Black Water Read online

“Yes,” I answered. “He’s taken the form of a klee named Timber.”

  “Boon told me,” Yorn said, shaking his head sadly. “It’s frightening to think he has found his way onto the Council of Klee. Why is he interested in Black Water?”

  “That’s what I’d like to know,” I said.

  Kasha didn’t say a word. She kept looking back and forth between all of us, trying to understand what it all meant.

  Boon asked, “And what are those little brown cubes the gars have? Saint Dane was real interested in those, too.”

  “Maybe your father has some answers for us,” Yorn said.

  Huh? Now it was my turn to be confused. “What do you mean?” I asked.

  Kasha reached into a fold of her tunic and pulled out a small, wooden key. “My father gave this to me the last time I saw him. He said that if anything should happen to him, I needed to use it right away.” She went to Seegen’s kitchen table and pulled it away to reveal a bench that was built into the wall. She ran her hand along the bench, just under the seat, until she found a small hole.

  “This is where my father kept his most valuable possessions,” Kasha explained.

  She inserted the key into the hole, turned it, and I heard the click of a lock. Kasha lifted the seat to reveal a hollow area beneath. There was only one item inside. It was a wooden box about the size of my mom’s jewelry box. I wanted to make a comment about how Seegen didn’t have many valuable possessions, but figured that wouldn’t be cool. Kasha removed the box, dropped the seat back down, and placed the small chest on the table. I noticed that on top of the box was a folded piece of paper. Kasha opened the note and read it aloud: “For my daughter, Kasha.”

  “It’s for you!” Boon exclaimed.

  Kasha gave us all a quick, nervous look, then opened the box. She pulled out another note that was on top. She first read it to herself. A tear welled up in her eye. None of us said anything. That wouldn’t have been cool. Kasha sniffed, stood up straight, and turned to us, saying, “You should all hear this.” She read the letter aloud.

  “My dear Kasha, If you are reading this, it means I am dead. Please do not grieve for me. This was the way it was meant to be. I know you do not believe in the Travelers, and our mission. I don’t blame you. But I’m afraid you will soon discover that it is all true. Eelong is in grave danger. If Saint Dane succeeds in his quest to destroy the gars, our home will be crushed. As difficult as this is to believe, Eelong being destroyed would be a small catastrophe compared to what would follow. Saint Dane must not succeed. If you choose not to follow your destiny as a Traveler, I would understand. The fault is mine. I have not done enough to prepare you for this responsibility. But I will ask one thing of you. It is something you must not refuse. A gar will arrive one day who goes by the name of Pendragon . . .”

  Kasha looked at me. I stared back silently, though I was dying to shout: “Keep reading!”

  She continued.

  “Share with him the contents of this box. I wish I knew more about Saint Dane’s evil plan, but I’m sorry to say I do not. I did discover this much: The gar legend of Black Water is true. It exists. I know, because I’ve been there.”

  Whoa, that officially made this note a shocker. We all exchanged looks, then Kasha continued.

  “I believe Black Water is central to Saint Dane’s plans. So does the Traveler named Gunny. He is waiting for Pendragon at Black Water.”

  I stood up straight. My heart raced. Gunny was alive.

  “I need you to help Pendragon get to Black Water. This is my request to you. Please, please honor it. I’m proud of you, my daughter, but more than that, I love you.

  Kasha lowered the note. Nobody could speak. Seegen had reached back from beyond death to finish his duties as a Traveler. My first thought was that I wished I had known him. My second thought was voiced by Boon.

  “So what’s in the box?” he asked.

  Kasha reached inside and picked up another piece of paper. She stared at it for a moment, as if not believing what she was seeing.

  “What is it, Kasha?” I asked softly.

  She handed the paper to me, and I examined it to see hand-drawn symbols and numbers that made no sense.

  “I don’t understand this,” I said.

  Yorn took the paper, gave it a quick look, and smiled. “Could it be?” he asked.

  “I think so,” Kasha answered.

  “What?” I demanded to know.

  “It’s a map,” Yorn answered. “From what Seegen wrote, I’d say it’s the route to Black Water.”

