The Fanged Crown

by Jenna Helland

  “My house is in order,” Kitto said. “I’m not scared to die.”

  “You don’t have a house, kiddo,” Harp said, smiling faintly.

  “That’s why it’s so easy to keep it clean,” Kitto replied.

  “Well, that water’s not clean,” Harp said. The niferns had grown to a dozen, trapping them against the palace door. “I’m guessing fighting for the causeway is our best option.”

  “What are they waiting for?” Boult asked.

  “Probably just sizing us up,” Verran prattled nervously. “There’s a type of wolf that hunts like that. They’ll surround you and just watch. They won’t let you leave, but it’s like they want to see what you’ll do. I don’t know. Maybe they’re not really that smart. There’s also a kind of beast—”

  “It’s all right, Verran,” Harp said gently. “We’ll get through this. It might be a good time to try one of your spells.”

  “I don’t think I can,” Verran said worriedly. “I feel something strange. It’s affecting my magic. If I do a spell, something awful might happen.”

  “Or you might melt some of those doggies,” Boult said. “That spell you did on Bootman would be useful right now.”

  “Or it might melt you,” Kitto reminded Boult.

  “Fine, Master Thief,” Boult said. “You have a better plan?”

  “No,” Kitto said honestly.

  “Captain Harp?” Boult asked. “How about some orders?”

  “Unfurl the sails?” Harp suggested. “Tack to starboard. Hold that wheel steady, boys.”

  “You are so useless,” Boult growled. “Me and Harp in front. Kitto and Verran get behind us.”

  Harp knew the maneuver that Boult was suggesting, but usually it was done with a larger number of soldiers. The ones in front would brace themselves behind the shields, while the ones in back used long weapons to stab the oncoming enemies. Following Boult’s orders, they grouped themselves into a defensive box to await the onslaught of the scaly dogs. Harp immediately noticed a flaw in the plan.

  “Um, Boult?” he said, keeping an eye on the niferns still milling at the top of the causeway. “You do realize that we’re holding the dwarven equivalent of frying pans and steak knives.”

  “Only if your hands are freakishly large.”

  “It’s stupid,” Harp said, standing up. “The boys are more likely to stab me in the back of the head than anything.”

  “What do you suggest?” Boult said.

  “No time,” Kitto yelled as the animals rushed down the road in unison. Kitto sheathed his sword, pulled his crossbow off his shoulder, and loaded one of the small bolts.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Harp asked, waving his dagger-sized blade at Kitto. “Get your sword out!”

  But Kitto leaped onto one of the pillars, curled an arm around it, and momentarily braced his feet against the square base. He jumped from the pillar onto the back of one of the niferns. Firing the crossbow directly into the back of the creature’s skull, he killed it instantly. As the body of the nifern slumped on the ground, the rest of the hissing niferns surrounded them like a flood. Harp kicked one in the head, sending it reeling. Dazed briefly, the animal scurried back into the fray. As Boult stabbed one in the throat, another swung its tail and forced Boult to drop to the ground to avoid the stinger. Three niferns leaped onto his back, biting into him while Harp and Kitto rushed to pull Boult back to his feet.

  “Verran, do something!” Harp called as he kicked another one in the jaw. Kitto sliced one across the back with his blade, but it rushed at him as if it didn’t notice the wound. Kitto nearly lost his balance as he scrambled backward, but Harp bent low and brought his sword up under the creature’s belly, slitting it open. He jumped back as the blood sloshed across the glass shards strewn across the ground.

  “I can try, but it might just make them enormous and invulnerable,” Verran shouted.

  “Try something!” Boult demanded.

  Harp and the others flanked Verran to keep the niferns away from the boy as he pressed his palms to his forehead, chanting under his breath. The niferns formed a tight circle around them, ready to rip the men to shreds as soon as they ran out of fight. Verran dropped his hands, and a yellowish haze began rising from the ground.

  “Verran!” Harp exclaimed, looking at the mist around his boots. “What is that?”

  “I don’t know! It wasn’t what I was thinking about at all!”

