Virginia was watching from above. “Anything important inside?”
Such sarcasm. You’d think his daughter would give him a little sympathy. Tony pulled himself over the last rise and lay down for just a moment. “How could both straps break at exactly the same time? The chances of that must be a billion to one.”
“Or maybe you just didn’t tie it properly.” Virginia’s tone was icy.
“Of course I did,” Tony said. “It’s just my bad luck.”
“Yeah,” Virginia said. “Well, I’ve got the worst luck of all, traveling with you.”
“Oh, please just say it,” Tony said. “Get it off your chest. Anything is better than sulking.”
“I’m not sulking.”
She adjusted her rucksack and made sure the straps were secure. Then she started up the narrowest of paths. Prince Wendell was ahead of them, blazing the trail. Sort of. He did seem more enthusiastic about this than he would have been a week ago.
Tony rather missed the complaining aristocrat.
‘ ‘What were you doing on the roof of that building, drunk, with the mirror?” Virginia finally asked. Of course, she waited until they were alone on a mountainside. ‘ ‘It was our only way home.”
“Oh, you still can’t be mad about the mirror,” Tony said. “It’s done.”
“I spend my whole life looking after you,” Virginia said. “You’re on your own for five minutes and—”
“Looking after me!” Tony shouted. “Who brought you up? Twenty years I’ve looked after you. And if I hadn’t had to do that as well as work a full week, then maybe my business wouldn’t have gone down the drain. Did you ever think of that? Or do you only think of poor little Virginia, me, me, me.”
“I really hate you sometimes,” Virginia said.
“Yeah, well, I’m used to it, so hate away. You have a good long hate if it makes you feel better.”
It didn’t make him feel better. He needed some sympathy. Just a little. He knew it would get harder and harder as these seven years progressed. Didn’t she see that? Didn’t she know they needed to stick together?
The narrow path they had been following forked. Prince Wendell stood at the fork, waiting for them. Virginia stopped beside him. Tony stopped too and surveyed the area.
“The path is this way,” Tony said.
“That path goes down,” Virginia said. “It’s sloping downwards. This is the way up.”
Prince Wendell was looking anxiously from Virginia to Tony and back to Virginia again.
“That’s not a path,” Tony said. “That’s a goat track.”
“Prince, am I right?” Virginia asked.
“Anthony,” Prince said, “I know this is highly irregular, but would you give me a cuddle, please?”
Tony shuddered. Wendell was no longer any help. Tony would have to take the leadership role. “This is the way. I’m right.”
“You go your way, I’ll go mine,” Virginia said.
“I will,” Tony said. “And don’t blame me if the dragons get you.”
Virginia walked along her path. Tony watched her go. He wasn’t going to back down on this. He needed to get some self-esteem from somewhere.
“I’m serious,” Tony shouted after her. “I’m not going that way, because it’s wrong.”
Tony started down his path. Prince Wendell still stood at the fork looking at Virginia, then at Tony.
“Oh, no—decisions,” Prince said.
The poor dog didn’t sound happy or princely at all. Tony whistled, feeling odd, and Prince Wendell came.
They walked together on the narrow path. Tony was grateful, at least, for Wendell’s company. He was worried about Virginia, but he wasn’t going to admit it.
“Now, it’s on the tip of my tongue,” Prince Wendell said softly, “but who am I?”
It was the fifth time he’d asked that in the last hour.
“Oh, God,” Tony said, “don’t start that again. You’re Prince Wendell, all right? You rule all this land around us. You’re the most important person in the kingdom.”
“Top dog?” Prince asked.
“Yeah,” Tony said, not liking this at all. It was getting worse. “That’s right. Top dog.”
“Dominant dog,” Prince said. “I thought so.”
They walked in silence for a few moments. Tony kept thinking of Virginia. He had no idea that she would defy him like that. This place was changing her and not for the better.
“Prince Wendell,” Tony said, “you came with me because you knew I was going the right way, isn’t that right?”
