The Fanged Crown

by Jenna Helland

  “Not yet,” Tresco said. “But I will. And then you’ll see some changes in Tethyr. But enough talk about such things. I’m going to let you and Cardew dine alone.”

  “Why?”

  “Cardew and I are going fox hunting tomorrow. We will leave early in the morning and return very late.”

  “Can I come?” Ysabel asked. “I love a good chase.”

  “Not this time. We have politics to discuss.”

  “You never let me go anywhere,” Ysabel pouted.

  “When I make the world safe for innocents like you, then you may walk freely,” Tresco promised her. “But until that time, I must keep you safe.”

  “There are safe places other than Kinnard Keep,” Ysabel pointed out.

  “It’s not just the temporal realm, child,” Tresco said patiently. “The darker realms conspire against us as well. They assaulted your mother, and I was powerless to stop them.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “In the days before your mother was killed, she talked about her death,” Tresco told her. “It was as if she knew it was coming.”

  “How could she have known?” Ysabel asked.

  “I don’t know, child. I wish I could have protected her. I know that I’ve guarded you carefully. It’s because I don’t want anything to happen to you the way it happened to your mother. But I must let you go into the world and marry. It would be wrong to keep you a child forever.

  “I have something for you,” Tresco said. “I planned to give it to your mother the night she died. I’ve kept it with me ever since, but I want you to have it.”

  Tresco opened his hand and held out an amulet. A delicate golden chain held a circular crest embedded with diamonds.

  “Oh, Uncle!” Ysabel cried, looking down at it. On the crest was the lithe, curving body of an ermine, the symbol of Kinnard Keep and Tresco’s ancestral house. “It’s beautiful!”

  Tresco looked away from the delighted Ysabel to the statue of Evonne, who had a knowing smile carved on her stone lips.

  “It is indeed,” he replied.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  2 Flamerule, the Year of the Ageless One

  (1479 DR)

  Chult

  The yuan-ti stripped the crewmates of their weapons and possessions and tied them together with a single length of rope, so they were forced to walk in a line like pack animals. Verran was in the front, followed by Kitto, Harp, and Boult. Each of the men was gagged, which meant that Verran and his unpredictable spells were going to be of no help to them.

  Across from the gate was a massive patch of the crimson flowers like the ones that Harp had blundered into the day before, and Boult noticed that the yuan-ti gave the poisonous blooms a wide berth as they headed into the underbrush. Surprisingly, Boult didn’t feel panic about the direction things had gone in, although he would miss his pipe and griffon-head tamper. The situation hadn’t played itself out yet. Somewhere in the jungle they had an unknown ally—the dwarf who had cast the ward of protection on the trees in the grove.

  Despite the rope on his wrists and the gag in his mouth, Boult felt triumphant. He’d learned a few things from that treacherous elf. Even if Cardew was following the orders of a patron, the Hero of the Realm was still in the thick of things somehow. Since the Children’s Massacre, Boult had devoted his life to exacting revenge on the man who had framed him for murdering the royal heirs. If being captured by crusty snake-faces was just another step on the path to vengeance, so be it.

  As he marched behind Harp of the Slumped Shoulders, Boult asked himself for the millionth time why he traveled with a man whose biggest talents in life were self-pity, self-torture, and self-delusion. That Liel was an evil, conniving bitch did not surprise Boult at all. That Harp had spent years of his life pining for the elf was a little more surprising. There was no doubt that she was attractive. But ever since Boult had begun to piece together the story of Liel, he doubted that the elf had ever loved Harp.

  Boult would never admit it to anyone, but it wasn’t compassion that drove him to help Harp in the Vankila Slab. Once he had figured out that Cardew hated Harp specifically, Boult reasoned that there must be ways to use the situation to his advantage. But if it wasn’t compassion that made him take Harp under his wing, it soon was guilt. As Harp endured session after session, every part of him systematically killed and brought back, Boult wondered if that were a punishment that Cardew would have imposed on Amhar—had Amhar not switched identities with the real Boult and escaped the Practitioner’s attentions.