  The haze drifted across the ground and pooled around the niferns’ paws. As if the yellow clouds distracted them, the niferns stopped their assault and snapped at the wisps of yellow air. When the haze reached the height of the niferns’ faces, the animals began to wheeze. One by one they dropped to the ground as their sides labored up and down with shallow breaths. They shuddered and were still.

  “It’s poison,” Verran said. “Fast poison. That’s good!”

  “Except it’s not,” Kitto said, pointing to the crest of the causeway where more niferns were stalking back and forth aggressively, safely out of range of the low-lying poisoned air.

  “If we run, we’ll get eaten by the reinforcements,” Harp said.

  “And if we stay, we’ll choke on our own vomit,” Boult said, looking down at the haze that had reached his thighs.

  “Up the pillars,” Kitto urged, climbing up to the top of the square base while the others followed. It got them off the ground, but the haze was still rising quickly.

  “I told you it could go bad,” Verran said.

  “It could be worse,” Harp said.

  “At least we’ll be unconscious when they eat our bodies,” Boult said.

  “Harp! Do you hear something?” Kitto asked, twisting his body around to look at the front of the palace. “What?” Harp asked.

  “I hear mewling, like a kitten,” Harp said.

  “I don’t hear anything,” Boult said. “Except the sound of my upcoming death.”

  Harp jumped off the pillar and waded through the haze to the palace door.

  “What are you doing?” Boult shouted.

  “Liel!” Harp yelled. “Liel, where are you!”

  “Harp, there’s no one there,” Boult said.

  “Liel!” Harp shouted again. Above him on the balcony, a cat with cream-colored fur and dark brown spots had appeared on the top of the stone railing. “It’s Harp! And Kitto!”

  The cat jumped off the railing and disappeared from sight. Kitto jumped down and hurried through the haze after Harp.

  “Are they both insane?” Boult asked Verran.

  But then a figure appeared on the balcony above them. When she leaned out over the railing to look down at the crewmates, her coppery hair glinted in the sunlight, and her face was familiar to them all.

  “Liel!” Harp said joyfully.

  “Throw me a rope!” she called.

  Kitto reached in his backpack and pulled out a coil of rope. With one skillful toss, he threw the rope up to her waiting hand. Quickly, Liel looped one end around one of the pillars, knotted it tightly, and threw it back down. Verran and Boult left their pillar and waded through the haze that nearly reached Boult’s chin.

  “Go!” Harp told Boult. The dwarf scaled the rope quickly and hauled himself over the railing on the balcony. Kitto scampered up the rope after Boult as easily as if he were climbing a shroud rope on a sunny summer’s day.

  “Your turn,” Harp said, pushing Verran to the rope. Verran pressed his feet against the stones, leaned back until he was almost perpendicular to the ground, and walked up the front of the palace. Harp followed him, enjoying the newfound strength in his arms and clearness of his lungs. Clearly Majida had healed more than his skin. Harp pulled himself onto the balcony, dusted himself off, and grinned at Liel. When he’d seen her in the cavern by the river, he’d hesitated, not knowing what to do with himself, wanting to touch her but too unsure to reach out. He wasn’t going to make the same mistake again.

  “Hey, you,” Harp said, putting his arms around her and looking down
into her eyes.

  “Hey, yourself,” she said, slipping her arms around his waist and tipping her head back to grin up at him.

  “You still have a pointy little chin,” he said. “And pointy little ears.”

  “And you still talk too much,” she told him.

  “Did I tell you I loved you?” he asked.

  “No, you never got around to it.”

  Harp shook his head ruefully. “My mistake.”

  And he kissed her.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  3 Flamerule, the Year of the Ageless One

  (1479 DR)

  Chult

  Boult cleared his throat. “I’m happy you kids are happy, but don’t we have things to do? People to see? Artifacts to steal … I mean, recover?”

  Harp kissed Liel one last time before he reluctantly broke away. “You haven’t changed at all.”

  “But you have,” Liel said. “Or rather, you changed back.”

  “I hate to break up your reunion, but Verran’s haze of death is still rising,” Boult told them.

