The Key Read Online Free PDF Page A

tumbled boulders. At some point back in history, the side of the mountain had crumbled. The other sides were all still nearly vertical cliff. But this side offered some possibilities for ascent.
    So Jarrah held Stefan’s hand and guided him every step of the way with comments like, “Here you go, upsy-daisy, eh?” And, “Come on then, mate, just jump it.” And, “Nah, you won’t fall more than twenty feet, and that’s nothing.”
    â€œI could fly up there in two seconds,” Xiao muttered. “Stupid treaties. Like I would be any kind of threat to those big, leathery, murderous, fire-breathing western dragons.”
    â€œStill, it is a sort of law,” Dietmar said. “And we must obey the law.”
    That remark seemed to lessen Xiao’s affection for Dietmar substantially. Xiao could get a very hard look in her eyes and set a very determined jaw when you annoyed her.
    Mack brought up the rear, stepping cautiously and gazing up anxiously every few seconds to see just how little progress they had made. It was also his job as the leader to think of a plan for dealing with MacGuffin once they found him. So far his plan was to ask him very politely if they could have the Key, and would he mind releasing the Begonia clan’s All-Mother.
    He did have one other idea. He yelled to Jarrah, who was at that moment in midair between boulders. “Jarrah, make sure your mom gets you the latest Vargran.”
    â€œDone,” Jarrah said. She landed like a cat, stood up, pulled out her iPhone, and pointed to it with her free hand. “Nothing new: Mother is on holiday with Dad.” Then she was knocked over by Stefan, who had come to kind of like jumping over invisible boulders. From his point of view he was climbing in midair.
    Vargran was the magical language, long forgotten, and only really useful to those very few who were born with the enlightened puissance . Jarrah’s mother was an archaeologist in Australia, where she had discovered some bits and pieces of Vargran carved into a cave wall inside the massive rock known as Uluru.
    So far they had learned that Vargran had sounds that included a throat-clearing sound ( ch ), a click, and a sniff, as well as more normal consonants and vowels. And they had learned that Vargran had four basic verb forms: infinitive, past, future, and or else.
    Generally magical spells involved the “or else” tense, which added a ma on the end.
    To date they had used Vargran to make a small sun, to cause blue-cheese-filled Lepercons to grow, and to go shopping at Harrods department store, although they hadn’t really intended that last one.
    The whole experience had not been very satisfying. Which was why they needed the Key. With MacGuffin’s key matched to the earlier piece of the key—the part they’d obtained from the goddess Nott—they would be able to learn a whole lot more Vargran. The language was, after all, their only weapon, and they didn’t have a lot of time left to assemble the rest of the twelve, somehow convince the traitorous Magnifica Valin to switch sides, and stop the Pale Queen. They needed Vargran. And no: there was no app for that.
    About halfway up the mountain they had a lucky break: a stairway, carved into the cliff face. It had once gone all the way down, but when the mountain collapsed, so had the bottom half of the staircase—a fact that made Mack a bit nervous as he climbed his weary way up the narrow, overly tall steps.
    It was a good thing they found the stairs because the sun was setting and casting very long, deep shadows all around them, turning every jagged rock into a monster’s head. (Not literally, that was a simile. Or possibly a metaphor. One of those.)
    The staircase ended in a stone guardhouse. To their immense relief there was a fountain spouting what they fervently hoped was water. It wasn’t warm in Scotland, but it was humid, and they were all sweating