TOMBSDAY

I spent the night huddled in the middle of my room, thinking about Mom and Dad’s warning, looking at each of the walls and wondering which one was about to melt away into flame. Needless to say, I didn’t get much sleep. And in the end, my parents were totally wrong!

Dragons fly, so they generally attack from above. Gorey would call this an “aerial assault.” Halitosis must have been hovering above the castle when he cut loose with his flame, because the hole didn’t appear in the wall. He blasted an opening in the ceiling.

This was bad for a couple reasons. First, the ice didn’t just evaporate. Well, some of it did, but the rest turned to water. Second, Storey was in the room above me, so she came down with the melted ice and landed pretty much right on top of my head. She’d also drawn her sword as she fell, and it nearly cut me in two.

She hit the water, and we both took a moment to recover as she drew back her blade. The two of us floated up a bit on the tide. But there wasn’t enough water to lift Storey and me up to the roof of the castle, which was why it would have been a whole lot easier if Hal had just burned a hole in the wall. The blue sky glistened in the distance, but I saw no way to reach the castle roof.

Fortunately for us, Storey’s IMPRACTICALLY long sword had at last found a PRACTICAL use. She dug her blade into what was left of the ice walls, and we both pulled ourselves up on the sword’s massive haft.*

Storey’s soldierly training must have finally kicked in, because she did some pretty impressive stuff over those next few hours, and we worked as a team. Storey stabbed her sword into the ice. Then we took turns helping pull each other up by the blade’s grip. It seemed like something friends might do, but I didn’t want to mess things up by saying a bunch of mushy stuff, so I kept quiet and let Storey do her work. I think we wasted half the morning climbing out of that tunnel. But we found a pleasant surprise at the top.

I was excited to see Oggy, but when I opened my mouth to speak, I remembered we weren’t allowed to talk to each other. So I told Storey to tell Oggy I was glad he’d joined our mission.

She said, “I’m just here to keep you alive. Get your own messenger.”

“It’s okay, Wick. We can talk,” said Oggy. I thought he had a screw loose. He’d never directly disobeyed his mom and dad before. But here he was, defying his parents, which was a big deal. Remember, Oggy’s mom expected him to follow orders and all that military stuff. He’d be in deep trouble when we got back to the castle . . . But Oggy made no mention of it. He had a pixie in his pocket and was eager to show it to me.

I pretended to be interested in the little fellow while I asked the obvious question: “Why’d it take so long for you guys to show up?”

“Um, yeah,” said Oggy. “Halitosis heard your call. Someone whispered your location in his ear. He just didn’t do anything about it.” Oggy glared at Hal. “Apparently he was in the middle of a long nap and couldn’t be bothered. But when I heard the news, I knew it had to be urgent. So I threatened to poke him every time he closed his eyes until we left.”

“Good one,” I said. Oggy’s specialty was monsters; he knew the right way to motivate a dragon.

“Not really,” said Oggy. “Hal politely told me he could turn me into roasted half orc with a single breath of flame. But I reminded HIM that Gorey frowned on that sort of thing.”

“Oh yeah,” I said. “Didn’t Gorey threaten to kick Hal out of the castle the last time he fried one of us? I forgot about that one.”

“Exactly, so I reminded him of Gorey’s warning. And since Hal’s generally too lazy to move out of the castle, he agreed to rescue you.”

Sometime around then, Halitosis stirred from his nap. “Too lazy to move out? Is that what I heard?” Hal was obviously offended. “I happen to enjoy living in the Grimhold, and that incident with the ogre was taken completely out of context. He was partially fried at best.”

“Well, it’s just nice to know you care, Hal.”

“Not really,” said Oggy. “He took another nap before we left.”

“It was a short nap,” Hal muttered, a hint of regret creeping into his voice. “I barely recall closing my eyes.”

I took that as an apology and forgave Hal for being a generally lazy and terrible friend. He’d done his job. Also, Oggy and I had a lot to catch up on. I told him about Nightshadows North and the kennings.

“They have cooler names for pretty much everything,” I said. “The giants call war the ‘weather-of-weapons’ and a knife is an ‘icicle-of-blood.’ My favorite? Death. They call it the ‘sleep-of-the-sword.’ Oh, and I like this one, too. They call their beards ‘chin-forests,’ or ‘chin-hedges’ when they’re well trimmed.”

I don’t think Oggy understood the kennings because he kept calling them “Ken-things,” like they belonged to some wizard named Ken. I figured he’d catch on eventually. And besides, wordplay wasn’t our most pressing concern.

The giants had found us. I heard them talking as they hurried up the stairs. Apparently, One Eye was REALLY close to making up his mind about letting me go or smashing me or whatever. They went on about all the careful thought he’d put into his decision. I respected his dedication to the problem, but I had no interest in experiencing the sleep-of-the-sword or the hammer-of-the-just. I’d learned enough kennings for one lifetime.

“Sorry, guys,” I told the giants. “We’ll have to save the sweat-of-war”—blood—“and hammer-kisses”—punches—“for another time. We won’t be spilling any raven’s-wine”—blood, again—“today.” I used a lot of kennings, but they didn’t seem impressed. The giants were set on stopping my escape, and no amount of wordplay could dissuade them.

So we began the dance-of-war, which is a terrible kenning. I pictured the icy fiends waltzing, but that’s NOT AT ALL what it means.

A storm of one-hundred-foot-tall giants descended on us. Spears of snow rained down from every direction, and arrows of ice fell like hail. It was stranger than anything I’d seen in Weird Rain, and deadlier too.

Storey drew her blade. Up until today, I’d thought her longer-than-long sword was just a nuisance. But it HAD been helpful in the ice shaft. And when she lifted it to fight the giants, I realized that her inordinately long sword was the perfect length for slaying giants. I guess that was the reason she brought it.

Storey readied herself for the fight. But there was no way she could defeat a whole army of giants. As for us, Oggy and I hid behind Hal. Let’s face it, this was no time for bravery, and I wasn’t ever going to find my magic if a giant stepped on me.

We were all in serious trouble.

Fortunately, Hal took over the situation. One of those ice arrows hit him straight on the forehead and woke him from his most recent nap. That was a bad move—a very bad move. Few things in the Known World are deadlier than an angry dragon. And nothing angered Hal more than a nap cut short. So there would be no smashed warlocks or crushed goblins. We would not “feed-the-eagles.”

Aside from his fiery breath, Hal had a second weapon at his disposal. And in my opinion, this one was a hundred times worse than his flame. The dragon took a deep breath and unleashed his terrible, unthinkably bad breath on the giants.

Vomit erupted from their mouths. It shot like geysers, and there was no way to avoid it. Puke poured from the sky in eighty-foot-long waterfalls. The best thing we could do was close our eyes and cover our mouths as it rained down on us. And that was just the start of it. Apparently, the smell also got into the frost giants’ heads. Their shoulders wobbled. Their knees swayed back and forth. Their great, armored chests listed. One by one the giants fell, knocking into one another and colliding with the castle walls.

When a score of eighty-foot-tall giants keel over, it’s almost impossible to get out of the way. Bodies fell in every direction. The sun and sky vanished. We needed to fly, literally. I got everyone onto Hal’s back and told him to go. Dragons are as fast as lightning, faster even. They just don’t like to let anyone know it. But those giants weighed enough to turn even Hal into smooshed lizard, so he tore out of there in a genuine flash.

We escaped the giants, but when the dragon turned around and told us to hold on tight, his breath hit us in one terrible, awful-smelling wave. First I felt the dizziness, then the light-headedness, followed by the loss of vision. Oggy and I, Storey, and even that pixie fainted.