The Fanged Crown

by Jenna Helland

  “What is that?” Verran asked, his eyes wide and fearful. “What makes the ground shake like that?”

  “Let’s get out of the tree before we’re tossed out,” Harp said. They hurriedly gathered their things and made their way back to solid ground.

  They left the tree crown and climbed back onto the rocky plateau. As they climbed to it, two unseen adversaries faced off somewhere in the direction of the river. They could hear the sounds of ripping skin, snarls and gnashing, and giant bodies flattening the landscape as they fought.

  “What’s that sound?” Verran asked. “Is it coming toward us?”

  “Verran!” Boult snapped. “Why do you keep asking us? Am I not standing beside you? Do you see a spyglass in my hand?”

  “You don’t need to bite his head off, Boult,” Harp chastised him. “What, a little rumble in the jungle makes you crabby before your morning cup of tea?”

  “If I had a cup of tea in front of me, I wouldn’t be in the stupid jungle,” Boult shot back just as the sound of a bone snapping echoed across the clearing. As the thrashing between the beasts intensified, the birds in the trees screeched a harsh cacophony of warning calls. Kitto covered his ears as an unnatural screech of pain pierced the air. Then something very large fell very hard, shaking the ground again, and it was quiet.

  “Did it die …” Verran started to ask, but he caught Boult’s glare and shut his mouth.

  Harp motioned for the others to follow him and scrambled through the undergrowth and down a rocky slope in the direction of the river that he’d seen the night before. As they neared the river, the ground leveled out, and he could hear the rushing of water. They came out of the trees at the edge of a small valley and the place where one of the monsters had met its end in the morning’s battle. A gargantuan lizard, easily twenty-five feet long from the tip of its spiked tail to the front of its fanged maw, was sprawled across the ground. Its pebbly yellow skin had black stripes branching out from its spine, and given its muscular haunches and tiny front legs, it must have walked on its hind legs.

  “If that’s not at the top of the food chain, what is?” Harp said as they walked down the slope to the corpse of the monster. The monsters had felled several of the large trees that ringed the valley, and as Harp crawled over one of the massive trunks, he saw claw marks slashed deep across the bark. When they reached the corpse, they stopped and stared in wonder at the massive creature splayed out in the crushed and bloodied underbrush.

  “I thought they were nightmares,” Kitto said quietly.

  “What were, Kitto?” Harp asked.

  “The monsters I saw last night,” Kitto told him.

  “No, I saw them too,” Harp said as he circled around the lizard. Bony frills stuck out around the base of its skull, which was twisted sideways on its neck. Gaping wounds bisected the lizard’s back, and thick blood still oozed out of the claw marks, although the creature was decidedly dead.

  Verran was standing near the lizard’s head with a thoughtful look on his face and his head cocked as he inspected the lizard’s blank yellow eyes. Each was bigger than a man’s head and had a dark, vertical pupil that reminded Harp of a snake’s. In death, a thick, cloudy shroud covered the eyes, and buzzing insects were amassing along their edges.

  “Whatever killed it had to be bigger,” Verran said. “Look at the way the neck is snapped.”

  “And why didn’t it stay to eat it?” Boult asked, swiping an insect away from his face. Carrion bugs were moving into the sticky gashes and buzzing over the bloody ground.

  “It could have been a purple worm,” Verran suggested. He sounded almost excited at the idea of seeing monsters he had only heard about. “Or maybe a basilisk. Did you know it can petrify you?”

  “I know that I don’t want to spend another night in the jungle,” Boult said. “Let’s get going.”

  “A hydra!” Verran continued. “What if it was a hydra? The only way to kill one is to cut off all of its heads. Did you know that?”

  “If we run into a hydra, I’m going to kill you, Harp,” Boult said.

  “If we run into a hydra, I’m going to kill myself,” Harp told him.

  They had just reached the other side of the depression when Kitto turned around and looked behind them with a puzzled expression on his face.

  “What’s wrong?” Harp asked him.

  “What’s that noise?” Kitto asked. “Is that the water?”

