Aldwyn, distracted by their foes’ deadly fight, suddenly found two webbed hands wrapped around his neck, feebly attempting to choke the life out of him.
“You’ll never have them,” cried Gilbert.
Skylar flew over and tried to pull him off Aldwyn.
“Gilbert, let go,” she said.
Fortunately, Gilbert wasn’t a very strong frog, and Skylar and Aldwyn were able to pin him to the ground.
Aldwyn slapped a paw across his face.
“Snap out of it!”
Gilbert blinked hard.
“What happened?” he asked, suddenly himself again.
Aldwyn turned back to see Grimslade picking up the net and throwing it over the other man’s head. With his opponent in a tangle, Grimslade charged at him, and the strength of his attack knocked both of them over the side. Grimslade, however, hung on to the edge of the wall with his fingers, while the other man managed to catch hold of Grimslade’s leg just moments before plunging. He held on desperately and looked up with pleading eyes.
“I’m sorry. I never meant to betray you,” the assassin said. “It was the voices.”
But Grimslade was still clutching the bridge, and so words of betrayal were still ringing in his head. He kicked out at his companion, sending him into the gorge.
“Come on,” said Skylar to Aldwyn and Gilbert. “Let’s go.”
Skylar and Gilbert began hurrying across the bridge toward the snow-covered Kailasa mountainside. But Aldwyn headed back to where Grimslade hung on for dear life, his fingers struggling to retain their hold on the stone.
“I don’t suppose you’d want to lend me a paw,” said Grimslade, “seeing as how we’re old friends, you and me.”
It would be so easy, Aldwyn thought. A quick bite into his fingers, a scratch to the back of his hand, and the man who had been ruthlessly chasing him would no longer be a threat.
But Aldwyn was no killer. He lived by the strict code of the back alleys, and taking out an enemy in this manner would not be honorable. Of course, should wind or gravity finish off the bounty hunter, well, that would not be his problem. Aldwyn turned and ran for the Kailasa mountainside.
12
A SECRET HISTORY
Aldwyn caught up to Skylar and Gilbert, and the three of them began climbing the Kailasa mountains. It wasn’t long before a fierce blizzard was swallowing them in a storm of white. Aldwyn glanced back as they continued higher; the bridge could no longer be seen through the wall of snow, and their footprints had disappeared under a blanket of powder.
“I can’t believe I was about to betray you both for fame,” said Skylar.
“Well, it’s not as bad as strangling your best friend over a bag of flies,” said Gilbert. “I mean, a cat wouldn’t even want flies.” He paused, then turned to Aldwyn. “Would you?”
Aldwyn shook his head.
“What were the voices saying to you?” Skylar asked Aldwyn.
Aldwyn silently took a few steps through the cold, wet snow. He couldn’t tell them the truth.
“Oh, you know, typical betrayal stuff,” he said. “Something about me being the new familiar and you two teaming up against me.”
“Well, I hope you know that’s not true,” said Skylar. “We’re all in this together.”
The trio trudged higher. The snow was piling up and getting deeper and deeper. Once or twice, Gilbert hopped into a bank so tall that he ended up neck deep in the soft white powder. Worse still, thunder was beginning to crackle overhead, and lightning bolts were dancing from cloud to cloud.
“Lightning snow, just as the billy goat warned,” said Skylar. “A rare and dangerous phenomenon. We could get fried and frozen at the same time.”
“Sounds like a fun combination,” said Aldwyn without even a hint of a smile.
“The chances of getting struck by lightning are one in a million,” said Gilbert, trying to ease his own worries.
“Not in the mountains,” replied Skylar.
Like an exclamation point, a lightning bolt struck a nearby rock, splintering it in a flash.
Aldwyn remembered Kalstaff’s words about Queen Loranella’s weather binding spells and wondered if the severe storm was sent purposely to prevent the familiars from ever reaching the Sunken Palace. One thing was for sure: the blizzard was slowing their climb to the Mountain Alchemist’s hideaway.
Soon it seemed as if the three familiars weren’t making any progress at all. For every step forward, they were blown two steps back. At this rate, they would find themselves back at the Bridge of Betrayal, a delay they could not afford.
