The Hero's Guide to Storming the Castle

by Christopher Healy

  “You’re making me feel much better about my decision to join you, you know,” Rapunzel said.

  “Anyway,” Frederic continued, “all that crushing notwithstanding, Reese and I came to a sort of understanding.” He paused, a thought striking him suddenly. “Rapunzel, do you know where Reese is now?”

  She nodded.

  “Then we need to make a detour on our way back to Avondell,” Frederic said. “I think I finally know how we’re going to get past the Bandit King’s wall.”

  After an entire morning of wringing his cape in angst, Liam had worn the edge of the garment down to bare frayed threads. He opened his window to get some fresh air and spotted Gustav leaning out of his own window one room over.

  “Ah, you’re going stir-crazy, too, huh?” Gustav said. “I can’t take it anymore. I’m gonna make a jump for it.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Gustav,” Liam said. “First of all, the fall would kill you. And even if you managed to climb down safely—well, take a look. There are guards all over the place: dolphin hedge, harpy hedge, guard, crocodile hedge, troll hedge, guard, clam hedge, hedgehog hedge, guard. There’s no way to avoid being seen.”

  “Well, come up with one of your famous plans,” Gustav said.

  I wish I could, Liam thought.

  Suddenly, Duncan’s head popped out of the window next to Gustav’s. “Hey, did somebody mention clams?” he asked. “Because I am famished.”

  “We’re trying to figure out how to get out of here,” Gustav said.

  “It’s not looking good,” Liam added.

  “What’s not looking good? The clams?” Duncan asked, leaning farther—and completely tumbling over the edge of his windowsill. That was when the garden’s troll-shaped hedge sprung to life and caught the falling prince in its grassy green arms.

  “Thank you, tree,” Duncan said.

  “Hairy Scary, is that you?” Gustav called down.

  Mr. Troll waved up to him.

  “You were supposed to leave,” Liam said. “I told you we didn’t need you.”

  “Troll disagreed,” the creature said. “So Troll stayed.”

  The three nearest Avondellian guardsmen left their posts and ran at the troll with their long poleaxes.

  “Explain that it was an accident,” Liam instructed. But Mr. Troll proceeded to clobber all three pin-striped soldiers, knocking them out. “Or not,” Liam sighed.

  “Hey, Troll, I’m coming down, too!” Gustav called. He leapt from his window. Mr. Troll caught his Prince Angry Man with a gleeful grin.

  “What do you think you’re going to do?” Liam yelled down.

  “We can’t wait till bedtime. With the lockdown in place, this might be our only chance,” Gustav said. “We’re gonna find the bard and get the song out of him.” He turned to Duncan and Mr. Troll. “It’s B team time. You ready for some investigative action?”

  They nodded eagerly.

  “No, Gustav!” Liam shouted. “Wait!”

  “It’s now or never, Capey,” Gustav said. “We’ve already knocked out three guards.” He had a point.

  Liam briefly considered jumping down to join them but was honestly afraid the troll wouldn’t catch him. And the trio was already on its way, creeping through the forest of shrubbery. He couldn’t stop them.

  “Subtly, Gustav,” Liam called. “Subtly!”

  Gustav gave him a thumbs-up as he disappeared around a corner.

  “He has no idea what that word means,” Liam muttered.

  Liam pounded on his locked bedroom door, praying that Gustav and Duncan hadn’t already ruined everything. “Guard! Guard!” he shouted. “Please, you’ve got to let me out! It’s an emergency!”

  “Emergency?” he heard the guard ask from out in the hall. “It’s not the Gray Phantom again, is it?”

  Liam thought for a second. “Yes,” he shouted back. “I saw the Phantom outside. Let me out. I can help stop him!”

  “The Phantom’s back!” the guard called to his comrades along the corridor. Through the door, Liam heard a lot of murmuring and commotion, then the pounding of a dozen booted feet running off toward the stairwell.

  One good hard kick later, Liam’s bedroom door burst open, and he rushed out into the now empty hallway. He dashed straight to the opposite end of the corridor and rammed his shoulder into another bedroom door, breaking the lock and knocking it open. Ella jumped up with a start when she saw him.

  “I need your help,” he said. “We may have a big problem.”

