The Sleeping King (77 page)

“Thanks,” Will panted.

“No problem,” she panted back.

Cicero plunged his sword into the beast's chest and called urgently to Sha'Li, “Get that club out of his hand!”

The lizardman girl had no sooner knocked the club loose than the troll began to … dissipate. His body turned to smoky wisps and blew away like fog. Will stared in disbelief. He'd felt the blows of that club, the strength in those massively muscled arms … and yet they were disappearing like mist burned off by the morning sun.

“What the—” Rosana started.

Eben surprised Will by croaking weakly, “Phantasm.”

Raina stared at the jann. “That was a dream creature? Does that mean we are in the dream realm?”

Eben's gaze shifted to the door and Will's gaze followed.

Cicero murmured, “I know that silk. It comes from Vaestros. He is the dream-weaver spider. Scion of Zinn, the Great Spider.”

Raina moved to the panel and traced the intricate web of lines etched into the wood panels with her fingers. “Then this must be a dream catcher,” she whispered.

Will had heard of those. His mother used to hang one in the window if she left it open at night. She'd told him it kept phantasms from creeping in and stealing his dreams. He looked back quickly at where the troll had fallen. Phantasms were
real?
Hearth tales described them as denizens of the dream realm and capable of taking on the appearance of anything or anyone.

Will turned back to Eben to ask him what else he knew of this place, but the jann's eyes had lost focus and were glazed over with pain once more. Will noted that the jann's normally colorful skin was going grayer by the minute. They had to find healing for him, and soon.

“What is this?” Sha'Li asked. She'd moved far away enough from where the troll had fallen that she was starting to be swallowed by the mist. From what Will could make out of her, she appeared to be staring hard at something.

Cicero moved toward her and Will joined him. He stopped short, though, when he spied the wall before them. It was solid but violently uneven. It looked made of crystals colored yellow and white and orange and red and even shot through with a translucent hint of blue in a few places. All the colors of fire. As soon as he thought of that it dawned on him that the crystals looked exactly like flames, made substantial and frozen forever in a dancing pose.

“It looks like crystallized fire,” he murmured.

“And forms an arc around us,” Raina announced.

Sha'Li commented, “I'll bet there is no opening in it and we are trapped.” She took off to the right, following the wall into the mist.

“Feel like going the other way with me?” Cicero muttered to him.

“Why not?”

They followed the curving wall of crystallized fire back to the stone and dirt wall containing the circular door. They followed it to where the girls crouched beside Eben, checking his bandages.

“How is he?” Will asked.

Raina answered grimly, “He worsens rapidly.”

“We have to get out of here and find him help soon,” Rosana added in dismay.

Will squeezed her shoulder comfortingly, and Rosana rose to her feet and turned in to his touch for a quick hug as Sha'Li materialized out of the mist.

“No opening,” the lizardman girl announced in disgust. “Too slippery and tall it is to climb. Smash through it we must.”

Rosana frowned. “It's not a good idea to destroy a magic thing. Bad things happen when magic gets set free.”

“A better idea you have?” Sha'Li snapped.

Rosana huffed in frustration. “No.”

Will shared her sentiment. He didn't like the idea any better than the gypsy, but what choice did they have? They couldn't just sit here and wait for Eben to die. Time was of the essence and they needed to press forward.

“We cannot leave him here, alone,” Raina announced, gesturing down at Eben, who appeared to be barely conscious. “I will take him back to the surface.”

Once she'd put on the White Heart tabard she'd seemed to embrace its tenets with gusto. Still, he hated to split the party.

Rosana piped up, “You go forward, Raina. I will take Eben back. I have a little healing for him.”

“I have no healing at all!” Raina protested.

“You have knowledge. You go on.”

Raina's spine stiffened stubbornly, and Will sensed an argument forthcoming. They had no time for this!

Thankfully, Cicero laid a hand on Raina's arm, which seemed to shock her into silence. “Rosana is right,” the elf murmured soberly. “Let her go. She, too, is bound to heal the injured and cure the sick. And she can defend herself … after a fashion.”