“This is useless,” said Skylar. “We’re better off seeking shelter until the storm breaks.”
Time was precious. Although it was impossible to tell through the blizzard’s dark clouds, Aldwyn could sense another sunset upon them. That meant only one full day remained until Kalstaff’s protective spell over Jack, Marianne, and Dalton would fade. But he also knew Skylar was right. Beyond the fact that the going was slow and dangerous, the cold was turning Gilbert as blue as Skylar’s feathers.
“I agree,” he said. “We need to find cover somewhere.”
“M-m-m-maybe over th-th-th-there,” said Gilbert, teeth chattering. “B-b-b-b-y the r-r-r-r-rocks.”
His stiff webbed fingers pointed over to the hollowed-out mouth of a cave. Inside was a shelter that seemed large, wide, and protected.
The familiars entered and collapsed onto the hard stone floor at the front of the cave. It was impossible to see how deep it went. Even the flashes of lightning weren’t bright enough to reveal its farthest reaches. Skylar removed some nightshade, juniper berries, and sage leaves from her satchel.
“What are you doing?” asked Gilbert. “You know you’re not supposed to dabble with human magic.”
“I’m going to conjure a fire spirit to warm us,” she replied. “Otherwise, we’ll all freeze to death.”
“It’s dangerous and forbidden,” said Gilbert. “But I am losing circulation in my toes. Just cast it—I won’t tell.”
Skylar tossed the components into the air and chanted, “Send a flame from whence you came!” A thumb-high sprite materialized. Although she was tiny, the heat she created as she danced in the air was equal to that of a crackling bonfire.
Gilbert was the first to drift off to sleep; Skylar soon followed. Aldwyn considered keeping watch, but instead leaned his head against a silver and red rock. He figured there was little chance of another traveler making it this far, let alone finding them. Within moments, he, too, slipped off into slumber.
The sound of twigs snapping could be heard. His body rocked from side to side as thunder crashed above. Then he was flipping…drowning…head to toe underwater. He came up for air, breathing once more. Tiny paw prints in the mud. Then a sight before him: tall and white…
Aldwyn’s eyes opened. This had been another new dream. Just like the journey he was on, it seemed as if his mind was traveling, too, taking him places he had never been. Or had he?
It was early morning, and the lightning snow had passed. Aldwyn awoke with a yawn. He tried to sit up but found himself tugged back to the floor of the cave. That was odd, he thought. Then he noticed that Jack’s pouch, strapped over his shoulder, seemed to be stuck fast to the red and silver rock he had been sleeping beside. There was no glue or sticky substance on the leather pouch. What was going on? Puzzled, he opened it, and the steel marbles Jack kept inside shot out, clinging to the magnetic rock.
Aldwyn shrugged and was about to wake up Skylar and Gilbert, when his attention was drawn somewhere else. The light of the sun shining in from the eastern horizon was reaching the back of the cave. He walked across the smooth ground, entering a wider portion of the cavern, nearly two stories tall. There before him on the walls were thousands of drawings from floor to ceiling.
Aldwyn didn’t know where to look first. His eyes darted from one vivid image to the next. He was no scholar, but he could tell these were pieces of Vastia’s history recorded
in color. Yet something seemed strange about these cave paintings—tails, paws, hooves—and that’s when it hit him: there were no people in the paintings, only animals.
Aldwyn stepped up on a gray boulder to get a closer look at one of the scenes. It was a picture of the Ebs, drawn from the very same spot where, just two days ago, Skylar had told them of the great wizard who had raised the cliffs to turn the river. It was this very act that was being shown here—but the wizard moving mountains was no man. He was—a dog!
Aldwyn moved on to another painting and found another recognizable image, that of the sun being carried across the sky, just like he had seen in the Sun Temple in Bridgetower. The same horse pulled the golden orb behind him, only he was not being ridden by a bearded warrior. The horse was pulling the sun on his own.
“Skylar, Gilbert, wake up!” he shouted. “You have to see this!”
Everywhere Aldwyn looked, he saw more magnificent animal achievements: spiders building a castle, a mouse slaying a dragon, and a pride of cats moving a pillar of granite telekinetically across the plains. All without the help of humans. Aldwyn was trying to understand what he was seeing.