  “For someone the size of my living room, you’re very good at sneaking,” Duncan said as the trio crept through the garden, freezing behind Mr. Troll any time a guard passed by.

  “Oops Man not so bad either,” Mr. Troll replied.

  “Okay, guys,” Gustav said. “Since everybody in the palace is supposed to be locked in their rooms, we can assume Mr. Sing-Song is in his room as well. And all the bedrooms seem to be on the top floor of the palace.”

  “That’s really smart thinking, Gustav,” Duncan said.

  Gustav paused and grinned. “You’re right, it is,” he said. “But we don’t know which room is the bard’s.”

  “You know who we should ask?” Duncan said. He pointed to a high window. “Whoever lives in that room with the music-note curtains.”

  Gustav’s eyes brightened. “That’s got to be the one! Time to go back to the top floor.”

  “How?” Duncan asked.

  “Same way we got down, only backward,” Gustav said. “Awful Clawful, how strong is your throwing arm?”

  Reynaldo, Duke of Rhyme, was (as Liam liked to point out to people) not really a duke. He was, however, Avondell’s royal bard and one of the most famous bards in the Thirteen Kingdoms. His “The Tale of the Sleeping Beauty” was the biggest international hit of its day—or at least it had been until that Harmonian hack, Pennyfeather the Mellifluous, started flooding the market with his “League of Princes” songs. What was so special about Pennyfeather’s songs anyway? Was it because he named the princes? A cheap gimmick! And one that, if it caught on, would mean more work for the bards. Reynaldo couldn’t imagine how annoying his life would become if he had to start making sure his stories contained facts.

  Fig. 26

  REYNALDO, Duke of Rhyme

  But he was going to beat Pennyfeather at his own game. Reynaldo’s song about the wedding, “The League of Princes Fails Again,” was already gaining in popularity—and he didn’t mention a single real name in it (other than that of Briar Rose, of course). No, Reynaldo went back to calling all the men Prince Charming. It made the story incredibly difficult to follow, but nobody seemed to care—the people were just happy to hear about a familiar character they already knew. Or thought they knew.

  Reynaldo was sitting on the edge of his bed, strumming his lute and composing a song about himself out-barding Pennyfeather, when a gigantic blond man flew in through his window—and landed on a rack of tambourines. Gustav growled as he shook one of the jingling rings off his foot.

  Reynaldo shrieked and dropped his lute. He ran to his door and pulled on the knob, forgetting it was locked. “Guards! I’m being attacked!” he screamed. But his guards, like all the others, had run off in search of the Gray Phantom.

  “Are you the Gray Phantom?” the bard whimpered, pressing himself against his door as if he hoped to squeeze himself through the keyhole.

  “Jeez, you bards don’t pay attention to anything, do you?” Gustav groaned. “I’m Prince Gustav, one of the guys who rescued you from that witch.”

  “One of the sixteen hero princes of Sturmhagen?” the curly-haired bard asked, crouching in a corner and shielding his chest with his floppy feathered hat.

  “No, I’m the seventeenth, and for your information—” Gustav was cut off as Duncan flew in through the window and bowled over a set of music stands. The much smaller prince staggered to his feet, holding his head. “Now I know why penguins prefer to walk.”

  Reynaldo tried to scramble under his
bed, but Gustav grabbed him by the pantaloons and yanked him back out. “I’m too talented to die!” the bard whined.

  “Hey,” said Gustav. “All you’ve gotta do is sing for us and we’ll leave you alone.”

  Reynaldo didn’t need to be asked twice. He immediately jumped into song: “Listen dear hearts to a tale most upsetting, four bumbling Prince Charmings who destroyed a wedding—”

  “Not that song!” Gustav growled.

  “And it’s Princes Charming,” Duncan added pointedly. “How many times do I have to remind people of that?”

  “But Princes Charming just sounds wrong,” Reynaldo said. “No one would request my songs if I used stiff grammar like that.”

  Gustav picked Reynaldo up by his ankles and held him upside down.

  “Okay, Princes Charming,” the bard shrieked. “Princes Charming!”

  “No, I actually agree with you on that point,” Gustav said. “I just don’t want to get off topic. Sing us the lullaby—the one you sing to Princess Sourpuss every night.”

  “‘The Tale of the Jeopardous Jade Djinn Gem’?” Reynaldo asked, his face turning bright red as blood rushed to his head.

