“You two can chat about fashion on the way,” Frank said impatiently. “You’re wasting time. Leave now.”
“Yeah, before Snow White sees,” added Flik.
Duncan winced. “Ooh, Snow. I’d better talk to her about this before I go.”
“There’s no time; your friend is in danger,” Frank said. “We’ll talk to Snow for you. Don’t worry.”
“You sure?” Duncan asked. “But what if—”
“This is hero business, remember?” Frank said. “The world needs you. Or something like that. She’ll understand. Now go.”
“Well, you are right about my hero responsibilities,” Duncan said. “But—”
“Go!” Frank barked.
“All right,” Duncan said. “Lead the way, Mr. Smimf.”
Smimf took one step and seemed to vanish into thin air.
“Huh? I didn’t even see which direction he went,” Duncan said, stunned.
Smimf reappeared. “Sorry, sir, Your Highness, sir. I’ve got to remember to keep it slower. Let’s try again.” He ran off at a startling speed, but Duncan was at least able to see him this time.
“Onward, Papa Scoots Jr.!” Duncan shouted, and rode off after the messenger.
Frank rubbed his hands together. He’d gotten rid of Duncan. And the royal family had Snow in such a tizzy that it would probably be hours before she realized her husband was missing. Frank and Flik did something very rare for Sylvarian dwarfs: They smiled.
4
A HERO DOESN’T APPRECIATE GOOD COMEDY
You’re never too young to start being a hero. Practice dueling one-handed so you never need to drop your blankie.
—THE HERO’S GUIDE TO BEING A HERO
“How do you like your new throne?” asked Princess Briar Rose. She looked as smug and superior as ever, standing on the red carpet of her statue-lined royal reception chamber in Avondell Palace. She wore a ruby-studded gown and sapphire-tipped shoes. Her arms were covered by long silk gloves that were only slightly whiter than her bone-pale skin, and a diamond tiara was tucked into the mountain of thick auburn hair piled atop her head. She crossed her arms and flashed a self-satisfied grin at Liam, who sat before her in a gold-plated, velvet-cushioned super-seat.
“I’d like it better if I wasn’t chained to it,” Liam said. Iron shackles bound his ankles to the legs of the throne. “Seriously. My feet are going numb. Can we loosen these cuffs a bit?”
“Sorry if your tootsies are sore, Tough Guy,” Briar snickered. “Better get used to it. How else can I make sure you don’t try to run before the wedding?”
“I don’t understand any of this,” Liam said. “You obviously hate me. Why would you want to be tied to me for the rest of your life?”
“Haven’t we been through this before, Lover Boy?” she said. “It’s destiny. You were promised to me when we were both eensy-weensy babies. And when something is promised to me, I make sure I get it.”
Liam couldn’t argue those facts. Back when Briar was an infant and he was only three years old, their parents made arrangements for the two to someday be married. But Briar ended up spending the majority of her life hiding from an evil fairy’s curse, and when Liam woke her from an enchanted slumber and finally got to meet her in person, he discovered she’d become a spoiled brat. He called off the wedding—and in doing so earned himself the scorn of both their kingdoms.
“But I still don’t get why you want to marry me. You spent the last year spreading lies about me and destroying my reputation,” Liam said bitterly. “Your people despise me. Do you think they’ll be happy to see me by your side?”
“They will feel however I tell them to feel,” Briar said. “I’m pretty much a goddess around here. And besides, nobody cares about your precious little reputation. You’re just here to be eye candy.”
That comment struck a nerve (not the eye candy bit—the part about Liam’s reputation). “You’ve tried to take everything from me just to be spiteful,” he said coldly. “But no matter what people may think, I know who I am. Being a hero is all I have lived for—ever since I was three years old and I saved the lives of your parents.”
Briar chuckled. “Oh, yes, that’s right—those two professional assassins you managed to beat up when you were just a toddler,” she said. “Nothing about that story ever seemed—oh, I don’t know—a wee bit fishy to you?”