The fight went out of Raina's spine and Will sighed in relief. He nodded his gratitude at Cicero, but the elf merely gave Will a worried look back. They were sending the last of their healing out of the cave. It was a desperate measure. But they had no choice. The clock was ticking.

Rosana declared firmly to Raina, “This is your quest. Not mine. I'll go back with him.”

“What of the wolf?” Will demanded. No way was he letting her go back into that chamber of the dead if the wolf was still loose.

“Haven't you noticed that it is no longer attacking the door?” Raina asked.

“Mayhap it's lying in wait for someone to come out. All the more reason for Rosana and Eben not to go out there!” he retorted.

“Let us take a peek and see if we can ascertain where it is and what it's up to,” Raina suggested.

Will sighed and gave in for lack of any better idea. “Fine. Sha'Li, if you could unlock the door, I'll have a look.”

Cicero, Sha'Li, and Raina put their shoulders to the door in preparation to shove it shut if the beast should attack. Will pulled on the heavy portal and it slid open a few inches. No attack. He opened it a bit more. Still nothing. Finally, he opened the door far enough to peer very cautiously around the panel.

He straightened in surprise and pushed the door open a little farther to look again. “The circle is back up and the wolf is within it.” He moved out of the doorway far enough to hock a clod of dirt at the beast's nearer head. The dire wolf lunged at the circle, snapping and snarling, but did not pass through it. “It's caged once more,” Will announced.

“There you have it,” Rosana replied in relief. “Eben and I will make our way back to the Boki and Balthazar. They will heal Eben.”

Will doubted the White Heart man would have any mana left by now, either, but kept that pessimistic prediction to himself. Eben needed the hope. “All right,” Will conceded reluctantly. “Be careful. Do not disturb the roots nor touch the mushrooms—”

“I came in the same way you did,” Rosana chided gently. She laid her palm briefly on his cheek and whispered, “Come out of this cave alive, Will Cobb. I would take it much amiss if you did not return.”

He smiled quickly and nodded his promise to do so; then she was spinning away and thrusting her shoulder beneath Eben's armpit. “Let us go, Rainbow Boy,” she said jauntily.

So brave she was. Plucky. His heart swelled with affection for her. She was the kind of girl his mother would approve of. His mother, who'd sacrificed her life that he might complete this quest. The great, circular door closed behind Eben and Rosana.
And now they were four.

Will said heavily, “If we are going to do this, we might as well do it quickly. Any ideas for passing over, under, or through yon wall?”

“Use your staff,” Raina suggested. “If you can channel some magic down it, breaking the magic of the wall may not destroy you.”

He grimaced and gripped the weapon hard. His strength was waning and with it his ability to call magic. A thin stream of gold wandered down the staff. He took a deep breath and thrust it at the wall.

The crystals reverberated from his blow, but did not shatter or even appear scratched. Oddly, though, the vibration continued on for longer than it should have, chiming loudly, almost like it summoned something.

“Not good,” Sha'Li said under her breath, taking a step backward.

“Not good at all,” Cicero echoed, backing away from the wall.

Will looked up, and out of the mist above the wall a creature was materializing. It looked like a drawing Will had seen once of a great sea monster, except atop this one's massive body were multiple massively long necks, each capped with a vicious reptilian-looking head and rows of glittering, deadly teeth. It was
huge
.

“What. On. Urth. Is. That?” Raina asked in awe.

Sha'Li answered shortly, “Hydra.”

Will added, “And this one is not wearing clothes and items that might weaken it to remove.”

Just then one of the four waving heads opened its mouth and blasted a gout of fire over their heads.

“A fire hydra make that,” Sha'Li corrected herself.

“As if that makes it any better?” Will exclaimed.

“No choice we have, Will Cobb,” Sha'Li declared. “Proceed we must until succeeding or dying, yes?”

