A Hero's Curse (9 page)

“We would be honored,” I echo.

“To accept the queen’s generous invitation,” he continues.

“To accept the queen’s generous invitation,” I parrot.

“For myself and my esteemed protector,” he finishes.

I snort.

“Thank you,” replies the Urodela. “Please, follow us then to the main hall.”

I feel many tiny three fingered paws grab my hands and the hem of my tunic and pull me up a gently sloping trail. Many more little hands try to help by grabbing an elbow or by simply pushing on my back—it seems every salamander wants to be a part of helping me up the steps. I feel a tiny Urodela foot under my own. I try to be careful not to step on any of the little toes that seem to be everywhere.  

Tig whispers in my ear again. “The orange salamander that has your hand has puffed up his chest and is swaggering so much he’s having trouble walking. He’s leading us into a long hall.” I can feel that the ceiling is lower than the great cavern, and many of the cheeps and chirrups filter away behind us. The salamander holding my hand leads the way down halls to the smell of delicious food.

“Whoa,” says Tig. “Nice hall. We have before us low moss-covered tables, laid with hundreds of dishes. But I don’t recognize any of these,” he says, his voice suspicious.

As we walk through what must be some kind of banquet hall, I listen to the Urodela around me. The voices are pleasant, but completely foreign. Nevertheless, amid the chirrups I think I identify cheeping laughter, and I still hear the occasional “hello” from some Urodela boasting his command of Lingua Comma. I feel like I am being paraded around the room, which Tig confirms. “Our guide has taken the long way around the table. Apparently it wants to get the most out of his position,” he says. I am seated, and a chair is even available for Tig on my left. A hush falls over the room, and I hear scrambling.

Tig hisses from my elbow, “Everyone just stood for the queen.” I scramble up and nearly knock over my chair, but an Urodela grabs it just in time.

I feel awkward standing, not really knowing which way to look.

“Sitting,” whispers Tig. I am guided gently back to my chair by little three-fingered hands. I assume some formality has just occurred. I can smell the food, and I know I am hungry. Something delicious wafts up from in front of me. It reminds me of grass, sweet brown syrup, and strong mint tea. Other smells ambush me. A sharp citrus aroma makes my mouth pucker, but the steaming fragrance of rich sweet sauces has me practically drooling. I hear the dull clunk of wood on stone and tapping of wood on wood as Urodela are served or serve, but no metal or glass. An Urodela reaches past my shoulder, and I hear my plate filling with food. New scents waft up to my nose: what smells like green boiled vegetables, sautéed mushrooms, and sharp spices all overwhelm any reservations I might have had.

Tig helps at a crucial moment. “Looks like you’re in luck. They eat with their paws here.” I let out a happy sigh. I love eating with my fingers. I can tell what I’m eating that way. It also helps me be much neater.

Nevertheless, I am still awkward. I feel everyone staring at me. I have never been in a crowd this size, especially when I eat. I blush furiously whenever I miss my plate. I almost knock over my bowl of water twice. The salamanders never stop chirruping though, and the food is wonderful. I feel like I can’t get enough, and dishes keep appearing from over my shoulder. I decide this is probably one of the best meals I’ve ever had. The chirrups around me don’t stop until I’ve had more than my share of the tiny juice filled mushrooms, pudding, sweet fruit that explodes with moisture in my mouth, something crunchy that could be baked crackers or beetles—I don’t ask—sweet syrup over a bed of moss that tastes a bit like brown rice. Everything is so good I don’t even make Tig describe the tiny straws that have a thick meaty gel in them.

Tig whispers from my elbow, “The Urodela that can speak has come around the table and is bowing and talking to the queen now.”

The squeaks and chirrups hush, and the Urodela addresses me in Lingua Comma again. “Thank you for joining us, Essie Brightsday and Tigrabum. We hope the banquet was satisfactory.”

“Yes very, thank you.” I nod toward our host. Little feet scamper away from the table in every direction.

“Have you had cave spider before?” asks the Urodela.

“Cave spider, n-n-no thank you, I’m full,” I respond quickly.

“Of course, you’ve already finished several,” says the Urodela.

My stomach does an uneasy turn. “Thanks,” I put on my best smile and pretend I eat cave spider all the time. I sneak a hand over Tig and pinch him. He should have told me.

“If you need more, please ask. We understand that you humani walkers eat more than we do.”

“Humani walkers?” I ask.