  Harp heard it too, and it wasn’t water. It was a punctuated clicking that sounded like something he’d heard before, but he couldn’t quite remember when. Before his mind could settle on what it was, it grew louder. A large ant appeared at the top of the slope on the other side of the depression. About the size of a dog, with curved tusks like a boar, and a segmented body. The ant hesitated for a moment. Its beaked jaw clicked together rapidly, sending an almost metallic sound ringing through the trees.

  “Why is everything huge in the jungle?” Boult asked.

  “At least there’s just one,” Harp pointed out. He was disconcerted by the enormity of insect too. But before his words were fully formed, another ant appeared on the horizon followed by two more. Boult glared at Harp accusingly.

  “You can’t hold me responsible … ” Harp began as a flood of the shiny black insects surged over the slope and skittered across the ground. Before the men could make a move, the ants engulfed the lizard’s corpse until none of the yellow and black skin could be seen through the writhing ants’ bodies.

  “We’re all right,” Harp said in relief. “They just want the meat.”

  “Look at that!” Verran gasped as a much larger ant made its way down the slope and into the depression. The size of a small horse, the ant’s reddish shell was the shade of rusted metal. Like the smaller ants, the queen ant had an armored body and spindly legs that looked too skinny to hold up the bulk of her body. Unlike her soldiers, she had the tattered remains of papery wings. The queen didn’t participate in the feasting frenzy but instead skirted the edges of the swarm as her bent antennae quivered rapidly.

  Flashes of white appeared through the swarming mass of black, and Harp studied it curiously for a few moments. Then he understood exactly what he was seeing—the white was the lizard’s bones picked clean by the ants. Looking at the horrified faces of his companions, they had all reached the same conclusion. Even a lizard that large wasn’t going to satisfy the ants, not when there was something else available, namely three men and a dwarf. As they turned to run, the queen ant swung her head in their direction with her beaked mouth clicking open and closed. As if of one mind, the army of ants skittered across the clearing toward the crewmates, leaving only a pile of bare bones in their wake.

  “To the river!” Harp shouted as they sprinted across the uneven ground toward the sound of rushing water.

  But when they came closer, they saw the river was far below them at the bottom of a narrow ravine. The fast-flowing water had carved a channel deep into the earth, and there was no obvious route down the dirt banks. Jumping was possible, but it would be easy to break a leg on the narrow lip of dry ground at the edge of the water, or get swept into the rushing current of the river. They ran north along the ravine with Kitto leading the way as he leaped effortlessly over the clumps of ferns and rocks scattered on the ground. The ant soldiers seemed to have fallen back.

  “The bastards are flanking us,” Boult shouted. Through the gaps in the trees on their left side, Harp could see that Boult was right. A line of ants had moved ahead of them on their left, forming a half-circle around them. Once the ants overtook them, they would be trapped against the edge of the river with no means of escape.

  “Since when are ants so smart?” Verran gasped as he ran beside Harp. Harp was equally shocked that the ants could execute such a trap, but he was breathing too hard to respond. As they ran, Harp saw a tree with vines dangling down to the ground. Up a tree was better than over the edge of the ravine, he thought. At least it would give them time to come up with a stra
tegy of their own.

  “Climb!” Harp shouted, grabbing a vine and pulling himself up as his feet scrabbled for traction against the bark. Boult was close behind him, while Kitto and Verran scurried up another tree that was across the clearing.

  “Can ants climb trees?” Verran called from the other tree.

  “Not sure,” Harp gasped, as he perched on one of the branches and surveyed the ground below. These trees weren’t as tall as the ones they’d slept in the night before, and the vines weren’t as thick. At the moment, the ants weren’t climbing; they were just milling around the bases of the trees. Boult and Harp climbed to the widest branch and waited to see what the ants would do. In the moment of calm, Harp realized he was trembling, not only from fatigue but from fear as well. As a younger man, he’d been stronger and faster than most men his size and went into battle with no hesitation. There had been too much comfort in his life in recent years. His body didn’t remember how to react to danger.