  That was something that Boult liked about Harp—his formidable refusal to die. Hopefully that would serve them in the Chult forest, seeing how they were trussed up and helpless.

  The yuan-ti led them down a well-traveled path that headed north along the river gorge. As they crested a small rise and came out of the undergrowth, Boult felt droplets of water dampening his face and clothes. At first Boult thought it was raining despite the sun in the sky, but he realized it was mist rising from a waterfall that lay in front of them. The water rushed through a narrow channel dotted with boulders, over a sheer drop-off, and into a dark blue lake. The yuan-ti stopped and seemed to be arguing about something, giving Boult and the others a chance to stare in awe at the vista.

  The rushing river drained into a deep, round canyon so perfectly formed that the smooth cliff walls looked like they were shaped by godly design rather than the chaos of the elements. Like the primary directions on a compass, four waterfalls drained into the canyon. Boult and the others stood on the the southern edge at the top of the smallest waterfall, which was at most thirty feet high. The height of the waterfall on the northern side was much more dramatic. Foaming water blasted down the northern waterfall into a wide canal, one of many canals that ringed the flat ground at the bottom of the canyon.

  Beyond the northern waterfall, a range of six mountains blocked their view of the horizon. Huddled together in an unnatural circle, the mountains were like spikes jutting out of the tangled mat of jungle growth that covered the uneven landscape. The bare, silvery rock of the peaks made Boult think of sharp teeth taking a bite out of the sky. Dark gray clouds framed the tops of the mountains. Between the clouds, winged creatures glided on air currents, their shapes disappearing and reappearing in the mist.

  On the eastern side of the basin, a golden dome shimmered in the sunlight like a coin at the bottom of a reflecting pool. A city had once flourished in the valley, but it lay in ruins and was partially obscured by years of rampant growth. Only the gilded dome was untouched by the creeping vines and unblemished by either the passage of time or the ravages of the climate. The domed palace had not entirely escaped the jungle, however, and the earth had opened up and swallowed the lower floors. Once the ground had settled, the bottom of the dome was level with the jungle floor.

  Canals funneled the water from the four waterfalls into the mouth of a narrow gorge on the western side of the basin. The remains of a network of roads radiating out from the palace were visible between crumbling stone buildings. The city had been laid out in a series of circular sections with the walls and archways between the piazzas having since vanished beneath the jungle.

  Tired of waiting for something to happen, Boult turned his attention to his captors. The more humanoid yuan-ti, with their fancy golden anklets, seemed to be arguing with the legless slitherers about the steep path that started at the head of the waterfall and traversed the slope down into the basin. It would be a challenging walk for anyone with feet, and Boult couldn’t imagine the wide-bodied, heavily armored warriors making it along the narrow path.

  As the argument between the Jumpers and the Slitherers intensified, a spear suddenly appeared above their heads. Although it was aimed in his general direction, Boult stared at it quizzically as it seemed to drift lazily across the gray sky. There was nothing threatening about it, just a pointy stick with a single blue feather and a metal tip. It hit one of the Slitherers, clattering uselessly against its armor and falling t
o the dirt.

  Before anyone reacted to the spear, a much larger volley of darts whistled through the air. The cluster of tiny barbs soared out of the trees and hit the serpentfolk—but not Boult and his crewmates—with surprising accuracy. Even before all of the darts had found their targets, something short and wide barreled out of the underbrush, sprinting toward them at top speed and bellowing in a surprisingly loud and uncomfortably high-pitched manner.

  Boult was the first one to register that it was a dwarf—a hairy, squat, overly confident dwarf. Despite the spear, the darts, and the dwarf running pell-mell in their direction, the serpentfolk seemed unconcerned, as if none of these things were worth a reaction. One of the Slitherers reached up to brush off the clump of darts that bristled across its back, but there was no collective effort to address the pending dwarven assault.

  Boult was also the first one to register the words the dwarf was screaming, and when he did, he raised his eyebrows in surprise.

