again. I opened my eyes and started to scream.
“Oof!” I grunted as my backside landed hard on the rocky ground. I think I might have fallen a whole two feet.
I opened my eyes to find Jozlyn standing nearby. She was rubbing her backside and staring at something behind me. I quickly jumped up to look in the same direction as her.
We were on top of Craggerscraw Hill. A black metal castle stood a short way off on a low rise.
The castle stretched high into the air and pulsed with an eerie blue light. Its base was shaped like a cylinder, but as it rose, it divided into an assortment of long arms like tree branches.
Some of the branches were higher than others, some longer. Each arm ended in a unique tower of a different shape and size. One was long and thin, the next rounded at the bottom like a teardrop. Another was square.
There were nine towers in all. I didn’t need to count them to know that. We’d reached the wizard’s home, and now I knew the reason it was named Ninespire.
As if in confirmation, the rock bird that had carried me to the summit stretched its wings and shook its massive head. I hadn’t realized the bird was so close. It had looked like a part of the hill.
In a deep, rumbling voice it said, “Welcome to Ninespire, travelers. My master is expecting you.” Then it leaped into the sky and spiraled out of sight.
17: CHOOSE THOU WISELY
AS I gazed up at the castle, my heart sank. It was made up of many towers, not just one. Clearly no one from town had been up here in a long time. If they had, they’d never have called it a tower.
Ninespire was a wizard’s castle.
The soft blue light pulsing from the castle bathed the ground around it in color. It pulsed like the heartbeat of a living creature.
“Josh, let’s rest here a while, all right?” Jozlyn pleaded sleepily. Her face was dirty and there was a rip in the side of her tunic.
Still, Jozlyn had to look better than I did. New scrapes were added to the scratches from my dash through Everleaf Woods and from the silver-eared cat. A layer of dust coated my whole body, and the chalky taste of dirt was strong in my mouth.
“You got it,” I mumbled drowsily. Resting sounded like a great idea. I could hardly keep my eyes open. “But not too long. Everyone in town is depending on us to hurry.”
Of course Jozlyn knew that, but I was talking more to prevent myself from falling asleep than for any other reason. We were supposed to rest, not sleep.
I closed my eyes and waited for Jozlyn to respond. She didn’t. She was asleep and I soon joined her.
I woke in the dark with a start. I’d been asleep for a long time and dreaming of falling. Jozlyn sat next to me. In the castle’s soft glow, her face looked worried.
“Oh Josh, you wouldn’t wake up!” she exclaimed. A tear rolled down her cheek. “I’ve been talking to you and shaking you forever.”
I sat up quickly, feeling amazingly better. Still dirty and thirsty, but better. I patted Jozlyn’s knee gently. “It’s all right. I’m fine now. I’m sorry I scared you.”
I was really making an effort to be more considerate of her feelings. After the way I’d acted at the bottom of the hill, it was important for me to make things right.
“Any idea how long we slept?” I asked.
“A long time,” she answered. “We fell asleep in the afternoon and it’s dark now. Everyone in town must be worried.”
“And hungry,” I added with a little grin. “Unless they ate flies for dinner.”
We smiled at that. I guess falling off a cliff and flying through the air in the talons of a rock bird can change your opinion of things. The townsfolk had to eat bugs until we returned, but they didn’t have to have adventures.
Jozlyn stood up and tugged me to my feet. “Come on,” she said, “there’s something you need to see.”
We headed toward Ninespire. Its blue radiance was the only light except for the stars overhead. We’d sure slept a long time.
“There,” Jozlyn announced, pointing.
An enormous stone dragon statue stretched forward from the base of Ninespire. It wasn’t a whole dragon exactly, just the upper half. It had a head, front arms, and chest. It sat the way a dog rests with its paws out in front of it and its head between them.
A flight of stairs ran along the dragon’s back where ridges should be. Dragons always had rows of pointy ridges along their backs. The stairs ended at a set of large double doors in the side of the castle.
“Looks like the way in,” I said hopefully.
“Sure Josh, think about it,” Jozlyn said in her sister’s voice. She’d obviously thought of something I hadn’t. “How do we get up to the stairs?”
Good point, I thought, but didn’t give her the satisfaction of knowing it.
The stairs started on the top of the dragon’s head, about twenty feet above the ground. “Maybe we’re supposed to climb up. Let’s take a closer look.”
