"We'd like her to stay here."
This was not something we had decided, or even talked about. I stopped in midchew and glanced at the others to see if they were any less surprised. They didn't seem to be. Except, of course, for Mom, who had taken maybe three bites of bread, then laid her head down on the grass. "Cornelius," I said.
"No," the miller said.
"Harek," Cornelius told me, "it'd be the best thing for her. She could rest. She'll be safe here." He turned his attention back to the miller. "We'll pay you to watch over her."
"This is no boardinghouse." Obviously the miller had had enough. He turned his back on us and headed inside the mill.
"But...," Cornelius called after him.
I said, "He can't even see her."
"Probably," Nocona said, "the program wouldn't allow for it anyway. There's no telling what would happen if you tried."
Again I said, "He can't even see her."
"Somebody would have had to stay with her," Feordin added, "and the group's divided enough already."
"And we're getting pretty tired of you making decisions for us," Thea said.
"Look," Cornelius started, "I just thought—"
Mom opened her eyes and whispered, "Put a lid on it, Corny. I wouldn't have stayed anyway."
"In that case," Cornelius said, "at the risk of getting accused of making decisions for everybody, I'd say we'd better get going."
28. DESERT
The desert crossing was worse than I'd imagined, and I can say that despite the fact that we met no one and nothing out of the ordinary.
No sand hands.
No giant snakes.
No killer sandstorms or flash floods or sun-crazed nomads.
On the other hand, it was hot. The sand was hot. The air was hot. We were hot. The sand dragged at our steps, leaving us exhausted even as we were just setting out. I could feel the heat through the leather of my boots and once, when I didn't step high enough and pitched forward onto my hands, I singed my palms in the two seconds before I picked myself up.
We wrapped cloth around our faces, hoping that would filter out some of the sand our struggles churned into the air and maybe give the air we breathed a chance to cool off before it hit our lungs. Before we were farther than shouting distance from Miller's Grove, we'd already lit into our water supply.
Despite the shredded blankets we'd wrapped around their legs, the horses balked just about every step of the way. They nipped and kicked and just generally made themselves unpleasant. Mom had dismounted so we could handle them more easily, and there was no telling how long she'd be able to walk on her own. About ten steps, I estimated.
"This is not going to work," Thea said.
"We need to leave the horses," I suggested. "They're holding us back."
"Oh sure, that's easy for you to say," Feordin told me. "What about our treasure? We can't leave that behind."
I said, "It won't do us any good if we die in the desert."
"Oh yeah?" he said.
"Yeah," I said.
"You think you can make me?"
"I think—"
Cornelius said, "I have an idea."
We all turned on him, even Nocona.
"Now wait a minute," Cornelius said over all the shouting and hooting. "Will you just listen to me? I can use my Levitation spell."
I said, "I don't see how that would help. Levitation can get us up off the sand, but it won't get us closer to Sannatia."
"I could levitate the horses," Cornelius explained, "and ... say, two riders each. Felice, obviously. Myself, of course. The rest of you could alternate, take turns: two ride, and two pull the levitating horses along. It'll be a lot easier than trying to drag the horses through the sand."
"Uh-huh," Nocona said, mulling it over. "Why do you get to ride?"
"Because I need to concentrate on the spell."
"Figures," I said.
We used Feordin's magic rope, tying each end to one of the horses. Thea and I lost the draw and got to be the guinea pigs. Or draft horses, however you choose to look at it.
Cornelius shared a horse with Mom. She was looking a little better. The miller's bread must have done her good, for her face had lost that pinched hollowness. But her hair, not combed in the four days we'd been here, no longer hung halfway down her back. It was so tangled, it barely reached her shoulders. And it was coated with a fine layer of sand so that it looked less like the dark and glossy gypsy hair with which Felice had started out and more and more like Mom's own brown-and-gray hairstyle.
