IV. The Trials
The trails of dead flowers was easy enough to track. It led into the woods, which Lloyd and Linus had unconsciously avoided. It wasn't that they were wary of the creatures there; it was just now that they'd been awoken to those dangers. They just hadn't ever thought of exploring the woods themselves, not when Uhai and his men had so very thoroughly and reported nothing.
Trees were tall here and pine cones and needles crunched underfoot. Ursula was seriously considering heading back, for her bare feet weren't tough enough anymore to take the perilous terrain. She pulled the coat tighter around her, a chill brushing past her and wiped her left foot from needles.
"This is it," Linus said, returning from ahead. He tripped something in the ground that he hadn't seen on the way there. "There aren't anymore flowers in this direction."
"Maybe here," Lloyd pointed to where the branches of a low sapling were broken. Ursula's eyes widened.
"No," she said, carefully picking her way over the forest floor. "Look. This wasn't here before . . ."
Ursula knelt on the ground, brushing away the forest debris. Linus backed up. She cleared the needles, thrown around slapdash-like, covering a . . . a bleeding heart, caught in a crack in stone.
"Now that's weird," Linus observed. He brushed away more needles. "Lloyd, get over here. Help me out with this."
Lloyd squatted next to Ursula and began to clear the area, brushing away needles and cones and all sorts of things. The stone, as long as Linus was tall, and as wide as a sword's length, rose an inch off the ground, but was embedded deeper. Carved into the surface were words, gaunt and haunting.
i Small and thin, a mourning place
Youth in earth, a shameless waste. /i
"That's . . ." Ursula trailed. "A bit morbid . . ."
"What is it?" Linus asked.
"A riddle," Ursula murmured. "Youth in earth . . ."
"A mourning place, that could be a church or a graveyard," Lloyd muttered thoughtfully. "Probably a graveyard, since it mentions the earth . . ."
"A child's grave," Linus said, suddenly. "Small and thin. And isn't the death of a child a waste?"
The three watched the stone. Noting that Linus was not standing on the stone, Ursula stood up.
"A child's grave," she enunciated.
As if responding, there was a rumble and a great crack as the rock split under her feet. Lloyd, being closer, reached out and pulled her from the dividing stone before she fell into the gaping hole forming as the stone split. The two pieces moved aside, somehow polarized.
"My god . . ." Ursula murmured. Lloyd released her and stepped forward. "I knew it existed. It's like in the stories . . ."
"Is Nino down here?" he said, peering into the darkness. He could see a stone floor, and a little ways further, a narrow stairway, almost too small for him to fit.
"Yeah," Linus said confidently, vaulting into the pitch. He looked up at his brother. "Hey! Let's go!"
"Linus, wait!" Ursula cried. He was already squeezing through the stairway, somehow. Lloyd prepared to follow him, but Ursula blocked him with an extended arm. "Wait . . . Lloyd, stand up for a moment and close your eyes."
Somewhat confused, he stood up, but did not close his eyes.
"Hurry, Linus'll get into trouble," he said, agitated to move. Ursula silenced him. He closed his eyes. He could hear her muttering some kind of charm.
"They who forge images, they who steal and bewitch, the malevolent eyes that trick and tease, spirit of heaven dispel their power, spirit of earth reveal their lies," she recited, her voice somehow resonating. She hesitated, then toughened her resolve. Reaching to pull his head down to her level, she kissed one eye, then the other, and released him, backing up.
"What was that for?" Lloyd asked, opening his eyes again, flinching from sudden contact. He shut them tightly, not even a moment to fit in a spare blink. A thin jolt of pain shot through his eyes. As it faded, he squinted at Ursula, who was standing and looking vaguely interested and a tad concerned.
"I gave you the ability to see properly down there," she explained. "I've never used that charm before, so I had no idea what would happen. Did it hurt?"