“No,” Prince said.
“No?” Tony asked.
“I only came with you because she doesn’t understand anything I say.”
“Yeah,” Tony said. “Well, she doesn’t understand me either.”
Then, from behind him, he heard the broken glass sound. He winced in advance. He hoped it wouldn’t catch up to him, but he knew it would.
He would keep going, that’s what he would do. Like the intrepid adventurer. He put his hand on a nearby rock and screamed in pain.
He pulled his hand back. It was covered with a live, active wasp nest. The pain was incredible. He shook his hand and the wasps flew off, except for the ones stuck inside the nest, who kept stinging him.
Weren’t they like bees? Didn’t they die after they stung someone? He hoped so.
“Since when do wasps build nests halfway up mountains? Of all the places I could put my hand. It’s beyond belief.” With his other hand, he picked the wasp’s nest apart, bit by bit, leaving chunks of it—and dying wasps—on the ground behind him.
He finally got the last bit of nest off his hand. It was horribly swollen. He hoped he wasn’t allergic.
Prince Wendell looked up at him. “I’m losing my mind.” “You’re not,” Tony said. “Give it a rest.”
“Can we stop for a cuddle?” Prince asked.
Tony sighed. The poor prince. The poor dog. Tony stopped and sat down against the rock face. Prince Wendell came up beside him and leaned against him. Tony put his arm around him.
“Combined cuddle and stroke, please,” Prince said.
With his good hand, Tony stroked the dog. He sucked on his sore hand while he did so.
Then a shudder ran through Prince Wendell. “I’m going dog,” he said. “I’m going dog, and there’s no going back.” Tony didn’t know what to say about that, so he just kept cuddling his dog.
“Tired now,” Prince said. “Sleepies.”
“I’d like to be a dog,” Tony said. “Fd like to have someone who looked after me, fed me so I didn’t have to worry about anything. That would be my idea of heaven.”
Suddenly there was a crunching sound behind him. Tony started. Hands appeared beneath him, and then Virginia pulled herself up.
She looked dirty and windblown.
“Oh, you made it,” Virginia said.
“I was going to say the same to you,” Tony said. “I’ve been here quite a while.”
“Really?” Virginia asked.
“Yes, about an hour.”
“I didn’t know it was a race.”
Tony peered over the ledge. “I didn’t know that was a path.”
Blabberwort was tired, and her muscles ached. Every time she got into the same position she had been in when she had been turned to gold, her muscles screamed in agony.
She was trying to ignore it. If she thought about anything, she thought about her dad, and that was a bad thing.
She and her brothers were walking along the mountain road, following the trail left by the awful witch and her companions. Blabberwort was focused on revenge, but Burly was a wreck. He kept cutting nicks in his arm with his knife and crying at the same time.
“There’s more paw prints here,” Blabberwort said. “They came this way.”
The other two really didn’t seem to care. They were coming with her because they didn’t know what else to do.
“Dad’s dead,” Burly said.
/> Blabberwort didn’t know what to say to that. Neither, apparently, did Bluebell. Finally, Blabberwort decided to try. “Look on the bright side. No more beatings.”
“We can fail totally without fear of punishment,” Burly said.
“Good riddance to the old bastard,” Bluebell said.
They smiled at each other. Then Buriy’s smile faded.
“Wait! Wait! W'hat are we saying?” Burly asked. “He was our dad. He took us hunting.”
“He gave us our first weapons,” Blabberwort said.
“He taught us how to keep a torture victim conscious for hours,” Bluebell said.
They all started to sob. Blabberwort felt the tears run down her face like molten gold.
“Wait until we get hold of that little witch,” Burly said. “We’ll tear her apart.”
* * *
Bad weather had found them again. Or perhaps more rightly, it had found her father. Virginia stopped under a huge rock overhang and hoped that the storm clouds wouldn’t try to chase Tony in here.