  “Actually, it’s not,” Verran said defensively, looking over the railing at the dead niferns slumped on the ground. “It looks like it’s going away.”

  “Liel, that is Verran,” Harp said. “You know Kitto, of course.”

  Liel embraced the boy. “Kitto, it’s been so long.”

  “Good to see you, Liel,” Kitto mumbled shyly.

  “And that is Boult, a friend of mine from Vankila.”

  Boult and Liel shook hands. After spending time with the husk, Boult seemed a little disconcerted at meeting the real Liel, but Majida had vouched for the elf and that would be enough to convince Boult to trust her. Verran, however, wasn’t as understanding.

  “We’ve already met you,” Verran said curtly. “We met your husk.”

  Liel turned white. “Oh no. What did it do?”

  “Nothing,” Harp said quickly. “There was little contact, and we learned the truth soon enough.”

  “We have to stop him,” Liel said angrily. “Stop him from making more husks and stealing the Torque, and whatever else the bastard is planning.”

  “Cardew?” Harp asked.

  “Cardew’s just a puppet,” Liel said bitterly. “He has a patron. A man named Tresco, who has been orchestrating events here in Chult.”

  Harp felt his heart beating rapidly in his chest. Just like that, his torturer had a name. The man who had chained him down and mutilated him had an identity, just like anyone else. When he thought of the gray-haired man as Tresco, his memory seemed less potent somehow. Harp had the irrational thought that it was easier to kill a man with a name.

  Or at least it was easier to track him down and then kill him.

  “Are you all right?” Liel asked, taking his hand. She was watching Harp’s face closely.

  “Tresco is the man who tortured me at Vankila,” Harp said. “We knew him as the Practitioner.”

  “I knew that Tresco ran … affairs at the prison, but I didn’t know he did it himself,” Liel said, laying her hand on Harp’s arm.

  “Wait,” Boult said. “Tresco Maynard? He was Anais’s son’s tutor.”

  “At the Winter Palace?” Harp frowned.

  Boult nodded. “It was Ysabel, Cardew, and Tresco that survived.”

  “So, maybe Cardew’s not just a puppet in this particular scheme,” Harp said. “Maybe he’s been a puppet all along.”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised,” Liel said. “Tresco wants the throne in the hands of a ruler he can control. One who’ll chase anyone not human from Tethyr and give him all the power he wants. That’s not a plan that happens overnight.”

  “Why does Tresco want the Torque?” Kitto asked.

  “I’m not sure exactly,” Liel told them. “It suppresses magic somehow.”

  “That doesn’t seem very useful,” Verran said dismissively.

  “Majida told me that the Torque shields the wearer. But from what I’ve overheard it sounds like it prevents spells from being cast,” Liel said. “It’s possible whoever wears the Torque can cast spells, but no else can. That seems very useful to me. And to Tresco.”

  “Am I feeling the effects of the Torque?” Verran asked. “It feels like I wouldn’t be able to cast a spell, even if I wanted to.”

  “I think so,” Liel said. “I feel that too.”

  “Then we must be close to it,” Boult said. “Let’s quit chatting and get it.”

  “Can you take us to the Torque?” Harp asked.

  “Unfortunately, I can’t,” Liel said. “Come and see.”

  A crystal clear lake blocked the path to the Torque. As if it were a giant cup filled with water, the vast hall under the golden dome was completely submerged. They’d entered the hall from the balcony and stood on a whispering gallery ringing the perimeter of the cylindrical palace. Directly under the dome, the gallery was the highest point in the hall, but the water lapped gently under the walkway, making it feel more like a dock than a lofty perch.

  “As you can see, there’s a water problem,” Liel said.

  The dome was completely smooth on the outside, but he inside had slender golden trusses made from twisted metal that radiated from its apex down to the gallery where they stood. The base of the dome was so close that Harp could reach up and touch the metal, which had been enchanted to permit light to permeate its surface. The golden sheen radiating from the dome gave off heat, and the hall was as warm and as bright as if they were standing directly under the sun. Where other buildings were crumbling, the dome was solid, and kept the debris from outside out of the water that filled the hall.

