Fablehaven: The Complete Series (190 page)

Keeping their hands on the horn, they stepped back. The grotesque dragon husk did not twitch. Kendra looked over her shoulder. Some distance away, a pool of black liquid covered the ground, but she did not see Mendigo.

“Where’s our puppet?” Seth asked, voicing her thoughts.

Kendra walked to the black pool, crouched, and dipped the tip of the unicorn horn in the foul fluid. Bubbling and smoking, the tarlike puddle turned to vapor. On the bare floor rested the sword, a flashlight, and numerous small golden hooks.

“What the heck?” Seth exclaimed. “He’s gone!”

Kendra considered the evidence. “That black sludge must have dissolved the wood.”

Seth picked up a hook, examining it closely. “Not even a splinter left.” Tears shimmered in his eyes. “That sort of takes the fun out of everything. Think we could rebuild him?”

“With only hooks left? I guess we can gather them up, just in case.”

Maintaining his grip on Kendra and the horn, Seth crawled around the area, meticulously collecting every hook and clasp he could find. Kendra gathered hooks as well. She told herself not to cry, that Mendigo was not a person. The puppet had no identity, no will; he was just a tool. A mindless wooden robot. When he had worked for Muriel, Mendigo had put Kendra and her family in grave danger. But since his loyalties had been altered by fairies, the puppet had saved Kendra’s life multiple times. And now he had been destroyed trying to protect them. He may have only been a mechanical servant, but he had been reliable and true. She and Seth would be less safe without him. Kendra found herself wiping moisture off of her cheeks.

“Kendra!” a voice hollered from outside the chamber. “Seth? Are you all right?” It was Tanu.

“Think we got them all?” Kendra asked.

Seth scanned the floor. “Looks like it. We’d better go let them know what happened.”

Together they walked to the top of the stairs. Their companions waited not far from the bottom step.

“We killed Siletta,” Kendra announced. She and Seth started down the stairs.

The others cheered and shouted congratulations. At the bottom of the steps, she and Seth had to recount all the details. Everyone kept hugging them and clapping them on the back. By the exuberant expressions of relief, Kendra could tell that most of her comrades had doubted that she and her brother would succeed. They were all saddened to hear Mendigo had been disintegrated, but no further tears were shed. Tanu said that the magic animating Mendigo had most likely been in the wood, but that he was no expert on such things, and keeping the hooks couldn’t hurt. The Samoan used a key to remove the handcuffs.

“Do you think the horn sanitized the air in there?” Seth asked.

“Touch a unicorn horn to a pond and the whole pond will be purified,” Tanu said. “I’m not sure how the horn would affect a gas. The vapors you saw rising from the dragon and the poison pool would be harmless, but the preexisting gasses in the chamber might still have potency.”

“We’ll take no needless risks,” Trask said. “Three of us will proceed to the treasure room, each with a hand on the horn. Kendra should be one, to be certain the horn remains active. She should also be there in case Patton left another message.”

“I want to come too,” Seth said. “I remember the descriptions of the figurines.”

“And I’ll come for protection,” Trask said.

“I’m going to head back to the hydra,” Gavin announced.

Trask shook his head. “We’ll face Hespera together once we retrieve the key.”

“No, I have a p-p-p-p-plan,” Gavin insisted. “Let me borrow Seth’s crossbow. I’m going to visit the corpse of Glommus and dip my spear and some quarrels into his vital juices. I may be able to put the hydra to sleep.”

“You’ll probably just fall asleep yourself when you return to the area where Glommus lies,” Tanu cautioned.

“If I do, you guys can wake me,” Gavin insisted. “I’m inspired by Kendra and Seth. A small, focused attack has advantages. If I approach the hydra alone, I think I can soothe her and get close enough to prick her. Don’t worry, I won’t throw my life away. But if I can clear the path for our escape, why not?”

“I’ll trust your judgment,” Trask said. “You don’t want somebody to accompany you?”

“My best chance of getting close is to go in alone,” Gavin said. “If I succeed, you’ll find me waiting. If I can’t pull it off, I’ll come back. Or you’ll find me unconscious near Glommus. If you don’t find me at all, you’ll know what happened.”

“I don’t like this,” Kendra said.

“I feel good about it,” Gavin replied.

“None of our options are pleasant,” Trask said. “Gavin, I think this is worth a try. If you can get close and put the hydra to sleep, we might beat the odds and see daylight again. You’re free to go. In case Gavin can’t subdue the hydra, the rest of you should make ready to face Hespera and dash to our rendezvous with the griffins. Kendra, Seth, come with me.”

Chapter 26

Ambush

The dragons had evidently placed a lot of confidence in their guardians. Beyond the chamber where Kendra and Seth had slain Siletta, a short, spacious hall led to the doorless treasure room. Trask took his time carefully probing and investigating, but detected no traps. With Siletta and Glommus dead, and the hydra pinned back near the entrance, the treasury was left unguarded.

Beyond the giant doorway, the treasury contained three wide aisles bounded by rows of stone tables. An endless variety of items cluttered the tables, ranging from the opulent to the primitive. Elegantly cut gemstones the size of billiard balls rested alongside rough-hewn stone mallets. Walking along one row of tables, Kendra noticed an elaborate pagoda carved from lucent jade, a rusted iron helm, a ten-foot ivory tusk inlaid with gold, a bucket of crude nails, delicate baubles of colored glass, ragged books decorated with arcane glyphs, a rotting leather birdcage, a collection of large lenses inside a compartmentalized wooden trunk, fanciful bronze masks, a tattered cape, a corroded candelabrum, and a pile of copper coins with holes in the center.