Skylar flew over and sat on the rock beside him. “Is everything okay?” she asked.
But before he was able to respond, Skylar saw the drawings. She fell silent.
“What does it all mean?” asked Aldwyn.
Skylar was still too lost in the discovery to answer. Aldwyn had the sense that what they had stumbled across was profound, deeply meaningful in ways he didn’t yet know. Finally, Skylar was able to speak.
“If what I’m seeing on these walls is true, then everything we’ve ever been told about Vastia’s ancient history is a lie. If these paintings aren’t the work of a madman, then it was the animals who once were the great wizards of the land, not the humans.”
Gilbert hopped over sleepily.
“What’s going on?” he asked.
“These are the markings of the Enchantaissance,” continued Skylar, pointing from her perch on the rock to a series of symbols drawn beneath the images. Aldwyn recognized them; they were almost identical to the carvings on the Glyphstone in Bridgetower. “The history books state this was a period of magical innovation and artistic wonder for humans. But what if the birds and the beasts first ruled the land? What if before we were the animal companions to wizards and witches, we were the conjurers?”
“I am so lost right now,” said Gilbert.
“The paintings,” said Aldwyn. “Look.”
Gilbert turned to gaze at the hidden history of Vastia. He seemed to have difficulty taking it all in, but then his eyes suddenly lit up.
“Is that a frog sitting on that throne?” he asked, dumbfounded.
Reeling a bit, Gilbert stepped back and leaned against the rock on which Aldwyn and Skylar were sitting.
“Why?” asked Skylar, aloud to herself. “Why would history have been rewritten?”
It was right then that Aldwyn spotted something out of the corner of his eye. He could have sworn that the rock he was sitting on just blinked.
“Umm, guys,” he said, but it was too late: again the rock blinked, and then it moved. The gray mass of what he thought was stone was in fact a living creature! A living creature who was now rising to its feet. Aldwyn tried to hold on, but as the cave monster went upright, his paws lost their grip and he was sent falling to the ground.
Aldwyn crashed to the hard floor and had but a moment to size up the beast now towering at least eight feet above them. Its skin was gray and stony; its chin, nose, and ears as sharp as jagged rocks. No wonder Aldwyn had mistaken the creature for a boulder while it had been asleep.
“What is it?” asked Aldwyn.
“A cave troll,” answered Gilbert. “And I think we just woke it up from its hibernation.”
The cave troll stretched its long lumbering arms overhead and yawned, expelling a gust of mildewy breath. It used the backs of its stubby hands to rub the black sleeping crust from its huge eyes. The trio of familiars, cornered in the back of the cavern, knew there was only one way out: through the same opening they had entered the night before. As they began to make a run for it, the troll stomped down its foot and let out a grunt, shaking the ground so violently that it knocked Aldwyn and Gilbert off their feet. It scooped up a chunk of rock and hurled it with amazing speed and force at the four-legged trespassers. Aldwyn dove to one side, Gilbert to the other, and the rock shattered against the wall behind them, sending dust everywhere.
“Over here,” called Skylar, who was hiding in a hole in the back wall of the cave. Her fellow familiars darted inside, joining her in the tight space.
The troll reached for them, but its hand was too wide to fit through the hole. Frustrated, the creature pounded its six-fingered fists into the cave wall, trying to break through with sheer force. Its blows sent dust falling down to the familiars’ feet. A pungent, sulfurous smell quickly filled the air.
“A volcano must have formed these mountains,” said Skylar, wincing from the scent. She reached down and swept some of the residue onto her wing. “This is lava spice.”
“Does it kill cave trolls?” asked a trembling Gilbert, as the rocky beast continued to pummel the wall.
“No, but when you mix it with colossus sap—”
“—it can make a person grow up to double his size,” Aldwyn completed Skylar’s sentence, remembering Kalstaff’s lesson from the Forest Under the Trees.
“That’s right,” said Skylar. “If we all swallow a drop, we can make this a fair fight.”
Another mighty punch from the troll cracked the barrier protecting the familiars. It wouldn’t be long before their entire defense crumbled.
Skylar reached for her satchel, but it wasn’t there!
