Sure enough, the first of the kingdoms that had gathered in Ninebridge had broken off from the others. Several thousand people followed a flag with a boar and a spear toward the foot of the Bridge to Nowhere. The sound of their footsteps on the grass was a muffled, peaceful thunder, and Brinley realized that they were all of rather small stature. This was the kingdom of the gnomes.
A moment later, Thieutukar Manisse paused before her at the front of the line. He gave her a short bow and said, “Magemother, promise me that one day we will meet under pleasant circumstances. When first I met you, you saved my life. Now, at our second meeting, you save my whole country. We are forever in your debt, and we will be proud to stand and fight when you call, whatever the end may bring.”
Brinley bowed back and he moved on.
She stood and watched and greeted people as they passed, and Animus and Belterras and the others went to help keep the crowd organized as they neared the bridge.
After a while, her father touched her arm and she turned in surprise. She had nearly forgotten that he was still there.
“Do I understand correctly,” he said, “that after all that time I spent in Inveress, you expect me to go back in there and leave you to face some magical dark lord?”
Brinley’s hand shot to her mouth in horror. “Oh my goodness, Dad! I haven’t explained anything to you!”
He laughed. “Don’t worry. I was waiting in Inveress for quite some time, and Cyus was an excellent teacher, once he decided that I could stick around. In fact, I am probably more current on world events than you are. Brinley,” he said, putting his hands on her shoulders. “You’ve done so much, grown so much! I couldn’t be prouder.”
“Oh—I,” Brinley stammered, then gave up and buried herself in another hug.
He pulled free a moment later, looking stern. “But you can’t actually expect me to let you face Shael alone,” he went on. “I don’t care if Animus thinks it will make for the best surprise. You may be the Magemother, but I’m still your father, and I’m staying with you.”
Brinley looked up into his kind face. He wore a patchy beard now, which must have grown in since she saw him last, but his eyes were the same ones that she remembered. “Dad,” she said, “of course you can stay. Just promise me you’ll never leave again.”
“I promise,” he said. “But then I didn’t really mean to leave the first time.” He straightened up a little taller. “I guess I’m going to need to get a sword or something, eh?” He looked around, as if there might be one lying nearby. “I sure wish I had my rifle right about now. I can’t believe I left it on the four-wheeler. I bet you Shael wouldn’t see that coming.”
Brinley laughed. “Just don’t hurt yourself, Dad.”
Brinley reached out with her mind in search of Cassis. She found him inspecting the king’s armies with King Remy. Remy would be the last to cross the bridge, she knew, and the first in line when she summoned the armies.
“Come on,” she said, taking her father’s hand and leading him into the crowd. “Let’s go find you a sword.”
“And maybe someone who can give me some quick pointers?” He winked.
Brinley laughed. It felt good to have him back again.
Chapter Nineteen
In which everyone gets eaten
Hugo felt himself slowing gradually in the air. Soon he was not in the air at all. He was on a smooth stone chute. He was still descending, but not as fast as before, and he was not falling, he was sliding. The chute glinted like polished glass in the darkness, so that Hugo could just make it out snaking ahead of him. It was covered in something like oil, except that touching it did not get him wet.
Something nudged him in the back, and he turned to see Cannon behind him.
“Jumped right after you did,” he said, grinning. “I guess Lashé was right.”
“I guess he was,” Hugo admitted.
“I mean right about you screaming like a girl,” Cannon said.
Hugo’s retort died on his lips as the slide suddenly dropped away beneath him and he plunged straight down. He screamed again and Cannon laughed, and a second later he was back in contact with the slide.
“Here we go,” Cannon said, and Hugo looked up to see the slide loop around in a tight corkscrew. He clenched his teeth as they entered it. He experienced the unpleasant sensation of his brain trying to flatten itself against the inside of his skull. Then they were out of it, and the slide was angling downward again, causing them to pick up speed.
“Save us,” Cannon said with a groan. “Look at that!”
