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  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.

  Chapter 28

  After a slow day’s journey, Murbra Faire loomed in the distance. The vast numbers in their troop made movement slow. Sherman and Valrune agreed that the route least traveled by Lady Orpion or her spies was to the north, through the Oaktangle Woods at the base of the Ice Cap Mountains. But it took them almost the whole of the day to make their way through the treacherous passes and impossibly tangled trees darkening the paths of their passage.

  The dwarefs munched on stray pebbles of granite that cluttered the sides of the road. Briar and the others hadn’t eaten since their meal of mud bread from the Boss and his posse. As revolting as it had tasted before, the hard flat loaves with the flavor of soil along with some water sounded good to Briar and Dax halfway through the day. Leon was lucky to snap up a flying insect from time to time. Even though the very act of eating a bug was loathsome to him, and even though they tasted disgusting, he knew it was better than starving.

  Once they were well into the woods, Valrune called for the caravan to stop, and he ushered Briar and the others down a soft fern-covered bank that sloped from the side of the road. There, beneath a stand of oaks, was a ring of red berries the size of peas. Skilled in knowledge of the woods, Valrune called the shiny things Imp Weave, and said they tas
ted good. Briar and the others picked them and stuffed themselves with the sweet things, which tasted like crisp apples.

  By the time they emerged from the woods and saw Murbra Faire up close, its windows glinted from the last rays of the setting sun. The forest was behind them, and Briar looked back at the spectacular western horizon, red and orange, reflecting brilliant pink and purple on the low-slung clouds.

  As Briar gazed out, the final rays coloring her face, she knew that the protecting enchantments would soon end, if they hadn’t ended once she used that mirror. She wondered if she might feel any different once the spells were gone. But as of now, all she felt was a growing sickness in her heart, knowing that things might end for her in this land.

  Sherman’s comments in the cave still haunted her. If she was not dillywig but had power, what was she? She felt lost— perhaps just as lost as she felt before coming to these Realms. Sherman wasn’t convinced from the very beginning that she was the girl from the Omens. And what if he was right? What if she was not Briar the savior—Briar the hero? What if she was just the same as before: Briar the hopeless, Briar the nothing?

  Or worse, what if she were wickett? There were undeniable clues. Her powers seemed to surge out of control whenever she sensed danger. Her entire being became a weapon in those moments, killing both soldiers and priests. If she were a child of the darkness, not of the light, there would be too much to lose. She had so little in her life up until this moment—so suppressing whatever was budding within her was a fast ranking priority.

  Once they arrived at the Westwolf Wall, the farthest and most secret of the palace’s wings, Valrune dismounted and instructed Briar and the others on how they might enter through the lower tunnels that were created to serve as an escape for the king in times of war. Westwolf was partitioned by the natural jagged mountain formations that jutted suddenly from the landscape. The upswept rock upon which Murbra Faire was perched extended farther west than most travelers or warriors suspected. So it had long served as a natural barrier for intruders.

  Valrune mapped out his plan. He would go by horse to the main gates, to see if he could create a diversion while Briar, Sherman, Dax, Leon, and Tarfeather entered the secret passages below. The dwarefs remained in hiding below the Oaktangle Woods’ snarled, camouflaging branches. They awaited Valrune’s signal, a flaming arrow, if indeed it became necessary for them to be called to action.

  The path to the secret passages of Westwolf proved a treacherous journey through a dried thicket of spike-length thorns. Whether or not the king had planned this as a defense, Briar did not know. But she did see the skeletons of rodents and other small creatures that must have accidentally ventured into the thorns and could not find a way out. Without telling Briar why, Valrune had given her his sword before he rode up the winding palace road. And now Briar found herself using it like a machete to hack at the branches, some of them thick as a child’s arm.

  Leon and Tarfeather could easily fit beneath or between most of the dangerous branches, and proved to be useful scouts for Briar, Dax, and Sherman. They would call out to them to turn left, right, or go back depending on the thinness of the chaparral.

  The secret passage was not so difficult to find, and Briar wondered why it was touted a secret. The door that led into Westwolf was as tall and wide as Cole, with a small window near the top of it, barricaded by crisscrossing wrought iron. The door was not locked as they had suspected, But Sherman reminded them that Cole had likely tried to escape through it, and was apprehended, then taken to the mines.

  The passage was a series of stone steps leading through a narrow stairwell that smelled dank and mossy. Small openings in the wall about the size of bricks served as windows and helped illuminate the stairs in the otherwise dim passages.

  Finally they reached an old door set between the narrow gray stone walls. Briar used her sword to push it open, and it squealed on its ornate iron cast hinges. The chamber on the other side was cold and high. Like the rest of the palace, there were no windows set in the smooth stone walls, but this made sense, given it was the king’s refuge in times of war. A fire roared in the room’s sculpted stone fireplace, which was large enough for someone to stand within.

  The place was sparsely, though regally appointed. A polished table, long and plain, was at the center of the room. Papers of curling parchment were unrolled on it, pinned down by numerous weighty metal markers. Two leather wingback chairs with backrests of exaggerated height were arranged near the fireplace. The room was still, but something about the place made everyone feel a bit uneasy.

