A Hint of Hydra

by Heidi Lang

  “Oh, sorry. This might have been one of those things I was supposed to keep to myself.” Wren sighed. “I never know which things are secret and which aren’t. Mama is always telling me to keep my mouth shut, but it’s hard to do all the time.”

  “No, I’m glad you told me.” She wasn’t, though. Slipshod should have told her. Suddenly she was angry. “I guess I’m going hunting alone.”

  “Oh good,” Wren said quickly. “I’ll come with you.”

  “Er, what?”

  “I want to test out those harnesses, make sure they’re working properly for you. This is a perfect night to try them out, right?”

  “Um, maybe we should wait?” Lailu’s stomach ached just thinking about going back in one of those death traps. “I mean, Slipshod would want to be here. Plus it’s dark out.”

  Wren drooped faster than a cake in the sun. “I understand. I know I got the generator to work all on my own, but I don’t blame you for not trusting me with the harnesses.”

  “It’s not that.”

  “Really? So you do trust me?”

  “Of course.”

  “Then let’s go! I mean, unless you’re just scared.” She frowned. “I hope you’re not scared. I told Mama you were the bravest person I know.”

  “Really? You really said that?”

  “Of course.” Wren’s smile was back. “So, what are we hunting? Griffins again?”

  And Lailu knew she was trapped as surely as if Wren had thrown a net around her. “No,” she sighed. “Not griffins. If they’re smart, and they usually are, they’ll have moved farther from town. But when griffins abandon a nesting spot, often raptierols will move in. They’re not as dangerous, but if left alone, they breed like mad.” And they tasted delicious panfried, baked, broiled, or mixed into a good pasta. Lailu realized she was already mentally planning a menu around them. Maybe hunting with Wren at night in a harness wouldn’t be so bad after all.

  27

  HUNTING IN HARNESSES . . . AGAIN

  Icy wind beat at Lailu and Wren as they dangled in their harnesses from the side of the cliff. The chill air felt like thorns on exposed skin, a feeling Lailu was no longer used to. Back at home in her mountain village, this would have been a warm night, but here in Twin Rivers, this cold air promised an early, bitter winter.

  “O God of Cookery,” Lailu whispered, “what was I thinking?” Hunting at night in a harness with only a young scientist for backup? This had to be her stupidest idea yet. Even worse than bargaining with elves . . .

  Well, maybe not quite that bad. And certainly not as bad as owing Greg a favor.

  “This was my third-stupidest idea yet,” Lailu decided.

  “What’s that?” Wren called, her voice snatched away by the howling wind. “You’re ready to go?”

  “What? No, I’m no—ahhhhhh! ”

  Wren slapped a button on the front of Lailu’s harness, and Lailu shot down the cliff. All the flailing of her arms did nothing to slow her down.

  Wren fell next to her, her laughter tearing through the night.

  The harness jerked and thrummed like a living thing, and then it finally caught, slowing Lailu’s descent, then gradually stopping. Lailu hung there for several long seconds trying to teach herself how to breathe again. She could feel the straps digging into her thighs and around her waist and tried to take comfort from that. She was secured. She wasn’t going to fall out. The rope that looped through the front of her harness and attached to the box on top of the cliff was thick and sturdy and not going to break. Probably. Which was a good thing because they were hanging about halfway down the cliff, just above the first of the old griffin caves.

  The moon wasn’t quite full; it would be on the Seventh Night of Masks, two nights away, but it was large enough to bathe the landscape in light. Nothing stirred except for a gentle breeze.

  “Ready to lower?” Wren whispered. Her hair was a giant red tangle around her face, her green eyes wide behind her magnifying goggles. “Ready to hunt?”

  “Just about.” Lailu loosened her knife in its sheath. “I don’t hear anything, so there’s a chance the raptierols haven’t moved in yet. But if they have, they can be dangerous, okay? They have sharp claws, and they move quickly.”

  “Okay,” Wren said.

  Lailu paused. Wren looked so young. “Maybe you should wait here.”

