Valrune walked to the edge of the terrace on which they stood and stared with eyes fixed upon the scene. “What has my father done?” he asked. His voice was full of loathing and regret. Sherman grabbed Valrune by the back of his clothes and pulled him back to the group that stood in the shadows of the smaller cave, where he would be less likely noticed.
“No.” Valrune shook his head. “I don’t believe this is my father’s work. He would never—”
Sherman placed a paw over Valrune’s mouth.
Dax asked, “Why are they all dwarefs?”
“Built for diggery,” Tarfeather said. He held up his long golden claws and his face seemed to crumple from sadness.
Dax glanced up at the ceiling and was taken aback. He grabbed Briar by the shoulder and pointed. The ceilings, high and wide enough to fit a small city below them, were painted with three ornate panels. Accented with gold leaf, like the illustrations from an illuminated manuscript, they depicted distinct scenes that featured a girl with long black hair who wore a torn white ball gown and thigh-high boots.
In one panel, the girl touched her hand to a spinning wheel. In the next, she bit into something handed to her by a hooded figure. The third panel depicted her holding a sword up to a dark, cloudy image.
Briar was overcome, and tears flooded her eyes. It was true what the Omens said. She wondered how many lives had been lost in the name of either maintaining the Omens or ending them. To think of this frightened her.
Sherman stood alongside Briar gazing up at the paintings, and he placed a paw on her cheek. “Do not be afraid, Briar of the Black Woods.”
“These are the Three Omens,” Briar said. Sherman nodded and drew her chin down so that he could look her in the eyes.
“Yes,” he said.
“But it shows me pricking my finger,” Briar said. Just saying so caused her to lose balance and fall against the pillar behind her.
“Yes,” Sherman replied.
“Then, no matter what we do, I’ll die.” Briar felt like the cave walls, and the smoke and heat were closing in around her throat.
“If you believe the Tale that others tell. Then you are cursed to live by it,” he said. “There are omens and prophecies to fill a thousand halls. Live by your own Tale, Briar, not theirs.” She did not feel better by him saying this. She knew nothing of their ways. He could be filling her head so that she’d continue to take risks. Who was she to them? Perhaps nothing but a pawn.
Tarfeather started down the path that sloped to the cave floor. He turned back for a moment. “Book of bad things—” He pointed one of his golden claws to the central columns.
They followed along behind. Leon was no longer in Briar’s hands since she and Dax now had to support Sherman between them. Instead he hopped alongside them, being careful that no one stepped on him in the shadows.
As Briar and Dax walked with Sherman along the cavern wall, they noticed that he had begun to drag his feet as he walked and his eyelids drooped. There was, perhaps, more blood outside of his body than there was inside it by now. “Sherman, how will we get the book?” Briar asked him mostly to keep him from drifting into unconsciousness. “It’s in the middle of everything.”
“Disguise yourself as Orpion again,” Dax suggested.
Sherman tried to refocused his eyes. “Disguises will not work here,” Sherman replied. His voice was barely audible. “The Priests of the Tales know these magics…Many prisoners have tried to leave this place by way of magical disguise. Their Tales…do not end well. I will camouflage you…Get the book. Bring it back.”
Briar looked at Dax. “But Sherman, it may take some time to get up and down those steps, let alone steal the book without anyone noticing. It will drain you.”
“Climb the steps. Take the book. It is the only way,” he replied.
“I will protect you, Dame Titania,” Valrune said. Then from his belt he withdrew a dagger with a stubby blade.
“Wow. We’ll call you when we need a letter opened,” Leon said.
“Sherman, this is crazy,” Briar said. “You need the Dire Liquid now.”
“There is no Dire Liquid…without…book,” he replied. Briar didn’t want to argue with him any longer, but she knew that none of this was about saving Leon, changing him back, or making Dire Liquid. Sherman wanted that book. Perhaps Myrtle, Poplar, Ash, and he had plotted this all along. There are Tales within Tales, Ash had warned her.
