DAREL SHOOK HIS HEAD, WATCHING Dingo's Komodo dragon lumber away while Ponto chased her past the extra mount they'd brought along for Yabber.
Dingo liked to tease Ponto, which was usually pretty funny, but after the long journey into this strange, chilly landscape, it was getting a little old. They needed to focus on the job. They needed to find Yabber, who'd disappeared into the Snowy Mountains after the defeat of the scorpion hordes.
Yabber had said that with the Veil ripped and the spider queen out for revenge, he needed to retreat to the mountains to hone his powers and meditate on the Rainbow Serpent. He'd promised he'd try to return within a month, and Darel and the Kulipari had spent the first few weeks helping rebuild the villages, chasing away scorpion and spider stragglers, and planning their defenses in case of another attack.
When Yabber hadn't come back after a month, nobody had worried, at first. The turtle dreamcaster could look after himself.
Then they'd started hearing the rumors. A wandering lizard said that Marmoo wasn't dead-or that he'd returned from the dead, stronger than ever. A pair of emus nattered nonsense about Queen Jarrah training a new breed of "devil warrior," but everyone knew emus were total birdbrains.
Finally, a sailfish arrived from the Coves with a message from Yabber's clan, the turtles, claiming that the scorpions were planning a new attack. A huge onslaught, aimed at the rip in the Veil, to bury the Amphibilands in an avalanche of soldiers. And that the spider queen was planning to use the defeat of the Amphibilands as a first step toward spinning her nightcast sorcery across the entire outback.
That was when Chief Olba had decided they needed to find Yabber-and fast. So Darel had kissed his mother and the triplets-his little brothers and sister-good-bye and joined the Kulipari on this trek.
With all that hanging over them, Darel didn't understand how Dingo could goof around so much. He sighed, watching her darting away from Ponto, spinning under her dragon's scaly neck, then popping up on the other side.
"Don't worry about Dingo," Quoba said, suddenly beside him. "She's just trying to keep our spirits up."
"How do you do that?" he asked.
"Creep up on you?"
"Well, that too. But I meant, how do you always know what I'm thinking?"
She smiled. "Because I'm usually thinking the same thing."
They rode in silence for a moment. Darel yawned. "I've never been so sleepy."
"Don't close your eyes until we've made a fire," Quoba told him.
"Why not?"
"Like Ponto said, we're cold-blooded. Warm-bloods like koalas and emus make their own heat. They stay warm even when the air is cold. Not us. When the world cools down, we cool down, too."
"Because we're normal," Darel said. "How freaky is it that warm-bloods always have the same temperature?"
Quoba grinned. "I don't know how they live in those fuzzy bodies."
"But the Amphibilands never freezes," Darel continued. "What happens to us in the snow?"
"Well, some frogs and turtles snuggle into the mud at the bottom of frozen lakes and stay there all winter. They hibernate. Others-like wood frogs, I think-wait for the frost, then fall asleep and freeze solid."
"Like an actual hopsicle?"
Quoba laughed. "Exactly. And when the spring comes, they thaw out."
"That is so cool!" Darel said, his eye bulging. "I can do that?"
"You wood frogs have many hidden talents. There's one problem, though. On the Snowy Mountains, there are places that never thaw. You'd stay frozen forever."
Darel gulped. "Oh."
"So don't fall asleep in the snow, nor in the mountains."
"Gotcha," he said. "I won't."
"And the cold slows us down, making us sluggish and sleepy. I'm not sure we can even tap into our poison in the snow."
"That's not a problem for me," Darel complained. "I don't have any poison to tap into."
"In some ways that makes you stronger," Quoba said in her quiet voice. "Perhaps we rely on our poison too much."
The next morning, as Darel was riding beside the spare mount, an arrow suddenly jabbed into the ground twenty feet from him.
"That's a sign from Dingo!" Burnu said, leaping off his Komodo. "She's seen something!"
Darel followed, and they found Dingo-who'd been scouting the path ahead-crouching beside the tattered remains of a web, her bow in her hand. As Darel eyed the long, dusty web that disappeared into the underbrush on both sides, a sick feeling rose in his stomach.
"That's not a normal web," Burnu said, drawing his boomerangs.
"Looks like a nightcasting." Quoba slipped beside them. "It's a huge circle."
"There's a village in the middle," Dingo said, her face solemn for once. "A wallaby village."
But there was no village. Not anymore. There were only dead crops, dry wells…and skeletons. Wallaby skeletons.
"Jarrah must've dried up the springs," Darel said, wiping tears from his cheeks. "Then used that big web to trap the wallabies inside."
"But why?" Ponto asked.
"Maybe to punish them." Darel swallowed thickly. "Or to test her power, now that King Sergu is dead."
For a moment nobody spoke, remembering the turtle king, who'd died in battle protecting the Amphibilands.
Then Quoba nodded. "Yabber once told me that dreamcasting came from the Rainbow Serpent, cool and healing and life-giving. But nightcasting is the opposite-harsh and deadly and dry."
"Figures that Jarrah would use thirst to kill," Ponto said. "And with Sergu gone, there's nothing to stand in her way."
"Except Yabber," Darel said.
"And us," Burnu said.
They traveled for two more days, as the foothills grew into mountains. They stopped every night and ate smoked bogong moths around a campfire. To keep themselves and the Komodo dragons warm, they heated rocks in the fire, then tucked them around their mounts in heavy, bulging saddlebags.
On the third day, they traveled through a craggy mountain pass as snowflakes swirled from the sky. Cliffs rose on both sides, and Darel was eyeing the high rock walls when, without any warning, the flurry of snow turned into a blinding storm.
He leaned forward, pressing his chest against the warm rocks draped over his saddle. They'd need to stop soon, to light another fire. His eyes closed to slits, and snowflakes brushed his face. Time crept and the warm rocks grew cold, and he felt his Komodo dragon slowing under him. As the storm grew, he peered sleepily through the curtains of snow and barely saw the dark blotch of Dingo's mount ahead of him on the icy path.
He felt numb and defeated, like they'd never find Yabber, like they'd never leave these mountains alive. He weakly touched the dagger at his hip. His father's dagger. He thought about Gee and Coorah back home, about his mother and his brothers and sister and Chief Olba. He felt the snow on his cloak freezing the fabric to his back as the rolling motion of the Komodo dragon rocked him gently.
He closed his eyes for one moment…
…and when he opened them, the air smelled of smoke, and a gray wolf was about to bite his head off.