  “Look at the big ant, Harp,” Boult said after a moment. “I think it’s giving orders to the smaller ants.”

  “How can you tell?” Harp asked. The red queen paced back and forth across the clearing below them, moving between the two trees where the crewmates had taken refuge.

  “Just watch,” Boult said impatiently.

  The queen moved through the swarm, its jaws clicking loudly. It would pause, change directions, and resume the rhythmic noise again. Harp recognized a pattern in the clicks—Boult was right. The queen was telling the soldiers what to do. The smaller ants began to methodically move up the trees. They didn’t climb quickly, but in answer to Verran’s question, they could definitely climb trees.

  “Kill the big ant,” Harp urged.

  Boult pulled his crossbow off his back, loaded a bolt, and fired it at the queen. The bolt hit square at the base of her neck, but it bounced off her shell harmlessly. Boult tried two more times, and while his aim was dead on, the shell was too thick to penetrate.

  “She’s got to have a weak spot,” Boult said in frustration. “But I’m not hitting it from this angle.”

  “What do you need?” Harp asked.

  “The underbelly,” Boult said. Immediately Harp began to move down the trunk and grabbed the longest vine.

  “Don’t you dare!” Boult shouted when he realized what Harp was intending to do.

  But Harp was already sliding down the vine. “If I can’t flip the big one over, then I’ll lead her to the cliff,” he called. “All of you fire at once, and we’ll knock her over the edge.”

  “Get back here!” Boult shouted. “The small ones will eat you first!”

  But when Harp dropped to the ground, it was the queen ant that charged him while her troops continued their methodical climb up the trees. The queen was so fast that Harp had to scramble backward to get away from her, tripping over the underbrush and falling on his back. The ant lunged at him, her tusks slicing through the air and her beaked mouth easily capable of snapping his head off his neck. Harp twisted out of the way, scraping his chin against a rock and getting a face full of mud. Pushing himself to his feet, he pulled out his sword and ran to the edge of the ravine.

  “Maybe flipping her isn’t such a good idea!” Harp yelled.

  “Get her between you and the cliff,” Boult shouted.

  But that was easier said than done, and the ant seemed to have the same idea about knocking Harp into the river. Every time Harp tried to switch their positions, the ant lunged, forcing him to go on the defensive. Harp got the unsettling impression that she was toying with him, and as soon as she tired of the game, he was going to be the one squished on the ground.

  “Last try!” Harp yelled. “When I go down on the ground, shoot at the same time!”

  “No, Harp!” Kitto shouted.

  Harp dodged as the ant lunged at him. With a burst of speed, he sprinted away from the ant to the edge of the ravine. Planting himself a few paces from the drop-off, he let the queen charge him. In the instant before she smacked into him, Harp dropped backward onto the ground, raised his sword, and plunged it into her underside just as she barreled over him.

  When they saw Harp fall backward onto the ground, Kitto and Boult fired arrows that struck the ant’s back, but they bounced harmlessly off the hard shell. Instead, it was the ant’s own momentum that propelled her to the very edge of the ravine. The creature struggled against gravity, her legs skittering for a hold on the muddy bank before she flipped over the edge, taking a smattering of loose earth, Harp’s sword, and Harp with her.

  “Harp!” Kitto screamed, as Harp disappeared off the edge of the ravine.

  “Hold him, Verran,” Boult shouted. Verran grabbed Kitto’s arm, but the boy jerked it away.

  Kitto started down the trunk, and Verran grabbed his elbow again. Kitto glared up at him furiously and pulled away.

  “The ants will leave,” Verran assured him. “And we’ll go after the captain.”

  Kitto looked doubtful, but he hesitated. Just as Verran said, the rank-and-file ants didn’t know what to do without their leader. The ants on the tree trunks dropped to the ground and milled around in confusion, eventually wandering in different directions into the underbrush. A few walked directly off the edge of the ravine and into thin air, following the path of the queen. As the horde dispersed, the crewmates scrambled down the tree trunks, but the few remaining ants didn’t seem to notice them.

