“You know, I’m a grandpa now. Little tadpoles swimming around, just a few days old, already predicting the weather,” said Gilbert’s dad with a sneer. “You, on the other hand, couldn’t see a storm coming if the rain was pouring right down on your head.”
Aldwyn felt sorry for Gilbert. Not that he’d ever had the experience, but he imagined that to be told off by one’s father in front of one’s friends had to be about the worst thing for anybody’s self-confidence. He wanted to tell the mean old frog to back off but then thought better of it.
“You know, life isn’t just about looking into the past and future,” said Gilbert, too afraid to meet his father’s gaze. “It’s about living in the moment and appreciating what’s right in front of you.”
“Who filled your head with such silly notions?”
“Marianne. The smartest person I know,” said Gilbert proudly, before turning to Skylar. “No offense.”
“I had hoped you would have grown up by now,” said Gilbert’s dad, deeply disappointed. “But I’m not sure you’ll ever learn to be like one of us.”
Aldwyn thought that maybe being an orphan wasn’t such a bad thing after all.
Gilbert looked as if he was ready to head back out the way they’d come. But as he turned, Skylar put a wing on his shoulder and cleared her throat.
“Forgetting something?” she said to him quietly.
“Right,” he said, before turning back to his father. “Dad, we need your help. Our loyals have been kidnapped by Queen Loranella, and we don’t know where to find them.”
Gilbert’s father looked at his son, as if staring deep into his soul.
“Give me a moment to stir the waters.”
Gilbert’s dad picked up a nearby stick and used it to make circles in the still pool. Immediately, pictures began to take shape on the surface, but they were flashing by too fast for Aldwyn to understand. Then one image, lasting longer than the others, caught his eye: Jack, Marianne, and Dalton were chained to the same wall as in Gilbert’s vision, only this time Queen Loranella stood across from them. She was sending bolts of electricity from the tips of her fingers at Jack, but they fizzled upon making contact with his protective forcefield. Then the picture vanished as quickly as it came, blending into more pictures. Aldwyn felt a lump in his throat bigger than any hair ball. Jack was in danger and there was nothing he could do.
Gilbert’s dad continued to watch intently, the images reflecting in his eyes. A chorus of voices emerged from the water, their words overlapping and tumbling over one another. Then the pool’s water went still again: the viewing was complete.
“They are being held in the dungeon of the Sunken Palace,” said Gilbert’s dad with a voice that was full of authority but without emotion.
“Thank you so much,” said Skylar. “I don’t know how we can ever repay you.”
“But there is a guardian,” the old frog continued. “The seven-headed Hydra of Mukrete stands in the way. If you wish to make it safely past you’ll need to put the beast to sleep with a special powder that can only be made by the Mountain Alchemist.”
Aldwyn sneaked a look at Skylar and Gilbert. He wasn’t surprised to see that Gilbert was frightened by what his father said, but to find Skylar staring blankly into space with equal fear made him realize just how daunting the quest was that lay ahead. Saving their loyals seemed more impossible than ever.
“You should go now,” said Gilbert’s dad. “The pool has no more to reveal to me. How this will all end is up to the three of you.”
And with that, the old frog turned his back on the group, not even saying good-bye to Gilbert as he resumed his meditation. Aldwyn could see that Gilbert was hurt, but now was not the time to make things better between father and son.
Aldwyn, Skylar, and Gilbert left the Quag and passed back through the village.
“I know that must have been hard for you,” said Skylar, “but it had to be done.”
“You did good, Gilbert,” said Aldwyn, giving his companion a pat on the back.
The tree frog brightened slightly, but his father’s coldness had left him looking weary.
Gilbert couldn’t leave without saying a final farewell to his mom. He found her sitting in a leaf hammock, rocking a tadpole in her arms and singing it a lullaby.
“‘Hiding high upon its head, draped in white shimmering gown, lie the keys to the past, in the snow leopard’s crown,’” she whispered to a melody.
“Ma, I gotta go,” said Gilbert quietly, trying not to disturb the baby frog.
