King Cole was dead. Briar and the others found Valrune among the rioters, slumped on a boulder. His father lay cracked in half, fallen from a high wall in the caves. The raw, clear goop with a swirl of bright yolk oozed from his shattered shell.
Valrune looked detached, as though he was thinking of something else—not of the king. It took time before he even noticed that Briar and the others were standing around him, looking at the gruesome mess. “We must do something to save him,” Valrune said. “The Dire Liquid—we can prepare it.”
Sherman shook his head and placed a paw on Valrune. “Magic has its limits before it becomes something dark and regrettable. We cannot put him together again.”
There were no tears in Valrune’s eyes. He returned to his silent, far-away gaze. Briar and the others were at a loss, but they remained standing by Valrune’s side, waiting for him to awaken from his cocoon of pain. “You have your book,” he suddenly said. “You have your friend.” He would not look at them. “You had best be on your way.”
“We cannot leave,” Sherman said. Briar and Dax exchanged stares and noticed that Sherman was unable to lift his gaze from the ground.
“What?” Dax finally said.
“She touched Orpion’s mirror, and what’s more, she used it,” he said. There was a great hollow pain ringing in Sherman’s voice. “I don’t know how, but she used Orpion’s mirror.”
“So what? Let’s go,” Dax said.
“You don’t understand. Briar’s power may not be dillywig after all,” he said. “She cannot truly use her trinket, the key. I still don’t understand how she used it to enter these Realms. It may have been sheer luck. Perhaps Myrtle and Poplar aided in some way. I just don’t know. But now that she has used Orpion’s mirror, the key will never be able to protect or even help us back. Using a dark object of magic makes all else turn to the dark. And without that key, there is no going back.” He shook his head.
“But once the sun sets tomorrow, I turn sixteen,” Briar said. “I won’t be protected anymore. There must be something we can do.”
Sherman gazed upon the ground and at the book in his hand. “There may be one last effort, but it risks all.” He held up the small black book. “We do have this,” he said. “It is the source of much of Orpion’s power. Without it, she cannot completely carry out her plans.”
“We should burn that sucker,” Dax said.
“No!” Leon and Tarfeather shouted together.
“We still need it, Dax,” Briar said. “And besides, Orpion will want that book above all. We can bargain with it.”
“As I see it, she will do as you ask,” Sherman said. “For without the book, great turmoil in the Realms would begin. Her seat of darkness would be challenged. Her own death would be inevitable.”
Leon hopped up into Briar’s hands with something to say. “So what? We’re supposed to go back to the palace, confront her with the book and hope she plays nice? May I remind you all that this bitch has done battle among other kingdoms—and won. Drinking blood is a self-improvement course for her. How would we ever stop her from turning us all into frogs and then simply taking the book from us?”
Tarfeather spoke up in his movie voice. “I’ll help. Why, we’ll all help if it makes things better, darling.” He was surrounded now by the seven other dwarefs that Damarius had caged and sent to the mines two days prior. Briar hadn’t recognized it until now, but the rioting in the caverns had stopped, and many more of the freed dwarefs crowded around to see the Black Woods girl. Throngs of small golden creatures, as far as Briar could see, stood among and atop the cavern rocks and peered from the cavern tiers above.
“What’s happening, Tarfeather?” she asked.
“Dwarefs comery to see special girl, Three Omens girl,” he said. “Freery family. Freery friends. They helpery now.”
“Will you translate what I say, Tarfeather?” she asked. Tarfeather nodded.
Briar stood tall and full of a confidence she never had before. She recognized this newfound strength and it felt right. “Friends, we need your help,” she began. Sherman nodded encouragement to her. “If the Realms are to be free for everyone, we need you to stand with us and fight.”
After Tarfeather translated, the crowd murmured. The dwarefs to either side of Tarfeather huddled with him, all of them nodding, speaking in the same guttural language she had heard Sherman and Gelid speak. Then one to another, they spoke the ancient language, passing along Briar’s message.
Then a noise sounded throughout the cavern. It started out small, in the deep recesses of the cavern. But then it grew, widespread, across the vast crowd. It was a sound like bees buzzing. But it was a noise dwarefs made when they were about to march into battle. Louder and louder the noise grew until it felt as though the entire cavern was vibrating with the focused, righteous anger of an oppressed people.
“Battle for you they makery, Briar Blackwood,” Tarfeather said. Then the buzzing changed to a sweeping ocean of cheers, while the dwarefs swung torches and their tiny pickaxes in the air.
