get even with him if it's the last thing I do, so help me Quad...

Bam!

The anger burst out of Bommy's mind, a coiling tentacle of white-hot energy that grabbed the trunk and flipped it end over end. It landed on its side with a loud thump, the contents spilling out. Mr. Sog's eyes opened a little bit, then closed.

Bommy grinned. He'd done it! But even this victory he couldn't savor. He had to find a weapon, and quick. His eyes darted over the assortment of jars and jugs and vials and old books with cracked spines and yellowed parchments and oddly colored crystals, none of which looked particularly dangerous.

He pondered the jars. He could bust up the glass into sharp shards, but it was so thick it would take a heap of whacking before it broke, and even if Bommy had the energy to do it, the noise would surely wake up the wizard.

He looked at the big earthenware jug, the one Mr. Sog kept his potion in. Easier to break than glass, probably, but there'd still be a lot of noise.

And then he thought of the potion inside the jug, the potion that had poisoned Elyno. Would it do that to any living person? To Mr. Sog himself?

Blinding pain wracked Bommy's head, like a rhinocerops horn jabbing into his brain. The last Lift had taken everything out of him, every last ounce of magic he possessed (which wasn't much to begin with), but he had to reach deep inside himself and generate a little more, just enough for one last Lift. It wouldn't require much energy, but lots of dexterity.

He bit his lower lip and scrunched up his face and concentrated as hard as he could on the jug. He'd never thought this hard about anything before – not Amalissa or ovalball or chocolate ice cream or star ships. He could feel the energy tingling inside his mind, just behind his forehead – hot one second, cold the next, rising, falling.

The jug rose into the air and floated unsteadily toward the bed and hovered over Mr. Sog's mouth. Bommy pulled out the stopper and tilted the jug forward. He nearly dropped it then, but caught it just in time. Black liquid seeped out, dribbling onto Mr. Sog's nose and cheeks and chin and beard. The wizard grunted and turned his head a little. A few drops trickled into his mouth. He smacked his lips.

His snore turned into a gurgle, a cough. His eyes flew open. He sat bolt upright and delivered a vicious backhanded slap to the jug. It flew into the side of a gravepost and exploded. Spitting and cussing, the wizard grabbed his blanket and wiped it vigorously across his mouth and chin, then hurled it to the ground. He turned toward Bommy, his face a mask of murderous fury.

All across the cemetery, the sleeping dead awoke, their eyes winking on, giving the air an orange tinge, their lungs rasping like an ill wind. Tens of thousands of voices cried as one:

"You filthy monnngrellll! You ungrateful currrrrr! You dare use your puny magic upon a masssterrr of the black artssss? I shall rip your dirty little brainnnnn out of your conniving little head and eat it raw for breakfasssssst!"

Mr. Sog jumped out of bed and headed toward him. Bommy tried his best to move his frozen muscles. No go.

The wizard grabbed his six necklaces and yanked them off his neck, then held them out at arm's length, thrusting them toward Bommy's face.

"You have heard, I presume, of the Death Stones of Gaggadech?" the wizard said in a quivering voice.

"Not recently," Bommy said.

"Then it is time you had a lesson in their powers. Don't bother taking notes. There will be no quiz afterwards."

Mr. Sog began to chant, a dark and horrid jumble of words that tumbled from his tongue.

He stopped abruptly, cut off in mid-syllable. His mouth kept going up and down, but no more words came out, and for a second he seemed to be choking, then his jaw went slack. His face filled with alarm, then fear, then ... nothing.

His eyes got all glassy. His face followed. His body.

And a giant smoked-glass figurine stood before Bommy Giffitt, clutching six crystal-clear pendants in its lifeless hand.

Warmth flooded into Bommy's body, tingling through his arms and hands and fingers, his legs and feet and toes.

No time to savor this victory either. The dead were still coming.

Bommy tried to walk but his legs were half asleep. Desperately he rubbed his calves with his hands, coaxing the blood back into them, but it was taking too long. There was no time to wait for nature, no time at all, because the army of the dead was closing in, growling like angry dogs, knocking down graveposts like they were toothpicks.

"Destroyyy himmmm," they said. "Avenge the massterrrrr!"

