by Zac Gorman
The little hill on which she sat watching the Black Mountain had quickly become her favorite respite from the village. The only downside was that it was far enough away from Three Fingers that when you went back, you had to reacclimate to the stink. After twenty minutes or so inside the village, though, you hardly noticed the smell, but those first few were absolutely torturous. It wasn’t uncommon for lifelong residents to go “nose blind,” a rare condition in which prolonged exposure to the town’s intense stench actually caused their sense of smell to disappear. Iphigenia was optimistic that she hadn’t lived in Three Fingers long enough to suffer irreversible nose damage but had been disturbed the other day when she realized she couldn’t smell a lilac bush.
Iphigenia reopened her book, a rather boring history text, and nodded off within minutes. When she awoke, it was to the sound of trumpets—which was every bit as unpleasant as you’d imagine. She jerked awake and looked out to see a royal carriage, the same one she’d traveled in all the way from Lyra Castelis, rumbling up over the horizon in a cloud of dust.
It was about time.
Iphigenia brushed the dry grass from her dress and headed down to the road, prepared to face what was likely a screaming, red-faced Lillia. She was so certain it’d be quite the scene that she was nonplussed to see only the well-manicured hand of the General appear to wave her aboard. Iphigenia exhaled. She couldn’t help but feel a bit disappointed. Still, there was nothing else to do now but hike up her dress and climb the small ladder that the footmen had laid out for her.
Everything inside the royal carriage was exactly the way it’d been when she’d seen it last, including the stony-faced General Lillia Lutgard, who, if she was disturbed by the Princess’s disappearing act, was adamantly refusing to show it.
“Are you about done?” asked General Lutgard.
Iphigenia plopped down on the cushions and stared at the General, who was pouring a cup of coffee from a silver carafe. Lillia rapped twice on the driver’s-side wall of the carriage, and they began to move with a bit of jolt.
“Excuse me?” said Iphigenia, hating that she’d somehow lost the upper hand.
“Are you about done?” repeated the General with a sigh before she continued, “With whatever it was you thought you were doing.”
Iphigenia felt a little relieved that the General was at least showing some signs of annoyance.
“Yes, I suppose I am.”
“Good,” said General Lutgard.
Iphigenia waited, hoping for more.
“Is that it?” she asked.
“You tell me,” said the General. “I’m happy to let you spend a few more days in Three Fingers if you’re not satisfied with your little vacation.”
“You knew where I was?”
“Of course. I spoke with the Master of the Black Mountain. I know where you’ve been and I know why you came. To help your little friend enter the Wretched Scrattle.”
“You’re angry,” said Iphigenia, barely suppressing a smirk.
“You won’t get a rise out of me like your father, dear. Frankly, I don’t care what you were doing here. That’s no business but your own. You are the future Queen. What I don’t care for is how you did it. By risking your own life, you also put mine at risk. You’re trying to make me into an enemy when I am, in fact, one of the greatest allies you could possibly have. I serve the crown and I serve you, lest you forget. You could have ordered me to bring you here after we finished the mission we were on, the one your father entrusted you to see through. That is well within your authority, and I would’ve been in no position to deny you. You could have acted like a Queen, but instead you ran away like a child. No, I’m not angry with you. I am, however, disappointed at your stupidity and shortsightedness.”
Iphigenia’s face turned bright red.
“How—how . . . who do you think you are! I’m going to be your Queen!” she screamed.
“If you behave like a child, I will treat you like one. If you behave like a Queen, I will treat you like one.”
“Stop this carriage!” screeched Iphigenia.
With a lurch, the carriage came to a complete stop.
“See how easy that was?” said Lillia.
Iphigenia was so angry that she missed the handle several times before she managed to finally grab it and fling the carriage door open. With a loud smack, the door banged into the side of the carriage, and the noise spooked the horses, who jerked the whole thing forward, throwing Iphigenia clean from the coach. She stood up and spun to see Lillia standing in the door to the carriage, looking smug. It was too much to bear.
