Pennyroyal Academy (13 page)

Evie tried to sit, but she was bound to a bed with a rope as harsh as corroded metal. She writhed against her restraints, but to no avail.

“Yes, yes! Feel the fear in your veins!” croaked one near the fire. “It will only add to the value of that lovely heart.”

Evie stopped struggling, but her muscles remained as tight as the ropes. All three witches leered at her with hungry smiles. They looked like corpses, interred and buried, that had risen again. Their skin, waxy and drooping in parts, was so attenuated across their skull bones that it looked like the slightest touch might tear it apart. White hair wisped from their heads and chins, and their wide mustard eyes were shot through with blood vessels.

“Our Sister should arrive momentarily,” said the witch with the spoon. “It would be quite nice if you were properly terrified—”

A soft rapping at the door interrupted her. The witches threw up their hands and danced around with excitement.

“She's here! She's here!” they sang.

One crossed to the door, but didn't open it just yet. “Now remember what we discussed, girls. We have a price in mind . . .”

“. . . and we intend to get it,” finished the other two.

Dozens of thoughts flickered through Evie's mind. She tried to focus on one thing—escape—but it was only a word, quickly shunted away by visions of what waited behind that door. She spit again, trying to clear the vile taste from her mouth.

The door creaked open and the cottage fell silent, save for the pop and hiss of the fire as the witches' stew bubbled onto the coals.

“Good evening, Sister,” said the witch at the door. She staggered back, clearing a path. The other two huddled together. Evie thought they looked frightened, and if they were frightened, what did that mean for her?

Cold night air poured into the cottage, followed by the most frightening thing Evie had ever seen.

A witch floated inside, her feet dragging limply across the floor beams. Her skin had the lumpy, slimy texture of sludge on a stagnant pond. Her jaw hung free in a wide smile, and her bright yellow eyes were trapped in a permanent stare because she had no eyelids to close. The instant she crossed the threshold, those eyes fixed onto Evie, who recoiled as though she had been bitten. The witch had only just entered the cottage, but already she had gone inside Evie's eyes, probing toward her heart, searching for courage.

“Welcome to our humble home, Sister. We trust your journey wasn't too difficult?” said the witch near the door.

The Sister ignored her and floated to the bed, her decaying tree-bark slippers scraping slowly across the floor. The stench of mold and rot filled Evie's nose, and the whole world started to blacken at the fringes of her vision. The witch noticed and hurried over with her spoon, forcing more of the bitter potion into her mouth. It shocked Evie back to consciousness. Tears streamed down her temples and into her hair. She had the same panicked feeling as when she had jumped from the cliff . . . a cold certainty that she was about to die.

“Our dear Sister,” said the hag with the spoon. “You can see she's a Pennyroyal girl. Quite valuable, indeed.”

The Sister's eyes bored into Evie, her mouth hanging wide.

“She's obviously yours to keep, m'lady, as we three are loyal to none but Calivigne.”

The longer Evie's eyes remained locked on the Sister's, the more complexity she could see. Beyond the cold hate there was an unexpected depth of anguish, as though this witch was bound to roam the land seeing everything, every act of evil, without ever being able to close her eyes. And all that wickedness, despair, and madness now beamed straight from the Sister's eyes into Evie's heart. She had never felt so utterly meaningless in her life.

“If it please you, we should like to discuss a price, m'lady,” said the witch, causing the other two to clench each other even more tightly. “Of course, we mean no insult to a witch as eminent as yourself. We are but three humble sisters struggling to make our lives in the dark forest.”

Evie's strength began to drain. The ropes slackened, and her head sank back to the straw-stuffed pillow.

“Do you know,” spoke the Sister in a low whisper, “how a witch is made?”

Don't listen!
screamed Evie inside her head.
Look away!
Somewhere inside of her, a small spark of fight still remained.

“She is born from a cauldron,” she continued in a strange, unplaceable accent, “the product of her ingredients. First, the heart of a dragon. Older dragons make the best witches, for they have seen the worst of life. The fury in a dragon's heart is unmatched.”

