9 9 The ladder swung and twisted as Cole descended one rung at a time. Holding the flag made the climb tricky. A few rungs from the bottom he paused to study the women. Though not identical, they resembled one another—grayish complexions, neutral expressions, creased faces, bony builds, medium height, hair in buns, faded dresses, dark shawls.
He could find no differences between them and real people, except for their uninterested attitudes. Nobody glanced his way. Nobody paused. Nobody smiled. Instead each woman walked briskly about her business.
Cole stepped down to the bottom rung. He had been warned more than once that trouble tended to happen when you first reached the castle. What if this was it? What if he didn’t make it back? Nobody would ever know what happened to him—not his parents and not his friends. He wondered if Jenna and Dalton believed he would come for them. He wondered if they would forgive him if he never showed up. Wherever they were, he hoped they weren’t on dangerous missions, being used as monster bait.
Taking a deep breath, Cole checked the position of his sword. Keeping one hand on the ladder, he stepped down onto the paving stones of the courtyard.
Every woman immediately stopped. With chilling synchronization, they turned and stared directly at him.
Chills washed across Cole’s shoulders and down his back. Frozen with surreal horror, he stared back.
As the moment stretched out, he wanted to race back up the ladder. But some instinctive part of him worried that as soon as he moved, they would rush him. He didn’t breathe.
One woman bustled toward him, her footfalls noisy in the silent yard. She peered nervously over her shoulder more than once. The others remained still, solemn eyes boring into Cole. The oncoming woman removed her shawl. When she reached him, she wrapped it around his shoulders and fastened it below his neck with a clasp.
As if responding to some invisible signal, the other women turned and continued about their business. One moment he had their full attention, the next he was utterly forgotten.
Remembering the flag in his hand, Cole set it on the ground. It stood upright despite lacking a base.
The woman without her shawl held out a hand to Cole. “This way,” she urged. “We haven’t much time.”
“Why?” he asked.
“Not here,” she said, anxious eyes checking the area. “Indoors.” Her agitation was convincing. Supposedly, she wasn’t alive, but there was nothing phony about her appearance or demeanor. It was in the details—the redness at the corners of her eyes, the faint gloss of sweat on her forehead, the loose skin of her neck, the spots on the back of her hands, the ragged tips of her fingernails.
Cole took her hand and let her lead him away from the ladder. She placed her other arm around his shoulders protectively. Women marched past on either side, going about their errands without a flicker of interest in what was happening around them. But they had to be aware. He had stopped traffic when he first stepped off the ladder.
The woman kept her head down and walked swiftly. It didn’t seem like she meant him any harm. If anything, he thought she was trying to help. But he stayed ready, in case she turned on him.
Cole noticed fossils embedded in the paving stones—mostly leaves, bugs, and fish. As they neared the castle, he saw similar fossils preserved in the wall.
The woman led him to a minor door into the main castle. They entered a corridor and passed another woman on her way out.
“What’s your name?” Cole asked quietly.
“Not yet,” she said, giving his hand a squeeze. They moved down the hall, then through a door into a storage room. Releasing him, she shut the door behind them. “Merva.”
“I’m Cole. What’s going on?”
“We have no time. It’s expecting me. We can’t break routine. It must be cleaned. You must come.”
“What’s expecting you? Come where?”
She took his hand again. “Keep near me. Move how I move. Say nothing.”
He resisted her pull. “Wait. You have to tell me what’s going on.”
Her grip tightened, and her face became agonized. “There’s not time. It’ll kill us all!”
Cole let her lead him from the room. She increased her pace to a fast trot. They passed a few other women in dresses and shawls.
This was happening too quickly. Cole had no idea where they were going or what they would face when they got there. He had lost all control of the situation. Merva’s desperation had vanished when they exited the storage room, but the glimpse of her terror had left him even more deeply unnerved. At least nothing had attacked them yet. Maybe Merva knew what she was doing.
He tried to keep an eye out for valuables. The halls were mostly bare. What furniture he saw looked simple.
They started down a dim, winding staircase. Women climbed up from below, passing them without a glance.