Hugo glanced up again and immediately regretted it. The darkness around them was lifting, and in the distance the slide was visible as a tangled mass of twists and loops, funnels and screws that led on forever.
Hugo tried to respond, but they were in another corkscrew now, and he couldn’t force the words out of his mouth. It went on and on, until Hugo thought that he would pass out, and then it turned into a loop.
Hugo clutched at the slide, trying to slow himself down, and Cannon smacked into him from behind.
“Ugh,” Hugo groaned. “I can’t think. What’s the key?”
“Forgive the dream,” Cannon recited.
“What the blazes does that mean?”
The slide spit them out into a large funnel. They cruised around the edge of it, turning in tighter and tighter circles, every revolution bringing them closer to the dumping hole at the bottom.
“You said it would be obvious,” Hugo said with an effort.
“I was wrong.”
The funnel dumped them into another series of corkscrews, these ones tighter than those that had come before, and for the first time, Molad stirred inside of Hugo. Stop it, he whispered.
Hugo winced. He needed to bring himself to peace again if he was going to keep Molad from getting out. He needed to stop being bothered by what was going on around him. He needed to be the calm at the center of this storm. Hugo began to watch his thoughts, as Lashé had taught him. He observed his senses, his eyes seeing the slide, his stomach lurching around the corners, his heart racing. He just watched it, let it be. At once he felt separated from the chaos around him.
Hugo smiled. “You just have to surrender to it, Cannon. We’re not getting out of here. We’re never getting off this slide. Just let it be. The way out of it is to get into it.”
As he said it, he felt a deep peace sink into his mind. The slide veered off to the right. Looped downward and corkscrewed again. His body was thrown from side to side, his heart ached from beating so fast, and his brain was under that strange pressure again, but inside, Hugo was at peace.
The slide split again. Hugo went one way and Cannon went another, shouting in alarm as he flew by. Hugo was slowing down, the slide leveling out. He had reached the end.
A stone chamber appeared ahead of him, floating in the midst of nothing. The slide was taking him right to it. He zoomed inside and the slide deposited him on the floor inside the chamber. Lashé was there with his hand out, and Hugo took it and got to his feet.
“How did you do it?” Lashé asked.
“It was just a bad dream,” Hugo said. “So I woke up.”
Lashé nodded. “Good. Good.”
“Do you think Cannon will make it out?”
“He will,” Lashé said. “One does not become a wizard without learning how to control one’s own mind. I expect that he’ll be along any minute now.”
Hugo rubbed his hands together thoughtfully, wishing there was something more that he could do for his friend.
“What do you make of this place?” Lashé was studying their surroundings carefully.
This room was called The Spring, Hugo remembered. The key was, “There is only one way out.” Now that he was here, it still didn’t make any sense. The room was a perfect cube, with walls of the same slick black glass that the slide had been made from. The floor and ceiling were peculiar, though; the ceiling was shiny, like worn metal, and the floor felt strange under his feet.
He knelt to inspect it and found that it was in fact a packed bed of thin nails. They were so close together that it didn’t hurt to walk on them; the pressure of his feet were spread out evenly across their sharp points. Down near the base, they were barbed. Hugo was glad that those barbs were on the bottom instead of the top. “Weird,” he said finally.
“I agree. And here is the strangest thing of all,” Lashé stepped aside to reveal a round alcove cut into the side wall. Two black statues stood within it, carved of the same black glass-like stone that the walls and slide were made of. One statue was of a cat. The other was a hawk. Both had gleaming red jewels for eyes and looked so lifelike that Hugo expected them to move at any moment.
“Creepy,” Hugo muttered.
“Aha!” Lashé said, turning back to the slide. “Here he comes.”
Cannon slid into the room, and Hugo helped him to his feet.
“Glad that you could join us,” Lashé said.
“So am I,” Cannon responded. He swayed slightly and leaned against the wall for support. “I never want to see another curve again as long as I live.”
Something brushed Hugo’s leg, and he glanced down and was startled to see the black cat. It blinked up at him, very much alive, and mewed loudly.