Bommy wobbled away from the tree. His numb legs collapsed and he fell to the ground. He crawled as fast as he could, nearly tumbling into one of the empty graves.

The footsteps of the dead shook the earth beneath him. Their vengeful cries hammered at his ears. Their stench filled his nostrils. Their frigid breath blasted the back of his neck. He put his hands over his head and curled up into a ball, awaiting his gruesome fate.

And then a new voice spoke, soft and clear, uttering a single word.

"Stop!" the queen commanded.

TWENTY

Bommy gazed up at Queen Cammaleila's face. Her eyes were bright and alert, and there was something in her expression – an intelligence, a regal manner – that hadn't been there before. In a sense he was meeting her for the first time – not the mindless zombie mesmerized by Mr. Sog, not the dazed and confused prisoner in the jail cell, not the decaying corpse in the tomb – but the queen of legend who had captured the heart of a kingdom so long ago.

The zombies were also free of Mr. Sog's spell, but they didn't look so hot. They were sitting on the ground, slumped and sagging like discarded rag dolls, their eyes reduced to dim yellow orbs. The king wandered among them, patting their shoulders and muttering "there, there," like a coach consoling his team after a loss.

The graveyard was changing too, flattening out into two-dimensions, the colors draining away, leaving shades of gray. Chalk outlines silhouetted everything, like the marks constables draw around the bodies of murder victims.

"Arise, Bommy," the queen said. "You must remove yourself from this place, and quickly."

He sat up. "I sure would like to, your highness. Just point me to the nearest exit."

She smiled sadly. "I have no idea where this 'exit' would be. But you must find it, and soon. This place is drifting into the Realm of the Dead. I can feel it in my bones and smell it in the air. This is where I belong." She nodded at the zombies. "And they as well. We are going home. But you must not accompany us. You belong in the land of the living."

"Hey, tell me about it."

The queen scanned the bleak surroundings. "I seem to recall a window of some kind, in the middle of the air. My memories are all disjointed, like a bad dream, but I know there was something here and we walked through it during our journey. It seems to be gone now."

"Yeah, Mr. Sog drew it with a piece of chalk. It never sticks around for long."

"Do you think you could use this chalk to make another window, one that will take you back where you belong?"

"I guess I could try, but I'd need the chalk."

"Where is it?"

"In Mr. Sog's pocket, I guess."

"I suggest you retrieve it. There is no time to lose."

The queen helped Bommy to his feet, and together they walked over to the wizard. There was a look of outraged surprise frozen on Mr. Sog's face, and a wicked glimmer in his eyes, as if his evil mind was still awake, lurking inside the glass, scheming of ways to get out. Bommy touched him gingerly, ready to bolt if the wizard so much as blinked.

The queen showed no such timidity, running her hands over Mr. Sog's robe like a veteran cop frisking a suspect.

"He has no pockets," she said. "There are only creases in the glass where the pockets used to be."

"Great," Bommy said. "So now what do we do?'

The queen nodded at the stuff scattered on the ground around the trunk.

"Could there be more chalk in that jumble?" she said.

"I don't think so," Bommy said. "I looked it over pretty good."

"What about inside the trunk?"

"I think everything spilled out, but maybe not." He walked over to the trunk and peered inside. "Hey, there _is_ stuff in here!"

He reached in and pulled out a paper sack and a shoebox. The sack had an odd but pleasant fried-food smell. Bommy's mouth watered.

"I'm starved," he said, and opened it up.

It was full of noses, all sorts of noses, some human, some animal, some unclassifiable. Button noses, pointy noses, thin noses, fat noses, and one made of wood. Some had only one nostril. Some had three or four. Many were full of hair, in a variety of colors. No boogers though. At the bottom of the bag lay little packets of ketchup and salt, plus a sales slip with indecipherable writing on it and some sort of scratch-off game card.

"Gross!" Bommy said.

He hurled the bag as far as he could. It landed inside a grave. He looked at the shoebox and hesitated, then opened it. To his relief, there was nothing disgusting inside, just some sort of clockwork device. He was tempted to wind the spring and see what the device did, but decided not to.

"I guess that's it," he said sadly. "No chalk."