  “The Jepperjajinjam?” Gustav asked quizzically.

  “Jeopardous Jade Djinn Gem!” Duncan shouted triumphantly. “We’ve found it, Gustav! JJDG!”

  “Hate to break it to you,” Gustav said. “But that would be all Js.”

  “No, it’s JJDG,” Duncan insisted.

  Gustav mulled it over. “All right, I’ve heard of Gs making a J sound, but not Ds.”

  “The D in ‘djinn’ is silent,” Duncan explained.

  “Stupid language,” Gustav grumbled. He dropped Reynaldo and ordered, “Sing us the Jeopardy Jewel song!”

  “And try to stay on-key this time,” Duncan added, squinting in an attempt to look tough.

  “Sorry,” said Reynaldo. “My vocals aren’t at their best when I’m terrified for my life.” Reynaldo cleared his throat and trilled, “Listen dear hearts to a tale of mayhem, of death and destruction all caused by a gem. . . .”

  Gustav and Duncan listened to the bard’s ancient tale, and while I could simply repeat all the lyrics for you to read right here, I’ll do you the favor of just summing the story up instead. Believe me, there are only so many times you can hear someone rhyme “gem” with “phlegm” before it becomes really annoying.

  In the tale, a nameless adventurer opened a mysterious bottle and freed a long-captive spirit: a “djinn,” or genie. The djinn offered to grant the man one wish, but the man thought he could outsmart the spirit by wishing for two things at once. “I wish for wealth and power,” he said.

  The djinn responded by presenting the adventurer with an extraordinarily rare piece of orange jade, the most valuable gem in the world. “What about the second half of my wish?” the man asked angrily.

  “That stone is not just priceless,” the djinn replied. “It grants its bearer the power to control the mind of another. While you are in physical contact with the gem, anyone in your presence can become your puppet. Simply think what you want that person to do, and he will do it, regardless of his own will. Only one person at a time, though, and only while you can see him.”

  The greedy adventurer rushed home and immediately began using the jewel to make others do his bidding. But as he was not a very imaginative person, he mostly used it to make street vendors give him free coconut drinks. And that was when a thief swiped the jade from him.

  The thief was much smarter than the adventurer, and he used the gem to great advantage. All his enemies conveniently decided to kill one another—after turning over all their treasures to him, of course. Suddenly, this petty pickpocket had the largest house the land had ever seen, the fastest horses, and the finest magenta silk robes. Before long, he ruled his town.

  But there was one thing the thief did not have: love. He’d been pining after a lovely barmaid for years, but the girl had always rebuffed his advances. So one day the thief went to the barmaid, proposed marriage, and used the gem to make her say yes. But he’d never heard the djinn’s rules for using the magical stone. As soon as the pickpocket grew tired, closed his eyes, and could no longer see his new bride, his control over her was broken. She fled into the desert. Blinded by his desire to find the girl, the thief trekked into the dunes after her. But he was unprepared, with no food, no water, and no map. He soon became lost. And it was there, somewhere in the desert sands, that he died.

  Reynaldo finished his song and took a bow as Duncan applauded.

  “That was rather dark,” Duncan said. “But I liked the part about coconut drinks.”

  Before Gustav had a chance to roll his eyes, the door was bashed in. Liam and Ella surveyed the wrecked bedroom—broken tambourines, toppled music stands, quivering bard—and both smacked their hands to their foreheads.

  “Subtly, Gustav,” Liam said. “I’ve been telling you for days—we needed to do this subtly.”

  “And I did!” Gustav retorted. “Subtly. Everything’s quiet, the bard suspects nothing, and then subtly—BOOM!—we attack.”

  “Gustav?” Duncan said gently. “I think you were thinking of ‘suddenly.’”

  “No,” said Gustav. “Suddenly is when . . . Oh. Yeah. Well, uh . . . who cares? Because we heard the song. And now we know what JJDG is!”

  “The Jeopardous Jade Djinn Gem!” Duncan announced.

  “Even though it sounds like all Js,” Gustav added.

  “Jade,” Liam said. “Is it orange jade, like the jewel on the sword?”

  Duncan and Gustav nodded.

  “But what’s so special about this gem?” Ella asked.