He didn't say a word, but gave her a confused, disbelieving look, as if what had happened had not. She ushered him into the hole. Lloyd jumped in, kicking up dust where he landed. There were more markings on the walls, words and warnings he had not seen prior to entering. The pit was deeper than he thought; to get out, he'd have to stand on Linus' shoulders. Lloyd craned his neck to see Ursula, who was crouching next to the edge, wrapped in his coat. Would he ever get that back?
"Go!" she commanded. "And don't eat anything or tell them that you see them through both eyes."
He nodded, and without a word disappeared down a staircase that now seemed so much wider. Ursula sighed and bit her lip.
". . . be careful . . ."
Linus had a difficult time believing his eyes.
The stairway, narrow and plain, led into a great hall, finer than the king of Bern's or maybe even Etruria's. Certainly something to behold. Had Nino been taken here? The hall branched off into three smaller halls. Which one?
He heard the shriek of a child, coming from the hall on the left. Fearing the worst, Linus wasted no time in dashing down the path, ignoring all finery until the smaller hall let out into a wide, open room, hung with tapestries and rich cloth. Everywhere, there were looms and spindles.
In the center of the room was a tiny woman, gold-haired and beautiful, singing and weaving on the ugliest of the looms.
i A goblin. /i
Strange, he'd imagined them to be a little more threatening. This tiny woman possessed arms like sticks and the frailest body he'd ever seen, even on the malnourished children in some of the worst places he'd ever visited.
Even as he approached her, she did not stop her work. Linus tried to catch her attention and coughed. Gracefully, the goblin woman turned. Her eyes widened; Linus noticed that they were no color he could name.
"What is wrong with you?" she demanded, her high-pitched voice making him cringe. "Stupid trollses! They don't know how to follow the leastest orderses. I told you to fetch someses more yarn!"
"I-I'm sorry . . ." Linus muttered, shocked. The little woman mistook him for a troll.
"Hurry ups," she said, turning back to her work. "These childses are harder to sew when they're dead."
She's weaving children into clothing, Linus realized, disgusted. He watched the little woman's work carefully. She did seem to be weaving around something invisible and now that he was paying attention, it was squirming in her hands. The little woman was an expert it seemed.
She turned to yell at him again. In one swift, angry moment, he drew his sword and lopped off her head. The blood spurted out, staining her tapestry to reveal a half-dead child in the center of the pattern, flat as the cloth, but strangely tangible. The child's head lolled and he stopped struggling.
"What?" Linus gasped, trying very hard not to retch now. The child looked at him.
"You killed her? Maritha, the Weaving Witch?" he murmured. The child looked up to the ceiling and closed his eyes. "Thank god."
"Who are you?" Linus frowned, stepping nearer. "M'name's Linus."
"I'm nameless to her, but once I was called Rats," said the child in the tapestry. "I lived in the city. She lured me down here using chocolate."
"Rats?"
"On account of being worse than a colony of dirty rats, says my sister," Rats sighed. "At least I think she says it. Time passes funny in here."
"Funny?" Linus asked, confused. "How so?"
"Like, you walk in and it's fifteen minutes for you, but five-and-fifty in the outside world . . ."
Linus tried to imagine Ursula as an old woman, waiting fifty-five years for him and Lloyd to bring back Nino. She'd be wearing that coat for a long time.
"I don't have fifty-something years," he said coarsely. "I need to find my sister."
"Well, before I became dress-fodder, I was her Ladyship's cup-holder," Rats shrugged. His body retained motion within the cloth. "I know this place fairly well."
"Her Ladyship?" Linus raised an eyebrow. "Who's that?"
"Eh, well," Rats crossed his arms. "I can't really say her name; she's got ears everywhere, but she can't listen to everything, right? Her Ladyship listens for her name. She's in charge in these parts."
"So this lady's got some magic power that lets her hear her name? Great, I'm real scared," Linus yawned. Rats scowled, irritated.
"Hey! This ain't a laughing matter!" he said dejectedly. "When she hears her name, she comes running, and when her Ladyship comes to call, it's never a good thing."
"What does that mean?" Linus said suspiciously.
"Think of the absolute i worst /i woman in the world," Rats instructed him.
