The Black Shard (7 page)

"I think they're okay," Kristina said, but she, like Hester, felt awkward in them.

Another knock came at the door. "You may enter," Davina said, while bowing to her reflection in the mirror.

It was Elzwur again. He opened the door slightly and peered through the crack between the door and the wall. "I am waiting to take you to the kitchen," he said impatiently.

The girls quickly hurried out of the room, and followed Elzwur. Davina kept in her distinguished character, holding her nose up high and sauntering with long strides.

A gnome house maid passed by them carrying a large vase filled with flowers, and zooming in and out of the flowers were two female fairies, one with light blonde hair, and the other with tawny brown hair. They were busy arranging the flowers when the blonde fairy took notice of Kristina. She pulled at the other fairy's arm, and then the two of them flew over to Kristina.

"Aren't you the girl in the paintings on the ceiling in the lower corridor of the palace?" the blonde fairy asked Kristina excitedly.

"Yes—at least, I think so," Kristina answered.

"Oh, brother," Davina said under her breath.

The blonde fairy touched Kristina's hair and face. "I am truly honored to finally meet you, Kristina," she said.

"Thank you," Kristina said. "It's really nice to meet you as well."

With a squeamish look on his face, Elzwur stood impatiently waiting. "Would you please come along now?" he finally said. "We certainly don't have time for your dilly-dallying."

The girls continued following Elzwur, and after quite a walk through a long hallway, they finally made it to a set of large white doors. Elzwur pushed through them, and as soon as the girls stepped foot in the next room, their nostrils instantly filled with the fragrant scent of cinnamon. They were in the palace kitchen, and in its center was a long table crafted out of a single slab of wood. It was set with three plates, and on top of each plate, sitting in an egg cup, was a boiled egg. Beside each plate was a cup of steaming hot cocoa topped with whipped cream and chocolate sprinkles. A twisted candied orange slice sat neatly on top of the whipped cream.

The girls could hear someone humming a strange tune, and then at the back end of the kitchen, someone suddenly pushed through a set of wooden swinging doors. It was a fat, elderly, gnome woman, carrying a tray with a large stack of pancakes, tilting to the right, on top of it. She set the tray down on the table, and then looked up at Kristina. Bewildered, her mouth dropped open. "I thought I'd be struck by lightning before I'd see the likes of my dear chosen one again," she said astonished. She quickly made her way around the table to Kristina and embraced her tightly. Then with faded blue eyes and an almost toothless grin, she looked up at Kristina's face. "That Werrien, the little sneak—he told me that I'd be serving breakfast to a friend of his that would be traveling with him to Tezerel, but I would have never guessed it would be you."

"Leacha! It's so good to see you," Kristina said joyfully. She took Leacha's wrinkled old hands in hers. "Though I'm surprised to see that they've put you to work here."

"What do you mean, child?" Leacha's eyes grew wide. "It was my own choice." Her gray chin hairs poked forward as her smile grew more pronounced. "Werrien wanted me to come and live at the palace and have me do nothing but take it easy, but I wouldn't have any of it. I told him that I would come, but only under one condition."

"Oh, and what was that?"

"That I be made head chef in the kitchen, of course! I've got to make sure my Werrien's eating properly, you know." She pulled out a chair for Kristina. "Now sit down and eat before the pancakes get too cold." She poured some unusually bright, yellow syrup over each girl's pancakes and then headed back to the far end of the kitchen behind the swinging doors.

"Yum! It looks so good," Kristina said. But after two bites her stomach began to feel queasy.

Hester looked over at Kristina and noticed that she wasn't feeling well. "What's the matter? Is all the overrated attention getting to you?" she said coldly.

"Wow! Kristina, you look awful," Davina snickered, while trying to figure out how to get her egg out of its shell.

