by D. W. Vogel
“Whoa, whoa, buddy,” Treffen held his hands out in front of him. “Nobody’s questioning your bravery. We just . . .” he trailed off. We just what? We just think you’re going monkey-bananas and maybe you should leave before you totally blow?
Gawain sighed and dropped his hand. “I know. I’m sorry. It’s . . . this place.”
Treffen relaxed. “It’s all right. Just let me know if you’re feeling . . . worse.”
At the bottom of the stairs, another long hallway appeared empty. Corridors branched off every few yards, leading to unknown darkness. Trent whispered to Treffen as they proceeded.
“The Knight is mad at me.”
“He’s not angry with you, Trent. He’s just feeling very stressed down here. This isn’t a good place for him.”
“Not a good place for anyone,” Trent agreed.
They moved along the corridor. A dark, square shadow appeared along one of the gray stone walls. Treffen and Gawain already had weapons drawn and ready, but the shadow didn’t move as they approached.
“Wow, would you look at that?” Treffen said as they got close enough to see.
Gems and gold crown coins glittered from inside a large wooden chest with its lid wide open. Coins, jewels, pearls from the sea . . . A glint of iridescence caught the torchlight. Could that be dragon scale? Deeproot Elves had very little use for such treasure in their own gatherings, but Treffen’s eyes widened to think what goods this wealth could be traded for. All the iron arrowheads I could ever use in a lifetime. His father could commission new instruments for his entire orchestra. His mother could outfit her laboratory with . . . anything she wanted, really.
He reached for the chest, but a strong branch pushed his hand aside.
“Don’t touch it. Chests lie.”
Treffen looked at the chest again. Was it his imagination, or did the lid open just a bit wider?
“Don’t touch,” Trent said again.
It wasn’t his imagination. The thing moved ever so slightly, making the gems and gold within glint in the flickering light. So beautiful. So appealing. So . . . not a real treasure chest.
Treffen backed away. If it was possible for a not-treasure-chest to look disappointed, this one did.
“Are you done gawking at the jewels?” Gawain’s voice sounded gruff, even for him.
He can’t help it, Treffen reminded himself. He’s cursed. Or thinks he is. A Ranger saying flashed into his mind. Fear is more dangerous than rage. It wasn’t always true, but sometimes anger could be reasoned with. Terror was outside reason. And Treffen knew that underneath the silver armor, the Questing Knight was terrified.
Three will enter. One will not return.
Treffen shook himself and followed Gawain down the hallway.
They stopped short when the faint squishing sound became an urgent squelch right above their heads.
“Hey, Trent!” The voice came from the drippy ceiling.
A purple fungus hung there, gills fluttering in the damp, still air.
Be still. If that thing releases its toxin, we’re all dead.
“Hey, Trent, long time no see!” The voice came from the fungus. “The king said you’d be back soon and I should come watch for you. Is this the guy? Who’s the other guy?”
The Treant whacked the fungus right off the ceiling. It tumbled away down the hallway going, “Whee!”
Gawain’s voice was cold steel. “What did that thing mean, Trent?” He growled the name like a taunt. Or a threat.
“I—it must be confused.” The Treant started to back away down the hallway they’d just traversed.
“It didn’t sound confused,” Treffen said. “Trent? Buddy?” His words trailed off as everything he’d ignored suddenly fell into place. His father’s voice rumbled through his head. So obvious, and you missed all the signs.
What had the Treant been doing in Stonebridge? They never lived among humans if they could help it. The mage had said he lived there, but who was the mage? Had he ever heard anyone mention a Treant living in that particular town? He thought about the fighting they’d just survived. None of the evil kodama were going for Trent. He swept in and massacred them, but they weren’t trying to kill him until he joined the fight on his own. And the chimera Trent had captured and forced to talk . . . well, Treffen hadn’t heard the beginning of the exchange, had he? Just the commotion when Trent took the thing down and . . . told it what to say?