They hiked down to the lowest level and they hid behind the enormous pillars and a collection of rusted mining carts. Sherman stumbled back but then steadied himself. He raised his paws unsteadily, and drew another of his intricate enchantments. The design enlarged and dropped like a net around Briar who then vanished.
“Go,” Sherman said. He held his shaking arms up to maintain the spell.
Now unseen by any, Briar bolted out from behind the carts and ran as fast as she could toward the central pillars. Through the mountainous jewel piles she wound along a narrow path that was just big enough for a slave worker and his wheel barrow to fit through. She heard someone coming and she climbed out of the path onto the side of a pile, rubies and emeralds cascading below her feet.
“Hello?” A familiar voice was calling from just beyond her view. She held still so that no more jewels would tumble. Then the slave came around the bend.
It was King Cole. His royal robes were shredded, his crown was gone, and his curl-toed shoes barely held together. He also had a prominent fracture in his shell that started at the top of his head and cracked down the front of his face. “Is there someone there?” he whispered. He maintained visual contact of the watchful Priests along the walls, hoping they hadn’t noticed him speak.
Briar covered her mouth so that her breathing would not be heard. Cole looked around some more. But seeing no one, he overturned his cart of jewels onto the pile and trudged away. He glanced back over his shoulder to where he heard the sounds, but sighed and went on his way.
When Briar was certain he was gone, she ran for the columns at a greater speed, dashing around mounds and making her own path through them. When she reached the steps, a priest stood guard with his staff planted in the ground. She picked up a large ruby, which vanished as soon as she held it in her hand. She threw it with great force and it struck the priest’s face. Then she ran around to the other side of the jewel pile.
The priest fell back, and his hood slipped off, exposing his pale, bald head. He reached up with a hand and wiped a trickle of blood from his face. He gnashed his teeth and held up his staff to zap whomever it was. Briar could see a flurry of silvery electrical currents storming the area and she lay against one of the tall piles out of harm’s way.
Then she heard his footsteps approaching. “Where are you, filthy slave?” She slipped around the opposite side and headed back to the stairs, which were now unguarded. Up the steps she climbed for what seemed like several stories of a building. Her footsteps sounded up the stairs, and the priest who searched for her followed up after them. “Come back here, talebreaker!” he shouted, forks of electrical power shooting along the curve of the stairs, but never reaching Briar. She finally made it to the upper platform and stood perfectly still.
High above the cave floor, Briar got a better view of the vast jewel stockpiles amassed by the slaves. And there, on the far end of the platform on a dais between two standing incense urns churning out thick gray smoke, beneath a domed bell jar, was the Book of Cinder and Blight. It was an unassuming little thing: black leather bound its yellowing parchment pages together. And it was no bigger than a slim school book. It was propped open on intricately carved bones. Two trim black chains with ball weights at their ends were draped across the pages, keeping them spread apart.
The priest huffed as he ascended the stairs and when he arrived at the top of the platform, he shot more power from the tip of his staff. It swept with long crackling branches in every direction, but did not seem to expose the intruder the priest thought was there.
Bria
r crouched safely behind the dais. When everything went quiet, she peered secretly from one side. The priest was gone. But she noticed that Gelid’s jeweled mirror had fallen from her boot in the process of finding safety. It lay in the middle of the platform. She stood up and looked around more. If she moved quickly and quietly enough, she could easily recover it. Unexpectedly from behind, the priest leveled his staff to her throat he began to choke her with it.
Sherman’s spell must have worn off. She knew he could not keep up his energy for long. Now she was visible and defenseless.
Briar put her hands up to push the staff away and she saw the glowing flames forming in her hands. She would have touched the flames to the priest, as she was taught, but her hands were the only buffer between her throat and the priest’s staff, which clamped tighter against her flesh.
She began to lose consciousness, her coughing and gagging the only things that kept her alert. She tried to kick at him, but it was useless. She had grown too weary. Through her daze, she could hear voices and footsteps of other priests who were watching from their posts along the cavern.