Leacha passed through the swinging doors again, this time with a pan full of steaming-hot cinnamon rolls. She set them down on the table in front of the girls. "Sailing on the high seas takes a lot of energy. You girls eat heartily now," she said. She glanced at Kristina, whose face was as white as a sheet. "Oh, my mercy! What have I done?" Leacha shrieked. She quickly pulled Kristina's plate away from her. "I'm so sorry, dear. It looks like the food isn't agreeing with you—probably the syrup. It's a fairly new recipe of mine."

"What do you mean? This is the best syrup I've ever tasted!" Davina said, pouring so much of it on her pancakes that they were floating in it.

Leacha frowned at Davina and promptly snatched the syrup jug out of her hands. Then Leacha hurried off to the other part of the kitchen behind the swinging doors again, and a minute later she returned, carrying a cup of water in one hand and a round, red tablet, about the size of a marble, in the other. She dropped the tablet in the cup and as soon as it hit the water, it smoked, popped, and bubbled over the sides of the cup. Then she handed it to Kristina. "Drink this quickly," she insisted.

Kristina's stomach was so upset that she had a hard time swallowing the warm, bubbling concoction, but once she finally got it all down, her stomach instantly settled. "Thank you, Leacha. I feel much better now," she said.

"How about a warm cinnamon roll?" Leacha said, patting Kristina on the head with her chubby, wrinkled hand.

Hester grabbed one from the pan, and Davina grabbed two.

"I think I've had enough to eat, thanks," Kristina said.

Elzwur entered the kitchen. "How was breakfast?" he asked, cracking a thin smile at Kristina for the first time.

"Delicious!" Davina said, while chewing, and at the same time grabbing more cinnamon rolls from the pan.

"Well, then, I would say it's high time we get moving," Elzwur said.

Leacha pushed through the swinging doors again, this time wearing a busy-patterned scarf on her head and pulling a cart full of food, including a big corked jug of her syrup. "What are we waiting for?" she said. "Let's not keep our Werrien waiting."

C
arrying a golden object in its mouth, a bat flew into the cave where it found the Irgul lying on the cold, damp floor. The bat stopped momentarily to marvel at the Irgul. Excited to see what the once-deluded victim had become, the bat's mouth salivated and almost dropped the golden object. The bat's body quivered as it pictured the consequences it would have faced if it had actually dropped it.
I must find the serpent,
the bat thought, clenching its tiny pointy teeth around the object.

The bat continued on its way toward the crevice and in order for it to fit through the narrow crack, it had to crawl sideways on its belly along a damp rock wall. When it reached the end of the crevice, it entered a small dark nook, where on the middle of the floor, the serpent sat lingering over its newly claimed object that it had acquired from its victim. Beside that object lay the back section of Bernovem's Book of Prophecy.

Cautiously, the bat made its way to the serpent and landed on the floor beside it.

"Did you bring it?" the serpent hissed to the bat. The bat dropped its golden object onto the floor in front of the serpent, and the serpent examined it closely, touching the object with its slithering tongue. Then with its flat scaly head, the serpent pushed the object that the bat had brought, beside the object acquired from its victim. "Did anyone see you?" the serpent asked the bat.

The bat hesitated.

"Answer me you pathetic creature!" the serpent hissed, causing the bat to cower toward the entrance of the crevice.

"I ... I'm not sure," the bat said in a small voice.

"What do you mean, you're not sure? Did anyone see you or not?"

"When the boy and the girl entered the room, I ... I panicked. I was going to fly out the window, but at the last second, I decided to hide behind the curtain until they left."

"They better not have seen you," the serpent said with frowning eyes.

The bat suddenly had a realization. "Actually, now that I think of it, I know that they didn't see me, because the boy said that he thought I was a bird." Feeling more at ease, the bat crawled along the rock wall to get closer to the serpent. "As the boy went to shut the window, he heard someone coming toward the room from outside in the hall, so instead of shutting the window, the boy and the girl hid by the cabinet so that they wouldn't be seen in the room. Then, when they figured that the coast was clear, they left the room in a hurry, and the stupid boy left the window and the cabinet open." A nasty grin lingered on the bat's face. "And that is how I was able to get the golden goblet."

