"What do you mean?" Perda asked Maff. "How can it be your fault?"
"Yeah, we're the ones who rescued Morb from that houseboat," Zann added.
"But I was the one who created the houseboat," Maff told them.
"What?" Gliss exclaimed. "How?"
Maff sighed. "I didn't want Wyssa to kill my brother," he said.
"I know what Morb did. I know he deserved his fate. But he's my brother." His eyes had a faraway look.
"Maybe if my brothers and sisters and I had been a little nicer to him, things would have been different.
We should have included him more often, even though he was a Void . . ."
Zann glanced at his friends. "Okay," he said. "But how did you stop Wyssa from doing what she planned to do?"
Maff blinked. "Oh. That was easier than I expected. When she left Magica with Morb, I tracked her through the vortex."
"You did?" Perda said. "How?"
Maff shrugged. "I've made a lifelong study of off-world magic," he said. "I used a difficult spell."
Zann nodded. He guessed that Maff was a very powerful Red.
Otherwise he wouldn't be hanging around at the palace with Venna and the other important people in First City.
"I expected the spell to lead me to Fardark," Maff went on. "That's a terrible world where—"
"We know," Zann broke in. "We've been there."
Perda shuddered. "Yes. Wyssa had threatened to feed Morb to a scatter beast."
"I thought that was her plan too," Maff said. "But instead I ended up on Skellia."
"So Ello—I mean Morb—was telling us the truth?" Gliss asked.
"Wyssa brought Morb along when she rescued the Skellian people?"
"Not exactly," Maff said. "Apparently she left him immobilized in an unpopulated world while she transported the Skellians to their new home.
Then she retrieved Morb and brought him to Skellia."
"Why?" Zann asked. "Did she want to feed him to a gulper?"
Maff smiled faintly. "I doubt a gulper would be interested. Morb had no magic left."
"Right," Darb said. "Gulpers eat magic. Morb was back to being a Void."
Maff nodded. "Wyssa had decided that a scatter beast would provide too quick and merciful an end to Morb," he said.
"So she decided to strand him on Skellia. She'd discovered that Morb is terrified of deep water and can't swim."
"Oh!" Now Zann understood Wyssa's plan. "So she left him there with no magic, which means no way to reach a wormhole or navigate the vortex."
"Exactly," Maff confirmed. "There was only a small island left, and the waters were still rising.
She knew that eventually he would drown, but that he'd have plenty of time to ponder his own demise in the meantime."
"Wow, that's horrible," Gliss said. She glanced at the others. "Even for Morb."
"Yeah." Zann shuddered. "So then you found him there?" he asked Maff.
"That's right," Maff said. "He begged me to take him away from Skellia.
I wouldn't do that—he still had to pay for his crimes.
But I couldn't help taking pity on him. I didn't want him to die."
"So you created that houseboat," Zann said.
"Yes. I also provided him with a pair of infused gloves.
They contained just enough self-refreshing magic to allow Morb to create food and other basic necessities."
"Self-refreshing magic?" Perda sounded curious. "What do you mean?"
"It's a very simple type of off-world magic," Maff explained. "It's rather weak though.
That's why I chose it, given Morb's, er, talents for manipulating magic."
"Wow," Gliss said. "Now a bunch of stuff makes a lot more sense."
"But not all of it," Zann added. "Morb only had a weak pair of infused gloves.
So how was he able to do Masking spells and send me weird messages from another world?"
"Good question," Perda said. "Masking spells take a lot of magic energy. At least that's what the books say.
And who knows what kind of spell he used to communicate with Zann."
"I have no idea." Maff shrugged. "I thought I'd considered every possibility, but clearly my brother is even cleverer than I realized.
He must have harnessed some sort of native Skellian magic source to increase the gloves' power."
"Maybe he caught a gulper or something," Perda suggested.
Darb winced. "I hope not," he said. "Or if he did, I hope he treated it better than he did those blue leeches he brought here."
Zann was a little surprised that Darb was so concerned about the gulpers, which were kind of scary.
But Darb did love all animals, from panic bugs to the biggest, nastiest dragons.
"This is looking bad," Gliss declared in a shaky voice. "We have to tell someone that Morb is on the loose!"
"Who can we tell?" Perda said. "First City is in chaos. Nobody even knows where the king and queen have gone!"
"Yeah, and my parents and Boz wouldn't even listen to us," Zann said.
"That is, before they got tossed in the dungeon."
He looked at Maff. "Do you think you could get us in to see them?"
"Are you sure that's a good idea?" Gliss said. "What if the guards throw us in a cell too?"
"It might be worth the risk," Maff said. "Boz and Teplo might have a good idea for stopping Morb."
"You mean you don't know how to stop him?" Perda said.
Maff shook his head and looked grim.
"I'm sorry, I don't. But I'm willing to do whatever it takes if someone else has a plan."
Zann stared at Maff in alarm. If Morb's own brother didn't know how to stop him, what chance did they have?
But he tried not to lose hope. "Okay, let's go to the dungeon," he said.