"Really?" Zann leaped to his feet. "Where?"
"Come, I'll show you!" The nomad was already rushing out again.
When Zann and his friends burst out of the cave, the nomad was whistling for the hoof beasts, which were still grazing nearby.
Several of the beasts trotted over.
"Did you find both Gliss and Wyssa, or just one of them?" Perda asked as she climbed onto one of the hoof beasts.
"I'm not sure," the nomad messenger admitted.
"My group of searchers was nearing an area where there are several deep caves.
Ripples of magic energy were coming from that direction.
We assumed it was coming from your friends.
The others continued on while I returned to fetch you."
"Are you sure it wasn't Morb sending out the energy?" Zann asked.
The messenger grimaced.
"Quite sure. We saw him atop the Seeing Stone when we passed.
Luckily he didn't notice us."
Soon Zann, Perda, Darb, and several nomads were galloping across the desert.
The messenger led them to some rocky hills.
Two nomads were crouched by a large, dark hole in the side of a big hill.
One of them turned when she heard Zann and the others coming.
Her face was ashen. "She's in trouble!" the nomad called. "Hurry!"
Zann jumped off his hoof beast and ran to the mouth of the cave.
He gasped when he looked inside.
Just inside the cave was a deep, wide pit.
Looking down, Zann saw Wyssa.
She was standing on a huge boulder.
All around her, filling every bit of the floor, were hundreds of cave hissers!
Zann felt his blood run cold.
Cave hissers were among the most dangerous creatures in all of Magica.
They lived underground, and their bite could immobilize even a large dragon.
"Oh, no!" Perda cried as she knelt beside Zann.
"Can those hissers reach her?"
"Not quite," a nomad said grimly.
"But she can't reach us either."
"Why can't she just levitate out?" Perda said.
"Or magically immobilize the hissers so she can get by?"
Wyssa had heard them by now.
She squinted up at Perda with a frown.
"I tried both those things, but my magic isn't working," she snapped.
"Do you have any other brilliant ideas, girl?"
"The lower half of this cave seems to be a natural vacuum," a nomad said.
Now Zann understood the problem. Magic didn't work in a vacuum.
Wyssa was still staring up at them.
"If I had all of my potions and ingredients, I could blast these hissers into oblivion."
Zann nodded. Wyssa came from a world with little natural magic.
Her people had learned to combine various ingredients to create magic energy.
Once she'd even managed to open a wormhole in a world with no magic at all!
"Maybe we can find the ingredients you need," Zann said.
A nomad cleared her throat.
"I don't think there will be time for that." She pointed.
The cave hissers were piling atop one another.
"What are they doing?" Zann asked.
"They're forming a pyramid," Darb said.
"I've heard that hissers will cooperate with one another to reach—" He gulped. "Food."
Zann gulped too. They didn't have time to look for magical ingredients.
If they didn't figure out how to get Wyssa out of there soon, she would become the cave hissers' lunch!
He glanced around, desperate for ideas.
His gaze fell on the hoof beasts standing nearby.
A couple of them had the nomads' long lassoes looped around their necks.
"I know!" Zann exclaimed.
"We can pull Wyssa out with your ropes! They're strong enough, right?"
A nomad nodded. "Strong enough, yes. But not long enough."
"That's okay." Zann grabbed a couple of the lassoes.
"We'll tie them together."
Soon the lassoes formed one long rope.
But when Zann tried to toss it to Wyssa, he couldn't get it to land anywhere near her.
Wyssa was too far away from the cave mouth.
A couple of the nomads tried too, but it was no use.
The end of the rope kept falling onto the hissers.
On one try, a hisser clung to the rope, and the nomad struggled to shake it off.
"This isn't working!" Perda cried. "We need a new plan."
Zann bit his lip. How could they get the end of the rope out to Wyssa?
He studied the cave. A large stalactite hung down right above the pit.
"If I could get out there and hang on, I could lower the rope to Wyssa," he said, thinking aloud.
"Then the rest of you could pull us both out."
"What?" Darb looked out at the stalactite.
"How are you going to get there?"
Zann shrugged. "I think I can jump that far."
Perda looked alarmed. "What if you miss?"
Zann tied the rope around his waist.
"I'll keep the rope short enough so that if I do miss, I can't fall all the way down."
"It seems dangerous," a nomad argued.
"There must be another way."
Zann glanced down just in time to see Wyssa kick a cave hisser off the top of the boulder.
Others were creeping toward her feet.
"There's no time," Zann said. "I'll be fine."
The others tied their end of the rope to a sturdy rock.
Zann took a deep breath, trying to gauge the distance out to the stalactite.
Could he do this?
He took a running start and leaped.
He reached the stalactite.
"I did it!" he cried.
"I—" Suddenly he felt his grip slipping.
He began to slide downward and clawed furiously at the slippery rock.
"Levitate!" he cried without thinking.
"Zann, no magic!" Perda yelled.
It was too late.
Zann's magic energy bounced against the vacuum below.
Bam!