  “Yeah!” shouted Boon.

  I was so surprised, I couldn’t breathe. We had a piece of information that Saint Dane was desperate to get his hands on. Or should I say, his paws on? He tortured and killed a gar trying to get it, and here it was, right in our laps.

  “There’s something else in the box,” Yorn said.

  Kasha pulled out a roll of pages that were tied together with twine. She unfurled the pages and read, “Journal Number One—Eelong.”

  “Seegen’s journal!” I exclaimed.

  We were now complete. We had the benefit of knowing everything the previous Traveler discovered; we knew where Gunny was; and we were a couple of steps ahead of Saint Dane. For the first time since I landed on Eelong, I felt as if we had a fighting chance. But there was one important question that needed to be answered.

  “Kasha,” I said. “Where do you stand?”

  Kasha thought for a moment, glanced at her father’s note, and said, “I’ll get you to Black Water, Pendragon.”

  • • •

  This is where I’m going to end this journal. I’m feeling better now, though the experience of being a caged animal will stay with me forever. I’m going to use those memories to give me the strength I need to help save the gars from Saint Dane. They’ve suffered enough. Tomorrow, Kasha, Yorn, and I will leave for Black Water. We’ve decided that Boon should stay in Leeandra to watch what happens with Saint Dane and the Council of Klee. Hopefully he’ll find out more about their plans for the gars.

  I’ll close this journal by saying I hope Kasha’s head is in the right place. I’m going to have to rely on her if things get tough, and based on history, things always get tough. It goes with the territory, so to speak. By the time I write to you again, I’ll have news about Gunny. Good news, I hope.

  Please be well. Think of me. And though I know I don’t have to remind you . . . do not use the flume. There’s no telling what will happen if you do.

  END OF JOURNAL #17

  CLORAL

  “Please be well. Think of me. And though I know I don’t have to remind you . . . do not use the flume. There’s no telling what will happen if you do.

  Mark lowered the pages of Bobby’s Journal #17 after having read it aloud to Courtney and Spader. Everyone looked pretty grim.

  “Did we make a mistake by coming here?” Mark asked solemnly.

  “No!” Courtney said with confidence. “Bobby doesn’t know the whole story. What about all those dead tangs at the farm? It all fits. It’s the poison from Cloral! I’ll bet Saint Dane is trying to find Black Water so he can use the poison there, too.”

  “What do you think, Spader?” Mark asked.

  “I think Courtney’s right,” he answered.

  “Thank you!” Courtney shouted in triumph.

  “But I’m not sure if bringing the antidote from Cloral is the right thing to do,” Spader added.

  “How can you say that?” Courtney said quickly. “The rules have changed. Saint Dane told us that himself. If he’s mixing the territories, why can’t we?”

  “Well,” Spader said thoughtfully. “Because he’s the bad guy.”

  Courtney couldn’t argue with that. Instead, she grabbed the plastic bag with the sample of Seegen’s fur in it. “What about this?” she asked Mark. “We brought this from Second Earth. Aren’t we mixing things from the territories too?”

  “I was going to destroy that,” Mark said sheepishly.
/>   “Sure, after you were finished with it,” Courtney shot back. “I think things really have changed. Saint Dane ruined his first territory and it’s somehow made him stronger. Mixing the territories may be dangerous, but letting him win again might be worse.”

  “And what about the acolytes traveling?” Mark asked. “Bobby thinks it’s wrong.”

  “He doesn’t know for sure,” Courtney answered. “But I’ll tell you what is for sure: Saint Dane is about to wipe out the gars. He’s got the klees behind him and he’s got the poison. What do you want to do? Go home and wait for Bobby’s journal to tell us how he lost again, and Saint Dane’s powers have gotten even stronger? Or maybe Saint Dane will stop by to tells us in person, right before he starts messing with Second Earth.”

  Mark looked to Spader. Spader’s eyes were trained on the floor. Mark saw that his jaw muscles were working as he clenched his teeth together. Finally Spader stood and took the plastic bag from Courtney and said, “We’re not doing anything until we know for sure. Come with me.”