“Do you remember when I used to sing this to you?” she asked, clearly not picking up on the urgency in his voice. “You would fall asleep in my arms even when you were a full-grown frog.”
“Mom, not now,” said Gilbert, embarrassed.
“I think the songbirds used to sing us the same one at the Aviary,” said Skylar, remembering. “Only when I was little, of course.”
“I packed you some flies for the road,” said Gilbert’s mom, handing Gilbert a sack made from a hollowed-out flower bud. He looked inside and saw that it was stuffed with gnats and maggots. She then turned to Skylar and Aldwyn. “Take care of him. And make sure he washes his feet twice a day—”
“We’re leaving,” said Gilbert, cutting her off. “I love you.”
He gave his mom a hug, slipped the grass straps attached to the flower bud over his shoulders like a backpack, and the three familiars set off again. When they reached the muck near the log they had floated in on, Phillip was waiting.
“So long, Gilbert,” said his bigger and stronger younger brother. “We’ll be keeping an eye on you in the waters.”
Phillip laid down a leaf over the muck and gestured for Aldwyn to cross it to the log.
“Ladies first,” he said.
“I’m a boy!” exclaimed Aldwyn. “What is it with you frogs?”
Then his ears perked up at the sound of feet splashing through water. They weren’t the light footsteps of tree frogs, either.
Up ahead, running through the knee-deep waters beneath the cypress archway, were a half dozen of the queen’s soldiers, led by the one with the battle-axe that the familiars knew all too well. His lightning-singed scalp was unmistakable.
“How did they find us?” asked Gilbert in a panic.
The question was answered when Aldwyn spotted a spyball flying alongside one of the guards. The winged eye stared at the familiars.
“By the order of the queen,” growled the half-bald soldier, “you are to come with us at once.”
The guards pulled out their blades, ready to take the familiars by force.
Then, from the trees, it started raining frogs.
A hundred of Gilbert’s brothers, sisters, and cousins leaped from the foliage, bearing sharpened bamboo spears and bolas made of vine and rock. Before the soldiers knew what had hit them, they were attacked from all sides.
“Engage hand-to-hand combat,” ordered Phillip, who had jumped to a nearby branch and was now hanging upside down.
The tree frogs were tiny but fearsome warriors, amphibious assassins with acrobatic skills and deadly precision. It was evident to Aldwyn that this was an orchestrated attack, one that could only have been planned with the aid of foreknowledge.
Phillip dropped to the ground and barked another command to his troops: “Full-scale assault!”
In a flash, two human soldiers went facedown in the water. Their helmets had been pulled from their heads by the first wave of frogs, and then they were knocked unconscious by hundreds of tiny stones launched via slingshots.
“Let’s go!” shouted Gilbert to Aldwyn and Skylar. “They’ve got our backs.”
Aldwyn and Skylar raced for the log, but the soldier carrying the battle-axe was closing ground on them quickly. There was no way they could make it. He was coming too fast.
“Aldwyn, do something!” shouted Skylar. “Use your telekinesis.”
Aldwyn didn’t know what to say. It was proving awfully difficult to tell Skyla
r and Gilbert he had no talent whatsoever—especially in these moments of crisis, when his fellow familiars were counting on him.
The soldier continued toward them, axe raised overhead.
“What are you waiting for?” asked Gilbert.
“I’ve never done this running through swamp water before,” said Aldwyn, desperate. “It throws off my mental balance completely.”
Then, something miraculous happened: a branch on the ground began to rise on its own, directly in the path of the charging soldier. Skylar, Gilbert, and Aldwyn all watched over their shoulders in awe. Aldwyn couldn’t believe what was happening. Even though the guard saw the floating branch, he couldn’t slow down fast enough and tripped over it, falling flat on his face.
The familiars reached the log safely and began pushing it into the water.
“You did it!” exclaimed Gilbert.
“You didn’t have to wait until the very last second, you know,” said Skylar. “But a success all the same, I suppose.”
