The Familiars (23 page)

“So, Skylar,” said Aldwyn, “does this hydra have any weak spots? Something that might slow it down?”

“I know a little about the seven heads,” she replied. “You see, Brannfalk had collected one dragon from each of the seven northern species. There’s a fire breather, fairly typical. A shrieker, whose wail has been known to cause madness if you’re exposed to it for too long. A tunneler, whose spiked horns can bore through any mountain. You remember the acid spitter; we already know what it is capable of. And then there are the three really dangerous heads.”

Aldwyn swallowed. The ones Skylar had already told them about seemed bad enough.

“The first of those is the hive dragon,” continued Skylar. She seemed to take pleasure in describing their foe in detail. “Poisonous hornets live in its nostrils. The second is the black tooth, whose bite causes instant death. So you should definitely avoid that one. And the final head is the python
strangler, whose forked tongue can squeeze the life out of a full-sized gundabeast.”

“You didn’t answer my question,” Aldwyn interrupted her.

“Oh, I’m sorry. What was it again?”

“Any weak spots?” he reminded her.

“None that I know of.”

Aldwyn’s uneasiness grew.

“Don’t worry,” said Skylar. “I’ll be casting illusions to help.”

“What about me?” asked Gilbert. “What am I supposed to do?”

“You’re going to be bait,” she said.

Shortly afterward, the mist began to lift, and Aldwyn spotted a tower of stone jutting out of the ground like a giant mushroom, tilting ever so slightly.

“This must be the high tower of the Old Palace, the one Brannfalk escaped from,” said Skylar. It was the only thing from all of Mukrete that had remained visible.

Through an arched window, half above ground and half below, Aldwyn could see a spiral staircase
leading downward.

“Guys, over here,” said Aldwyn. “It looks like a way in.”

Aldwyn was the first to climb through, jumping down to a marble step beneath the window. Skylar peered through the opening, assessing the distance of the drop.

“Gilbert, I could do with a little help,” she said.

Gilbert supported her with two webbed hands, lowering her down to the ground, and Aldwyn was there to ease the landing. Gilbert followed,
hopping down beside them.

Aldwyn took one last look through the window and could see a sliver of sky, the clouds now turning orange-pink, a sure sign that sunset was approaching. Before he turned back for the stairs, he could have sworn he saw a small flock of spyballs fly past outside.

“Come on,” said Skylar. “We have a long way down. It says in the scrolls that the Old Palace’s high tower reached twenty stories into the sky. And who knows how deep down the dungeon lies.”

They began their twisting descent, making winding circles around the central stone pillar of the staircase. The granite walls were remarkably well preserved; the superior architecture and construction had prevented even the slightest cracks in their surface. The windows had mud and earth pressed against them, revealing a cross section of worm trails and mole tunnels. As the familiars moved lower, the air became stale and still. No breeze had passed through this spire for two hundred years. Their descent into the buried underground fortress was lit by steady flames
coming from wall-mounted candleless holders. Skylar identified this wax-and wick-free magical device as Protho’s Lights, named after the great magical inventor, Orachnis Protho.

“Hey, wait a minute,” said Gilbert suddenly.

Aldwyn and Skylar turned back to him. The tree frog had stopped beneath an open window, standing beside a pile of dirt on the floor.

“That’s great, Gilbert, but we’ve seen dirt before,” said Aldwyn.

“No, look,” said the tree frog as he pulled a gold-capped tube from the floor. “It’s one of Marianne’s pocket scrolls. It must have slipped out of her sleeping shirt.”

“They’re really here!” whispered Aldwyn to himself. The hope that they weren’t too late washed over him.

Just then, he felt some pebbles fall on his shoulder. He glanced up at the window and saw a horde of giant earth mites scurry in from the dried dirt outside. They were the size of grapes, with hard shells and six pointy legs. The ground-dwelling insects crawled down the side of the wall, moving quickly toward them. “What are they?” asked
Aldwyn, with alarm in his voice.

