The Ancient Lands: Warrior Quest, Search for the Ifa Scepter by Jason McCammon Page B

turn.
    “Bomani!”
    “Keep your head down!” Bomani instructed
her.
    “But, Bomani, there’s a whirlpool up ahead,”
Farra yelled over the sound of the noisy rapids that moved nearby.
Suddenly the water stirred them into a full-fledged whirlpool. They
both grabbed an oar and desperately tried to turn the boat away
from the powerful current that pulled them closer to the forceful
vortex.
    “If we can manage to stay clear of its pull,
maybe the ogres will fall into it,” Bomani said fighting against
the water with his oar.
    The ogres took up oars at the site of the
whirlpool. At first they panicked and toppled over one another in
their boats, too clumsily to manage it; but they quickly fell into
sync, and barely guided their boats away before the current over
took them.
    Bomani and Farra, however, did not have
strength to steer their boat clear of the angry waters. They looked
at the whirlpool desperately. It looked like a hungry black hole,
and as the current of the whirlpool picked up speed, they realized
that there was no way to escape its grasp.
    Farra looked down at Pupa apologetically.
She wanted to tell Bomani that she was sorry for throwing the rune
into the river, but it was all happening so fast, that she couldn’t
speak. Besides, she was not even sure why she had thrown it into
the river, or what she expected to come from it.
    But it was as if she had been compelled to
throw it, as if it wanted her to. All of that didn’t matter
now, for the whirlpool showed no sign of slowing down, and in spite
of their efforts, they could not change its direction, or change
their fate. And so the three of them, Bomani, Farra, and Pupa along
with the boat were swallowed by the center of the whirlpool and
they all disappeared beneath the water.
     
     
    Once the whirlpool had its meal, it seamed
to be satisfied, for the water stopped spinning, and in one quick
instance it was as calm as before. The bewildered ogres drifted
over to the spot where the water had taken the children, and they
looked about in confusion.
    “What happened to dem?” said an ogre.
    “Dunno,” replied another. “Me think them
drowning.”
    “Look and see.” Commanded the first ogre. He
pointed a stubby finger caked with mud and hair toward the
water.
    The second ogre reached down into the water,
and he wriggled his thick, dirty, fingers inside. “Hey children,
you drowning down dere?”
    A fish swam by and took notice of what
looked to it like a lovely meal moving about in the water and bit
down on the ogre’s finger.
    “Owww!” the ogre yelled. He yanked his hand
back and rocked himself back and forth in the boat, soothing his
fingers in his mouth.
    “Fine then, you stay drowneded!” He turned
to another ogre, and complained. “See what happen when me try to be
nice and help?”
    “That why me always true to self,” the other
responded. The second ogre nodded and agreed, and he nursed his
finger like a simpleton, as the baffled ogres drifted away.
     
     
     
    XIV FIRE AND
WATER
     

     
    It was dark. Extremely dark, very dark,
pitch-dark dark. They sped through the darkness along an
underground river, their boat totally submissive to the will of the
tunnel and where it wanted to take them. The river twisted and
turned through the belly of the cavern, carrying them swiftly
through this obscurity at full speed. Farra held on to Bomani
tightly, and Pupa nestled into the crook of Farra’s arm, while
Bomani held on to the boat securely with every turn as the obedient
boat rode the stream. And though he would not admit it, Bomani was
glad that Farra had come along.
    The pace of the current began to slow down.
Gradually the darkness began to give way to a faint red glow at the
end of the tunnel, making it just barely possible to see looming
silhouettes of the shapes around them. The light slowly spread
along the walls of the cave. It revealed the deep, knotted, roots,
which hung overhead from the trees above land and outlined the
cavern