“We have a fine selection of dragons' hearts as well, if you'd—”

“The second ingredient we require is a righteous heart,” said the Sister. Evie realized that her jaw was barely moving, as though the words were being formed somewhere else, somewhere deep inside of her. “Innocent children, good men and women. All are acceptable, but most desired is the heart of a princess. It beats strongly with virtue, goodness, and innocence.”

Tears streamed from Evie's eyes. She managed one last struggle with the ropes, but it was so feeble the witches didn't even notice.

“To create a truly cruel witch, one must find a virtuous heart bathed in fear. As yours is now. One dragon's heart of fury, one virtuous heart awash in terror. This is the recipe for the most wicked witches in all the land.”

“And all we ask for this girl's heart is placement in a kingdom,” said the witch with the spoon. The other two cowered as though the Sister might strike them dead at any moment. “Forgive me, m'lady, but our bones are too weary for this forest life.”

The Sister's eyes remained on Evie's, which had started to flutter closed, like a butterfly slowly dying.

“Your price is fair—”

“We should also like an audience with Calivigne,” continued the witch. Her eyes went wide and her shoulders crumpled. She realized she might have overstepped. “Simply to show her our potions . . . to see if we might be of use . . .”

“You shall not receive an audience with Calivigne,” said the Sister. Her arm rose, skeletal fingers clacking as the joints snapped open. She slid a bony finger under the dragon scale necklace. “But I shall reward your loyalty with this.”

With an abrupt flick of her wrist, she tore the necklace free.

“No . . .” muttered Evie, barely mustering the energy to speak.

“Oh, thank you, m'lady, thank you!” said the overjoyed witch. “Look, girls, dragon's blood and all!”

With a casual toss, and to the delight of her sisters, she lobbed the scale toward the cauldron.

“No!” said Evie. Her eyes shot open. A dying spark erupted into a flame. “No! No! No! No!”

The scale arced through the air, sinking into the boiling stew with a puff of rancid brown smoke. Evie held her breath and let the flame inside her build into a fire. Her mind was clear. Her eyes were open. Her fear was gone.

“NO NO NO NO NO!”

She pulled on the bindings with all her strength, then let herself go slack. She clenched again, feeling a kind of power she had never known course through her muscles. As the last ridge of the scale disappeared into the cauldron, something exploded inside of her.

“
NO!
”

A brilliant flash of electric light detonated in front of her chest. The bonds that had held so tightly ripped away like spiderwebs, and she was free. And then, like lightning, the white flash was gone.

She leapt off the bed and threw her shoulder into the witch nearest the cauldron, knocking her into the flames. The old crone shrieked as the fire sizzled her gauzy skin into a fine green mist. Evie plunged her hand into the boiling sludge of the cauldron. The pain was so intense it registered only as a bolt of shock in her brain. She couldn't feel her hand, but knew she had a grip on the scale. She ripped it from the stew and fled out the open door.

She tore through the black forest. True, shocking pain began to settle around her hand like a thousand tiny insects eating her flesh. She clutched the dragon scale in her other hand, the one that could still feel. Her foot found a goblin's hole and she went sprawling face-first through the rotting black leaves beneath the undergrowth.

She spit out a mouthful of muck and looked for a route of escape. But instead she found something else. Something that brought back the old familiar fear, that hopeless, helpless terror of witches that she just could not escape.

It was the sickly, pale glow of two yellow eyes. She flipped onto her back and found two more sets of witches' eyes.

“Leave me be!” she cried. Something grabbed hold of her leg, though nothing was there. The Sister began to pull her back through the bracken with some ancient, unknown spell.

“No! Please, stop!” She tried to kick free of the witch's magic, to roll and scrape and scream and struggle, but it was no use. The Sister dragged her closer and closer, using a black magic that only compassion and courage could defeat. And Evie was in no state to summon either.

Suddenly, she had the strangest sensation that she wasn't moving anymore. A moment later there was an explosion, a concussive crash that rumbled the entire forest, as something elemental slammed to the ground only yards away.

Evie screamed and covered her head with her good arm. She was free, the witch's spell having somehow been broken. She scrambled away in a blind panic until she slammed into something big and solid and rough with scales.

“Sister?”

