Jenn gaped.
“Meg?” she shouted.
Meg stumbled into the catacombs, eyes burning with rage.
“Jenn,” she grumbled. “Where are we?”
“Catacombs,” Jenn said. “How did you get here?”
Meg furrowed her brow. “Invisible door. Page Trey is trying to find the one to Ryderwyle to save his master. He’s stuck there in the snow since someone stole the fortissium fork or something or other.”
“Sir Kenneth,” the librarian said. “Unburied. His body is still in the Dreadnaught’s stomachs.”
Jenn cringed in disgust.
Meg sighed irritably. “What are you doing down here?”
“The seer sent me,” Jenn explained. “I have to find her Sight that she hid down here.”
“Gross,” Meg said. “Any idea where it is?”
Jenn glanced at the librarian, who shrugged his shoulders, and then she gasped. Just behind Sir Rignot was the row she’d been wandering before Meg arrived. And in that row was the grotesque corpse in an open grave. She realized now that there had been no nameplate on the coffin. It was surely Solomon’s tomb. Jenn could grab the Sight and get out of here with Meg and the librarian.
But the witch had other plans.
Hiding in the shadow of the entrance to the catacombs, watching Meg, Jenn, and the librarian, the witch placed a hand on the ground.
“Long dead bones, awaken from slumber,” she whispered. “Take up your weapons, add to your number.”
CHAPTER 21:
The Queen’s Protection
Metal and stone screeched against one another as I popped another bolt from the inner wall of Queen Coralee’s prison cell. Halfway done. Only two more to go.
“With everything going on, the witch and the Dreadnaught and the defenders and…you know, all of it,” I said, broaching a topic I’d been scared to mention, “why didn’t you call us sooner? Get all the defenders on the island, all of the Reserves, and put a stop to her.”
“I called a majority of the Reserves,” the queen said. “But even a force of a hundred could not stop the witch and her Dreadnaught.”
“But you didn’t call us,” I said, trying to hide my apprehension.
Queen Coralee inclined her head with a tight smile. She started kneading her hands again. I popped off the third bolt and began prying the final one.
“It was most admirable for you to volunteer as children,” she said. “Of all the Reserve, you and your friends were the most passionate and adamant in hopes to help. But I could not possibly call you then. It would have been most inconsiderate and unconscionable of me, a queen, to call upon the youngest and most vulnerable knights and dames first. A sound mind should never call children into battle.”
“What about when we were older?” I asked. “Wasn’t the witch locked up until just a few days ago?”
We locked eyes for a moment, at a stalemate. After a moment, Queen Coralee reached for my hand through the prison cell.
“Sir Nicholas,” she said, her voice pleading. “From your first letter—” my heart skipped a beat at the mention of those old childhood letters, but I didn’t have the guts to say anything “—I knew you yearned to protect the kingdom. I knew your heart, though I had never truly met you. Because of that, no matter your age, I knew that you must never face the witch. I entrusted you with the book, but did not dare call upon you. To put you in such danger…”
I gaped at her, suddenly realizing something.
“The witch didn’t force you to take our titles,” I realized. “You did it.” I was flabbergasted and angry. “Why?!”
“To protect you!” the queen cried.
“From what?” I shouted back.
The queen bit her lip.
A thousand thoughts ran through my head. Perhaps fearful of being accused of favoritism of her defenders over her kingdom, the queen had secreted the book away that could inform the witch of the kingdom’s secrets and disbanded the order herself. The witch hadn’t forced her hand. But why? Was it truly to protect us? Favoritism? Compassion? Something else? All in all, it was a dangerous move on the queen’s part. Stripping my friends and I of our titles could have backfired and killed the magic sooner. But had the queen really done it to protect us poor, little children? Or was there something more to this story?
I was trying to figure out what to say next, when suddenly, with a pop, the queen transformed before my very eyes. One second, she was the hideous witch, the next, she was the queen. The true queen. Long locks fell over fair features. She was beautiful in a tender yet authoritative way. Her eyes, I realized, were a captivating brown, full of kindness and knowledge. She had scars of a burn on one of her hands.