“I don’t know,” replied Skylar.

Aldwyn and Gilbert both gave her a look of surprise.

“What? I don’t know everything,” she said, using her good wing to try to knock a couple of the bugs that had fallen onto her from her feathers.

“First vampire leeches, now this,” said an exasperated Gilbert. “I’m really done for this time!”

Aldwyn tried to shake off the handful of mites that had landed on his fur.

“Aldwyn, Gilbert, relax,” said Skylar. “They’re not biting.”

They both stopped their flailing.

“They’re not?” asked Gilbert.

“They’re not,” said Aldwyn.

“I think they’re just looking for a warm place to nestle,” she added.

Skylar reached into her satchel with her beak and removed some sage, juniper, and nightshade. She tossed the components into the air and chanted.

“Send a flame from whence you came!”

A small female fire spirit materialized, and the mites immediately swarmed in the direction of the fairy’s glowing form.

Aldwyn used his claw to pull one last hanger-on from the furry pit of his hind leg and dropped it on the ground. Skylar and Gilbert, now free and clear as well, were moving farther down the steps, leaving the heat-seeking crawlers behind.

They headed deeper and deeper into the bowels of the Sunken Palace. Soon they could hear haunting music. Around a bend at the end of the staircase, they found what appeared to be a banquet room. Large sofas and chairs surrounded an enchanted harp playing a melancholy tune, as if a musical recital of some sort had taken place here long ago and never ended. One of the strings was out of tune, and every time it was plucked, a flat note pierced the air. Crystal glasses with traces of wine and plates covered with quail bones were still left on the tables, abandoned in a rush when the ogre’s curse had plunged the castle into the ground. Save some cobwebs and dust, Aldwyn thought, this is what the place must have looked like two centuries ago.

He looked at the paintings on the walls. One seemed to be a portrait of King Brannfalk. His resemblance to Queen Loranella was unmistakable. Aldwyn’s eyes then returned to the floor.

“Look, footprints.”

Tracks in the dust led to a wooden door. The trio followed them onto the second floor landing overlooking the great hall. Aldwyn stood in awe. Never before had he been inside a room so enormous. There were marble staircases on either side of the landing. Rows of columns supported the high domed ceiling, from which hung metal chandeliers holding Protho’s Lights. The floor displayed a large tile mosaic of King Brannfalk’s face. Skylar had been right when she said he was prideful: this was vanity unchecked!

Two large archways led to neighboring rooms. Aldwyn could see that one was the throne room; the other he couldn’t see into from where he was standing. Unlike the banquet room they had passed through, the great hall appeared to have been ravaged by battle. There were singe marks on the wall where a fire had burned tapestries to ash, and chunks of stone had been splintered as
if by mighty blasts of energy. Heavy wooden furniture had been crushed and a table overturned. Dented suits of armor lined the wall. One of the stairway’s marble banisters looked as if a large part of it had been melted away.

An ominous silence hovered over the place, broken only by the distant melody of the out-of-tune harp. As Aldwyn took his first steps down the stairs, he felt the ground move beneath his feet. He thought that the earth had given way and the castle was sinking even deeper. Either that, or—these were the footsteps of the seven-headed hydra.

17

THE HYDRA OF MUKRETE

A
ldwyn didn’t have to wait long to get his answer: in the throne room’s archway, a single dragon head appeared. Then another. Then a third and a fourth. Each a different size and color. The last three heads came all together, along with the beast’s giant body, smooth and green with jagged spikes on its tail. The Hydra of Mukrete stood thirty feet tall and was nearly as long.

Aldwyn, Gilbert, and Skylar froze in their tracks. All they’d been told had not prepared them for the fearsome monster now blocking their path.

“
Eeeeeeeiiiiiiiiiiiiii!”

