A Royal Guide to Monster Slaying

by Kelley Armstrong

  It’s Jacko, digging in all his claws and his teeth. The beast snarls and shifts, and I fall free. Hands grab me.

  “Jacko!” I scream.

  The jackalope leaps from somewhere above me and lands on my head. I hear a clang, as if my sword has fallen out of the gryphon, and I should go after it, but arms drag me away. Before I can even see who it is, I’m being shoved into the rear cave.

  I twist to see Dain. He pushes Jacko and me inside. I scramble around, and Dain grabs me as if I’m about to run again. Inside the cavern, the gryphon stomps about, shrieking in rage. That’s all I see. The gryphon…and a blood-smeared wall.

  “Malric,” I whisper. “Where’s—”

  Alianor pops her head out from the side cave and calls, “I have Malric. He’s alive, just—”

  The gryphon wheels and snaps at her. She yanks her head back just in time.

  The beast keeps stomping and snarling and raging. It tries again to shove its head into our rear cave. Tries to shove it into Alianor’s side one. When it can’t do either, it retreats to the middle of the cavern and settles in, one eye on each cave entrance.

  “Is Malric okay?” I shout.

  “He will be. One of his legs is broken, and I think he has a head injury. He’ll recover but…he won’t be taking that message, Rowan. I’m sorry.”

  “It was a good plan,” I call back. “Thank you for trying.”

  I mean that. It was a very good plan. But Jannah always said that no matter how good a plan is, you can’t control every variable, so you need a backup.

  I don’t have a backup.

  I’m sitting on the rear cave floor, with Jacko on my lap. He’s purring, but it sounds forced, as if he’s doing it for me.

  “We’ll figure something out,” Dain says.

  “Like what? I’m supposed to kill this thing. If I don’t, I’ll never become the royal monster hunter. My mother will lose the kingdom, and Heward will take over. He’ll destroy it, and it will be all my fault, unless I kill that…that thing.” I jab my finger at the cave opening. “That thing that I can’t even get past. Forget killing. I can’t even escape it.”

  “But you did, right? In the battle where your aunt died? It had you, and you escaped.”

  “That was different.”

  “Yes, because it had you in its talons. That was worse.”

  No, this is worse. I knew we shouldn’t have come through the canyon. Dain and Alianor came this way for me. So the princess would get her pegasus. Now I’ve lost her, and I might lose them, too.

  Dain, Alianor, Jacko, Malric…

  They might all die in this cave, and it’s my fault.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  he sun is starting to drop outside the cave, shadows inside lengthening. We’ve been sitting in silence. Thinking. Hoping, too—hoping the gryphon will give up. It hasn’t. I’ve injured it, and now it’s more determined than ever to wait us out.

  I’ve been adding the jba-fofi page to my field journal in hopes that will distract me, but it hasn’t. Finally, I set it aside and call out to Alianor, checking in with her. She’s fine. Just resting and tending to Malric.

  I look over at Dain. “I’m sorry.”

  “For what?” he asks.

  “Everything. We changed our route for me. The gryphon attacked because of me. Now it’s wounded—and angry—because of me. We’re all going to die because—”

  “Uh, no. Sorry, princess, but I don’t plan on dying today.”

  “It won’t be today. It takes three days to die of thirst.”

  He laughs at that, a sharp guffaw that startles Jacko. The jackalope chatters at him before settling in again.

  “Let me rephrase that, princess. I have no intention of dying anytime soon. While I do appreciate your scientific assessment of our situation, I plan to be rescued by magic. Or a witch.” He scrunches his nose. “Maybe a wizard.”

  I force a smile for him.

  He walks over and hunkers down at my side. The falling light casts half his face in shadow, but he’s close enough for me to see a scar crossing his nose, a thin, pale slash against his brown skin.

  “Did you drag me on this adventure, princess?”

  “No, but—”

  “Did you order me to come?”

  “No, but—”

  “Did you force me up that tree? Did you push me into the spider’s burrow?” He meets my gaze. “You led. I chose to follow.”

