Oh, great. More good news.
“If it’s important,” I said, “I should hear it whether I like it or not.”
Loor sat down on the pelts and leaned her back against the wall. In spite of what I had just said, I wasn’t so sure I wanted to hear this. But I had to.
“I have only known for a short time that I am a Traveler,” she began. “I do not know much more than you do. But there is something my mother told me that is important. Maybe more important than saving Press and helping the Milago.”
This sounded big. She had my full attention.
“I know you want to know why we are Travelers, but I do not know. That is the truth. My mother said that I would understand someday, but for now it was not important. What she did tell me though, is that we must understand our mission.”
“Mission? You mean there’s more to this than helping the Milago?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said. “My mother explained that there are many territories, and they are all about to reach an important time. A ‘turning point’ she called it. It is a time when the outcome will either send the territory toward peace and prosperity, or plunge its people into chaos and destruction.”
“So the battle between the Milago and the Bedoowan is some kind of turning point for all of Denduron?” I asked.
“That is what my mother said,” she continued. “If the Milago break free of the Bedoowan, then Denduron will continue to exist in peace. But if the Bedoowan triumph it could be a disaster that will destroy the entire territory.”
That was huge. This struggle wasn’t just about helping these poor miners, it was about saving the whole territory.
“How did she know all this?” I asked. “That’s like predicting the future!”
Loor shrugged and said, “It is part of being a Traveler. Someday we will understand this. But for now we must know that the Travelers’ mission is to go to the territories that are about to reach their turning point and do all we can to help guide events in the right direction. That is why my mother was here; that is why Press is here. That is why you and I are here.”
This was all a little cosmic for me. I thought I was finally getting my mind around how things worked, but I was only scratching the surface.
“Then who is Saint Dane?” I asked.
“Saint Dane is a Traveler like us,” she said. “But he has been working against us. He wants the territories to turn the wrong way and create pandemonium.”
“But…why?”
“When we find that answer, we will know all there is to know,” she said. “Right now, I do not have those answers. Now go to sleep.”
Yeah, right. Sleep. She just revealed that we have the future of Denduron in our hands, not to mention other territories that might be headed for trouble, and I was supposed to nod off to dreamland? And to make things just a little bit more interesting, there was a killer out there trying to stop us. I saw what this Saint Dane dude was capable of. Sweet dreams, Bobby boy! I was on the verge of a major brain hemorrhage and had to try and calm down. I told myself that none of this had anything to do with me. I had one goal and one goal only: to rescue Uncle Press. After that, I was out of here. If Uncle Press wanted to stay and try to change the course of history, that was his choice. But for me, I was catching the next flume home.
This gave me a little comfort and I tried to get some sleep. But before I put my head down I asked, “Is that it? Is there anything else you’re not telling me?”
Loor didn’t even open her eyes. She was nearly asleep. But she managed to say, “That is all I know, Pendragon. Is that not enough?”
Oh, yeah. That was plenty. It was time for lights out. I thought I would have trouble knocking off, but the truth was I was so exhausted, I didn’t even remember my head hitting the fur. That was great, except that it felt like I had just closed my eyes when my watch alarm went off. Two hours felt more like two seconds. Man, did I go out hard! I had one of those weird waking-up moments and didn’t know where I was. It seemed like I was in my bed at home and my first thought was, “I gotta walk Marley.” But in no time, the reality of my situation came hurtling back. I sat up and tried to clear my head.
Loor wasn’t there. After a stretch and a yawn, I went to my pack to do inventory and saw that the clips were undone. Somebody had been going through my pack! I quickly threw it open and did a quick scan. It looked like everything was still there, though it was definitely rummaged through. I was pissed. I clipped the pack shut and went looking for Loor.
I walked back into the now familiar main cavern of the mine. It was business as usual out there. These poor guys never stopped. I briefly wondered what had happened with the latest Transfer ceremony and if they had mined enough glaze to balance with the woman Mallos had chosen. I hoped so, but there was nothing I could do about that. I needed to find Loor and get the rescue show on the road.
I scanned the cavern and something caught my eye. Walking out of a tunnel to my left was Rellin. He walked along quickly while speaking with another one of the miners. The weird thing was, these guys actually looked happy. Rellin slapped the guy on the back like they had just shared some joke and the guy took off running someplace. Now, these guys had nothing to be happy about. The last time I spoke with Rellin he had pretty much condemned his entire tribe to a slow death by refusing to stand up against Kagan. Why was he happy all of a sudden? When he got farther away, I went to take a look down the tunnel they had just come from.
I entered to find that it was another abandoned avenue. The ore-car railroad tracks were old and rotten. This must have been one the first tunnels they dug off the main cavern. I wondered how long ago that was. Years? Decades? Centuries? I also wondered why Rellin and the other miner were down here. I found my answer a few yards in. As with many of the other tunnels, there was a chamber dug out of the rock off to the side. But unlike the cell where I had just slept, this one had a wooden door to it. I took a quick look around to see if I was being watched, then opened the door and went inside.
It was a room about twice the size of the one I had just slept in, and this one was packed full of equipment. At first I thought this was where they kept their mining tools, but on closer inspection I saw the truth. This wasn’t digging equipment, this was an armory loaded with weapons! There were hundreds of spears like the ones Uncle Press had lashed to the side of the sled we rode from the top of the mountain. I was surprised to see their sharp metal tips gleaming in the light. The Milago weren’t allowed to use metal tools except in the mines, but I was sure they weren’t allowed to make weapons, either.
One side of the room was full of these spears. Below them were stacks and stacks of arrows. There must have been thousands. Across from them were the bows for the arrows. Probably a hundred in all. This looked to be a pretty formidable arsenal. Then I saw something that didn’t quite make sense. There were large baskets placed along the back wall. I recognized them as the baskets they used to bring the glaze to the surface. These baskets were full, but not with glaze. I walked over to them and picked up one of the items inside. It was a small, sturdy stick about six inches long. Attached to one end were two thin, leather straps about eighteen inches long. At the other end of the strap, a leather pouch the size of a baseball card was attached. I looked at the strange contraption trying to figure out what it could be. And then I got it. It was a slingshot! An old-fashioned slingshot! These guys didn’t have rubber, so it wasn’t the kind that you could stretch back and snap to propel stones. With this thing you had to hold the wooden stick and kind of fling the stone. There must have been a couple hundred of these babies in the baskets.
As I stood there holding the slingshot, I was struck with a sad thought. Rellin was right. The Milago were not prepared to do battle with Kagan’s knights. These slingshots were pitiful. Sure, we all knew the story about David slaying Goliath, but that was just a story. How did these guys think they could stand a chance against trained, killer knights in armor by using these toys? The spears looked a little more dangerous. The arrows did too, but did the Milago even know how to use them? Suddenly Rellin’s concern seemed very real to me. If they tried to fight the Bedoowan, they’d be slaughtered.