Firestorm

Dinotopia #7

Firestorm

By Gene DeWeese





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CHAPTER 1


So this was the fabled Round Table Hall!

It was the most wonderful thing Olivia had seen in all her twelve years. It was even more magnificent than she had imagined. The table itself, larger than most people’s houses, glittered like gold. Windows that stretched to the ceiling looked out on the mist-filled wonder of Cloudbottom Gorge.

And gathered around the table were all the Habitat Partners, human and saurian alike. Even Lightwing, the Skybax half of the Aerial Partners, was there, despite his species’ well-known dislike of enclosed spaces.

And they were all waiting.

Waiting to hear about the new plant that she had discovered!

Olivia looked down and saw that she held the plant in her hand.

Proudly, she lifted it up for all to see.

A hush fell over the gathering. Even Hightop, her Plateosaurus partner, looked down at her in silent approval. There was no doubt left in her mind. After this

discovery, she would be made an apprentice to the Forest Partners!

“Please,” Bracken, the human half of the Forest Partners, urged her, “tell us about this marvelous plant you have discovered.”

Olivia nodded eagerly, but before she could speak, she heard the huge doors behind her opening.

Suddenly, someone was standing beside her. It was Albert, a boy from her village a couple years older than her. But what was he doing here?

“Tell the Partners where you found it,” he demanded sternly.

Olivia opened her mouth to speak, but no words came out. Suddenly, she couldn’t remember where she’d found the plant!

And the plant itself was witherin; g and turning to dust in her hands!

Looking up, she saw that the Partners were no longer smiling at her. They were frowning. Bracken was looking at her and shaking her head with disappointment.

Slowly, Albert unrolled a scroll, holding it up for the Partners to see.

“Here is what she should have brought you. A map showing where the plant can be found.”

Her face flaming, Olivia lowered her eyes in shame. How could she have forgotten! Albert had told her a million times to take careful notes, to draw sketches and make maps. But she’d seen the plant and

known instantly that it was important…

Olivia lifted her head and tried to apologize. “Next time, I promise. Next time—”

But suddenly, she was being drowned in a sea of scrolls. They were showering down out of the sky, piling up on the floor around her, suffocating her. Scrolls full of notes, drawings, maps, diagrams, everything she’d forgotten in her haste.

“Here is the information you need,” Albert said.

“But I found it!” Olivia tried to shout, but no words came out. Her tongue felt huge and bloated. The only sound she could make was a rumbling growl. No matter how hard she tried—

Suddenly, Round Table Hall was gone, and Olivia found herself in total darkness. The rumbling growl from her dream—her nightmare!—still echoed in her ears. For one panicky moment, she couldn’t think of where she was.

But then the damp, chilly ground she was lying on reminded her. She and Hightop were in the jungle.

She wasn’t making any discoveries. She was making a list, an extremely long list. Or she would be, as soon as the sun came up. Then she would once again start identifying and writing down every single species of plant she found, no matter how ordinary.

She and a dozen others scattered about the area, including Albert, had been at it for a week and would likely be at it for another four or five. Like the others, she carried a number of scrollbooks for taking notes.

Each was a collection of short scrolls, carefully flattened and laced together along one edge. She had already almost filled her first.

Albert had worked with Bracken before and had been trying to help Olivia become an apprentice. When Albert had told her he’d talked Bracken into including her on the team, she’d been ecstatic. She loved the outdoors, particularly the forests, even if it did mean sleeping on the ground or getting caught in bad weather now and then. Approaching rain had a smell that was even better than fresh-baked bread. And sunlight, as it sparkled down through a canopy of leaves after a storm, could make her forget the discomfort of wet clothes.

Very few twelve-year-olds, she knew, were chosen for the spot-check surveys the Forest Partners conducted. They were an important part of making sure the forests and jungles stayed healthy. If new types of plants had appeared or old plants disappeared from an area, the Partners would have to find out why. Usually such shifts were just a normal part of the ever-changing nature of the land. But every so often, changes meant that something was wrong. At times like that, the Partners and scientists got together and decided what needed to be done.

And this time, Olivia was right in the middle of it. If she did well—if she didn’t mess things up the way she had in her dream—she really might be made an apprentice.

The only trouble was, she hadn’t realized how many different plants there were. It would take forever to write down the hundreds of names and descriptions and the thousands of locations. She grimaced in the near-darkness. She had always had trouble concentrating on tasks like that, where you did the same thing over and over for hours on end.

Just then a sound, part rumbling growl, part hissing scream, came from somewhere in the night, knocking all thoughts of the survey from her head. It sounded just like what had come out of her mouth in her dream.

It was what had awakened her! Something was out there in the darkness!

But the darkness wasn’t quite as deep as it had been moments before. The moon was edging out from behind the clouds, and she could actually see the shadowy shapes of trees and ferns all around her.

For a moment, she thought about heading for the nearest Refuge, but only for a moment. For one dung, she wasn’t sure she could find one of the hillside caves, even if it were daylight. For another, running around trying to find it would most likely attract the very things the Refuges were supposed to protect you from—meat-eaters that had wandered over from the Rainy Basin, just a few miles away.

“Hightop!” she called, her whispered voice a loud hiss. “Did you hear that?”