Evie's dragon sister contorted her face in serpentine rage and unleashed an unholy roar into the trees.

“Begone, wretched beast!” shouted one of the witches as the roar's echo faded into the night.

“We'll kill you and take your heart just for the fun!” called the other.

The dragon spewed a blast of flame into the trees, the smell so acrid it singed Evie's eyes. She heard the witches' shrieks of pain and terror, and couldn't imagine the fireball exploding around them. The thought of that—of those hideous witches that had been so close to killing her, fearing for their own lives—emboldened her. And then, through a mystery of the human mind, the faces of the three little girls of Marburg came to her again.

“Away with you, witches! Do you hear me? Away with you!” She took a step forward into the black, and something moved with her. There, yards ahead, an invisible shield seemed to mirror her every step. She couldn't be certain if it was real or just a product of her exhausted mind.

“
I am not afraid of you!
” she shouted, and with this, she knew the thing was real. A weapon born inside her that she had never known existed.

“Dragons and princesses have no alliance!” shrieked a voice so awful Evie knew it could only be the Sister's. “Calivigne shall hear of this!”

There was a flurry of movement, like bat wings flapping, and then silence. Evie stood in the dark for several moments, waiting for some sound to tell her the witches had truly gone. Finally, her dragon sister stomped forward and lowered her great head.

“Come, before the trees awake.”

B
EYOND THE GREEN
RIPPLE
of ferns, beyond the stand of bristlecone pines that marked the forest mouth, the towering shoulders of a mountain range loomed in the near distance. The peaks wore hoods of snow, and the trees were outlined in white nearly halfway down the valley.

Evie studied this swooping landscape of blacks and greens and whites as though she had never seen it before. But, of course, this was the same view she had woken to every morning of her life. She was home again, in the old familiar cave. Something about it seemed strange, though.
It's the sky,
she thought.
I haven't seen a sky of blue in months.

She turned her head, wincing at a sharp ache that ringed her neck. Ignoring the pain, she saw that she was sitting on a mossy ledge. This had always been one of her favorite places to fall asleep as a girl. Here she would listen to her father tell stories of the great dragons of the past while the stars rolled slowly by. Her mind began to emerge from sleep, and the details of how she got back to the cave returned. Her sister had come out of the night to save her. She must have wrenched her neck running headlong into the dragon's leg during her scramble from . . .

Oh yes . . . the witches.
It was the second time she had narrowly evaded death at their hands. But this time she had escaped by entirely different means.

She glanced down at her hand, the one that had rescued the dragon scale from the cauldron, and found it wrapped in a huge, gray verbascum leaf. She peeled the wet layers away until the chill of mountain air bit her sensitive skin. With great care, she stretched her fingers, then balled them into a fist. The skin felt tight, the muscles stiff, but only the dull echo of her horrific burns remained. This was her sister's work, she knew. Dragons were born with fire inside them, and as pups they learned to treat all manner of burns.

She uncurled her fingers once more. The sensation was dulled, as though her hand belonged to someone else. The skin was unnaturally smooth scar tissue, mottled with streaks of brown and red.
It was worth it,
she thought,
to rescue . . .

Her other hand shot to her neck, and a moment of panic died away as quickly as it had come. The scale hung there, right where it belonged. She ran a thumb across its rough ridges and felt an immense sense of gratitude. If all she had to show for her encounter with the witches were some scars on her hand, then she would count herself lucky.

“You've been asleep two days,” came the dry rumble of her sister's voice.

She wheeled and saw the great lizard curled in a trough of cool stone. “Sister!”

“It was all I could do to keep you on your perch,” she said, pulling her huge green body from the rock. She lowered her head. Evie ran her good hand down the dirt-crusted scales of her sister's cheek.

“How did you ever find me out there? They were going to kill me.”

“Something drew me. I never venture that far from home, but . . . I don't know, really. It was as though I could
feel
Father.” She hooked Evie's scale with one of her talons. “I think it was this.”

A shadow crossed the cave mouth as the sun traveled behind a cloud. Evie shivered, but more from something ominous in her sister's words than the cold.

“What do you mean you could ‘feel Father'? Where is he?” She glanced deeper into the cave and saw nothing but stone and moss and rippling water. “Where's Mother?”

