by Robin Jarvis
The boy merely grinned in answer.
“Or cake, perhaps?” he continued. “Nothing like newly baked cake or fresh walnut bread!”
A faint smile appeared on one of the guard’s faces as something dredged itself from the forgotten depths of his mind.
“Wormies,” he whispered. “Me liked wormies in milk.”
His comrade stared at him in astonishment, until he too remembered something.
“Juicy beetles,” he sniggered. “Me likey—them was crunchy.”
Gamaliel took a step closer. “And who were you then?” he asked. “What were you? What were your names?”
The sluglungs closed their great yellow eyes.
“Wartfoot,” one of them breathed.
“Holloper,” added the other.
And, at that, Gamaliel snatched the silver fire devil from Finnen’s hand and pushed it into the nearest sluglung’s face, then into the other.
“So be as you were!” he cried. “Wartfoot and Holloper, come back. Come back!”
White and silver flames shot out from the talisman and the guards let out a terrible wail, throwing down their swords and flinging themselves upon their hideous faces.
The cold fires snaked around their wobbly limbs, and their saggy skins glowed brightly as they began to change.
Finnen whistled in amazement and looked at Gamaliel as if seeing him for the first time, while Kernella tossed her head and pretended that her brother had done nothing remotely clever.
The enchanted flames whirled around the stricken forms of the sluglung guards, and their shapes twisted and stretched as their bones clicked and creaked, solidifying into their old positions.
But there was no time to stand and watch.
“Listen,” Kernella cried. “Down there!”
The urgent trampling of many splayed feet came echoing up the tunnel from the direction of Meg’s throne room.
“They’re headed this way!” Finnen said quickly.
“We’ll be caught!” the girl howled. “Oh, Gamaliel, it’s all your fault! You can’t magic all of them back to what they were!”
Finnen leaped between the white fires that crackled around the transforming guards. “No need,” he promised her. “They won’t catch us. We won’t be here. Finding these two should stall them for long enough.”
“Long enough for what?” Kernella demanded, bewildered and afraid. “Where are we going?”
“Just follow me,” the boy replied.
The transforming flames were dwindling. The guards had grown twice their size and were staggering to their feet when Gamaliel and his sister darted past them.
“Hurry!” Finnen called from the path ahead. “Nearly there.”
“Nearly where?” Kernella shouted.
“Shut up and go after him!” Gamaliel told her.
Behind them the last tongues of flame were licking about the guards’ shoulders and, with a crackle and sputter of tiny stars, were extinguished.
The figures shook themselves and gulped in surprise.
They were now two wizened, gray-haired spriggans. Dazed and disoriented, they gazed at their surroundings. Then they inspected the rusted mail that clad them and picked up their swords, having no memory at all of the time they had spent in that subterranean world.
“Is that you, Wartfoot?” one of them ventured.
The other felt his face to make sure.
“I reckon so,” he replied. “Who’s you then?”
“It’s me, Holloper.”
“Gah, that ain’t you. Or, if it is, then you’ve aged a hundred year or more since we went roving in the forest.”
“Speak for yourself, you old grizzle beard!”
Before they could quarrel any further, they heard the clamor of the approaching sluglungs, and in that same moment, thirty of Peg-tooth Meg’s guards came rushing into the tunnel.
“What in the name of the Hollow Hill are they?” Wartfoot shrieked.
“I doesn’t know!” Holloper squealed. “Them’s uglier than a klurie’s armpit!”
The sluglungs glared at them, and their wide mouths fell open in surprise.
Spilling into the narrow way, they surged around the spriggans. Their large round eyes were bright with doubt and questioning stares.
“Get away from me!” Wartfoot snapped when a pawing hand came reaching for him.
“Thissum big bad,” the sluglungs hissed. “Bring Megboo, bring Megboo!”
Three of them scurried away, but Wartfoot was determined not to stay a minute longer.
“Let’s get out of here!” he yelled, hacking his rusty sword right and left.