The big Plateosaurus, who never slept very

soundly, reared up on his massive hind legs with a start. His long neck whipped his head at least fifteen feet in the air as he looked around. After a few moments, he lowered his head and looked down at Olivia from a height of only eight or nine feet.

“I could hardly avoid it with you practically shouting in my ear,” he said. The actual sounds he made were a series of muffled honks and rumbles, but Olivia understood them almost as well as the Plateosaurus understood her speech.

“Not me, silly! It was out there somewhere,” she said, waving her hand in the general direction of the noise. “It sounded like something was growling. Something big!”

Hightop’s head swayed from side to side on his long neck, a sure sign he was not particularly happy with her. “My dear young lady,” he said—or so Olivia chose to translate his carefully enunciated honks and rumbles. “We are in the jungle, just a few miles from the Polongo River and the Rainy Basin. A certain amount of rowdy behavior should not come as a complete surprise.”

“But aren’t you curious? Don’t you want to know what it is?”

“Not particularly. Whatever it is, it can do quite well without being identified by either of us. Now I suggest you go back to sleep and allow me to do the

same.”

“But what if it’s dangerous?” A tingle ran up

Olivia’s spine at the thought. She didn’t really want it to be dangerous, of course, and since they weren’t actually in the Rainy Basin, it probably wasn’t. Still, it was exciting to think about.

And meat-eaters did come across the Polongo now and then. It had been easier than ever the last few weeks. The so-called Rainy Basin hadn’t been living up to its name, and the river was creeping lower every day.

“Suppose it is dangerous,” the Plateosaurus grumbled. “Unless I’m missing something, I’d say that’s all the more reason not to attract its attention. I don’t look forward to becoming a meal for some creature with more teeth than brains. I can only assume you don’t, either. Although,” he added, bringing his bluntly rounded nose down to within a few inches of her face, “there are times when you make me wonder.”

Olivia sighed but couldn’t help smiling at the saurian’s mock sternness. He was right, of course.

Besides, the noise had probably just been Thunderfoot. Albert and his Chasmosaurus partner were camped no more than three or four hundred yards away, and Thunderfoot did have bad dreams now and then. Bad noisy dreams, or so Albert had told her when they’d started out on this survey.

She grinned, thinking how it must have sounded to Albert. He would’ve been only a few feet from the source instead of a few hundred yards.

“You’re right,” she said, getting rid of the grin before the Plateosaurus could notice and comment on it. “Good night.”

Lying back down as Hightop watched sternly, she was sound asleep in only a minute or two.

Four hundred yards away, Albert was trying to go back to sleep as well. It was taking him a little longer, however. At least his ears weren’t ringing, thanks to the new sleeping arrangements. On this mission, Thunderfoot was spending his nights several hundred feet from where the boy slept.

The apologetic Chasmosaurus had suggested it himself, and Albert hadn’t argued. Thunderfoot didn’t have noisy dreams every night, but when he did, it was a real fossil-maker for anyone sleeping nearby. Sort of like being woken up by lightning hitting the tree you were sleeping under, Albert had told Olivia once.

It would be bad enough even from Olivia’s distance, he thought. It would certainly have been enough to wake her. He couldn’t keep from grinning for just a moment. This would be the first time she’d heard it. With her vivid imagination, she’d probably conjured up all sorts of monsters out there in the dark before realizing what it really was.

Then he felt a twinge of guilt and hoped she hadn’t been too shaken up. She was, after all, only

twelve. Maybe he’d been wrong to urge Bracken to include her in the group.

Albert shook his head silently in the darkness. He’d had this same argument with himself a half-dozen times before. She was too young, too reckless, to ever become an apprentice, one part of him said. But she also had the quickest mind of anyone from their village. In her haste, she could overlook things that were right in front of her, but at the same time she could spot patterns that no one else noticed. Which was just the sort of ability that could prove helpful in almost any mission for the Forest Partners.

To watch over the health of the forests and jungles, you needed to look not only at hundreds of individual plants. You needed also to be able to see them all at once, to see the patterns of the forests.

He was still arguing with himself when he drifted back to sleep.





CHAPTER 2


Olivia blinked in disbelief as she peered down into a jungle ravine early the next afternoon.

“A Trilobur!” she almost shouted.

“I beg your pardon?” Hightop turned from his perpetual lunch, munching at leaves ten and fifteen feet above the ground. He eyed the girl suspiciously. “Arctium longevus doesn’t grow in the jungle,” he said.

“I know it doesn’t! But there it is.” She pointed at a narrow ledge sticking out from the side of the ravine about a third of the way down. The cluster of thistly purple flowers poking up through the tangle of other vegetation was unmistakable. “See?”

The big Plateosaurus lowered his handlike front feet to the ground and moved cautiously toward the ravine. The purple streaks and splotches on his green and brown hide almost glittered as he passed through a patch of sunlight. Then he was at the edge of the ravine, looking down to where Olivia was pointing.

“It does look like a Trilobur,” he said after a moment.

“That’s because it is one.”

But even as she spoke, Olivia felt a twinge of doubt in her stomach. This wasn’t the sort of thing she could take for granted. If it really was a Trilobur, the discovery went way beyond the sort of thing that was usually found in a spot check. It could make her famous, as in her dream!

At the very least, it would make Bracken take her seriously as a possible apprentice.

