Dax sat on the floor across from Briar, with his back against the moss-slicked wall. He stared at the stone floor with the look of an animal headed to the slaughterhouse. “This is it,” he said. “We’re toast.” It wasn’t in his nature to give up, to see only darkness—or nothing at all. But he couldn’t help himself.
Sherman ignored that and trotted over to Briar. He sat beside her for a while quietly regarding her. Finally, he nuzzled her a bit and wrapped his fluffy tail around her. She looked up at him. He didn’t return the look, but he nodded in silent approval. Now it was clear to both of them that Myrtle and Poplar were right. Briar was indeed the one named in the Omens—or at least everyone around here seemed to believe it. She didn’t feel at all like the hero they imagined. And in the dank and the smell of decay in the cell, she couldn’t understand how she would ever be able to save anyone—including herself. But whether or not the so-called Omens were true, it was clear that the Lady Orpion was not about to test them out. Briar realized that even if the Omens weren’t true—and really, how could they be?—she was a sacrificial offering. She understood that once Orpion eliminated her, the Realmsfolk, would lose hope. And with hope gone, the Realms were a low-hanging fruit for the Lady.
The sound of stone grinding upon itself filled the cell. Briar and Dax looked in all directions for the source but saw nothing. Finally, one of the stones from the floor dropped down, away from the others. Tarfeather raised his head and peered around the cell with his ears tucked back.
He lifted himself from the hole with one hand, while in the other he carried a chunk of the floor-stone. He popped it into his mouth and crunched. Pebbles and sand cascaded down his rounded golden belly on to the floor. He licked his fingers and picked up the crumbs with his sticky saliva, smiling as he slurped them off. “Why Marge, I simply must have that recipe,” he said like an old-time actress.
Dax said, “Now that’s gonna require a dental plan.”
“One more thing Tarfeather bringery,” the dwaref said. His eyeholes glowed mischievously. He reached down into his tunnel and pulled out the king’s pillbox that he had pilfered from the carriage. “With these little babies you’ll have enough pep all day!” he said like a movie character. “Briar Blackwood getery boy-friend,” he said in his own rasp. Then he gave a proud fanged smile.
“Jeez, enough with the boyfriend,” Briar said. “Even if we get out of here, the palace is crawling with Orpion’s guard. We’d never be able to reach Leon and get out of here alive.”
Dax’s face lit up with realization. “Not necessarily,” he said. He stood and then he paced. “I’ve seen you do this before,” he said. No one could follow what he was talking about. “Do what?” Briar asked.
“Act. You can act like Lady Orpion,” he said. Then a manic flair lit his eyes.
“If you were in your right mind, you would have never suggested this,” Briar said.
“No, it can work,” Dax said to Sherman. “I’ve seen her do this before. It’s like she transforms into the character she’s playing. You can’t even recognize her.”
“Remarkable,” Sherman said. Then he sized Briar up once more with a squint.
“Dax, this is stupid. Let’s think of a better plan than one that involves me acting like a murderous—”
“Wait a minute,” Sherman said. “Your friend is right. This might work.”
“Are you out of your minds? There’s like a bazillion guards and monsters all waiting around for Lady Orpion to execute me so they can chew on my bones for an afternoon high-tea,” Briar said. She caught herself saying it all too loudly, and she finished her thought in a loud whisper. “No way!”
The guard snorted himself half-awake. Everyone stood still, holding their breath. He grumbled something unintelligible while he leaned more, and then a bit more to one side. He finally drooped completely flat onto the straw and stone, and slept taking great whistling breaths.
“Hold out your hands,” Sherman said. He seemed to have a glimmer of some secret in his eyes.
Briar shook her head. “Forget it.”
“You know,” Sherman said. “Myrtle and Poplar tried to convince me that you were the girl—the one we’d waited for. But I couldn’t see it. You were rough, cynical, sarcastic—”
“Hey, Pep-Squad, is this leading somewhere?” Briar asked.