“Look,” Liam said, “if you’re going to force me to marry you, why drag it out? Why aren’t you calling a cleric in here right now to perform the ceremony and get it over with?”
Briar shook her head in disbelief. “I’m a princess, darling. And not just any princess. I’m heir to the throne of the richest kingdom on the continent. I am having a proper royal wedding: platinum coach pulled by two dozen white horses, ninety-eight-piece marching band, cannons blasting a salute, thirty-foot-tall bouquets of flowers most people thought were extinct, little mesh bags of those pink and white candied almonds—everything!”
“And the groom in chains?” Liam asked.
“Why not?” Briar said dismissively. “I’m going to look so fabulous, most people won’t even notice you anyway. Seriously, look at us next to each other.” She sat down in the throne next to Liam’s and struck a regal pose.
“Adore me, people,” she commanded.
The dozens of servants and guards who had been standing silently along the marble walls suddenly came alive with awestruck gasps and murmurs of admiration. Several clasped their hands to their chests or fanned themselves. A few pretended to faint.
One man did nothing.
“Ahem! Ruffian,” Briar scolded. “I don’t hear any oohing and aahing coming from under that dreary hood of yours.”
Ruffian the Blue, the most notorious bounty hunter alive, stood stoically between two bronze statues of dancing goddesses. “I’m not paid to ooh,” he said. “Or to aah.”
Briar scowled at him. “But I pay you to do a lot of other things, Grizzle Face,” she sneered. “And if you’d like to receive the gold you’re due for those tasks, I’d better start hearing some adoration.”
Ruffian took a deep breath. “Ooh,” he said flatly. “Aah.”
“You’re not impressing anyone, Briar,” Liam said.
“I beg to differ,” she said. She looked to her guards: “Men?”
“We’re impressed!” they all shouted in unison.
Liam shook his head. “I pity you, Briar. I can’t imagine how hollow I would feel if I knew that none of the praise or admiration I got was genuine.”
Briar’s eyes lit up. “You know what, Hubby-to-be?” she said. “Since you don’t seem to appreciate your insanely gorgeous throne anyway, I’m going to set you up with cozier accommodations. Guards! Unchain the prince and take him down to Dungeon Level B. Cell 842. And throw in some extra rats.”
“Do your worst, Briar,” Liam said as a pair of guards unshackled him from the throne and began to haul him away. “Go ahead and try to wear me down. You’ll never get me to say ‘I do’ at that wedding.”
“Oh, I will. I have ways of getting people to do what I want,” Briar said with assurance. “And after the wedding, it will be even easier,” she added, almost to herself.
As Liam was dragged away, Briar lounged back in her throne and thrust her arms out to either side. “Buff me!” she commanded.
Two servants rushed to her and vigorously began shining her overlong fingernails with baby seal pelts.
Liam was led down a gorgeously tiled corridor, the walls of which were festooned with ribbons of spun bronze. The people of Avondell prized ornamentation and beauty above all else. Absolutely nothing in the palace was allowed to look plain or ordinary. Even the soldiers in Avondell were natty dressers: The two guards escorting Liam wore blue suede jackets and silver pin-striped pants. On their way to the stairwell, they passed a cleaning boy who was hard at work sweeping.
“Don’t step in the dirt pile,” Liam helpfully warned his captors. As the two guards looked down, Liam quickly reache
d out, snatched the broom from the cleaning boy’s hands, and bashed it over the heads of his two armed escorts, cracking the long handle in two.
“Aw, man,” the cleaning boy griped. “They make us buy our own brooms, you know!”
“Sorry!” Liam shouted as he dashed away down the corridor. While the two disoriented guards struggled to their feet, the fugitive prince zipped around a corner. Straight ahead of him was an open window, an easy path to freedom. But before leaping through it, he paused.
Briar is planning more than just a wedding, he thought. I’ve got to figure what.
As the footsteps of the pursuing guards echoed from around the corner, Liam abandoned the window and darted up the nearest staircase. He’d heard Briar brag about the view from her top-story bedroom, so he headed straight to the upper level. As he dashed down hallways looking for a room that could be hers, he ran past several surprised servants and even a few befuddled guards.