His fingers tightened on his bowstring. Even the Mist Hound knew. It was growling at Gawain and Trent. I thought it was Gawain’s steel sword, but the Hound smelled evil. Even a Mist Hound is smarter than you.
“You lied to us, Trent,” Treffen said. And I fell for every word.
“No, not a lie . . .” Trent said, but Gawain advanced on him, brandishing the lit torch as a weapon.
“You lied. You betrayed us. You led us down here to die.”
The Twisted Tree will show the way. Why hadn’t the Deeproot Tree warned him more clearly? Would he have been so quick to trust if She hadn’t planted the idea in his mind?
“No, you’re my friend. Wasn’t a lie.” Trent turned his eyes to Treffen, and for a moment, the elf believed that the stricken look on the woody face was genuine. He looks like a lost, kicked puppy. But there was no denying what they had heard. Trent was a spy. The Betrayer’s spy. And they’d walked right into his trap.
Gawain lunged with the torch at Trent, who whirled around and ran back up the hallway. He disappeared around a corner, and when Treffen pushed past Gawain to give chase, the Treant had vanished in the labyrinth of passages.
The Knight swore.
“We need to get out of here right now.” Treffen started back up the hallway they’d come down.
This hallway.
He was sure of it.
They’d only come around a couple of corners on the way down. And one more chasing Trent. Not your friend. Never your friend. There would be time to process the pain of that betrayal later. Right now, they needed to run.
Right down this hallway, Treffen was sure of it.
The torch lit up a dead end.
“It wasn’t a right, it was a left,” Treffen muttered. He caught sight of Gawain’s face under his visor, pale and sweating.
“We’ll get out of here,” he assured the Knight. “We’ll get you away from this cursed place. Trent made everything up. Emerald’s not here. She never was here. It was all a lie, but we’re going to get out before any other evil thing knows we’re here.”
They crept through the hallways.
“Look, see? There’s that treasure chest. The one Trent said not to touch.”
The one that was on the opposite side of the hallway from where it had been sitting. If it was even the same chest.
Don’t panic. You can do this. You’re a Glimmerdusk Ranger, for Goddess’s sake. You can’t get lost.
He opened himself to the Deeproot Tree and felt Her presence even here. Her roots wound through this evil place, and he followed them in his mind right back to the Glade where She towered up from the valley. I feel Her here like everywhere. Doubt crept into his mind. But why did She send me here? Did She know it was a trap? He wasn’t sure what he wanted the answer to be. If She didn’t know, perhaps Her power was already fading in the encroaching evil. But if She did know . . . He shook his head. Then She sent you here on purpose knowing you would die. The thought was so stark that it shook him to his core. Never. I will always trust in the Tree. He reached for Her comforting pulse deep in the ground. Orient yourself, and you can’t get lost.
But they were already lost.
Turn after turn led them back to the treasure chest, which seemed to look smugger every time they passed it.
“Shame you didn’t bring that axe,” Treffen muttered the fourth time they passed it, and was rewarded with a slight movement that he took to indicate shock.
They rounded another corner just as a faint light crossed an intersection str
aight ahead.
A voice called out in the passage.
“Are you there? Can you help me?”
The voice was Princess Emerald’s.
Chapter 21: Following the Voice
Treffen stared at the disappearing light.
“Did you see that?”
Gawain shook his head with a squeak of his helmet. “I heard a voice. Didn’t really see anything.”
“But the voice . . . it’s Emerald. She really is here.” Treffen hurried to the corner where the light had disappeared, just in time to see the faint glow vanish from another hallway up ahead. “Come on,” he hissed. “We have to find her. She’s lost down here.”
“So are we,” Gawain muttered, but followed Treffen.
The faint sounds they had grown accustomed to had faded to silence. Even the drip of water was muffled. They chased the light down hallway after hallway. Treffen wanted to call out to Emerald but couldn’t risk alerting anything else to their presence.
The light flickered down a long staircase. They hesitated at the top.
