Whatever sadness she’d felt after Plank’s story was long gone. Ladon might’ve had a soul once, but it wasn’t there any longer.
The creature laughed manically, his eye slits glowing red. “Only one innocent among you,” it hissed. “And one with so much delectable black inside.” Ladon’s eyes flickered to Jagger. “My pretties, we shall feast tonight!”
The snakes around his neck thrashed in ecstasy.
Plank gripped her by the shoulders, talking low in a rapid whisper, “Ebba, ye need to leave. Now. Back down the mountain to Barrels.”
“W-what,” she mumbled in confusion, looking at the blood on her palms again.
“Ye’re the only one who can be leavin’. Ladon can only feast on those with black in their souls.”
Rushing filled her ears. “What are ye talkin’ about? Let’s just go back through the tunnel. He won’t fit through the rocks. . . .”
She trailed off as her eyes finally saw the rest of Ladon’s trap. The archway behind them no longer existed. Solid rock filled the space.
“Only ye can get through,” Plank pressed.
Panic surged within her. “Nay—”
“Ye must!”
Locks leaned in. “Ebba, if ye don’t return, Barrels will never know what befell us.”
Barrels. Her face fell, and indecision warred within her for the briefest second before she stood back from the pair and withdrew both her pistols, cocking the weapons and aiming them at Ladon.
“Nay,” she said through gritted teeth. Barrels was currently safe, the other five of her fathers weren’t.
“Your intent to kill is as scattered ash in your soul, young mortal,” Ladon gloated, tongue flicking and tasting. “Delectable gray. Close enough to black, don’t you think, my pretties? The way is barred to all.”
Ebba swallowed back her queasiness at the sight of the snakes’ rapture around the lizard’s neck. He had to be bluffing about the way being barred now. A mere thought couldn’t have made her soul gray. What did that even mean? That she was evil or something? Checking whether she could still leave was tempting, but Ebba resisted. She wasn’t leaving without her fathers.
The creature took a single step forward, but then flickered out of existence for a full two seconds. Ladon reappeared back in the previous spot.
“What be goin’ on with him?” whispered Peg-leg to Plank.
Jagger answered, “He seems weak-like. He be there one moment and gone the next, but so quick it looks like he’s blurrin’.”
That’s what she’d thought, too.
“If he can’t move, we may have a chance, but how do we find out if he can?” Stubby asked in a hushed voice.
Only one way Ebba could think of. She spoke to the beast, “Oi, can ye move, or are ye stuck there? Ye seem weak.”
Ladon’s response was a roar as ear-splitting as the first. His snakes reared back and spat their venom toward the group, but the droplets landed several yards away. Ebba wasn’t compelled to cover her ears this time, and her heart jumped into her mouth. Was her soul actually gray? Why didn’t his roar hurt anymore?
“I think that be a no,” Stubby said drily.
“It’s of no matter if he can move or not,” growled Locks. “The way off this clearin’ be blocked, and there only be sheer cliffs around us.”
“Can I just say I told ye so?” Plank said. “But no, none of ye wanted to listen to me story—”
Peg-leg growled at him. “Not the time.”
“Er, right.” Plank cleared his throat and slid closer to the beast. “Ladon.” The beast’s red slits fell upon Plank, who swept his raven curls from his forehead in a quick, nervous gesture. “Ladon, we are at an impasse. Ye can’t move—”
“And none of you may leave,” hissed the creature. “You will not eat my beloved apple.”
Plank opened his mouth, but the creature continued. “A test,” Ladon declared. “A game. A bargain.” The word echoed, eliciting another violent shiver from Ebba.
She slid closer to Peg-leg.
“What kind o’ bargain?” Plank asked.
Two of the snakes unfurled on either side of Ladon’s head and drew close to where Ebba guessed the creature’s ears to be.
The beast’s lipless mouth stretched into a smile. “Yes.”
The two snakes returned to the throbbing mass, and Ladon lifted his great, horrific head. “Three correct answers to three riddles for your freedom.”
“The riddles will be about things we know?” Plank asked suspiciously.
