Stealing the Dark Moon

Misadventures of a Treasure Indexer

King Highbolt awoke on a pallet of soft hay set up beside the Lake of Sundered Blue. The stars now swirling in the lake's waters did not match those that shone in the evening sky above. Only the position of the moon held the same reflection, and its coy silver light stabbed his eyes like a lance.

He turned his gaze away only to be met by the gentle ultraviolet glow of a swarm of dust sprites. They diligently gathered every last speck of his shattered spire and dropped the tiny silver flecks into a wooden basin set beside his pallet. The devotion of even Arvustel's tiniest creatures touched him, but it was hopeless—his spire would never be whole again. The base of his horn throbbed under his bandages, and with each twinge of pain King Highbolt could feel himself lessening just a little bit more. His magic, the strength of his wit—in time he would become dumb as a mortal horse.

Soon, very soon he must abdicate his kingship for the good of his herd, he accepted this fate—but he refused to accept the terrible destiny his daughter was sprinting towards with all of her stubborn, hot-headed might. Struggling to stand upright on his shaking limbs, Highbolt reared on his hind legs and brayed at the moon which mocked him with the casual serenity of its gleam.

"Take back your curse, old wyrm," he cried. "Take it back before your ancient magic claims my daughter and destroys our world!'

***

Stray ice crystals frosting the gold near the cavern's entrance were the only sign that autumn was setting into the outside world. A month had already passed by in a glittering haze in the heart of Mt. Galefang, yet neither Kit nor the others had come any closer to finding Aerohim's lost artifact. Sometimes they found a piece of treasure that had one or two of the qualities Aerohim had described—bright, very warm, weightier than the world. And each time, they barely survived the encounter . . . .

Minnow almost blew Tad's head off when she picked up a silver hand mirror that released a searing beam of fire. Lil and Vi dug out a yellow topaz jewel from the skull of a crocodile that blazed like an evening star and hypnotized them for hours until Aerohim crunched it between his fangs. And Charles—that is, Charles Basil Frederick Lionel Rufus (five weeks had passed, each one requiring the Mazak boy to pick an ever more dashing name worthy of one who lived in the company of a dragon) was nearly crushed when he picked up a tiny stone statue of a white elephant. The statue rapidly expanded to the size of an actual elephant and rolled after Rufus as he slid down a dune. Only Lady's cannon fire saved—and moderately incinerated—the Mazak boy from a flattening fate by pulverizing it.

But none of the objects the orphans discovered ever fit all of the dragon's precise requirements. Kit couldn't be more . . . ecstatic.

A fierce gladness filled his heart each night that they returned to the Ladyslipper in failure. It was sheer torture to think that they might actually succeed! Nobody dared to voice their secret fear out loud: if they found the dragon's missing treasure, what use would he have for his motley band of treasure indexers? For Kit quickly realized that Aerohim regarded the rest of his hoard as if it were trash, crushing diamonds to dust under his talons and melting gold into simmering pools for a warm nest to curl in during the evening.

Despite the possibility that Aerohim might've melted his precious lost artifact into a molten pillow already, Kit dutifully scoured the dunes each day—until a fat pearl startled him out of the search. The white orb whizzed past his nose and smacked the toad statue he was reaching for straight into the ruby-studded fangs of a golden gargoyle skull. The toad shattered into a pile of enamel warts.

"Poor little fellow!" Kit sighed regretfully. He glanced up to find Vi perched on the back of a gigantic brass horse statue with her slingshot drawn. Oddly, her near cousin was nowhere in sight.