The Frog Princess 07 - Dragon Kiss

by E. D. Baker

  “No, I’m not. Meg made me take a bath today,” he said, as if that explained everything. When Audun’s expression remained blank, Jim added, “Most people don’t bother me when I smell. I mean, honestly, would you?” Raising one of his arms to his face, Jim took a deep sniff. Rolling his eyes, he stuck his tongue out of the side of his mouth and pretended to faint.

  “I thought you were on fire or someone was chasing you,” said Audun. “If I’d known you were just being an idiot, I never would have gotten so worried.”

  Jim blinked and looked up at Audun. “You were worried about me?” he said, as if he were pleased. “No one ever worries about me.”

  “Meg does,” said Audun, giving Jim a hand out of the manure.

  “Meg worries about everyone,” Jim said. “I think it’s part of her job.”

  “And what’s your job exactly?”

  Jim shrugged. “I clean up messes that no one else wants to touch. I run errands that no one else wants to do.”

  “In other words,” said Audun, “you make yourself in-valuable.”

  Jim gave him a sideways glance as if surprised that someone had figured it out. “I guess you could say that.”

  “And what else do you do?” Audun asked. “You have complete run of the place. I bet you know everything that goes on here.”

  “I guess you could say that, too,” Jim said with a smirk. “I know that Smugsby has a killer headache and that he blames a certain person who gave him a certain tankard. I’d tiptoe around him if I were that person.”

  “Thanks for telling me. Now, tell me one more thing: have you seen a girl who doesn’t belong here? One who might be in danger?” Audun asked, trying to sound casual, as if the question weren’t uppermost in his mind.

  Jim glanced away, but not before Audun could see that his eyes looked troubled. “No. I don’t know anyone like that.”

  Audun nodded. He didn’t want to scare the boy off. “Well, then, what about places? I bet you know your way around this castle pretty well.”

  Jim snorted. “Better than anyone. I know more secrets about this place than the men who built it. There are secret passages everywhere. I know three ways to get into the king’s own chamber, and only one of them is through the door.”

  “What about the dungeon? How many ways do you know to get in there?”

  “You aren’t asking about the front door, where you have to go past two sets of guards and a trapdoor that would send you straight to the netherworld if you took one wrong step, are you? You want to know about the back way, where no one can see you and you have to watch out for rats and things that give you nightmares even during the day.”

  “That’s right,” said Audun.

  “Did you want to see these places yourself ?”

  Audun nodded. “Now, if you have the time.”

  Jim took his mission very seriously. He warned Audun to be quiet and, once they had passed the stables, looked high and low to see if anyone was watching them as they approached the far side of the castle. They had rounded the corner of the keep when Jim stopped suddenly and said, “That’s odd. Those weren’t there when I was here last.” He pointed along the back of the keep to a group of figures that were standing in their way.

  “What are they?” Audun asked, squinting into the sunlight. They looked like tall, thin people with upraised arms, but they were too tall and too thin to be real.

  “They’re some kind of plants,” Jim said, approaching them cautiously. “Look, they’re covered with prickers.”

  “How long ago were you here last?”

  “Right after I came to live at the castle. Before the wizard came. Do you think he had something to do with this?”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised,” said Audun.

  As they got closer, Audun saw that they really were plants. Gray green in color, they each had two armlike branches that reached toward the sky and sharp, spike-like growths that covered them from top to bottom. Jim and Audun were almost among them when the plants began to move.

  “Watch out!” Jim shouted, as the plant closest to Audun swung a branch at him.

  Audun jumped back, and the branch barely missed him. Drops of liquid quivered on the tips of some of the spines. “We’re not going any farther now,” said Audun, taking another step back. “Where exactly is the opening to the dungeon?”

  “There,” Jim said, pointing at a patch of tall, normal-looking weeds by the base of the wall. “There’s a hole with a grate in front of it. The hole is small, but it gets bigger inside. We’ll never get there, though, not with these plants guarding the opening.”