Aldwyn was amazed himself. He certainly didn’t think he was responsible for the levitating branch. And then his doubts were confirmed when he saw the true cause of his “telekinesis.” Four chameleon crabs were carrying the tree branch along the edge of the water toward the dam they were building. They had been invisible just moments earlier due to their temporary camouflage spell. And lucky for Aldwyn, Skylar and Gilbert were too busy pushing the log across the mud to notice the now visible crabs. His secret would stay a secret a little longer.
As the familiars struggled to pick up speed, the battle-axe-wielding soldier was back on his feet, heading straight for them. Once again, he lifted his weapon over his shoulder, but before he could strike, the double-sided blade was ensnared in vines and yanked from his hand. The three looked back to see who was disarming their attacker—Gilbert’s father!
“Dad?” Gilbert asked, surprised to see him in the fray.
“Go,” the old frog said. “Your loyals need you.”
Aldwyn and Gilbert paddled as fast as they could. Behind them, Gilbert’s dad swung his bamboo fighting stick. He was defending Gilbert and the other familiars with fierce paternal protection, striking the soldier in a flurry of painful blows to the throat. Watching him, Aldwyn reconsidered his earlier judgment about being better off as an orphan. Once again, he longed to know his own father and mother.
As the army of tree frogs overwhelmed the rest of the soldiers, the familiars paddled off into the cool evening.
“Aldwyn, you really came through for us,” said Gilbert.
Aldwyn forced a smile, knowing that his deception couldn’t be maintained forever. He’d be called on to use his telekinesis again, and no chameleon crabs would be around to bail him out. Perhaps next time, Jack’s life would hang in the balance.
“Yeah, you really saved the day,” added Skylar. “Just in the nick of time, too.”
There was something in the way she said that last part that made Aldwyn think she wasn’t totally convinced.
They kept paddling, watching as the sky changed colors. The sun was setting, and only two days remained before Kalstaff’s protective spell would fade, leaving their loyals defenseless against the evil queen.
10
VASTIA’S MOST WANTED
The tip of the enchanted quill glided across the parchment, filling in forests, gorges, and deserts alongside the previously drawn map to the Weed Barrens. Aldwyn watched as Scribius inked in the words Peaks of Kailasa above a cluster of mountaintops, and Sunken Palace in the low grasslands at the top of the page. The familiars had steered their log ashore at the first sign of dry land, and here on the banks of the Daku swamp they sat beneath the early evening moonlight, charting a new course.
“Well done, Scribius,” said Skylar as she examined the path set out for them in black and white.
Aldwyn glanced over her shoulder at the parchment and realized just how far the lands of the queendom stretched.
“Wow,” he said. “Vastia sure is…vast.”
“We’ll continue north and look for a bridge or a shallow place to walk across the river,” said Skylar, drawing the tip of her wing along the wrinkled creases of the parchment, and then stopping before a tri-peaked mountain at the center of the cluster. “The Mountain Alchemist resides here, high in the Peaks of Kailasa. Long ago, he fought against the Dead Army beside Kalstaff and Loranella. Back then he had a name: Yonatan McCallister, grandson of the great diviner, Parnabus McCallister. Yonatan was wizarding royalty, a five-time champion of the Warlock Trail and undefeated in dozens of disenchantment duels. But after he was blinded during the Uprising he became a recluse. He has lived alone ever since, more interested in matters of the Tomorrowlife than the politics of Vastia. He chose to abandon his given name and is now known simply as the Mountain Alchemist.”
“Then why would he help us?” asked Gilbert.
“I’m not sure that he will,” she answered. “But we’ve got to get that sleeping powder, and unfortunately he’s the only one who can brew it.”
Aldwyn tapped his paw impatiently as Scribius completed the map with a final stroke. Then the animal trio set off on the next leg of their journey.
Gilbert took in one last whiff of home and looked back at it fondly as he left the swamp behind for a second time. Aldwyn, however, was relieved they were on the move again: he wouldn’t miss the stench or the chiggers that had been nipping at his ankles since their arrival. It wasn’t all bad though. Seeing where Gilbert came from allowed him to get to know his new friend better. At the same time, it made him realize how much remained a mystery about Skylar.