“What just happened?” I asked.
“The witch,” the queen gasped. Her voice was different too, a light, lilting voice with the accent of her kingdom. “She must have parted with my most prized possession. It was the key to her disguise. Without the letter, we are ourselves once more.”
At first, I wasn’t sure what the queen was talking about, but then I remembered the fold of paper I’d seen sticking out the witch’s neckline. It was a letter, surely one I’d written to the queen in my youth. Had that been the source of magic that made the queen and witch switch physical appearances? Was one of my letters the queen’s most prized possession?
At this prospect, I should have felt giddiness, maybe pride. But instead, anger bubbled inside of me. How could she have received our letters, read them, cherished them, and abandoned us? Just to protect us? That wasn’t good enough. There had to be another reason, a deeper one, and I swore to myself I would find it out.
Through all this, I had still been working on the last bolt holding the inner wall of the queen’s prison cell to the stone wall of the castle. As I was thinking, the last bolt popped off. The wall sprung open. A split second later, a shrill alarm sounded. I clutched my ears, but it did no good. The siren was loud enough to alert the whole island.
After three blares, the alarm fell silent. The queen and I exchanged glances.
“That’s not good,” I said. “We gotta move. The witch will come looking for you.”
But the queen stayed in her cell. She kneaded her hands and now, I realized she was rubbing the burn along her fingertips.
“I have deceived you,” she confessed. “I truly apologize, Sir Nicholas. I only acted in your best interests at the risk of losing my own titles. Is there any way you can forgive me?”
I couldn’t begin to answer that honestly. There was layers and layers of secrets on Dembroch and plenty around the queen. I had a hunch I’d only seen the surface.
“I have a lot of questions,” I said honestly. “But for now, we need to save the kingdom. And my job is to save you.”
“Where will we go? What will we do?”
“Find the witch,” I said. “Stop her. Avenge your king.”
This gave the queen pause, but not for long. She pushed the cell door open and joined me. Her presence, so close and uninhibited by prison bars, made my insides do flips.
“There’s the knight I knew,” Queen Coralee said. “Lead on, Sir Nicholas.”
CHAPTER 22:
Dead Men, Dead Men, Come Alive
Deep in the catacombs, dry bones popped into place, the clicks and snaps echoing off the walls. The lids of the coffins pushed open. Bodies rose. Jenn, Meg, and Sir Rignot gathered close together.
“What, what?” the librarian stammered.
“Jenn, we gotta—” Meg began.
A coffin next to them broke open. From it, a moldering corpse, forgotten by life and romanced by death’s decay, came forth. It shambled, learning how to walk again, then lunged. A dozen other skeletons rolled out of their caskets too, charging at the women and librarian. They didn’t stand a chance and were pinned to the wall, overcome by the sheer number of attackers. Jenn’s torch was torn from her hands and cast out of sight. A few seconds later, a hundred other corpses garnered in swords and decaying armor gat
hered around them, their frosty eyes staring right at Jenn, Meg, and the librarian.
A cackle rose through the cavern. The witch—disguised as the queen—strutted into view, a pernicious smile on her face. She crossed the catacombs toward her prey with the slimy smoothness of a snake.
“Girls, girls, girls,” the witch crooned. “All this unrest has upset the dead.”
She surveyed them with a sneer.
“Not having much luck with your magical flames?” she asked.
The librarian yelped in surprise.
Jenn shot Meg a look. “She knows?”
“She kind of heard everything,” Meg rasped against her captors’ bony holds. “Not really important right now.”
“Precisely,” the witch agreed. “More pressing is how best to kill the both of you. Shall I leave you here to rot or hoist your bodies for all to see and make trophies of your spines. Or perhaps…”
She glanced back at the coffins, a sinister cackle coming from her belly. But it was cut short.
Meg had managed to break free of her captors and socked the witch right in the face. The corpses and skeletons clicked and clanked as they pulled Meg back, slamming her into the wall again.