After all, the Trilobur—or Arctium longevus, as the elders and scholars insisted on calling it—was arguably the single most important plant in all of Dinotopia. Its leaves were used to make healing medicines for both humans and saurians.

And its roots were used to make Trilobite Tea— the elixir of life, some called it. Every Dinotopian began drinking it at the age of twenty-four. Every Dinotopian, that is, who wished to live to be “as old as a Trilobite.” For the tea healed not just illness but age itself, at least for a century or two.

But it wasn’t supposed to grow even this far into the jungle. It was found most often in the plains, fairly often in forest clearings, but never in the jungle. And people had been looking long and hard, ever since its remarkable properties had been discovered thousands of years ago.

Not that the plant was in short supply. Most villages outside the Rainy Basin had their own small patch. And everyone, no matter where they lived, had

an ample supply of the dried leaves and roots.

No, the worry was that it might someday be in short supply. There were tales of long-ago times when a mysterious blight had threatened to wipe out the plant, a blight that had been defeated only by fire. The tales, however, were just that. Tales. No one now alive remembered the blight firsthand, and few Dinotopians believed the blight was anything but a tale. A fairy tale, some said.

Even so, many worried that the blight, if real, might someday return. And if it did return, the more widespread the plant was, the better. The more places it grew, the more likely it would be to survive.

“I’ll make sure it’s a Trilobur,” Olivia said. “I’ll go down and take a closer look.”

Hightop backed away from the ravine and looked down at her. “I thought you said you were afraid you might not be able to get back out once you went in.”

“I’m not going down to the bottom, just to that ledge. It’s not so far down. If I get stuck, you can lower your tail over the edge and pull me up.”

Hightop arched his neck, an indication of disapproval—or concern—that Olivia was very familiar with. “Perhaps we should call one of others to help,” he said. “I understand Albert is quite good at scrambling up and down in such places.”

“No! I don’t need any help!” She wasn’t about to go crying to Albert the first time she ran into a problem. The last thing she wanted to do was make him

sorry he’d talked Bracken into including her on this survey.

Besides, this was her discovery, not his.

Hightops neck arched even more, but instead of objecting further, he said, “As you wish. But don’t say you weren’t warned.” He returned to his munching of leaves, but stayed close to the ravine.

Carefully tucking her scrollbook into her backpack, Olivia looked down the bank toward the plant and the ledge it perched on—and suddenly remembered why she hadn’t gone down before.

For one thing, the sides of the ravine were very steep. For another, she knew that several of the vines along the ravine wall had nasty thorns hidden beneath their innocent-looking leaves. For yet another, something in the ravine had been irritating her eyes. They’d been watering and itching on and off all morning. As she looked over the edge, they started watering again.

But now she didn’t have a choice.

She took a last look at Hightop. The Plateosaurus was pointedly ignoring her. Cautiously, Olivia eased herself over the edge.

And started down.

Her feet were hidden by the thick vegetation, so she had to feel for each new toehold. With her hands, she did her best to avoid the vines, but she wasn’t entirely successful. Thorns were everywhere, snagging at her sleeves and scratching the backs of her hands.

Halfway down to the ledge, her watering eyes began to itch. Even if she’d had a free hand, Olivia knew she didn’t dare wipe them. She’d tried that the first time it had happened, earlier that morning, and it’d only made them worse. The only thing that helped was washing them with water from her canteen. Which she couldn’t get to at as long as she had to hang on with both hands to keep from falling.

Worrying less about the thorns than her eyes, Olivia scrambled down the ravine wall until, finally, she was able to twist about and jump the last couple of feet to the ledge. As she landed, one foot twisted beneath her—the ground, hidden by the vegetation, was more uneven than she’d thought. She was able to keep her balance, but just barely.

Fighting down a growing urge to scrape at her eyes, Olivia wet a spot on her sleeve with the water from her canteen and used that to wipe the tears and sweat from around her eyes. She sighed in relief as the itching faded to a bearable level.

Cautiously, she took a couple of steps toward the thistly purple flowers growing near the outer edge of the ledge. Hunkering down next to them, she pulled her scrollbook from her backpack.

As she leaned close, her heart sank. The plant wasn’t a Trilobur! It was barely two feet tall, much too short for a full-grown Trilobur. And the leaves, which she hadn’t looked closely at from above, were the wrong shape.

But whatever it was, it was definitely something

she didn’t recognize, something unusual for this area. Which meant she would have to make a detailed sketch of it.

If she could get her eyes to stop watering and itching long enough, that is. If it got any worse, she wouldn’t be able to see well enough to sketch anything.

Worse, the itch seemed to be spreading to her nose, where it was trying escape through a sneeze. For a moment she struggled to keep it in, but then, still hunkered down, she lost the battle and was shaken by a sneeze so explosive it almost knocked her off balance.

A second sneeze followed, more violent than the first. Olivia felt herself rocking backward on her heels, unable to stop. Instinctively, she dropped her scrollbook and thrust her hands out behind her. But her hands struck the ground at the very brink of the ledge. A small section of the ground gave way beneath her weight.

Before she knew what was happening, Olivia was falling through the air, then crashing into the thicket below the ledge and sliding and tumbling down the ravine wall!





CHAPTER 3


Finally, Olivia came to a bone-jarring stop, flat on her back in a tangle of weeds and vines. The world spun dizzily around her.

