Briar Blackwood's Grimmest of Fairytales Page 14

  “Hey, Omelette,” Dax said to Cole. “Ever hear of a washcloth? There’s enough grease here to lube a truck.”

  The king kept snoozing.

  Sherman rolled his eyes and turned back to face his window in silence.

  Dax spoke to Briar. “I’m sorry, but I’m a little confused,” he said. “Isn’t the creepy talking egg supposed to be Humpty Dumpty or something?” Briar shrugged. Nothing was as she expected since meeting the dillywigs.

  Tarfeather sat perched in the king’s crown, surveying the newcomers with his dark eye sockets. Briar shifted uncomfortably beneath the strange gaze of the creature’s blackened and shriveled eye holes.

  After a long time in silence, Sherman spoke aloud, but in a dark whisper. “Some redeemer.” He muttered to himself. “The girl almost gets us killed. The curses will never be undone.”

  Cole, burbled and then burped, but remained fast asleep.

  “How was I supposed to know what I was doing when I choose that door?” Briar protested. She tried to keep this disagreement to a whisper, but hearing herself speak, she realized that she was sounding like a hissing snake.

  “Myrtle told me to pick a door. I wouldn’t know a wrong door from a right one, now would I? I thought we were going to the magical land of sleeping beauty—you know, like with spinning tea cups and soft pretzel vendors—not with murderous freaks who have horrifying skin conditions.”

  “Do you ever shut up?” Sherman said.

  “It’s in my nature to comment on the bizarre and the unusual,” Briar said. “Case in point: a fox that’s all talk and no action. I thought you were supposed to be some kind of grand-poobah-wizard-thing. Where were your effing powers when we needed them?”

  Everyone sat in silence listening to the jangle of the coach. Finally Dax spoke up.

  “You’re forgetting that if it weren’t for Briar, we wouldn’t have run into the king who saved us—”

  The king licked his lips with a wide white tongue and snorted with great effort.

  Briar ignored Dax’s support. Sherman had come to help them, and all he did was pretend he didn’t know them in the bar. Why didn’t he stop the wolfguard from touching her, sniffing her? She wiped her neck where the wolf had sniffed around. “And why did you accept this stupid invitation? Now we have one day less to find Leon and the book.”

  “Well, we wouldn’t be here if we hadn’t ended up in the Horn and Hold.”

  “You know what?” Briar snapped. “Why is it every time I see you, all I can think about is old-lady face powder and pearl earrings?”

  Dax held up hands to both of them. “Sh, sh, shush, both of you!” Briar and Sherman quieted, but Briar knew she was right. The fox knew things—secrets—but he guarded them.

  “Now,” Dax said, “don’t make me pull this car over.”

  Sherman sat, turned away, wrinkling his muzzle. Then after a long while he spoke. “Can you please explain to me why you never mentioned your Dragon Powers, Miss Ingrate?” He wouldn’t look in her direction. Instead, he stared sullenly at the distant patchwork of landscape that sprawled below the steep mountain passes.

  “My what?” Briar reached over to shore up the king on one particularly sharp curve.

  “Those blue flames. Those are Dragon Powers—as if you’d know a Dragon Power from a nose piercing,” Sherman said.

  “Yeah? Well, you can have your shit-ass flames if you want them.”

  Sherman’s eyes darkened. “No one here knows who or what you are.” He whispered this—another secret, Briar supposed. “And I recommend that it stays that way. Seeing those flames would risk everything. And those who know what they are would assume that you were in league with the Lady Orpion. Either way, if we’re caught, that would be the end for all of us.”

  “So what are Dragon Powers?” Dax asked. “Is she, like, going to grow wings and sharp teeth or something?”

  “Perhaps you’re amusing to other commons. But here, you’re a nuisance. How could you ever expect to understand the rarity of Dragon Powers?”

  Dax gave up trying to mediate some kind of truce. Let them snap at each other. He was out.

  “It’s a mystery to me how such power could find its way to most unlikely and—needless to say—undeserving of persons.”