“Your race. We are the Urodela, we call you the humani walkers.”

“Got it,” I say.

Several chirps come from the direction of the queen. The chirrups are the same lower tone that I noticed earlier.

“The queen would like to know how you arrived under the Valley of Fire, how you came to find the Kingdom of Crypta, and your reasons for being here.”

I take a breath—I rehearsed this bit during dinner—we need their help to get back home. “We were chased into the Valley of Fire by thugs, probably working for Brogan. He’s the one who took over our Kingdom of Mar. They were trying to kill us so we came in by way of the river Mar. We followed the river to its source, and then a rock basilisk attacked us. That’s where I hurt my arm. The Mar goes under the Valley of Fire, so, we came in,” I finish. Telling the story reminds me of all they have done to save us.

“Thank you for healing my arm.” The Urodela chirrups to the queen, and I raise my eyebrows at Tig, silently asking him if I missed anything.

“Sounded good to me,” he whispers.

The Urodela speaks to me again. “By rock basilisk, do you mean you were attacked by a Lasertilla?”

“A what?” I ask.

“The Lasertilla hunt the Valley of Fire. They are a vicious predator there,” says the Urodela.

“Yes, that’s what we call a rock basilisk,” I reply.

The Urodela speaks to the queen again. “How did you find your way to the Kingdom of Crypta?” it asks.

“We weren’t looking for your kingdom,” I say, “we just followed the Mar. And now we would like your help to get back home.”

More chirps. “Did King Mactogonii send you?”

My heart speeds up as I grip the chair, even though the question makes me frown. “Nobody sent us. We were chased here.”

“Do you know King Mactogonii?” asks the Urodela.

This causes me to pause. I know I’m being obvious, but I turn to whisper to Tig. “Yes or no?” I ask.

“I don’t know,” says Tig, “he sounded proud earlier when he told you about that magic. Maybe yes?”

I decide to adopt a middle ground. “We knew of him,” I say, “he was—is—our king.” I hope they don’t probe too deeply.

“Excellent,” says the Urodela in an excited squeak that is more Urodela than Lingua Comma. “Did he tell you that our Kingdom of Crypta is dying? What of his promise to kill the daemon? Have you come to keep that promise?”

Chapter 10

I
don’t know how to respond, so I keep my mouth shut. Tig speaks for me. “We didn’t know him that well. Not a buddy or anything. More of an acquaintance.”

More chirrups and squeaks and then, “But you must have known him fairly well for him to have placed the magic on you that lets you speak Lingua Comma.”

Even Tig sputters at that. “Th-th-that’s—King Mactogonii didn’t—I’ve spoken Lingua Comma since I was a kitten,” he finishes, as if that decides the matter.

I break the unsettling silence. “We never met King Mactogonii. He was just our king.” I address my next words directly to the queen. “Surely Your Majesty doesn’t know every one of your Urodela?”

Our translator cheeps to the queen, and she responds in her low chirrup. “Yes, she does know each of her subjects. As queen she must know all the Urodela. How else could she rule justly? And she mourns that her Urodela are dying. That Crypta is dying.” There are several chirrups and then silence in the room. I feel the eyes on Tig and me. I twist my hands in my lap in the increasingly uncomfortable quiet.

The translator breaks the silence. “Tell us how you knew King Mactogonii.”

“Well, we didn’t ever meet him,” I admit again. Tig lets out a tiny breath next to me. So I tell them the whole story. How King Mactogonii disappeared last year. How no one in our kingdom had any idea where he went. I tell the little I know about Brogan seizing power and the work camps and the rebellion. I end with another quick summary of our escape into the Valley of Fire and then our ending up here.

“This is the first anyone in our kingdom has heard of the king. At least now we know he wasn’t assassinated. Our main problem is still Brogan. Our people can’t help anyone until after we win the rebellion.” As I let the translator relate everything back to the queen, I wonder if I could be hung for making statements about our kingdom’s political position. There is silence again. “How is Crypta dying?” I ask.

This sparks another series of chirps and squeaks, followed by a quick low chirrup from the queen. I hear her slide off her throne, and she and her guard patter out of the banquet hall.

Our translator apologizes. “Queen Crypthania has excused herself for the day. She has many duties to attend to.” The Urodela shuffles forward and speaks in what it must think is a lower chirruping voice. “I can’t remember ever seeing her this upset.”

“We would help if we could,” I say. I can feel our chances of the Urodela taking us back home start to slip away.