“New prince here,” he announced as he sprinted by and waved. “Just taking a tour of the place!”
He turned down a corridor that dead-ended in a door that was framed by a twisted border of thorny vines and bright red roses. Thank you, Briar, for having just as little subtlety as I’d hoped.
He strode up to the two sentries flanking the door and said, “How goes it, my good men?”
“Um, okay?” one answered.
Liam slammed their heads together, sending both men to the ground. He opened the door and stepped over the unconscious guards into Briar’s room. I’ve got to make this quick, he thought as he glanced around the room. He saw a carved ivory bed, platinum-plated vanity, dress dummies draped in extravagant gowns, framed portraits of Briar doing things she obviously never did (like taming a panther and throwing a spear into the moon). If Briar had some diabolical secret, where would she hide it? he asked himself. Someplace not even her maids would go. But someplace that has special meaning to her. Hmm. What has special meaning to Briar? Briar has special meaning to Briar! “The mirror!”
He dashed to Briar’s full-length dressing mirror, reached behind it, and instantly found the latch to a hidden compartment. “Man, I’m good,” he said as he pulled out what appeared to be the princess’s personal journal. What he saw when he flipped through the pages made him shudder. There was a map, which Briar had labeled “The Kingdoms Fall.” On it, the nations surrounding Avondell had all been numbered and X’ed out. The notes scribbled beside each eliminated nation were as baffling as they were unsettling. Next to Erinthia (#1) was scrawled, “Marry in. Simple enough.” But by Valerium (#2) Briar had written, “King abdicates throne”; and by Hithershire (#3) it said, “Royal family imprisoned.” Liam saw his friends’ kingdoms on the list as well: Sturmhagen—“Army disbanded”; Harmonia—“Scandal ousts king”; Sylvaria—“Monarchs disappear into wilderness.” But none of these events had occurred. Was Briar able to see the future? Or was she planning on making these things happen herself? Was she plotting a takeover?
It made sense, Liam thought. Briar never stopped wanting. And when you already own a kingdom, what is there left to yearn for but more kingdoms? The only question was how she planned to do it. What was the key to her scheme?
He turned the page and saw: “The key is JJDG!”
Well, that sort of helps, Liam thought. But what the heck does JJDG mean?
He kept reading.
“I’m so close I can taste it. It all begins with the wedding. Then JJDG. Then—”
Liam was startled by the sound of footsteps running up the hall outside. He quickly shut the diary and slapped it back into its hiding place behind the mirror as his two frustrated prison guards rushed into the room.
“Here I am, gentlemen,” Liam said, holding up his hands in the air. He was going to have to play along with Briar until he could find out more. “I give up. Take me back to Briar Rose. I’ll do whatever she wants.”
The men grabbed Liam’s wrists and pulled them behind his back. “We’ll give her the message,” said one prison guard. “But you’re crazy if you think we’re not following through on her orders first. She said dungeon, so dungeon it’s going to be.”
“Yup,” said the second guard while holding up a squirming burlap sack. “I’ve got the extra rats right here.”
Liam went quietly this time, and moments later he was thrown into cell 842 on Dungeon Level B, a tiny stone room containing nothing more than a pile of hay on the floor and a few lovely landscape paintings on the walls (this was still Avondell, after all). The guards emptied a bag of live, skittering rats into the cell with Liam and then slammed the iron-bar door shut with a loud clang. A second later, the rats all scampered back out between the bars and ran off down the hall. The guards shrugged and walked away.
“That happens every time,” came a rickety voice from the cell across the corridor. A scrawny older man with a wild, knee-length beard waved to Liam from behind iron bars of his own. A second prisoner, just as hairy and emaciated as the first, stood by his side.
Fig. 6
CREMINS and KNOBLOCK
“They always seem to think the rats will stay in the cells for some reason,” the second man said. “But of course they don’t. If I were that size, I’d have slipped through these bars ages ago. I don’t know why you don’t leave, Kippers.” That last bit was addressed to something sitting on the floor of the men’s cell.