Her sister's obsidian eyes, ringed by heavy folds of tan flesh and scales, wilted.
Something's happened,
thought Evie. Even if her sister couldn't find the words, her eyes spoke volumes.

“Where are they?” She stood up on her perch.

“I'm sorry, Sister,” said the dragon. “I'm sorry.”

Evie's knees began to flutter.

“Father's . . . dead.”

“What?” said Evie, her voice breaking at the end.

“He was killed by the Sisters. Months ago. Mother refuses to believe it. She still goes away for weeks on end searching for him, but . . . he's gone.”

Evie leapt from her perch and bounded across the stones to the cave mouth. The sun reemerged and lit up the mountainside with colors so vibrant they hurt her eyes. Her sister stepped out next to her.

“I don't understand,” said Evie. “How could witches . . . do that? He's the strongest dragon I've ever known. He must be out there . . . somewhere . . .”

“It was that storm. Mother said it was the worst she'd ever seen. Flooded out most of the cave. We couldn't find you anywhere.”

Evie collapsed in a small patch of weeds. Her sister's words cut straight to her core. Despair crashed over her like ocean waves.
He was looking for me.

“We kept watch, Mother and I, hoping he'd bring you back, but . . . he never did.” Her tail swept across the gravel and rested along Evie's thigh. “Our friends beyond the mountain heard from others who had heard from others that it was a lightning strike got him. And as he lay injured, Calivigne's witches closed in.”

Evie's scarred fingers wrapped around her dragon scale.
This is all I have of him now.
A shimmer of light pulsed through the fading black stain of her father's blood. She wiped the tears away, but more kept coming. Her heart had been broken clean in half. She didn't know what she was supposed to do. She stared deep into the forest, silently listening to its sounds as the minutes clicked by. Intermittent whistles of birdsong. The distant hum of a waterfall. Leaves rustled by the breeze. Everything was just the same as it had always been, yet entirely and irrevocably different.

“I hate witches,” she spat. Her tears had already started to transform from pure grief into contempt. “I've never hated anything in my life, but I hate them.”

“They say our kind are leaving the lands of the north because of witches. Imagine it, the Dragonlands without dragons. It's only a matter of time until they're here, in our woods.”

“I'll die before I see that happen,” said Evie.

“I'm afraid there isn't much to be done. They have the numbers and the will.”

“The place I've been, they train us to fight them.”

“What, fight witches? That's brilliant! I thought there was something different about you. You look bigger, somehow. Stronger.”

“I'm not,” said Evie, hanging her head. “You need courage to fight a witch. The only time I ever had any was back in that cottage, and even then it was only because of this.” She lifted the scale.

“Bah, you've got plenty of courage. Remember when you fought off that hawk to get her egg?”

“That hawk nearly killed me!”

“Yes, but she didn't, did she? Come, we've got to take you back.”

“I can't go back. I don't belong there, either.”

“Our father was the most courageous dragon the sun has ever seen, you said it yourself. If it's courage you need, then take him with you. In here.” She rested a claw against Evie's chest. “He'll help you find your courage.”

Evie filled her lungs with the air of newborn winter, then slowly let it out again. “Sometimes I feel like there's too much dragon in me to ever be a princess. But then there's too much princess in me to really be a dragon. I don't know what I am.”

“The witches must pay for what they've done,” said her sister.

The faint ember of those words glowed inside Evie. Images of her father—her dear, sweet father who taught her to see the world in all its horror and beauty, to strive for the good and fight back against the bad—flashed through her mind.

The witches must pay.

Now thoughts of the witch with no eyelids crept in, one of Calivigne's Council of Sisters. The ember inside her ignited, burning with cold rage.

The witches must pay.

Her anger piled on top of itself like sticks on a fire until it consumed her from the inside with pure dragon fury.

“I am the daughter of dragons, and no witch will ever frighten me again.”

They set off that very afternoon. Evie's sister, by virtue of the dragon's innate sense of navigation and orientation, found her way back to the Dortchen Wild, to the spot where she had charred the forest to scare off the witches. After that, it was only a matter of covering huge, swooping arcs of the forest until the lights of Pennyroyal's towers appeared above the canopy. By the time they set down at the edge of the great clearing, night had fallen.