  “No, I want to come.” Wren smiled. “Don’t look so worried, Lailu. I’m prepared. Now, you just tap this button when you want to lower, and you should be able to manually let yourself down. If you start falling fast, it has an auto-lock that should stop you, like what happened when we first jumped.” Wren indicated the button on the front of their harness belts.

  Lailu bit her lip. There were an awful lot of shoulds in that explanation. She eased back in her harness and put her feet against the wall, like she was sitting in a chair. Gripping the rope firmly in one hand, she carefully pushed the button, then walked her feet slowly down the cliff as the box secured to the top spooled her rope out a few inches at a time.

  This was definitely better than the free fall she’d been doing earlier. Lailu still didn’t like it, but at least her heart wasn’t leaping out of her throat. Clearly Wren knew what she was doing when she fixed these.

  Lailu dropped down until she was peering into the caves.

  Empty.

  A few griffin feathers and a pile of bones were the only indication that these caves had ever been occupied.

  “Hey, I’m not sure there’s anything here,” Lailu said.

  Wren frowned at the cave, then began fiddling with her harness.

  “What are you doing? Wren? Wren!”

  But it was too late. Wren’s harness lowered, the rope developing enough slack to drop her to the cave floor. “I just want to look around,” she called, pulling something out of one of her bulging pockets. She shook it, and light streamed out, illuminating the long cave. The left side veered out, disappearing into blackness, and Lailu hoped nothing hid in that tunnel.

  Lailu looked down at the ground far, far below. So far it was impossible to see it clearly. She thought she caught a gleam from the river twisting below, and she shivered. “I think we’ll need to hunt elsewhere. There are lots of things in the Velvet Forest.”

  “Nah, the elves are in there, and they’ve already told me what they’ll do if they catch me in their territory. Besides . . .” Wren grinned. “This is much more interesting.” She held up a skull.

  A human skull. Picked completely clean of flesh, the bone blackened.

  Lailu’s stomach plummeted faster than any harness. A griffin wouldn’t have been able to do that. There were only a few creatures that could achieve that level of destruction and would find an abandoned griffin home an acceptable den, and none of them would be good to face here, unprepared.

  She had to get Wren out of there, now.

  Scratch. Scratch. Scratch.

  The sound of heavily taloned feet scraping against stone echoed down the recesses of the tunnel. Each noise was like a knife sawing at Lailu’s nerves. “Wren, get out of there, now.”

  “Just a minute,” Wren said, tucking the skull away in her pack.

  “Wren!” Lailu hissed, already fumbling with her harness, but it wouldn’t work. The lock mechanism had jammed so she couldn’t lower herself.

  She popped the leg straps open and undid the belt, leaping into the cave just as the creature turned the corner.

  28

  REFLECTION

  The second Lailu’s feet hit the cave floor, she dove at Wren, knocking her backward. A blast of white-hot fire fizzled through the air, just barely missing them.

  White-hot fire . . . combined with the scratching sound of chicken feet.

  Lailu went cold. She knew exactly what they were dealing with: a cockatrice.

  A distant relative of the fyrian chickens Lailu hated and feared so much, the cockatrice was something no chef would hunt without months of preparation and reliable backup. One look direc
tly into a cockatrice’s bloodred eyes meant instant death. Not looking meant risking a blast of fire so hot, it could melt rock.

  Wren started to turn.

  “Don’t look!” Lailu grabbed her and pulled her to the cave entrance. “Its gaze can kill.”

  Wren’s eyes widened behind her goggles. She flicked a switch, and her goggles went completely dark. Lailu didn’t have any sort of magic goggles, but even without looking, she knew the cockatrice was close. She could smell it, the musty stink of chicken mixed with the sulfuric smell of bad eggs.

  These beasts were extremely rare, as one of the few things that could kill a cockatrice was the gaze of another cockatrice, so they avoided each other’s company and did not often breed. A mixed-up combination, they had the body and teeth of a small, sinewy dragon with the head and legs of a giant, vicious chicken.

  Lailu wrapped herself around Wren like a backpack and pulled her off the cliff edge.