“Is he talking to that piece of straw?” Liam asked cautiously.
“Shhh,” the first man whispered. “He thinks it’s a wiener dog. We’ve been in here a very long time.”
“Hah! You ain’t kidding,” the second man said, picking up the piece of straw and petting it. “You know, I was clean-shaven when they first put me in here. Had a chin so shiny it could light up a room. Ain’t that right, Kippers?”
Wow, these men must have been jailed here since long before Briar Rose’s reign of terror, Liam thought. “What are you two in for?” he asked.
“Attempted assassination,” the first man said. “We’re innocent, of course—but I got tired of saying that after about the eighth or ninth year.”
“Ooh! And now we get to guess why you’re locked up!” the second man hooted, hopping up and down on his calloused feet. “We don’t get to play this game very often; it’s exciting. Okay, lemme see. . . . You’re wearing a cape, so . . . I’ve got it! You’re a cape thief! They don’t tolerate stealing another man’s cape around these parts.”
“Nah, you’re all wrong, Knoblock. Look at him,” the first man countered. “Flowy shirt cuffs, spiffy belt buckle—not to mention that lustrous head of hair. He’s the swashbuckling type. You were doing a stealing-from-the-rich thing, weren’t you, kid?”
Liam shook his head. “I’m sorry, but no. I’m just here for safekeeping until Briar Rose marries me.”
The two old prisoners gaped in astonishment. “Could it be?” the first asked, his frail voice quivering. “Are you the kid from Erinthia?”
Liam took a step closer, peering through his cell door at the other men. “I am Prince Liam of Erinthia. Who are you?”
The prisoners gripped the bars of their cell and howled with glee.
“Well, I’ll be dipped in griffin dung!” the man named Knoblock cried. “Finally!”
“You’ve got to get us out of here,” the other said with desperation.
“Well, if you really are innocent men, I’ll do what I can,” Liam began. “But I’d need proof that you’re not actually assassins before I—”
“Of course we’re not really assassins!” Knoblock hollered. “You were practically a baby! Your father hired us!”
“My father? What are you talking about?”
The slightly more rational of the two men put his hands on Knoblock’s shoulders to calm him down, then said to Liam, “I’m Aldo Cremins. This is Varick Knoblock. We were actors. And good ones, too. We had fantastic careers in the Erinthian theater. People would line up around the block to see us onstage.”
“Cremins and Knobloc
k. You must have heard of us,” Knoblock said. He dropped into a goofy, bowlegged stance, elbowed his partner, and said in a fake nasally voice, “Hey, Cremins, what’s the difference between a goblin and a hobgoblin?”
“I don’t know, Knoblock,” Cremins replied in an equally ridiculous voice. “Please enlighten me. What is the difference between a goblin and a hobgoblin?”
“A goblin will eat your cat,” Knoblock said. “And so will a hobgoblin.”
Both men spun around to face Liam with big smiles and waggling jazz hands. Liam simply stared.
“Did we do that right?” Cremins asked, dropping the silly voice. “I don’t think that was the original punch line.”
“That would explain why it wasn’t funny,” Knoblock said.
“Could you please just finish your story?” Liam asked.
“Well, anyway, we were hot stuff once upon a time,” Cremins said. “But that was all before King Gareth hired us to make sure you won a certain contest.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Liam said.
“You couldn’t have been more than three at the time,” Cremins said. “People from all over the world were showing off their kids here in Avondell so the king and queen could pick a future husband for their baby princess, Briar Rose.”
“Well, of course I know that,” Liam said. “That’s how I ended up engaged to Briar in the first place. But no one helped me win. The royal couple picked me because I saved their lives. That was the most important day of my life—the day I first became a hero. I single-handedly stopped two masked assassins from attacking . . .”
The two men pulled their beards up to cover their faces.
“Oh, man. Two assassins. It was you.”
They nodded.
“You were actors?” Liam asked, his horror growing by the second. “And my father . . . ?”