The Magician's Key

by Matthew Cody

  To hear Paul tell it, it had happened like this: The ogres had stopped in the middle of the day to smash some rocks together. Smashing rocks together was a popular pastime among ogres because they liked the sound. Stopping infuriated the rats, who wanted to push on to New Hamelin, but when an ogre stops to smash rocks you don’t get in the way. Even a rat possesses that much common sense. On a normal day they would have smashed rocks for an hour or so, then resumed their march, but on this day the unthinkable happened and they ran out of rocks. Sure, there were pebbles around, but nothing satisfyingly smashable, so one of the ogres did a very ogre-like thing and grabbed the two nearest ogres and smashed their heads together instead.

  He discovered he liked the sound.

  Soon the four ogres were locked in an every-ogre-for-himself battle to see who could smash whose head. By the time Paul snuck away, the outcome was still uncertain, but he had high hopes that at least a couple of them would end up with their heads smashed in permanently. It certainly would help their odds when they reached New Hamelin.

  The head-smashing brawl allowed Lukas, Paul and Emilie to put some distance between them and the ogres, and by the time they reached New Hamelin, Lukas was confident that they were at least a half day ahead of the attackers. The bell ringers atop walls thirty feet high spotted Lukas and his friends, and the warning bells were already tolling by the time the village came into view. A group of Watch boys with long spears marched through the gate to meet them on the road. Even from a distance Lukas could see Finn, acting Captain of the Watch, leading the way.

  “Blast it, Finn,” Lukas muttered. “He knows better than to open the gate. How can he be sure it’s us from this far away?”

  “He’s sure,” said Emilie, putting a hand on his shoulder. “He’s sure.”

  Lukas scowled, but he knew Emilie was right. He was on edge because he dreaded what they were about to do. Finn and the rest would be expecting a happy return, maybe even news that the prophecy about Carter had been fulfilled and that they were all going home at last. Only when the last son of Hamelin appears and the Black Tower found will the Piper’s prison open and the children return safe and sound.

  The poor New Hameliners had no idea what was really in store for them.

  The Watch was armed, but their spears were lowered and their faces beaming as they saw their true captain returned at last. Finn stopped several feet away and saluted. The rest of the boys quickly stood at attention.

  “Captain,” said Lukas, saluting him back.

  “You can knock that off,” answered Finn, grinning broadly. “I see you didn’t get yourself killed.”

  “Not for lack of trying,” answered Lukas.

  Finn grabbed Lukas and pulled him close for a hug. The rest of the Watch joined in, cheering and patting them on the back. Finn dared not hug Emilie, but he took her hand in his and said, “Welcome home, Eldest Girl. We’ve missed you.”

  “And I you,” said Emilie thickly.

  “Hey!” said Paul. “I’m home, too, you know!”

  Lukas shook his head. Finn was the eldest scout, and Paul had been a pain in his backside for as long as he could remember. But Finn clasped his arm around Paul’s and welcomed him, too. Then he eyed the frying pan strapped to Paul’s back where his bow used to be. “Don’t tell me you let Paul do the cooking! It’s a wonder you weren’t all poisoned.”

  Paul drew his pan and made like he would strike Finn with it, but everyone was laughing by this point. For a moment, it truly was a joyous homecoming. But it couldn’t last.

  “Where are the two strangers?” asked Finn, noticing that whereas five had set forth, only three had returned. “The girl and her brother?”

  “They’re safe,” said Lukas. “We hope they are, anyway. We have a lot to tell you, Finn.”

  Finn looked concerned. “Is any of it good?”

  But Lukas could only shake his head. “Let’s get inside and talk there.”

  Finn nodded grimly, and as he turned to lead the way into New Hamelin, Lukas took his friend by the arm and leaned in close. “And, Finn,” he whispered. “Double the Watch on the gate wall.”

  They sat around Emilie’s old table in her cottage in the village square. Outside the window the Summer Tree’s leaves were bright with burnt autumn colors—reds, oranges and yellows. Little ones ran and played beneath its boughs and collected the leaves when they fell. Laughter filled the square as word spread that the Eldest Boy and the Eldest Girl had returned. But inside all was quiet. The remains of a lunch of bread and cheese cluttered the table, and a map of New Hamelin’s defenses had been laid out at one end.