Even though pleased with the bat's accomplishments, the serpent didn't have it in itself to congratulate the bat. "Stop gloating and get down here and open the book," the serpent said.

The bat hobbled over to the book laying beside the two objects.

"Open it to the last written page," the serpent hissed.

The bat did so, and read,
"Werrien invited Kristina to sail with him to Tezerel."

"Oh what fun," the serpent jeered, its glowing eyes illuminating the page. More writing began to appear as they stared at the page.

"Werrien and Kristina are leaving the palace to head to the ship,"
the bat read.

They suddenly heard a high-pitched buzzing sound coming from the entrance of the crevice. Then an insect resembling a mosquito flew through the crevice to the serpent and the bat. Though the insect looked like a mosquito, it was the size of a large bird. Its color was dark-dirt brown, and its needle nose was blood red. Protruding out of its face were its eyes, which were yellow, with rectangular pupils, like that of a goat.

The insect landed on the ground beside the serpent and the bat, and the serpent turned to acknowledge it.

"Well?" the serpent said, "Did you accomplish your task?"

"Yes," the insect said in a high-pitched vibrating voice.

"Are you certain you got the formula correct? If you didn't mix it just right, it will have a totally different effect."

"Yes, I mixed it exactly how it was written in Rupert's black book."

"Perfect! Then only a fraction of a drop will be needed for each one." A repulsive smile enveloped the serpent's face. "It will spread like wild fire. Now go quickly and inject as many of them as you can." The serpent gloated enthusiastically.

The insect bowed to the serpent and then flew through the crevice and out of the cave.

In a navy blue jacket and with his sandy blond hair tousled slightly, Werrien stood by Taysha and Lisheng, who were harnessed to a carriage. He saw Elzwur, Leacha, and the three girls heading his way. "Finally!" he said to Elzwur. "I was starting to wonder if you were coming at all."

"I'm sorry if we're late, Your Highness," Elzwur said, his stony eyes shifting to Kristina and then back to Werrien.

Werrien winked at Kristina, letting her know that he was only giving the tense dwarf a hard time. "It's okay, Elzwur. As punishment, today I'll have you scrub the main deck on the ship and then go to bed early, without dinner," Werrien teased, laying a friendly hand pat on the dwarf's back.

Elzwur laughed thinly, and then gave Kristina another icy glance, making her stomach queasy all over again.

Is it that he doesn't like me, or is he always this grumpy?
Kristina wondered.

Leacha began unloading the food from her cart into a back compartment of the carriage, and Werrien promptly went to lend her a hand.

"I see that you brought my favorite foods. How thoughtful of you," Werrien said to Leacha. Then he turned to Kristina, Davina, and Hester. "She's a great cook, don't you think?"

"Oh, yes! Kristina especially enjoyed her homemade syrup," Hester said, grinning at Davina.

"Isn't it great?" Werrien said. "We go through a lot of it at the palace."

"It tasted really good," Kristina said, not wanting to make Leacha feel guilty all over again.

Davina, Hester, Leacha, and Elzwur, climbed into the carriage. Kristina was about to follow, but Werrien gently took hold of her arm. "I was wondering if you might ride up front with me," he said.

"Are you going to drive the carriage?" Kristina asked.

"It crossed my mind," Werrien said, smiling.

Kristina's eyes nervously shifted to look at Hester on the other side of the carriage window, arguing with Davina. Then she looked up at Werrien again.

"I guess that I could have Elzwur drive it," Werrien said, "but I actually find it quite boring riding inside, and besides, I thought you might like to give it a try."

"You mean, you'd like me to drive the carriage?" Kristina said uneasily. After falling off the horse on the trail at the Tranquil Trails Ranch, she wasn't sure if she wanted anything to do with any horse again, be it riding it or manning it from a carriage. But then she thought,
These are my friends, Taysha and Lisheng. I guess that I could make an exception for them.
"Sure, I'll give it a try," she said.