Our interpreter takes my hand with his three tiny fingers. “Come with me,” he says. I scoot out from the table and follow the Urodela. I feel Tig’s tail brush my leg to let me know he is right next to me. We take several turns once outside the banquet hall, through mossy corridors, wide streets with Urodela cheeping, and a bare rock tunnel that proceeds for several minutes. I take the opportunity to find out more about our guide.

“What’s your name?” I ask. The little creature whistles a short phrase that ends with a high cheep. I wait for a follow up explanation but none comes.

“Oh. Well, let me try.” I try to imitate its whistle-chirrup and come nowhere close. A series of short whistles sounds like laughter to me.

“Mactogonii had a hard time with that one, too. It’s an easy name in our language. He just called me Cheep.”

This makes me grin, but it also introduces the subject that’s been on my mind. “Tell us more about King Mactogonii. How did he get here? Why did he choose you to speak Lingua Comma?”

“Mactogonii said he came in through an ogre lair on the Eastern side of the Valley of Fire. We are new to the Valley of Fire ourselves, so we don’t know all the entrances. There are many of them. He was making his way west and found me. I was on advance spotter duty. We’re supposed to warn the city if something dangerous is coming through the tunnels. You were found by a vanguard patrol, which is good because it took the whole patrol to carry you back here.”

“Thanks again for that,” I say. Cheep ignores my interruption and continues his story. Our feet make faint, whispering echoes on the tunnel around us since there is no moss underfoot. The echoes help me get my bearings, and I can occasionally sense tunnels leading off to the left and right.

“Mactogonii found me, and after I saw that he meant no harm to the Urodela—”

Tig interrupts. “How did you see that? Did he catch you and sit on you to tell you that? I’ll bet as an advance spotter you were supposed to patter back as fast as your little legs would carry you if you saw a great gallumping human sneaking through the tunnels.”

Cheep’s fingers tighten on my hand, and I feel him move forward a pace so that he can see around me to respond to Tig. “I would have warned them, but I didn’t have to!” says Cheep, his rising voice taking on more of a squeak. “Mactogonii explained what he was doing here!” Cheep lets out a couple of whistling breaths and then continues. “He did his muttering, and then I could understand what he was saying, and I could speak Lingua Comma.”

Cheep drops his voice a little. “So he didn’t really choose me from the crowd. I was just a spotter. I’m glad he did, though. I’ve been moved to translation and strategy. Spotters don’t last long.”

“What did the king say he was doing here?” I ask.

“He said he was hunting for information on the daemon. He said the daemon was causing the drought, and he meant to stop it, so of course we helped him as much as we could.”

“Wait, they’re connected?” I ask. I guess I should have known that, but the daemon has always been a story that Dad avoids and the valley folks use to scare stubborn children. It seems so far away. Sometimes I even wondered why Dad and the rest of the kingdom protectors were trying to pick a fight so far away from the Kingdom of Mar.

Cheep interrupts my thoughts. “Here we are.” We pause in the mouth of the tunnel, and I can feel that we are facing an enormous cavern. I can hear water lapping somewhere below us, the echoes bouncing strangely off of rock and then water.

“Of course they are connected Essie Brightsday,” Cheep says. “The daemon destroyed our home and forced us to come here.”

“You can just call me Ess,” I say in a voice that carries out onto the water in front of us, twisting and echoing back to us as something foreign.

“Sure, Ess,” says Cheep. “Have a seat.” The rock has a smooth, rippled pattern, and I realize that the tunnel we’ve been following was probably a river at some time. I cross my knees up under me and feel for Tig. He crawls into my lap and demands attention. Sitting as I am, Cheep comes up to my shoulder.

He continues with his story. “We’re sitting on the far side of the Lake of Hemleth. This is the source for your river of Mar. It was once the source for the Redlan River that flowed out to the east. It fell hundreds of feet out of the Valley of Fire and down the Red Giants. Those were the Watangau Falls. It fed the swamplands of Bangular. That was our home.” This time I don’t interrupt. I massage Tig’s ears and let Cheep continue.

“The Urodela people started their exodus from the marshes when the daemon came. He blasted a crater in the middle of the marsh and built a lair there. Some of the older Urodela say there was a black pool that formed in the middle of the crater. They called it the Cauldron. They also said it was sucking the life out of the marshes. Whatever it was, it happened quickly. Within months the marshes were mud flats. We knew about the underground caverns here in the Valley of Fire. There are dangerous creatures deep below the Valley of Fire, but up here around the lake it was relatively safe. And it was wet. Those who could either climbed the cliffs or wandered through the deep tunnels to try to make it here, to the Lake of Hemleth.”