She dug her fingers into the soft ground in an attempt to anchor herself, but her grip was shaken loose a moment later by another sneeze. At least the sneeze seemed to stop the spinning and the dizziness, but her eyes were itching even more and—

“Olivia? Are you all right?”

Blinking to clear her eyes, she looked up and saw Hightop peering down at her, his huge head lowered a foot or two into the ravine. A half-chewed leaf fluttered down toward the ledge she’d just fallen from.

“Good question,” she muttered between sneezes, struggling to sit up. Her hands were scratched, and there were half a dozen tears in her loose-fitting green-and-yellow blouse and breeches.

But nothing hurt too badly, she decided. And she could move everything. In fact, when she sneezed,

everything—all of her body, from head to toes—did move.

“Olivia?” the Plateosaurus honked more loudly, lowering his head even further into the ravine.

“I’m all right!” she yelled up at him. “I—achoo!— think.”

For another moment, Hightop peered down at her, making sure she really was all right. Then, with a snorting sound she’d long ago decided was a Plateosaurus version of a chuckle, he straightened up and regarded her from his usual regal height. This time it was made even more impressive by the thirty-or forty-foot depth of the ravine.

Olivia sneezed. “All right!” she yelled up at him before yet another sneeze overtook her. “Get it over with. Say ‘I told you so,’ then get me out of here before my head completely explodes.”

“I did warn you, you know,” he said, turning away. “I’ll fetch Albert,” he went on, his honks and rumbles fading, “as I should have done before.”

“No! Wait!” she yelled, but there was no response. Olivia could hear the receding thud of his feet and the crunch and crackle of the underbrush as he picked his way through it

Terrific! she thought, the sting from her scratches driven from her mind. Just terrific!

Albert would never let her live this down. It would be the tree house all over again. Six years ago,

she’d managed to climb up into a tree house, but she’d frozen and hadn’t been able to get back down until Albert had come back. He’d just stood under the tree and laughed. Finally, he’d told her about the rope ladder. It had been rolled up in the corner, only three or four feet from her, the whole time.

But this was worse. She wasn’t six anymore. She was twelve, almost thirteen, and hoping someday to become an apprentice to the Forest Partners. Albert knew how much she loved the forest and had been trying to help her. He’d gone out on a limb to get her on this mission, and now she was messing it up. For both of them!

With desperate, itchy eyes, she searched the ravine. There had to be something she could do!

Albert looked up from his scrollbook. Something was coming toward them, something big and in a hurry.

For a moment he wondered uneasily if it could be a meat-eater from the Rainy Basin that had wandered across the Polongo.

But Thunderfoot, he saw at a glance, wasn’t reacting. The Chasmosaurus was doing what he did most of the time—selecting his next mouthful of food.

A moment later, Albert saw why Thunderfoot wasn’t worried. It wasn’t a meat-eater approaching, it was Hightop. His purple-streaked head had just popped out of a wall of vines a hundred yards away and was swiveling around on his long neck, searching.

Albert called out to the Plateosaurus. “Albert!” Hightop honked loudly the moment he’d spotted the boy. “Olivia could use your assistance.”

Stabbing a small pennant into the ground to mark his place, Albert headed toward Hightop at a run. “What happened?”

The Plateosaurus explained as he hurried back the way he had come. Thunderfoot followed close behind.

“It was right there,” Hightop said, coming to a stop at the very edge of the ravine.

Albert lurched to a stop and peered down. “Are you sure? I don’t see her.”

“Of course I’m sure!” Hightop honked. “There— you can see where she lay.”

“I can see where something lay” Albert was starting to really worry. It was a long way down. “Why didn’t you stop her?”

“You’ve known her longer than I have. Have you ever tried to stop her from doing something she wants to do?”

Albert sighed. The saurian was right. Besides, it didn’t matter whose fault it was—

Behind them, Thunderfoot gave a soft bellow. “There’s something back here you should see.”

Albert spun around. The Chasmosaurus wasn’t very talkative, but when he did speak, Albert had learned to listen.

Olivia was emerging from a thicket several yards farther along the edge of the ravine. “I told you I didn’t need any help,” she said as the three of them just stared at her.

“I believe your exact words were, ‘Get me out of here,’” the Plateosaurus honked. “In any event, you look terrible, even for one of your species.”

“As if you could tell from way up there!”

“He’s right, Olivia,” Albert said sternly, cutting off their friendly sniping. “You really have to get those cuts cleaned up. It would be best if you—”

“They’re just scratches, not cuts!” Olivia said, quickly opening her canteen and wetting a cloth. She wiped at the blood on one of her arms and winced.

“Here, let me do that,” Albert said.

Reluctantly, Olivia gave in as Albert took a clean cloth of his own and carefully began to scrub the dirt and blood away. He was relieved to see that they were just scratches, not cuts.

He was dabbing some salve on the worst of them when a leathery fluttering sound filled the air.

Looking up, they saw a pair of Dimorphodons flapping earnestly down toward them. The creatures’ three-foot wingspans were just short enough to allow them to descend through the narrow and uneven openings in the canopy of treetops.