Irritation shuddered over Ladon’s face and into the surrounding rock. “Of course. Answer correctly, and I will clear the way so all may pass. Answer any of the three incorrectly and I will feast on your innards while you still live.”
She swallowed. That seemed . . . unfair.
They gathered together. Her fathers looked devastated, but Peg-leg rounded on the grim-faced Jagger.
“Ye led us to him, ye traitorous bastard! Ye knew Ladon was here.” Peg-leg accused.
Jagger’s face tightened and he stepped toward her father. “I’m in this trap, too, ye fool.”
The Malice pirate did seem as concerned about being trapped here as they did. Whatever he’d come with them to Neos for, apparently it hadn’t been to trap them up here with Ladon.
“Enough,” Plank said tightly. “There’s no time for this.” His glinting eyes rested on Jagger, however. It might be best for the younger pirate if they didn’t make it out of here.
With a muttered curse, Peg-leg spun away from Jagger, who watched his retreat, jaw clenched.
“We need Barrels,” Locks said with a sigh.
Everyone turned to him.
“I reckon that sounds fair,” a voice rang out.
They froze.
“And I like games. We’ll play,” the pleasant voice continued.
Ebba wasn’t the only one who dove to stop Grubby from speaking, but as she did so a heavy golden ring snapped into place around her neck. She coughed and tugged on the solid band, frantically seeking a crack she could use to pry the collar off.
She turned to the others with wide eyes, trying not to panic. All seven of them had a golden ring about their necks, too.
“Grubby!” Plank moaned.
Grubby jerked, staring at the rest of the crew. “What?”
“Too late,” Ladon said gleefully, stretching his neck to full height. “The golden ring has sealed your fate.”
Everyone, including Jagger, glared at Grubby, who shrank to the back of their group.
“And where be yer gold band?” croaked Ebba with a scowl. “How can we be sure ye’ll stick to yer word, beast?”
Ladon roared in fury, stamping his clawed limbs, but his red eyes flared as a golden ring snapped around one of his snakes.
Plank squeezed her hand. “Good thinkin’, little nymph.”
She only nodded in response, eyes focused on Ladon.
Nostrils flaring, the beast spoke again, “Let us begin.”
Shite, Locks was right. They really needed Barrels for this. He was the smartest.
The beast flickered in and out again before speaking in an echoing voice, “I grow harder to conceal with each attempt to hide me. I am festering, born of fear and humiliation. . . What am I?”
Ebba shared a nonplussed glance with Peg-leg. Sounded like a boil to her, but that didn’t quite fit.
Her fathers began to gather in a group, but Jagger moved away, not looking at any of them. His silver eyes darkened and he swallowed hard. “A secret,” he called to Ladon.
Her heart pounded in her chest as she and the crew waited to hear of their imminent doom.
Ladon’s thin nostrils flared. “Correct,” the beast said, in barely concealed rage. He flickered out of sight for three full seconds before coming back.
Felicity’s crew stared at Jagger.
“How’d ye know that?” Locks asked.
Jagger shrugged a shoulder in reply, not removing his ever-watchful silver eyes from the be
ast.
Another snake untangled itself and hissed at length in Ladon’s ear.
This was wrong, she shuddered. All of this was wrong. Snakes didn’t talk. Giant lizard-men didn’t wear hundreds of snakes as a scarf. Because that meant magic was real. But how had they never seen anything like Ladon before? A magic fruit was one thing, but a mythical creature?
Ladon’s thick tail lashed as his snake-minion finished.
“Listen closely, mortals: What do I spell? Contentment’s sound before the twenty-six’s leader. Yeo’s missing lover and a selfish man’s repetition. For all of this, you will not succeed, not unless you remember the sea.”
Ebba wasn’t alone in turning to Jagger, but Plank began to pace, tapping his mouth. “Yeo’s missing lover is named Gee.”
“Contentment’s sound. . . .” said Peg-leg. “Yum?”
Jagger turned to stare at the rocky ground.
He then glanced at Locks. “Dagger.”
Without batting an eyelash, Locks passed the weapon over.
Jagger whirled to the beast. “Repeat the riddle.” He crouched as Ladon recited the riddle again.