  After a few moments, Finn broke the silence. “I’ll bet they come for the western walls here, and here,” he said, jabbing his finger at the map.

  “Why’s that?” asked Lukas.

  “Well, they know we’ll have reinforced the front gate. We’ll have extra archers, too.”

  “Don’t think ogres are going to care much about our arrows,” said Paul. “Skin’s tougher than boiled leather.”

  “You might be right, Finn,” said Lukas. “But the rats also know that short of shoring it up with a solid wall, the gate is still the weakest point. Built to open, after all.”

  “Do you really think the ogres are taking orders from rats?” asked Finn.

  “Not orders, exactly,” said Emilie. “But they’re working together. I can hardly believe it, but it’s true.”

  It was stuffy inside the cottage at midday, and Lukas wiped brown sweat from his forehead. They hadn’t even stopped to wash off the dust from the road. There just wasn’t time.

  “So either the ogres try to break down the gate,” said Lukas, “or they try knocking a hole in the wall. Both are bad.”

  “And how long again before they get here?” asked Finn.

  “Half a day maybe,” said Paul. “Tomorrow evening at the latest, assuming they don’t kill each other on the way.”

  “We can only hope,” said Lukas. “But we need to plan for the worst. Any ideas?”

  No one had a chance to answer, however, as they were interrupted by the clanging of bells. Someone was approaching New Hamelin.

  “Already?” asked Finn, his face turning pale.

  “No!” answered Paul. “It’s impossible. I mean, isn’t it?”

  Emilie cuffed him on the back of the head as the four children ran from the cottage. But Lukas noticed that she was watching Paul with worry, not annoyance.

  Paul was right. It couldn’t be the ogres—but then who was it?

  Finn and Lukas led the climb up the gate wall until they were standing on the platform the Watch used to patrol the wall. A small bell ringer was leaning out of his watchtower and pointing. “There!” he cried. “On the road!”

  Lukas squinted against the midday sun and spotted a small hunchbacked figure walking slowly along the road toward New Hamelin. Emilie joined him at the wall.

  “Could it be?” she breathed, and Lukas felt his heart give a leap in his chest. It was impossible, and yet now when they needed him the most, could the Peddler have returned? Might the old magician be alive after all?

  Paul gave a cheer. “Open the gate! I’ve never been so happy to see that sour old man!”

  But Lukas countermanded the order. “Wait!”

  Finn and Paul shot him confused looks, but Lukas kept his eyes on the approaching figure. Please, he thought. Please. He wouldn’t give the order yet, however. The gate remained closed as they watched and waited.

  Lukas called up to the bell ringer in the watchtower. It was Pidge, the boy who’d been on duty the night the rats made it over the wall. He had keen eyes and the better vantage point. “What do you see, Pidge? I want details.”

  “It’s an old man,” said the boy. “Moving slow…wait, it’s not an old man. It’s an old woman!”

  Emilie gasped aloud, and Paul let out a curse. Lukas kept his face impassive, but inside, his heart broke down the middle. It felt like prayers were never answered on the Sum
mer Isle.

  They watched together as the old hag hobbled into clearer view. Hunched back, long hooked nose and a mess of stringy white hair dangling from her hood. Not the Peddler, but the very witch who had murdered him. Grannie Yaga was coming to New Hamelin.

  Paul reached for one of the Watch boy’s bows. “Give me an arrow,” he said. “One arrow is all I’ll need.”

  “No,” said Lukas. “Shooting arrows at a witch is not the same as shooting at rats. You’ve seen what she can do.”

  “Then what?” asked Paul. “We wait for her to knock?”

  Lukas took a deep breath. “Open the gate. I’ll meet her on the road.”

  The boys stared at him blankly.

  “Do it!” Lukas snapped, and the great sliding pole began to grind against wood as they pulled it free.