Olivia almost forgot the pain of her scratches as she watched the dun-colored pterosaurs with their trailing, diamond-tipped tails and blunt, reddish

beaks. In her and Albert’s home village of Camaraton, she had seen such messengers occasionally, but never had they stopped and spoken to her. They had always been on their way to someone else, someone important enough to have one of these creatures search them out and deliver their memorized messages.

Albert seemed equally impressed, for he fell silent the moment he saw the little pterosaurs. Even Highop looked up, though he didn’t stop munching on his latest mouthful of leaves.

One of the creatures aimed directly for the Plateosaurus and fluttered to rest on his back. The other headed for Thunderfoot and settled onto the huge bony crest that stuck up like a mottled green, stiffly starched collar at the back of the Chasmosaurus’s skull.

“What is it?” Olivia asked loudly. “What message do you bring?”

Her words, however, had no effect. With a faint rustling sound, they neatly folded their wings and looked around. With their wings tucked in, they looked much smaller than they had in flight, little bigger than parrots.

Hightop swiveled his head around until he was staring at the pterosaur on his back from a distance of only two or three feet.

“Well?” Hightop said, bringing his big, blunt nose even closer. “Do you have a message to deliver, or did you just stop to rest on my back?”

Both pterosaurs rustled their wings again. Olivia couldn’t help but think of someone fidgeting on a stage before a big speech.

Finally, with one last fluttering fidget, they both began to speak. Luckily, except for Olivia’s and Albert’s names, the pterosaurs had the same thing to say, and their words were pretty much synchronized.

“The remainder of your survey has been postponed. You and your partner are to go immediately to Round Table Hall in Waterfall City. Your new mission will be explained to you there.”





CHAPTER 4


To Olivia, eager to learn why they had been summoned, the trip seemed to take forever, even with Thunderfoot bulldozing their way through the dense undergrowth. The Dimorphodons had nothing more to say, and she couldn’t even get Albert to guess at the reasons they’d been recalled, no matter how often she asked.

He would just shrug and say, “Have patience. We’ll find out soon enough.”

She suspected he was just as anxious as she was to learn the truth, but he’d never let on.

And if the waiting itself wasn’t enough, her eyes decided to water and itch every few hours. A couple of times they got all red and puffy, and once she broke into a sneezing fit that almost knocked her off Hightop’s back. Holding a damp cloth across her mouth and nose helped with the sneezing. But for her eyes, all she could do was urge Hightop to move faster, to get her away from whatever was causing it.

Finally, their destination came into sight. The river

slowed and widened into Sweetwater Lake. Waterfall City lay before them. Hightop, Albert, and the half-dozen others who had joined them along the way stood on the shore, looking wide-eyed across the water at the awesome sight. Rainbowed mists were everywhere, billowing up from the mighty falls that flanked the city on both sides. Beyond the mists two ancient stepped pyramids looked down on the Outer Harbor. Atop the two huge structures, the Celestial Dome and the Shrine of Mystery glinted in the sun.

But Olivia barely saw them. She looked for only two things, neither of which were visible: The building that housed Round Table Hall and the ferry that would take them across the lake to Waterfall City.

The ferry arrived at last, towed by a pair of plesiosaurs with long, slim necks that made Hightop’s look stubby by comparison. Olivia was the first aboard the ornately decorated bargelike vessel. While the others, saurian and human alike, climbed on with ponderous slowness, Olivia hurried as far to the front as the hand-carved railing would allow. She could feel the mist on her face like a gentle, welcoming breeze.

The captain, a plump, white-haired man with a neatly trimmed goatee, looked down at her from his raised platform. The golden braid on his blue and green uniform glinted in the morning sun.

“In a hurry, are we, missy?”

“We all are,” she said, glancing back at the others. How much longer could they stretch out the simple

process of coming on board? The vessel bobbed slightly as Thunderfoot placed a foot on the deck as delicately as he could. “We have an appointment at Round Table Hall,” she added.

The man nodded as the ferry bobbed again, this time for the rest of Thunderfoot. “Ah, important business it must be.”

“I imagine it is.”

His white eyebrows arched. “Then ye don’t know what it is ye’ve been called in for?”

Olivia shook her head impatiently. “I’m afraid not. The Dimorphodons that brought the message to

us—”

“Ah, well,” he said, with a faint sigh. “I suppose it might be important, even so…”

“I’m sure—” she began, but he had already turned away to watch the rest of the saurians and their partners come aboard.

A flush warmed her face as she heard Albert chuckling quietly behind her.

Olivia gasped as the doors to Round Table Hall swung open. Even Albert’s jaw dropped. Sounds of awe and wonder came from the rest of the group as they entered the huge room.

It’s almost like my dream! she thought.

The plush red carpet was as thick and soft as the best-kept lawn. Equally plush, equally red drapes were pulled back from windows dozens of feet high. The

only thing missing was a view of Cloudbottom Gorge, but she could feel the tremors caused by the huge waterfalls that fed it.

“It really does have a round table,” Albert said softly.

Olivia nodded. It wasn’t golden, but it was at least as big as it had been in her dream. A polished wooden doughnut thirty feet in diameter, the table stood more than six feet high.

For those saurians who wanted them, there were resting couches, but only one ancient-looking Stegosaur was using one. Hightop and Thunderfoot simply walked up and stood by the edge of the table, their heads easily high enough to see. For the humans, there were long-legged chairs that had to be climbed like four-sided ladders before they could sit in them.