  The air sizzled above them as another white-hot blast of fire missed them by inches. Lailu punched the button on the front of Wren’s harness to belay them back up the cliff, the harness buzzing angrily beneath the weight of two people. But it had to work. If it could hold Slipshod, it could support the weight of two girls.

  “Can you make it go faster?” Lailu panted as they inched up.

  “Not safely,” Wren said. “And where’s your harness? You’re choking me.”

  “If I was choking you, you wouldn’t be able to say that I was choking you,” Lailu said, but as they left the cave entrance below them, she adjusted her hold on Wren. Just a little, though. She was very aware of the fact that only her grip on Wren saved her from the very long drop beneath her. “And I had to jump out of my harness. I couldn’t get the button to work.”

  “Oh no!”

  “What? What?” Lailu frantically looked around.

  “That means I didn’t get something right when I fixed it.” Wren sighed and pushed off against the wall with her feet, guiding them up. “I’ll have to take another look. At least it didn’t burst into flames on you.”

  “Was that an option?”

  “Well . . . sometimes my inventions have a tendency to explode.”

  “Good to know.” Lailu made a mental note to never again use one of Wren’s inventions. Then she thought of the power generator in her wine cellar, and her blood ran cold. “Er, that power generator thing you made? Should I be concerned?”

  “Oh no, that’s pretty solid. I barely tinkered with Mama’s design at all.”

  Somehow that was not completely comforting.

  “Also, I think it’s coming after us.”

  “What?” Lailu twisted around, almost losing her grip on Wren as the cockatrice launched itself from the cliffs below them. “O God of Cookery,” Lailu breathed, turning away from it. She’d been counting on the fact that they rarely flew after prey. But she knew there would be no escaping it by going back up. Wren would have to unclip from her harness, and cockatrices were notoriously fast over short distances. They’d never be able to outrun it—or its fire.

  Her mind moved at breakneck speed. Only blades made from forged iron heated by phoenix fire and doused in the western fairy springs of Mystalon were able to slice through a cockatrice’s scaly hide; Lailu’s chef’s knives wouldn’t stand a chance.

  No, the surest way to kill a cockatrice was with its own formidable weapons. Get it to somehow roast itself, or trick it into seeing its own reflection.

  Lailu thought of the river down below. In most parts, the water would be too rough, too choppy. But there was that one little outlet, the place where Slipshod had fallen. Maybe that would be calm enough to act as a mirror. But would the sky be light enough? The sun wouldn’t rise for another hour.

  It didn’t matter; the cockatrice was gaining on them, and they were out of other options. “We need to go down.” Lailu reached around Wren and switched the lever.

  They dropped immediately, dropped without any resistance at all, dropped like they were free-falling and would never stop. Lailu didn’t even have time to scream. She could feel the heat of the cockatrice as she and Wren shot past it.

  Wren flicked another lever, and the harness clicked, then slowed gradually until they were only a foot off the ground. Lailu hopped down on shaky legs, the river roaring behind her.

  “That worked perfectly.” Wren beamed.

  “Now is not the time, Wren,” Lailu said, searching the sky for the cockatrice. “Hurry and get out of that—”

  The cockatrice landed behind them. Lailu could feel it, could smell it, could practically taste it. She froze. If she turned, she risked looking it in the face. If she ran, she left Wren tied up in the harness like a tasty pre-dawn snack.

  The beast gave a strangled cry, the roar of a dragon forced through the throat of a rooster. Lailu clapped her hands over her ears. She had to do something. She had to run and hope it followed her.

  Stumbling forward, Lailu raced along the river, the cockatrice right on her heels. She darted erratically from side to side, avoiding blasts of fire so hot her clothing sizzled and the ends of her pigtails were singed.

  Lailu gasped and ran harder, changing direction as often as she could. She felt like she’d never reach the spot. She turned, darting sharply to the side, and it was there, right in front of her. Past the rocks and the foam-topped waves where the curve of the river created a natural swimming hole, the water looked pristine and smooth as a mirror.