Cornelius closed his eyes and concentrated. The horses didn't look too happy about being three feet off the ground, but they soon caught on that this way their hooves were out of the burning sand.
Thea and I started pulling on the rope and Cornelius was right: It wasn't like pulling the full weight of the horses. It wasn't too much harder than just slogging through the sand on our own.
29. SANNATIA
We arrived at Sannatia shortly after midday.
Sand from the desert had blown into the streets. Scrubby grass and weeds had sprouted in unlikely spots, like between the steps in front of buildings and in somebody's window box, where they'd crowded out the flowers.
"Looks like nobody's been here in years," I said.
Nocona, who with Feordin had been guiding the horses, stooped down. "Goblin tracks," he pointed out irritably. "Obviously goblins have been here."
"Nobody besides goblins," I corrected. I waited for Cornelius to lower the horses. Mounting and dismounting had been like being four years old again and picking a carousel horse stuck at the top of its leap.
Thea helped Mom down. "You all right?" I asked.
"I just need to sit on something soft that doesn't move," Mom whispered.
"We really should begin," Cornelius said. "There's a lot of territory to cover."
I gave a hand to Nocona, who hadn't stood up from examining the tracks. I half expected him to consider it an insult to his Indianhood or something, but his ankle must have been sore enough so that he didn't care. He'd probably done more than sprain it; he'd probably chipped or cracked the bone, or it'd have healed by now. Even my arm was half healed. He lugged himself up heavily and turned his face away so I wouldn't see him wince.
"Let's try the barracks first," Feordin suggested, "since that's right here."
It was spooky walking down the streets that the inhabitants had deserted—or from which they'd been snatched—twenty years earlier. Goblins had vandalized the place. Doors were kicked in so that they hung on their hinges and rattled in the breeze. Feather mattresses had been tossed out of windows and gotten sodden from the rains. Wooden furniture had been used for bonfires in the middle of streets. There hadn't been a systematic looting: goblins aren't interested in treasure the way people are. But it explained the lights at night: goblins don't like daylight. Whatever they do, they do at night. It just didn't explain what had happened to the townspeople.
At the barracks we all got out our weapons, to be ready just in case. We assumed the defensive position. I kicked in the door and Feordin and Thea went in ahead of me; Mom dragged herself in after me; Cornelius and Nocona guarded the rear.
No need for SWAT team tactics. The dust was thick enough to taste, and our feet left footprints. Obviously we were the first to pass in years. Storerooms, sleeping rooms, dining hall. Nobody and nothing. All the weapons were gone, though little else seemed disturbed.
"What do you think?" Feordin asked, indicating the stairs to the second floor.
"I think it's a waste of time," Nocona snapped.
The rest of us all looked at each other, anxious that Nocona, the most levelheaded of us, was becoming short-tempered with the pain of his injury.
"Well," Thea said, a study in diplomacy, "where do you think we should look?"
It didn't work. "Don't you get snippy with me," Nocona warned. He turned on his heel and stomped out. Well, it was more like stomp, step gingerly, stomp, step gingerly.
Cornelius said, "Maybe we should try the Wizards' Guild HQ."
"How will we know it?" I asked.
He shrugged. "Shouldn't be too hard to find."
He was right. It was the one that was a big, black hole, about twenty feet deep in the ground and wide enough to hold a midsized playground. There was a sign in the front, which said WIZARDS' GUILD, and it was only slightly singed by whatever had taken down the building.
"Ooops," Cornelius said.
Mom leaned against me.
Nocona sat down on the curb and massaged his ankle.
"Do you think we should go to the Street of Temples?" Thea asked.
"Sure," Feordin said. "Why not?"
"Because," I said, "there have got to be hundreds of places we could go that are 'sure-why-not?' places. If we go to every one of them, we'll still be looking tomorrow evening when we get zapped back to Shelton's basement."
"So?" Cornelius said.
"So, we've got to slow down and analyze. What have we got so far? Someone—we don't know who—has kidnapped Princess Dorinda and, apparently, brought her to Sannatia. Right?"