“You little fool,” the priest snarled. She saw his thick doughy hands, knuckles whitening on the staff, small magical sigils tattooed on his fingers.
The jewel stockpiles were likely the last thing she would see, she realized. Her eyes began to flutter closed. Images flashed in her mind: her foster sisters laughing at her, the spinning wheel, the Lady Orpion touching her trinket, Valrune holding her. She saw herself back on stage the night Leon disappeared. He stood there shirtless, leaning in to kiss her.
She felt a sudden surge of power. She opened her eyes and leaned all the way forward, flipping the priest into the air. He landed with a crash, overturning the dais and the bell jar. The book slammed to the ground and shut. His staff fell to the floor dead of its power. Where the priest choked so tightly, she still felt her muscles compressed.
Briar flung one of her flames at him where he lay already writhing. It attached to his face and engulfed it, turning pale skin into a blistering mass of charring meat. He clutched at what was left of his face, screaming, kicking his legs around, trying to stop the pain and the spell.
She staggered away, coughing violently, clutching her neck. But he had choked her so tightly that she was having trouble catching a breath. More priests stomped up the stairs and Briar flung her remaining flame at them. But masters of defense, two of the priests used their staffs to block it and even batted it back at her. She surprised herself again with a dropping floor-roll in order to escape the flame.
As she rolled, she landed close to the jeweled mirror. It was coved in blood that oozed from the dead priest’s body. The three remaining priests barreled for her. They surrounded her and pointed the tips of their staffs. But the book was closed, and the source of their power had been cut off. Unable to use magic, the priests began to swing their staves, aiming for Briar’s head.
Unexpectedly, she leapt into the air, vaulting into a backward flip over one staff, then forward flipping over another. She had never been trained in gymnastics, but she was performing aerial acrobatics she never knew she could do. One of the priests, missing Briar with his swing, brained one of the others who stood close to the platform edge. The struck priest’s head buckled, and he tumbled onto a jewel pile below.
Briar turned toward the other two priests, the bloodied mirror still in her hand. By accident, she shone the mirror toward one of the unholy priests. The effect was sudden and unexpected. He vaporized into nothing but gray clouds of dust that arose with heat and then settled on the ground with a sound like sand scattering.
Tarfeather was right about the mirror, and Briar thought it fitting that those who formed it and used it for such dark purposes should taste its wrath.
The remaining priest was stunned only for a moment. He tried to run, but Briar caught him in the mirror’s reflection. He too vaporized and dropped to the floor not as a man, but as a scatter of dust.
She stood there coughing, holding her neck, shocked by what had happened. Then she realized what else the mirror might do. She stood and shone the mirror on priests who were stationed around the cavern perimeter. Each one whom the mirror faced became charred dust that got sucked away by the outgoing airflow of the smaller caves. The few remaining priests who had evaded the mirror, fled through the catacombs, leaving the dwaref-slaves behind.
The captives began to revolt once they saw the few remaining priests running. The larger dwarefs chased close behind them with pickaxes and torches they seized from the cavern sconces.
Others ran out from the smaller caves, shouting jubilantly. Some of them, who had witnessed Briar’s feat, pointed to her and cheered. Pandemonium ensued as the freed slaves began to shove and push through the main cavern. Some filled small bags with jewels, others fled though smaller caves, following the priests who knew the secret ways out. Carts were overturned, and those dwarefs who had been too weakened by exhaustion or starvation got trampled in the chaos.
Leon, Valrune, and Sherman, followed by Tarfeather and Dax, ascended the steps at a frantic pace.
“Briar!” Dax shouted. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” she said. She seemed unable to focus her eyes and her head throbbed. Sherman said nothing, but watched Briar, who still held the mirror in her hand, a look of dread on his face. He hobbled to the book at her feet and he snapped it up.
“How did you do all of that?” Sherman asked.