Sherman continued, “—but when the Lady Orpion turned around with flames in her hands—I knew. Right then, I knew. Briar of the Black Woods, this is not how your Tale ends. And it need not end at all if you just survive past your sixteenth birthday. Prove the Three Omens and learn an enchantment from me. Give me your hands.”
Briar exhaled like it was the last breath she’d ever release. She took off her long gloves and held out her hands. “Now I’ve never done this before, but in the books of dragon lore, I believe it goes something like this—”
Sherman drew a series of geometric shapes in her upturned hands with one of his claws. “Close your eyes,” he said, “and imagine the Lady Orpion standing before you.” It took Briar a few moments to settle down. But slowly, as though stepping through a fog, she saw the Lady Orpion, her finger again poised at her throat. Immediately Briar felt a burning sensation in her gut. The tingling moved to her hands. She felt her heart pumping until it was the only sensation she could feel. Suddenly the blue flames appeared, engulfing her hands like two torches.
Tarfeather audibly drew a deep breath, and he clutched the pillbox to his quivering golden chest.
“Look very carefully at the details of her face,” Sherman said. His eyes were closed and tiny electrical currents, thin bolts of lightning, sparked from his paws toward Briar. “Allow her to come closer…closer…Let there be no gaps,” he said in a trance-inducing tone. Dax began to fight a wave of sleep that suddenly overcame him.
Briar imagined herself standing closer to what she hoped was actually an imagined Orpion. Her pale skin, the color of death, seemed smooth, waxy, and unnatural without any flaws. It reminded Briar of marble statues she had seen in a mortuary. The Lady’s eyes, pale green with slits for pupils, burned with an ice-cold rage. And yet, the more deeply Briar fastened her gaze and looked beneath Orpion’s rage, the more clearly she saw something that seemed like pain, or hopelessness.
Then Sherman used his fuzzy snout to nudge Briar’s flames toward her face. Like soap bubbles, the two translucent fires detached from her hands and became a single, luminous one that engulfed her head.
Dax and Tarfeather stood watching in amazement as Briar’s face began to twist and warp inside the glowing blue fire. Then the flame worked its way down the rest of her body until it completely enclosed her. Briar’s white silk corset and shimmering gown changed color, darkened, and transfigured into flowing black robes. Then she floated up off the cell floor, her limbs loose, her neck lolled back limply. The currents of shimmering blue flame swirled around her, twisting the robes tightly around her body so that they became a dark cocoon. The torches that once flickered outside the cell extinguished, and the world became as nothing in darkness.
“Briar,” Sherman whispered. “Briar, answer me.” But the cell was silent, save the guard’s drunken snorting.
“What’s happening?” Dax asked.
More stillness and silence.
The torches guttered and then flared back to life. Standing at the far end of the cell, gazing down upon them all with green reptilian eyes, was the Lady Orpion.
Tarfeather backed up against Dax. “Sweet Jesus. It’s a monster!” he said like an old movie reel.
“Briar?” Dax asked. “Sherman what did you do?”
The Lady standing before them examined her robes and felt the skin of her face. “Dang Sherman. This feels so weird.” Briar looked and sounded identical to Orpion and the others in the cell had trouble convincing themselves that it wasn’t.
“I didn’t do anything,” Sherman replied, though he was as entranced as the others. “—except help Briar along. This is her magic alone.”
&nbs
p; Briar needed a few minutes for her mind to fathom her new appearance. It sickened her to inhabit the Lady’s body. But she also realized that with Dax’s plan and Tarfeather’s seed-pills so that they could walk through the bars, this just might work. She looked up with Orpion’s wicked smile. “Let’s go kick some gargoyle ass.”
The guard believed he was following Orpion’s orders when Briar commanded him into the jail cell and told him to allow Sherman and Dax to tie him up with a thick jute rope. Then they gagged him with a rag that had, by the look of it, been used to mop up blood. They left him there, bound and muzzled and safely padlocked away, then sneaked down the lonely stone hallways, following Tarfeather.