Evie peered out from the trees, her sister next to her. Crickets sounded from the grassland beyond the wall, but not from the enchanted forest behind them. The Academy shimmered atop its hill, torchlight glowing from windows. To Evie, it really was beautiful, a light of goodness in a world of dark. She saw it and knew that her sister had been right to bring her back.

“Do you really think this will work?” she said. “We were warned about leaving the grounds.”

“What other choice do we have? Besides, after what that girl said to you, no one could fault you for running off. And it's just your bad luck there was a vicious man-eating dragon waiting to snatch you up. If we can get you inside, they'll keep you.”

Evie studied the dim flicker of the towers. Her heart was thumping. She longed to be back inside, but something about this plan frightened her. She put a hand on her sister's foot. “The instant they lift the barrier, you've got to go. All right? Promise me.”

The dragon's face softened. She touched a talon to Evie's cheek. “A witch fighter. He would have been so proud.”

Her wings sprayed out into the pines, and with a mighty flap she lifted into the air. Evie's breath caught in her throat. She wanted to call her sister back, to stop this whole foolish plan, but it was too late. A tree crackled, then crashed to the ground as the dragon lifted free of the forest canopy.

Then, in a violent spray of noise and fire, she swooped down from the clouds. A shower of glowing liquid streamed from her throat, leaving trails of burning pines and grass. She roared with the primeval ferocity of the fires at the heart of the world. Up on the hill, two horn blasts bellowed and torches began to move about. Her sister's plan was already working.

Evie nearly fell to the ground as the dragon rammed her body into the invisible wall of fairies' magic. Dots of orange light poured down the hill like a meteor shower. It wasn't just staff, it was the cadets, as well. Apparently, no one wanted to miss the rare sight of a rampaging dragon.
This changes nothing,
Evie told herself.
Get through the wall, that's all that matters.

“
Get those girls back!
” came a voice. Evie recognized it as the harsh snarl of Corporal Liverwort. “
Boys as well! Get away from that wall!
”

And now Evie could see faces in the bright flash of her sister's fiery jets. There stood Remington with the other knight cadets, shielding his eyes. Members of staff shouted indistinguishable things as they tried to formulate a plan. Her heart thumped like a war drum. It was her turn now.

Then she saw something that made the blood rush from her head. Staff pushed cadets aside to allow an intimidating fleet of horsemen through. Their bodies were covered head to toe in glassy black armor, as were their horses. In the glint of firelight, they looked like something from another world, like riders made of ice. Each of them carried a steel-tipped lance, with other weaponry strapped to their mounts' tack.

“Dragonslayers . . .” she said. These were men who had long ago graduated from the Academy. They had gone out into the world as the elite dragon-killing force for the kingdoms in which they served, then returned to teach the next generation their secrets. Only the steel at their hips knew how many dragons this squadron had put to ground. Evie looked up at her sister, diving in for another assault on the wall, and realized she had no idea what waited beyond it.

Evie broke from the trees and raced for the wall. “
Help!
” she shouted. “
Help me!
”

Her screams were drowned out by another roar from her sister. The dragonslayers hadn't yet moved, perhaps waiting for word from Princess Beatrice, or in a case as extreme as this, the Queen herself. Evie's feet couldn't match her panic and she stumbled forward, her face plowing through the hard dirt.

“
There's someone out there!
” Even through the screaming pain in her chin, Evie recognized the voice of the Fairy Drillsergeant. “
Get up, Cadet! MOVE!
”

Evie staggered to her feet. She scrambled ahead, wiping a smear of blood from her face. The fall had cluttered her head and she was having trouble focusing, but she knew one thing for certain.
The barrier has been lifted and I must get through.

The dragon soared low across the clearing. Cadets screamed, convinced she was about to be taken in the creature's jaws. Staff shouted urgent orders. And her eyes caught Forbes's just as his mouth broke open with the word “ATTACK!” In the confusion, he took the lance off a distracted knight and mounted his horse, then broke from the crowd.