Peter and the Sword of Mercy

ALSO BY DAVE BARRY AND RIDLEY PEARSON

Peter and the Starcatchers

Peter and the Shadow Thieves

Peter and the Secret of Rundoon

Escape from the Carnivale

Cave of the Dark Wind

Blood Tide

Science Fair

ALSO BY RIDLEY PEARSON

Kingdom Keepers—Disney After Dark

Kingdom Keepers II—Disney at Dawn

Kingdom Keepers III—Disney in Shadow

Steel Trapp—The Challenge

All rights reserved. Published by Disney • Hyperion Books, an imprint of Disney
Book Group. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form
or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording,
or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission
from the publisher.

For information address Disney • Hyperion Books, 114 Fifth Avenue, New York,
New York, 10011-5690.

Printed in the United States of America

First Edition

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data on file.

Reinforced binding

ISBN 978-1-4231-4091-7

Visit
www.hyperionbooksforchildren.com

A
CKNOWLEDGMENTS

First, we thank all the readers—especially the young readers—who kept asking us to write another Starcatchers book. We really hadn’t planned to, but you talked us into it, and we’re very happy you did. It was great fun to bring the familiar characters back, and to introduce them to some new ones.

We appreciate all the great people at Disney • Hyperion Books, especially our wise and ever supportive editor, Wendy Lefkon, and our unflappable publicist, Jennifer Levine. We promise them that at future book-signing events, we will try to make sure that there are no snakes.

We salute the amazing, brilliant, ever enthusiastic archaeologist Patrick Hunt of Stanford University for digging around the world of swords and museums for us. That there’s a character in this book named Patrick Hunt is, of course, purely coincidental. We also thank Sam Thomas of the London Underground Customer Service Center for helping us with historical research for scenes set in the Underground. Any inaccuracies in those scenes, or any others, are completely our fault.

We thank Judi Smith for her diligent research and ruthless proofreading.

And hats off to our wives, Michelle Kaufman and Marcelle Pearson, for letting us do this instead of getting real jobs.

T
ABLE OF
C
ONTENTS

Title Page

P
ROLOGUE
P
ART 1:
The Sword

P
ROLOGUE
P
ART 2:
The Eyes

C
HAPTER
1:
Disappearance

C
HAPTER
2:
The Skeleton

C
HAPTER
3:
The Visitor

C
HAPTER
4:
The Rescue

C
HAPTER
5:
Revile’s Report

C
HAPTER
6:
Molly Goes Looking