Curse of the Spider King (9 page)

“Anomaly,” she helped again.

Autumn laughed in spite of herself. “
Anomaly
that caused the Rocky Mountains to form?”

“Not at all, sweetie,” Mrs. Briarman said. “The Rockies formed through the collision of tectonic plates. The cave on our back property was probably formed through erosion as glaciers receded, or just from runoff as is the case with the softer sandstone.”

“Oh, thanks, Mom,” Autumn said absently.

“Thanks Mom,” Johnny added.

“That's it?”

“Yeah, thanks.” Autumn folded up the book.

“Wait a second.” Mrs. Briarman put her hand on the cover. “What's going on with you two?”

“What do you mean?” Johnny asked, getting nervous.

Mrs. Briarman eyed them both for a second. “Are you playing a trick on me? Where is your father?” She stood up and looked out the window smiling.

“No, Mom. Everything's cool,” Johnny assured her. “Argument settled.”

She looked to him. “You two never resolve things that fast.”

“I guess I just wanted to hear you say it, Mom,” Autumn clarified. She pulled the book away and made for the door. “Thanks, Mom!”

“Yeah, thanks, Mom!” Johnny echoed as they let the screen door slam behind them.

“You two are up to something!” Mrs. Briarman hollered after them. “Wait, you aren't thinking of going into that cave, are you?”

“Uh, well, no . . . not unless . . .”

But Mrs. Briarman knew better. “At least take the dog!”

9

Lighting the Blue Beacons

“MISS SIMONSON, see me after class,” Mr. Wallace said as Kat walked in.
It's about my test.
She just knew it. What else could it be? But the uncertainty ping-ponging around her mind for the remaining forty-nine minutes of American history was what Mr. Wallace wanted to say about her test. His first take was that she'd gotten all the answers correct. Maybe all he wanted to do was congratulate her for her unprecedented success. But that was just it. Kat hadn't broken the “C-barrier” in American history the whole marking period. Surely Mr. Wallace would be suspicious.
But he couldn't think I was cheating. It was all in my
head. Ah!
It was maddening.

Kat fidgeted with her hair incessantly, so much so that Darren Lions behind her smacked her in the back of the head.

“Ow!”

“Cut it out, would ya, Smurf? You're annoying me!”

Instead, Kat rested her elbows on the table, leaned forward, placed her chin just above her elbows, cupping her ears with her hands.

When the bell rang and the classroom emptied, Kat was both nervous and relieved . . . nervous for the conference with Mr. Wallace, and relieved because her next class was study hall. Alone time. No matter the outcome with her teacher, Kat needed time to think. The voices in her head had not returned, but there was no disputing that they had been there. Voices in the head weren't exactly healthy; this much she knew.

“Miss Simonson?”

“Yes, Mr. Wallace?”

“Have a seat,” he said, pointing to a chair next to his desk.

Kat put her backpack down and braced herself. She hated confrontation. “If it's about my test—”

“Yes, it is.”

“I can explain—”

“Kat, I believe this is your first one hundred since, well, since I've known you.”

Kat sat speechless when she saw the bright-red A-plus on the test cover.

“Well done.”

“Thank you, Mr. Wallace.”

“But I do have a certain discrepancy I'd like to discuss with you.”

Great, here it comes.
“Discrepancy?”

“Your answers were exactly like another student's . . . in fact, like ten other students'.”

“Excuse me?”

“It would appear that either you spontaneously copied off ten of your friends across the room without me noticing, or each one of the other ten students copied off you for one of their answers, again, without my noticing.”

Kat was beyond nervous now. “Uh . . . Mr. Wallace . . . I-uh . . .”

“Miss Simonson, I really don't have a choice here.”

She looked down into her lap, hands clammy and folded.
I'm getting
expelled. No more Blue Girl to freak anyone out.
“I understand.”

“No, I don't think you do.”

Suddenly, a massive, leather-bound book plopped into her lap. She was so startled she almost jumped out of her chair. “What is this? I . . . I mean . . . what are you talking about?”

“I believe you have what some of us would call a gift, Kat.”

Kat was completely dismayed now.
What? No lecture? No detention?

“A gift?”

Mr. Wallace peeked over his shoulder to make certain no one else was in the room. “Just read the book, Kat. I think you might connect with it in more ways than one.”

“So you're not kicking me out of class?”

“Read the book, Kat. You have study hall next, right?”

“Uh, yeah.”

“No time to start like the present.”

Kat got up and tucked the book under her arm, all the while eyeing Mr. Wallace as if he'd just escaped a mental ward. “Thanks.”
I think,
she added to herself
.

Kat shoved her backpack under her desk in room B21 and sat down as far away from the other students as possible. Ms. Reedley sat at the monitor's table and graded papers. Kat's cell vibrated and she pulled it out, seeing she had an incoming text from her mom:
new hskeeper pickn
u up aftr schl. name Anna. drvn the tahoe.

Great
, she thought.
Another one.
Kat frowned and crinkled her nose. Room B21 was one of three rooms constructed from the old gym locker room when the building was renovated a few years back. Now carpeted and repainted, B21 still smelled like a locker room. The bell rang, and the rest of the students filed in. Ms. Reedley removed her glasses and glared at them until they stopped talking. Her stare could be best described as somewhere between a rabid German shepherd and the warden at the state penitentiary. A hush fell over everyone in the room.

Kat settled down and laid the heavy book from Mr. Wallace on her desk.
The History of Berinfell. Great,
Kat thought.
History
. She squared her shoulders and flipped open the worn cover.
And
old
history
at that
. It even smelled old. She flipped a few pages. There wasn't any of the usual publisher and copyright stuff, but she paused to admire the next page: an amazingly detailed sketch.