  “Hello?” Briar called out. She held Valrune’s sword up. More stillness and silence.

  “Why is there a fire burning?” Leon asked. He flopped next to Briar and gazed around with his bugged out eyes. Briar looked around, and it occurred to her that Tarfeather was missing.

  “Tarfeather,” she called out. “What happened to him?”

  “Didn’t he come up with you?” Dax asked.

  “I haven’t seen him since we started climbing the stairs,” Briar said.

  Sherman said nothing, but padded over to the solid, planky table and looked at the scrolls. “This is a map of the Realms,” he said. “These look like battle markers.”

  Leon hopped over and up on to the table. “Oh, Briar, we need to get out of here now,” he said.

  “But Cole was planning no war—he had no enemies,” Sherman said. “So whose plans are these?”

  “Why they are mine, of course,” said a familiar voice from behind them.

  They all turned to face Damarius, who stood with his stone cold countenance, eyes cast down. From behind his robes, Tarfeather emerged. He faced Briar and the others with a long face, his claws clutched together and jangling at his throat.

  “Givery reward,” Tarfeather said to Damarius. “Givery now.”

  “In good time, my friend,” Damarius said. Then he entered the chamber. He made a gesture with one hand, his fingers drawing a magical symbol in the air. The door behind him slammed and the lock clinked in place.

  “No, givery now!” Tarfeather demanded. “Girl takery mirror, touchery mirror like you askery,” he said. He now made fists and began tearing at his jester’s clothes. “Givery back Tarfeather eyes. Givery back Ha’tua!”

  “So demanding, for a traitor. Wouldn’t you agree?” Damarius asked Briar. Then he drew another magic sigil in the air, and the Book of Cinder and Blight disappeared from Sherman’s paws and re-appeared in his open hands in a burst of black smoke. Before Sherman had time to react, Damarius made another gesture and Sherman froze in place.

  “Sherman!” Dax shouted. The fox fell to one side, like a taxidermied creature that had not yet been mounted to its base. Dax tried to revive him, but Sherman remained stiff, his mouth open in a gasp of surprise. Briar raised Valrune’s sword toward Damarius, but it trembled visibly in her grip.

  “Not as quick as the old fox used to be,” Damarius said. But his voice was no longer high and effete, the affectation of a courtly presence. This voice was huskier, and starting to sound familiar. Facial hair started growing on Damarius’ jaw at an alarming rate.

  Briar’s Dragon Powers seemed to have failed her. If ever there were a moment to use them, it was now. But the flames did not arise.

  As Damarius moved to the other side of the table, his face began to shift and distort. He grew taller. A full length of salt and pepper hair fell to his shoulders.

  “Ash,” Briar said. She felt like her heart was trying to escape her chest.

  “Time’s up,” he said. He pulled the hood from his head and placed the black book on the table. “The sun has set on your little adventure, I’m afraid. Oh, and by the way—happy birthday.”

  Briar backed up a step though she still held the sword up and tried to seem menacing. “You planned this moment from the start,” she said. She realized now why Sherman looked frightened when he knew she had touched Gelid’s mirror. “You wanted me vulnerable to Lady Orpion so she could end th
e Omens. You used Tarfeather to get me to touch the mirror and then to bring me here.”

  “Why didn’t you listen? I tried to warn you,” Ash said. While he spoke, he made a complex magical gesture above the book.

  “The stone you gave me. That wasn’t protection,” she said.

  “Imagine our disappointment when we found King Cole instead of you holding it,” Ash said. He made another complex pattern in the air that glowed blood red. The pattern became a mist that lighted over the book and caused it to take on the red glow.

  “You used it to track me?” Briar said.

  “And Tarfeather followed your every move in the commons. You would have found your way to this place one way or another.” Ash looked at Tarfeather. “He is a useful little flit.”

  “That’s how he knew so much about television and movies. That’s all my stepmother does all day.”

  “Clever girl. But not clever enough, I’m afraid. There are Tales within Tales…You should have listened when you had the chance. But now—now things are out of my hands.” He shook his head, and his eyes looked almost melancholy. “—And the Tale must be told as it must.”

  Tarfeather rushed to Ash’s feet and seemed ready to dig his claws into the man. “You givery eyes, givery Ha’tua. Givery Tarfeather just reward! You makery promise!”

  “As you wish,” Ash said. The dwaref levitated from the floor with Ash’s hand guiding him. The book creaked open. Then Ash whispered to the book, “A just reward.” Then he took several cautious paces back.

  The pages began to turn by themselves, and finally a luminous column shot up, scorching the stone ceiling. Ash held his tinted brass goggles up to shield his eyes.

  Dax took out his phone, fumbled with it for a moment, then began to video record what was happening.

  Tarfeather smiled wide, showing his terrible sharp fangs, as he became engulfed in the light. He raised his arms high above his head as though receiving a blissful, unseen gift. His missing eyes then appeared in his black eye sockets and he blinked with wonder at everyone. “Yes!” he screamed and laughed.