Snared: Voyage on the Eversteel Sea

by Adam Jay Epstein

“We’re on your side now,” Sceely said. “We don’t want any more trouble.”

  Odette reached into her new everstuff satchel and pulled out a pair of enchanted shackles.

  “Then you won’t mind putting on these,” Odette said as she approached the two oglodytes.

  “Not at all,” Sceely said.

  “I’m sure they will be very comfor-it-able!” Agorop said.

  “Tell us everything you saw,” Odette said as she snapped the shackles around their wrists.

  The two oglodytes began to ramble, talking over each other, interrupting and finishing each other’s sentences. They recounted how they had been in their own prison cottage eating scraps they had saved from dinner when the sound of a giant explosion shook the prisonaut.

  “It must have been the most powerful spell there has ever been,” Sceely said. “It shook the walls like a dozen lightning bolts striking all at once.”

  “I was so frightened that I nearly swallowed the lizard toe I had been munching on,” Agorop stammered.

  They continued to ramble about how a figure draped in cloaks unlocked their cottage and how they were too scared to escape with all the guards racing through the courtyard. In truth, they were saying very little that was helpful. They were wasting precious time.

  Wily hurried out into the prison courtyard again, where Pryvyd was now barking orders to the knights, who were putting out the fires burning in the cottages near the hole in the wall.

  “As soon as you’re done,” Pryvyd shouted, “I want you to search every corner of the prisonaut for Kestrel. And if you don’t find him inside, start making circles around the outside perimeter.”

  Meanwhile, other knights and prison guards were leading those escapees who had been caught back through the gates into the courtyard. Oglodytes tangled in rope nets struggled as they were dragged to their cottages. Cavern mages, shackled with enchanted chains to keep them from using their magic, walked in a single-file line toward their extra-secure cells. Moshul carried the still unconscious Girthbellow in his hands. Wily knew that these were only a small portion of the prisonaut’s inhabitants. He wondered just how many had escaped into the night and how long it would take to find them all again. Yet there was only one who truly mattered: his father.

  As Pryvyd continued to manage the return of the captives, Wily decided to do some investigating on his own. He wanted to see if there was any evidence that could point to the kind of spell used in the attack on the prisonaut and if that spell had been cast from the inside or the outside. He walked to the spot where the wall had been blown through and began looking for the powdery residue that was a surefire clue to a spell having been cast. He could remember the hundreds of times he had had to clean up the leftover dust from Stalag’s spells in Carrion Tomb. The only good thing about the chore was that it wasn’t as difficult or sticky a mess as mopping slug slime. A wet rag would do the trick.

  As Wily bent over to examine a portion of the ground, a furry hand shot out from a pile of rubble and grabbed him by the wrist.

  “I got the prince,” a boarcus said as he held tight to Wily’s arm.

  Wily had been distracted and so hadn’t noticed the tusk-faced dungeon dweller hiding just an arm’s length away. He tried to reach for his trapsmith belt, but the boarcus grabbed his other wrist before he could. The unpleasant creature pinned both of Wily’s hands behind his back and then wrapped his other arm around Wily’s neck.

  “In exchange for his life,” the boarcus screamed, “I want my freedom and a thousand gold pieces from the—”

  He never finished his demand. The blunt end of a knife clunked him in the forehead. The boarcus dropped to the ground, his furry hand releasing Wily’s wrists and his arm sliding off his neck. Wily picked up the knife from the ground. He only needed to glance at its curved metal blade and its careful etching of a fire-breathing lizard for a moment to know to who this knife belonged.

  “Here you go, Roveeka,” Wily said as he looked up to see his hobgoblet sister approaching. “Pops hit its target, as always.”

  Roveeka had two special knives that she kept on her side at all times. She had named them Mum and Pops after the parents she had always wished she had but never did.

  “Mum and Pops don’t just look out for me,” Roveeka said. “They keep you out of trouble too.” She took a glance around the spot where Wily was standing as the guards and knights went back to work. “What are you doing over here by all the wreckage?”

  “Trying to figure out what kind of spell blew up this wall.”