  Briar couldn’t agree more. Even if those flames were rare or special, she wanted nothing to do with them. True, they could make her a celeb on campus. But they could also be yet another reason for the kids to think she was weird.

  Sherman looked as though he was thinking of something very serious. Opened his yap to speak, but then turned away. “These powers can be…replicated.” Briar watched him closely. There would be Tales within Tales—she was told.

  “Replicated?” Dax asked.

  “To some degree. But trying to do so is a perversion of the Grand Design. It does irreparable harm.” Sherman turned to see Dax staring with a dull, uncomprehending expression. “That’s a bad thing,” Sherman clarified. He sat brooding about this for a moment. “It produces dangerous, monstrous results.”

  “How does someone replicate a power you’re born with?” Dax asked.

  “Blood sorceries. Dark workings. The Book of Cinder and Blight.” Briar could hear the weight in Sherman’s words.

  “Is that why the wolfguard collected the old woman’s blood?” she asked.

  Sherman did not answer. He looked away and stared dismally out at the overgrown black oak and fern forest that clung to the sides of the mountain.

  King Cole wheezed and then mumbled a little. But he remained asleep, lolling back and forth on Dax, who was clearly beginning to tire of this messy situation.

  “So I have to hide my hands?” Briar asked.

  “For starters, yes. For now.”

  Sherman withdrew into silence, and in it, the sounds of the springy carriage hinges took on meaning.

  Upward, into the low-hanging storm clouds, the king’s carriage rose. It jangled along switchback cobblestone lanes that wound around a limestone outcropping that jutted suddenly from the landscape. Tufts of pink and orange wildflowers fit themselves neatly between rocks, breaking up the otherwise sandy-white scenery.

  “What were you mumbling before about curses?” Briar asked.

  “That is none of your affair,” Sherman said. He kept his eyes on the land formations.

  “You can’t be serious. Poplar munches on rats whenever she can find them. Ash has some freaky fashion show going on. And Myrtle had something happen to her that Poplar said was the worst of them all—but she wouldn’t tell me what. I’m starting to get tired of all these riddles.”

  “I repeat. They are none of your affair.”

  Briar had little patience left after her recent ordeal. “Oh yeah? Well what if something like that happens to Dax and I? Huh? Don’t you think you should warn us a little?”

  “It isn’t my job to warn you, Ingrate. I am only here to teach you, if that’s even possible.”

  While the king continued to snore, now even louder, the others sat listening to the twanging of wheel springs straining beneath their collective weight, until one of the coachmen shouted out, “Wriggle!” That awakened the king with a loud snort.

  Briar and Dax thought it a curious thing to shout, and they knew it must have been said with reason. They twisted their bodies to look out the small windows. Just ahead, Briar spied an iron bar gate as tall as several city busses stacked on end. The gate was topped with gold filigree and shimmering lions.

  “Wriggle? Did he say wriggle?” asked the king in a haze. “Yes, why?” Sherman replied.

  “Wriggle!” the king shouted.

  In his fluster he tried to open a small pillbox that he extracted from a pocket in his billowy velvet pants. The pillbox opened too quickly in his eggshell-smooth hands and tiny black pills no bigger than poppy seeds scattered all over the juddering carriage floor.

  “Oh dear. Oh my!” Cole said straining forward to collect the pills. But he rolled forward onto the floor and lolled
between the other passengers. As he rambled back and forth between Dax and Briar he shouted, “Get those, Tarfeather, hurry.”

  Tarfeather had already jumped clear and before Cole could say more he was speeding along, his tiny claw fingers tweezing the flyspeck pills from beneath seats and in corners of the cab. “Quickly Tarfeather, one for each of us!”

  The coachman atop the carriage counted off. “Five…four…three…”

  Tarfeather moved so quickly that Briar saw little more than a trace of his tiny golden body moving from one to another in the cab, popping a pill in everyone’s mouth.

  “Swallow!” Cole crowed.

  Briar didn’t want to know what would happen if she didn’t. She felt the tiny seed at the tip of her tongue and she swallowed it down.