“I’ll have you demoted! You’ll be mopping floors in the dungeon by the time I’m done with you!” yelled Iphigenia.
“You sound just like your brother.”
Iphigenia’s heart stopped, and she felt tears begin to well up in her eyes. If it wasn’t for the sound of a second carriage coming down the road, she was sure she would’ve burst into tears. They both turned to watch.
It wasn’t a carriage but a proper war wagon, the kind meant for hauling supplies around a battlefield. It was heavily reinforced, and the armored plates that surrounded it were dented, having seen more than their fair share of combat. Iphigenia would’ve been intimidated by the approach of such a vehicle except it was flying the flag of Nth. Below that was a second, smaller flag, emblazoned with a crest that looked vaguely familiar, but Iphigenia couldn’t quite push through her anger to remember. When it came to a stop no more than twenty yards away, a handsome young soldier hopped off and approached them, holding his helmet tucked beneath his arm. His outfit was standard issue for the Nth military, but like the wagon, his gear had seen better days.
“General Lutgard! I’m so glad we found you! Urgent news!”
It took Lillia directing several expressive nods toward the Princess for the soldier to realize who he was in the presence of, and once it dawned on him, he practically did a double take before dropping down to one knee and apologizing. Iphigenia waved him to his feet. It wasn’t his fault he didn’t recognize her. She had caught her reflection in one of the mirrors inside the carriage, and she’d barely recognized herself.
“What news?” Iphigenia asked, mostly so he would stop apologizing.
“Can we speak in private?” he asked.
When Lillia hesitated, Iphigenia chimed in, “I have a place. We’ll take you there.”
The carriage led them back into town, where they convened in Iphigenia’s room at the Rat-Upon-a-Cat, which she’d called home for the past few days.
The handsome soldier, who’d introduced himself as Oren, was the commander of the men stationed at Hagstooth Pass, the northeasternmost post of the Nthian army. The Hagstooth Pass station was home to a small company of soldiers tasked with an extremely important job: serving as the dividing line between Nth and Umberfall in the Witchkünder Mountains.
Oren politely refused the seat he was offered, as it was the only chair in the room and he was a gentleman. Yet decorum dictated that if one member of the party was not seated, then everybody else should stand as well, as an act of solidarity, so the three of them stood around Iphigenia’s small room while a perfectly good chair remained unoccupied. To make matters worse, the soldier could not stop shifting his weight from foot to foot as if he desperately wanted to pace or had to use the bathroom, and either way it was putting Iphigenia on edge. When she tried to make eye contact with him, he seemed intent on looking anywhere else.
“You’ve probably already guessed why I’m here,” said Oren, staring at his feet and then glancing toward Lillia, whom he seemed less hesitant to address.
“You tell me,” said Lillia sternly. She was clearly tired of his hemming and hawing.
“Agents from Umberfall have slipped across the border.”
While this wasn’t exactly good news, it wasn’t particularly shocking, either. Nth and Umberfall had a long history of spying on each other. It was what Marl, the current Overseer of the Black Mountain, had been doin
g right up until her recent appointment.
“And?” asked Lillia.
The agent hesitated only briefly, remembering that Lillia’s patience was rapidly dwindling.
“And they have entered the Wretched Scrattle.”
Lillia crossed her arms.
“There’s more,” added Oren before she had a chance to ask. “We captured one of their spies. He told us that when they win, it’s only the beginning. We think this means full-on war. General, if the Umberfallians take over the Black Mountain, they’re going to weaponize the dungeon.”
Iphigenia had heard this all before. Marl had used the same argument as a reason why she should be placed in the dungeon as Overseer in the first place. It was a frightening thought, to be sure. There were some in the capital who believed that the only sure way to prevent such a thing from happening was for Nth to do it first, but thankfully, cooler heads had always prevailed. And when Iphigenia took power, she was ready to ensure the tradition of Nth remaining hands-off with the Black Mountain. But the fear was there. The fear of the dungeon somehow turning against the people of Nth was real, and it would never go away.