  As Wily continued to scan the area around the destroyed wall, he saw no signs of spell residue. He did find something else though: gears, metal sprockets, and screws. These were not things used to cast spells. They were what was used to make machines. Looking farther, he found a small pile of singed firebat guano.

  “Look what I found,” Wily said to Roveeka.

  “Bat droppings?” Roveeka asked. “What are they doing here?”

  Wily leaned down and picked up a handful of the crumbly material. Then he took a whiff. The guano smelled as if it had just been cooked in a fire.

  “Do you think someone was making a bonfire to toast slugs?” Roveeka asked aloud.

  In Carrion Tomb, bat guano was used for two things. One was certainly for building bonfires for the hobgoblets and oglodytes after successfully keeping invaders at bay. The other time Wily had used this combustible substance was in the flame flingers to help ignite the traps. It was extremely explosive when lit.

  “It wasn’t magic that was at work here,” Wily said to Roveeka as he sprinkled the burnt ash in her hand. “This was the doing of a machine. I think my father built something to cause this explosion.”

  “Impossible,” a nearby guard who must have overheard Wily said. “We ensured that he had no tools. Not even one. I think we can all agree it is impossible to build anything without the proper tools.”

  “I agree,” Wily said. “Without tools, it would be very difficult to build a machine that could do this.”

  Wily’s eyes fell on a nearby pile of rubble where he saw something very familiar catching the light of the moon. Under a piece of fallen steel wall, a brown wooden handle with a thin metal neck stuck out. He walked over to the object and pulled it free.

  During Wily’s previous trip to the prisonaut, his father had stolen a screwdriver from his belt. His father had been caught before he could get far, but the screwdriver was never found. Now Wily was looking down at that very same screwdriver in his hand. Could it have played a part in the prison break? Had my mistake months earlier caused all this?

  Moshul, Pryvyd, Righteous, and Odette walked up to Wily, who held the screwdriver in his open palms.

  “This is mine,” Wily said, sorrow in his voice. “My father was responsible for this explosion. There’s no question of that now.” He hooked the screwdriver back onto his trapsmith belt.

  “Don’t blame yourself,” Odette said. “It was a mistake.”

  “A very big one,” he said.

  Wily had learned the hard way that princes didn’t need to be perfect, but were they allowed to make kingdom-threatening mistakes such as this one? Did he really deserve another chance after this error? He wasn’t so sure.

  “He couldn’t have made it far yet,” Pryvyd said. “We’ll find him.” The knight led Wily, Odette, Roveeka, Righteous, and Moshul out through the blasted hole in the prisonaut’s wall. Roveeka still had her nose buried deep in the handful of bat guano. The others were looking at her strangely.

  “It’s a very calming smell,” she said with a crooked smile. “I used to burn flecks of it in my sleeping chamber to help me fall asleep.”

  “Bat droppings?” Odette asked, obviously disgusted.

  “Why? What kind of droppings did you use?”

  “Keep your eyes down,” Pryvyd added. “Hopefully, we can track his footprints.”

  Moshul sent out a swarm of fireflies to light the ground. As the earth was illuminated, Wily did not
see a pair of footprints … rather he saw thousands of them. They went in every direction and were of all shapes and sizes.

  “Easier said than done,” Odette said as she scanned her surroundings. “How can we possibly know which footprints are his?”

  “What is it, Moshul?” Roveeka asked the moss golem, who had come up beside her. He was signing something with excitement as two types of flies buzzed around Roveeka’s head, Moshul’s mossy fingers moving through the air in a blur of gestures. Wily didn’t catch any of the words.

  “Slow down,” Wily said.

  Moshul repeated the motions slower and bigger for Wily’s and the others’ benefit. Pryvyd began translating for him.

  “His rot flies,” Pryvyd said, gesturing to some large gray gnats, “love the smell of the bat droppings even more than Roveeka does.”

  “I don’t think that’s possible,” Odette said as she spied Roveeka dabbing the dried powder on her wrist and sniffing it.

  “And rot flies can follow a scent for miles,” Pryvyd continued to translate. “All we need to do is follow the flies. There must still be guano on your father.”