  “I’m sure you’re right,” said Audun, but he was already thinking of ways he could do just that.

  The sun was high overhead by the time they returned to the stables. “Thanks,” said Audun. “You were a big help. Just don’t tell anyone what you showed me.”

  “Who—me? You’re the only person I’ve talked to since Dolon took over. No one else is worth the bother. Say, aren’t you supposed to go see Smugsby soon? I’ve heard he has a whole lot of things for you to do.” Grinning at Audun once more, Jim darted off around the manure pile and up the hill to the castle keep.

  Jim was right; it was time to go see Smugsby. Only a few minutes later, Audun was passing the Great Hall. He heard the commotion of an excited crowd. Lords and ladies dressed in fine clothes pushed past him to stand shoulder to shoulder with scullery maids and undergrooms while the words “marvelous” and “wonderful” rang out around them. Audun worked his way into the crowd and finally, after crawling under a table and stepping on a few toes to get people to move, he was able to see Princess Gabriella and the man he assumed was her father, King Dolon, greeting someone he had yet to see. It wasn’t until the crowd parted so that the new person could come forward that Audun saw his face. To the delight of everyone except Audun, Olebald Wizard was back.

  As the old man’s head turned his way, Audun ducked and melted into the crowd.

  Nineteen

  Jim had been right about something else, too: Smugsby was in a very bad mood.

  “Someone who hates me sent you with that blasted tankard, I know it!” he growled, when Audun walked in the door. “Either I didn’t give him a job, or he didn’t get what he thinks he deserved. You brought me that . . . that thing so I’d drink myself to death!”

  Audun shook his head. “That isn’t true. I brought it because I thought you’d like it.”

  “I do, and that’s the problem,” Smugsby said, rubbing his temples. “I wouldn’t be too pleased with myself, though, if I were you. Every time my head pounds, I’m going to think of more work for you, and right now it feels like it’s the midsummer celebration and everyone is dancing on my skull! Go see Pringle. He’s got a list of things I want done today. And don’t dawdle if you want to keep your job.”

  True to Smugsby’s word, Pringle kept Audun running all afternoon. He took a message to the captain of the guard, then brought back his reply. He rushed to the city with a note for a man who sold wine, and as soon as he returned he was sent back to the city with a note for a wool merchant.

  Audun was relieved when Pringle finally told him that the rest of his errands would be inside the castle. He was walking through the Great Hall when the floor beneath him trembled and a loud rumble filled the air. A passing guard smiled in a knowing kind of way and said, “Must be that wizard. I expect we’ll have a lot of that kind of thing going on with him in the castle.”

  Audun frowned. It had been easy enough to forget about Olebald Wizard while he was in the city, but he’d have to remember to stay on guard if he didn’t want the wizard to see him.

  Late that afternoon Audun was returning with a message from the king’s chancellor when he saw an enormous man come out of Smugsby’s office. His shoulders were broad and his arms and legs muscled as if he lifted heavy objects daily. Although Audun was sure he’d never seen the man before, there was something familiar about the way he held his head. He nodded at Audun and
winked, as if about to say something, and might have if Pringle hadn’t stuck his head out the door and told Audun to come in.

  “Who was that?” Audun asked, shutting the door behind him.

  “A new guard,” said Pringle. “He’s big enough to intimidate anyone, don’t you think?”

  “Indeed,” said Audun.

  He wouldn’t have thought any more about the new guard if the man hadn’t kept popping up. Audun saw him while passing through the Great Hall on two different trips, then once outside the kitchen, and again in the corridor by the room where he’d left his pallet. Although the man never spoke, Audun could sense his eyes following him every time they met. At first he thought the man might be working for Olebald Wizard, but he discarded that idea when the man didn’t approach him and neither did anyone else. Surely if Olebald knew he was there, Audun would no longer be walking around freely. But, the man made him nervous.