  “It’s a spooky magic jewel that lets you control other people’s minds,” Duncan explained. “You could make them do whatever you want: squawk like a chicken, wear a funny hat. . . .”

  “Turn over an entire kingdom to you,” Liam added, his face turning unnaturally pale. “It’s all coming together. That’s how she plans to take over the world.”

  “Who’s taking over the world?” a shrill voice asked from the hallway. Briar Rose pushed her way into the room past Liam and Ella and repeated her question. “Who’s taking over the world?”

  “We’re on to you,” Liam said. “We know why you want the Sword of Erinthia: the Jeopardous Jade Djinn Gem.”

  Briar stared at him fiercely but said nothing.

  “With the power of the gem, you plan to take down every government in the Thirteen Kingdoms, one by one,” Liam continued. “Force the king of Valerium to abdicate his throne, make Gustav’s parents disband Sturmhagen’s army, trick Duncan’s parents into getting lost in the wilderness. . . .”

  “You read my diary!” Briar fumed. “I thought you had more respect for personal property than that, Prince Charming.”

  “So you’re not denying it,” Liam said.

  Briar walked over to Reynaldo’s harp-shaped bed and sat down on the edge of the mattress. “Growing up in hiding from an evil curse can be pretty dull,” she said. Her tone was softer than usual. “Even humiliating your servants becomes tiresome after a while. So you know what I did? I read a lot. And since I already knew I was destined to marry you, Liam, I read your family history. When I came across the story of that oaf, Prince Dorun, I immediately connected it to one of my favorite old bard songs, ‘The Tale of the Jeopardous Jade Djinn Gem.’ So much death and doom in that one—how can you not love it? Anyway, the orange jade, the skeleton in the Aridian desert, the magenta silk robes, the story about the royal menu—it didn’t take a genius to realize that Dorun’s gem was the Djinn Gem. And—”

  “And now you want the gem for yourself, so you can take over the Thirteen Kingdoms,” Ella said.

  Briar gritted her teeth. “I’m explaining—”

  “You can’t explain your way out of this, Briar,” Liam said.

  “Believe what you want,” Briar said. “Just let me know right now whether you’re backing out of the mission or not. Because the ninjas from Ko
m-Pai just arrived. And I’ll happily send them to Rauberia tomorrow if you guys aren’t willing to go.”

  Ella and the princes all looked at one another.

  “No, we’re going,” Liam said.

  “Good,” Briar said, standing up. “Because, one way or another, that sword has to be taken out of Deeb Rauber’s hands.” She walked to the cracked doorway and turned around. “I find it fascinating how you’re all so worried about me when all I’ve done is enforce a preexisting marriage contract and arrest a handful of people who assaulted my palace. And yet you don’t seem concerned in the slightest that this powerful gem is already sitting in a castle full of known criminals. There are worse people in the world than me, you know.”

  17

  THE VILLAIN JUST WANTS TO HAVE FUN

  If someone stands in your path to glory, crush him. If someone holds you back from achieving your goals, crush him. If someone peppers his speech with too many “ers” or “ums,” crush him.

  —THE WARLORD’S PATH TO POWER: AN ANCIENT TOME OF DARIAN WISDOM

  The Warlord of Dar closed the door to his guest suite: a posh room carpeted with pilfered animal-skin rugs and furnished with sophisticated armchairs and armoires that Rauber had stolen over the years. He turned to address the Darian soldiers he had gathered there. First in line was Madu, the Keeper of the Snake. Tall and lithe, Madu wore a tattered kilt and a loose vest that hung open to reveal scores of serpent tattoos covering his skin.

  Beside the snake handler stood a stocky bodyguard named Jezek, who was clad from collar to boots in spike-studded armor. And next to him was Redshirt, a thick-necked barbarian with a penchant for licking the edge of his ax.

  The final member of Rundark’s cabal was Wrathgar, the dungeon master. A walking mass of muscle, Wrathgar was larger than the Warlord himself (larger than all Gustav’s brothers, too—in case you’re keeping score). A red-and-black mask covered the top half of his face, while below it, a freakishly long mustache hung down to his chest like a pair of face-ponytails. Tied to each end of his mustache was an unidentified bone: the remnant of a lion’s claw, perhaps, or a human finger, or maybe just a chicken leg (it’s not like anybody was going to ask).