The queen bent down and squinted into the trunk's shadowy interior. "Could you have missed something? It's rather dark in there."

"I'll make sure."

He got on his belly and crawled into the trunk till he could touch the back, sweeping his hand through the shadows as dust bunnies scattered, chittering angrily at him before scurrying away. His fingers brushed against something solid and he grabbed it and brought it out. It was the last thing in the trunk, his last chance – a small gray cardboard box with black lettering on the top that he couldn't read. He slid the cover open.

"Chalk!" he said, grinning at the queen.

He picked up a piece and hefted it in his hand. It felt quite ordinary, not magical at all. Maybe it was just a spare, untreated and useless. He waved it through the air, trying to draw a line like Mr. Sog had done. Nothing happened.

"Nuts," he said.

"It doesn't work?" the queen said.

"I guess not. I wish I could..."

The ground trembled beneath his feet, the red clay changing instantly to black slate. Cracks spread across its surface. The clouds turned gray. Chalk dust swirled through the air. Bommy gagged and waved his arms to drive it away – as the chalk in his hand ripped a gash in the haze, like a knife cutting through cloth. The gash sagged and widened, the corners peeling away, and bright light spilled out, cutting through the cemetery gloom.

"It's a window!" Bommy cried. "Queen Cammaleila, I did it! I made a window!"

She didn't answer. He turned toward her. She was sitting down, her back against the trunk, her chin resting on her chest. Her hair was gray, her face grayer. One of her eyes was twisted strangely in its socket. The veins stood out on her hands like spiders. Liver spots dotted her skin.

Bommy knelt by her side, taking her hand.

"Come on, your highness," he said. "You've gotta come with me."

"I cannot," she said wearily. "My place is here. You must go on alone."

"But you don't understand. Elyno needs your blood."

"Elyno?"

"A friend of mine. We took blood from you in the jail to give to her, remember?"

"Vaguely."

"It was supposed to be an antidote to a potion she took."

"An antidote? Ah yes. I remember a lady using that word as she drew my blood. I did not fully understand."

"It's a long story, your highness, but it comes down to this: Your blood was full of bad stuff because you were under Mr. Sog's spell, so we couldn't use it, so now you have to go back so Melliata can cure you and..."

The queen put a hand on his cheek.

"Calm yourself, Bommy. No cure is necessary. The moment you vanquished the wizard, his evil taint fled my body. I felt it depart. I am cleansed now. I am well."

"Begging your pardon, ma'am, but you sure don't look well."

"My body is returning to the eternal slumber from which it should never have awakened. But my soul is whole. My soul is well."

"Great. But you've still got to come back with me so we can get more blood and..."

"No. My journey lies in another direction, young friend, a journey already embarked upon, from which no return is possible. But I shall be glad to give you my blood. I shall not require it where I am going."

She leaned forward with great effort and reached into the jumble and picked up a jar full of herbs and brought it down on a corner of the trunk with surprising force. The top of the jar broke off and fell away. The herbs tumbled out.

"What are you..."

Before Bommy could stop her, the queen drove her wrist onto the jagged glass. Blood gushed out, pouring into the jar. Bommy looked the other way. A horrible minute passed, full of splashing sounds and the queen's stifled sobs, and when she spoke again her voice was barely audible.

"I think this shall suffice. Take it."

He accepted the jar from her outstretched hand, grimacing as he saw the big gash in her wrist, the blood dribbling down her arm, the pained expression on her face.

"Go now," she murmured. "I shall be all right. You needn't fret."

Bommy stood up and bowed. There was a lump in his throat. "Thanks, your highness. I hope you have a nice trip."

"Quad speed, Bommy Giffitt."

The ground rumbled again, louder this time, the cracks widening into fissures, gobbling up graves. The moon disappeared from the sky, plunging the world into darkness. Bommy hurried to the portal and climbed through.

Silence and light engulfed him.

His head whipped around, his jaw dropping. He'd expected to find himself in one of the graveyards they'd already visited, or perhaps the schoolhouse where the journey began, but instead he was in a crystal labyrinth. It was like stepping inside a giant diamond and a kaleidoscope and a funhouse mirror maze, all at once, with a hundred translucent shafts spread out around him, each one containing thousands of glittering facets in a rainbow of colors.