Tig has been quiet this whole time, not even purring. “I notice the water line has dropped,” he says.

“It drops every month,” says Cheep. “Within a few weeks even your river Mar will stop running.”

Cheep turns toward me. “You asked how Crypta is dying. We’re dying the same way you’re dying.”

I shake my head. “We’re not dying. It’s hard, but we’re still doing okay. Our kingdom’s main problem is Brogan, not some daemon. But I’m sorry that he did that to your swamp,” I add.

Cheep’s voice gets quieter. “After the Mar stops, how long do you think your valley will last? There are a few Urodela who came late. They say that after Watangau Falls stopped feeding the marshes, the mud disappeared and within a few weeks the swamp had turned to desert. You know what they call it now?”

I shake my head, assuming there is still enough light from the glowworms for him to see.

“The Stone Forest. The trees have turned to rock,” says Cheep. “You’re wrong, Ess, your main problem isn’t Brunini—”

“Brogan,” I correct automatically.

“Him,” says Cheep. “Your main problem is this daemon. Your King Mactogonii saw that over a year ago. That’s why he was here.”

I’m not convinced, but it seems like Cheep really believes this stuff, so I bite my bottom lip instead of arguing. “So what did the king say he was going to do?” I ask.

“He studied the river and wandered the tunnels under the Valley of Fire for days. He spoke to us a lot about the daemon, asking if we knew where he was from, what he looked like, that kind of thing. We weren’t much help. Only a few Urodela are left who remember the daemon. We don’t live as long as you humani walkers. He told the queen that he would kill the daemon and cure the Cauldron so that we could go back to our marshes. I understand they call that whole region the Gray Wasteland now. But then he left.”

“What do you mean he left?” I ask.

“This guy disappears quite a bit,” says Tig from my lap. Since he’s a cat he gets to talk that way about the king.

“I’m sure he was sorry he couldn’t help, too,” says Cheep with more bitterness than I’ve heard so far. I start to explain that as sorry as I am, we just want to get home, but he cuts me off with a chirp. “I will take you to your room now.”

I scramble to my feet and feel Tig against my ankles. “Tig, can you tell me what you see before we leave?”

“The underground lake was huge,” he says. “We are standing about twenty feet above the water line here. The entire basin is almost drained. I can see several islands poking out of the water where the lake is getting low. On the far side of the lake is the Urodela’s city. We must have been on the other side of the city because this side of it comes right down to the edge of the lake.”

Cheep lets out an impatient whistle, and I turn with Tig and follow the gentle brush of his tail. Several hours ago I felt so hopeful that we would make it home. Now the emotions swirling inside my chest are moving too quickly to analyze. As we shuffle down the smooth stone tunnel I decide it doesn’t matter if King Mactogonii was here. It doesn’t really matter if everything Cheep says is true about the daemon and the marshes being destroyed. I can’t help that their kingdom is dying. Even if all those things are true and they are as important as the Urodela and King Mactogonii supposedly thought, what can I do about it anyway? The only thing that matters is getting home. If the Urodela can help us, great. If not, we’ll leave and find our own way home. Cheep said there were many entrances to the tunnels under the Valley of Fire.

The tunnel goes from the polished smooth rock to the cool, furry moss. The back of my new leather pants drag slightly in the moss. “Thanks for the new clothes.”

Cheep responds from a few steps in front and to my left, confirming where I heard his soft pattering. “We apologize for the boots. We were having trouble cutting them down. They were very resistant to any alteration at all. We’ll get them right for you.” He pauses, then, “Here you are,” he says in his signature whistling tone.

“No overgrown toad this time,” says Tig.

“No kicking you across the room with magic pants then,” I sigh.

“A healthy swipe from me has saved your skin more than once,” Tig growls. I ignore him, but he’s right. We’ll have to address the magic exploding armor sooner or later.

I feel the soft moss that covers our entryway. “Thanks again for healing my arm,” I say. “The Urodela have been very kind. I wish I could help.”

“No, you don’t,” says Cheep. He chirrups and several other Urodela scamper up, pushing me into my room. They patter back before a soft thud shuts them out.

“Hmm . . .” purrs Tig with an annoyed inflection, “I don’t like it when they lock us in.”