  • • •

  A short while later the three of them stood in the agronomy laboratory on Grallion. They were with Ty Manoo, one of the agronomers who was responsible for accidentally creating the deadly poison that threatened to spread a plague across Cloral. They watched the pudgy little scientist as he busily prepared a microscope slide from the strands of Seegen’s fur.

  “It was such a noble idea,” Manoo explained. “We set out to

  make a fertilizer that would double the growth rate of our crops. It would have insured a bounty of food for all of Cloral for generations! But something went terribly wrong.”

  The others knew exactly what went wrong. Saint Dane.

  “The fertilizer ended up mutating the molecular structure of everything it touched. The crops became poisonous. It was horrible!”

  Ty Manoo was short and bald, with an elflike face. He was a nervous guy, who constantly licked his lips when he spoke. He was licking overtime now. He didn’t like talking about the poison he was partly responsible for creating.

  “If it weren’t for the good people of Faar who created an antidote to counteract the effects, well, I’d hate to imagine what would have happened.”

  “Saint Dane would have destroyed Cloral, that’s what,” Courtney said under her breath.

  “Excuse me?” asked Manoo.

  “Nothing,” Courtney answered.

  Manoo finished the slide and slipped it into a microscope. It didn’t look anything like a Second Earth microscope. The contraption was round like a volleyball, and shiny silver. It had a flat base and a square window on top to peer down on the magnified image. Manoo looked intently down through this window while slowly spinning the sphere to focus it. “This is a waste of time,” he said. “Every trace of the poison was destroyed soon after . . .”

  Manoo fell silent. Mark thought he actually saw the color drain out of his face.

  “What?” Spader asked.

  “Where did you get this?” Manoo asked numbly.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Spader said quickly. “Is it the poison fertilizer?”

  “It . . . it can’t be,” Manoo stammered. “It’s impossible.”

  “But is it?” Courtney demanded.

  Manoo looked at them with a mixture of fear and confusion.

  “Say something, Manoo,” Spader said firmly.

  Manoo said sheepishly, “There was a problem—”

  “Problem?” Spader shouted. “I never heard about any problem!”

  “It’s not certain,” Manoo said quickly. “All the fertilizer was destroyed. All of it. But there was a discrepancy. A mistake—”

  “What kind of mistake?” Spader asked, losing patience quickly.

  “It was a clerical error. Nothing more.”

  “Hobey, Manoo! Tell us!” Spader demanded.

  “When we did an inventory, the numbers didn’t add up,” Manoo said nervously. “There were ten tanks of the poison that couldn’t be accounted for. We figured somebody wrote the numbers down incorrectly.” Manoo fell silent. The horrible reality was sinking in for him that the numbers weren’t wrong.

  “You’re positive it’s the same poison?” Spader asked.

  “I’d know it anywhere,” he answered, licking his lips furiously.

  That confirmed it. The Cloral plague was officially on Eelong. Manoo pulled the slide out of the microscope and dropped it on the desk as if it were diseased, which it was.

  “Spader, if it wasn’t a mistake, and those tanks are floating around somewhere on Cloral, we must—”

  “They aren’t,” Spader said harshly. “You’re holding the last of it. Burn it. The fur, the paper, even this bag.” Spader shoved the plastic bag into Manoo’s sweaty hands. “Burn it all.”

  “But what about the missing tanks?” Manoo asked.

  “They’re going to stay missing,” Spader said sharply. “What about the chemical antidote? Was that destroyed too?”

  “Of course not,” Manoo answered. “Every habitat has its own supply, in case, well, in case something like this happened. I can’t believe it! What should we do?”

  “Nothing,” Spader said. “I’ll report this to Yenza. Don’t tell anybody else; we don’t want to cause a panic over nothing.”

  “All right, Spader, if you say so,” Manoo whined. “But please, talk to Wu Yenza.”

  Spader left the laboratory with Mark and Courtney right on his heels. Once outside he kept walking quickly, passing through a section of the farm that grew luscious-looking yellow-and-purple-striped fruit the size of grapefruits. Mark and Courtney had never seen crops like this, but they didn’t stop to marvel. The time for fun was long past.