  “What’s he saying?” Harp mumbled around his gag.

  Boult would have been happy to tell him, but the gag was pressed against his tongue, the noisy dwarf was nearly upon them, and one of the serpentfolk finally drew its sword.

  “What’s he saying?” Harp mumbled again, louder that time, as he tried to enunciate around the cloth in his mouth.

  Knowing what was about to happen made Boult laugh. There was a good chance he would regret what he was about to do, but when such an opportunity presented itself, there wasn’t anything to do but take the plunge—literally. With a mighty leap, Boult sprang into the fast-flowing water just as the screaming dwarf reached them and pushed them into the river from behind.

  Being bound together with the same rope, the men were dragged into the current behind Boult. As the water closed over his head, he glimpsed Harp smacking face-first into the waves, a look of shock on his features. The rapids carried them to the edge, Boult’s head bobbing above the waterline. Their situation was going to propel Harp out of his inaction or it was going to kill them; either way it was better than where they’d been just moments before. Besides, Boult had a feeling it was going to be the ride of his life.

  Harp’s head popped out of the water near Boult just as they reached the edge. He was screaming something at Boult through his water-soaked gag, and it sounded like some unkind things about Boult’s mother. Boult gave him a wicked grin, and the world dropped away beneath them. It was an odd sensation, plummeting through the air surrounded only by an insubstantial film of water. Then he slammed into the lake, thankfully feet first.

  That part was less fun. The impact took his breath away. All four crewmates hit at roughly the same spot in the lake, so body parts got tangled up, and Boult couldn’t get his legs under him to kick for the surface. For a fleeting moment, Boult thought he was drowning. And then someone grabbed the back of his shirt and hauled him up to the sunlight. When they broke the surface of the water, the noisy dwarf who had jumped over the waterfall with them was whooping up a storm.

  “That’s the best idea you’ve ever had, Majida!” the dwarf yelled in Dwarvish. “I want to go again!”

  An older, female dwarf was waiting at the edge of the lake. She waded into the water and helped drag Boult and the others out. The male dwarf began sawing through their ropes with a dagger while she loosened their gags.

  “Damn, Boult,” Harp said, coughing up water. “Next time you want to kill me, just stab me in the heart, all right?”

  “Kitto?” Boult asked. “Verran? You all right?”

  The boys nodded. Verran was white-faced and shaky— and he looked a little angry. But Kitto looked amused, almost exhilarated, and Boult had the impression he’d go for another jump as well.

  “It’s not over yet,” the female dwarf said in Common, pointing at the top of the waterfall. The Slitherers had disappeared from sight, but two of the bandy-legged Jumpers leaped off the edge, moving easily between the slippery rocks that stuck out from the cliff-face. The water drenched the leather of their armor and rolled off their scales, but the hooked talons on their feet steadied them until they located the next rock. As they leaped down the waterfall, they moved like overgrown frogs hopping between lily pads, which might have been amusing except Boult was still attached to the other men, and none of them had any weapons to defend themselves from the serpentfolk.

  “Keep cutting,” Majida ordered.

  “What are you going to do?” Zo asked.

  “Just keep cutting,” she told him. Then she steadied herself and began chanting under her breath. The Jumpers had made it halfway down the falls, but the rocks were smaller there and the flow of the water was stronger, which forced them to slow their descent. Boult saw movement on one side of the bank as vines undulated like snakes under a charmer’s spell. When the first Jumper leaped to a lower rock, a vine lashed out and looped around its ankle. When it sprang from the rock, the vine yanked it backward and threw it off balance. Unable to adjust its body, it smashed headfirst against the boulders. The Jumper’s body hung limply on the edge of the rock before slipping headlong into the churning water.

  The other Jumper paused as its dead companion was swept down the waterfall, almost as if it were in shock that the dwarves had managed to take out one of its kin. Having seen how ineffectual the darts and spears were against the Slitherers when they were at the top of the waterfall, Boult suspected that the yuan-ti considered the dwarves more of an annoyance than a threat. Hissing angrily, the Jumper glowered down at Majida, who glared back defiantly.

