Briar Blackwood's Grimmest of Fairytales (21 page)

Briar landed feet-first into a bundle of sticky fibers and discovered that there was no place to stand; she was suspended up to her chin within the stringy mass. And try as she could to lift her arms or move her feet, her actions only served to sink her deeper into the knot. The only bit of light trickling into the deep darkness came from the trap door embedded high in the cave ceiling, and the small shaft of indirect light was not enough to help Briar understand on what they had landed.

“Rose roots!” Tarfeather shouted. He yelled the words with such alarm that he might as well have said, “hand grenades!” He had landed atop the heap. But because he was too light for the tendrils to grab him, he rolled himself far away and landed on solid stone.

“What the—?” Dax yelled. He landed flat next to Sherman on top of the root heap, so neither of them had sunk down into the
sticky tangle.

“Rollery off,” Tarfeather shouted. Dax took Sherman's paw and pulled him as he rolled to one side. It felt as though they were stuck to flypaper and his already tattered clothing from the ball finally ripped to pieces as he rolled away. Sherman gritted his teeth and groaned. His fur pulled out in several small clumps as he rolled off onto the stone floor.

He stood and made a gesture with his paws that left an intricate hologram design of silvery light hanging in the air before his face. The hologram merged into a single glowing ball that floated toward Briar. Sherman stood on the edge of the mound with his eyes closed, and he seemed to direct the light with his upraised hands.

Briar felt something like pinpricks, tiny and sharp, begin to invade her skin. She realized it was the roots, seeking nutrients. One of them crept and wound itself up over her face. Then it began to burrow into her ear.

“Sherman, help!” she shouted.

The glowing light began to drift above Briar and they could all see the rose roots, just as Tarfeather had warned. It was a tangle of hairy looking filaments, thick as fingers. They covered all but the crown of Briar's head, which stuck out of the top of the mound. Bones and skulls of various creatures, brown with age, were scattered across the floor and mixed into the root knot.

“The prince,” Tarfeather shouted. “Where is he?”

“And Leon?” Dax asked.

“I'm here,” Leon shouted back to the group. He was standing lightly atop Briar's head. He strained with his small flippers to pull the roots from her ear.

“Leon, jump off,” Briar yelled at him. But as soon as she opened her mouth, a root entered and began to explore the inside of her cheek, pricking with its sharp ends. She screamed and began to struggle. She sank lower until her face slipped out of view.

“Briar! No!” Leon shouted.

“Sherman, do something!” Dax pleaded.

Sherman shouted to Leon. “Remove yourself at once!” His slimy skin slid past the sticky roots and he could easily hop from limb to limb until he reached the solid floor.

Quickly, Sherman made another gesture, as though sculpting something in midair. Then he slammed the invisible sculpture onto the floor. In response to his movements, the ball of light changed into a pair of ghostly gardening shears that suddenly dove into the root mass and started snipping pieces away.

The roots receded quickly, as though Sherman's enchantment were poison to it. The glowing scissors cut through roots, causing them to ooze a blood-red sap. Sherman kept his eyes closed and he continued to pantomime as though he were holding the shears in his paws. The roots continued to fall away and recede until a gap was opened.

There, on the bare rock below, Briar lay crumpled. Next to her was Valrune, who was on his knees, gasping for air and making gagging sounds. With both hands, he extracted a long root out from his mouth that had crawled down his throat. Dax rushed forward and helped both Briar and Valrune up and limped with them far away from the tangle. Together they collapsed against a cave wall.

Sherman made another gesture and the phantom shears vanished in a puff of glowing silver smoke. Sherman slumped forward, grabbing his side. Dax noticed that blood once again formed stains in his bandages.

The prince sat next to Briar and Leon hopped onto her lap. “Are you all right? Say something,” he said.

Briar coughed up bits of dirt and she rested her head between her knees for a moment. Then she said, “I always thought roses were kind of creepy.”

“Where is Sherman?” Dax asked.

Briar looked down one of the many cavern-tunnels and there,
hobbling away with a slow unsteady gait was the fox. The others stood up and followed, looking one to the other once they noticed the sopping red blood stain in his bandages.

“Sherman, stop,” Briar said.

“We must…keep moving,” the fox said. His voice was becoming labored, but he kept trudging forward.