Trask, Kendra, and Seth each kept hold of the unicorn horn. Seth towed them across the aisle so he could pick up a gleaming sword.

“Pure adamant,” Trask noted reverently.

“Can I keep it?” Seth wondered.

“We should take nothing more than we must,” Trask admonished. “We don’t want dragons after us to reclaim stolen treasure.”

“They’ll already be after me for killing Siletta,” Seth said.

“We should still avoid causing any extra harm,” Trask said. “Combating the guardian dragons was unavoidable. But we don’t need to inflame the insult by pillaging their treasure. We owe Thronis the figurines, so we’ll pay that debt. If the dragons want them back, they can take it up with him. The key was never theirs to begin with, so, in a sense, we’ll have stolen nothing.”

“All right,” Seth conceded. He replaced the sword and they moved farther down the aisle.

A raised dais spanned the rear of the room, supporting an extra row of stone tables. Toward the center upon a pedestal higher than the surrounding tables rested a pair of gauntlets—lobstered steel embellished with gold and platinum scrollwork.

“Look at those gloves,” Seth said.

“Almost certainly not the Sage’s Gauntlets,” Trask surmised. “On display so prominently, they must be decoys. I wouldn’t be surprised if poisoned needles awaited unwary fingers.”

“I don’t know,” Kendra said. “Aside from the dragons and the hydra, they didn’t do much to guard the room. They may have been cocky enough to leave the gauntlets in plain view.”

“Maybe we should grab the gauntlets,” Seth proposed. “We can give them back in the end, but meanwhile we can use them to distract the dragons. If we get in a tight situation, maybe we could bargain with them.”

“Not terrible thinking in principle,” Trask acknowledged. “But to disturb the gauntlets would enrage the dragons beyond any hope of bargaining. I repeat, our best chance for success is to move quickly and take only what we came for. Kendra, did Patton leave any hint at the Fairy Queen’s shrine concerning where in the room he hid the key?”

“I didn’t see a hint,” Kendra said, being deliberately vague about not having actually read Patton’s message at the shrine. Her cheeks felt hot. She hoped she wasn’t blushing. In hindsight, she should probably have fished the tablet out of the pool in case he had included any extra tidbits. “And I haven’t noticed any writing here in the treasury either. Patton said the key looks like an iron egg the size of a pineapple, with a bunch of protuberances on the top half.”

They climbed up onto the dais.

“The figurines,” Seth said almost instantly. He led them over to where five statuettes were positioned on a circular mat. “Red dragon, white giant, jade chimera. Is onyx black?”

“Can be,” Trask said. “And the blue fishy thing is the agate leviathan.”

“Can I let go of the horn?” Seth asked.

Trask sniffed probingly. “I think so. If you start to feel ill, make sure you get a hand back on it.”

Seth opened a pouch. “Thronis gave me this,” he told Kendra. He pulled squares of silken fabric from the pouch and wrapped each figurine individually, then placed them together inside the small bag.

Trask left Kendra holding the horn alone and proceeded down the long row of elevated tables, pausing beside the glittering gauntlets. He looked behind the pedestal on which the fancy gloves were situated. “I’ve found the key,” Trask announced. “He stashed it behind the gauntlets.”

“Good job!” Kendra cheered. She and Seth joined Trask, who struggled to pick up the egg-shaped mass of black iron.

“Big pineapple,” Trask grunted. “Patton didn’t mention the key was
solid
iron. This must weigh at least eighty pounds. Tough to get a grip.”

“Use both hands,” Kendra recommended. “I’ll follow behind and keep the horn in contact with your skin.”

They shuffled in an awkward train back across the treasure room, down the hall, and through the pillared chamber, passing Siletta’s shrunken corpse. Tanu, Dougan, and Mara awaited them at the bottom of the steps.

“Success?” Dougan asked.

“We have the key and the giant’s figurines,” Trask reported.

“The key looks heavy,” Tanu remarked.

“Or I’m getting really weak,” Trask said.

“I’ll lug the key down into the storage room,” Dougan offered. “I already hauled the giant sword down there.”

Trask gratefully handed off the iron egg. “Once you’re back up, I want to move out. I hope Gavin fared all right. I’m not sure I should have let him go alone.”

Face red with exertion, Dougan managed to descend the rungs into the storage room cradling the egg in one arm. When he came up, they hurried back toward the hydra. Kendra tried not to fret about Gavin. She told herself that he was fine, that he wouldn’t have taken needless risks. But she knew how brave he was, and how deadly the hydra had appeared.

As they neared Glommus’s cave, Tanu went forward alone to sample the air. He came back and reported that the air was breathable, and that he had found no sign of Gavin. “We might do well to raid the dragon’s corpse ourselves,” Tanu added. “We could smear our weapons with sedatives, and it would be a once-in-a-lifetime chance to acquire potion ingredients.”

“We need to hurry,” Trask pointed out, “but prepping our weapons could pay dividends. Mara, come with me and Tanu.”

While waiting outside the cave, Kendra saw Gavin walking back to them with a slight limp. Squealing with relief, she ran to him, and he caught her in an embrace. He was soaking wet, his clothes were torn, and he bled lightly from several cuts and scrapes.

“What happened?” Kendra asked, pulling back.

“I got her,” Gavin said with a shy smile. “I found a g-gland in the neck of Glommus and drenched my spear and a few quarrels. You know how Trask shot out one of the yellowish head’s eyes? I pierced the other one with a tainted quarrel. The heads started to thrash, and I got in a few stabs with the spear.”