The twelve raced down from the battlements, down the narrow stone stairways, which shook beneath their feet. Awestruck soldiers parted to let them pass.
The gate was built of massive tree trunks. It was as powerful as any physical thing could be. Nevertheless, it would stand for only a few more minutes before the onslaught.
Pikemen and archers, trained for just this moment, formed a semicircle around the Magnificent Twelve. Ten strong men had been given the job of swinging the gate open. Drupe and two other great witches would be there to help them close it again. But they all knew that it would be a near thing and the enemy would pour through even as the twelve rushed out.
All stood at the ready.
Miladew smiled a shaky smile and nodded at Grimluk. “Lead us, Grimluk.”
Grimluk closed his eyes and formed a picture of Gelidberry and the baby. It suddenly occurred to him that he had a good name for the baby.
“Victory,” Grimluk said.
“Victory or death!” Bruise shouted.
“Yeah,” Grimluk said less enthusiastically. “Or death.”
Then, in a clear if nervous voice, he cried, “Throw open the gate!”
The gate wasn’t so much thrown open as hauled.
Vargran spells flew. The enemy surged. And Grimluk led the Magnificent Twelve straight into the teeth of foes as numerous as the stars.
Twenty-one
Looming ahead, larger and larger, was the rock. Ayers Rock. Uluru.
It sat there like the world’s biggest blood blister. All around, in every direction, the land was flat. But there, for no good reason, was this massive, incredible brown-red rock.
If by “rock,” you mean “mountain.” Or at least, “squashed, flat-topped mountain.”
“They say it just dropped out of the sky,” Jarrah explained, shouting to be heard.
“Who says?”
“The people it belongs to. The people who lived here long before Europeans showed up. Mum’s people. My people, too, partly.”
Karri looked up from her laptop to say, “It’s an inselberg. It’s what’s left after a much bigger mountain has eroded. It’s the hard core of an ancient mountain. The real mystery is not how the rock got here, but how the people did.”
“Why is that a mystery?” Mack asked.
“The Indigenous peoples have been here for at least forty thousand years. You may have noticed Australia’s an island. So how did they get here thousands of years before anyone had learned to sail? And once they got here, why did they seem to forget how to use the sea? Why did they come to live in the most desolate place on earth?”
Mack pondered this while he stared at the rock. They were moving again, getting closer. Jarrah was driving at a somewhat more reasonable speed, and they were now circumnavigating the rock.
“It seems…,” Mack started to say. Then he couldn’t think of quite what it seemed.
“It seems familiar,” Jarrah said.
“Yeah,” Mack agreed, surprised.
“Like it’s something you remember but you’ve never seen it before. Like maybe it was in some dream you had and forgot. But even that’s not quite it. More like this place is deep down inside your head. Like it’s down in your DNA.”
“Yeah. That’s exactly it,” Mack said, frowning.
Jarrah winked at him. “Most people—people who aren’t complete nongs, anyway—feel that way.”
They stopped when they reached a small camp. There were three dusty tents and half a dozen vehicles. The camp was at a respectful distance from the thousand-foot-high wall of Uluru.