Tarfeather spoke up. “Temple dwellers makery Dire Liquid. We findery.”

“No,” Sherman replied. “No time left…just the book. Then back home. Poplar has herbs—”

Tarfeather's face looked more withered than before when Sherman refused the obvious help he needed. The others exchanged glances and knew what this could mean for the fox. But no one said anything. Sherman was right. They had only a few hours to find the book. It was a choice that sickened them all: to risk Sherman's life for the sake of the book.

“Sherman, you can't go on like this. You don't even know where to go.” Briar said.

But Sherman kept taking one limp step after another. Briar could not stop him in his duty. There was only one way out. It was to get the book and go home.

“Tarfeather,” Briar said, “lead us to it.”

Chapter 26

Briar and the others walked deep into the winding caverns, hands along the rough fissure walls in order to guide them through the darkness. So as not to get lost or trampled, Leon sat in one of Briar's hands. Sharp, cold, moist stones scraped their fingers as they descended the path. Finally Sherman drew another complex magical pattern in the darkness that erupted into sparks, which fused together and became the giant spider from the birdhouse.

“Mittens—” Briar exclaimed. She was grateful to see something familiar, but then after watching him click around, she thought otherwise. The spider took on its magical glow, which allowed them all to see where they were now, which was inside a cavern full of sharp crystals. Mittens' glow shimmered on the millions of glassy, reflective surfaces, and the whole cavern seemed illuminated. Mittens made an awful ticking noise, loud and abrasive, like it was crunching through the shell of another insect.

“Yes Mittens…happy to see…you too—” Sherman said. Above them, below their feet, in any direction they looked, the shimmer of amethyst, rubies, emeralds, and diamonds played in the glow of the spider's body, and whenever he moved, the jewels seemed to sparkle that much more.

Dax was enamored by the gleaming jewel display. “Cha-ching! What
is
all of this?”

“It's where my father sends prisoners and poachers,” Valrune said. He examined the gems distractedly. “The Priests of the Tales live here in the darkness of the temple caves. They train their initiates here and maintain order among the prisoners.”

“Then where is everyone?” Dax asked.

“Walk—” Sherman said. Then he spoke in the Old Language, guttural and incomprehensible to the others. But Mittens seemed
to understand. It was the same language that Gelid used before she became the black slithering monster. It had a harsh, throaty sound, Briar thought. It also held some strange familiarity that left Briar uneasy. The ghostly spider, listening to Sherman, began to click again, then crawled ahead of them down the path. The group had to hurry to keep up.

Briar kept pace with Sherman, and even tried to help him walk, but he refused.

The further along they paced, the warmer and smokier the cave became. It smelled of sulfur and burning coal—perhaps the smell, Briar wondered, of some ancient land during the Industrial Age. The heat and the odor became so thick and acrid that everyone had to cover their mouths in order to catch a breath. The ground vibrated and the group stopped, wondering if it may have been a tremor before a full volcanic eruption, or a cave collapse.

“Mining,” Valrune said. He stepped ahead of the group. He had never been to this place. As a boy, Valrune asked again and again if he could see it. But Cole would always brush aside his son's queries. “It's no place for a son of mine,” his father would often tell him. But he'd say no more than that.

As a child Valrune always imagined the mines were a place for adventure, and he could never understand why his father would want to keep him from the fun of it. But as time passed, he heard rumors, whispered words from the mouths of servants.

Words like “slavery,” and “coercion,” they'd say in hushed tones. But the palace servants knew better than to openly admit anything. Cole must have had his reasons for his secrecy, Valrune believed. And now his eyes were wide and hungry to know what lay ahead in these hellish depths.

Mittens crept further ahead of them into the catacombs. Just beyond the bend in the path they saw light moving, burning red, undulating upon the cavern walls. They could hear the tick-tick-tick of countless pick axes chipping away at stone in a deeper
chamber. Once Mittens reached the glowing red light, he popped like a soap bubble into a shower of tiny sparks that evaporated before they could reach the ground.

The Briar and the others followed behind Valrune to the red glow, until they reached an opening that led to an immense vaulted structure. The rough cave walls were replaced by smooth, polished marble slabs that were carefully engineered, lining the towering cavern.