The stairs deposited them into a long, cavernous room, comparable to a subway station. A single creature filled the chamber—a nightmarish cross between a centipede and a scorpion. Armored by a glossy black shell, the monster was the size of a train. It had five sets of claws, each pincer larger than a minivan. Hundreds of legs supported the long, segmented body. The gargantuan tail curled up toward the ceiling, a vicious-looking stinger at the tip.
Anchored to rings in the floor, thick chains crisscrossed each segment of its body. Women bustled everywhere, cleaning the creature with rags, mops, brooms, chisels, and sponges.
The sheer scale of the monster left Cole stunned. The busy women looked like insects by comparison. No wonder Merva had worried about making it angry.
Cole realized he was in way over his head. His best chance of survival was probably to follow Merva’s instructions. She seemed to think there was a chance of keeping the monster calm. After a brief hesitation at his first sight of the colossal scorpipede, he stayed close to her, carefully matching her pace and posture. She no longer hurried. He tried to breathe quietly.
She led him to a wall where she retrieved a large iron crowbar. Cole reached for one as well, but she waved him off, pointing at hers. Apparently she wanted them to share.
Merva walked along the huge body of the scorpipede. Each segment was several paces long and more than three times taller than Cole. She stopped where the casing of one segment overlapped the next, and started chiseling at the gap between them. With her eyes, Merva told Cole to help. Placing his hands on the crowbar, he assisted as they chipped away material from the slick surface of the shell.
A ripple ran along the body of the scorpipede, making some of the chains squeal. The nearest pincers scissored opened and closed a few times, prompting some of the women to momentarily back away.
Merva wedged the crowbar deeper between the segments and scraped harder. Cole helped her push, lever, and pull.
The scorpipede shuddered. Cole felt the sharp vibrations through the crowbar. Then came a screeching roar that was high and low at the same time. The penetrating noise thrummed in his bones and teeth.
The room went still. In unison, all the women besides Merva dropped their tools. Brushes, gaffs, crowbars, poles, mops, and brooms clattered to the floor. As one, the women turned to stare at Merva.
All color draining from her face, Merva brushed Cole’s hands from the crowbar. “It knows,” she murmured.
Merva glanced down at the shawl he wore and then around at the women. Cole suddenly realized that the attention was on her because she lacked her shawl. Her expression became blank, her voice monotone. “It knows I tried to conceal you. You might as well try to run.”
As Cole took his first step away from the scorpipede, the creature reared up, mighty chains snapping like threads and whipping around violently. More than one woman went flying, but the others didn’t scatter. They held still, watching Merva.
Glancing back, Cole saw the tail lash down, spearing Merva with the stinger. He skidded to a halt. The stinger withdrew and stabbed another woman with merciless precision. Merva stayed on her feet for a moment, eyes distant, then collapsed.
Cole felt horrified, but there was nothing he could do to help her. If he didn’t get away soon, he would be next. As the segmented body bucked and squirmed, giant claws clamped other women. None cried out or tried to escape.
Focusing on the stairway, Cole yanked out his sword. The floor trembled with the thrashing of the scorpipede. The castle walls groaned. The whole place might come down on him any second, if the stinger didn’t pierce him first. Pointing his sword at the base of the stairs, Cole yelled, “Away!”
The sword pulled his body from the floor. Holding tightly, he sped forward at a low trajectory, never more than a few feet high. As his destination approached, Cole realized he would be crushed against the stone steps. But the sword decelerated enough at the last moment that instead of impacting with backbreaking force, he almost stayed on his feet, and tumbled into the steps jarringly instead of fatally.
The scorpipede screech-roared again. Driven by terror, Cole rose and dashed up the steps. He had hurt one hand trying to catch himself, and a shoulder and knee had taken harsh blows, but there was no time to really recognize the pain.
The stairway seemed longer going up than coming down. His thighs burned with exertion. The stairway rumbled and then quaked. Cole could hear stones falling.
He considered using his sword to climb faster, but since the stairway spiraled, he could never point it very far ahead, and little leaps didn’t seem worth the risk of falling. Beyond the top of the stairs, Cole tried to retrace the route to the courtyard. The dim corridors all looked alike, and soon he knew he had lost his way. He stayed at a full sprint, hoping that he wasn’t going in circles. The castle continued to shake in response to an ominous rumble in the foundation.