“The Master himself told me there were protections in place to ensure that nobody from outside Nth could enter the tournament,” said General Lutgard, intentionally trailing off to imply that she wanted an answer without having to ask a question.
Oren obliged. “We know that they’re working with somebody from inside Nth. A traitor. What we don’t know is the specifics of their agreement.”
General Lutgard grew indignant. “I was told that the magical barrier that allowed physical entry into the mountain was designed in a way that it would prevent—physically prevent—certain types of people from entering the mountain . . . not just wizards and sorcerers but also Umberfallians or anybody without the proper paperwork—”
“Magic is only a riddle, designed to be solved,” interrupted Iphigenia. “The same way that rules are made to be broken. All the Umberfallians had to do was find somebody inside Nth, somebody who could freely enter the tournament.”
Lillia frowned and shook her head, “This is why I don’t trust magic.”
Iphigenia smiled at her and immediately regretted the implied forgiveness, still feeling the sting of the General’s words from earlier.
“So, who is this traitor, exactly?” asked Lillia.
“All we have is a name. We’ve already deployed a unit to the suspect’s father’s mining operation in the southern reaches for further questioning.”
“And what is his name?” sighed Lillia, clearly annoyed that she had to ask.
“Vaswell Gandy,” said Oren.
Iphigenia’s jaw dropped. “Of the Flatbottom Gandys?”
Chapter 14
Thisby sat with her back against the mossy cave wall and flipped through her notebooks by the soft glow of Mingus’s blue-green light. She was hoping to find a map that might show where they’d ended up. The detour through the dining hall had sent them into a previously undiscovered section of the dungeon, something that up until that point she’d assumed wasn’t possible.
For hours after the encounter, they’d wandered around a series of perfectly round narrow tunnels that seemed as if they’d been made intentionally for the lindorm to travel through. Thisby couldn’t help but think that if Donato were still with them, he’d have been able to help verify that idea. She also suspected that they wouldn’t have passed through the same tunnels so many times before she’d finally come up with the idea to leave a trail to mark where they’d already been. It was the kind of idea that would’ve been second nature to a hunter.
There was a shuffling noise near the rounded entrance to the cave, and Mingus dimmed his light.
“Hello?” whispered Thisby.
“Hello,” replied Bero, emerging from the dark and entering their makeshift camp. “Vas still asleep?”
Thisby glanced toward the back of the cave at Vas, who was, in fact, still fast asleep and snoring in a way that was somehow more charming than annoying.
“Yeah,” said Thisby.
“How’s your arm?” he asked, crawling awkwardly into the small cave.
It was cramped inside, a bit more of a nook than a proper cave, but Thisby thought it was comfy enough. She’d definitely slept in worse.
“Better,” she said, waving it as evidence.
When Mingus’s healing magic wasn’t quite getting the job done, Bero had managed to mend her arm with a spell from one of the many books he carried with him in his satchel. The book this particular spell had come from was white and bore a crest of a leech wrapped around a dagger. He told her it was all healing spells. Thisby thought that it might have been an exaggeration to say that her arm was “healed,” but at the very least it was usable. It was still hard to make a tight fist.
“You find anything?” he asked.
“Not yet.”
“Mind if I look?”
Thisby shook her head, and Bero grabbed a notebook from the small pile of them she’d pulled out of her backpack. He turned the pages quickly, barely looking at them, like a child pretending to read.
“Are you okay?” Thisby asked.
Bero set down the notebook slowly.
“We grew up together,” he said. “Donato and I.”
Thisby set her notebook down as well.
“Actually, we served in the army together, believe it or not.”
Thisby went to ask the inevitable question, but Bero answered it first.