Immediately, the weapon was knocked from his grasp as ten sluglungs sprang forward and jumped upon him, pinning him to the ground.
Holloper screeched as thirteen more rushed him, glued his arms and legs against the wall with their treacly hands, and tore his sword away.
“Save me!” he bawled. “In the name of Rhiannon, spare me!”
At the sound of that name, the sluglungs growled, and their eyes shone more dangerously than ever.
“Ragaabah!” they snarled. “Must not speak the nameless one, must not speak the that name—is forbidden. Galaak ugnuk.”
“Who says it’s forbidden?” Wartfoot yelled as he struggled against the sticky hands that held him down. “The High Lady rules over all Hagwood. Who dares forbid Her glorious name to be spoked?”
“I do!” barked a stern voice, and into the tunnel came Peg-tooth Meg.
Her ugly face was a mask of anger, and her large eyes glittered with displeasure as she viewed the two captured spriggans.
“Stripe me violet!” Holloper yowled when he saw her. “It gets worse. Look at the moldy old mug on that fright!”
Meg crept forward and stared at them. “Never has this happened before,” she said in a voice quivering with barely controlled rage. “Never have any of my subjects changed back to their former selves. How can this be? No one is permitted to return to his old life. It is against my law.”
“They’re all crackers!” Wartfoot bawled. “We’ve fallen into a loon pit! Save us! Rhiannon, save us!”
Hearing that name again, the sluglungs bared their teeth, and Meg commanded one of them to hurry to the chamber of the dark waters.
“Fetch me the goblet,” she ordered. “They must drink the greasy black juice a second time.”
The guard scampered away up the steps, only to return a few moments later with a woeful look on his face.
“Broke!” he gibbered. “Is broke and smashed, no dark waters no more, no shobble and mooty, not never again! Mugjug umkak!”
The other sluglungs squealed in horror, and Meg’s face grew fierce.
“Who has done this?” she snapped. “Who is guilty of this evil crime? Who … ?”
She paused and her eyes flashed as the answer struck her.
“The little shobblers!” she spat. “Where are they?”
The sluglungs gasped around her.
“They must be found!” she screamed. “Sound the alarm! Beat the shield, summon the others. We must find the wicked shobblers, snare them!”
Raising her arms, she strode through the tunnel, and her guards swarmed after her.
FINNEN AND THE OTHERS HAD reached the jetty when they heard Peg-tooth Meg’s furious cries.
“They’re hunting for us!” Kernella exclaimed fearfully. “We’re done for!”
“Not yet we’re not!” Finnen vowed.
Kernella looked down at the boats moored at the jetty and shook her head.
“We’ll never be able to paddle those,” she protested. “They’re too big. We couldn’t even lift the oar!”
Finnen laughed. “I wasn’t thinking of using a boat!” he told her, and, without saying another word, he leaped from the jetty into the underground stream.
Kernella backed away. “I’m not freezing myself to death in there!” she complained. “There must be another way out!”
“You know there isn’t!�
�� Finnen called, spluttering in the icy water. “We swim to that shaft and climb up the rope there. It’s our only chance!”
The werling girl shuddered and stared miserably at the uninviting stream.
“Go on,” Gamaliel urged behind her.
“I’ve already done the almost-drowning-and-being-soaked-to-the-skin thing once this night,” she grumbled.
Suddenly the tunnel was in uproar as Peg-tooth Meg and her sluglungs came rampaging in.
“Jump!” Finnen yelled.
That was enough for Gamaliel. Not wasting another moment, he hopped from the jetty and, catching hold of his sister’s hand, dragged her with him.
With a startled shriek and a great splash, Kernella toppled into the water.
“There they are!” Meg cried, and at once she realized where the werlings were headed. “They must not escape. Catch them!”
Kernella would have liked to smack her brother for pulling her into the stream before she was ready, but she decided that would have to wait. She immediately began kicking her legs and swam after Finnen.