Without bothering to wait for an answer the lizardman girl charged forward bravely, claws before her, for the belly of the beast. It wasn't a bad idea in theory. The hydra's underside appeared to be the only part of the creature not covered in red shiny scales the size of a soldier's shield. And perhaps Sha'Li thought her own scaled hide would protect her from the monster's fiery breath. Will had to admire her directness and complete disregard for personal safety.

But as she neared the hydra one of the heads swooped down and exhaled a gout of flame that completely engulfed the lizardman girl, blocking her from view. Only the roar of the fire, ten times as loud as any smith's furnace, filled the air. It went on for many long seconds, freezing Will's feet to the ground in horror.

When the creature lifted its head, its fiery attack finished, Sha'Li was no more. Where she had stood there was only a small pile of gray ash flecked with black. The casual thoroughness with which the beast had eradicated her stunned Will speechless. They would never be able to defeat this beast. They were finished.

 

CHAPTER

30

Raina slapped a hand over her mouth and didn't quite succeed at containing her sob of grief and horror.

Will looked shaken to his core, and even stoic Cicero looked dismayed. What on Urth were they to do next? Her selfish quest to break the curse upon the women of her family was not worth all of this death, even were she not wearing the White Heart colors.

“Obviously, we cannot fight it,” Will declared with patently false confidence. “We have nothing left to fight it with. We must think of a way to pass by it.”

But how?
She was completely out of ideas. Out of courage, out of belief in the rightness of what they did. The cost was too high. It was time to end this madness. She opened her mouth to say so but was forestalled by the hydra making a strange, rusty sound. One of the heads had opened its mouth, but instead of fire, oddly formed syllables of … speech?… emerged.

She strained to understand the beast, making out something along the lines of, “It is in the air we breathe, the earth we stand on, the water we drink, and the fire that warms us. It is always and forever, never waning, never fading. It is what you feel in your heart, what you know in the deepest part of our spirit, and what you believe in your wildest dreams. Only its purest form can tame me.”

Will breathed, “Have I lost my mind, or is that thing trying to talk?”

“You have not lost your mind,” she muttered. “I think it's a verse of some kind.”

The head repeated the taunt, “Only its purest form can tame me.”

“Or a riddle?” she added doubtfully.

There was something familiar about the words. Their rhythm. The singsong flow … She could not place it.

Will lurched beside her all of a sudden, as if a blast of memory had just slammed into him. He said in wonder, “My mother said something like that to me just before—” He broke off, then continued painfully, “Just before she and my father died protecting me.”

“What else did she say?” Raina asked urgently. “Think, Will. It is important.”

The hydra head repeated the cryptic description and Will blurted, “Magic. It's as pure as lady's breath. Legend says the Green Lady's final breath upon the land became a flower.”

Raina didn't have the slightest idea what he was talking about. She looked around frantically for flowers, however. Within view, a few small, nondescript flowered weeds grew.

Beside her, Will muttered to himself, “Lady's breath. Lady's breath…” He cast his gaze around the scattered weeds. He dashed over to a small, unassuming clump of plants bearing simple white flowers and pulled off a handful of stems.

“You're going to fight that monster with flowers?” Cicero asked skeptically.

Will waved the flowers at the beast, and Raina privately thought he looked passing silly. Not to mention nothing happened.

The beast repeated the verse. And it sounded noticeably impatient. They were missing something.

“Are not offerings to fire creatures usually burned?” she suggested.

Will blurted, “Of course. This plant is used for incense, sometimes. Quick. Flint and steel, Cicero.”

The elf pulled out his fire stones and in a minute had a small twist of dead grass burning on the ground before him. Will touched the lady's breath to the small flame. A thin line of smoke curled up from the leaves, its distinctive sweet aroma filling Raina's nose. A feeling of wellness washed over her. All three of them waved their hands to waft the sweet smoke toward the beast.

The hydra dissipated almost the same way the troll had, but this time fading into a cloud of burning flames. But no heat radiated from the misty fire, which was large enough to engulf a cottage. Nonetheless, the three of them fell back against the dream catcher door, cringing away from the spouting blaze.