Almost filling the hole in the center of the table was a pedostenograph for transcribing the proceedings. Enit, the Deinonychus who was head librarian and records keeper, was already standing next to the machine. Soon, he would be hopping from pedal to pedal, his feet striking them the way a two-finger typist’s fingers hop from key to key. Running through the machine was a long scroll. A half-dozen words in the Dinotopian footprint alphabet were already printed across its top.

Olivia scrambled up the side of the chair next to Hightop and looked around. She had just noticed that there were still some empty spots around the table

when a short, wiry, gray-haired woman scurried into the room. Behind her came the Habitat Partners of Forests, Bracken and Fiddlehead. Fiddlehead was a Chasmosaurus even larger than Thunderfoot. A moment later, the human halves of the Savanna and Aerial Partners, Draco and Oolu, strode in.

The presence of this many Partners sent a new tingle of excitement up Olivia’s spine.

Bracken hurried to catch up to the older woman and offered to help her up into her chair but was abruptly waved away.

“I’m only a hundred and eighty,” the woman said, signaling Enit not to begin transcribing just yet. “I’m quite capable of seating myself.”

“As you wish,” Bracken said, but remained close until the older woman was safely seated. Only then did she clamber up into her own chair. Draco and Oolu took the two remaining seats.

“This is Esther,” Bracken said as soon as everyone was settled in. “She has long made a study of the Trilobur plant, to which we all owe so much. However, she has some disturbing news for us all.”

“Quite so,” the woman said, her voice slightly gruff but perfectly clear. “You may have heard of the fire south of Sauropolis on Blackwood Flats some weeks ago.”

Olivia opened her mouth to say that she had indeed heard of it but that she understood it had been put out within a day or two. But before she could begin, Hightop swayed slightly, giving her a gentle nudge that rocked her chair.

Albert darted a stern look in her direction, and Olivia realized that the Plateosaurus had done her a favor. Round Table Hall was not a place where eager first-timers like herself were encouraged to speak, unless spoken to. Feeling her face grow warm, she pressed her lips together and watched the speaker through downturned eyes.

“What you probably have not heard,” Esther continued, “is that the fire was purposely set.”

Olivia and several others gasped. Even Enit faltered in his frenzied hopping from pedal to pedal on the pedostenograph. Acts of deliberate destruction on any scale were virtually unheard of. Setting fires, which could destroy both land and lives, was unthinkable.

Unless—

Olivia realized with a start what Esther was going to say next.

“The blight!” Olivia gasped.

Suddenly, every eye was focused on her, and not many of them looked friendly.

“I’m sorry,” she said, her face flaming now. “It…it just popped out.”

Esther was looking at her intently. “Tell me, young lady—Olivia, is it?”

Olivia nodded miserably.

“Tell me, Olivia, what made you think of the blight?”

The girl gulped. Suddenly, she wished she could shrivel up and vanish.

“I—I’m not sure,” she managed to say. “It’s just that Bracken said you had bad news about Trilobur, and I thought I saw a Trilobur in the jungle a few days ago, and that made me think of how it doesn’t grow there, and how people’ve always been looking for it in new places, and I guess that reminded me of the blight a long time ago and how they used fire to get rid of it, and when you said someone set that fire in Blackwood Flats—well, no one would purposely set a fire unless they had a good reason, and I guess…”

Olivia’s nervous torrent of words trailed off as she looked around at all the faces, human and saurian, still staring at her. “I guess I couldn’t think of any other reason someone would start a fire like that,” she added. She lowered her eyes to the table in front of her. “I’m sorry. I won’t interrupt again. I promise.”

Esther nodded. “Thank you, Olivia.” She glanced around the table. “However, the young lady is right. It is the blight. It is real, and it has returned.”





CHAPTER 5


For a moment there was total silence. Then everyone was talking at once. Everyone except Olivia, who was limp with relief that she hadn’t made a complete fool of herself.

Finally, Esther held her hands up for attention. “As far as we can tell,” she said, “the blight first appeared about three years ago, in the wild.”

“But if you’ve known for three years—” someone began.

“We haven’t,” Esther said, shaking her head. “We realized what was happening only a few weeks ago.”

“But you just said—”

Esther silenced the speaker with a glance. “Let me explain. First, as I’m sure you know, all Trilobur plants die after a year or two. Like many plants, they go to seed and die, and the seeds produce a new generation. That means that there are always hundreds or thousands of dead and dying Trilobur plants. A few more in the wild aren’t easy to notice.”

She looked around the table to make sure everyone understood.

“The difference,” she went on, “is that the blight causes them to die before they go to seed. Where the blight strikes, there is no new generation. Worse, the land where the blight strikes is forever poisoned to Trilobur. Other plants will grow there, but Trilobur will not. And the blight spreads to surrounding areas, or so it did in the olden days. Nothing anyone did could stop it—until someone thought of fire. Cleansing by fire.”

Esther paused, looking toward Enit and waiting until his hopping ceased.

“The flames apparently not only destroyed the blighted plants,” she went on. “They also burned away the poison. Once an area was cleansed by fire, newly planted Trilobur grew as well as it had before the blight.”

“So we must find the blighted areas and burn them out,” someone said, giving voice to what Olivia was already thinking.