The high-pitched, eardrum-shattering wail came from the head of the shrieker. It had a long, beige-speckled neck and an impossibly large mouth. Its cry alerted the other wandering heads to what it had just discovered. In a flash, fourteen malevolent dragon eyes were gazing at the familiars, who were trying to cover their ears, attempting to block the shrieker’s wail any way they could.

“Gilbert, the sleeping powder!” shouted Aldwyn over the deafening scream.

“What?” Aldwyn thought he heard Gilbert respond, but he wasn’t quite sure.

“THE SLEEPING POWDER!” Aldwyn yelled, trying to be heard over the shrieker dragon.

Skylar was shouting, too, gesturing frantically to Gilbert, who seemed both confused and terrified. The hydra was stomping closer—its thick, clawed feet dragging its heavy body across the floor at a worrying speed.

Aldwyn tried pantomime instead, cupping his paws together and curling up to them as if pretending to sleep. He then shook his paw as if pouring something from a vial. Gilbert finally got the
message and removed the glass container with its precious powder from Jack’s pouch. Aldwyn took it in his teeth. The hydra had moved down the alley of columns right up to the staircase on which the familiars were standing, but the shrieker took a breath, giving them a quick chance to talk.

“Gilbert and I will distract it from the ground,” said Skylar to Aldwyn. “Good luck.”

At this moment, a blast of fire hit the stone steps, landing right between Aldwyn and his two fellow familiars. He looked up to see that the blast had come from the red-eyed fire breather. Its mouth was dripping steaming saliva. Skylar and Gilbert hurried down the staircase, drawing the fire breather’s attention away from Aldwyn. A trail of orange flames was nipping at their heels. Aldwyn sprinted upward, hoping to climb high enough to jump on top of the beast. As he ran, the smallest of the seven heads opened its mouth and flipped up its tongue. A stream of yellow liquid shot toward Aldwyn. When the discharge made contact with the marble, it began to eat away at it instantly. This was the acid spitter head. Aldwyn had to leap from step to step as its venom burned
simmering holes in his path.

Aldwyn caught a glimpse through the banister as Skylar and Gilbert reached the floor and sprinted toward the dented suits of armor standing against the wall. The head of the black tooth, with hollowed-out eyes and rows of rotting teeth, darted toward them. It might have swallowed both familiars whole had it not been for the shrieker’s head, which was pulling the hydra in the other direction, straight for Aldwyn.

As the shrieker wailed again, Aldwyn jumped atop the narrow stone banister. The head came up alongside him, the inhuman noise getting louder the closer it got. But instead of running away, Aldwyn leaped onto its snout. He took one of his claws and stuck it into the vial’s cork stopper, then tugged it out with a pop. The enraged head of the shrieker barely had time to react as Aldwyn pounced up to its eye and tipped a dash of the Alchemist’s dark yellow sleeping powder into the socket.

Instantaneously, the shrieker’s pupil dilated and the entire eye became glassy. It went silent—the first of the seven heads had fallen fast asleep. As the shrieker’s neck began to go limp, Aldwyn
dashed across it toward the hydra’s main body, recorking the vial as he ran.

“That wasn’t so bad,” he said to himself, a little surprised but also gaining confidence.

The feeling didn’t last long, though. Out of the corner of his eye he spotted a pair of twisted horns rushing toward him—the horns of the tunneler dragon. He dodged them at the very last second, only getting grazed by their spiked tips. Before the tunneler could take a second stab at him, Aldwyn vaulted to the neighboring neck of the acid spitter.

As the horns charged at him again, Aldwyn stood his ground, leaving himself a clear target of the tunneler’s attack. He waited as the spiked tips sliced through the air, approaching him. Then, at the last moment, he vaulted upward, wrapping his paws around the nearest chandelier. The tunneler couldn’t stop the momentum of his blow, and its horns pierced the underside of the acid spitter’s long neck, puncturing its salivary gland and sending a stream of acid gushing from the hole. The head of the acid spitter slammed to the ground, a flood of acid spreading across the floor.