  The rot flies buzzed off to the west, with the entire group in close pursuit.

  * * *

  AS THEY CONTINUED to move, Wily kept his eyes on the ground. The density of the footprints was thinning out. The other escapees of the prisonaut must have fled in different directions. The rot flies zipped along the ground with a throbbing buzz of delight. Soon, the group was following just one pair of footprints. Wily could see they were made by pointy boots, very likely the boots of his father.

  With the path laid out before them, Odette was moving swiftly, even outpacing the rot flies. Wily tried to keep up with her.

  “Over here,” Odette shouted.

  Wily rushed to where Odette was waving her arms. She pointed to the ground.

  Wily could barely make out anything in the dim glow of the moon, but once Moshul’s fireflies surrounded them, Wily could see that the trail of footprints along the dusty ground suddenly disappeared.

  “Where did the footsteps go?” Pryvyd asked.

  Odette gestured another few feet ahead to a set of parallel lines in the dirt as thick as Moshul’s wrists. Wily knew at once what they were.

  “Wheel tracks,” he said.

  “And judging by their thickness,” Odette added, “this was no ordinary wagon either. Those look like snagglecart tracks. I didn’t realize there were any still left assembled.”

  Snagglecarts were the rolling cages shaped like dragons that had been used by the Infernal King to snatch up innocent people he wished to capture and imprison. After Kestrel’s defeat, Wily had insisted that all the frightening creations of his father were disassembled. Clearly, one had escaped this fate.

  “The Infernal King wasn’t working alone,” Pryvyd said to Wily. “Your father was picked up from this spot by somebody.”

  Moshul placed his head down on the ground. Like every golem, he could hear vibrations in the earth, which he was made of. The ground could often tell him about things that were happening miles away. Wily hoped dearly that this was one of those times. After a moment, Moshul lifted his head. With a twinkle in his jeweled eyes, he began to sign. Once again, his fingers were moving too fast for Wily to understand. Fortunately, Odette didn’t have that problem.

  “Moshul hears a rumbling in the distance to the west,” Odette said. “He’s positive it’s the sound of a snagglecart rolling.”

  “How far away?” Wily asked.

  “Ten miles,” Moshul signed. “Maybe more.”

  “We should go now,” Wily said. “Before we lose them.”

  Righteous flew off toward where the horses were standing outside the prisonaut.

  “Hold on,” Pryvyd said. “Your mom and Valor will want to come on this hunt too.”

  Wily was already shaking his head. “They’re in the Twighast. We don’t have time to retrieve them or wait for them to return to the palace. My father is already far ahead of us.”

  “Valor’s and Lumina’s skills might be helpful when we confront Kestrel,” Pryvyd argued. “I know Lumina would want a part in this.”

  “You can go back,” Wily said, “but I’m not waiting.”

  “And leave you to deal with the Infernal King and his accomplice on your own?” Pryvyd said with disbelief. “I think not.”

  “You don’t need to take care of Wily,” Odette said. “Or me for that matter.”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  Righteous came back holding the reins of their horses in hand.

  “Then get on your horse and join us,” Wily said.

  Odette did a running backflip onto her horse. Wily mounted his horse as Pryvyd looked on, conflicted. Roveeka climbed up onto Moshul’s back, her usual traveling accommodations.

  “We are hardly prepared for a long trip,” Pryvyd said, still hesitant.

  “You’re telling me?” Odette asked. “I’m still wearing my pajama bottoms. At least you have a suit of armor on.”

  Wily looked down to remember that he was wearing his nightshirt too. When he had tucked himself into bed six hours earlier, he hadn’t planned for the possibility of a late-night adventure. From now on, he would always be sleeping in his shirt and pants.

  3

  JOUSTING AT THE DIRTY VAGABOND

  “Are you sure,” Odette asked Moshul, “you don’t hear the rumble of a snagglecart?”

  The companions had been traveling for hours, stopping periodically to allow Moshul to check that they were still heading in the right direction. The moss golem once again had the side of his head pressed to the ground, listening carefully. After a longer than normal pause, he signed to the group.