  “I changed our route because—”

  “No, I changed our route. I suggested this one. I said it was safe.” He leans against the wall. “I did a very fine job of getting us into this mess. Don’t go hogging all the credit.”

  I shake my head.

  He pulls his knees up, settling in. “You asked how I ended up with Wilmot. Would you like to hear the story?”

  Before I can answer, he says, “I know, it’s not the time. But we’re both going nuts trying to figure out a plan. We need a break. We need a story. Would you like one?”

  I nod. “Yes, please.”

  “Okay, so after the queen stole—” He stops, as if remembering who he’s talking to. “After my parents lost their farm, they sold—gave—asked—me to work for the village mayor as a rat catcher.”

  I don’t miss the way he quickly changes the verb in that sentence. His parents did not ask him. They didn’t give him to the mayor for fostering, either. They sold him into indentured servitude.

  Indentured servitude means that a person must work for an employer for a certain number of years. The only way to get out sooner is to pay for your freedom, which is nearly impossible when your already low wages are docked for room and board.

  When our first king took the ivory throne, he had to respect the traditions of the other clans. Indentured servitude was one of those traditions, but within two generations, Clan Dacre outlawed it.

  I can’t say that, so I only murmur, “That must have been awful.”

  “My parents had no choice, princess. Your mother—” He clips off the word. “And this is not the story I intended to tell you. I know your mother isn’t an evil queen. You’re too kind to have been raised by a terrible parent. I don’t know what happened, but it’s something for me to take up with her.”

  I say nothing, and he doesn’t seem to expect me to.

  “Okay,” he continues. “The important part is that I was a rat catcher—not how I became one. So when I was eight, we had a hoop snake in the chicken coop. The mayor summoned Wilmot. As soon as I discovered that a legendary monster hunter was coming, I stayed up two nights in a row, hoping to catch the snake myself. I did. Wilmot arrived, and I presented it to him. They thought I did it to earn Wilmot’s fee myself. I didn’t. My plan was to give Wilmot the hoop snake and the reward, and then ask him to buy my service from the mayor so I could become Wilmot’s apprentice. I wanted to be a monster hunter.”

  “And Wilmot was so impressed by you catching the snake that he agreed.”

  “Uh-uh. He said he had no use for an apprentice. That I should take the reward and put it toward buying my freedom. But the mayor refused to pay me. So I released the hoop snake.”

  I snicker. “I bet the mayor loved that.”

  “Oh, I was in trouble. A lot of trouble actually.” His eyes cloud over at the memory, but he throws it off. “Anyway, Wilmot caught the hoop snake. When he left, I snuck out and followed. I tracked him all the way home, and he never realized I was there. This, I said, proved that I could be a monster hunter.”

  “So he took you in.”

  “Nope. He sent me home. He told me the best and safest path back to the village. He warned me to stick to the trail. Whatever I did, I was not to go north of it. A warakin lived there, one he’d been trying to frighten off. So I left, but I ignored the warning.”

  “Because you wanted to kill the warakin.”

  Dain shakes his head. “Even at eight, I knew I couldn’t fight a warakin. But after Wilmot captured the hoop snake, I’d seen him sedate it so he could relea
se it in the forest. So I waited until he fell asleep, snuck in, found his hunting pack and stole a needle full of sedative. Then I went off to capture the warakin.”

  “You drugged it and brought it back, and then he made you his apprentice.”

  “Uh, no. The problem with a sedative is that you need to get close enough to use the needle. The warakin cornered me. By then, I’d lost the needle, and I was armed only with my stick.”

  “Your stick?” I try not to laugh.

  He mock-glowers. “It was a very fine stick. That’s what I used against the rats. I’d sharpened a stout branch, and I’d poke at them with it, to drive them off. Warakins don’t like being poked with sharp sticks. They really don’t.”

  “I’ll remember that,” I say, trying not to laugh. “But you survived, obviously. Did you poke it in the eye?”

  “No. That’s a fine idea, but I didn’t think of it. The warakin had me cornered. Just as it lunged for the kill, Wilmot ran in. He saved my life.”

