Briar Blackwood's Grimmest of Fairytales Read online

  Tarfeather whispered a movie line in her ear, “Run, child— like you’ve never run before!”

  “My Lady,” Gelid said. “It is as if the tides of time favor us. The moons dim and they are nearly concealed. No matter what becomes of the Blackwood girl, the Omens are null without the boy.” Gelid sat and lifted the jeweled mirror with porcelain priestess’ hands, reserved for tasks away from the sun or labor.

  The she withdrew a glass vial from her belt. It was as long as a man’s thumb, and in it, thick red blood. “Once I am wed to the prince, nothing will stand in your way.” Briar watched as Gelid poured blood out in a thin sappy stream onto the mirror. It puddled, and she smeared it like finger paint.

  She pointed the mirror at the chamber door. Just as before, the mirror illuminated with a strange white intensity. Countless pins of light, silver as moonlight, shot from its reflective surface across the room to the door. It glowed for a moment and then sealed up with stones. Like many of the other chambers, the builders had constructed no windows in order to maintain palace safety. But now there was no door. Briar suddenly felt dizzy. She teetered as though the floor had taken a slant.

  “Too late, Briar Blackwood!” Tarfeather whimpered. Then he burrowed deeper into the hood.

  “Yes,” Briar replied. She swallowed hard and tried to control any quavering in her voice. But the danger of the situation made it clear that there was no control over anything now.

  Gelid set the mirror down, gave a strange, hungry smile and then placed mechanical goggles over her eyes. “Now that none can intrude, clear the boy from his cage, dark Queen. Allow me to finish the last binding at my own hands, to rid this world of the Omens.”

  “This is no time to take chances,” Briar said. “Unseal the door, and I alone shall complete the Skull Sigil in my chambers.” She moved boldly to the wall where once was a door. A self-assured manner was even more necessary than before. She raised her chin expectantly.

  But Gelid did not react as Briar hoped. She raised her eyebrows to the Lady Orpion. “Beg pardon, Lady, but this cannot be done alone. The Skull Sigil requires two. Have you abandoned your trust in me?” Gelid bowed her head, and her many knotted dreadlocks cascaded.

  Briar noticed that although Gelid’s head was bowed, she was now following the Lady Orpion with suspicious eyes.

  “I have not abandoned faith in you. But I have changed my mind,” Briar said. She felt the churning in her stomach and the prickle of power building in her hands. She saw the lit candles at the dressing table and it occurred to her that she was usually near fire when her hand-flames appeared. If this was true, then they might appear at any moment.

  Why had she listened to Sherman and Dax? As she thought back, she realized that they never really had a plan at all. It was a gamble from the start. But now there were few cards left to play, except to continue bluffing.

  Gelid did not budge. “Why does the Lady Orpion walk in bare feet?”

  Briar looked down and saw that one of her bare feet stuck out from beneath the long robes and she pulled it back. “I, um…felt hot flashes. You know what happens to women at my age—”

  Gelid interrupted. “Where is the guard that was here before?” she asked. She took a vial of blood from the side of her boned corset and swallowed it down. A trickle oozed from the corner of her mouth. She raised her goggles while striding toward the false Orpion, and she stood close to Briar’s face.

  “I sent him to watch over the Blackwood girl and her companions,” Briar said. She struggled to restrain the terror seizing her throat. She knew by now her hands must be fully ablaze and she tried to hide them inside her sleeves. “Now do as I say, and unseal this door.”

  Gelid’s own eyes had changed to those of a reptile: cold, green, with slits where there ought to be pupils. She inspected Briar’s face, as though trying to understand how a street conjurer’s illusion had fooled her.

  Gelid bowed reverently, “Of courssse.” She stood upright and smiled. But now her teeth were sharp, ghoulish protrusions. Then she muttered something low, in an unfamiliar language that sounded like something caught in her throat. Suddenly she doubled over with a shriek. She toppled to the floor and writhed, curling like a worm that had been severed.

  Briar backed up, her hands bursting with flames. She tightened her hold on the cage and then she whispered to Leon using her own voice, “It’s me, Briar. Don’t worry, I’ll get you out of here.” Leon nodded, but his eyes were distracted and full of doubt.