  “Do we have enough proof now?” Courtney asked, as if she were confident of the answer all along.

  Spader didn’t answer.

  “Where are we going?” Mark asked.

  “I’ve got to tell Yenza,” Spader said.

  “The chief aquaneer,” Mark added knowingly. “Your acolyte.”

  “What’s the point?” Courtney asked. “This isn’t about Cloral.”

  Spader stopped short and whipped around to face the other two. He was upset. Mark saw it in his eyes. “It wasn’t supposed to be like this,” he said. “Pendragon was supposed to come find me when he needed my help. That’s what I promised him.”

  “What’s the difference?” Courtney said. “He needs your help now. You’re going to give it to him, right?”

  “The difference is we’re doing the exact things he told us not to do! Okay, maybe the rules have changed and anything goes now, but Pendragon’s the lead Traveler. I trust him.”

  “We all do,” Courtney said.

  “Then what if he’s right?” Spader barked with finality. “What if we’re doing the exact wrong thing?”

  It was a statement more than a question. They let it hang in the air because the truth was, none of them knew what would happen if the territories started to mingle, or the acolytes traveled.

  “I don’t know,” Courtney said calmly. “But I do know that if those are the rules, Saint Dane isn’t playing by them. Yeah, bad guys don’t always play fair, but he’s about to destroy his second territory. He told Bobby that once the first territory fell, the others would go more easily. So I think we have two choices. First one is: You can stay here, Mark and I can go home to Second Earth, and we can all hope that Bobby will figure out a way to stop the Cloral poison from destroying Eelong.”

  “It won’t happen,” Mark said soberly. “From what we’ve read, they don’t have the kind of science on Eelong to create an antidote like they did on Faar.”

  “Which brings us to our second choice,” Courtney continued. “We can take the antidote to Eelong. Hopefully it isn’t too late. The rules may be broken and two territories will be mixed, but it’s the best shot at beating Saint Dane. The only shot. The real question is, which is worse? Acolytes traveling and mixing the territories? Or Saint Dane winning territory number two
?”

  The three stood silently for a moment, then Mark said in a soft voice, “You want us to bring the antidote to Eelong?”

  • • •

  Wu Yenza stood on the deck of a large speeder craft that floated gently on the sea. She was giving a final check to the gear that was spread out before her. Yenza was the chief aquaneer of Grallion and carried herself with the kind of confidence needed for the job. She was older, somewhere in her thirties, and in pretty good shape. She had short black hair and wore a black aquaneer uniform like Spader’s, only hers had long sleeves with three yellow stripes on the cuffs that showed her rank. Yenza was fully up to speed on all things to do with the Travelers. After she and her aquaneers helped defeat Saint Dane and his raiders in the battle for the city of Faar, Spader told her all he knew about their mission to stop the evil demon. Realizing the importance of the Travelers’ mission, she agreed to become Spader’s acolyte. And now, standing on an aquaneer craft, she was doing a tech check on three silver cylinders that looked like scuba tanks. But they didn’t hold compressed air. They were filled with the liquid antidote for the poison that threatened Eelong.

  “Each of these cylinders has a nozzle,” Yenza explained to Mark and Courtney, who watched her closely. “The liquid inside is under pressure. Opening the nozzle will let out a fine, wide spray. It doesn’t take much to counteract the poison.”

  “Got it,” Courtney said.

  Spader climbed up from belowdecks carrying three black backpacks. “We’ll each carry one cylinder,” he explained. He slipped one of the backpacks on and Yenza dropped a cylinder into it. Spader tugged the straps tight, pulling the silver cylinder snug against his back. “Just like that. Easy-do.”

  Spader and Yenza helped Mark and Courtney slip into their own harnesses, then dropped the silver tanks into them. The gear was light. They could move around easily without having to lean forward and counterbalance.

  “You look like a scuba diver,” Mark said to Courtney.

  Yenza held up a silver pistol. Mark and Courtney recognized the weapon from Bobby’s description in his journals. It fired a short blast of water that was powerful enough to tear through a wall.