“Agh!” he said, backing away quickly.
The hawk fluttered away from its place in the wall and landed on Cannon’s shoulder.
“So,” Lashé said, “they were waiting for all of us to arrive. This is unexpected,” He reached for the hawk, but it glided off Cannon’s shoulder and back to the crevice in the wall.
Hugo shouted at a sudden pain in his leg and kicked the cat away. “It bit me!” he said.
“It does look hungry,” Cannon pointed out.
The cat slithered away and slipped into the alcove beside the hawk as an odd thrumming sound drifted down from above. The ceiling began to creep upward and away from them as the buzzing grew louder. There was a definite sense of tension in the air.
“I guess we know what happens next,” Hugo said, closing his eyes. “Do you think it will hurt?”
“Oh yes,” Lashé said quietly.
With a sound like a cannon going off, the ceiling slammed down into the floor. There was a split second of the most intense pain that Hugo had ever experienced, and then he was standing much lower to the floor, surrounded by what looked like a thick hedge of razor-sharp shrubs.
“We’re among the nails,” Lashé whispered. “Wait a moment before you move.”
Hugo took his advice, trying to get used to his tiny new body. It felt very different than it had a moment before, and Hugo decided that the ceiling must have done something other than just make him smaller. He felt fragile, like the slightest breeze might break his arm, or that his torso might crumble with the effort of walking. Lashé was on one side of him, and Cannon was on the other, but the nails were so thick that there were several standing between them. Hugo moved carefully, easing out from between two while avoiding the points.
“Don’t touch them,” Lashé warned.
“Duh,” Hugo said. “I feel like I’m going to break apart just looking at them.”
“Don’t do that either,” Lashé said. “I don’t think that is the way out.”
“What is?” Cannon asked.
“I don’t know, but the key is ‘there is only one.’”
A mewing sound came from above them.
“Lashé,” Cannon said slowly, “did that cat shrink down as well?”
From out of nowhere the cat jumped on top of them. Big as a house, it blocked out the light.
“Never mind!”
Hugo dropped to his stomach as carefully as he could between the sharp skewers and only narrowly avoided impaling himself on the way down. A second later, a paw slapped the nails where he had been. He crawled forward, winding between the nails as the cat continued to paw at the space above him.
“Don’t forget about its nails,” Cannon said from close by, no doubt referring to the fact that cats could extend or retract their nails at will. If the cat happened to extend them while his paw was above Hugo, they would probably be long enough to slice him to ribbons.
“I know,” Hugo said. “I’m moving. I’m moving! Where did Lashé go?”
The cat yowled in pain and leapt into the air, and Lashé’s torso rose above the hedge of nails again.
“Ha!” He held up half of a broken nail, indicating that he had used it as an improvised spear. “This one was already broken off,” Lashé said. “See if you can find more.”
Hugo bent back into the needly trench as the cat returned, and he crawled around in search of a broken nail. The best he found was one that was slightly bent halfway to the base. Taking hold of it, he placed his feet against the base and pulled, thinking that if he bent it back and forth it might break off. As soon as he began to pull, his arms ached and he shuddered. He wondered for a moment if they might break. He couldn’t be that fragile, could he? He shook the thought away and pulled. The nail bent, and his left arm broke off at the shoulder.
It shattered on the floor like glass. Hugo stared at the pieces of his arm numbly, then felt at the stump of his left shoulder. There was no pain. No blood. No bones sticking out. His arm had simply snapped off.
The cat howled again, and Hugo stood up just in time to see Lashé rising above the nails. He had lost an arm too, Hugo noticed, but he held the nail aloft in his remaining one.
“Watch out!” Cannon shouted, and Hugo ducked, but Lashé did not move quickly enough. The hawk had seen him from behind. Too late, he glanced behind him, and the hawk snatched him up in a single bite.
“NOOO!” Hugo cried, but there was nothing for it. The cat was back again, and it had figured out what to do with its claws.
