Finally I grabbed a handful of kelp and pushed it aside to reveal a star dug into the rock.
“Got it!” I shouted.
Uncle Press joined me and we dug through the vines until we found a narrow opening. It wasn’t much wider than a human body, but it had to be the gate. I don’t know why I was feeling so brave all of a sudden, but I went first. I entered the dark crevice and pulled myself along by grabbing on to the rock walls. It only took a few seconds before I saw a shaft of light streaking down through the water ahead of me. A second later I surfaced into another underwater cavern. Uncle Press surfaced right behind me and we both pulled off our air globes.
I didn’t know what to expect. What I really hoped was to find Spader there alone and safe, with no Saint Dane to deal with.
The cavern itself was much smaller than the one near Grallion. The pool of water that we now floated in was barely big enough for the two of us. Directly across from us was the flume. We were definitely in the right place. None of this was a surprise. What was hard to believe were the two people inside the cavern.
One was Spader. He was sitting on the rocky floor to our left, crying. And it was pretty obvious why. The other person in the cavern… was his father. I had only seen the guy once, and he was dead at the time, but I remembered him. Dead guys tend to leave an impression. The question was, how could he possibly be here? Alive?
When Uncle Press and I threw off our air globes, Spader’s father turned to us and said, “Look, your friends have arrived.”
The two sat together looking like they were having a quiet, father-son heart-to-heart. There must have been a hundred emotions fighting for Spader’s brain time.
He looked at us through his tears and cried, “Hobey, Pendragon! He’s alive! Saint Dane kept him here, like a prisoner! Can you believe it?”
The truth was, I couldn’t. But my mind wasn’t firing on all cylinders at that point either. It was Uncle Press who kept a clear head and gave Spader the bad news.
“It’s not him, Spader,” he said. “Your father is dead. You saw him on Magorran. He was poisoned.”
Spader looked at Uncle Press in confusion. If he had been thinking clearly, he would have realized the truth on his own. But seeing his father alive again had done a number on his head. It sure messed with me for a second, but I soon understood the truth as well. It made me hate Saint Dane even more, if that were possible. He was truly an evil being to have done this to Spader.
“Oh, Press, you are such a killjoy,” Spader’s father said. “And I thought you were dead.”
He turned to Spader and said with a sigh, “Your daddyisdead, Spader. And you will be too if you don’t back off.”
Spader’s brain wasn’t computing. He watched with wide eyes as his father stood up, walked to the mouth of the flume, and announced, “Veelox!”
Instantly the flume sprang to life with light and sound.
Spader’s father then looked back to Spader and said, “Who knows? Maybe I’ll find your mother along the way and kill her, too!”
Spader fell back against the wall like he had just been punched in the stomach. Spader’s father then made a quick transformation back into Saint Dane. He then looked right at me and stared into my brain with such an intense look, I wanted to sink back under the water to escape it.
“Until next time…,” he said with an evil grin. Then with a slight bow, he was enveloped by the light and sucked into the flume. I looked at Spader. His eyes were huge. He was only now starting to realize what had happened.
Uncle Press and I pulled ourselves out of the pool of water and went to him.
“His evil reaches out in a lot of ways,” said Uncle Press. “He takes as much pleasure in causing you this kind of anguish as wiping out a territory or murdering hundreds of people. It’s all the same to him.”
I could see Spader’s anger growing. His look went from one of confusion, to realization, to rage.
“I’ll kill him,” he seethed, and went toward the flume.
Uncle Press held him back. “Don’t,” he said firmly. “This isn’t about your own vendetta. This is about protecting the territories, and Halla.”
Spader shoved Uncle Press aside. He pushed him with such force that Uncle Press slammed into the rock wall and fell to the ground.
“I don’t care about the territories, or Halla, or whatever it is you say I’m supposed to be fighting for. He killed my father and he will die for that.”
He strode toward the flume. That’s when I heard the faint sound of the musical notes coming back.
“Veelox!”called Spader.
The light began glowing from the flume and the notes got louder. But something was wrong. I had heard them comingbeforehe said “Veelox.” The flume had already been activated. Something was coming our way.
Uh-oh. I thought back to the mine tunnel on Denduron when Saint Dane had sent back a quig shark through the flume that nearly ate Loor and me. Spader stood in the mouth of the flume, expecting to be taken away, oblivious to the danger. The musical notes grew louder and light blew out from deep inside.
“No!” I shouted. “Something’s coming back!”
I started to run for Spader, but Uncle Press grabbed me from behind and pulled me back so hard I tripped and fell on my butt.
“Spader, get out of there!” he yelled, and ran for the flume.
Spader wasn’t moving. There was only one thing on his mind, and that was revenge. I scrambled back to my feet in time to see Uncle Press headed for Spader. The light was so bright now that whatever was coming would be here in a second. Spader stood at the mouth of the flume, waiting for a ride that wasn’t coming.
What happened next took only a few seconds, but they were the longest seconds of my life. I will never forget them. They were seared into my brain forever. Uncle Press dove at Spader and knocked him out of the way. Spader crashed against the far wall, out of the light, away from the flume, and safe from whatever was coming back. But now Uncle Press stood there alone. He had saved Spader, but whatever was coming through the flume was going to hit him.
I heard a whistling sound, then a scream, and an instant later the rock wall opposite the tunnel exploded. At first I thought it was some kind of bomb that had come through, but there wasn’t one big boom; there were several smaller, sharp cracks. Bits of rock were blasted off the wall and rained down on me. There was no mistaking what it was — these were bullets. It was like someone had fired a machine gun into the flume and the bullets traveled all the way through, only to be spit out here.
Another second went by and it was over. The lights stopped, the musical notes stopped, and the storm of bullets ended.
“Uncle Press!”
He was lying on the ground, right at the mouth of the flume. I ran to him to see if he had been hit, but I already knew the worst. There was no way that many bullets could come flying out of the flume and miss him completely. It would have to be a miracle. But since my life had been one miracle after another lately, that’s what I was hoping for.
When I knelt down next to my uncle, I saw that my miracles had run out. Uncle Press had been hit. More than once. His eyes were unfocused, but they still had life. I looked quickly to Spader, who was crouched in the corner where he had fallen. He, too, looked at Uncle Press in shock. He had no idea what could have happened.
“Get the hauler,” I screamed at him. “We’ve got to get him back to Grallion.”
“Bobby, no,” Uncle Press said, grabbing my arm.
“You arenotgoing to die!” I shouted. My uncle was lying in front of me, mortally wounded. My invincible uncle. The uncle I loved and who took me on more adventures than any kid deserved… and that wasbeforeI became a Traveler.