  Gelid was completely still beneath her cloak. “This is no time for games, Gelid.” Briar tried to still sound in charge. Was Gelid dead? Briar crept forward and reached out a toe to jab at the body. She lifted the cloak only to find a misshapen embryonic thing within a translucent fleshy membrane. Its head was long and horned and its body was sleek, scaled and glistening black. Whatever it was, it hadn’t fully formed.

  Briar’s stomach dry-heaved and she backed up, falling over a footstool near the filigree table. Leon’s cage rolled beneath. Briar felt her innards melt as the black creature clawed its way out of the filmy cocoon and unfurled to its full serpentine length. But it wasn’t a snake. It was something more repulsive.

  It stood on stubby, claw-footed legs, as tall as Gelid, but it seemed to continue growing. It opened its slimy black-within-black eyes and then hissed angrily at Briar, snapping its long toothy jaws. It craned its twisting neck and licked with its black reptilian tongue at two malformed buds on its back that Briar supposed were to be wings. Instead they looked like short webbed claws that had atrophied.

  “Jeez, Gelid. That may not the best look for your wedding night.” Briar grabbed the footstool in her blue-blazing hands, and held it like a shield against the giant black beastie.

  The thing hissed and curled its claws downward, leaving gouges in the floor. Briar knelt down, grabbed Leon’s cage, and ran to the far end of the room. But there was nowhere else to go.

  The creature sidewound its way and stopped within striking distance. Briar threw the footstool at it, but the awful thing was quick to nab with its toothy jaws, and crush the furniture to splinters. The monster laughed with a sound like a punctured tire. It towered above Briar on its malformed hind legs, licking the air with its black forked tongue. Brownish saliva slavered from its sharp jaws and sizzled on the stone floor below.

  With a boom and a crash the wall of stone behind the beast erupted and crumbled to a heap of rubble. There with his paws upraised in some magical gesture, stood Sherman. Dax stood behind, watching in astonishment.

  The creature spun itself around and snapped its jaws. Then it lunged at Sherman with its massive body. But he quickly tucked into a ball and rolled aside. The enormous creature landed amid the rubble, scattering stones like toys around the room, then it coiled up to strike again.

  “The flames,” Sherman shouted. “Throw one at the dragon!”

  Tarfeather, who had been clinging to the inside folds of Briar’s cloak, saw the creature advancing on Sherman. He shouted, “The creeper, Briar Blackwood! Killery it!”

  But before Briar had a chance to do anything, the reptile struck Sherman, sinking its fangs into his back. He yelped in a high-pitched canine cry.

  “No!” Dax howled. He picked up a large piece of stone and slammed it down on the monster’s scaly head. It unlocked its jaws and recoiled. Sherman flopped to the floor and did not move. He lay in the middle of a small blood-lake. The monster furiously sounded off with a noise like a hundred angry wildcats.

  With a demonic, unstoppable rage, the beast slithered to strike Dax. He tried to back away, but tripped and fell onto the mountain of wall-stones piled just behind him.

  “Behind!” Tarfeather insisted. “Takery from behind!”

  Gelid rasped and bore down at Dax who rolled to one side. The creature’s fangs scratched at the stone, sparking, gashing.

  Briar charged up behind Gelid and struck her scaly back with one of the blue flames. There was a sound like raw meat sizzling on a grill, and
the creature began twisting upon itself, like a great knot that kept tying. The monster screeched as electric strands of silvery lightning scorched between the crevices of her tangled body, causing her to wrench into a tightly constricted mass.

  Dax scrambled to his feet while the dragon uncoiled with a final high-pitched cry. Then it sprawled, lifelessly, across the floor.

  One of Briar’s hands was normal again, but the other still blazed with power. She stood staring at it. Then she ogled the creature. Back and forth she did this, trying to understand what just happened. It wasn’t until Dax picked up Leon’s cage and ushered Briar toward the wall-opening, that she began to come back to her senses.

  “Takery mirror,” Tarfeather whispered. “Great powers it havery.”