Finally Cole saw a promising door at the end of a hall up ahead. It was not where he had entered, but it opened onto the courtyard. The lifeboat was in the air at the far side, ladder still dangling.
“I need out!” Cole screamed, rushing forward. The lifeboat banked and came his way.
Cole considered using the sword, but he would have to leap across almost the whole courtyard. He wasn’t sure if it would pull him that far and wasn’t sure he could catch hold of the ladder if it did. Instead he held the Jumping Sword ready and ran hard.
As the lifeboat came closer, the enormous scorpipede erupted from the ground between them, its shiny black body stretching skyward like a fairy-tale beanstalk, multiple sets of pincers grasping toward the little skycraft. Huge blocks of stone fountained like confetti and crashed down in all directions. Cole dodged a large one before the quaking ground dropped him to his knees.
For a moment the bulk of the creature completely obscured the lifeboat. Gritty dust hung in the air. A screeching roar saturated Cole’s eardrums. By the time Cole saw the lifeboat again, it was curving up and away from the castle, passing beyond the wall, well out of jumping range.
He had missed his ride.
A lonely sense of doom smothered him.
His fate was sealed.
The towering scorpipede swiveled, then started to curl back on itself in Cole’s direction. Relatively small mouthparts clicked open and closed, eager little mandibles. The body continued to emerge from the hole it had created. Last would come the tail and the evil stinger.
From high above, an arrow the size of a javelin lanced down. It hit the glossy carapace and rebounded harmlessly. The attack did no damage, but the scorpipede reared back in that direction to investigate.
The oversized arrow must have come from the ballista aboard the Domingo. They were still trying to help him!
Cole scrambled to his feet. Maybe the lifeboat would come back around. He had to buy himself time. Nobody would be able to save him if he let fifty tons of ugly mash him into paste.
His only hope was the Jumping Sword. He scanned the courtyard, then noticed the balconies jutting from a pair of the castle’s tallest towers.
With another ear-rending screech, the scorpipede swung back his way. Cole pointed his sword toward some bushes at the base of one of the towers and shouted, “Away!”
He was attempting to jump farther than his previous leap. As the sword pulled him forward, the acceleration took his breath away. He skimmed over the ground at a speed that should have led to death by road rash, but again the sword slowed somewhat at the end. His feet hit the ground an instant before his momentum heaved him into a bush.
After coming to rest, Cole realized that he was uninjured. Twigs snapped and leaves rustled as he extracted himself from the foliage. He got to his feet in time to see the tail of the scorpipede slither out of the hole and then curve up into the air, poised to sting. The monster scuttled his way.
Cole aimed his sword at a balcony high above him. If he failed to reach it, the fall would surely kill him. “Away!”
He had only jumped low before. This time he felt like a superhero taking flight. Air rushed by as he rocketed upward. He realized that somehow the sword exerted a pull on his whole body. If he had to trust only the strength of his grip to keep hold of an object accelerating so rapidly, he never would have managed to do it.
Cole reached the balcony at the peak of his jump, allowing him to land lightly. After his ground-skimming leaps, the soft landing was a welcome relief.
The stinger-tipped tail rose up higher than the balcony, then blurred forward, punching a hole in the wall a few feet away. Shattered bits of stone peppered him as Cole fell flat. The stinger retracted and exploded up through the bottom of the balcony, missing him by inches. The balcony rocked and made horrible cracking sounds. The scorpipede might be striking blindly, but it wouldn’t have to wait long for results.
Rising, Cole pointed his sword toward the neighboring tower and as he sprang, he yelled, “Away!” Roller-coaster sensations surged through him as he soared across the intervening space and up to another balcony, again landing gently at the apex of his flight.
The scorpipede let out another screech-roar, the tail flailing down below. He had traveled higher than it could reach. Cole looked hopefully for the lifeboat, but saw nothing. The scorpipede started climbing straight up the tower wall.
Pointing his sword at a higher balcony across the way, Cole said his word and jumped again. Once again he landed smoothly. A glance down showed the scorpipede climbing fast.