  “He hears many other sounds but not a snagglecart,” Odette translated. “They must have stopped somewhere to the southwest of here.”

  “There’s nothing between here and Freemont,” Pryvyd said, “unless they camped out on the side of the road.”

  Moshul signed back to Odette and Pryvyd.

  “What kind of sounds do you hear?” Odette asked.

  This time Wily was able to understand what Moshul signed. He repeated the words aloud. “Many creatures with eight legs.”

  “Could there be giant scorpions out here?” Roveeka asked.

  “Doubtful,” Pryvyd said. “They are found mostly to the south.”

  Odette grinned broadly, as if she had just solved a puzzle.

  “I know what those sounds are,” she said. “Spider jousting! It must be where the Dirty Vagabond has set up its tent.”

  “Spider jousting?” Roveeka asked. “The Dirty Vagabond? I’ve never heard of either of those things.”

  “Neither have I,” Wily said. “And I’m supposed to be the king one day. I should know this kind of stuff.”

  “It’s not exactly castle conversation,” Odette said. “The Dirty Vagabond is a festival for the, hmm, let’s say the less friendly members of Panthasos. Burglemeisters and bounty hunters need a place to relax as well.”

  “It’s the kind of place your father would be able to recruit a small army if he wished,” Pryvyd explained. “Or blend into the background without anyone asking any questions.”

  “And the spider jousting?” Wily asked.

  “Two giant venomous ghost spiders,” Odette said, “are ridden by gwarves with blunt axes and then pitted against each other in a vicious battle of survival.”

  “It sounds horrible,” Roveeka said.

  “It’s actually far worse than my words can describe,” Odette said. “You want to go and check it out?”

  “If there’s a chance my father is there,” Wily said, “then yes.”

  Wily, Pryvyd, and Odette remounted their horses, and Roveeka climbed onto Moshul’s back again. Righteous floated at the front of the group as the mighty moss golem led the way.

  “After months cooped up in the palace,” Odette said, gripping the reins in her hands, “it feels amazing to be out on the hunt ag
ain.” The dusty wind flapped through her sapphire hair as she leaned forward in her saddle. “And I know we’re not out searching for treasure like we did before Wily reclaimed the kingdom, but right now it kind of feels that way.”

  Before Wily had been pulled out of Carrion Tomb to join them, Odette, Pryvyd, Righteous, and Moshul had been raiding dungeons for treasure in an attempt to collect enough gold to flee Panthasos and the reign of the Infernal King forever. Their plan had been to have Wily aid them in their quest, knowing that his trap-building skills could be used to disarm traps as well. In fact, it had worked once, when they’d explored Squalor Keep and he had saved their lives from a set of crushing walls. Of course, they had never counted on the fact that Wily was much more than the finest trapsmith in the land; he was a prince in waiting.

  “Well this ‘treasure’ we’re looking for now,” Pryvyd responded, “has a rather nasty habit of removing limbs.”

  It had been the Infernal King’s mechanical suit of armor that had separated Righteous from Pryvyd’s shoulder. And that wasn’t the only horrible thing that Wily’s father had done by far while he ruled Panthasos. Forests had been burned, towns razed, and families torn apart.

  “I hate him even more than you do,” Odette said. Her parents had lost their lives in one of his prisonauts when she was just a little girl. “Don’t forget that I was the one who suggested throwing Kestrel down a bottomless hole.”

  “Actually,” Wily said, thinking back, “I don’t recall you ever saying that at all.”

  “Oh yeah. I might have just mentioned that to Moshul after we captured Kestrel in the Infernal Fortress. But Moshul thought that would be a little inappropriate.”

  Moshul nodded and signed to the others.

  “It would not have made us as bad as him,” Odette countered Moshul. “He deserved a very long fall. And a bottomless hole is bottomless, in which case he wouldn’t have been hurt. Just trapped forever. Without food. In the dark.”

  Which was, as Wily and the others knew, not exactly the truth. They had found the bottoms of at least a few so-called bottomless holes in a land far beneath the surface of the earth, known as the Below, during their last adventure. And there was no pile of pillows down there to cushion the blow.