  Kitto ran to the edge where Harp had disappeared, dropped to his knees, and peered over the side. “Do you see him?” Verran asked.

  Boult stood at his shoulder. “It’s not a vertical drop, Kit. He could have grabbed onto something. And I can’t see his body.”

  “Let’s find a way down,” Verran said. A few paces up the river, a faint path traversed the bank down to the river. Halfway down the trail they could hear Harp calling to them over the rush of the river.

  “See Kitto?” Boult said. “You’re not going to get rid of him that easily.”

  Kitto’s head was tipped forward, so his shaggy black hair covered his face, and he didn’t say anything until they reached the bottom of the ravine. Harp was waiting for them by the river, wincing as he rubbed his shoulder. His face was muddy, and blood from his chin had dripped onto his sweat-stained shirt.

  “Are you all right?” Kitto asked.

  “Hah, stupid ant,” Harp said. “Lost my sword, though.”

  “Bad luck,” Boult said.

  “Maybe not,” Harp said, pointing downriver. “I found something else.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  30 Kythorn, the Year of the Ageless One

  (1479 DR)

  Chult

  Set into the face of the riverside bluff, the wooden door was half-covered in flowering vines. The edge of the river was just paces away from the door, and there were watermarks halfway up the planks as if there had been recent flooding. A narrow path, just wide enough for a single person, led from the door to the river.

  “Doesn’t look much like an ancient ruin,” Boult said, looking at the sturdy metal hinges and doorframe set into the bank. Between Bootman’s attack and the ants, Chult’s surprises were nothing to underestimate. The door was one more thing. What hid behind it?

  “There’s something here,” Verran called from where he’d wandered down the bank. A short slope led down to the river, and a ring of three boulders formed a pool of calm water. Judging from the smattering of tracks along the slope, it was a popular watering hole for animals.

  “I’ve never seen half these tracks before,” Verran said, kneeling down and poking at the ground with a stick. “See those hoof prints? I’d say they’re wild boar. But look, they’ve got an extra toe.”

  “What do you know about wild boar?” Boult said dubiously.

  Verran looked embarrassed. “My father liked to go hunting. Before he died, he used to show me things.”

  Boult glared at Harp, who avoided his gaze. It would take an act of outright treachery for Harp to see that there was somet
hing suspicious about a boy who could unintentionally melt the skin off a man. Boult wasn’t fooled by Verran. He might act like he was lost and confused, but he was taller than Harp and built like a blacksmith. A youth didn’t have muscles like that unless he had done something hard to earn them.

  “I can see … six different cat tracks,” Verran said excitedly. Kitto knelt down beside Verran to inspect the mud.

  “I used to have a cat,” Kitto told Verran.

  “So did I,” Verran said. “It was a fat tabby.”

  “Mine was gray,” Kitto said.

  Boult couldn’t believe what he was hearing. At this rate, the boys would be skipping stones and laying out a picnic. Boult looked at Harp incredulously and saw that Harp was trying hard not to smile.

  “Is that what you wanted to show us, Verran?” Harp inquired gently.

  “There are human footprints. There,” Verran told him.

  Boult looked closer and saw a series of tracks that were unmistakably from a barefoot humanoid, and a smallish one at that.

  “Another dwarf?” Harp asked. “Like the one we saw in the hollow?”

  Verran shook his head and crouched down for a better look. “I don’t think so. Usually they have a lower arch and the bone below the big toe sticks out more. Look, they go back up.” Verran followed the tracks up the muddy slope in the direction of the door.

  “And just what was young Master Verran doing tracking dwarves through the wilderness with his father,” Boult said in a low voice.

  Kitto frowned. “Verran’s all right,” he said.

  “Yeah, Boult,” Harp said. “Keep your wits about you. Maybe it was perfectly innocent.”

  “Sure, they were all going to frolic together like wood nymphs,” Boult snapped.

  “Can’t a man just stalk a dwarf for the joy of it?” Harp said. “Why do you have to make it sound all nefarious?”