So I took the little motorcycle out of my pack, reached around the corner of the corridor, and put him on the floor. My plan was to send it slowly past the guard, but I didn’t want him to see me standing there with the radio controls. I had to do this blind. I took a breath, then pushed the forward stick. The motorcycle hummed to life with that familiar whine. I wasn’t sure how fast it was going, but I couldn’t take the chance of looking too soon. If I sent it off course, I was dead. If I sent it too slowly, the guard might just bend over and pick it up. So I forced myself to count to ten, then I peeked an eye around the corner.
I saw exactly what I wanted to see. The guard was standing at the door, dumbfounded, staring at the little man on the motorcycle. I can’t imagine what was going through his mind. I couldn’t tell if he was curious or scared. Probably a little bit of both. I had the motorcycle moving on a perfectly straight line, headed for the far end of the corridor. So far so good. But just as the cycle was about to roll past him, the guard took a step forward and reached down to pick it up.
I quickly hit the throttle and the cycle shot ahead, just barely out of his grasp. Maybe I was better at this than I thought. This seemed to get the guard’s curiosity up even further, and he walked after the cycle. Perfect. This was like playing a fish on a line. I teased him by slowing up. When he would bend down to pick it up, I shot it forward. The whole time he kept moving closer and closer to the balcony on the far end of the corridor where Loor was lying in wait.
With one final push on the throttle, I accelerated the motorcycle forward and it shot out onto the balcony. The guard walked out behind it. He looked down, then hesitated because he expected it to move again. But it didn’t. He stared at it for a second, then suddenly bent over and snatched it up with one quick move. But his victory was short-lived because he never stood up again. Loor jumped out and whacked him with her ministick. With two quick moves she slammed the guy, pivoted, and sent him sailing over the rail into the ocean. Mission accomplished and we hadn’t given ourselves away.
I quickly reached into my pocket and pulled out my walkie-talkie. “Get Alder,” I commanded into the yellow walkie. Loor definitely heard me, because she took off running along the balcony and out of sight. I put my walkie-talkie away and looked to the cell door. There was nothing left between me and Uncle Press but that door. So I quickly grabbed my pack and ran for it.
It was too much to expect that the door would be unlocked, and it wasn’t. There was an old-fashioned keyhole, but of course I had no key. So I dug into my pack to look for something that might help me open the door. All I could come up with was the Swiss Army knife that I had nabbed back from Figgis. I opened up the awl blade and stuck it into the keyhole, figuring I might be able to turn the lock somehow. But it didn’t work. I jammed the awl up and down desperately. If I couldn’t open the lock then maybe I could break it. I think that’s exactly what happened, because with one final twist, the latch moved and the door opened. I was in! Or should I say, Uncle Press was out.
“Uncle Press!” I shouted as I ran in. “It’s me! We gotta get-”
The small cell was empty. Uncle Press wasn’t there! I didn’t understand why it would be guarded if there was no one to guard. The answer came quickly.
“Ahhhhh!” Somebody jumped me from behind. He leaped up on my back, wrapped his legs around my waist, and tried to wrestle me to the ground.
“Let me outta here, ya filthy Bedoowan pig!” he shouted. The guy wasn’t very heavy, or very strong for that matter. All I had to do was spin once and he went flying off. He landed on the hard floor with a loud thud that must have knocked the wind out of him. I looked down and saw that this definitely wasn’t Uncle Press. It was a grimy little guy dressed in Milago skins. His hair and beard were incredibly long, which meant he’d been here for a long time.
“Where’s my uncle?” I shouted.
The strange little man looked up at me with confusion in his eyes. “You…you are not Bedoowan?” he asked.
“No! I’m here to get my uncle. Where is he?”
The guy took a while to answer. I guess he wasn’t used to this much excitement. Join the club, neither was I.
“You must be…Pendragon,” he said.
“Yes! And I’m looking for my uncle. Do you know where he is?”
“They took him,” answered the Milago prisoner. “Early, before the suns came up. He is to be executed today.”
Yeah, I knew that. This guy wasn’t helping much. I didn’t know where to turn. Uncle Press could be anywhere. My mind raced but I didn’t come up with a single answer. I was in total brain lock when my walkie-talkie came to life.
“Pendragon,” came Alder’s voice. “I found Press. He is not in his cell.”
I grabbed my walkie and said to him, “Yeah, I know. Where is he?”
“I am with him now,” he came back. “I will direct you to us. Hurry.”
We were back in the game. I glanced at the Milago prisoner and said, “Now’s your chance. Get out!” Then I turned and ran out of the cell. I quickly ran back toward the mayhem that Alder had caused. The water was still gushing out of the pipes and the corridor was totally flooded. Knights and Novans worked together trying to stop the flow, but they were doing a lousy job. Good. It kept them busy.
Alder then came through the walkie-talkie saying, “Go back to the stairs and climb two more levels.”
Got it. I did what I was told. But when I entered the stairwell I saw something down below that nearly made my heart stop. Coming up fast from the lower level were a dozen knights. And these guys were in full battle gear, carrying spears. I think some kind of alarm must have finally sounded. They knew we were here.
One of them looked up and saw me. “There he is!” shouted the knight.
Yep, they knew we were here. The knights began to run. There was no way I could outrace these guys, so I played my final card. I pulled the CD boom box out of the pack, held it in front of me, cranked the volume and hit “Play.” Instantly the thrashing rock guitar blasted out of the speakers.
It was like I had thrown a bomb at these guys. They froze in their tracks with a look of total shock on each and every face. They had never heard anything like this before and probably never would again. They turned and fled back down the stairs in total panic. Under other circumstances I would have thought this was pretty funny. Right now it just felt like victory. I left the boom box on the stairs, figuring this would be as good as putting up a gate to keep them down there.
“Pendragon, hurry!” came Alder’s voice through the walkie.
As I started to run back up the stairs, I grabbed my walkie and called to him, “I’m almost on the fourth level.”
“Turn left at the top and go to the end of the corridor,” he instructed. “We’re hiding in the last room to the left, before the balcony.”
I tucked the walkie away and ran to where he told me. My mind was working ahead to the next few moves. We had to find Loor and get out. But we couldn’t get back out through the kitchen because I had the knights trapped down there. There had to be another way out. Hopefully Alder had one, because I sure didn’t.
I got to the top of the stairs, made the turn and ran down the corridor. I realized briefly that this corridor was more ornate than any we had seen so far. There were huge sculptures and giant paintings on the walls. It would have been pretty cool, if I weren’t so scared out of my mind. But I had reached my destination. The last room on the left was where Alder and Uncle Press were waiting for me. Hopefully Loor was there too. I ran into the room and skidded to a sudden stop.