Fenzy by Robert Liparulo Read Free Book Online Page A

braided-leather tassel he’d taken from Xander. It trembled in his hand, anx-ious to zip through the portal.
    Ahh , he thought. An antechamber item. He felt pleasure lighten his mood as he realized those little punks wouldn’t be using it: they weren’t going home. He returned it to his pocket and stepped through.

CHAPTER

twelve

    Keal was deep inside the cave now. The sounds of the bear-human fight had faded away long ago. He swung the torch back and forth to make sure he wasn’t missing something, like a sign from one of the boys or another passage. So far he’d found nothing other than more cave drawings. He wished he could see farther in front of him. Moving through the cave in the small circle of light felt like scuba diving in murky water: you never knew what might show itself—and be too near for you to do anything about it.
    As he’d been doing for the last five minutes, he called out to the kids: “David! Xander!” His voice bounced against the stone and scurried away like a small animal afraid of the light.
    They can’t be here , he thought. The way the walls of the cave hurled his voice far ahead of him, they would have heard him by now, he was sure of it. They would have called back, and he would have heard something , even if it was the faintest vibration of air. But he’d heard nothing.
    Where could they have gone? He was sure he had gone into the same antechamber David had disappeared into. He had kept his eyes on it, and the door was still open when he had arrived. Unless following Phemus had somehow altered the way the portals worked. Maybe David and Xander had never been in the cave. Maybe Phemus had pulled them somewhere else completely.
    The torch’s flame flickered and fluttered, as though in a brisk wind. All he saw was blackness. He listened: silence. The whole time, there had been a faint breeze blowing through the cave from the entrance. But whatever moved the flame now was stronger. The flame flickered, bending like fingers back toward the front of the cave. He turned around to head in the direction of the pointing fire.
    Then he felt it, first in the torch, then the spear. They were vibrating . . . pulling . The portal! He began running, retracing his steps through the cave.
    It was either the portal home, or perhaps the portal that David and Xander had gone into. Either way, he would find out. The items’ pull grew stronger, and he entered a cavern. He remembered passing through it. It was like a big, domed room. In the center, his light had reached up only as far as the tips of stalactites—rock formations hanging like icicles from the ceiling.
    Now he could see all of the stalactites, as well as the tallest part of the ceiling. A shimmering rectangle hovered higher than his head, throwing out a rainbow of sparkling light. The flames whipped toward it, then disappeared, as though the portal had sucked up the fire itself. He released the torch. It flew into the rippling rectangle and disappeared. The spear quivered violently. It slipped through his hand and vanished, presumably joining the torch on the other side.
    But how was he going to go through? It was too high to leap into. He looked around at the cavern’s stalagmites—like stalactites, but rising from the ground. They appeared too fragile and were definitely too pointed for him to climb and jump from. He spotted a broken one, similar in shape and size to a tree stump. If he leaped from it, his hands would reach the portal—but was that enough? Would the portal pull the rest of his body through?
    Something appeared in the portal, startling him. A black shape. Hazy at first, it took on the form of a man. The figure was just standing there, legs slightly apart, hands at its sides. It appeared to be wearing a cape, which fluttered and whipped around in the portal’s currents. Then Keal realized: not a cape, but a black overcoat. At the head, long black hair snapped one way then another.
    Taksidian .
    Keal waited for him to