“We can’t go down another level,” Gawain said. “We need to get out of here. Now.” The anger that had been in his voice was gone, which frightened Treffen more than the anger ever had.
“But I heard her,” Treffen insisted. “She’s like a sister to me. What if that thing was telling the truth? Are you going to go tell King Jasper that we were this close to rescuing his daughter, but we ran away because we were scared?”
The words had an immediate effect. Gawain straightened up, raising his sword. “Of course not. But what if it isn’t her?”
“It’s someone. Isn’t that enough?”
The voice floated up from below.
“Hello? Can anyone hear me? It’s so dark here.”
Treffen flew down the stairs at the sound of Emerald’s frightened call. Gawain clanked down behind him.
The air was closer down here, damp and thick. The walls looked fuzzy with mold. Treffen’s feet slipped on the slimy stones as he hurried after the disappearing light. Why is she running? And how is she running so fast? But Emerald had always been quick. The girl was practically an elf, except for the rifle she carried, which no self-respecting elf would ever wield.
Up ahead, the light was closer. It flickered like torchlight, but paler. What is she burning down here? Treffen grabbed the torch from Gawain, slinging his bow back over his shoulder.
“Come on, keep up,” he hissed to the Knight. “She’s right there.”
The light stopped moving. Treffen skidded to a halt. Just ahead, a low, arched doorway led into a room lit by the flickering, pale light. Treffen crouched low on the floor and crept forward. He couldn’t see the far end of the chamber, which was in deep shadow, but Emerald had to be just inside that archway.
He sidled around the corner and into the chamber just as the light winked out.
Gawain was right behind him.
And right behind him, the archway filled with grasping, thorny vines that burst through the loose mortar in the floor, writhing toward Treffen and Gawain and blocking their escape.
A bright, shrill laugh echoed through the room. “You found me.”
The light reappeared, floating around the room, illuminating the high corners of the vast chamber. It changed shape as it drifted, giggling its way around the damp stones, finally showing its true form of a tiny blue girl dressed like a flower.
“It’s a Wisp,” Gawain said.
“I know.” Of course it was a Wisp. But what was it doing down here? Wisps were the most ethereal of forest spirits. They would often appear to lost travelers, leading them back to their campsites or to nearby villages. It seemed the Betrayer’s evil could infect even one so gentle.
“We need to find another way out. It didn’t bring us here by accident.”
The chamber was devoid of life, except for the floating Wisp and the living, writhing barrier of brambles across the doorway. Three stories high, it was made of the same gray stone as the rest of the place. On the second level, four doorways entered onto a catwalk that circled the edge of the room, but the stone walls were far too slick to climb. On the floor, the center of the room was dominated by a great heap of statues. They appeared to be made of granite and were piled on top of each other. Every one was the same: the figure of a suit of armor wrapped in thorny vines. None of the statues had a head.
“I don’t like the looks of this,” Treffen muttered.
They edged around the pile of statues and found another arched doorway on the far side. This one was also barred by a tangle of thick brambles, the living version of those on the strange statues. Treffen whipped out his machete and began to chop at the barrier. There wasn’t room for Gawain to help with his sword without one of them losing a limb, so the Knight stood behind, weapon ready.
The chamber suddenly got brighter.
Treffen whirled around mid-chop.
There was still no movement, but the air around the statues had begun to glow. The air shimmered in a way that made Treffen’s blood freeze.
“It’s another rift. Something’s going to come through here.”
A deep hum filled the room, and Treffen redoubled his efforts to break through the archway. They had only survived the last battle because Trent had helped them. There was no Trent here. And if there was, whose side would he be fighting on?
He could hear them as they emerged from the rift. The first through were three winged beasts. They looked like brightly-colored birds, but no bird Treffen knew was half the size of a human.
“Elf . . .” Gawain used a voice Treffen had never heard. Tired and shaky, it did not inspire confidence.
As the birds circled the room with heavy wingbeats, Treffen saw that each of them bore an armored creature on its back. It was hard to tell what sort of chimera the riders were, but the bulgy eyes looked decidedly froglike. And the frogs carried lances. On some unheard signal, the birds folded their wings, diving toward Treffen.