  “Go,” Briar said to Dax. She motioned to the opening. He hopped through it while she made a hasty detour to Gelid’s dressing table. She seized the mirror and stuffed it into her robes. She knew Dax hadn’t seen her do it, but she felt that it needed to be kept secret for now. Who knows how it might help later on? she reasoned. Then she dashed back to Dax, who stood looking down at something behind a rocky pile of wreckage.

  There at his feet, Briar saw the fox lying with his red and white fur soaked through with blood. “Sherman!” Briar cried with such force that she was certain the remaining walls would crumble into dust.

  Dax held her back. “It’s too late. We have to get out of here.”

  Briar doubled over and sobbed. “We can’t just leave him here.” She knelt down and lifted Sherman’s floppy body with her flameless hand. He felt lighter than she expected. And he was already getting cold. She pressed his form to her chest. His head lolled to one side and a strand of blood dripped from his mouth. Briar then listened to his chest. She felt like crying again, but this time from joy. Sherman’s heart was still beating. It was faint. But he was alive.

  “Come on!” Dax shouted. He was now in the outside hallway looking in all directions for guards, who probably heard the immense explosion and Gelid’s gruesome shrieks.

  Briar began to negotiate a path between the chunks of strewn stone. And when she passed Gelid’s reptilian head, it lifted. Without Briar ever noticing, the thing widened its jaws, forming sticky saliva strings.

  “Briar Blackwood!” Tarfeather screeched.

  Instinctually, Briar slid down onto the rubble, trying to evade the creature. It bore down again, its sharp teeth gouging the rock-pile on either side of Briar’s leg. She felt the dragon’s wet mouth, but she was unharmed. Gelid slithered with all of her weight on Briar’s robes, and pinning her to one spot. The creature raised itself for a final deadly bite, opening its mouth wide, when Briar whipped the remaining blue flame from her hand. The ball of fire propelled like a skyrocket, striking inside the dragon’s mouth.

  The creature bit down and tried to shake the flame out. But Briar watched the power from the flame glow through the creature’s body and travel into its core. The reptile screamed and recoiled backward into a corner. It paced back and forth several times, like a mad, trapped animal, trying to expel the flame. It vibrated out of control when black smoke began to billow from its mouth. It slammed its own body to the floor, trying in vain to get the flame out. In desperation, the creature sank its claws into its belly and ripped itself apart with a wall-shaking howl that was filled with all the wildness of the world. Innards and black blood washed across the floor, soaking Briar’s feet with a foul stench.

  The dark creature finally lay without a sound, smoking and sizzling like doused campfire logs. Briar looked down at the slick black mess in which she stood and tried not to wretch.

  “Now that’s a perfectly cooked pot-roast,” Tarfeather impersonated from a television cooking show.. “No time for wastery. Runnery!”

  Chapter 21

  Briar lost all sensation in her body and she wondered if it would ever return. Still, she cradled Sherman’s blood-soaked, wilted frame like a child who recovered a long-lost doll. He had saved them, and paid for it with his life. But there might still be time, she hoped.

  “Right this way, Madame,” Tarfeather shouted in one of his many voices. He hopped weightless like a flea atop the scatter of broken stones. Then he scrambled down an empty hallway that faced an inner courtyard. It was different from others because it was lined with towering overhead windows.

  Briar and Dax followed, their way lit by the haunting crescent moonlight that bled from above. Dax was not paying attention to the jangling of Leon’s cage. “Let me out!” he yelled in a croaky voice.

  “There’s no time,” Dax said back. “Just hang on.”

  “Is this a dream?” he asked Dax, looking with his green, bulging eyes.

  Dax didn’t know how to answer intelligently, so he didn’t. “Yeah, I know it’s hard to believe that I don’t normally dress like a pop-star’s backup dancer, circa 1990. But I don’t—”

  They managed to keep a fireball’s pace behind Tarfeather, who streaked along, zigzagging through the maze of dim hallways.

  “Is this the way out?” Briar asked. She was huffing and beginning to feel the weight of her many robes.

  “The book? Why yes, darling, I know where it is,” Tarfeather parroted from television. “Temple caves havery book of terrible things.”