What strange realm was this? He touched one of the facets, a cherry red one about the size of a manhole cover, and it split into four diamond shaped sections that swung inward, revealing a field of wheat stretching into the distance under a lavender noonday sky. Bommy stuck his head into the opening and smelled the rich earth and felt the gusty wind and heard the rustle of the amber waves. He leaned back and the facet closed. He selected another facet, periwinkle blue, which opened into a lush jungle. Strange birdcalls filled the air, competing with the sound of a roaring waterfall somewhere nearby. A crocodile with wings crawled up out of a slimy green pond and eyed him hungrily. Bommy backed away and scurried up the shaft.

The labyrinth must be some sort of central station for portals, a place where they all intersected. But how could he find the right one, the one that would take him home?

He picked another shaft at random and headed into it, following its curves and twists and turns till he came to a turquoise facet shimmering a little brighter than the ones around it. Maybe that was a sign of some kind, a good omen?

Bommy entered it and found himself in a strange, circular room, where three creatures resembling huge balls of twine were rolling around in a spinning trough that reminded Bommy of an immense roulette wheel. A dozen elegantly dressed men with square heads sat in chairs mounted on the walls, armed with whips made from octopus tentacles, and as the twine-creatures rolled by the men flailed away at them, raising huge welts on the creatures' bodies as little lint balls cascaded from their beady red eyes.

Bommy retreated into the shaft and moved on, checking out more portals at random. Some were empty worlds – great deserts or deserted mountain peaks – while others weren't even worlds, just vacant vistas, like the inside of gigantic golf balls. Still other portals opened straight into walls – some made of stone or brick, others of wood or earth – and Bommy nearly bumped his head a time or two.

Eventually the shaft split into two branches. Between them was a staircase made of octagonal patches of maroon light. Bommy took the stairs, climbing for a good ten minutes, eventually stopping at a portal that was larger than most. He had a hunch this might be the one, but when he looked inside there was nothing but a mountain, with four massive stone faces carved into the side – men's faces, strange and alien.

Bommy returned to the stairway and kept climbing, ignoring the portals on either side of him, dim and dingy things that didn't look too promising. He came to a landing and sat down to take a breather. There was a golden portal on his left, bright and shiny and beckoning, and he peeked into it and saw a muddy street flanked by toadstool-shaped buildings, and a sky swarming with black storm clouds and gray dirigibles, the latter firing grappling hooks at each other in some kind of crazy air battle.

"Cool," Bommy said.

One hook finally managed to snag the gasbag of an opponent, tearing a gaping hole in its side. Flames erupted, consuming the dirigible's skin as its metal framework bent in the center, then buckled, sending hundreds of crewmen plunging downward, racing with the raindrops as they hurtled toward their doom.

Bommy turned away, shaking his head, and resumed the climb. As the minutes wore on he got more and more frustrated until finally he sank down onto the steps and buried his face in his hands. There had to be a way home. But how long would it take him to find it? The rest of his life? Or did time stand still inside this labyrinth?

He pulled the piece of chalk out of his pocket and pondered it. Maybe he was going about this all wrong. Mr. Sog had started his journey by drawing a cemetery; perhaps that was like filing a "flight plan" with the labyrinth, telling it where he wanted to go – in which case, Bommy should draw a picture of home. Heck, it couldn't hurt.

He got to his feet, picked up his jar, and climbed down the stairs to a small side shaft he'd passed earlier, one made of indigo glass, the closest thing to black he'd seen so far. He picked a nice smooth spot where the glass wasn't quite so ripply, and he began to draw his bedroom. The chalk made a horrid squeaking noise as it rubbed along the glass – but that wasn't nearly as dreadful as the drawing itself.

Bommy shook his head sadly. Art never was his best subject in school. In fact, he really didn't _have_ a best subject. But if he had one, it definitely wouldn't be art.

He put his hand up to the drawing, intending to wipe it off and start over, but as he touched the glass with his palm a slight movement stopped him.