His mind went blank, fingers pulling arrows from his quiver. Grab and fire. Grab and fire. Bright colored feathers filled the air.
The birds fell, but their riders leapt away as their mounts crashed to the stones. With angry croaks, they hopped toward Gawain, lances bobbling in their grasps.
Gawain made short work of them.
“Get us through that door before more come through. I’ll get your arrows.”
Treffen turned back to chop at the brambles. He heard Gawain grunting across the room, pulling arrows free from the unfortunate, broken birds.
The hum in the room rose by a third.
Twenty duck-beaked Billmen poured through the rift, swords raised. The hoard of chimeras divided Gawain and Treffen, each on opposite sides of the chamber.
Chapter 22: So Very Close
The Forgotten King could barely contain his excitement. He could almost smell his quarry, and every step the Questing Knight took brought him deeper into the king’s lair. Like a spider who feels the slightest vibration on its web, the king reveled in his prey’s futile struggle.
Behind him, Boris growled low in his throat. The Berserker had been with the king since before the curse. He’d been human once, but the dark magic that turned the king’s forces into chimeras had changed the once-nervous soldier into a fearsome beast. He was never a Bramble Knight and shared no blood with the House of Ursinus, although he was a dead ringer for the Bear House’s emblem. In the early days, the king had hoped the beast’s blood might break the seal of that treasonous house, but the attempt had been futile, and the hairy monster had only become grumpier in the long years since his transformation.
A large shadow darkened the doorway.
“Ah, Trent. The man of the hour. Well, not the man.” The king motioned for Trent to enter.
The Treant shuffled through the archway, approaching the bramble throne and bending his roots to kneel.
“I brought the Knight,” he said.
“Indeed you did.” The king descended from his throne and placed a hand on Trent’s shoulder. The hand was not human, nor was it a goat’s hoof, but the hairy fingers were short, and the nails thick and black. “I wouldn’t have believed it. Would you, Boris?”
The giant Bearstruck Berserker grumbled.
“I didn’t hear you, Boris. Aren’t you proud of our Trent? It just goes to show that with a clear sense of purpose, one doesn’t need brains to be valuable.”
Trent slumped deeper under his lord’s touch. “The Wisp is taking them to the round hall.”
“Them? Is the elf still with our quarry?”
Trent looked up sharply before dropping his gaze back to the floor. “He’s very brave.”
“I’m sure he is.” The king turned to his chimera troops stationed around the star-shaped chamber. “I’m sure he’ll fight like a dragon, but it will hardly matter. The Knight is within our walls, and soon our brother will be returned to us.” He turned back to his throne with a motion of dismissal for Trent.
“Uh, my lord?”
Is that thing still talking? “Yes, Trent?”
“Um, maybe we could just . . . let the elf go?”
Snickering laughter filled the room, and Trent’s head hung lower.
“Let him go?” the king asked. “Why would we ever do that?”
“Um . . .”
The king rolled his eyes as Trent struggled to speak. I can almost see the steam rising from his branches. Not made for thinking, that one.
“Um . . . because he knows the princess. Maybe he could bring her, too.”
Heavy robes swept behind the king as he spun around and plopped into his throne. “Ah, yes, Princess Emerald. How I wish that your story had been true and she were, in fact, a captive here. The royal blood that runs through her veins would be very useful to me. The Nether Elves have informed me she is also of use to others. Some expect the princess and her four sisters to fulfill a prophecy and be a light to Crystalia, while some in the Dark Realm would like to see that particular prophecy put to rest permanently. One princess may be missing, but why wait for a missing one to die when I could soon have the opportunity to make Crystalia permanently one princess short?” He picked a stray hair from his robe. “No, Trent. I certainly do admire your persistence, but I suspect that if allowed to escape, the Wood elf would never set foot in this place again. He would never bring us the princess we require. We shall have to find a way to do that for ourselves.”