They all looked at me with varying degrees of impatience.
"So, what are the possibilities? One: the princess is dead, killed during the abduction or after."
"Oh, no," Mom said.
"What're you getting at, Harek?" Nocona asked.
"Possibility number two: the princess is alive but being held captive. I prefer that possibility, because if she's dead, then this whole thing is pointless."
Cornelius sighed and muttered, "Talk about pointless
"I'm trying to look at this logically," I said. "If you'd rather just flail about blindly—"
"Just say what you've got to say," Thea told me.
"If Princess Dorinda's being held captive, the question is why."
"Why?" Thea repeated.
"Why is anyone held captive?"
"For the ransom?" Cornelius suggested.
"Good. What else?"
"To force the relatives to do something," Nocona said.
"Or to prevent them," Thea countered.
"Maybe," I said.
Feordin said, "Perhaps the princess has some information about something, which somebody wants."
"Could be."
"I can't think," Mom said. "Which is it?"
"I don't know," I told them. "I'm just exploring the possibilities."
"Harek, you idiot—" Nocona started.
"What it seems to me," I continued, "is that whatever the reason they want her, they probably want her safe."
"So?" Cornelius said.
"So we've got to figure where someone would keep a ten-year-old girl safe."
Thoughtfully, Thea murmured, "In a town with goblins..."
"Even if you were a goblin," I pointed out, "you wouldn't go through all the trouble of kidnapping a princess just to lock her up in a dungeon and terrorize her. Where would you lock up a ten-year-old kid?"
"In school!' Feordin said. "That's what our parents do to us."
"No schools here," Thea said. "Children would be taught at home until they were old enough to learn a trade."
"Royal children would have tutors brought in for them," Cornelius said.
Thea shook her head. "Yeah, but the princess didn't live in Sannatia."
"The royal governor did," I said. "If he had any children, there'd be a nursery at the governor's palace."
"Sure," Feordin said to show he wasn't impressed with my reasoning. "Why not?"
As soon as we walked into the main hall of the governor's palace, we saw it was a lot cleaner than the barracks. Not clean in the sense of they-must-have-a-housekeeper, but there were definite paths through the dust and grime.
"Goblins," Nocona told us after a quick glance at the footprints.
"Are you sure?" Thea asked.
Nocona sighed real loud and took a closer look at the floor. "Mmm-hmmm," he said in what sounded like thoughtful surprise.
"What?" Thea asked.
He ignored her, moving on instead to check the furniture, which had obviously been climbed on, and the walls, which seemed to have been bounced off. "Uh-hunh," Nocona said.
"What?" Thea repeated.
He stepped around her to place a chair under the chandelier, which had pieces broken off and scattered across the room as though someone had been playing Tarzan on it. "I see," Nocona said.
"What?" Thea demanded.
"Goblins!" he screamed at her.
Very calmly, very quietly, she said, "All right." She gave him the overly sweet smile girls do when they're feeling especially superior. "Thank you."
Nocona stepped off the chair, wincing at the movement.
"Now that you've got the attention of everyone in town...," Cornelius said.
Nocona shrugged, as if to say, When you surround me with fools, don't blame me for the results.
"Can we please stop bickering long enough to finish this?" Mom asked.
I pulled out my sword and Thea her knife. In a moment, Cornelius stepped closer, then Feordin, finally Nocona. Mom just hung onto my arm, which would be the death of both df us if we ran into trouble.
We followed the path the goblins had made through two decades' worth of dust. Certainly there were sidetracks, where individual goblins or small groups had gone into other rooms—and some of these even looked recent. But obviously a great number of goblins passed through here repeatedly. At one end of the path was the front door. All we had to do was find the other end.
