She took her mother’s hand. “I’m sorry, Mother,” she said. “None of this was your doing.”
Elli looked at me with pleading eyes. “Pendragon, do something.”
“How can I save you, Nevva?” I asked.
“You can’t. Saint Dane controls the dark power of Solara. He will not allow it to save me. Not anymore.”
Nevva started to flicker. Her physical being was fading out.
“What’s happening?” Elli asked in a panic.
“I’m ending, Mother,” Nevva answered with a weak voice. “My spirit is ending.”
Elli wept. Her daughter was about to disappear forever. Literally.
Nevva focused on me. “Pendragon, you must do to him what he has done to Solara. His power will not be fully realized until the light of Solara is destroyed. Make him use his power. It is the only way to weaken him and end his spirit.”
“I… I don’t understand,” I said. Nevva was giving me the answers, but I didn’t know what they meant.
“Saint Dane has split Solara. He draws his power from the dark spirit he has created. Make him use it… and save the exiles. He fears their spirit more than he fears even you, Pendragon.”
Nevva’s image winked. She wouldn’t be there much longer. “Stay with us,” Elli begged.
“Where are the exiles, Nevva? They must be here on Third Earth, right? Where are they?”
Nevva looked at me with glazed eyes. “They aren’t on Third Earth,” she whispered.
I was rocked. Everything I had seen up to that point led me to believe this was where the final battle would take place.
“But they must be!” I blurted out. “Saint Dane can’t attack another territory without the flumes!”
Nevva struggled to stay focused. She didn’t have much time left. “You saw what happened on Second Earth. You were there. He has the power. Make him use it again. Weaken him.”
My mind was flying in a million directions. What did I see on Second Earth? Was she talking about Yankee Stadium? The Bronx Massacre? Naymeer created a flume that drew in all those victims. It suddenly came clear to me.
“He’s going to create another flume,” I stated with finality, realizing the truth as I said the words.
Nevva looked up at her mother. She was in pain. Her imaged winked out, then came back… faintly.
“I love you, Mother,” she said. “Tell Father I’ve missed him more than he could know.”
“He already knows, Nevva. We both love you and always will.”
Nevva smiled. In spite of the pain, and her imminent death, she was at peace. But I wasn’t.
“Where are they, Nevva?” I begged.
Nevva looked to me and said two words. Two words that I had been hunting for. Two words that could hold the salvation of Halla, or lead to its final destruction.
She looked me right in the eye, grabbed my hand, and whispered, “Black Water.”
A moment later Nevva Winter was gone. She disappeared. Her spirit had ended along with her physical self. There was nothing left for Elli to hold, or to grieve over.
Her hands were still outstretched, holding nothing. Elli was strong. She barely whimpered. I reached out and held her.
“I’m sorry” was all I managed to say.
We sat that way for several minutes. Elli didn’t cry, but she accepted whatever small comfort I could offer. I was ready to stay that way for as long as she needed.
It wasn’t long. The troubled woman pulled away and looked at me with weary eyes. Through the tears, came a smile. “She came back to me.”
“Yes, she did,” I said, trying not to cry myself.
Elli wiped her tears, straightened up, and in a voice that was far stronger than I could have imagined, gave me an order. “Don’t let her death be for nothing.”
It was exactly what I wanted to hear.
I stood up and backed away from her.
“Go to Solara,” I said. “Tell them what we’ve learned.”
“And what will you do?”
We’d had so much thrown at us in the last few moments. The implications were huge. There was so much to digest. So much to try and understand. As confusing as it all may have been, I knew that we were a big step closer to finding the answers we needed.
The next step was clear.
After having been denied access for years by the tragic destruction of a flume, it was time to go back to the jungle. To the klees. To the gars.
To the tangs.
“I’m going to Eelong,” I said. And stepped off Third Earth.
Chapter 27
The jungles of Eelong. Yikes.
I never thought I’d see them again. Not after what happened the last time I’d been there. The flume collapsed, killing Kasha and trapping Gunny and Spader on that twisted territory where cats called klees were the dominant species. The destruction of the flume happened because non-Travelers weren’t supposed to use them. But they did. Mark and Courtney went to Eelong and brought along the critical piece of information that allowed us to defeat Saint Dane there. But each time they traveled, they weakened the flume, until it crumbled on us. Mark, Courtney, and I got out just in time. Kasha didn’t. She was killed by the tumbling gray rocks.
Of course, that was ancient history. As Saint Dane’s dark spirit grew, the flumes became open highways. Anybody was able to use them. That is, of course, until they all exploded. Once again, the rules changed. After the destruction, Spader and Gunny left Eelong and moved on to Solara with the rest of the Travelers. Including Kasha. Her body died on Eelong but her spirit lived on.
Now Kasha was back in the game. As with all the Travelers, she was sent to her home territory in order to search for the exiles. My first task on returning to Eelong was to find her. Actually, that was my second task. My first task was to stay alive and not get sent back to Solara. That wasn’t going to be easy.
There was no way of knowing when I had been sent there and how much time had passed since I’d been there the last time. I found myself standing in a section of jungle that was so thick the overhead canopy of foliage blocked out most of the light. It could have been night for all I knew. That’s how dark it was. There wasn’t a regular sun that gave Eelong light. It was a distinct band that spread from horizon to horizon and traveled across the sky each day. It gave off heat, too. Lots of it. Eelong was a hot, humid place. It was that intense heat that told me it was daytime, in spite of the lack-o-light. It didn’t help that I was still wearing the dark red Ravinian guard uniform. It was pretty heavy and I started sweating right away. In seconds the uniform was sticking to me like a wet suit.
I had no idea which way to go. I hoped to land near Black Water, but if I remembered correctly, there were miles of open, barren land leading to the mountains where the gar stronghold was hidden. The dense jungle I landed in was much more like the area that surrounded the klee village of Leeandra. I did a three-sixty and saw nothing but jungle. I wasn’t even on a path. For whatever reason, the spirits of Solara had plunked me down in no-man’s-land. Or no-gar’s-land. Or whatever.
I picked an arbitrary direction and was about to walk when I heard a rustle coming from the undergrowth not far away, followed by the faint crack of a branch. I snapped to attention. All it took was that one little sound to instantly bring back another memory of Eelong.
Tangs. They were raptorlike dinosaur creatures that roamed the jungles in search of meat. Any meat. The last thing I needed was to square off against one of those bad boys. I listened. Had I heard a creature scrambling in the bushes? Or was it the natural rustle of the jungle? Just in case, I backed away from where the sound had come from. I tried to move quietly, which isn’t easy when you’re walking on thick snarls of roots and vines.
I sensed movement. Ten yards to my right. It was fleeting, but it was there. Something in the bush had definitely made the noise. Was it a tang? Or a monkey or any other creature that didn’t look at me and immediately think “snack”? As much as dying wouldn’t be the end of it all for me, getting shredded by a tang’s three-pronged talons or chewed by its razor teeth would not have been a pleasant way to get shipped back to Solara. I could blast off of Eelong before that happened, but then I’d be wasting more spirit.