She sat down on a pile of rocks and didn’t help her father as he climbed under the overhang to join her. Prince Wendell followed. Something about him made him seem more and more like a dog.
“Hey, you’re sitting on somebody,” her father said.
Virginia got up and saw that there were more piles of rocks all around. Each one had a sword or spear stuck in the middle of it, and a rotting pennant.
‘ ‘Do you think these people found the dragon of the mountain?” Virginia asked. “Or it found them?”
Her father bent down and read the carved wooden inscription leaning against one of the piles. “Here lies Ivan the Optimist.”
“These graves are really old,” Virginia said. “I don’t think there’s still any dragon up there.”
And then, suddenly, there was a roar high up on the mountain.
“This is insane,” Virginia said. “We must have climbed a thousand feet.”
“Have we?” Tony asked.
He walked to the edge of the ledge and looked down. She joined him. The bottom of the valley was very far away.
He twitched the way he sometimes did when he heard that awful sound. She hoped that wasn’t what it was, but then, as if on cue, her father said, ‘ ‘We should think about staying here for the night.”
“In a graveyard?”
“The light will be gone in an hour. I mean, it’s fading now.”
“You think so?” Virginia asked, looking around. “I think there’s just a lot of clouds.”
But she was tired. She didn’t want to go any farther. They were too high up to gather wood, and she didn’t like the idea of taking the grave markers. So she huddled next to her father and Prince Wendell for warmth.
“It was a stupid idea of mine to come up here,” Tony said. “I’m sorry.”
A wolf howled in the distance. Virginia looked up. When she had been climbing alone, she had seen a young wolf on a distant ledge. It had made her long for Wolf. She shouldn’t have driven him off like that.
“You miss that Wolf, don’t you?” Tony asked.
“Yes.”
She looked out into the darkness. How her life had changed in such a very short time.
“I think this is the end of the line,” Tony said. “I’m not going to survive seven years of bad luck. I’m proud of you, Virginia. We wouldn’t have gotten this far if it wasn’t for you.”
“I’m cold,” she said. “Give us a hug.”
He hugged her. They hadn’t hugged each other in a long time. It felt good.
Then she realized that they were alone. “Where’s Prince?”
“Oh, my God,” Tony said.
They looked around. She couldn’t see him. She shouted, “Prince! Prince!”
But there was no answer in the darkness.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Tony couldn't remember the last time he had fallen asleep sitting up. He woke, stiff and cold, huddled against his daughter. The wind on the ledge was fierce.
Then he saw what had awakened him. Prince Wendell— more Prince the dog now than Prince Wendell—coming down the path toward them. He clutched an enormous bone in his teeth.
“Virginia, wake up. Prince is back.”
Prince stopped in front of Tony and dropped the bone at his feet.
“What is it, boy?” Tony said, somehow knowing that this tone was appropriate. “What have you got?”
“Big bone big bone,” Prince said.
Tony picked it up and looked at it in amazement. “It is a big bone. I’ve never seen anything like it before. Where did you get this from?”
Prince started barking furiously. Tony winced. He had been hoping for an answer in English.
Virginia stared sleepily at Prince and Tony. She was even colder than he was. He had to shake her a little to get her to follow the dog.
Prince took them on a winding path. There were rusted helmets and armor littering its sides. Then they rounded a corner and came upon it—the huge skeletal head of a dragon, thrusting out of a cave.
It was as big as a brontosaurus and probably more impres-
sive. Tony took a step closer. The dragon had been dead a long time. Its mouth was wide open, forming an entrance into the mountain. A rusty sword was sticking through what had once been the dragon’s eye.
The place was eerie, with the remains of knights and the wind blowing through it. The dragon’s head itself was the creepiest part of all. ,
Tony followed Prince forward and Virginia followed. They picked their way along the path until they reached the dragon’s mouth. It was huge. Each of the jagged teeth was nearly as big as Virginia.