Briar soon realized that no one wanted to cross the path of the Lady Orpion, not even her own wolfguards, so making progress down the hallways was easier than she initially thought. Doors slammed shut and people darted away when they saw her coming. Briar shivered from time to time as her bare feet met cold flat stone.
Dax walked alongside Tarfeather, who seemed certain of the way to Leon’s hiding place, despite being blind. “There are so many hallways, doors, and staircases, Tarfeather. How is it possible that you know the way?”
Tarfeather grinned. “Are you sayin’ I can’t do it? Well, are ya’?” he mimicked an old movie actor. Then he said in his own gritty voice, “Usery nose, usery ears. Long time livery in palace.”
They had journeyed through so many different passages that Briar lost track of how they might even return to the cell, let alone find their way out of Murbra Faire.
“It’s almost as if Cole created this labyrinth of hallways to hide from something,” Briar said.
“Or to keep something in,” Sherman wondered. He pricked up his ears and jogged with a nervous prance, scanning the halls in all directions.
Without slowing his pace, Tarfeather turned back to the three. “Just what are you trying to hide? You’ll never get away with it!” he said, sounding like a daytime drama. Then he motioned with his claws like a tiny flicker, urging them to keep up. Finally, after several more stone corridors and short staircases, he stopped in a nondescript hallway next to an ordinary door, which seemed very much like dozens that they had already passed. “Sshh,” Tarfeather said. He pressed one of his wrinkled ears to the door.
“Boy-friend inery Gelid room,” he whispered in his gravel-voice. He pointed to the door with his sharp golden finger.
Briar reached into her robes and pulled out the cell phone that Myrtle and Poplar had returned to her. She turned it on, and miraculously it still had about half of its battery power left. She began thumbing the device and in a moment, Dax’s pocket began to buzz.
“No way,” he said. He pulled the phone from his knickers with a smile of amazement. “My mom’s gonna kill me for these roaming charges,” he said.
“Dax, Sherman, you two stay here. Hide behind these suits of armor near the door and text me if someone is coming,” she whispered. “Tarfeather will come with me.”
Tarfeather swallowed hard and his mouth went slack. Briar bent over to get closer to the floor and to Tarfeather’s quivering face. “Don’t be afraid. Everything will be okay,” she said. She nodded to him and he hopped onto her shoulder and buried himself into the folds of her hood.
Then Sherman spoke with hushed, cracking voice. “Before you go, you must know something about this enchantment.”
“What?”
“Most magic is done in short bursts,” he said. “But a dragon’s magic can last as long as one can physically bear it. Legends say the magic of transformation can tax the body and the mind.”
“You’re just full of good news today. Okay—whatever. I feel fine. But thanks.” Briar turned to leave, feeling unsettled to her core.
“Wait!” Sherman said. “If you feel depleted, you must get out of that room immediately.”
Briar rolled her eyes. “Thanks, Dad. I think I got this—”
Then she stood up, closed her eyes and inhaled deeply. She then imagined the sound, the voice of Lady Orpion. When she thought she had a good recollection of her voice, she opened her eyes and knocked on the chamber door.
A guard opened it. As soon as he saw her, he knelt low. “My Lady.”
Briar lifted her chin, haughty and sedate. “I wish to speak with my ward,” she said. She was surprised that the words came so naturally. Dax and Sherman, their backs pressed to the stone walls, exchanged looks of approval at Briar’s performance.
“She said that you had summoned her, My Lady, and she left moments ago to your quarters,” the guard said.
“Yes…” Briar replied. Then she stood silently for a long time, trying to figure out what to say next. She knew that if she said the wrong thing, she’d blow it for them all, and she started to choke. The guard, sensing something was wrong, decided to look up at the fake Orpion. He sniffed the air.
“My Lady?” he asked. Then he darted his eyes away as soon as he had spoken.
Briar lied with an imperious tone to save her mistake. “I meant that I came back for the frog.” She took several confident strides into the room that sent her black cloak fluttering behind her. She searched with her eyes, but if Leon was in that chamber, he was nowhere in plain sight.
