here.”
“Who is your acolyte?” I asked Alder.
“A Milago,” Alder answered. “Her husband was killed by Saint Dane during a Transfer ceremony.”
I knew exactly who Alder was talking about. On Denduron the Milago farmers were forced to slave in the mines, digging up a precious, blue mineral called glaze for the ruling class. The Bedoowan. When Saint Dane went to Denduron, he started a brutal practice of choosing a Milago and forcing the miners to dig up his weight in glaze. The Transfer ceremony was where they weighed the poor miner against that day’s haul. If they didn’t dig up enough, the miner would be killed. I saw a Transfer ceremony where they didn’t make quota. The miner was killed. His wife had to watch. I am happy to say that Loor and Alder and I put the mines out of business. We had beaten Saint Dane on Denduron. We were now together again, ready to stop him on Zadaa.
“I hear you have been busy, Pendragon,” Alder said. “It seems as if our adventure on Denduron was only the beginning.”
“Pretty much,” I answered. “I want to hear about what’s happening on your territory. I could use some good news.”
“You will be pleased,” Alder assured me. “The Bedoowan are working with the Milago to rebuild their village that was destroyed when the tak mine exploded.”
“Where do the Bedoowan live now that their castle is destroyed?” Loor asked.
Alder laughed and said, “They live in the Milago village! You would not recognize the place, it has grown so!”
“So it’s all one big happy family?” I asked.
“It is not perfect,” Alder answered. “But it is peaceful. And the Milago are no longer in the mines. The future is bright.”
Hearing all this couldn’t have made me happier. Denduron had reached its turning point, and we pushed it the right way. But it also made me a little sad, because it reminded me of Uncle Press. I can still picture him standing up on the back of that crude, medieval sled, flying over the snow, heaving spears at the charging quig-bears.
I said, “I want to hear about Rellin, and Queen Kagan and-“
Alder suddenly took a step backward and reached for his leg. With one quick move he grabbed a vicious- looking knife that was strapped to his calf and threw it between Loor and me. We both ducked out of the way in surprise. I spun around to see what he was throwing at and saw something that made my legs go weak.
As I’ve described before, the huge underground cavern that held the flume was dug from the same light brown sandstone that all of the buildings of Xhaxhu were made from. The way in and out was by climbing up using small holes that were dug into one craggy wall. These handholds led up through a dark cleft in the rock that was barely wide enough for one person to squeeze through. It was a treacherous climb that ended at a trapdoor leading to a storage room used by the Rokador. Alder had thrown his knife toward the wall with the handholds.
His throw was dead solid perfect. Now skewered into the soft sandstone was a snake. A big snake. It must have dropped down, head first, from the cleft in the rock that led to the trapdoor. Alder’s knife had drilled through its head. I turned in time to see the rest of its body falling down from above. Dead. It must have been six feet long. Its head stayed in place, pegged to the soft sandstone by Alder’s knife.
“Wha-?” Saangi said in stunned awe. She looked to Alder with new respect. “I apologize for doubting you, sir.”
Alder shrugged modestly. “I may be a clumsy oaf, but I am also a knight.”
I don’t like snakes. There’s nothing good about snakes. They’re quiet, they’re sneaky, and they can kill you. Not a whole lot to like there. But this snake was especially nasty. I had run into one on a previous visit to Zadaa.
“Quigs,” I said.
“Quigs?” Alder echoed.
“That’s what they are on Zadaa,” I answered. “On Denduron they’re bears. Second Earth, dogs. On Cloral they’re sharks. Here they’re snakes. Big, nasty snakes.”
“Why would they appear now?” Saangi asked, stunned. Gone was the cocky young warrior. She suddenly seemed like a nervous little girl.
“Quigs only show up when Saint Dane doesn’t want us using the flumes,” I said. “You know what that tells me?”
“What?” Alder asked.
“It means we’re doing the right thing,” I answered. “Saint Dane is beginning to feel the heat. It’s time to get started.”
JOURNAL #21
(CONTINUED)
ZADAA
We didn’t run into any more quig-snakes on the way up and out of the flume cavern, I’m happy to report. Alder led the way, but without his sword or knife. He had to abandon his Denduron armor and weapons at the flume. Mixing items between territories wasn’t allowed. But I guess I don’t have to point that out anymore. Saangi fixed him up with a white Rokador tunic since he looked a heck of a lot more like a Rokador than a dark-skinned Batu. She also gave him a silver-rod weapon like the Tiggen guards had carried at the farm above. It was about three feet long with a leather handle on one end that had a loop to go around your wrist.
“What do I do with this?” Alder asked. “It has no blade.”
“It is an effective weapon,” Loor assured him. “You will see.”
We climbed up the footholds, through the trapdoor and stood together in the rock-walled room that the Rokador used to store machine parts. Loor slammed the trapdoor shut that bore the star symbol marking it as a gate to the flume. She covered it with sand, hiding it completely.
“Where to now?” I asked Loor.
“To a place where we will not be disturbed by Batu or Rokador,” she answered.
We left the room, following Loor through the twisting tunnel that I had walked through several times before on visits to Zadaa. Shortly we left the smaller tunnel to enter the huge cavern that once held an underground river. When Spader and I were first here, there was a four-story waterfall on one side of the immense cavern that fed a deep, raging river. Now there was only a dribble of water that fell from a rocky mouth into a pathetic trickle of a stream at the bottom of the mostly dry riverbed.
“What happened here?” Alder asked.
“There is a lot to tell,” Loor answered. “Later.”
Alder accepted that. He was an easy guy.
Loor led us to the opening that was once hidden behind the waterfall, but was now in plain sight. We climbed a few stone stairs, stepped through the portal, and entered a room that held the water-control device I have described to you before. To remind you guys, this thing looked like one of those giant pipe-organs that you see in church. But these pipes ran horizontally, disappearing into the rock wall on either side of the room. There was a platform in front of it that held an amazing array of switches and valves. When I first came here, there was a Rokador engineer on that platform, feverishly working the controls like an expert. I had no idea what the device did, other than knowing it had something to do with controlling the flow of water from the rivers. The guy had maps and diagrams that he referred to while he quickly made adjustments and toggled switches.
Now the platform was empty. A thin layer of sand and dust covered the control board.
“This is one of the many switching stations that the Rokador engineers use to control the rivers of Zadaa,” Loor explained.
“I guess there isn’t much to do here anymore,” I said sadly.
I heard a booming voice behind me say: “At least for now.”
We all turned quickly to see Bokka, the Tiggen guard striding toward us. He was followed by Teek and the