Tony stepped around them and helped Virginia through. Then they made their way through the skeleton, walking down the dragon’s gullet.
Other creatures had come this way. The bones were scattered. There was no smell, which made sense, Tony supposed, considering how long the dragon had been dead.
Finally they reached the tail. After they climbed down it, they were inside the cave proper. It smelled musty and was warmer than Tony had expected.
Virginia stopped beside him, and together they stared into the darkness.
“People have been in here,” Virginia said. “Look, there are shovels and things.”
Not to mention wooden supports farther down in the cave. Virginia dug in the pile of tools. After a moment, she pulled out something that Tony had to stare at before he figured out what it was. An old-style wooden torch with a wick made of hessian soaked in oil. The tip was encased in an iron frame. It could double as a weapon.
Virginia lit it with one of their matches. Tony had never been so glad to see light in his life.
The flame only illuminated the area they were in. Hanging from a roof beam above them was another sign with a dragon painted against a red circle. The sign was blackened and burnt as if someone had tossed a flame-thrower at it, but Tony could still make out the words:
Keep Out! Dragons!
Trespassers Will Be Eaten!
“Dragons,” Tony said. “That means there is more than one dragon.”
“It’s a very old sign,” Virginia said. “They’re probably all dead now.”
‘ ‘Oh, what are you, the dragon expert? Dragons might live for thousands of years. With my luck, I might as well season myself now.”
Virginia ignored him, which, he supposed, he deserved. She stepped into the tunnel. Tony followed, and he heard Prince’s claws scrabble on the stone beside him.
The tunnel descended very deep into the mountain. Virginia looked at Tony. She was scared. He hadn’t known her to get scared.
“What do you think?” she asked.
He shrugged. What choice did they have, really? He didn’t want to go back down the mountain.
So Virginia led them through the tunnel. It twisted and turned, and once or twice the flame guttered. When it did, Tony got a hint of the complete darkness they would be in if the flame went out.
�
�I hate confined spaces,” Tony said. “This tunnel is getting narrower. It can’t be right. Let’s go back. I’m finding it hard to breathe.”
“Look,” Virginia said. “It stops ahead.”
They reached a hole where their tunnel joined with another, bigger tunnel. Virginia lifted the torch, and Tony stepped up beside her. They looked in both directions, but their light didn’t extend far enough for them to make a good decision.
“Which way now?” Virginia asked.
He had no idea. In the distance, he could hear rumbling.
“Do you hear that?” Tony asked. “It’s a dragon.”
The rumbling grew louder until it became a roar. A breeze preceded it and Tony thought of nothing more than subway tunnels. He pushed Virginia against the wall as hot air hit them. Then a train went by.
It was full of Dwarves who sat astride. The train was little more than a wooden bench with wheels and an engine. The Dwarves wore miner’s helmets complete with lamps. They were all singing.
Tony pushed Virginia as far back as he could. She shielded their lantern with her hand, maintaining the flame.
After the train passed, they looked at each other in amazement. They now knew which direction to go. They crossed into the new tunnel and followed the tracks.
They didn’t have to walk far before they found the train. It was empty now, except for the last few Dwarves who walked under a large archway. Above the archway was a carved sign.
9™ Kingdom Royal Dwarf Mines Entrance Shaft 761
“Ninth Kingdom?” Tony asked. “When did we leave the Fourth Kingdom?”
“I’m not sure we have,” Virginia said. “You remember that map in the Kissing Town? The Ninth Kingdom is all underground. Maybe we can get through this mountain and out the other side.”
It sounded like a good idea to Tony.
They walked up to the train. It had stopped at an underground station, marked by the dragon symbol again, this time decorated with a mining hammer and pick cut into it. The huge sign was illuminated from behind by lamps. It reminded Tony of nothing more than a spooky entrance to hell.
On the other side of the arch was a changing area. There was no sign of the Dwarves. Just a black hole disappearing down into the dirt.
The 10th Kingdom Page 34