16

THE SUNKEN PALACE

Never before had a quick pace been of greater importance on their journey, and yet the familiars were moving slower than ever. Skylar had made a makeshift sling for her broken wing out of her satchel strap. Her injury forced the normally swift-flying bird to travel on foot. Aldwyn and Gilbert had considered racing ahead without her, but even though she was handicapped, they knew Skylar’s illusions could mean the difference between victory and defeat in their battle against the hydra.

The three animals had left the banks of the Ebs behind and were now crossing a wasteland enshrouded in the mists churned up from the crashing waters of the Torentia Falls. The rays of the sinking sun created ever-changing patterns of light wherever one looked. The entire region seemed haunted. Aldwyn had the anxious feeling he used to get whenever he took a shortcut through Bridgetower’s lone cemetery. The air was still, and a terrible sadness seemed to cling to every blade of grass. They were following the remains of an ancient road, a two-cart-wide path of mud and pebbles, with wagon wheel tracks petrified in the ground like fossils.

As the sun crept closer to the horizon, the road suddenly ended. Ahead of them, the earth had been overturned, as if it had been tilled by a gigantic farmer. The thick mist over the land hid from view whatever lay beyond.

“This must be the edge of Mukrete,” said Skylar, “the city in which the Old Palace of Vastia once stood. Before the curse.”

“Not another curse,” said Gilbert nervously.

“I’m afraid so. This one sank the Old Palace and all of Mukrete with it.” Skylar picked up the pace again, and they walked onto the ravaged land and deeper into the mist.

“Nearly two centuries ago,” continued Skylar, “King Brannfalk, the grandfather of Loranella’s grandfather, ruled Vastia. According to the historical scrolls, he was hot tempered, prideful, and a lover of dragons. In fact, he kept seven of them in the Old Palace stables. He was so protective of his prized pets that he demanded they be guarded day and night, a job which fell to a one-eyed ogre, a creature said to have traded his second eye for the ability to cast magic.

“One morning the King came to check on the dragons and found that they were all missing. When questioned, the ogre insisted that he had locked the stables the night before and all seven had been safely inside. As nobody else had a key to the stables, the ogre was accused of stealing and eating them, an understandable claim, given the never-ending appetite of most ogres. Besides, when his sleeping quarters were inspected, a dragon’s foot was discovered beneath his bed. Only the bones remained, the meat having been scraped clean off.

“The ogre pleaded his innocence to no avail: he was sentenced to death, but to the very end claimed that he had been framed. Just before the executioner’s axe fell, the ogre used the magic he traded his eye for to place a curse on the King’s palace and all that surrounded it.

“At the moment his head was severed from his body, the ground opened up, swallowing castle and town alike. Some escaped, but many were buried alive.”

Aldwyn stepped more cautiously, aware that far beneath his paws lay a buried city, its buildings and streets encased in mud and dirt.

“Well, was the ogre innocent?” asked Gilbert.

“I’m getting there,” said Skylar. “I haven’t finished the story yet. Brannfalk was one of the survivors; he managed to escape the sinking castle by jumping off the balcony of the palace’s highest tower. So did the palace wizard, who in his own desperate getaway dragged a chest containing his most precious research up the tower with him. But in his haste, it broke and spilled open, revealing severed dragon body parts: eyes, teeth, and talons. He was the one guilty of the dragon slayings, not the ogre whom he had framed.

“The palace wizard had experimented on the dragons in the hope of engineering an undefeatable dragon, obedient only to him, that would become his familiar. But his forbidden necromancy had been unsuccessful. In an attempt to hide his dark experiments, he poured the contents of his failed spells down the dungeon well. Little could he know that what he was unable to achieve over those few terrible nights, nature with its infinite patience would accomplish over the span of a hundred years. For there, in that well, the stew of all seven of the King’s dragons eventually grew into the perfect dragon: the creature that we know today as the Hydra of Mukrete.”

“Wait a second,” said Gilbert, “you mean—?”

“That’s right,” replied Skylar. “It’s the very dragon that has been guarding the Sunken Palace ever since.”

Aldwyn’s mind was racing. He remembered his alley days, when he was often outsized and out-matched. He had always found a way to turn the odds in his favor, whether it was by his lightning-quick reflexes, clever thinking, or just sheer guts. But would those skills be enough when fighting a seven-headed monster?

“So, Skylar,” said Aldwyn, “does this hydra have any weak spots? Something that might slow it down?”

“I know a little about the seven heads,” she replied. “You see, Brannfalk had collected one dragon from each of the seven northern species. There’s a fire breather, fairly typical. A shrieker, whose wail has been known to cause madness if you’re exposed to it for too long. A tunneler, whose spiked horns can bore through any mountain. You remember the acid spitter; we already know what it is capable of. And then there are the three really dangerous heads.”

Aldwyn swallowed. The ones Skylar had already told them about seemed bad enough.

“The first of those is the hive dragon,” continued Skylar. She seemed to take pleasure in describing their foe in detail. “Poisonous hornets live in its nostrils. The second is the black tooth, whose bite causes instant death. So you should definitely avoid that one. And the final head is the python strangler, whose forked tongue can squeeze the life out of a full-sized gundabeast.”

“You didn’t answer my question,” Aldwyn interrupted her.

“Oh, I’m sorry. What was it again?”

“Any weak spots?” he reminded her.

“None that I know of.”

Aldwyn’s uneasiness grew.

“Don’t worry,” said Skylar. “I’ll be casting illusions to help.”

“What about me?” asked Gilbert. “What am I supposed to do?”

“You’re going to be bait,” she said.

 

Shortly afterward, the mist began to lift, and Aldwyn spotted a tower of stone jutting out of the ground like a giant mushroom, tilting ever so slightly.