The domed ceiling was supported by pale beveled columns as tall as city buildings. The cavern interior was like a layered cake that had seven or eight tiers with countless rows of arches leading to what Briar assumed were jewel-filled caverns. Standing before the caverns were Priests of the Tales that had tattooed blue markings on their faces, like Gelid and Damarius.

Heaped on the floor of the central cavern were piles of jewels, as tall and as deep as desert sand dunes. They shimmered in the light of a thousand torches that flanked the smaller cave entrances. Dwarefs—hundreds, perhaps thousands of them, dressed in tatters—emerged from the lower arched tunnels with wheelbarrows filled with precious stones that they dumped into the jewel piles. Then back up ramps they would trudge in lines until they reentered the smaller caves.

The Priests, dressed in long, wooly, earth-colored robes, stood at the edges, near the smaller cave entrances. Each grasped a staff and pointed it from time to time to discharge a silvery electric current at a stray or stumbling slave worker. Anyone hit by the flashing current fell to the ground and screamed as though being seared by a hot poker. Fellow slaves would assist the fallen workers and prop them back up into the line.

In the middle of the chamber was another set of columns that supported a central platform high above the cave floor. A curve of earthen stairs hugged the columns and led to the platform. Whatever was upon it seemed to be the energy source for the priests' staves.

Valrune walked to the edge of the terrace on which they stood and stared with eyes fixed upon the scene. “What has my father done?” he asked. His voice was full of loathing and regret. Sherman grabbed Valrune by the back of his clothes and pulled him back to the group that stood in the shadows of the smaller cave, where he would be less likely noticed.

“No.” Valrune shook his head. “I don't believe this is my father's work. He would never—”

Sherman placed a paw over Valrune's mouth.

Dax asked, “Why are they all dwarefs?”

“Built for diggery,” Tarfeather said. He held up his long golden claws and his face seemed to crumple from sadness.

Dax glanced up at the ceiling and was taken aback. He grabbed Briar by the shoulder and pointed. The ceilings, high and wide enough to fit a small city below them, were painted with three ornate panels. Accented with gold leaf, like the illustrations from an illuminated manuscript, they depicted distinct scenes that featured a girl with long black hair who wore a torn white ball gown and thigh-high boots.

In one panel, the girl touched her hand to a spinning wheel. In the next, she bit into something handed to her by a hooded figure. The third panel depicted her holding a sword up to a dark, cloudy image.

Briar was overcome, and tears flooded her eyes. It was true what the Omens said. She wondered how many lives had been lost in the name of either maintaining the Omens or ending them. To think of this frightened her.

Sherman stood alongside Briar gazing up at the paintings, and he placed a paw on her cheek. “Do not be afraid, Briar of the Black Woods.”

“These are the Three Omens,” Briar said. Sherman nodded and drew her chin down so that he could look her in the eyes.

“Yes,” he said.

“But it shows me pricking my finger,” Briar said. Just saying
so caused her to lose balance and fall against the pillar behind her.

“Yes,” Sherman replied.

“Then, no matter what we do, I'll die.” Briar felt like the cave walls, and the smoke and heat were closing in around her throat.

“If you believe the Tale that others tell. Then you are cursed to live by it,” he said. “There are omens and prophecies to fill a thousand halls. Live by your own Tale, Briar, not theirs.” She did not feel better by him saying this. She knew nothing of their ways. He could be filling her head so that she'd continue to take risks. Who was she to them? Perhaps nothing but a pawn.

Tarfeather started down the path that sloped to the cave floor. He turned back for a moment. “Book of bad things—” He pointed one of his golden claws to the central columns.

They followed along behind. Leon was no longer in Briar's hands since she and Dax now had to support Sherman between them. Instead he hopped alongside them, being careful that no one stepped on him in the shadows.

As Briar and Dax walked with Sherman along the cavern wall, they noticed that he had begun to drag his feet as he walked and his eyelids drooped. There was, perhaps, more blood outside of his body than there was inside it by now. “Sherman, how will we get the book?” Briar asked him mostly to keep him from drifting into unconsciousness. “It's in the middle of everything.”

“Disguise yourself as Orpion again,” Dax suggested.

Sherman tried to refocused his eyes. “Disguises will not work here,” Sherman replied. His voice was barely audible. “The Priests of the Tales know these magics…Many prisoners have tried to leave this place by way of magical disguise. Their Tales…do not end well. I will camouflage you…Get the book. Bring it back.”