  “I’m coming with you,” said Emilie. Lukas would have argued, but he knew it wouldn’t do any good. Paul, however, didn’t possess such good sense.

  “You can’t go out there!” he said. “That witch killed the Peddler and who knows how many other people over the years.”

  “I’m the Eldest Girl,” said Emilie. “I have to go.”

  “I won’t let you!” said Paul.

  Lukas cringed, and braced himself for the verbal thwacking that Emilie was surely about to deliver. No one ordered Emilie to do anything. But, to his shock, she didn’t get angry at all. She only put her hand on Paul’s cheek and said, “I’ll be fine. You can watch out for me from here.”

  Then Paul silently nodded, and Emilie scooted past Lukas on the stairs and headed for the gate. Lukas shook his head in disbelief. Some things in life were mysterious, and Paul and Emilie’s relationship was near the top of the list.

  Lukas and Emilie were getting ready to step through the gate when Finn climbed down to meet them. He was holding an ugly black iron sword in his hands. “Lukas, take this.”

  The Sword of the Eldest Boy was nothing Lukas had ever wanted, and for a time—while he was on the road with Max and her brother—he thought he’d gotten rid of it for good. Both the sword and the responsibility that came with it. But he was home now, and he’d learned that some responsibilities will only chase you if you run from them.

  “Thank you,” he said as he strapped the heavy blade around his waist. “Close the gate behind us, Finn. Quickly.”

  The boy nodded, and as Lukas and Emilie stepped outside, Paul called down from his perch atop the wall. “She gives you so much as an evil look and I’m filling her full of arrows.”

  “I’m counting on it,” said Lukas. He tried to swallow, but his mouth felt dusty and dry.

  “Let’s go,” said Emilie, and the two of them marched side by side down the road to meet the witch.

  Lukas hadn’t noticed it before now, but the Peddler’s Road was changing. He hadn’t seen the changes up close because they’d cut through the wild country in pursuit of the ogres, but now he could see the transformation that was taking place. Briar bushes were encroaching from all sides, and tangled vines snaked across the path, as if looking for an unwary traveler to trip. Something terrible was laying claim to the source of the Peddler’s magic, and Lukas suspected that something was right in front of them.

  They stopped to wait for the witch a quarter of a mile from the village gate. Lukas wanted to make sure she came no closer.

  “Well, lookee here,” cackled Grannie. “Coming to welcome old Yaga, are we? Ask her to sit a spell? Maybe offer her something plump to eat?”

  When she grinned, she showed a mouthful of broken wooden teeth.

  “You’re not welcome here, witch,” said Lukas.

  Grannie’s smile faded. “Manners, young man. Best learn to respect your elders. I’m not wearing my good teeth today, but I can fetch them.”

  “What do you want?” said Emilie as she put a warning hand on Lukas’s arm. She was right, of course. He might as well have let Paul fire his arrows if this was how he was going to behave. But he couldn’t help it. When he looked at Grannie, all he saw was the Peddler, fighting for his life, and losing.

  “Well, if you’re not going to invite Grannie in…”

  “You know that we aren’t,” said Emilie.

  “All right,” she said. “Do you know what is marching your way? Them that’s coming through the Shimmering Forest for you?”

  Emilie and Lukas exchanged a glance. “We know,” he answered.

  Grannie laughed. “Ogres strong as rock and mountain. Rats clever and cruel come to put the children of Hamelin in chains.”

  “Rats have tried to breach our walls before and failed,” said Emilie. “They’ll fail again, with or without the ogres.”

  Grannie shook her head. “Oh, no, dear. Not this time, methinks. This time’ll be different.”

  “So that’s why you came all the way out here?” asked Lukas. “To taunt us?”

  “No, you stupid boy. I came to deal. The rats have a new king, a dangerous king, ambitious, too. But he’ll leave you be—if Grannie tells him to.”

  Lukas wasn’t sure if he believed the witch’s claim that she could tell this new rat king what to do—rats had never much cared what witches wanted before. But then again, rats had never allied themselves with ogres before. The Summer Isle, a land where time held no sway, was changing fast. “Even if you could get the rats to turn around, what would you want in return?”