There was no time to really strategize, but a rough plan flashed through his mind. When he got to the top, hopefully the lifeboat would be within range. He would either make a final jump to his rescuers or get trapped by the scorpipede with no escape.
If he leaped to the other tower with this next jump, he would be back on the same tower the scorpipede was climbing. But it was also the tower closest to the edge of the castle, which would allow Jed to steer the lifeboat within range at minimal risk.
Extending his sword, Cole jumped up to the flat roof of the opposite tower, landing in a crouch. Battlements surrounded the top like blunt teeth. Cole looked frantically in all directions. The Domingo hovered high above. Other castles floated in the distance.
When he saw the lifeboat, his heart sank.
It was swinging around to come his way, but it was too far out and much too low. They must not have spotted him climbing until a moment ago. Cole decided he could buy a little time by jumping back across to the roof of the neighboring tower before the scorpipede arrived. As he raised his sword, the tail shot up in his way.
Cole hesitated. With the scorpipede crawling up the tower, he would be in full view when he jumped. The tail would skewer him. The head of the scorpipede loomed into view, its weight crushing battlements as it leaned toward him. The tower shuddered as the scorpipede heaved more of itself to the top. The lifeboat would not be within jumping range in time.
But if he waited, he was dead.
Running away from the scorpipede, Cole jabbed his sword diagonally up and away from the tower, shouted “away,” and leaped with everything he had. He launched into his biggest jump yet, testing the sword’s limits. He heard the tail strike the castle behind him, and the scorpipede gave a furious cry.
Still curving upward, Cole saw the castle wall pass underneath him. His trajectory carried him well beyond the edge of the cloud at the castle’s base. As he lost his forward momentum and plunged downward, all he saw beneath him was endless sky, dropping away to immeasurable purple depths.
The shawl flapped above him, held in place only by the clasp at his neck. Fumbling desperately, it took Cole a panicky moment to find his rip cord. He was falling almost straight down by the time he gave it a sharp tug. The parachute blossomed up above him, jerking him as it interrupted his descent.
As he slowed, the shawl draped down over his head. He pulled it off and tucked it under one arm. His heart was still racing. Down between his feet yawned such endless nothing that it gave him shivers.
Above and behind him, the scorpipede let out another screech-roar. It was loud even at this distance.
“We’ve got you!” called a voice from below and off to one side.
The lifeboat appeared beneath him, falling with him to catch him softly. Eli steadied his landing, sat him down, and began pulling in the parachute as it went limp. He bundled it expertly.
Cole sat in shocked silence as the Okie Dokie climbed. He had hoped they would get to him before he dropped below where the skycraft could descend. And they had. He had made it.
He couldn’t believe he was alive. He had been so close to dying that at some level he had known he was only prolonging the inevitable. But now he was safe.
Eli and Jed stayed silent, and so did he. They rose toward the Domingo, glided up above it, then landed on the deck at the rear.
“Quite a performance,” Captain Post greeted as Cole clambered out of the lifeboat.
Cole tried to muster a smile. “I thought I was dead.”
Jace came up and gave him a big hug. “You’re officially my best friend.”
“That was a bad one?” Cole asked hopefully.
“Terrible,” Jace conceded. “You shouldn’t have survived.”
“One down,” Cole said shakily.
“Weeeell,” Jace replied, stretching the word out. “You have to bring something back for it to count.”
Cole paused and then gave a single chuckle. “I forgot to even think about that.”
“What have you there?” the captain asked.
“It has to be something valuable,” Jace explained hesitantly. “Something we would salvage on purpose.”
The captain took the shawl from Cole, shook it out, and held it up. “It’s less than we would normally accept. But that was a brutal first outing.” He eyed the shawl more closely. “It’s in good condition. And it might have useful properties—the other semblances ignored you once you put it on. If nothing else, I know a woman who might thank us for this. Granted, it’s a bit more effort than one would normally make to acquire a wrap, but we’ll count the mission valid.”
Cole slumped with relief.
“Nice job, rookie,” Jace said with a jeering smile. “Only forty-nine to go!”