by Zac Gorman
“You have the look of somebody who has been traveling with my sister for days.” He laughed. “I probably don’t need to tell you this, but she can be a bit of a handful. You see, that’s the problem. She was chosen by birth to rule the kingdom, our kingdom. But she’s not fit to rule. At least, that’s what the Eyes in the Dark thinks, and I’d have to say I agree. I’m a much more natural leader. So I did what I had to do . . . or at least, I tried to.”
Ingo sat down on a rock nearby. He leaned so casually and smiled so nonchalantly that he could have just as easily been talking about the weather as he was talking about trying to murder his sister.
“I see that look. I know what you’re thinking. ‘What a monster!’ But I want you to know that I never wanted things to play out this way. I’d always thought I’d do my power grab like a proper gentleman, through politicking and the law, usurping her from the throne through more . . . legitimate means. I’m not a violent man! Murder? How crass!”
Thisby almost could have believed him, the way he said it. She found it hard to believe that somebody so beautiful, so delicate, could be such a monster.
“This isn’t my style! But the Eyes in the Dark can be very . . . persuasive. And once we had a deal, there was no backing out. I follow his plan; I take my rightful place as the ruler of this kingdom. Simple as that.
“Or it should have been, until you showed up! I have to give you credit, Thisby! You know this dungeon better than I ever thought possible!”
He reached out to take the towel from Thisby, sensing she was done with it. He was right, but Thisby held on to it anyway. It made her feel better to deny him something. Ingo shrugged.
“Which brings me to my next point. I’d actually like to talk to you about a promotion. Things are changing in the Black Mountain, Thisby. Heck, things are changing in the world! And I think there’s a place for you. Here. In the Black Mountain. Do you get what I’m saying?”
Thisby squeezed her towel and imagined she was wringing his neck.
“Of course you don’t. I’m being too obtuse. Lemme just come right out and say it: I want you, Thisby Thestoop, to be the new Master of the Black Mountain.”
Thisby hated that her heart raced at those words. She knew it was a trick. Every bone in her body was telling her it was, and yet, she couldn’t deny feeling a strange sense of elation at the idea. Worse yet, somehow Ingo had sensed it.
“Great! Perfect! You know the dungeon better than anyone! You’ll be perfect for the job! There’s just one little change we need to make, part of upholding a deal on my end—you know how these things go—we need you to keep the Darkwell open. So from now on, the Deep Dwellers can come and go in the dungeon as they please. It’s something the Eyes in the Dark has been very insistent on and, well, a deal’s a deal. Before you say anything, I know, I know, it’s not ideal, but this is how things get done in the world. You understand that, don’t you, Thisby?”
Thisby hesitated. Ingo grinned.
“Or we can do this the hard way. Now, before you answer, let me tell you about the hard way. The hard way is where I take my army of angry Deep Dwellers, smash through the weakened Darkwell, march through your precious dungeon, and kill every single monster in sight. That doesn’t seem like a good compromise, though, does it?”
“What about Roquat? You’re working with him, right?” Thisby asked, keeping her tone as flat as possible. She was beginning to realize Ingo was quite good at reading inflection.
Ingo beamed at her.
“Ah! Very clever! Very clever! So you figured it out, huh? I was working with, uh, Roquat did you say? Right. Roquat. And he was indeed promised the position of Master in exchange for his, uh, assistance in opening the Darkwell, but it seems he’ll no longer be able to fill the position. His contract was . . . terminated early. I’m afraid he’s passed on.”
Thisby had been furious at Roquat for days since he’d loosed the tarasque and started this whole mess, but something about Ingo grinning over his death rubbed her the wrong way. She felt sick in the pit of her stomach. She and Roquat had never gotten along, but he didn’t deserve to die as a casualty of Ingo’s insane quest for power.
“Roquat does your dirty work, tries to kill your sister, gets rid of the Sentinel for you, and you, what, stab him in the back? That must’ve been it, right? From the looks of it, I doubt you could take him in a fair fight.”
“And you’re worried that we’d do the same to you, right?”