Through the commotion, Valrune remained fixed upon his father, who lay shattered. Sherman put a paw on his shoulder and urged him away. “Come, Valrune,” he said. “We all need rest now. I’ll cast a little spell on you to help you sleep through the night. And then, in the morning, we can give him a proper burial.”
“I cannot go further with you,” Valrune said.
Briar stepped close to him and took his hands. “Valrune, please. How can we do this without you?”
He could not meet her eyes. Instead, he looked downward, and finally tears began to flow. He seemed to lose his strength. His knees buckled, and he crouched to the ground. Putting his hands to his face, he sobbed while Briar, Sherman, and the others stood watch.
It was dawn by the time the grave was completed for Cole not far from the temple cave entrance. Briar was surprised by the care the dwarefs exercised in bringing Cole’s remains from the caverns. They had placed his enormous shell on a wheelbarrow, which they pushed slowly and solemnly—as though he were one of their own who had fallen.
Briar watched with admiring eyes, knowing that they had somehow looked beyond their imprisonment. Whether Cole knew it openly, or endorsed it tacitly, he was to blame for their sorrow. But rancor was not in a dwaref’s blood. They lived freely, moment to moment, like wind blowing across the grassy plains, and like water gurgling over stones in a brook. One moment they were prisoners and laborers, the next they were free. And they did not hold themselves to the past, for what good would it serve?
Briar watched the tiny torchbearers flanking Cole’s remains, keeping pace with the funeral procession. And once they were all outside the caves, the dwarefs spent the night on a bare slope of the Towery Flowery Hill with their pickaxes and their sharp claws, digging a grave for the king, singing a mournful dirge. Briar and the others slept near the coach that night, too exhausted to do anything else. But throughout the night, Briar would awaken from time to time, and wonder if she could live as the dwarefs, forgiving without hesitation. It seemed impossible, and it troubled her that she could not find the same freedom in her own heart.
In the morning, Briar awakened to the discomfort of sleeping in the cramped coach. She had spent the night leaning against Valrune’s shoulder. And now she was stiff and achy. Leon had nestled himself into her lap, and she found it comforting to have been wanted, even desired by two such beautiful men. True, one of them was yet a frog. But it was still nice to be wanted by these two in this way, and she thought she could grow accustomed to it.
She looked out the coach window and saw Tarfeather standing at the edge of the grave, staring into the pit with his empty black eyeholes. Without disturbing the others, she left the coach, first placing Leon in Valrune’s lap. She watched the two of them, resting comfortably together, and she wondered if there would ever be a way to have them both remain in her life.
She left them and approached Tarfeather from behind. The grassy slope was illuminated by the sun, and dew gleamed on the small white dandelion blossoms that looked like scattered kettle corn. Once she was close to Tarfeather, she saw that the other dwarefs had lined the grave with fallen rose petals. The king’s shell was already cleaned and lowered down to its soft bedding. She knelt next to Tarfeather, but said nothing.
“Ha’tua innery king belly,” Tarfeather said. He shook his head slowly. “King bad man,” he said.
“I’m so sorry, Tarfeather,” she said.
“No cryery for Tarfeather, Briar Blackwood,” he replied. “King Ha’tua gonnery now. Bad things no more happenry now.”
Briar sat with Tarfeather, the two of them watching over the grave, sitting without words. But Briar’s mind went to dark places. Today was her sixteenth birthday and the curse of the sleepdeath loomed like heavy rainclouds. Poplar and Myrtle said they’d softened the curse so that Briar would sleep. But how did they know what would happen? There would no longer be protections. Perhaps she’d die. Briar tried not to think of these things, but the beauty of the hills, and the roses, and the dwarefs all working side by side, made the idea of death almost too much for her to bear.
One by one the others from the carriage awakened, and they gathered around the grave of King Cole. Valrune stood alone at the head of the ditch and spoke.
“Old King Cole was a merry old soul…” He tried to say more, but his voice caught on his pain and left him.
The dwarefs, too many of them to count, worked in teams to brush more rose petals down into the pit and to fill the rest with soft dark soil.
When all was completed, Briar and the others piled into the coach. There was little left to say. All that remained was their momentous task ahead. Valrune mounted his horse and rode alongside the coach as they journeyed back to Murbra Faire. The dwarefs marched behind Valrune with their pickaxes and hammers, ready for them to put to a far better use.