But Esther shook her head. “It is not that simple this time. Those early blights, we are told, each began in a single area and spread out from there, season by season. Once a blighted area was discovered, it was simple to burn it out and keep close watch in all nearby areas. When the first sign of premature wilting appeared in a nearby patch, that patch was set afire.”

She paused, looking grimly around the group

while Enit once again caught up. “This time, that will not work. For one thing, the lack of rain in recent weeks has made many areas too dry to safely set fires. It’s extremely fortunate that none of the fires already set have gotten out of control. But more importantly, the blight this time is following no pattern that anyone can see. It didn’t start at a single point and spread outward from that point. Instead, it appears to be springing up at random wherever it chooses. There are already a dozen areas that we know about, from Blackwood Flats to Windy Point, and I fear there may be many more.”

“But why does it act so differently this time?” someone asked.

The wiry, gray-haired woman looked around the table once again.

“That is precisely the question we hope to answer. It is the question we must answer if Trilobur is to survive. And all of you will play a vital part in answering

it.”

Olivia’s head was still spinning as she and Albert and the rest emerged into the sunshine outside Round Table Hall. Early the next morning, they and dozens of others would be heading out to different parts of the island, from Windy Point in the north to Sauropolis in the south, wherever Trilobur was known to grow. It would be like the spot check that had just been interrupted. But this time their observations

would have to be even more detailed, more complete. As a result, they would work in groups of four, two humans and two saurians in each. If one pair missed something, it was hoped that the other would pick it up.

Once all the information was collected and brought back, Esther, the Partners, and other scientists would analyze it.

Then, if everyone was smart enough—and lucky enough—they would be able to figure out what was causing the blight.

And how to stop it.

The thought that she would have a hand in this effort sent a shiver up Olivia’s spine.

At the same time, she couldn’t help but worry that she would miss something. She was really glad she’d been paired with Albert. He never missed anything.

A waiting guide led their group east to the Rosy Morning Promenade, which ran north along the edge of Cloudbottom Gorge itself. The faint rumble that Olivia had heard inside grew now to a deafening roar as countless tons of water poured over White Curtain Falls into the gorge. Olivia sighed enviously at the thought of those who lived and worked in Waterfall City and could see such magnificent things whenever they wished.

Although, she told herself, it was no more beautiful than a sunrise in the forest or the jungle. It was just a different beauty, a different face of nature. And

a noisier one, now that she thought about it.

At the far end of the promenade, the guide turned right onto the Bridge of the “Winds, leading them over the smaller but still spectacular Gateway Falls. On the far side was the huge, castlelike Haven of the Muses, where they would all spend the night.

Quite a change, she thought with an appreciative grin, after all those days sleeping on open ground. Better take advantage of it and get a good night’s sleep. It’ll be back to roughing it tomorrow.

That evening she found herself having similar thoughts, but now they were about food rather than sleep. In the Haven’s banquet hall, the visitors were served a meal the likes of which she had never imagined, let alone seen. Some of the guests, most notably Albert, picked and chose and ate only a few dishes. Olivia, however, enthusiastically sampled virtually every dish that was offered. Often, despite Albert’s repeated warnings, she did more than just sample.

A few hours later, as she tossed and turned in her dormitory bed, she regretted it. An exceedingly full stomach, she found, did not make for easy sleep. And a stomach full of unfamiliar dishes was even worse.

The nearby falls dumping countless tons of water into Cloudbottom Gorge didn’t help, either. No matter how beautiful they had looked during the day, they were now a huge noise machine that made sleep almost impossible.

Even when she did manage to fall asleep, the sounds invaded her dreams. More than once she woke from nightmares in which the entire Haven crumbled and was carried over the falls like a rudderless boat.

It was times like this that she envied those who could sleep an entire night without a single dream. Usually her dreams were fun. Each night she had a different adventure. But every so often there were nights like this, when her dreams turned nasty and all she wanted was to sleep undisturbed.

When morning finally arrived, the building still stood. Olivia, however, had permanently lost all desire to live in Waterfall City.

“I’d never get another decent nights sleep my whole life,” she grumbled to Albert as they emerged into the morning sunlight and headed back across the Bridge of the Winds.

“Oh, this is nothing,” he said with a quiet chuckle. “You should be here when the Polongo is high. The falls are really spectacular then.”

Olivia made a face. “They’re quite noisy enough as they are, thank you very much.”

“You’d get used to it,” he said with a laugh. “Believe me, I know. I lived here several months a few years ago, and I had no trouble sleeping after the first couple of nights. Besides, not every place is like the Haven. After all, it’s practically in the middle of Cloudbottom. Other places aren’t nearly as noisy.”

She wasn’t sure she believed him, but it probably didn’t matter. There wasn’t much chance she’d ever live here for long.

A few minutes later, they were at Jugglers’ Plaza, on the banks of Mosasaur Harbor. Hightop and the other saurians were already there. The Sauropod Dwelling, where they had spent the night, was only a few hundred yards away.

Esther and the Habitat Partners were waiting as well. They began passing out maps and issuing final instructions the moment Olivia and the others arrived.