For once, Ingo was way off the mark.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “Roquat was a means to an end. He never would’ve been able to maintain a lasting peace between the Deep Dwellers and the rest of the dungeon, but I believe you can. I believe you can control these monsters. I’ve seen it.”
Thisby spit out some blood and wiped her mouth with the towel. She almost felt like laughing at his sheer arrogance.
“Nobody controls these monsters. Especially the Deep Dwellers. Was that your plan for lasting peace? To just open the gate and hope nothing bad happens? That was your bargain: you get the throne and just leave the Black Mountain in chaos? What do you really think will happen then? Once that gate is open, the Deep Dwellers and whatever it is down there that’s driving them, it isn’t going to stop at the mountain. They’re going to show up in your villages, in your towns, at your gate. You’re playing right into their hands. They promised you the Kingdom, just as they promised Roquat the Black Mountain. Don’t you see? This is a game where everybody loses. You, Roquat, the Deep Dwellers, the monsters. After spending time with Iphigenia, I’d started to think that maybe you royals weren’t so stupid after all, but apparently it’s just her,” said Thisby.
Ingo stood up, enraged. His face was red and several locks of his black hair slid across his forehead.
“How dare—” he started.
“No, no, no,” said Thisby, standing up. “I’m not done yet.”
Several of the Deep Dwellers who’d been escorting the Prince rushed over with their weapons drawn, but he held up his hand to stop them. Ingo Larkspur was far too proud to have his guards protect him against some scrawny unarmed little girl.
“You tried to kill your own sister, your own sister who’s spent the last three days worrying about you, searching for you, so that you could enact what has to be the worst thought-out plan in history! This is why you weren’t meant to be King! You’d be terrible at it!”
Ingo drew his sword. Thisby took a step back and glared at him.
“Now I’ve gotta go try to undo your stupidity before it’s too late! And one more thing!” Thisby added. “Next time you take somebody captive, check their pockets first!”
And with that, Thisby threw a blackdoor at the ground and jumped through.
Ingo scrambled to his feet but hesitated just long enough at the edge of the portal for it to snap shut with a definitive crackle. Unlike Thisby, he had the good sense to look before he leapt. And where Thisby was headed, Ingo had no interest to follow.
Chapter 22.5
Shabul peered through bundles of drying herbs through the leaded glass window of his cobblestone cottage as ranks of soldiers trudged past up the Black Mountain. He’d been watching for the better part of an hour as the rows upon rows of soldiers carrying purple flags emblazoned with the crest of King Larkspur—a silver lyre entwined with flowers—bumbled past, and still the army had yet to thin out. Wherever they were going, whatever they were doing, they were bringing an army.
A few days ago, a convoy carrying the Prince and Princess up the Black Mountain for the Royal Inspection had passed by Shabul’s shop, but unfortunately for the potion maker, he wasn’t able to entice them to stop. He’d even gone so far as to tailor the signs in front of his shop to things he believed would steal the royal twins’ attention:
POTION OF FUTURE TELLING: WILL YOU BE ASSASSINATED? FIND OUT!
HEAVY IS THE HEAD . . . THAT DOESN’T HAVE SHABUL’S SPECIAL ELIXIR!
ROYAL BOIL? TRY MY SPECIAL NO-SPOIL BOIL OIL!
>
The last one he’d thought was particularly brilliant, but it was all to no avail. The royal carriage had passed by without even so much as slowing down. Now he found himself with an opportunity to upsell an entire army, and he’d been caught completely unprepared. Fortunately for Shabul, this was a large army, which meant he had time to rush prepare some Luck Potion—a perpetual favorite for those brave soldiers about to rush headlong into a fray of people wielding extraordinarily pointy things. He’d wait for the back of the army. At the back of the army were the generals, and they were the ones with the money anyway.
After some time, Shabul finally caught sight of a woman riding a beautiful white horse wearing the most resplendent armor that he had ever seen. The woman’s armor was not so shabby, either. Shabul grabbed up his Famous Luck Potion, straightened his turban, and ran outside, eager to make a sale.