“I know. I don’t look like much of a soldier, do I? But in the army, everyone has their part. Magic users especially. We do things, we see things, things that nobody else gets to see . . . not that they’d want to. Donato was, for lack of a better term, my bodyguard. That’s what they do—pair a soft-bodied wizard type like me with somebody more capable in battle and send us into the field together. He saved my life. More than once. And what did I do to repay him? I ran away. Ran like the coward I am. And now he’s dead.”
Thisby said nothing.
“Well, that’s how these missions go, I suppose. I knew that in the army and I know that now. And my mission is to make sure he lives,” he said, gesturing at the soundly sleeping Vas. “That’s my mission.”
Thisby opened her mouth to say something, but no words came out.
“You don’t need to say anything,” said Bero with a sad smile. “I saw what you did back there. You ran in to help Donato without a second thought. You risked your life for someone you barely knew. That’s the difference between us. One of many, I hope.”
Bero reached into his satchel and withdrew a small waterskin that Thisby suspected wasn’t full of water and took a long drink from it. He offered a drink to Thisby but she politely declined. He laughed a bit too loudly, and Vas stirred in his sleep.
“Why did you take this job?” asked Thisby. It seemed rude, but she couldn’t help herself. Bero just didn’t seem the type.
“The world is always changing,” said Bero. “That’s the first thing they teach you at the Grand College of Arcanology—go, Werewolves!—and it’s as immutable a law of nature as any that I’ve ever learned. The balance shifts constantly. Good to evil, evil to good. You know this mountain is important, I assume?”
Thisby nodded but wasn’t quite sure she was defining “important” the same way as he’d meant it. Bero nodded back in agreement anyway.
“Outside these walls, people think that the Black Mountain is pure evil. After all, it is the thing that grew over where the Eyes in the Dark fell—if you believe the legend.”
She hoped Bero didn’t see her shiver when the chill ran up her spine at the mention of the Eyes in the Dark.
“But that’s too easy an answer. The Black Mountain isn’t evil. Nor is it good. It’s the needle upon which those scales rest, forever swaying in the breeze. It’s the dividing line between order and chaos. If those scales were to ever tip too far, if one side were to upset that balance . . .” Bero trailed off.
“Tha
t’s what wizards do. Magic folks, like me. We maintain the balance.”
“And shoot sparkles out of your hands,” Thisby said automatically.
Bero paused and then burst out laughing. Vas sat up half-awake, mumbled something incoherent, and then fell immediately back asleep.
“Yes, and shoot sparkles out of our hands,” admitted Bero.
There wasn’t much conversation after that. Thisby made her way to bed and left Bero to flip through her notebooks. She awoke several times in the middle of the night to find him still awake, still reading through her notebooks with bleary eyes, taking long pulls from his seemingly bottomless waterskin. He barely seemed to notice her at all.
When Thisby crawled out of her sleeping bag the next morning, Bero and Vas were already up and standing outside their small cave, examining their surroundings. Bero had one of Thisby’s notebooks open and was pointing out something to Vas, who had his face scrunched up as if he was trying very hard to understand. When Bero saw Thisby, he waved her over excitedly.
“I think I found a way out of here!” he said, pointing to the notebook.
Bero had gotten up early to scout ahead—if he’d slept at all—and had found a path that potentially led out of their current uncharted area. He’d even been so bold as to add his own notes to a previously unfinished map Thisby had drawn several years ago.
“Where does it lead?” she asked, trying her best to hide how upset she was that a stranger had written in one of her precious notebooks.
“There are actually several paths from here, but they all funnel into an area you’ve labeled with a horned skull and crossbones,” Bero remarked.
“Giant’s Crossing,” said Thisby.
She’d been hoping to avoid Giant’s Crossing, since it had seemed to her like an obvious spot for the Overseer to place a trap. It was a choke point that separated what was generally considered the top third of the dungeon from the bottom two-thirds. If you were making your way from the bottom of the mountain to the top, as everybody in the Wretched Scrattle was, it was almost inevitable that you’d pass through the crossing at some point, and that was what frightened her. It was a perfect spot to eliminate careless competitors.