  “And then he took you on as an apprentice, because you’d passed his test.”

  “No…Have you been listening, princess? I failed. I didn’t catch the warakin. Wilmot did take me on after that, though. He said someone had to train me, before I got myself killed.”

  “Wilmot didn’t just happen to show up at that moment. Just like he didn’t just happen to warn you about a warakin north of the path. He wanted to see what you’d do. You accepted the challenge. You were also mature enough to realize you couldn’t kill a warakin and clever enough to come up with another way to defeat it. He didn’t expect you to succeed. He just wanted to see what you’d do. See whether you’d make a proper monster hunter.”

  “Huh.” Dain leans back against the cave wall. “I never thought of it that way. You’re right. He did show up just in time to save me.”

  “He let you get scared for your life. That was a lesson. One you need to become a proper monster hunter. So what happened then?”

  “Wilmot returned to the mayor and said there’d been a mix-up, that I thought he’d bought my freedom, and that’s why I followed him. Then he did buy my freedom…and gave it back to me. He said what the mayor did was wrong and illegal. If I stayed with Wilmot, it had to be my decision. That’s why I owe him so much. He can be gruff, and he is the most stubborn person I’ve ever met, but he has always been fair to me. I’m with him by choice. Now I’m caring for him by choice.”

  I’m quiet for a moment. Then I leap to my feet, startling both Jacko and Dain.

  “Princess?” Dain says as Jacko squeaks.

  I grab my pack and pull out a small padded case. The bottom corner is wet, and it stinks of chemicals.

  “No,” I whisper. “Please no.”

  I pull out a broken bottle. It’s cracked at the base, some of its contents leaking. It’s more than half full, though. I exhale in relief and set it on its side so it can’t leak anymore. Then I remove a needle.

  “Sedative?” Dain says.

  “Your story gave me an idea. A quarter of a needle made the pegasus groggy. Two full ones should knock out the gryphon.”

  “You only have one needle.”

  “I know, but I can refill it.”

  “Run up to the gryphon, inject it and refill the needle?” He crouches beside me as I rummage through my pack. “Even getting close enough to inject it once would be difficult.”

  I pause. He’s right. Even if I get the first dose in, that will alert the beast, like it did the filly. The gryphon will never let me get close enough for a second. I look down at the bottle, the contents shifting from one side to the other.

  “It’s viscous,” I say.

  “Viscous…?”

  “Thick. Gummy. I can coat my sword with it.”

  “The sword that’s lying out there in the cavern?” He shakes his head. “Getting near the beast isn’t the answer. I learned that with the warakin. What we need is a way…”

  He trails off as his gaze lands on his quiver.

  “Yes!” I say. “We’ll coat the arrowheads in the sedative. You have four left, right?”

  He nods.

  That should be enough.

  It has to be.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  he arrows are ready. Dain is ready. I’ve called over to Alianor and told her the plan. There’s nothing she needs to do. I just don’t want her thinking anything’s wrong when the gryphon starts crashing about after he’s been sedated.

  Dain crouches at the hole. It’s waist-high. My waist height, not his.

  “It’s a lousy firing position,” he says. “If I had my crossbow, I could lie on the floor.”

  “You have to make do with what you’ve got.”

  “I know, princess. I’m just…” He wipes his brow. “I don’t know if I can hit the gryphon four times. Not after it starts moving. And when that first arrow hits, it’s going to start moving.”

  “You just need to hit it with three. That’ll be enough to take it down. Then I’ll run out and jab in the rest with the needle.”

  “I can do that,” he says.

  “No, you shoot, I run. You don’t get to have all the fun.”

  I smile when I say it, but my voice quavers, and he doesn’t smile back. He kneels and draws back his bow, checking his position. Then he positions himself on just one knee and nods, meaning he’s stable enough.

  “Three,” he says. “I can do three.”

  “If you don’t, that’s fine. We’ll figure something out. This isn’t all your responsibility, Dain.”

  “Yeah, it kind of is.”

  He gives me a strained smile. Sweat drips down his forehead. I pass him a spare tunic from my pack and motion for him to wipe the sweat. He does, and he plasters his hair back. Then he takes a deep breath.