Ebba leaned forward to watch Jagger, studying his high-boned profile as he scratched letters in the smooth stone. He could spell? A pirate of Malice knew his letters? Even she didn’t know her letters—well, she knew the letters, but not how to put them together. First he’d come aboard their ship without a fight, then the tattoos, and now he knew how to spell? Ebba couldn’t make anything of the pirate, including that he’d seemed so cold a week before, but was acting with some human decency right now.
He scratched a line for each part of the riddle, and added Plank and Grubby’s contributions.
“A selfish man’s repetition.” Stubby rubbed a hand over his forehead, glancing at Peg-leg. “Me, I guess. Or I?”
Peg-leg glowered. “Why are ye lookin’ at me when ye say that?”
Jagger’s eyes gleamed, and he scratched in Stubby’s guess.
Ebba’s mind whirled so fast it hurt. She could only remember the second clue.
Locks gestured wildly, his eye blazing. “What be the twenty-sixth leader?”
“No, that ain’t what he said,” Ebba interrupted, happy she remembered something. “He said twenty-six’s leader.”
Everyone stared at Jagger’s markings on the ground. No one offered an answer.
“Yumgeeme,” Plank tried. “Yummgee-I.”
She sighed. This was hopeless. “The last clue. What did he say?”
“For all o’ this, ye will not succeed, not unless ye remember the sea,” Plank recited.
“The sea.” Stubby lifted his head from his hands. “He gave it to us. C. We can’t forget the C!”
Locks slapped him on the back and Stubby nearly face-planted.
“They be indiv’dual letters, mateys,” Locks exclaimed, eyes scanning the ground. “Not small words, one single word. Let’s look again.”
She leaned closer over Jagger’s shoulder as he scratched a ‘C’ into the ground on the end.
“The fourth one would have to be ‘I’, not ‘me’, if we be goin’ with single letters,” Peg-leg offered hesitantly.
She heard the hitch of Jagger’s breath as he swept the ‘me’ and ‘I’ away and redrew the ‘I’ in the same spot.
Plank leaned down and carefully brushed away the two ‘E’s’ after ‘G’. “Yum. Gic,” he said, in the nonplussed silence.
Ebba frowned, annoyed at herself. For once, she wished she knew her letters better. Barrels had attempted to teach her more times than she could count. But he’d given up. Truly, she held no interest in the alphabet. Not until now when it might save their lives.
Jagger held the dagger in a relaxed grip. His other hand clawed around the ring circling his neck, almost as if he wanted to pull despite knowing the futility of it. “The first clue. Would it be ‘Y’?”
‘Y’ was the second to last letter in the alphabet. That much she knew. Though she’d always thought the realm could get by with half so many letters. Who really needed—
Her mouth dropped open. “Twenty-six,” she whispered.
The others looked at her.
“Twenty-six’s leader!” she jumped. “It’s ‘A’. There are twenty-six letters in the alphabet.”
Jagger shot her a triumphant look, which she returned before thinking better of it. He whipped back to his sketch in the dirt, scratching in the letter ‘A’.
“The first one ain’t ‘Y’,” Plank said, his voice strained. “Mmm. Mmm is the sound of contentment.”
Jagger didn’t glance up, but his cheeks lifted as a grin spread across his face. He wiped away the ‘Y’.
“Magic,” Plank breathed.
Ladon’s outraged screech shook the mountain and Ebba fell to the ground, unable to stand with the sheer force his anger radiated.
Peg-leg collapsed next to her and they watched, powerless as Ladon threw his head back and sank his exposed fangs into the knot of snakes around his neck. He pulled viciously, and a snake tore free—the same tiger-striped snake that had whispered the riddle in his ear. Ladon tossed the snake up and opened his reptilian jaws wide, stretching and disfiguring the jaw until it was as big as a third of his body. The small snake twisted as it began its downward fall. Ebba felt its fear, could almost imagine it screaming.
She shut her eyes tightly as it fell into Ladon’s mouth.
His jaws snapped closed with a pop of displaced air and his forked tongue swiped across his lips. “Very good, mortals. You surprise me. Time for the third.”