Gamaliel was not a strong swimmer, but he thrashed at the water for all he was worth. Glancing back he saw the ledge was now teeming with sluglungs, and then the underground country resounded with a deafening boom as the shield in the cavern of the dark waters was struck with the great hammer. The thunderous gonging blasted through every grotto, and from every dank hole Meg’s subjects came whooping and screaming.
Peg-tooth Meg’s realm was roused as never before. Yammering hordes came flooding into the tunnel, brandishing their ancient weapons and baying for vengeance with bloodcurdling screeches.
Rearing up, her joints and bent back clicking and cracking until she stood as straight and as tall as her damp-warped body would permit, Peg-tooth Meg stared at the werlings as they labored in the stream, and her face grew cold and cruel. The warmth she had felt for them disappeared, and when she spoke, her croaking voice was resolute and filled with hatred.
“They have betrayed my lovely dark,” she uttered, “and they refuse Meg’s friendship. So be it. They must not crawl back to the above lands. No one up there can know of Meg’s cozy caves; this they were told, and there can be but one penalty for such filthy treachery.”
Stepping into her boat, she gripped the sides and, in a loud vengeful voice, cried, “Stop them! Kill them!”
With one tremendous shout, the countless sluglungs plunged into the stream, and it boiled and foamed as they flailed their limbs in pursuit of the werlings.
At a signal from Meg, six more jumped from the jetty and into the water around the boat. Reaching up with their stretchy arms, they seized hold of the wooden craft and with powerful froglike flicks of their legs propelled it swiftly after.
Finnen had already entered the darkness of the tunnel that covered the stream when the sluglungs leaped from the ledge. Kernella was not far behind, but Gamaliel could not catch up with them.
Hearing the frenzied shouts and bellows of the sluglungs behind him, he struggled to swim faster.
The stream was clogged with Meg’s guards. Wobbling arms smashed into soft heads or became tangled with nearby limbs, and feverish kicks pounded into outraged faces directly behind. All was chaos, and many wild fights erupted midstream as fists squished into jellylike jaws.
In this way Gamaliel managed to pull ahead, and by the time Meg sailed up to quell the battling rabble, he was already through the stretch of darkness and had reached the low archway that led to the bottom of the well shaft.
One last spurt and he shot through.
The curved stone walls opened up around him, and he caught his breath as he gazed upward to the small circle of light far, far above.
Finnen was standing upon the ledge, helping Kernella from the water, and Gamaliel joined them quickly.
“What … what is this place?” he panted. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“No idea,” Finnen answered. “It leads to the outside world though, and that’s all that matters.”
“Which part of the outside world?” Kernella asked.
“Like I care!” Finnen cried.
“It’s a long way up,” Gamaliel added.
“Then you have to climb faster than you ever have in your life,” Finnen told him. “Those things can run up walls as quick as I can race up a tree.”
Hurrying to where the large wooden bucket lay on its side, he grasped the stout rope it was attached to.
“You first,” he said, swinging the slack toward Kernella.
The girl had been rifling through her wergle pouch, searching for her token of squirrel fur. As a squirrel she could fly up the rope in next to no time. With a groan she remembered that she had dropped it on the cliff top in the chamber of the dark waters and had to settle for a bundle of mouse fur instead.
“Last one up is a sluglung!” she said with a laugh, before wergling into a very wet rodent.
At once she ran up the rope, leaving Finnen and her brother behind.
“You next,” Finnen told Gamaliel.
The boy hesistated, but the din of the sluglungs was growing nearer. They were rushing to the shaft with terrifying speed. Their furious yells echoed bansheelike around the walls, and Gamaliel did as he was told.
Up the rope he clambered.
Finnen waited a moment, looking anxiously around him. But it was not just the fear of the sluglungs that worried him. He had heard strange noises issuing from high above. It was a horrendous squawking, like the attack cries of many wrathful birds.
He could not begin to guess what that may mean. What if they escaped one threat, only to emerge into even greater peril?
Nervous and afraid, he began to climb after the others.
Several moments later, the first of the sluglungs came gushing into the well shaft, churning up the water as they leaped clear and clung to the walls with their rubbery hands.