Briar looked at Dax. “But Sherman, it may take some time to get up and down those steps, let alone steal the book without anyone noticing. It will drain you.”

“Climb the steps. Take the book. It is the only way,” he replied.

“I will protect you, Dame Titania,” Valrune said. Then from his belt he withdrew a dagger with a stubby blade.

“Wow. We'll call you when we need a letter opened,” Leon said.

“Sherman, this is crazy,” Briar said. “You need the Dire Liquid now.”

“There is no Dire Liquid…without…book,” he replied. Briar didn't want to argue with him any longer, but she knew that none of this was about saving Leon, changing him back, or making Dire Liquid. Sherman wanted that book. Perhaps Myrtle, Poplar, Ash, and he had plotted this all along.
There are Tales within Tales
, Ash had warned her.

They hiked down to the lowest level and they hid behind the enormous pillars and a collection of rusted mining carts. Sherman stumbled back but then steadied himself. He raised his paws unsteadily, and drew another of his intricate enchantments. The design enlarged and dropped like a net around Briar who then vanished.

“Go,” Sherman said. He held his shaking arms up to maintain the spell.

Now unseen by any, Briar bolted out from behind the carts and ran as fast as she could toward the central pillars. Through the mountainous jewel piles she wound along a narrow path that was just big enough for a slave worker and his wheel barrow to fit through. She heard someone coming and she climbed out of the path onto the side of a pile, rubies and emeralds cascading below her feet.

“Hello?” A familiar voice was calling from just beyond her view. She held still so that no more jewels would tumble. Then the slave came around the bend.

It was King Cole. His royal robes were shredded, his crown was gone, and his curl-toed shoes barely held together. He also
had a prominent fracture in his shell that started at the top of his head and cracked down the front of his face. “Is there someone there?” he whispered. He maintained visual contact of the watchful Priests along the walls, hoping they hadn't noticed him speak.

Briar covered her mouth so that her breathing would not be heard. Cole looked around some more. But seeing no one, he overturned his cart of jewels onto the pile and trudged away. He glanced back over his shoulder to where he heard the sounds, but sighed and went on his way.

When Briar was certain he was gone, she ran for the columns at a greater speed, dashing around mounds and making her own path through them. When she reached the steps, a priest stood guard with his staff planted in the ground. She picked up a large ruby, which vanished as soon as she held it in her hand. She threw it with great force and it struck the priest's face. Then she ran around to the other side of the jewel pile.

The priest fell back, and his hood slipped off, exposing his pale, bald head. He reached up with a hand and wiped a trickle of blood from his face. He gnashed his teeth and held up his staff to zap whomever it was. Briar could see a flurry of silvery electrical currents storming the area and she lay against one of the tall piles out of harm's way.

Then she heard his footsteps approaching. “Where are you, filthy slave?” She slipped around the opposite side and headed back to the stairs, which were now unguarded. Up the steps she climbed for what seemed like several stories of a building. Her footsteps sounded up the stairs, and the priest who searched for her followed up after them. “Come back here, talebreaker!” he shouted, forks of electrical power shooting along the curve of the stairs, but never reaching Briar. She finally made it to the upper platform and stood perfectly still.

High above the cave floor, Briar got a better view of the vast jewel stockpiles amassed by the slaves. And there, on the far end
of the platform on a dais between two standing incense urns churning out thick gray smoke, beneath a domed bell jar, was the
Book of Cinder and Blight
. It was an unassuming little thing: black leather bound its yellowing parchment pages together. And it was no bigger than a slim school book. It was propped open on intricately carved bones. Two trim black chains with ball weights at their ends were draped across the pages, keeping them spread apart.

The priest huffed as he ascended the stairs and when he arrived at the top of the platform, he shot more power from the tip of his staff. It swept with long crackling branches in every direction, but did not seem to expose the intruder the priest thought was there.

Briar crouched safely behind the dais. When everything went quiet, she peered secretly from one side. The priest was gone. But she noticed that Gelid's jeweled mirror had fallen from her boot in the process of finding safety. It lay in the middle of the platform. She stood up and looked around more. If she moved quickly and quietly enough, she could easily recover it. Unexpectedly from behind, the priest leveled his staff to her throat he began to choke her with it.