“This must be the high tower of the Old Palace, the one Brannfalk escaped from,” said Skylar. It was the only thing from all of Mukrete that had remained visible.

Through an arched window, half above ground and half below, Aldwyn could see a spiral staircase leading downward.

“Guys, over here,” said Aldwyn. “It looks like a way in.”

Aldwyn was the first to climb through, jumping down to a marble step beneath the window. Skylar peered through the opening, assessing the distance of the drop.

“Gilbert, I could do with a little help,” she said.

Gilbert supported her with two webbed hands, lowering her down to the ground, and Aldwyn was there to ease the landing. Gilbert followed, hopping down beside them.

Aldwyn took one last look through the window and could see a sliver of sky, the clouds now turning orange-pink, a sure sign that sunset was approaching. Before he turned back for the stairs, he could have sworn he saw a small flock of spyballs fly past outside.

“Come on,” said Skylar. “We have a long way down. It says in the scrolls that the Old Palace’s high tower reached twenty stories into the sky. And who knows how deep down the dungeon lies.”

They began their twisting descent, making winding circles around the central stone pillar of the staircase. The granite walls were remarkably well preserved; the superior architecture and construction had prevented even the slightest cracks in their surface. The windows had mud and earth pressed against them, revealing a cross section of worm trails and mole tunnels. As the familiars moved lower, the air became stale and still. No breeze had passed through this spire for two hundred years. Their descent into the buried underground fortress was lit by steady flames coming from wall-mounted candleless holders. Skylar identified this wax-and wick-free magical device as Protho’s Lights, named after the great magical inventor, Orachnis Protho.

“Hey, wait a minute,” said Gilbert suddenly.

Aldwyn and Skylar turned back to him. The tree frog had stopped beneath an open window, standing beside a pile of dirt on the floor.

“That’s great, Gilbert, but we’ve seen dirt before,” said Aldwyn.

“No, look,” said the tree frog as he pulled a gold-capped tube from the floor. “It’s one of Marianne’s pocket scrolls. It must have slipped out of her sleeping shirt.”

“They’re really here!” whispered Aldwyn to himself. The hope that they weren’t too late washed over him.

Just then, he felt some pebbles fall on his shoulder. He glanced up at the window and saw a horde of giant earth mites scurry in from the dried dirt outside. They were the size of grapes, with hard shells and six pointy legs. The ground-dwelling insects crawled down the side of the wall, moving quickly toward them. “What are they?” asked Aldwyn, with alarm in his voice.

“I don’t know,” replied Skylar.

Aldwyn and Gilbert both gave her a look of surprise.

“What? I don’t know everything,” she said, using her good wing to try to knock a couple of the bugs that had fallen onto her from her feathers.

“First vampire leeches, now this,” said an exasperated Gilbert. “I’m really done for this time!”

Aldwyn tried to shake off the handful of mites that had landed on his fur.

“Aldwyn, Gilbert, relax,” said Skylar. “They’re not biting.”

They both stopped their flailing.

“They’re not?” asked Gilbert.

“They’re not,” said Aldwyn.

“I think they’re just looking for a warm place to nestle,” she added.

Skylar reached into her satchel with her beak and removed some sage, juniper, and nightshade. She tossed the components into the air and chanted.

“Send a flame from whence you came!”

A small female fire spirit materialized, and the mites immediately swarmed in the direction of the fairy’s glowing form.

Aldwyn used his claw to pull one last hanger-on from the furry pit of his hind leg and dropped it on the ground. Skylar and Gilbert, now free and clear as well, were moving farther down the steps, leaving the heat-seeking crawlers behind.

They headed deeper and deeper into the bowels of the Sunken Palace. Soon they could hear haunting music. Around a bend at the end of the staircase, they found what appeared to be a banquet room. Large sofas and chairs surrounded an enchanted harp playing a melancholy tune, as if a musical recital of some sort had taken place here long ago and never ended. One of the strings was out of tune, and every time it was plucked, a flat note pierced the air. Crystal glasses with traces of wine and plates covered with quail bones were still left on the tables, abandoned in a rush when the ogre’s curse had plunged the castle into the ground. Save some cobwebs and dust, Aldwyn thought, this is what the place must have looked like two centuries ago.

He looked at the paintings on the walls. One seemed to be a portrait of King Brannfalk. His resemblance to Queen Loranella was unmistakable. Aldwyn’s eyes then returned to the floor.

“Look, footprints.”

Tracks in the dust led to a wooden door. The trio followed them onto the second floor landing overlooking the great hall. Aldwyn stood in awe. Never before had he been inside a room so enormous. There were marble staircases on either side of the landing. Rows of columns supported the high domed ceiling, from which hung metal chandeliers holding Protho’s Lights. The floor displayed a large tile mosaic of King Brannfalk’s face. Skylar had been right when she said he was prideful: this was vanity unchecked!

Two large archways led to neighboring rooms. Aldwyn could see that one was the throne room; the other he couldn’t see into from where he was standing. Unlike the banquet room they had passed through, the great hall appeared to have been ravaged by battle. There were singe marks on the wall where a fire had burned tapestries to ash, and chunks of stone had been splintered as if by mighty blasts of energy. Heavy wooden furniture had been crushed and a table overturned. Dented suits of armor lined the wall. One of the stairway’s marble banisters looked as if a large part of it had been melted away.

An ominous silence hovered over the place, broken only by the distant melody of the out-of-tune harp. As Aldwyn took his first steps down the stairs, he felt the ground move beneath his feet. He thought that the earth had given way and the castle was sinking even deeper. Either that, or—these were the footsteps of the seven-headed hydra.