As we approached the dragon, the ground started to quake and we both fell down. The dragon’s eyes opened and shined with the same blue light as the castle behind it. Its mouth opened and it spoke in a deep voice.
“Three guesses thou art granted,” it rumbled. I could feel the vibrations of the words rattling in my head. “Only one answer gives entry. All others, the fire of wrath. Choose thou wisely.”
“What do you mean?” I called up to the dragon. But it wasn’t paying attention to me or it didn’t feel like answering.
Instead it asked a riddle:
Soar through the air.
Breathe in the sea.
How can this happen?
How can this be?
Shrink to an ant.
Walk through a wall.
What is it to you?
What is it all?
Vanish from sight.
Turn ice to flame.
Tell me the secret.
Tell me the game.
“A game!” I shouted. “You’re playing a game—”
“Wrong,” the dragon rumbled. “Two guesses more. Choose thou wisely.”
Jozlyn stomped on my foot. “Don’t say anything it can hear,” she hissed without moving her lips. “It’ll think you’re making another guess.”
I exhaled in disgust and frustration. I’d wasted a guess with my outburst. Now we had only two left.
Two guesses more to answer the riddle or we’d face the dragon’s fire.
18: IMPOSSIBLE POSSIBLE
JOZYLYN grabbed my arm and led me away from the dragon. We walked far enough away so that we could talk without being heard.
“Fire, Josh. What do you think it means?” She looked worried again. She was playing with her hair again, winding it around a finger.
“What do you think it means?” I repeated. I couldn’t believe that she didn’t understand. Sometimes she could be so smart but other times she acted just like a typical kid. “What do dragons breathe?”
She crossed her eyes at me. “Air,” she huffed.
I almost groaned. Of course dragons breathed air, but that wasn’t what I’d meant.
“Not in,” I explained quickly. “What do they breathe out?”
Jozlyn’s eyes widened in alarm. She finally gotten it. The dragon was going to breathe fire on us if we answered the riddle wrong three times.
“But how can someone do those things?” She meant the riddle. “Soar through the air. Breathe in the sea. The only time I’ve ever done them is asleep. You know, dreaming.”
My head shot up and I smiled at her. “That’s it, Jozlyn! The answer. It’s dreams.”
Her jaw dropped open and her eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Do you think it’s that easy?”
“Why not?” I shrugged. “It makes sense, right? Go give it a try. We’ll still have one more guess left if we’re wrong.”
She frowned at me and I knew immediately that I’d managed to say something that only a little brother would say. “We can’t waste our guesses, Josh. We have to be right.”
I folded m
y arms. What she said made sense, but we didn’t have much choice. “Do you have any better ideas?” I asked.
She didn’t, so we headed back to the dragon.
With her arms straight at her sides and her hands balled into fists, Jozlyn stood up tall in front of the dragon.
“Dreams,” she said in a clear voice. She sounded confident and older than a teenaged sister.
The dragon wasn’t impressed. “Wrong,” it announced. “One guess more. Choose thou wisely.”
Jozlyn hung her head and started to shake quietly. But I didn’t blame her. We’d both wanted the answer to be right so badly.
I’d been sure it was, too. A person could fly, turn invisible, and walk through walls in a dream. A person could do all the things named in the riddle.
But now we were out of ideas and almost out of guesses. What were we going to do?
We needed to get inside Ninespire. The wizard was in there and he had the antidote to Cleogha’s frog spell. If we failed, everyone in Tiller’s Field would be doomed to spend the rest of their lives as frogs.
I couldn’t imagine our parents being oily green bug-eaters forever.
Away from the dragon, we flopped onto the ground. We were both exhausted again. Jozlyn was really twisting her finger in her hair now. The longer we sat there, the more she did it.
“I don’t have any ideas, Josh,” she told me, twirling her finger faster. Her hair was full of tangles. “I don’t think the riddle is possible to solve. It must be some kind of—”
Possible. The word stood out to me like a solitary star in the night sky.
Excited, I jumped up. “You said it!” I cried, hopping about as if I’d been turned into a frog. “Possible! What makes something impossible possible?”
Jozlyn stared at me as if I were crazy. Maybe I was, but I knew the answer to the
Cauldron Cooker's Night (Epic Fantasy Adventure Series, Knightscares Book 1) Page 9