  The sun had already set when Audun finally finished his work for the day. After making sure that no one, including the new guard, was following him, he slipped through a door and hurried around the side of the castle. He was about to do something he had told himself he wouldn’t do while on the castle grounds, but it was the only thing he could think of that would take care of the spiky plants. For just a few minutes, Audun was going to have to turn back into a dragon.

  He waited until he was in the deepest shadows close to the wall of the keep before closing his eyes and thinking about being a dragon. When he next looked up, his eyesight was back to normal; washed in a pale light, the plants were no longer the dull grayish green they’d appeared through human eyes, but now showed patches of ultraviolet and a white so bright that Audun had to look away. The plants seemed to be watching him. He took a step closer and they swayed in his direction ever so slightly—as if a gentle breeze had blown them. When he was a few yards away, they began reaching for him.

  If Audun had been a fire dragon, he would have blasted them with a heat so intense they would have blackened and withered like daisies in a forest fire. But because he was an ice dragon, he coughed. It wasn’t a loud cough, just the kind that ice dragons do when they are mixing the noxious gas stored in a sac near their lungs with the air they are about to exhale. When he did exhale, the gas formed a small cloud that was colorless and nearly invisible. As the cloud drifted through the cluster of plants, they jerked back and then began to shrivel and die. Not a single desiccated plant stirred as Audun walked between them to the grate in the wall.

  About two feet across and built into the wall for drainage, the grate covered a round opening at the bottom of one of the walls. Time and rust had loosened it so much that Audun was able to lift it free with no effort at all. The opening was too small for a dragon as big as Audun, and since he had to change back, anyway, he crouched down and, a moment later, tried to see if his human form could fit. Although it was tight, he was able to wriggle inside. He thought about going to look for the king himself, but he had no idea what the man looked like or what he would do with him once he got him out, so he wriggled back through the opening and set the grate where it belonged. Midnight was only a few hours away and Audun guessed Owen would be furious if he rescued the king without him.

  The full moon was peeking over the castle wall when Audun returned to the stable yard. Owen had yet to arrive, so Audun sat on the ground to gaze up at the sky while he waited for the prince. It wasn’t long before he heard someone approach, but the boy who sat down beside him was Jim.

  “I wish I could fly away from here,” Jim said, sounding wistful.

  “Where would you go if you could?” asked Audun.

  “Somewhere I wouldn’t have to hide and could just be myself. The problem is, I wouldn’t know how to get there.”

  Audun felt sorry for the boy. He pretended not to notice Jim scrub his eyes with the back of his hand as he climbed to his feet.

  Jim straightened his back and glanced at Audun. “Where’s your friend?”

  “What friend?” asked Audun.

  “The one who’s meeting you at midnight. I told you I know everything that goes on around here.”

  “He should be here soon,” said Audun.

  “Who is that?” said a voice out of the near-darkness. “I told you to come. I never said you could bring someone else.”

  Audun waited while Owen came close enough that they could see each other clearly. “I didn’t invite him, but it might not be a bad idea to have him along,” said Audun. “Jim knows his way around the castle better than anyone.”

  “He doesn’t know it better than I do,” Owen snapped. “Look at him—he’s a kid. He’ll just get in the way.”

  “I can help!” Jim rushed to say. “And I bet I know ways into the dungeon that you’ve never seen.”

  Owen narrowed his eyes. “He told you we were going to the dungeon?”

  “No, I just know a lot of things,” Jim said. “And I’m small. I can fit places you can’t.”

  “All right,” Owen said. “Since you already know all about it, you can come, but stay out of my way. And it’s up to you to keep an eye on him,” he added, glancing at Audun.

  “No problem,” said Audun, giving Jim a pointed look.

  Owen acted as if he knew where he was going, but when they reached the base of the first tower, he stopped and kicked at a pile of gravel. “I know it was here,” he said. “I found the tunnel years ago when I was playing with my friends. It was behind a couple of big boulders.”

  “I think Dolon had it filled in after he took over the castle,” said Jim. “If it were daylight out, you’d see the new stones and mortar.”