Sorgana hit the ground hard. A small, folded letter fell from her bosom—at the same instant, the witch transformed into her true, hideous form of deep wrinkles, sinewy skin, and thin, white hair.
The witch sprang back to her feet, eyes wide with anger, the fallen letter unseen, her transformation unnoticed. She raked her hand through the air, tips sharp and spiky with broken nails. They sliced into Meg’s chest, drawing blood. Meg squealed in pain. The witch dug into her flesh, relishing in the cries.
“Most believe that deep wounds, lethal wounds, hurt the worst,” Sorgana seethed as blood dribbled down Meg’s front. “But they’re wrong. Flesh wounds nick the nerves, leave them raw. They burn long after. And this—” she ran her broken nails over Meg’s fresh wound, extracting a scream “—will never leave you. Not until you die. It’s what you get for crossing a witch.”
The witch’s eyes snapped to the librarian.
“Speaking of,” she spat. “You meddlesome little fool. Bussing a book of secrets away from the kingdom so I would never see it. As if I would trouble myself searching old texts in that pigsty of a library for the answers to my needs.”
She grabbed Sir Rignot’s throat, squeezing. The librarian began to choke. Jenn cried for her to stop.
“It matters not,” the witch spat, aging on the spot as she strangled the librarian. “I know the secret of the flames. Your efforts were for naught.”
The librarian garbled a retort.
“Oh, but I will succeed,” the witch wretched. “I’ll let you in on my secret. What I plan to do to your little kingdom.”
She whispered in the librarian’s ear. All color left his face. A tear formed in his eye.
“You’ll—you—never—” he rasped.
“I will,” the witch seethed. “And do you know why? Because Dembroch is doomed. Cursed. It always has been.”
The witch was wrinkled and grey now, having aged decades as she strangled Sir Rignot.
“Don’t you see, now?” she asked, wiping a tear from his cheek. “The futility of it all? You did all of this for your queen…for nothing… Your kingdom will fall for nothing. Your defenders will die alone down here while your body rots. At least you shall be spared the kingdom’s final desolation.”
The librarian fought against her, dangerously close to running out of air.
“Take them!” the witch cried.
The skeletons and corpses pulled Jenn and Meg from the walls and dragged them to the open coffins. The women screamed and bucked their bodies.
Sorgana focused only on the librarian.
“You die for nothing,” she spat in Sir Rignot’s face. “What futility. What misery. What…woe.”
Meg and Jenn were thrown into the open caskets. Lids were slammed onto the top. Jenn pounded on the wood for all it was worth, screamed at the top of her lungs, but she was trapped.
There was a sick crack followed by a wet thump, then the witch crowed with laughter. Jenn started banging on the casket again, but it held tight. The dead defenders must have been holding it closed or have secured it somehow.
Suddenly, the air was rent with the shrieking blare of a siren. It rang three times, drilling into Jenn’s ears and then it was dead quiet. She lay silently, listening, but all she could hear was her own heartbeat.
What had happened? Had the witch killed the librarian? What was that alarm? What was—?
Jenn wound up to start banging on the coffin again, but her arm touched something cold. She felt around, wrapping her hands around the tip of a broken sword. She wielded it uncertainly in the darkness of her coffin and wedged it between the lid and the casket. She pulled and pushed, prying the top off. Its sharp edge drew blood from her fingers, but she refused to lay here until she suffocated or died of starvation.
The lid popped open just enough. She pushed hard and it flew off.
She came out fighting. There were two skeletons standing watch and she bowled them over. Their bodies shattered into a couple hundred pieces each.
Breathing hard, holding the broken sword tip like a machete, she spun around, quickly taking in her surroundings.
The witch was nowhere to be seen. There were about two hundred dead defenders circling around Jenn. Meg was still trapped in her coffin, the lid shuddering with each hit from within.
Jenn glanced behind her and squinted, not sure she understood what she was seeing.
Hovering in the air between her and the wall was a sphere of black specks. The iotas swirled around one another like a million little bugs. She didn’t know what it was, but it couldn’t have been good.