  Harp leaned over the crumbling railing and peered down into the water. It was clear enough to see all the way down to the blue and white floor of the hall. From where he stood in the gallery, he could just see the top of the arched doorway and the glitter of silver stones that had been set into it, a mirror image of what they had seen outside when they stood in front of the palace.

  “No wonder the Scaly Ones didn’t want anyone opening the door from the outside,” Harp said. “They’d get a face full of water.”

  “They were serious about protecting the Torque,” Boult agreed. “Even if we can get rid of the water, is there any way down from the gallery?”

  “There’s a ramp over there,” Liel said, pointing across the water to a stone ramp that arched from the gallery to a large gilded pillar in the center of the hall. The ramp spiraled down the massive pillar, which was inlaid with a geometric pattern of turquoise and gold tiles. The ramp continued down through a circular opening in the floor below until it disappeared into watery darkness.

  “Can either of you cast something and drain the water?” Harp asked Liel and Verran, who shook their heads.

  “I’ve tried it,” Liel told him. “Nothing happens. It feels so dead and cold.”

  “Majida said the Torque was below the entrance hall,” Harp said. “Can we just swim down?”

  “I don’t think we can hold our breath that long,” Verran said.

  “Have you searched for a lever or a switch that might empty the water out of the hall?” Boult asked Liel.

  Liel shrugged. “Thoroughly, but that doesn’t mean much in this place. There’s nothing obvious, but the sarrukh were clever architects. It could take a lifetime to find.”

  “It’s all we can do. Let’s spread out,” Harp said. “Kitto and Verran, check along the railing. Boult and Liel, check the walls. I’ll go over the floor. Go carefully. Anything that looks strange, call it out.”

  Mosaics adorned the wall of the whispering gallery, and the intricate tile patterns were unblemished despite the years since their creation. In a display of skillful arti-sanship, the rich array of colors illustrated the history of the sarrukh. They didn’t seem to tell a sequential history, though. Harp passed one panel that depicted an army of serpentfolk sweeping across a grassy meadow like a plague of locusts. The next panel showed basking serpentfolk surrounded by piles of gold in a verd
ant jungle.

  As Harp progressed down the gallery, the mosaics became more grisly, as the sarrukh chronicled their fondness for mass slaughter and mayhem—chained humans being decapitated, chained humans clearing rocks from a pit, and chained humans hauling massive stones up a mountain under a swirling gray sky while the overseers whipped them. Harp stopped paying attention to the walls and focused on searching the floor. But Boult couldn’t take his eyes off the macabre scenes plastered on the wall.

  “Those are pleasant,” Boult said sarcastically.

  Boult continued down the curve of the wall until he came to a panel that showed dwarves in bondage being led out of a cave by serpentfolk. A line of dwarf heads were mounted on pikes along a rocky ridge. Dwarf men were laid out on the ground in a line as yuan-ti prepared to roll a massive stone over them and crush them to death.

  “Boult!” Harp called. He could see a thin, silver cord nestled in between two rows of tile and obscured by grit and dust. “I think I’ve found something.”

  Walking back to Harp, Boult leaned down and picked up a hunk of rock from the floor.

  “What are you doing?” Harp asked. Boult tossed it up in the air and caught it as if to size up the weight of the stone.

  “Expressing my disgust,” Boult said vehemently, hurling the rock at the mosaic of the subjugated dwarfs.

  There was a loud pop as the rock smashed into the mosaic. But instead of a crashing noise, they heard a short rush of air, like a sharp intake of breath. Then the mosaic rippled the way water does when a pebble is dropped into it. Harp only had time to register the strange undulation of the stones before the colorful tiles exploded off the wall in a spray of ceramic slivers and thick white dust. Like a wall of knives, the shards blasted into the air as Boult scrambled backward away from the projectiles. With no target to hit, the shards splashed harmlessly in the water.

  “Everyone all right?” Harp asked after a moment of shock. Boult had been the closest to the explosion, but he had backed far enough out of range to avoid getting sliced. Liel, Verran, and Kitto had been on the other side of the gallery and safely out of range.