Nightrise

get up and run away but he wouldn't have been able to move even if he had tried. Scar was lying on her stomach, her hand resting on her sword. She didn't look scared. She looked angry.
    What was this place? First the man-scorpion, now this. What sort of nightmare had he landed himself in?
    And then it was as if a decision had been made. The leader kicked at his horse — a horse that was in fact a part of him, part of the swarm from which he had come — and they jolted forward. The rest of the troop followed. Jamie saw them ride for about ten paces before — at the same instant — they all came apart again, separating into a million tiny pieces and dissolving into the air. Once again they were nothing more than flies, a huge cloud of them hanging over the ground. Then they were swept away as if by the wind and a moment later they were gone.
    "Drink!" Finn nodded at Jamie, who was still holding the water bottle. He was squeezing it so hard, he was surprised it hadn't burst. He thought for a moment, then shook his head and handed it back. He was still thirsty but he doubted his ability to swallow anything. His entire body felt stretched. His heart was pounding and he had to concentrate to stop himself trembling in front of the others. Part of him knew that Sapling wouldn't have been afraid.
    "The enemy is gathering for the last fight," Finn said. "The end of the war."
    Scar nodded. "Will they attack tonight?"
    "Who can say?" Finn thought for a moment as he clipped the water bottle back onto his belt. "They believe they have already won. They will be too busy congratulating themselves. They'll wait for the morning light."
    "If we don't hurry, it'll be morning before we even get home." Scar pulled her horse up onto its feet.
    "Let's move."
    The others allowed their own horses to stand up, then they mounted and set off once again, moving —
    much to Jamie's dismay — in the same direction that the fly soldiers had just taken. But by the time they reached the brow of the hill, there was no sign of them. If they were still flying over the vast landscape, there wasn't enough light left to see them.
    But now .there were buildings. Looking down into a valley, Jamie saw that they had come to a small town, hexagonal in shape, surrounded by walls with oddly shaped towers at the corners. It was impossible to say when the town had been built. It looked new. And yet most of the buildings were low-rise and there were no modern roads, no evidence of traffic or urban life. Everything seemed to have been constructed around an interlocking system of waterways with narrow footbridges leading from one side to another.
    The City of Canals. But it was no city and the water had been drained out of the canals. As they rode down the hill-side Jamie realized that the place had been almost completely destroyed. The surrounding walls were breached. In places it had collapsed. There were scorch marks suggesting a recent fire.
    Perhaps this was the source of the smoke that had spread out across the sky, swallowing the sun.
    They rode through the remains of an entrance shaped like a giant keyhole, and at once Jamie saw the scale of the devastation. Broken doorways, shattered walls, burnt grass and trees that had been reduced to stumps. The canals were full of rubble. He tried to picture what this city might once have been like but it was simply beyond him. Most of the buildings had been made of red brick with roofs of terra-cotta tiles. The pathways had been brightly colored, finished with mosaic. But the simple truth was that no city like this had ever existed in America, and even at school, looking in picture books, he had never seen anything like it. It wasn't modern. It wasn't medieval. For the first time, Jamie began to wonder if he was even on the planet Earth.
    They followed a street between the remains of two matching pagodas and entered a wide, empty area.
    Ahead of them stood a circular temple — it could surely be nothing else — with white columns placed evenly around it, supporting a dome-shaped roof. A series of arches stood left and right in the square, part of a system of aqueducts. These had once brought water into the city but now there wasn't any left to bring. There were two fountains, one on either side of the temple, and a series of flower beds that would have made this a pleasant place to walk. But everything had been destroyed. Some of the columns had been smashed, there were great holes in the temple roof, the