  “There was another, smaller entrance,” said Owen, “but it had a grate over it. I don’t recall exactly . . .”

  “It’s this way,” said Jim. “Follow me!”

  He took them around the castle wall to the side he had visited with Audun earlier that day. It was darker there because the tower itself was blocking the moonlight, but with his sharp dragon eyes, Audun could see the ground where the spiky plants had been standing. It looked ghostly in the gloom, as if a patrol of guards had been mown down and deflated at the same time.

  “What happened to them?” Jim asked.

  “Looks like something killed them,” said Audun.

  Jim glanced at him in exasperation. “I know that! I just wonder how.”

  Owen nudged the limp remains of a plant with the toe of his shoe. “Could have been a lot of things.”

  The prince seemed to be having difficulty determining where to step, so when he stumbled and nearly fell, Audun set his hand on his arm to guide him. Owen tried to shake him off, saying, “I don’t need your help.”

  “What harm is there in accepting what little help I can give you? Or would you rather trip over a rock and break your neck so that your father rots in the dungeon for the rest of his life?”

  “Well, if you put it that way . . . ,” said Owen.

  “It’s over here,” Jim called from the middle of the dead weeds.

  Audun helped the prince down the slight incline, the weeds crunching beneath their feet. Releasing his grip on the prince’s arm, he lifted the heavy grate as easily as if it were made of paper, then bent down to peer into the opening.

  “It’s a tunnel,” said Jim, squatting beside him. “It opens into another tunnel that goes all the way under the dungeons. It smells in there and there’re a lot of rats, but there’s water running through the bottom.”

  “An underground river runs beneath the city,” said Owen. “It’s why Desidaria was built here and why we rarely run out of water. I’ve seen it on my father’s old maps.” Reaching into his tunic, he pulled out a candle and flint. “We can light this in the tunnel. Stay here. I’ll go first.”

  “I think I should go first,” said Audun. “You never know what you’re going to find in a place like this.”

  “I’m not going to argue about it,” Owen said. “Just stay here until—”

  “Come on in,” Jim cal
led from inside the tunnel. “There’s plenty of room in here.”

  “People are supposed to listen to princes,” Owen grumbled, as he crawled through the opening. Audun followed, reaching back to grab the grate and pull it roughly into place. When he turned around again, Owen had lit the candle and was holding it up to examine their surroundings. The tunnel was wider than the opening to the outside, but still not big enough to allow them to stand. It went back only a dozen yards or so before ending in a mound of stone and gravel. The sound of rushing water was audible even near the opening and grew louder the farther in Audun went.

  “The other tunnel is this way,” Jim said, as he scurried off, still doubled over, into a side passage. “We’ll have to go down because it’s under this one and . . . Hey! It’s filled with water! It wasn’t the last time I came here, I swear it!”

  “I believe you,” Audun said, squeezing in beside Owen and Jim. The tunnel was short, ending in a hole in the ground as wide as the tunnel itself. Water rushed only a foot or so below them. “I bet the wizard brought the water level up just so people couldn’t get into the dungeon through these tunnels.”

  Owen nodded, the flickering light of his candle making his shadow on the wall nod with him. “The whole castle shook this afternoon. I even felt it outside.”

  “What are we going to do?” asked Jim. “I know of two other ways in, but if this tunnel is flooded, they will be, too.”

  “I’ll go,” said Audun.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Owen said, scowling. “You won’t be able to breathe in there and there’s no telling how far you’ll have to go before you reach air again.”

  Jim shook his head. “You can’t go in! I’ve been down there and I can tell you that it’s a really long way. I suppose we can check the other openings. Maybe one of them . . .”

  “You said yourself that if one is flooded, the others will be as well. I’m a strong swimmer and can hold my breath for a very long time, much longer than either of you. I’ll have the best chance of getting in there and back out again.” Although Owen knew that Audun was really a dragon, Jim had no idea. The last thing Audun wanted to do was let someone else in on a secret that no one was supposed to know.