“Where are you, Cannon?” Hugo said as he scrambled away from the cat’s claws. He was trying not to shout now, in case the cat heard him.
“Here,” Cannon’s voice came just as quietly, and Hugo crawled toward it. He squeezed around an especially thick stand of nails and gasped when he saw Cannon. His legs were gone, and his torso was propped up against a nail.
“Well, I see that you’re doing better than I am.”
“Does it hurt?” Hugo asked, guessing the answer.
Cannon shook his head. “I don’t think any of this is real, Hugo. I should be dead with injuries like this.”
“So what does that mean?” Hugo said. “What do we do next?”
“There’s only one way out,” Cannon said, turning the phrase over thoughtfully. “One way…hmm. Maybe we should feed ourselves to the cat. He looked hungry.”
“What?”
“It’s not like we’re getting out of here anyway,” Cannon said. “Besides, I don’t think it’s a real cat. It’s made of that glassy stone stuff. The hawk too. They can’t be real.”
“Well, they’re really hungry,” Hugo said. “And I really don’t want to get eaten!”
Cannon shook his head. “No, I’m sure I’m right about this, Hugo.” He held out his arms. “Come on. Lift me up there. They’re not going to be able to get to me if they eat you first.”
“I can’t believe I’m feeding you to a cat,” Hugo said, hefting Cannon onto his shoulders.
“What are friends for?” Cannon said. “Besides, it makes perfect sense, really. I think it’s all a test. This whole mechanism. It’s here so that you can prove how badly you really want to get out. First the Plunge. You have to want go forward so much that you’re willing to risk it all instead of going back. Then the Screw, where you have to be so dedicated that you’ll surrender all control. Then this place, where you have to to stare a gruesome death right in the face and say, ‘Here, kitty, kitty!’”
Hugo stood up with some effort and felt a quick tug as Cannon disappeared. He stumbled forward at the sudden change in his balance and caught himself with his right arm, which broke off in the effort.
Hugo groaned and rolled onto his back. He clenched the muscles in his stomach, praying
that wouldn’t break off too, and got to his feet. The hawk had returned to the little alcove in the wall, but the cat was still sitting there, waiting for him. He glared up at its gleaming red eyes and it licked its lips.
“Well?” Hugo said. “What are you waiting for?”
The cat flicked out a single claw, skewered the neck of his shirt, and lifted him into the air. It opened its mouth wide, and Hugo hovered for a moment over the dark hole of its throat, eyeing a ring of sharp white teeth.
He fell, his body was dashed to pieces on the cat’s teeth, and he was still conscious as he felt all the tiny parts of himself slipping down its throat.
***
The belly of the cat was a tiny, red space without doors or windows. There was light, but Hugo could not tell where it was coming from.
Cannon and Lashé were waiting for him.
“How is it that you’re both in here?” Hugo said. “When one of you was eaten by the cat and one by the hawk?”
“Don’t ask silly questions,” Lashé said. “We need to get a move on. Do you remember this room?”
Hugo had to think about it. “The Siphon,” he said finally.
“Yes,” Lashé said. “There is only one way out of this room as well. You must prove that you want out of this place more than you want life itself. Breath, to be more precise.”
“Haven’t we done that already?” Hugo said. “I just let myself get eaten by a cat.”
“It is easy to rush into death,” Lashé said. “It takes determination not to breathe.” He sat on the ground and crossed his legs. “I will go first.” He promptly shut his mouth.
After ten seconds, his lips began to tighten. At twenty, his eyes shut tight. At thirty seconds, his face turned red. At forty, tiny beads of sweat appeared on his forehead and he swayed slightly on the spot. At fifty seconds, he gave a raspy groan and slid through the floor like a ghost.
Cannon gave a low whistle. “Okay,” he said, clapping his hands together. “I guess it worked.”
“Or the cat just digested him,” Hugo said darkly.
Cannon sat on the floor as Lashé had done. “Together?” he said.
Magemother: The Complete Series (A Fantasy Adventure Book Series for Kids of All Ages) Page 79