The woman on the white horse gave him a side-eye as he walked briskly up to her, waving happily and holding his finest basket full of potions.
“Hello, hello!” called Shabul.
The woman did not answer him, but also did not take her eyes off him. Shabul saw this as a good sign.
The woman’s white-gold hair was cropped short and pushed back away from her face. She was tall and thick, with broad shoulders, and she looked as if she’d seen her fair share of battles. Shabul did not know it, but she was General Elspet Castor, the Hero of the Battle of the Nameless Sea. Even if he had known, he probably would not have behaved any differently.
He bowed awkwardly as one might to a lady.
She gazed at him stonily but stopped her horse anyway.
“My name is Shabul, and I have just the thing for you!” he said, rifling through his potion basket. He knew full well that he was going to try to sell her his Famous Luck Potion—but that would be the final act of the play. Opening with that would spoil the whole thing.
Shabul rifled around for a bit more before he withdrew a green flask and proudly held it up.
“This one will make you very, very rich!” He beamed. “It is made with real cockatrice feathers, known the world over for their fortune-enhancing properties!”
General Elspet had begun to ride again, following her army at a slow trot. Shabul walked alongside her, pretending he hadn’t noticed the discourtesy.
“Never mind! Never mind! I should’ve known you were too discerning for that!”
Shabul went back into his basket and began to root around again. He made a great show of clinking the bottles together. General Elspet kept her eyes on the path ahead.
“This,” he said, producing a small bag of crushed leaves, “produces a tea that will heal any infirmity of the mind or body. It is made from . . .”
“I do not want your snake oil, peddler.”
Shabul deftly turned around his bottle of Genuine Snake Oil so its label was no longer visible.
“My elixirs and potions are the best in all of Nth! I assure you!”
Elspet sped up enough so that it was hard for Shabul to keep pace.
“I’ll have you know I get my ingredients from the Black Mountain itself! They are harvested in the dungeon by hand!”
Suddenly, Elspet stopped riding. For the first time since he’d approached, the General turned to face him, and Shabul found himself retreating a bit beneath her cold glare.
“What did you say?” she demanded.
Shabul, ever the professional, continued on. “I said, my elixirs and potions are made from finest ingredients, which come from the dungeon of the Black Mountain itself.”
Elspet rode over to the peddler, her eyes trained on him.
“When was the last time you were there, in the dungeon?” she asked.
“Hm. Maybe three or four days ago.” Shabul paused. “What is it you’re doing there, anyway? Is something wrong?”
Elspet considered him for a moment and decided there was no harm in telling him the truth. He was of such little importance that it was as harmless as talking to a tree.
“A royal caravan passed through here several days ago. Inside that caravan were the Prince and Princess of Nth. They were expected to return days ago and have yet to. We’re here to find out why.”
“And start a war, from the looks of it,” said Shabul, despite his better judgement.
The general didn’t smile. In fact, she didn’t even blink. It gave Shabul goose bumps. Here was somebody who knew war, who understood it. And who was definitely willing to make it again if need be.
“Have you seen anything strange around here lately?” asked Elspet.
Shabul combed through his recent memory. The other day, a raven the size of a small carriage had carried off a baby from Three Fingers. He’d watched it fly over his cottage on its way back to the mountain. He’d also caught a goblin stealing carrots from his garden. And there’d been that horrible disembodied voice that had begun talking to him over the last few days as he tried to fall asleep, but all things considered, there was nothing he’d call “strange.”
He shook his head.
Elspet turned to ride away.
“Be careful, Mister Shabul. There are bad things coming to the Black Mountain.”
“I’ve lived here all my life. I’m used to it.”
Elspet paused.
“Then you know this is different.”
Shabul felt a chill go up his spine at her words. He knew she was right, but hated to admit it to himself. Something had been different lately, although he couldn’t quite put his finger on it.
“Good luck, General.”
“Thank you,” she said sincerely. “I need it.”
She rode away, leaving Shabul standing dumbstruck, staring after her. It took him several minutes until his brain kicked back in, and he realized he’d just missed a sale.