Kat loved to draw. She was a natural with charcoal, pen and ink, or even just pencil. But she had never seen a sketch such as this one. It was an orchard of tall, broadleaf trees laden with blossoms and fruit. Splendid patches of grass and long-stemmed flowers wavered at the base of the dark trees. It was as if the trees were wading waist-high in the middle of an ocean of foliage. Kat felt like she could almost smell the fragrant pollen from all the blossoms and hear the muted buzz of the bloom-hopping bees.
I want to go there
, she thought. After a long look, she turned the page.

She leafed through several pages until she settled somewhere in the middle of the book.
Hm
, she thought.
This text looks kind of raised, as if
it has its own texture.
She brushed her thumb across the first letters. The lights in the study hall flickered, the temperature climbed well past the 78-air-conditioned degrees, and the smell of smoke filled the room. A lick of fire appeared on the page and began to grow. Kat shut the book in a hurry. The lights stopped flickering. It was a comfortable temperature again, and the room smelled like gym socks once more.

Kat looked around. But to her astonishment, no one was staring at her as she thought they would. They carried on as usual—reading, passing notes, whispery giggling—completely oblivious.
Didn't they
see?
Even Ms. Reedley still sat grading papers, without so much as an eyelash flutter from her lethal gaze. Kat opened the book once more, found her page, and touched the text. No sooner had her fingertips brushed the lettering than the temperature rose, the lights dimmed, and the air filled once more with the smell of smoke. Fire leaped up from the page, but still no one in the room so much as flinched.

This time, Kat didn't close the book.

More and more fire burst through the pages. It danced along the ceiling of the classroom before dropping to patches on the floor, some right at the feet of her classmates. Kat held her breath as huge marble columns rose up from the pages, followed by shards of broken glass, streams of water, and pieces of timber. Room B21 melted away.

Kat found herself sitting next to a huge basin of water, like a fountain, in an enormous hall. She could even feel the cool spray from the trickling water. But there was something terribly wrong in this scene. Dark smoke rose from many fires and swirled on the ceiling. It was hard to see clearly or breathe. But everywhere she looked, things were broken or burning. And there were lifeless forms strewn about the hall. Bodies. But other forms entered the scene. Some crowded around the bodies. Others ran from one place to another as if on urgent errands. Kat heard voices, turned, and saw that someone nearby was wounded and others were tending to her.

“What?” Kat muttered to herself. “They . . . they have pointed ears!”

P
lease, Elle!” Flet Marshall Brynn prompted, wiping the excess saliva away from the wounded Sentinel's lips. “I'm sorry to press you, but we must know what happened here. Tell us what you know . . . anything you can remember.”

Elle lay on a litter surrounded by Elven warriors. She tried to speak but coughed harshly through the first few syllables. Fresh blood trickled from the corner of her mouth.

“Break out the rest of those windows on the other side!” Guardmaster Olin Grimwarden yelled at the flet soldiers who milled about the ruins of the Great Hall.

Flet soldiers exchanged pained glances as they trod into the wreckage. They hoisted large pieces of marble and charred wood and hurled them through their beloved windows.

“Now,” said Brynn. “Tell us, Elle, what did you see?”

“They came up the main hall”—whispered the Sentinel—“and through the glass: Warspiders, Gwar soldiers, Drefids . . .” Her voice, now thin and weak, fell away. Her ceremonial robes were torn and her ribs badly bruised and broken. It was all she could do to stay conscious. “We had no time.” Elle coughed. Brynn offered her another sip of water, but she denied it. “The guards barely had time to draw their swords . . . many were cut down right where they stood.”

“Go on,” said Grimwarden, his own fear making him impatient.

“It was so sudden. We had no time.” Elle coughed and scowled. “They just kept coming.”

Grimwarden frowned. “Surely the Seven Lords fought.”

Elle's eyes grew large and fierce, and for a moment her strength seemed to return. “They fought like lions,” she said. “Galadhost was the first to recognize the danger. His twin blades took many a Gwar head! And Tisa, she nearly sent the hall up in flames. In spite of the overwhelming numbers of Warspiders, Gwar, and Drefids, the lords might have still turned the tide of the battle. But they could not advance on the enemy without leaving their offspring unprotected. The lords were slain as they defended their children.”

The children?
Grimwarden looked sadly up at the thrones. Something troubled him. Behind the thrones, hidden and unknown to all but the most elite Elves, was the tunnel entrance to the ancient Nightwish Caverns.
Why
hadn't the Seven Lords taken their children and escaped?

“Elle, what became of . . . of the children?” asked Brynn. “They are not here among the dead.”

Elle winced at the memory. “After the Seven Lords fell, it was only a matter of time before the Gwar gained control of the hall. We were overwhelmed. The Drefid commanders took the infants. They placed them in satchels on the Warspiders, and the war party left through the windows.”

“Why would they leave?” asked Brynn. “Had they stayed, they could have cut into the heart of the city and hemmed us in.”

“They accomplished their mission,” muttered Grimwarden.

“What?”

“They came for the children,” he said. “Why? I cannot say. But a growing fear gnaws within me. The Spider King now holds the end of the lordship bloodline in his hands.”

Elle groaned. Her voice came out in an agonized wail. “I failed them!”

“You have not failed,” Brynn consoled her, placing a hand gently on her shoulder. “You live to tell what the Spider King wanted known only by the dead in this room. He is the one who failed. You are strong.”

“Neither strong nor smart enough,” she whispered. “Ah, treachery!”

“Treachery?” Brynn stood, sympathy vanishing from her expression. “Treachery in Berinfell? I don't believe it.”