He blinked and leaned closer. No, it wasn't his imagination. The tree branches outside his bedroom window were swaying back and forth. And the moon he'd drawn above the trees was beginning to glow, casting shafts of light across his bed, throwing shadows into the corners.

And then Bommy heard the clattering of the branches against the side of the house, and the whisper of the wind, the chirrup of crickets, the soft buzz of his dad's snoring down the hall, and his eyes widened in astonishment as his poorly drawn bed and dresser took on their proper shapes and shading, and the floor and walls filled with color and texture. Without hesitation, Bommy pushed in on the glass. It popped like a soap bubble but the picture remained, only now it was real, now it was actually there. He clutched the jar tightly to his chest and clambered through, falling into bed.

His very own bed, in his very own room.

He was home. Home at last!

Some blood had sloshed out of the jar, staining his pajama top and his blanket, but only a little. Bommy set the jar carefully on his night table and let out a long, relieved sigh.

When he turned around he saw the portal hovering above his pillow, swiftly dwindling to the size of a hand mirror. To Bommy's surprise, Queen Cammaleila's face suddenly appeared in its surface. The flesh on her cheeks had been eaten away, exposing the bone beneath, yet a bright intelligence still lingered in her eyes and a smile found its way onto her ravaged lips.

Bommy waved at her. Her smile broadened, but the movement was too much for her mouth – the lips broke apart and fell away, leaving strands of flesh behind, stuck in her teeth like bits of dental floss.

Her head sank out of sight, and all that remained in the portal was a trembling, bony hand, waving from side to side as chalky clouds engulfed it.

The portal winked out of existence, and Bommy's room grew dark.

TWENTY ONE

Bommy burst into his father's room. "Dad! Wake up! I did it! I did it!"

His dad sat up with a start. "What's all the racket about?" he demanded. "What are you up to now?"

"I did it, Dad! I beat Mr. Sog! We can save Elyno!"

He told the whole story, not bothering to embellish. There was no need. When he was done his dad just sat there, holding the broken jar in his hands, gazing at the queen's blood with a baffled look on his face.

Bommy knew his dad didn't believe him. How could he? Bommy barely believed it himself.

"It's true, Dad," he said. "All of it. Every word. Honest."

His dad rubbed his chin. "Let me get this straight. You attacked Mr. Sog with some screws..."

"No, no, the screws were on the hinges on the trunk and the jug was in the trunk and the potion was in the jug."

"OK, and how did Jayk get there exactly?"

"He wasn't there. I was just thinking about him, and that's how I tipped the trunk over."

His dad sighed. "OK, start at the beginning and take it slow this time."

After two more tries, his dad finally understood. Sort of.

"And the queen stopped the zombies from attacking you?" he said.

"Yeah," Bommy said. "She was awesome."

"She just said, 'Stop,' and they all stopped. Just like that. An entire army."

"Yeah. She said it in a real firm voice."

"Uh huh. And you escaped by drawing a window in the air."

"More or less."

"And then you drew a picture of your bedroom."

"Yeah, on a wall in the labyrinth."

"And even though you got an 'F' in art and you have no teleportation training at all, this picture became a portal and you just climbed into it and got home."

"It must've been the chalk."

"The chalk. I see. And you're sure this adventure wasn't a dream, even though it started in bed and ended in bed."

"If it was a dream, how could I have a jar with the queen's blood in it?"

"Good point," his dad murmured. He contemplated the jar for a few moments, then let out another long sigh. "All right, Bommy. I guess I have no choice but to believe your story. Most of it, anyway."

"Good, because we've gotta get help to Mister Varasta."

"You're sure it was him you saw inside the blackboard?"

"Sure I'm sure. After that butterfly thing stopped screeching and that bright light went away I heard someone screaming and I looked up and there was a little box in the center of the blackboard and Mister Varasta was inside it, like a cartoon on TV, and he looked just awful, and his house..."

"Yes, yes, you already told me that part. OK, I'll call the police and get someone over there."

"Good. And then we've gotta get the blood to Melliata so she can start work on the antidote right away."

"Hold on, Bommy. Take it easy. We're not going to barge in on Melliata in the middle of the night, is that clear?"

"But dad..."

"Elyno can wait till tomorrow. You and I both need some sleep. We can't accomplish anything if we're dead on our feet."