  A blast of heat raced toward her, and she leaped into the river, plunging into its icy depths. She clung to a rock underwater and waited. The shape of the cockatrice loomed over her, and she peered up at it carefully. It was mere feet above her, so close she could have reached out and touched it, too close for her to escape. It was staring at the calm pool, at the hint of its reflection in it.

  And it was still very much alive.

  29

  MAL-CANTATION POWDER

  Lailu’s lungs burned, and she knew she’d have to come up for air soon. And when she did, the cockatrice would be waiting. There’d be no escape.

  She should have known this was how she would die: at the talons of a chicken.

  And then she noticed another silhouette moving toward the cockatrice. A Wren-shaped silhouette.

  The cockatrice started to turn, and Lailu reacted. She shot up to the surface, her knife already in her hand. Caught between Wren and Lailu, the cockatrice had a brief split second of hesitation.

  Wren tossed some sort of glittery powder at it just as Lailu threw her knife, the blade soaring straight into the beast’s left eye.

  It roared and collapsed onto the riverbank, its healthy eye rolling up into its head.

  Lailu and Wren stared at each other. “What did you do to it?” Lailu asked.

  “I knocked it out.”

  “With what? What is that stuff?”

  “This stuff?” Wren held out the pouch to Lailu, who took it carefully. It was a simple leather pouch, the powder inside one moment black as pitch, the next bright as the stars in the sky. “General Tori created it out of particles he discovered on Beolann. We call it mal-cantation powder.”

  “Mal-cantation powder.” It sounded familiar, but Lailu couldn’t remember where she’d heard that name before. “What does it do?”

  “It neutralizes magic.”

  “Wow! Really?” Plenty of mystic chefs had searched for a way to neutralize magic, but as far as Lailu knew, all of them had failed. “That sounds really useful.”

  “It is, but its effects wear off in about an hour. You can keep that, if you’d like.”

  Lailu tucked it away in her vest. It certainly couldn’t hurt. “Thanks, Wren.”

  “Well, Mama might not be pleased. I mean, we’re running low, but I think I’ve found a good replacement substance that works even better.”

  “So, if the effects wear off in an hour, that means it’s not dead?” Lailu prodded the cockatrice with her boot. She wanted to pull her knife out, but she was afraid to
.

  “Not unless your knife to the eye killed it.”

  “I don’t think so.” Lailu hadn’t realized she could even wound a cockatrice. Maybe their eyes were their weakness? Or more likely, it was the combination of the knife and Wren’s powder that did the trick.

  “Then I guess we’d better take care of that.” Wren put her foot against the unconscious creature’s head and yanked out Lailu’s knife. Then she rolled back the other eyelid and jammed the blade in to the hilt, twisting it.

  Lailu gasped.

  The cockatrice shrieked and gurgled, flailing for a few seconds, and then was still. And this time, Lailu was sure it was dead.

  “Wren . . . ,” Lailu began, her stomach filling with dread at the sight of Wren standing there so calmly, her hands covered in blood.

  “What?” Wren asked. “It’s not a successful hunt if you don’t actually kill your target, is it?”

  “But . . . it was unconscious.” Lailu had killed plenty of beasts, and she had no love at all for the cockatrice, but there was something very disturbing about the way Wren had killed it while it was so defenseless. Emotionlessly, mercilessly, like it was any other task. Like she was turning off a machine, and not taking a life.

  30

  MOTHER’S INTUITION

  Lailu cut and separated the cockatrice meat while Wren hummed happily behind her. Wren had been in an exceptional mood ever since the hunt, and as soon as they got back to Mystic Cooking, she had insisted on working on more improvements for the restaurant.

  “This is going to change everything for you,” Wren had said before drilling a hole through the kitchen floor, where she had explained the pipes needed to go. She swore that Lailu would have running hot and cold water no later than tomorrow.

  While the idea of running water in her restaurant was fantastic, Lailu kind of wished that Wren would just leave. Morning light had already warmed the city, and Lailu really wanted to get some sleep before Mystic Cooking opened that evening. Plus . . . Wren made her uncomfortable. Lailu wasn’t sure why she was so bothered by the way her friend had dispatched the cockatrice. It had just seemed so cold.