  “Three shots,” he says. “One to spare. If I manage all four, even better.”

  “Don’t get cocky.”

  Another smile, more genuine now. He adjusts his position. I scoop up Jacko to keep him quiet this time.

  When Dain signals that he’s ready, I crouch behind him. My heart thumps so loud I can barely breathe. I hug Jacko tight. Dain draws back the string. He fires and nocks the second arrow so fast that he’s firing it before the first even hits.

  And it does hit. It strikes the gryphon in the haunch. The beast snarls. The second embeds itself beside the first, and Dain’s already got the third nocked. The gryphon rises, but it’s still right there, a huge wall of feather and fur that Dain cannot possibly miss.

  He fires…just as the gryphon flies up into the air, the arrow passing under it.

  “No,” Dain whispers. “No.”

  “It’s okay,” I say quickly. “You’ve got one more. You couldn’t have expected that. I didn’t even think it had room to launch in here.”

  Outside, the gryphon shrieks. It flies at our hole, but the sedative makes it clumsy, and it hits the wall instead. The whole cavern shakes.

  The gryphon lowers its head to our cave hole. It peers in. Its pupils are dilated from the sedative, but it’s not enough.

  We need one more arrow strike…and the gryphon is right outside the hole.

  A perfect, unmissable shot.

  Dain draws back the string. The gryphon rams its head into the opening.

  I set Jacko down and snatch the needle. I keep my foot in front of the jackalope so he can’t upset Dain’s shot.

  The bowstring stretches taut. The gryphon batters the opening.

  I grip the needle. I’ll wait for the gryphon to teeter away from the opening. It will. No need to rush—that’d be dangerous. Let the sedative daze the beast, and then I’ll rush out and deliver the final dose.

  Dain releases the string…and it breaks. The bowstring snaps, the arrow smacking into the wall.

  Dain grabs the arrow and lunges at the beast. The gryphon backs out of reach. Dain barrels through the opening. Running into the cavern.

  “Dain, no!”

  I shove the needle into my pocket and race out. Dain
stands there, arrow in hand, the gryphon right in front of him. He’s stopped, seeing how small he is, how puny that arrowhead is. His eyes widen.

  The gryphon lunges. Dain dives to the side. The gryphon’s beak snaps. It catches Dain’s bare foot. He drops the arrow as he falls clear of the beast and rolls across the cavern floor.

  Dain vaults to his feet and pulls his sword. The gryphon advances, its talons clicking against the rock.

  My sword lies on the other side of the gryphon. I race over, snatch it up and charge the beast. I slash at its back leg. It screeches and wheels away from Dain.

  “Hey!” Alianor shouts, out of her cave and waving her arms. “Over here! Easy pickings right this way!”

  The gryphon ignores her. It keeps bearing down on me. Dain runs for the arrow he dropped. Before he can reach it, the gryphon spins, its beak slamming into him, sending him flying.

  As the beast turns, I see the angry red scabs on the foreleg I injured a week ago. I swing my sword right at the same spot. The blade slices in. The beast lets out a terrible screech of pain and rage. It stumbles into the cave wall. Rocks rain down. One strikes Dain’s head as he rises. He falls back down. The gryphon flies at him.

  Alianor races toward Dain, shouting at the gryphon, trying to attract its attention. She’s waving her dagger, but the beast doesn’t seem to care.

  I’m behind the gryphon. I run at it, my sword raised. The beast is poised over Dain. I shout, and it glances over its shoulder. Something hits my arm. Something that feels like the crack of a whip. It’s the gryphon’s tail, lashing my elbow so hard I gasp. White-hot pain slams through my arm, and my hand opens before I can stop it.

  My sword clangs to the rock floor below. I scramble to grab it, but the gryphon’s massive back paw lands on the blade. Then the beast turns. It spies me without my weapon. It knows I’m the one who hurt its leg. It knows.

  I am right beside the gryphon. So close that as it turns, its mane brushes me. Those huge amber eyes fix on mine as it screeches in victory.