  The Jumper leaped into the air, deftly avoiding another vine that cracked against the rock near its leg. In a flash of speed, it bounded to a higher rock and out of reach of Majida’s writhing vines. The Jumper coiled its body low and used its powerful legs to vault across the wide expanse to a muddy path on the side of the falls. Sprinting down the slope, the yuan-ti moved with startling speed. Just before it reached flat ground, it hurled itself into the air at Majida with its fangs and claws bared. Since Boult’s hands were still bound, he had the inclination to close his eyes. He couldn’t help Majida, and he’d rather not see the dwarf get her heart ripped out by the furious Jumper.

  But Majida didn’t flinch at the sight of the creature soaring through the air. Just as it was about to crash into her, she reached down and yanked a spear off the ground. The Jumper couldn’t change the direction of its flight and rammed into the spear. It punctured its throat and slid out the back of its neck. The creature’s weight knocked Majida flat on her back and its blood splattered across her face and clothes. The dead Jumper slid down the spear and landed on her.

  “Majida!” Zo said as he finished cutting through the soggy ropes. “Use a spell next time!”

  “Force was called for,” Majida said nonchalantly, shoving the Jumper off to one side.

  “We should hurry,” Zo told them. “The other Scaly Ones will be here soon.”

  “Why are you helping us?” Boult demanded crossly, rubbing his raw wrists. He wasn’t going anywhere until the jungle shaman was a little more forthcoming. Having seen her vine spell, he had little doubt that she was the one who had put the runes on the trees back at the compound.

  “What he means to say is thank you for helping us,” Harp said, bowing slightly. “I’m Harp. That’s Verran and Kitto. And that’s Boult. He’s always suspicious. Don’t take it personally.”

  “I am Majida,” Majida replied. “And that is Zo. We’ll take you someplace safe.”

  “Why did you cast the protection spell?” Boult demanded, crossing his arms. He had a right to be suspicious. There was more to the runes than Harp knew. “Why are you helping us?”

  Majida smiled faintly. “I heard your question the first time, Outsider. But I don’t have time to answer it. Unless you want to wait for more Scaly Ones?”

  “Let’s go, Boult,” Harp said. “You can get your answers later.”

  “She knows my name, Harp,” Boult said. “She wrote it in the runes.”

  “What? W
hy didn’t you tell me?”

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” Boult said sarcastically. “Somehow amid all the treachery and capturing, it completely slipped my mind.”

  “What do you want from Boult?” Harp questioned.

  “I wanted his help,” Majida said. She turned to Harp. “Although I was seeking Boult, I now find that I recognize you as well.”

  “Me?” Harp asked. “How do you know me?”

  “I know how you got those scars.”

  She took a stick from the ground and scratched a symbol in the dirt. It was a curving animal in a circle, and the sight of it made Harp go white.

  “That is the symbol of a man we call the Ermine,” Majida told them. “A powerful wizard and a cruel man. I think you both have seen it before.”

  “At Vankila, the Practitioner wore an amulet with that symbol,” Harp said quietly.

  Peering around Harp at the ground, Boult recognized it as well. “Nine bloody Hells,” he said.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  2 Flamerule, the Year of the Ageless One

  (1479 DR)

  Chult

  Having lived for centuries in the lethal jungle, the dwarves of the Domain had perfected survival tricks to give themselves an edge over the many predators who threatened their existence. Good mobility and escape routes were essential, so the dwarves cut secret pathways through the jungle. Hidden throughout the dense vegetation, the pathways tunneled through stinging thickets, walls of vines, stands of massive rhododendrons, and anything else the dwarves could use as cover from hungry eyes. If the path-cutters came up against a natural barrier such as a ridge or a river, they tunneled their way through or under it.

  Like a labyrinth hidden in plain sight, the paths wound in laboriously long routes so as to never cut across open ground. Designed to accommodate dwarves and nothing larger, most of the paths were narrow and low so the men had to stoop while they walked, which made progress slow and conversation easy.