He got up from the bed and escorted Bommy back to his room.

"Now get to bed, Bommy. You look like a zombie yourself."

"Awww."

"And don't think of sneaking out and going over to Melliata's on your own."

"Would I do something like that?"

"Yes, but don't bother. I'm putting your jar in the fridge with the punishment pot on guard, and I'm going to lock up Bigmouth, too."

"Aw gee."

"No arguing. Get moving."

Bommy went into his room and shut the door and climbed into bed – and immediately began plotting his escape. He would sneak down to the kitchen just as soon as his dad was asleep, and create a diversion to distract the punishment pot, then Lift the jar out of the fridge. The pot might be wicked and smelly, but it wasn't real smart. Neither was the bike lock; it was a cinch to pick. And then Bommy would be on his way to Melliata's. She wouldn't mind a late-night visit, not if it meant helping Elyno – and even if she did mind, he had no choice.

I just can't wait till morning. I just can't. I won't get a lick of sleep till I know Elyno's going to be all right. ... Come on, Dad. Start snoring. ... Come on. ... The sooner you're asleep, the sooner I can ... the sooner I ... can...

The next morning he woke up to the sound of his dad banging on his bedroom door.

"Come on, sleepyhead," his dad bellowed. "I've called Melliata and she's waiting for that blood. You going to dawdle around all day?"

* * *

Fronk and Nilla Telves watched nervously as Melliata sat down on the edge of Elyno's bed and rummaged around in her medical bag. Bommy's dad stood next to the Telveses, rubbing his chin pensively. Bommy sat on the floor at the foot of the bed, peeking at Elyno over the edge of the mattress, trying to be as inconspicuous as possible. Fronk and Nilla said they weren't mad at him; they knew he was just trying to help Elyno when he gave her the potion. But all the same, he wanted to keep a low profile.

He muttered a silent prayer as Melliata picked up the bottle containing the antidote and pulled out the stopper. She poured a little into Elyno's mouth, but it wasn't a real mouth, just a depression in a piece of molded plastic, and the medicine dribbled right back out.

Undaunted, Melliata put some in the palm of her hand and smeared it on Elyno's face and neck, then peered at her through a crystal.

"Hmm," she said. "Nice, clear pores."

She picked up a spoon and filled it with medicine and held it to Elyno's mouth, like a child pretending to feed a doll.

"Come on, dear," she said encouragingly, "have some."

Elyno did not respond.

Fronk and Nilla looked at each other. Fronk frowned, his face disappearing in a sea of wrinkles. Nilla dabbed a tear from her eye with a soggy hanky. Bommy started another prayer.

Melliata set down the spoon. "You know, Elyno, for an action figure you're not very active."

She dipped a finger into the bottle and dabbed some antidote into Elyno's unblinking eyes. It trickled down her shiny cheeks, mimicking tears. Nilla sobbed, producing real ones.

"You're not trying, honey," Melliata said. "You've got to try."

She patted Elyno's hand. The Guild ring on her finger made a "click-click" sound as it hit the plastic.

Bommy shuddered. How could there possibly be any life inside that hard shell?

"Come on, dear," Melliata said, again and again. "Come on."

And slowly the click-click faded, replaced by another sound.

Pat-pat-pat.

The sound of flesh against flesh.

Elyno's stiff wrist bent, slowly. The hand grew limp. The skin lost its shine.

Melliata brought the spoon to Elyno's lips. "Take the medicine," she commanded harshly. "Take it, dammit!"

Elyno's lips parted. The tip of her tongue protruded, flicking at the spoon.

Her nose twitched. A nostril flared.

Melliata tossed the spoon aside and picked up the bottle.

"Drink this," she snapped. "Come on now, guzzle it down."

Elyno guzzled.

And grimaced.

And blinked.

And said, "Yuck!"

And spat half of it back out.

And suddenly she was alive again, a moving, breathing, flesh-and-blood person, and Fronk and Nilla were fawning all over her with hugs and kisses and Bommy was crying and his dad was crying too and trying to hide it, and Melliata was beaming, quietly pleased with herself.

"What's going on?" Elyno said, looking thoroughly bewildered. "What's happened?"