Tarfeather peeked out from behind her head and searched too. He whispered in her ear, “Not hearing, not smelling commons in here, Briar Blackwood.”
“The frog is where you placed him last,” the guard said. He stood up now, closed the chamber door, and took a few dangerous steps toward her.
“Of course he is,” she said. She turned to face the guard with a placid stare. “That will be all.” But he wouldn’t leave.
“Go ahead and take him…My Lady,” he said, squinting, stepping closer.
“Take one more step and—” Briar began.
Now certain that he had caught a plot before it had fully hatched, the guard spoke. “And what? What will you do?”
Briar tried to figure out what to say next, but she drew a blank. She chose instead to stare defiantly, holding her serene facial expression in place the best that she could.
Then she heard buzzing coming from her robes. The guard flinched and began to cringe a bit from the sound. “What is that?” he asked.
It made sense. He didn’t know about cellphones. Briar took it out and it lit up, buzzing some more. The guard rocked backward and fell to a kneeling posture.
“That’s right,” Briar said, “its magic. And I’ve got plenty of it. Lucky for you I only need one frog, fool—or you’d be next in line.” Then she placed the buzzing phone on the guard’s exposed neck and he shuddered with a whimper. “Now bring him to me before I decide that what I really want is a worm to squish beneath the soles of my shoes.”
“Of course, My Lady,” the guard said, and he ran to a faded tapestry on a far wall.
She read the text from Dax saying that Gelid was coming down the hall.
Briar watched him impatiently and her leg began to shake from anxiety. The guard reached up to the pale image of a cage that was embroidered into the whole scene. It was hidden among unicorns, pomegranate trees, and a host of courtly lords and ladies. As he touched the weaving depicting the cage, the actual cage with Leon in it pulled away in his hand, leaving a blank spot on the wall hanging. He hurried back and offered the cage to her with lowered eyes.
Leon hopped as far away as he could from who he thought was the Lady Orpion. Briar snatched the cage away, and the guard flinched at her quick gesture. The phone buzzed sharply in one of her hands. The guard cowered and backed away. The text just said, “Hurry.”
“Why, all he needs is a little push to succeed,” Tarfeather said, in one of his television voices.
“Stand up,” she commanded.
As though he was shocked by a thousand volts of electricity, the guard sprang up and stood at attention. She held up the phone, its blue-gray light glowing in his face. He made a little whimpering noise and then he backed away from the strange object she held in front of h
is face.
“No, My Lady. Please.”
“That’s right, keep backing up and no one gets hurt,” she said.
The door lock clinked.
Briar had no more time. With a burst of energy, she charged the guard and shoved him with every ounce of her strength into the tapestry.
Chapter 20
“My Lady,” Gelid began. She made a slight bow, but never allowed her eyes to meet Orpion’s. Briar could not sense the tone of their relationship, beyond this formality. She watched as Gelid secured the chamber door, then she folded her hands together at her waist like a prim cloistered nun awaiting orders from her Mother Superior. Her blue dreadlocks hung like ropes across her face as she lowered her chin. “You surprise me,” she continued. “I was in your chamber not more than a moment ago.”
“By now you should expect surprises,” Briar said. She was shocked at how quickly she could come up with a bluff. She realized she was still holding the cell phone and she shoved it into her robes. She flicked her eyes to the cage with Leon inside. The eye movement, though subtle and relatively imperceptible in any other circumstance, gave away the purpose of her presence in Gelid’s chamber.
“Ah, you came for the boy. So it is agreed, then. We shall complete Skull Sigil tonight,” Gelid said. She glided over the frigid stone floors to the dressing table and standing mirror solemnly adorned with white taper candles, carved with filigree, and drenched in gilt. Briar noticed the magical jeweled hand mirror laying on the table.
“Yes, of course—the Skull Sigil,” she replied. There it was; but how to get it— She gave a haughty chuckle, thinking that was probably just what Orpion would do.
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