“Dimorphodons have already been sent out to the villages, spreading word of the situation,” Esther said. “The message they carry is, of course, short and uncomplicated, so you will have to explain matters to the villagers in much greater detail. The message instructs the villagers to start a continuous watch on the plants in their area. That way, if anything unusual happens before you arrive, they can tell you about it. And once you have fully explained things to them, they can continue observing after you leave. This will, we hope, give us thousands of pairs of eyes in addition to your

own.”

Esther paused and motioned toward a man standing next to a large cart a dozen yards away. The man spoke quietly to the Pachycephalosaurus hitched to it and the saurian, drab green and tan except for its pinkish head, pulled the cart over to the group.

When they’d stopped next to Esther, the man reached into the cart and lifted out a basket. Something inside the basket was making fluttering noises.

“Each group will be given one of these,” Esther said as a Dimorphodon poked its head over the edge of the basket. “They are not for routine reports. Send them back only if you come across something you feel the Partners and I should be told of immediately?

A tingle of excitement swept over Olivia at Esther’s words. Dimorphodons were not given out lightly. Which meant…

Which meant Esther and the Partners thought it at least possible that someone would find something really important.

Something like the solution to the mystery of the blight?

Olivia shook her head sharply, trying to dislodge such unrealistic thoughts. But no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t completely drive them out. It was too exciting!

Then one of the baskets and its fluttering cargo was being settled cozily behind Thunderfoot’s huge crest, and they were ready to go.

The next few days, Olivia thought with a shiver, were going to be very nervous-making.





CHAPTER 6


Together with another group, Olivia and Albert and their saurian companions headed north through the heavily forested Polongo Valley. For the first few miles, they skirted Hadro Swamp. As on the inbound trip, Olivia broke into an eye-watering fit of sneezing every few hours. Whatever was causing it must be everywhere, she thought with a shudder. After the second fit, she took to keeping a cloth constantly wet, ready to pop over her face the moment her eyes started itching or watering.

Their traveling companions were Carlton and Indira and a pair of playful Triceratops named Grundle and Hoover. They weren’t together for long, however. On the second day, the other group turned to the northwest, toward their assigned area around Volcaeum.

Hightop gave a relieved snort when they were out of earshot. He had not enjoyed the Triceratops’ games, particularly when they turned into gentle roughhousing. “Creatures like that have far too many

sharp points for my taste,” he honked softly.

Olivia and Albert continued north, then northeast toward Chimeerney. The further they went, the more concerned they became about the fires Esther had said were being set all over Dinotopia. Hadro Swamp and the jungle areas closer to the Polongo River were in little danger, but here there was increasing reason for worry. What rain had fallen in recent weeks had been spotty at best. Many villages had had none at all. The land might not all be tinder-dry, but several areas were very close.

Early the next day, they came to Gundagai, the first of the tiny villages in their assigned area. At least half the population came running out to greet them as they approached.

“Are you the ones the Dimorphodon told us would be coming?” three or four villagers tried to ask at once. Obviously the Dimorphodons had done their job well.

“We are,” Albert admitted, and they were taken immediately to the village’s sizable Trilobur patch.

Like most such patches, it looked more like a small field of weeds than a garden. There were no neat rows or any organization at all. Most likely it had started when the villagers found a single plant or two and then “encouraged” them. Usually this meant clearing the immediate area of other plants and letting nature take its course.

After a few years you had a patch like this one,

and you could begin harvesting the leaves and roots.

“I tend the patch,” a young man named Barlow said proudly. “There is no blight here.”

And there wasn’t

Even so, Albert and Olivia each filled several sheets in their scrollbooks. Albert drew a precise map showing the names and locations of more than two dozen other types of plants in and around the patch.

Olivia was surprised to find several of the almost-Trilobur plants she’d found in the ravine in the jungle. She’d never seen them anywhere before, but now here they were, in a second spot several miles from the first.

Were they related to the Triloburs, she wondered? They were just beginning to bud, as were the dozen or so real Triloburs. From the look of them, they’d both start pollinating in ten or twelve days. After that, it would be another week or two until it was time to harvest the Trilobur roots.

The next village was Narandra, where a tall blond man named Gunnarson took them proudly to a neatly kept Trilobur patch. It was so neatly kept, in fact, that it held only Trilobur. There was nothing else, not even a weed. Albert was barely able to fill two sheets in his scrollbook. And there was certainly no sign of the blight.

And so it went for three days, as they zigzagged back and forth through the forests and meadows, hitting a tiny village here, an isolated patch in a forest clearing there.

Until, early on the fourth day, they came to Collicos.

The narrow trail they were on widened and turned into a rough dirt road. At the same time, the forest opened out into a clearing two or three hundred yards across. In the center lay the dozen small, thatched-roof houses of Collicos. Ten or fifteen miles distant on the left, the towers of Volcaneum were visible on their snowy mountaintop. A cloud of steam drifted up from the crater that shared the mountaintop with the city.

Olivia looked around as they approached the little village. Why wasn’t anyone coming out to greet them?

Surely they had felt Thunderfoot’s approach, she thought with a grin. After the first village, the normally heavy-footed Chasmosaurus had taken to being even more so—probably a trick he had picked up from Grundle and Hoover. From then on, whenever they drew near a village, he would start stomping his feet as he walked. Just to make sure their arrival was noticed, Olivia assumed, which was all right with her.

Had Esther’s Dimorphodons missed this vi