Briar Blackwood's Grimmest of Fairytales (22 page)

Sherman's spell must have worn off. She knew he could not keep up his energy for long. Now she was visible and defenseless.

Briar put her hands up to push the staff away and she saw the glowing flames forming in her hands. She would have touched the flames to the priest, as she was taught, but her hands were the only buffer between her throat and the priest's staff, which clamped tighter against her flesh.

She began to lose consciousness, her coughing and gagging the only things that kept her alert. She tried to kick at him, but it was useless. She had grown too weary. Through her daze, she could hear voices and footsteps of other priests who were watching from their posts along the cavern.

“You little fool,” the priest snarled. She saw his thick doughy hands, knuckles whitening on the staff, small magical sigils tattooed on his fingers.

The jewel stockpiles were likely the last thing she would see, she realized. Her eyes began to flutter closed. Images flashed in her mind: her foster sisters laughing at her, the spinning wheel, the Lady Orpion touching her trinket, Valrune holding her. She saw herself back on stage the night Leon disappeared. He stood there shirtless, leaning in to kiss her.

She felt a sudden surge of power. She opened her eyes and leaned all the way forward, flipping the priest into the air. He landed with a crash, overturning the dais and the bell jar. The book slammed to the ground and shut. His staff fell to the floor dead of its power. Where the priest choked so tightly, she still felt her muscles compressed.

Briar flung one of her flames at him where he lay already writhing. It attached to his face and engulfed it, turning pale skin into a blistering mass of charring meat. He clutched at what was left of his face, screaming, kicking his legs around, trying to stop the pain and the spell.

She staggered away, coughing violently, clutching her neck. But he had choked her so tightly that she was having trouble catching a breath. More priests stomped up the stairs and Briar flung her remaining flame at them. But masters of defense, two of the priests used their staffs to block it and even batted it back at her. She surprised herself again with a dropping floor-roll in order to escape the flame.

As she rolled, she landed close to the jeweled mirror. It was coved in blood that oozed from the dead priest's body. The three remaining priests barreled for her. They surrounded her and pointed the tips of their staffs. But the book was closed, and the source of their power had been cut off. Unable to use magic, the priests began to swing their staves, aiming for Briar's head.

Unexpectedly, she leapt into the air, vaulting into a backward
flip over one staff, then forward flipping over another. She had never been trained in gymnastics, but she was performing aerial acrobatics she never knew she could do. One of the priests, missing Briar with his swing, brained one of the others who stood close to the platform edge. The struck priest's head buckled, and he tumbled onto a jewel pile below.

Briar turned toward the other two priests, the bloodied mirror still in her hand. By accident, she shone the mirror toward one of the unholy priests. The effect was sudden and unexpected. He vaporized into nothing but gray clouds of dust that arose with heat and then settled on the ground with a sound like sand scattering.

Tarfeather was right about the mirror, and Briar thought it fitting that those who formed it and used it for such dark purposes should taste its wrath.

The remaining priest was stunned only for a moment. He tried to run, but Briar caught him in the mirror's reflection. He too vaporized and dropped to the floor not as a man, but as a scatter of dust.

She stood there coughing, holding her neck, shocked by what had happened. Then she realized what else the mirror might do. She stood and shone the mirror on priests who were stationed around the cavern perimeter. Each one whom the mirror faced became charred dust that got sucked away by the outgoing airflow of the smaller caves. The few remaining priests who had evaded the mirror, fled through the catacombs, leaving the dwaref-slaves behind.

The captives began to revolt once they saw the few remaining priests running. The larger dwarefs chased close behind them with pickaxes and torches they seized from the cavern sconces.

Others ran out from the smaller caves, shouting jubilantly. Some of them, who had witnessed Briar's feat, pointed to her and cheered. Pandemonium ensued as the freed slaves began to shove and push through the main cavern. Some filled small bags
with jewels, others fled though smaller caves, following the priests who knew the secret ways out. Carts were overturned, and those dwarefs who had been too weakened by exhaustion or starvation got trampled in the chaos.

Leon, Valrune, and Sherman, followed by Tarfeather and Dax, ascended the steps at a frantic pace.

“Briar!” Dax shouted. “Are you all right?”

“I'm fine,” she said. She seemed unable to focus her eyes and her head throbbed. Sherman said nothing, but watched Briar, who still held the mirror in her hand, a look of dread on his face. He hobbled to the book at her feet and he snapped it up.

“How did you do all of that?” Sherman asked.

“I don't know, I just…” Briar looked down at the mirror and felt a sickness overcome her. She doubled over and vomited. Valrune rushed to her side and Leon hopped up to her shoulder.

“Drop the mirror. It—it is dangerous,” Sherman said. He eyed the thing like it was radioactive waste.

“I can't,” Briar said. Her hand could not unclench from the handle.

“Do something,” Dax shouted to Valrune. He immediately rushed Briar to the edge of the platform and forced her to crouch down. He gripped her arm and swung it so that the mirror caught on the hard edge. Again and again he swung her arm until the mirror cracked and fell from her grip down into the cavern depths where it struck the stones below and shattered to pieces.

“This cannot be,” Sherman said. He looked stricken. “The mirror was Orpion's wickett magic. You are dillywig. This was not in the Omens.”

Briar did not understand Sherman's concern. The priests were defeated and the dwarefs freed. Why was he so worried? Then she remembered Cole. “Val…rune,” she tried to call his name through her violent coughs. “Your father. They brought him here. He was with…the slaves.” Valrune gazed in stunned silence down to the cavern floor, at the riots taking place. Saying
nothing, he turned from the group and raced back down the stairs to find his father.

Chapter 27

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.