  “…two…one…wriggle!” the coachman exclaimed.

  Briar watched from the window as they approached the gate, but the carriage didn’t seem to be slowing down.

  “What’s happening?” Dax asked. “We’re not stopping.”

  Just then, the horses and the coach went directly through the gate’s iron bars. Briar watched as they sliced through the horses, the cab, and the seats they sat in, splitting Sherman and the king in half. She noticed that the bars had also severed one of her arms, which separated, but stayed aloft at shoulder height. Dax crammed himself tightly into a corner and managed to get through without being sliced. Once they passed through the gates, the severed body parts fit back neatly together as though nothing at all had happened.

  “Someone needs an automatic gate opener,” Dax said.

  “Oh, I do find that bothersome,” the king said.

  Sherman helped the king back to his seat. He fitted the crown back on his head and then then rolled himself aright so that he could sit back in the center of the bench. Cole brushed off his trousers. “Too much sorcery for my taste. But—this is my life now.”

  Briar thought it was an odd thing to say, coming from someone who lived in a land of enchantments.

  Tarfeather sighed, relived that was over. He grabbed the king’s hand, which still clutched the empty pillbox, and he sprinkled the remaining recovered pills inside. With a single hop he landed back inside the king’s crown and slumped down.

  Dax blinked in disbelief again. “Don’t you think you should just open the gate up before you try to go through it?”

  “Of course,” the king said huffily. “It isn’t my idea that the gates remain forever locked.”

  “Your majesty,” Sherman said. “I must remind you that we are here in the Realms with specific orders—”

  “Oh, fiddlesticks, Sherman,” King Cole groused. “Always fussing like an old maid.” Then he laughed, suddenly feeling amused again. He paused with a heavy sigh, then added, “Besides, tonight at my son’s engagement party I need at least one ally with whom I can speak freely. Be a good chap, won’t you?”

  Sherman sighed.

  The carriage tottered, slowed its pace and came to a sudden halt. The force of the stop threw Briar and Sherman onto the king and Dax. Tarfeather hissed and bared his golden fangs.

  “Please tell me he’s not really a jester,” Dax remarked. “Because, he’s not exactly Saturday Night Live material—”

  The cab doors opened simultaneously on both sides. More of the footmen, top hatted and white gloved, stood on either side of a long strip of burgundy and gold-fringed carpet.

  Briar followed the long carpet with her eyes, and noticed that it stretched to a pair of enormous steepled doors. The palace was a vast and intricate structure. Many buildings crowded the complex with their verdigris copper roofs. Each of them was constructed of heavy sun-bleached stones, the same color as the rock outcropping on which the palace was erected. Briar realized that the central building had to be Cole’s quarters; it was a plain square with two round turrets on either side that streaked up to the sky.

  A man wearing a brown hooded robe of a rustic and granular weave, seemed to appear from nowhere. His eyes remained lowered, and his movements were minimal, subtle—just enough to step through gaps in the crowd of guards and find his way to the front. He bowed with his hands pressed to his abdomen and the king stepped down from the carriage.

  Cole nodded, but was distracted. “Ah, Damarius,” he said. The robed man had a long carved staff strapped to his back and he used it right himself after his stiff bow. Then he strode alongside the king at a surprising clip as they made their way toward the towering doors.

  The man acted as though he hadn’t even seen or cared to notice Briar, Dax and Sherman who had to help themselves off the coach. They hurried along after Cole and Damarius. Briar especially wanted to keep pace to listen in on their discussion.

  “The preparations for tonight’s festivities have all been tended to, save one small incident,” Damarius said. His eyes remained lowered and his face seemed long and tense. Once they were beneath the front steps, Damarius removed his hood and Briar saw that he was completely bald. He had electric blue tattoos in various bold patterns, swirls and sweeps across his entire head. When he turned enough for Briar to see, she noticed two triangles above his eyes, and two X marks below. These were the same markings as those of Leon’s kidnapper. The X marks reminded her of the doll tied to the spinning wheel. Her heart seemed to rumble beyond her control, and she lost her breath, but she tried to seem incognizant.