“Ragaabah!” they seethed, staring up at the rope and seeing the werlings already some distance above.
With their large amber eyes gleaming, they began scaling the curved walls, while every instant that passed brought fresh numbers bounding from the water. Soon the shaft was choked with their gelatinous, slimy bodies, and then, under the archway, Peg-tooth Meg came creeping.
“Higher,” she called to her subjects. “Do not stop till you have caught them. Even if you have to blink in the hated sunlight, bring them back to Meg or cut them down where they stand. None above must learn of the under country.”
The well trumpeted with their blaring death threats, and Meg crouched down, staring at the frothing, surging water. Dipping in her long fingers, she traced a curious sign in the splashing cold, and a strange smile lifted the corners of her wide large-lipped mouth.
Kernella’s mouse was scooting up the rope, leaving the others far below. Her brother huffed and puffed his way up while, under him, Finnen Lufkin spurred him on with encouraging words.
Finnen knew the sluglungs were surging closer, rapidly closing the gap between them. The racket of their cries pounded in his ears, and he longed for Gamaliel to hurry.
“That’s right!” he called. “Come on, you can do it, up and up. Don’t look down, keep on going. Don’t stop, not for anything!”
The circle of daylight was growing steadily larger above, but, up there, he could see many winged shapes zooming across the bright sky. What new hazards were they heading toward?
Flicking the hair from his eyes, he twisted his head around and looked below.
The shaft was full of sluglungs. He could see their bulging eyes shining up at him. They were everywhere, clinging impossibly to the stones, even slithering up the rope; and every one of them was hungry for his death. Most were grasping their swords and spears, while others clamped long rusty knives in their slobbering mouths. It was a hideous sight that would have daunted any other werling, but Finnen gritted his teeth and renewed his calls to Gamaliel, telling him to hurry.
And then he faltered and almost lost his
grip on the rope.
Far below, beyond the clustering, jostling bodies of the pursuing enemy he saw something that made his heart judder and his blood turn cold.
Meg had summoned a flood. Beneath the sluglungs, the water was rising.
CHAPTER 19 *
THE WITCH'S LEAP
THE HIGH LADY’S STALLION GALLOPED through the forest like a November gale.
Rhiannon Rigantona’s virulent mind was scalded with doubt and fear. The face of that filthy little wer-rat who had escaped her by climbing into the Crone’s Maw burned in her thoughts. Was that the secret place the Wandering Smith had chosen to hide the golden casket? Even now the loathsome creature could be turning the enchanted key and be looking upon her beating heart. Any moment could see her clutch at the empty space in her breast and fall lifeless from the saddle.
Never had her sense of dread been so acute. Why had she not dispatched her spies to explore those squalid caves? The hunt for the casket had ranged throughout the rest of Hagwood. They had searched everywhere else—why did the fools not think of there?
A frown spoiled the fair symmetry of the High Lady’s face. No, they had not searched everywhere; there was one other place in the forest that no one would ever dare go, and even she had not set foot there for over three hundred years. But that morning her consummate anxiety was driving her there—to the Witch’s Leap.
Beneath gnarled branches of ancient trees, she spurred her horse, plowing through deep piles of the previous autumn’s leaves. Along neglected overgrown paths choked with thistles and nettles it bore her, until eventually the ground began to rise beneath its hooves, and then the stallion tossed its head and its nostrils flared.
The flaming eyes rolled in their sockets, and its ears pressed flat against its skull. It would proceed no farther. The sweat frothed from its jet-black coat, and the High Lady knew that it was pointless to try to goad it. No amount of whip or lash could impel her charger up that steep, forgotten track. It would rather be flayed alive than brave another step. The terror of Black Howla still lay heavy upon that place, and so Rhiannon dismounted and tethered the horse to a twisted stump.
“You are blameless in this,” she told the shivering beast. “No other animal would dare take this road. You are wise to shrink from it, and I only tread it because I must. Stay, await me here, and take your ease—if ease you can find in this benighted spot.”