“I don’t know, I just…” Briar looked down at the mirror and felt a sickness overcome her. She doubled over and vomited. Valrune rushed to her side and Leon hopped up to her shoulder.
“Drop the mirror. It—it is dangerous,” Sherman said. He eyed the thing like it was radioactive waste.
“I can’t,” Briar said. Her hand could not unclench from the handle.
“Do something,” Dax shouted to Valrune. He immediately rushed Briar to the edge of the platform and forced her to crouch down. He gripped her arm and swung it so that the mirror caught on the hard edge. Again and again he swung her arm until the mirror cracked and fell from her grip down into the cavern depths where it struck the stones below and shattered to pieces.
“This cannot be,” Sherman said. He looked stricken. “The mirror was Orpion’s wickett magic. You are dillywig. This was not in the Omens.”
Briar did not understand Sherman’s concern. The priests were defeated and the dwarefs freed. Why was he so worried? Then she remembered Cole. “Val…rune,” she tried to call his name through her violent coughs. “Your father. They brought him here. He was with…the slaves.” Valrune gazed in stunned silence down to the cavern floor, at the riots taking place. Saying nothing, he turned from the group and raced back down the stairs to find his father.
Chapter 27
King Cole was dead. Briar and the others found Valrune among the rioters, slumped on a boulder. His father lay cracked in half, fallen from a high wall in the caves. The raw, clear goop with a swirl of bright yolk oozed from his shattered shell.
Valrune looked detached, as though he was thinking of something else—not of the king. It took time before he even noticed that Briar and the others were standing around him, looking at the gruesome mess. “We must do something to save him,” Valrune said. “The Dire Liquid—we can prepare it.”
Sherman shook his head and placed a paw on Valrune. “Magic has its limits before it becomes something dark and regrettable. We cannot put him together again.”
There were no tears in Valrune’s eyes. He returned to his silent, far-away gaze. Briar and the others were at a loss, but they remained standing by Valrune’s side, waiting for him to awaken from his cocoon of pain. “You have your book,” he suddenly said. “You have your friend.” He would not look at them. “You had best be on your way.”
“We cannot leave,” Sherman said. Briar and Dax exchanged stares and noticed that Sherman was unable to lift his gaze from the ground.
“What?” Dax finally said.
“She touched Orpion’s mirror, and what’s more, she used it,” he said. There was a great hollow pain ringing in Sherman’s voice. “I don’t know how, but she used Orpion’s mirror.”
“So what? Let’s go,” Dax said.
“You don’t understand. Briar’s power may not be dillywig after all,” he said. “She cannot truly use her trinket, the key. I still don’t understand how she used it to enter these Realms. It may have been sheer luck. Perhaps Myrtle and Poplar aided in some way. I just don’t know. But now that she has used Orpion’s mirror, the key will never be able to protect or even help us back. Using a dark object of magic makes all else turn to the dark. And without that key, there is no going back.” He shook his head.
“But once the sun sets tomorrow, I turn sixteen,” Briar said. “I won’t be protected anymore. There must be something we can do.”
Sherman gazed upon the ground and at the book in his hand. “There may be one last effort, but it risks all.” He held up the small black book. “We do have this,” he said. “It is the source of much of Orpion’s power. Without it, she cannot completely carry out her plans.”
“We should burn that sucker,” Dax said.
“No!” Leon and Tarfeather shouted together.
“We still need it, Dax,” Briar said. “And besides, Orpion will want that book above all. We can bargain with it.”
“As I see it, she will do as you ask,” Sherman said. “For without the book, great turmoil in the Realms would begin. Her seat of darkness would be challenged. Her own death would be inevitable.”
Leon hopped up into Briar’s hands with something to say. “So what? We’re supposed to go back to the palace, confront her with the book and hope she plays nice? May I remind you all that this bitch has done battle among other kingdoms—and won. Drinking blood is a self-improvement course for her. How would we ever stop her from turning us all into frogs and then simply taking the book from us?”
Briar Blackwood's Grimmest of Fairytales Page 23