On the ground, she spotted the letter that had fallen from the witch’s dress. She stooped quickly, unfolding it. She recognized it instantly and stuffed it into her pants pocket.
The dead defenders were creeping closer, none quite ready to attack her. She pointed the sword tip at them, keeping the skeletons and corpses at bay. She glanced again at the wall, looking for the librarian. At last, she found him and her heart seemed to break.
Sir Rignot was standing, his back to her, but he wasn’t alive. His head was backward on his body, the eyes bloodshot from burst vessels, his face vacant. He stumbled toward her, walking backwards, body slave to the witch’s magic like the dead defenders.
“No,” Jenn moaned. “No.”
The librarian, tears of the living still fresh on his face, broken neck bruising, came at her. The knights and dames of old pressed in from the other side, drawing their swords, black pits locked on their prey.
Much as she wanted to curl up and die in that moment, Jenn could not go to the grave again. The librarian could not have died for nothing.
Jenn turned her back on the librarian, unwilling to hurt him, and charged the dead defenders. With the broken sword tip, she fought for all it was worth. Corpses fell around her, their atrophied muscles unable to compete with her quick, if inexperienced, jabs and slices.
She made it to Meg’s coffin and pried it open. Meg came out swinging and knocked the sword tip from Jenn’s bloody hand.
“Calm down,” Jenn said, pulling Meg from the coffin.
“Where is she?” Meg shouted, scanning the masses of dead men and women pressing in around them.
“I don’t know,” Jenn replied. “She left after she killed the librarian.”
“Didn’t even have the dignity to wait for us to die,” Meg grumbled. “Have you gotten that Sight thing?”
Jenn groaned a no.
“We can’t leave without it,” Meg said. “Can’t let this all be for nothing. Where is it?”
Jenn swung her head in the direction. “That collapsed one over there.”
“I’ll have your back,” Meg said. “But we need weapons.”
A skeleton lunged at them. Meg sidestepped it and punched, knocking the skelet
on into pieces. She grabbed the skeleton’s sword, pulling its arm from the hilt and offering it to Jenn.
“Thanks,” Jenn grumbled, taking the severed skeleton arm feebly.
“Okay,” Meg said doubtfully. “On three.”
They didn’t have the time to count to three. The zombified knights and dames charged.
Moving with the bravery of an armored soldier, Meg lunged at the attackers. She cleared a swath. Jenn fell in after her, halfheartedly swinging at attackers with the skeleton arm. A few terrifying moments later, they were by the open, unmarked coffin of Solomon. The half-melted corpse still lay within.
“Don’t go the way of Solomon,” Jenn reminded herself with a shudder. He was the only dead defender who had not been resurrected, and perhaps for the best.
With Meg standing guard, Jenn grabbed Solomon’s upper body—his burnt skin crumbled like ash under her fingers—and pushed the cadaver aside. Underneath him was bare wood. There were no talismans or mirrored eyeballs.
“No,” Jenn gasped. Where was the Sight?
Then she saw it. There was a hole in bottom of the coffin, a large one. And below it was another lidless casket.
It’s down there, Jenn sensed. They rolled down into the next casket.
With a heave, she pushed aside Solomon’s top casket, revealing the coffin below. She nearly retched. Inside was a pile of red and brown gelatin. It stunk like rotten eggs. But suspended in the goop, just below the surface, were two spherical, mirrored rocks.
That was it, she knew. The seer’s Sight.
Jenn considered what must be done. She didn’t want to. She hated goo. Mud. Germs. But particularly goo.
But she loved Dembroch more.
She dug her hands deep into the slop. It was warm and thick, congealing around her fingers. She squealed, but pushed deeper, reaching for the eyes.
The dry cries of the undead knights and dames filled the air. Jenn looked up just in time to see attackers getting past Meg. They ran at Jenn, mouths gaping, swords held high, bony hands reaching to strike.
Something shiny caught Jenn’s attention. Buried in the coffin, presumably with the knight or dame before they had been turned to Jell-O, was a sword.
The Age of Knights & Dames Page 14