She tried to sit up but Melliata pushed her down again.

"Stay still, girl," she said.

"What's happened?" Elyno said. "Why are you all in my room?"

"You were taken ill," Melliata said. "We're just tending to you, that's all."

"Taken ill? How?"

"It happened quite suddenly, but you're better now."

"I don't remember."

"No point in dwelling on it. The important thing is to lie still and get your rest. You're not out of the woods yet."

Melliata pulled the blankets over Elyno, all the way up to her chin. "You've got to stay warm. Keep your limbs under the blankets. That's an order."

"I feel fine," Elyno said, squirming. "Don't make such a fuss."

"Shhh," Melliata said.

Elyno turned to her parents. "Why are you two crying?" Then she saw Bommy's dad. "Mister Giffitt? What are you doing here?"

"Hush now," Nilla said. "Time enough for questions later."

Elyno noticed a movement at the foot of the bed, a pair of eyes peeking at her. "Bommy, is that you?"

"Yeah, it's me," he said, poking his head up and smiling shyly. "How ya doing?"

Elyno frowned. "Now I remember. We were out in your back yard. You gave me a potion. You..."

She gasped and tried to sit up again. Melliata and Nilla restrained her.

"I drank the potion," Elyno said. "I remember now. It was going to make me normal again! And then I felt so strange. And then ... I don't remember."

"That's all over and done with now, darling," Nilla said gently. "The important thing is, you're going to be well."

"Am I?" Elyno said.

"Of course you are," Nilla said. "You're still weak, but thanks to Melliata..."

"No, no. I mean, did the potion work? Did it cure me?"

"Uh..."

"Someone bring me a mirror! I want to see my face. I've got to see!"

"You know we don't keep mirrors in the house," Fronk said sternly.

"And you shouldn't be getting yourself all worked up," Melliata scolded. "Not till you're stronger."

"Foo on that," Elyno said. "I want to see myself. Where's the nearest mirror?"

She started to toss the covers aside. Melliata and Nilla grabbed her arms.

"Easy girl," Melliata said. "You're not going anywhere."

"Yes I am!" Elyno said.

"Don't go getting stubborn on me now, or I'll have to give you a night-night pill."

Elyno stopped squirming. "Oh foo!"

Melliata patted her shoulder. "Now I want you to keep yourself wrapped up snug as a bug in a rug so you don't catch cold. Later you can get out of bed, when I say you're ready, and not before. Do you hear me?"

"Oh, all right," Elyno said wearily. "I guess I am a little sleepy. But I wish you'd all quit making such a big to-do over me."

Melliata turned to the others. "Maybe you'd all better leave. I'll stay here and tend to her, to make sure she doesn't take a downward turn."

Fronk and Nilla nodded. They kissed their daughter on her cheeks and headed for the door. Bommy's dad followed them. Bommy got up too.

"Bommy?" Elyno said.

He turned toward her.

"Are you crying too?" she said, amazed.

"No," he said, wiping away a tear.

"You are too."

"Am not."

"Are too."

"Am not."

"Was I that sick? Did you all think I was going to die or something?"

"Heck no," he said gruffly. "I knew you'd be OK. I just got bored to tears sitting around here waiting for you to wake up, that's all."

He started to walk away.

"Bommy?" Elyno said softly.

He paused with his hand on the doorknob.

"Why won't anyone tell me what's going on?" she said.

"Nothing's going on. The potion made you a little sick, that's all."

"But how do I look? Tell me. Did the potion work or didn't it? I've got to know!"

He looked into her eyes. "You're beautiful, Elyno. More beautiful than anyone else I know."

"Really? You really, truly mean it?"

He nodded.

"More beautiful than Amalissa?" she asked.

"Much."

"Cross your heart?"

He swallowed. "Cross my heart," he whispered.

Elyno smiled at him like she hadn't smiled in years – a big, bright smile that lit up her face – and as Bommy turned to leave he glanced out the window and saw the sun, and marveled at how dim it suddenly seemed.

THE END

Thank you for reading my tale. If you liked it, please rate it, or write a review, at the Website where you downloaded it, or on Goodreads, etc. I would appreciate it very much.

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