Off they went, with the black night sky serving as their ally, hiding them from whatever predators were lurking in the windswept plains. And while they didn’t come face-to-face with any of the wild inhabitants of these badlands, they certainly felt their presence. At one point they stepped into what appeared to be a small crater, only to realize it was a footprint so large a cow could have fit inside. They all wondered if this was the imprint of a fully grown gundabeast. If it was, it would take more than the Council’s beast tamers to push their kind back to the Beyond. Later they crossed a long path of burned and crushed grass that looked like the aftermath of fire and a stampede. Skylar recognized the trail as that of the lightmares, a noble breed of horses that lived far in the east, high in the Yennep Mountains. They made rare visits to Vastia when they felt cracks forming in the magic energy of the land. When, a little later, Skylar heard the distant wail of a wolverine pack on the hunt, she told Aldwyn and Gilbert that it would be wise to quicken their pace, given the vicious carnivores’ supernaturally enhanced senses of sight, smell, and hearing. Queen Loranella’s job was to keep Vastia safe, but the lands were clearly more dangerous than ever. Could this be another part of her evil plan?
It wasn’t long before the familiars were staring down at the colossal width of the Ebs once more. This was a different portion of the river, and to Aldwyn’s eye, the swath of clear blue water was many times broader than it had been in the south. No man-made bridge could stretch across the river Ebs here, but they had to cross it. Beyond the wide belt of blue, far away in the distance, towered the Peaks of Kailasa, their white caps reaching up to scratch the sky. Somewhere in those mountains, they would find the Mountain Alchemist, who was as yet unaware of the vital part he would play in saving Vastia once again.
“I don’t suppose the two of you are up for a swim,” said Skylar.
Aldwyn’s eyes went wide. He had treaded through the sewers of Bridgetower for scraps of chicken that had washed down the drains, but as far as he was concerned, swimming was not what cats were made for. Crossing the Ebs would have been a daunting task even for a skilled swimmer. Gilbert, too, looked nervous, even though he had spent his childhood breathing underwater.
“The current would carry us straight out to sea,” said Gilbert. “That’s assuming the river dragons don’t eat us first.”
Skylar reconsidered. “Okay, so maybe that was a bad i
dea.”
Aldwyn scanned the moonlit river for another way. A safer way. A saner way. A moment later, he spotted the solution.
“You may not have to get wet after all,” he said to Gilbert. “Look out there.”
Skylar and Gilbert saw where Aldwyn’s paw was pointing: right in the middle of the river was a raft the size of a house. Horses and people stood atop its wooden planks as it drifted slowly through the darkness toward the far shore.
“We need to find out where that ferry left from,” said Aldwyn.
They began walking once more, this time hugging the river until they arrived at the outskirts of a town consisting of no more than a dozen buildings. The isolated trading village sat on a peninsula. The Ebs flowed by on the west; to the east, it branched off into a smaller tributary, the Enaj, which stretched through the less traveled flatlands on Vastia’s border.
As the trio continued to follow the river into the town, they came upon a small landing where the ferry could be pulled up against the shore for loading and unloading. A timber ticket booth stood empty now with a sign propped up against its shuttered window: ferry crossing—next boat departs at sunrise.
They looked out at the ferry, growing smaller as it sailed toward an unseen dock on the other side.
“Let’s find a safe place to sleep until morning,” said Skylar. “Then we can return here for the day’s first passage.”
Lanterns lighted the way to the little settlement’s center. Aldwyn, Skylar, and Gilbert followed the lit path between a tannery smelling of dried hides and a cobbler shop with boots and shoes displayed in the window. The unpainted buildings looked like they had been built quickly. When the group emerged onto the town’s main thoroughfare, an unpaved dirt road, Gilbert let out a terrified shriek. Aldwyn spun around to see Queen Loranella, standing tall and motionless before them.
Aldwyn froze—but then immediately relaxed again: this was not her evil majesty in the flesh. No, this was a mere portrait of the queen, painted with loving detail, but lifeless nonetheless. It was hanging on the outside wall of a small inn.
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