  “The Piper foolishly let the boy Carter escape from the Black Tower,” said Grannie. “I want him back.”

  So Grannie thought that Carter was still with them, and she thought they were keeping him safe inside New Hamelin. Lukas nearly laughed in her face. He very nearly told her that Carter wasn’t there, and that she’d come all this way for nothing. It would have been almost worth it just to see the look in her eyes. Almost.

  Thankfully, Emilie spoke up first. “What do you want with him?”

  “That’s my business, pretty thing,” said Grannie. “Shouldn’t matter to you anyways. All that should matter to you is giving me the boy, or watch your friends made slaves by the rats. The lucky ones, that is.”

  Should he tell her that Carter wasn’t in New Hamelin? Would that make her leave them alone? Or would it just put the boy in more danger than he already was? At least, Grannie wouldn’t be out there hunting for him if she thought she’d already found him.

  Lukas looked at Emilie, and a silent agreement passed between them. “There will be no deal,” said Lukas.

  Grannie started to argue, but Emilie cut her off. She spoke as the Eldest Girl, the one who’d led them and who’d kept them safe, Lukas included. “Do what you like, witch. But we don’t give up our own. Now turn around and leave this place.”

  For a moment, the air between them was thick with tension as the Eldest Girl of New Hamelin stared down the witch of the Bonewood. Grannie Yaga was not used to people saying no to her. Her eyes narrowed in anger and she took a step forward, one bony hand reaching for Emilie.

  Something whistled by Lukas’s ear, but Grannie flicked her wrist and the arrow Paul had fired veered away, as if deflected by a mighty wind, and landed harmlessly in the road. Lukas drew his sword and planted himself between Emilie and the witch.

  Grannie made another gesture, waving her crooked fingers at the sword as she had with the arrow, but nothing happened. Then the witch’s eyes went wide as she got a good look at the black iron blade.

  In the time before, in the old world, Lukas’s father used to tell stories about the wicked creatures of the forest. The elves and the goblins, and the witches that waited to carry off troublesome boys. His father hung a horseshoe of cold forged iron over their door, to drive such evil creatures away.

  The Sword of the Eldest Boy had been given to New Hamelin long ago by the Peddler himself. A symbol, but more than a symbol. A weapon of cold forged iron.

  Almost cautiously, Lukas jabbed at the witch with his blade. He struck her on the wrist, barely a tap, but she screamed in pain, and the air suddenly smelled of burning brimstone. Quic
kly for one of her age, Grannie Yaga leaped back and hissed at Lukas.

  “Curse you, boy, but I’ll make you pay for that! I’ll snap your bones with my good teeth!”

  Sword point out, Lukas advanced on her, and Grannie Yaga whirled around as her cloak fell away, and suddenly in the witch’s place was an ugly long-necked goose. It honked at Lukas angrily before taking flight, its powerful wings carrying it west over the trees of the Shimmering Forest and out of sight.

  While Cornelius continued to make his rounds handing out bread, Geldorf invited Max and her friends back to his home in Bordertown, meager as it was. There was no weather to speak of down here belowground, so the little shacks and tents were more for privacy than anything else, but the trollsons were too big to fit into any lean-to, so they gave up privacy for community. The trollsons and the giant daughters mostly lived together in the troll quarter, on the edge of Bordertown proper. They sprawled out beneath a massive outcropping of rock, several stories tall, which possessed disturbingly troll-like features. There they sat and talked and slept out in the open. But every person needs a place to call his own, and Geldorf’s was a stretch of cavern floor where he’d built a bed out of several old mattresses scavenged from above. He’d decorated a few nearby stalagmites with tattered old lampshades and hung up a faded painting of dogs playing poker.

  Harold remarked at the odd outcropping overhead—from a certain angle it looked a little trollish, almost like a roughly carved statue leaning against the cavern wall. Geldorf explained that it was just old Hillbeater. As tall as a house, the poor trollson was pure second-generation, and he’d gotten so trollish and rocky that no one had seen him move in centuries. The trollsons and giant daughters still talked to him, though, just in case he appreciated the company.