The Circle of Seven and the woodsfolk likewise struggled to their feet. Bruised and shaken, some watched the misty form of Shauku regain shape. Others staggered to aid their leader, who crawled aimless as a baby. The unkillable Jedit Ojanen reached her side first, as always.
"Dira," rumbled the tiger. "Let me help."
"Don't call me Dira, damn you," gasped the pirate chief. Awkwardly she rose. "Only Simone could call me that! And Hazezon, damn his white whiskers. And most especially I damn Johan."
Even addled, Adira blinked. Johan had never run away before. Always he stole opportunities from the crisis at hand. What secret knowledge sent him pelting helter-skelter for the upper air?
"Haahhh!" A cobras hiss startled everyone. Like a ghost from the mist, or smoke issuing from a fissure in the ground, Shauku rematerialized. The vampire grinned with needle teeth and peered with black eyes like burn holes in her yellow parchment skull. Withered hands crooked in the air. "Stand fast, ye humans!"
Indeed, pirates and pinefolk again felt their limbs stiffen, and this time Adira knew they wouldn't escape. Nothing could save them.
In one long stride, Jedit Ojanen slung a balled paw far behind his shoulder, wound up with all his massive weight, and punched the vampire square in the brisket. Shauku was plucked off her feet as if hurled from a catapult. She struck a stone wall thirty feet away with a bone-breaking crunch, then flopped on her shriveled face out of sight amid boulders.
Adira grunted. "How did you do that? That curse petrifies people in their tracks!"
"This time she commanded humans, not mortals." Jedit grinned so long white fangs winked below his muzzle. "Nor tigers."
"The legionnaires?" Magfire peered through a haze of smoke and dust. The tattered soldiers fell into a ragged encircling rank as an officer rapped orders in a foreign tongue. "They ring us still."
With the vampire temporarily out of the way, Adira had bigger worries. Not far off, the green-flushed cosmic horror peered upward with bulging eyes. Even the hideous tongues and tentacles were turned upward as if awaiting deliverance from the sky. And Johan, Adira recalled dimly, had quit this chamber running.
"Never mind the legionnaires! They're not the threat! Grab Whistledove." Adira squatted where the brownie lay as if asleep, hoping against sense for a breath of life. But one clasp of a cold hand made Adira let go. "Oh, for pity and cruelty! Leave her! Make ready to run!"
"Run how?" asked someone. "Adira, wait!"
Adira Strongheart pushed past her crew and Magfire's to stand not twenty feet from the nearest legionnaires.
Pointing with her sword, she called, "Hear me! The cosmic horror wakes and works celestial magic! The mage we fought read the beast's dreams and now flees as if his skirts were afire! I don't know what portends, but best we all flee without further foolishness!"
Legionnaires turned hooded heads to hear orders. Some officer, in garb indistinguishable from the rest, hesitated a moment. Not seeing Shauku, he decided. With a curt bark in a foreign tongue, the legionnaires faced left and double-timed in two ranks to the nearest tunnel.
"Who'd believe that?" marveled Magfire.
Adira jolted her with a smart shove. "Run! All of you! Just run!"
Her crew and some foresters called questions. The pirate only shouted to keep running, pushing shoulders and prodding kidneys. Johan's desertion and Adira's panic proved infectious. Soon everyone saved their breath to run.
"Keep up!" called Adira. She scooped the wounded Heath under the armpit to hurry him along. "All of you! Don't dally! Whatever set Johan running must be bigger than any threat of vampire or soldiers!"
Racing into a dark tunnel, far ahead they heard a hollow boom.
Panting, Wilemina asked, "Whatever can that be?"
"At a guess," gasped Adira Strongheart, "it's the entire mountain crashing down on our heads! Run!"
Chapter 19
The race up twisting tunnels was an unending nightmare.
Jasmine Boreal's groundquake had splintered stone in a thousand places. Gaps as wide as three feet threatened to engulf the heroes every dozen yards. Thrice they had to skirt or scramble over fallen rocks that blocked the passageway. Murdoch and Magfire had rescued some torches, but dust boiled thick. Jedit's cat eyes led the way, but everyone's eyes and noses streamed. Coughing tore at throats.
Booms and crashes sounded hither and yon, some percussions so hard they shook the ground. That the mountain might collapse and entomb them spurred the adventurers on.
After what seemed hours, Jedit called that roots snaked underfoot. Coughing, wheezing, half-blind from smoke and dust, holding each others' shirt tails, the heroes blundered past fallen rock -and miraculously found themselves outside in an overcast noon.
Finally clear of the cursed castle and caverns, people lagged, sobbing for air. Adira let no one rest. Slapping, cursing, batting, she bullied them like balky sheep away from the ruins, into the forest, and up the valley's gentle slope until their feet slipped on pine needles. Exhausted, some dropped weapons or tackle, but Adira urged them on.
"Must we… run… clear to Buzzard's Bay?" rasped Murdoch. His breath frosted in crisp autumn air.
"We're… free of the haunts!" gasped Wilemina. "May we… Oh, my!"
A keening whistle rose to a harsh scream that drowned out words. Everyone cast their eyes to the sky. A black jot marred the overcast like a hole punched in cloud cover. But in seconds the jot loomed big as a moon, then bigger.
When the meteor struck the ground, the roaring impact flicked the onlookers off their feet. As they stiffly clambered upright, they spotted a new hole in the valley floor. Fifty feet across, the crater showed black loam and yellow sand pitched out in windrows like wheat. Heath pointed to other fresh holes scattered about, a half dozen or more.
"Those booms we heard!"
"More stones fall!" Kyenou pointed straight up.
Another meteor sizzled from the sky, growing larger in fractions of seconds. This time no one gawked. They ran uphill, astonished they'd ever felt winded.
Twice more the heroes were tossed off the ground like ants flipped off a stalk of grass. Each time they surged onward, up the shallow valley dominated by Shauku's castle. Holding hands, urging each other on, dodging loose boulders and broken trees, they trotted doggedly with aching legs and lungs.
Came a whistle so fierce their ears rang and heads felt swollen to bursting. Adira screamed to dive for cover. No one heard, but pirates and pinefolk flung themselves flat on the forest floor.
The howling ended with a noise like the end of the world. A crash and smash resounded so vast their minds couldn't encompass it but shut down and left them deafened and stunned. The world shook like a bog, so hard that pebbles and sticks pinged upon them where they clutched hands over ears and heads.
A long, long time the heroes lay, stunned, half-blind, and as numb as if struck with sledgehammers. Gradually, as the sun pierced the cloud cover and warmed their chilled and filthy heads, one, then two, could rise to their feet. Gently they helped others up.
The ruined castle and hill were gone.
"Let them go."
"Magfire!" Adira Strongheart snorted. "The world has truly turned topsy-turvy if you let enemies escape unharried!"
"They quit the field. We hold it," said Magfire. "To fight for revenge is foolish."
Magfire and Adira stood atop a tree toppled like a bridge. As the sun set, the two chiefs watched a line of yellow and black trickle out of the valley. Some thirty-odd Akron Legionnaires had survived the onslaught of the shooting star. Tired soldiers and cadets shouldered pack baskets and blanket rolls and trudged east of north, presumably bound for Buzzard's Bay and a voyage home. Magfire spat after them.