  Finally the dwaref stopped and backed himself against a wall, droplets of sweat glistening on his golden skin. The others all came to a halt behind him and pressed their backs to the cold walls. Briar saw that just around the corner from where they stood were two of Orpion’s wolfguard. Their helmets only allowed her to see their gray muzzles. Standing outside an open door, they bared long swords in a practiced military manner.

  Briar and the others tried to control their huffing enough to remain unnoticed and to hear the conversation that echoed in the hollow corridors.

  “I don’t know how it happened,” one wolf was trying to explain. His gruff voice sounded familiar.

  “Have you searched the grounds?” This was unmistakably the Lady Orpion’s cold, detached voice.

  “We thought it important to report it first,” the other wolf said. He had a cringing, rueful tone.

  “Spread the word,” Orpion said to one. “You stay here and guard my quarters,” she said to the other. Then Briar heard the sound of hurried footsteps echoing into the distant halls.

  Tarfeather peered around the corner, but the remaining guard saw him. “You there!” he shouted.

  Briar knew what she had to do. She tried to hold back her inner trembling. It was the only way past this guard now. Briar set Sherman down at her feet. She took a moment to collect her thoughts. She realized that she was beginning to feel fatigued. Sherman had warned her that the spell could be physically taxing, and now she was beginning to feel it. Nevertheless, she knew it would be just a moment longer and then they would be out of the palace. She stepped out from behind the wall.

  “I hope you were not shouting at me, fool,” Briar said. Feigning Orpion’s cold intensity, she came face to face with the head of the wolfguard again, with his decay and smell of sickness.

  “I…I…” The wolf looked down the hall in the direction where he saw Orpion leave. Then he looked back at the Lady approaching him. “I thought I saw the escaped prisoners,” he said. It made Briar feel powerful to see him backing up, his gray tail tucked between his legs.

  Briar, hands clasped at her waist like Gelid, moved toward him with a dignified glide. “It sounds as though your judgment is impaired. Perhaps you should take your leave, soldier.” She felt her legs trembling with weakness and a cold sweat forming across her brow.

  “Forgiveness, Lady,” he said. Then he tucked himself low and cringed like a beaten dog.

  Briar felt woozy. Her heart pounded as though she had run a marathon, and her skin felt as though it were coming off. She could not speak or move or even stand for a moment longer. The hallway began to swirl, but in her haze she noticed two standing suits of armor flanking one of the soaring floor-to-ceiling windows. But as so
on as she saw them, they seemed to blur. She felt herself sink toward the floor, nauseated, her consciousness sinking into a puddle of moonlight.

  Briar dropped to her knees, pale as a viper’s belly. The wolfguard dared to look up and his distorted, blind-eyed face twitched as he watched his Lady’s features contort, blister, and re-shape themselves.

  Tarfeather listened from around the corner and motioned for Dax to watch what was happening. As he peered around the corner, he watched the wolf stand above Briar, sword held out, afraid of what he saw. “My Lady?” he asked. But Briar did not respond.

  The wolfguard watched as one of the Lady’s arms reached out and changed from pale, death-white to flesh pink. The Lady’s black robes transformed from somber black to the soft white and gold of Briar’s tattered ball gown.

  The wolf cracked a sinister smile. “So it’s the talebreaker,” he said. He growled and bent low so that he could be eye to eye with his prize. “Think you can just leave me in a prison, tied like a roasting pig?” Briar just wheezed and reeled, unable to do anything. He slapped her hard and her lips bled. Then he loomed over her and hoisted his sword with both of his paws gripping the sword tightly. “I’ve been wanting to taste your flesh since the Horn and Hold. Now it’s time for a little slice.”

  He began to bring his heavy blade down, but it was met by another, blocking it just before it would have chopped at Briar’s exposed neck.

  It was Valrune. It shocked the wolfguard who was told by the others that the prince was as soft and dithering as his father. The wolf stood at his full height, towering over Valrune by a head or more and he lifted his sword. Valrune began to advance attempting to strike so that the wolf would move away from Briar. But the wolf was quick to meet Valrune’s sword with his own and parried it away with a twisting motion of his body, giving him enough time to position himself so that his back was not to a wall.

  Briar slowly began to lift herself from the ground. She looked at her tattered ball gown, and she registered the clanking of swords just a pace or two away from her. But she still felt incapable of standing.