None of the snakes rose to offer him advice this time. Instead, Ladon’s head dipped and swayed as he stared at each pirate in their group in turn.
Stubby whispered to Plank, “He can’t do anythin’ funny with those red eyes, can he?”
Plank shook of his head. “Not in the story. But—”
He didn’t have to finish the sentence. No story could’ve prepared them for this.
Ladon’s talons gouged the stone as he roared. His red eyes throbbed and pulsed as he stared into each of their eyes in turn. Slowly, the glowing faded, accompanied by a curving of his lipless mouth.
“Your third riddle,” he hissed quietly. His menace rolled over the edges of the plateau and down the cliffs of the mountain.
He faced Peg-leg. “He’ll take your dignity and pride.”
His eyes sought Plank. “He will slaughter your wife, and . . .” his tongue lashed in Stubby’s direction, “. . . your father.”
Ebba looked at her three fathers. Plank’s face had lost all color. The three of them didn’t react, their faces frozen, eyes wide and fixed on the beast.
Ladon wasn’t done. He turned to Grubby. “He’ll destroy your mind.”
Next was Locks. “He will control cowards and half-men,” the beast stated.
The snakes around Ladon’s neck unfurled and the grotesque creature hissed his laughter as he faced Jagger. “His grandson has taken everything you once were. You are a shell. And soon all you hold dear will be dead and gone.”
Ladon’s voice was victorious and swelled high until it more closely resembled a scream. “He is the name you swore to never say. He is gone, but with you always. Still you hate him, still you fear him. This is my final riddle. Who is he?”
Ebba waited for one of the others to answer. Jagger seemed to be the only one who hadn’t seized during Ladon’s riddle, though he looked pale and drawn, like he’d been socked in the gut too many times.
“Who is it?” she asked him.
He shook his head, fists clenched. “He r’ferred to Mercer Pockmark as the grandson, but I ain’t be knowin’ the name of his grandfather.”
She turned to her fathers. They clearly knew who Ladon spoke of.
That stuff couldn’t be true, could it? . . . The beast hadn’t meant Plank’s actual wife, or Stubby’s actual father, had he? She didn’t even know Plank used to have a wife. He would’ve told her that.
Ebba’s chest tightened; her
fathers didn’t like to talk about their pasts and she’d never thought to pressure them, only because she’d never dreamed they were concealing anything important. All they ever said was they’d been an honorless bunch of pirates until the day they found her. They’d always say it with a bit of a grin on their faces, like their pasts were no big deal.
If Ladon was right, and from their reactions, she guessed he spoke at least some truth, then they’d lied to her. Her entire life.
Who was the man who did this to them?
Ebba strode forward and took the cook’s hand. “Peg-leg, who does Ladon mean?”
Grubby turned a tear-streaked face her way. Her breath caught at his vacant look and a lump rose hard and fast in her throat. He’ll destroy your mind. She gripped Grubby’s hand with her free one. Her fathers had told her Grubby was hit by a boom by accident. Was that even true? Or had Pockmark’s grandfather done it to Grubby on purpose?
“They’re keeping things from you, child,” sneered Ladon. “They’ve lied to you.”
“Shut yer ugly gob!” Ebba marched in front of her fathers, picked up a stone and threw it at the beast. It hit one of the snakes and the snake fell forward, dead.
“Shite,” she whispered.
Ladon screamed and stamped. The force spread out in a wave, throwing Ebba back into Stubby’s stocky arms. His roar was shaking the entire mountain, and the sound of loosened rocks careening down the cliff face below them was deafening.
Ignoring the crashing around them, Ebba turned and placed her hand over Stubby’s heart. “Did this man kill yer father, Stubby?”
Mouth pulled down, he nodded.
Ebba gasped. It was all true. How could this be? How had she never known any of these things?
“Who?” she pressed. “Ye need to tell Ladon. He’s goin’ to bring down the mountain!”
Stubby shook his head and placed her back on her feet. She wobbled and fell on her butt, staring up at her fathers from the ground.
Ebba-Viva Fairisles: Immortal Plunder (Pirates of Felicity Book 1) Page 10