  The king fitted Tarfeather once again with his choking collar and leash before letting him down from his crown. He hopped along behind the king and Damarius like a golden flea with his metallic collar rattling like chainmail until, finally tired of the king’s wide strides, he hopped into Damarius’ open hood and hitched a ride.

  “An incident? Not another,” Cole grumbled. Briar thought he seemed like lost, petulant a child who had been forced to take the crown and make something of it, rather than a monarch who knew his place and acted from the certainty and gravity of his throne.

  “It is best for you to see,” Damarius said.

  Briar, Dax, and Sherman jogged along the carpet to keep up with the men. They passed cloaked musicians who held fluted trumpets by their sides. And as the king passed they blasted a royal welcome salute. Cole yanked away a horn from the pucker of one trumpeter, bent it in half, and handed it back with a look of disgust. The other trumpeters stopped and looked at one another.

  “Obviously not a music lover,” Dax whispered.

  Cole grumbled as he and Damarius hurried into the palace. “Ninnies. How much are these good-for-nothing street vagabonds paid?” he asked. Without waiting for a response, he answered his own question. “More than I care to afford. Damarius, I want you to disrobe them, empty their pockets, and throw them out onto the street—preferably far beyond the palace. Make sure that there is no further frivolity unless it is by my decree. Is that understood?”

  Damarius bowed his head, and showed no sign of emotion.

  Briar and the others followed with frantic steps, barely making it into the palace vestibule, as a dozen shirtless strongmen heaved from behind the immense doors, straining with their tree-trunk arms to close them. Several more arrived with an iron bar that heaved into slots across the door.

  Cole addressed Sherman. “They know in these times our movements are to remain as hidden as possible. Why the blasted trumpets is a mystery.”

  Sherman scurried along to keep pace. “Forgive me, Your Majesty,” he said. “Why exactly must you be so elusive?”

  “The damnable Orpion.” The king spoke in a whisper, but still his words carried across the emptiness of the hall. Briar and Dax, followed along to one side and glanced at each other. “Not much of a lady, if you ask me,” the king continued. They rushed along another long runway of burgundy carpet.

  Briar marveled at the high stone walls with hundreds of tiny square windows lined in rows extending far above their heads. Banners emblazoned with a crest depicting a gold lion and a green tree fluttered at the head of the drafty hall. The banners flanked a throne backed with the shields of soldi
ers who had given their lives—freely or otherwise—in service to the crown.

  “My friend,” the king continued, “perhaps in your leave you’ve not known that most of these Realms are commanded now from Scarlocke. The marriage of my son to Orpion’s ward will seal the last of it. After that, the whole of our world will be in the hands of…I dare not say it. At least my son and I will be safe. It is indeed a perilous time that you have chosen to come from the shadows to do your business.”

  “You would wed your only son to the kingdom of Scarlocke?” Sherman asked.

  “And why would I not? She has inflicted wars upon our kingdom to its furthest reaches and beyond. Drained us of land and gold,” the king said. “A marriage between our kingdoms may ease the burden of innocents. If lives can be spared, then is it not a necessity?”

  They finally reached a raised platform upon which the throne stood. Tarfeather hopped out of Damarius’ hood and jumped alongside the king. He plopped down on a velvet cushion at the base of the throne.

  Briar wondered how this creature, obviously intelligent, must feel about being treated like a cocker spaniel. Maybe that’s why she saw him in the mirror—he wanted Briar to set him free. The king paid no attention to the small creature and almost stepped on him while fitting himself between the Throne’s arms.

  “Well, Damarius?” the king asked.

  Tarfeather studied the king and then mimicked him.

  Damarius bowed and stepped aside. He whispered to a nearby attendant who nodded and rushed away. Shortly thereafter, two more guards brought in a cage with seven other golden creatures that looked exactly like Tarfeather—save for the fact that they all had their eyes. Golden darting eyes, they were, with slits like that of a cat. The guards positioned themselves on either side of the cage, watching them carefully as though the tiny things were a great menace to the country and in need of maximum security.