“My satchel?” she asked, suddenly in a panic. “It must have slipped off while I was flying for the hole.”
Aldwyn looked out past the troll, who was still punching furiously. Not far past it lay the satchel. It would have been certain death for any of the familiars to try to retrieve it.
“Aldwyn—” Skylar began to say.
“I know, I know,” he interrupted. “My telekinesis.”
Aldwyn knew his supposed magical talent would be called on again; he just didn’t anticipate it would be this soon. He had to confess. He looked down, building up his courage, and there at his feet he saw a fragment of red and silver rock—just like the one that Jack’s marbles had been magnetically drawn to.
The troll pounded the cave wall again.
“Aldwyn, hurry up,” shouted Skylar. “Use your mind!”
Aldwyn might not have had telekinesis, but he had a different idea. He sneakily picked up the rock in his teeth and leaned his head as far out from the hole as he could toward Skylar’s satchel. He just hoped Scribius had enough metal in him for this to work.
Aldwyn thought to himself: Move, move, move.
The satchel began to shake a little, then slide across the stone floor.
“He’s doing it,” said Gilbert excitedly.
Skylar’s satchel was moving faster and faster, until it shot through the troll’s legs and came to a stop right before Aldwyn’s feet. Without the others seeing, he tossed aside the rock he’d held in his teeth.
There was no time for congratulations, but Gilbert was clearly impressed. Skylar quickly removed the vial of colossus sap that Dalton had stored there.
“Gilbert, Aldwyn, add some of that spice to this vial,” she said. “I’ll try to distract it with an illusion.”
Smash!
She dropped the vial into Gilbert’s hand just as the troll’s thick forearm bashed through the wall, leaving the trio of animals exposed.
“Nocturno infury!” chanted Skylar.
Out from the dark, a large woolly bat emerged with giant fangs, breathing fire. Aldwyn would have expected any rational being to duck for cover, but the cave troll didn’t seem the least bit intimidated. It swung a fist at the bat, but its hand went straight throug
h the illusion. This sent the troll temporarily off balance. Aldwyn didn’t waste any time, seizing the moment to quickly gather pawfuls of the lava spice and pour them into the glass tube. As the troll stumbled into the wall, Gilbert finished stirring the potion with one of his orange fingers.
He was about to pass Aldwyn the vial when the troll regained its balance and snatched Gilbert up from the ground.
“Oh, boy!” cried Gilbert.
“Drink the potion,” shouted Aldwyn.
As the cave troll lifted the tree frog toward its mouth, Gilbert brought the potion to his lips, but in his panic he dropped the vial directly into the monster’s open mouth. Momentarily confused, the monster swallowed and dropped Gilbert back to the ground.
“I’m so sorry,” said Gilbert to his companions. “It was an accident!”
Then their enemy started to twitch and expand. First its ears, then its arms, and all the way down to its legs, everything was getting bigger, wider, and denser. Dim-witted a creature though it was, the cave troll realized that it was growing into an even greater threat, and a terrifying smile appeared on its rocky lips. It raised its now elephant-sized foot above Aldwyn and thrust it down, just missing his tail. If the beast’s strength had been mighty before, now it was downright earthshaking.
There was nowhere for the familiars to run. They huddled up shoulder to shoulder in the corner as the enormous troll approached.
“It was an honor fighting by your side,” said Skylar.
“Likewise,” replied Gilbert. “And I’m sorry I ever called you an arrogant know-it-all.”
“I never heard you say that.”
“Well, it wasn’t to your face.”
The animals braced themselves as the troll clenched its now boulder-sized fist tightly, preparing to crush them. Then there was a loud crack, and bits of painted rock started raining down: the troll had grown so large that its head hit the ceiling of the cave. It tried to bend over, but it just kept getting bigger and bigger. Soon it was wedged tightly between the ground and the ceiling, and more and bigger rocks started falling from the crumbling roof of the cave. “Run,” shouted Aldwyn to his companions, and they slipped through a sliver of space between the troll’s expanding ankles. The walls were spiderwebbing, cracks spreading from every spot the giant was squeezed against. The pictures from the Enchantaissance began to fall away, shattering on the floor below.
The Familiars Page 13