Chapter 23
To her surprise, Thisby didn’t find herself back in the dungeon. At least, she didn’t think she was in the dungeon. In all her years there, she’d yet to come across any place this horrible.
Everything was dark and extremely hot—so dark that she couldn’t see her hands in front of her face, and so hot that it immediately felt as if all the air had been sucked out of her body.
She inhaled sharply, trying to catch her breath, but the sudden blast of heat inside her lungs made her feel as if her chest were on fire. Thisby collapsed. She braced herself against the fall, but the hot stone burned against the skin of her palms, making her cry out in pain. She rolled over onto her back, trying to remove her exposed skin from contact with the ground, but the heat quickly radiated through the back of her thick shirt and made her feel as if she had lain down on a frying pan. Thisby rolled onto her knees where her leggings were thicker and stood up, coughing and wheezing.
She pulled the neck of her shirt up over her mouth and breathed through it, desperate to take some of the edge off the unrelenting heat. She sipped the air in short little breaths, trying her best not to breathe it deep into her lungs again.
Everything was pitch black.
Back on her feet, she reached into her pocket for the second blackdoor, but it was gone. Her mind went blank with panic. She’d dropped it.
She knelt down and felt the ground. It burned her skin, but she had to keep looking. It had to be there somewhere. She groped the ground desperately but came up with nothing. After several minutes she accepted the inevitable. She was going to have to find another way out.
Hands outstretched in front of her, Thisby stumbled through the dark, hoping beyond hope to bump into something. Anything. If she could find a wall, maybe she could follow it to an exit, but her fingers touched only terrible, endless darkness in every direction.
She staggered forward. Something shifted in the darkness, just beyond where she was standing, and an awful feeling began to creep up from the base of her spine. She wasn’t alone.
“I know you’re in here!” yelled Thisby.
Nothing responded. Not even an echo.
A hot gust of air grazed the back of her neck, ca
using her to shiver despite the overwhelming heat. She stopped dead in her tracks and listened. The only noise she could hear was her own labored breathing.
Perhaps she was already dead. Maybe she’d dropped through the blackdoor straight into a volcano and this was some sort of torturous limbo. After all, there was no way to know where a blackdoor let out unless you’d made it yourself. When she’d thrown it, she’d thought anywhere would be better than being stuck in the Deep Down with Ingo. Apparently, she was wrong.
“You have a dream,” said a raspy voice. It came from everywhere at once, as if the cave itself were speaking. “You wake up. You get out of bed. You walk to the ladder. You look down. And then . . .” The voice trailed off.
Thisby felt the darkness drawing in more tightly with every word. It was heavy, weighing her down from every direction and keeping her stuck to her spot. Thisby forced herself to respond despite her every instinct telling her to stay still and quiet.
“Then I jump,” she said.
There was hideous laughter all around her.
“Then you jump,” it parroted. “How nice.”
Thisby felt the words wrapping around her neck like a noose. She felt the urge to scream and run away but couldn’t find the strength to do either.
“Where would you go if you ran?” he mocked. “Would you run forever? Just run and run and run and run? You belong here, Little Mouse.”
Thisby thought for a second she saw Catface stalking around in the darkness, but shook the image from her head. It was just her imagination. This was something far worse. It knew her. It knew what she was thinking. She shook her head. For all she knew, it could also just be her mind playing tricks on her.
“Maybe it is, and maybe it isn’t,” said the voice. “What is it you want, Thisby Thestoop, the sweet, lonely girl who was left at my doorstep? Tell me, and I would be happy to oblige.”
He paused. Thisby could feel thin, invisible fingers digging around inside her head. She struggled to keep her mind clear.
“Strange . . . for an orphan, you seem to have no desire for your parents. Good. Most parents are idiots, yours especially. Neither do you want power. How rare for someone so pitiful as yourself to not to want to be powerful! You truly are a kind, gentle girl, aren’t you? Are you sure you wouldn’t like to be Master? To have the whole dungeon serve you?”