We walked through the banquet hall, where there had been a food fight decades ago: food stains on the walls, broken dishes on the floor, shriveled and dusty pieces of who-knew-what underfoot. We went up a curved marble stairway. There were doors along the hallway, splintered where they had been kicked in. At the far end of the hall a set of double doors were wide open the normal way, and that's where the goblins' trail led.
For a moment we just stood there, listening.
Nothing.
Stealthily we made our way down the hall. Thea pushed ahead of the rest of us to take the lead. Pressing herself against the wall next to the door, she motioned for us to keep back. Once we were all in position, she bobbed forward to peek inside the room, making herself as quick a target as possible.
Nothing.
She repeated the motion, a fraction slower.
Nothing.
She held up three fingers to us, folded one down, folded the second one down, folded the last one down, and leapt into the room. We jumped in behind her.
There was no one there.
It had been a nursery, that was obvious by the faded pictures on the walls. There were animals, more cute than realistic, and rainbows and stars. One entire wall was a tapestry: a fantasy castle with airy spires and turrets coming out of the building at impossible angles, and a very friendly-looking moat monster in the background.
The room had a canopied bed—too dusty to tell what color—and the canopy sagged almost to the quilted covers. A few toys lay in the corners of the room—a painted top, a rag doll, a puppet. More toys overflowed out of a wooden chest at the foot of the bed. The floor was rubbed dust-free by the passage of countless goblin feet, but there was no telling where they'd come from. Only one doorway opened into the room, and we were standing in it. Why would goblins come up here, walk around the room, then go back downstairs and disappear into the town?
"Now what?" Mom sank down onto the floor. "Do we just wait until they come back?"
"No." Cornelius stepped forward. He raised his hands and sputtered in his obscure wizards' dialect.
"What are you doing?" I asked wearily.
"Reveal Magic spell."
"I don't feel anything," I protested.
Cornelius shoved past me and zeroed in on the wall, the one with the tapestry. He began running his hands across the weaving.
I rested my hand against the cheerful moat monster. "I don't feel anything," I repeated.
Cornelius ignored me. He sto
oped down for a better look at the bottom half of the picture.
I examined the tapestry more closely. I still felt no telltale tingle of magic. But I did suddenly notice that the wall hanging wasn't dusty. "Hey," I started.
"Bingo," Cornelius said. He tapped his finger against the door of the castle.
I got down on my knees and ran my hand over the same area and got just the faintest sensation like I'd been leaning on one arm too long. There was a warding spell here, to prevent the magic from being casually detected.
"Yes," I said. "Now what?"
The others huddled closer. "Try knocking," Feordin suggested.
"Ask the moat creature if anyone's home," Thea said.
Nocona cleared his throat and held up the little golden box, the one he'd won riddling with the dragon. " 'Whatever we'll need to complete our quest,' " he reminded us.
We all cleared a space while he got out the tiny key and looked for a place to insert it. A tinfoil key in a woven-cloth door. Sure, I thought.
Cornelius's head was in my way, but I heard the click.
The castle door, about as tall as my hand, swung open. Light poured out, but we couldn't see anything.
Take that back.
Looking inside was like looking into a candle flame, or into the sun: not really a color, but a presence.
"Oooo," we all breathed.
Nocona reached his hand in, and it disappeared up to his wrist. He pulled back and wriggled his fingers. Apparently that was proof enough for him that it was safe. He reached in again. His hand disappeared up to the wrist, the elbow, the shoulder. He stuck his head through the door, which should have been too narrow, but somehow he was gone up to the shoulders, then he crawled forward and disappeared up to the waist.
"Ahm, Nocona," I said, grabbing hold of his ankle. It was his injured one, all wrapped up in a makeshift bandage. I must have hurt him, for he jerked his leg away. If he cried out or said anything from the other side of the doorway, we couldn't hear. I caught just a glimpse of blood on the bandage—which shouldn't have been there, not on a sprain—then Nocona crawled the rest of the way in through the door and disappeared as completely as Robin going down in the sand.
We waited what felt like half an hour. It was probably closer to a minute.