An image of Sonia fluttered through his mind, laughing and draped over his father's arm. Worst woman in the world. Right.
"Now double her, triple that and give her ultimate power in her domain," Rats said gravely from his tapestry. "That is what her Ladyship is. She's a duchess of Hell, the whore of the gods, queen of sin and squalor and that is me being nice."
"Sounds like my stepmother," Linus commented.
"Mine, too," Rats agreed, and in that moment Linus gained the deepest of respect and sympathy for the two-dimensional child. "Why are you here, anyway?"
"My sister," Linus told him. "Her name is Nino."
"Never 'eard of her," Rats said. His tone was genuinely sympathetic. "Poor lass."
"No," Linus said, indignant. "Me and my brother, Lloyd, we're here to save her."
"Psha," Rats snorted. "You're not the first. But her Ladyship'll win, if you go by yourself. Where's this Lloyd character, anyway?"
"He's . . ." Linus realized that he'd left his brother and Ursula at the doorway. Smart thinking, Linus. "Coming. He's coming."
"I'm so sure," Rats raised an eyebrow. He paced within the confines of the cloth. "I hate her Ladyship. And you must love your sister a helluva a lot to come for her in this wretched place."
Linus stared at Rats somewhat uneasily. Rats looked at him, standing feet apart, hands on hips.
"You don't know this place like I do. You don't seem to have Eyes, either--"
"I've got eyes," Linus retorted sharply.
"No, Eyes," Rats corrected. "They help you See what's actually there. You don't have them. All this stuff, it's fake. Made to look like this by her Ladyship's power, but it's not real."
"I see," Linus said, thinking. Rats laughed.
"Or rather, you don't," he snickered at his own joke. "Here, take me down. I'll be your Eyes. We'll find your sister together."
Lloyd took the right passage. It was as good as any, and he was confident that his brother, however idiotic, could handle any dangers until he found him.
There were warnings, written in some unknown kind of ink, scraped into the stone, embedded in the walls. An ominous air, heavy and damp with tense fear, existed in this place. He felt a humid, terrible heat blast his face.
A little ahead of him, Lloyd saw a great gap, revealing a room turned red from fire and smoke. The insides of the room twisted themselves from the sheer heat of it. A kitchen, very much like Uncle Jan's, only giant-sized. Hanging from the ceiling, which was high over head, was the dim, obscure figure of a cage.
Lloyd entered the fairy kitchen, ignoring the frantic warnings. Over the bubbling and screeching of ordinary, but enormous, kitchen din, Lloyd could hear a child's voice--or was it children?--shouting and crying and wailing.
As he drew nearer, he saw that the cage, as he had feared, was full of children. A small girl pointed at him, saying something in the tongue of the Western Isles. The others reached through the bars at him, their words jumbled. Lloyd knew, from just the tone, what they were asking of him.
One addressed him by throwing a lump of bread at his head, a seven-year-old with long, violet hair. Her aim was remarkably good.
"Please!" she shrieked. It stood out from some of the louder children who were Sacaen, taught to speak in their native tongues first. "Please, save us! The fat lady's gonna be back any second!"
"S'ehs gniog ot tae su!" cried a Sacaen boy. In his arms was a smaller child, wrapped in green. "Evas ym rehtorb!"
"Please," an Etrurian girl begged. "She'll eat us! Mama Cuchina will cook us and then--"
Lloyd stepped back, examining the cage from afar. It dangled from a chain, swinging only five feet above the floor. A great, flaming lock held it shut and the children were keeping quite clear of it. Nino was not among them. Still, she very well could have been next in line . . .
An earth-shaking boom made the children scream louder. It was succeeded by another, and another, like footsteps. Lloyd looked around quickly, scanning for a hiding spot. On the floor were some towering containers, much like the clay ones Uncle Jan used to store rice and the like. He dashed behind one and then peeked around it to see the feared cook, Mama Cuchina.
Like everything else, she was enormous, two times the height of his father. Her black hair, her only fair feature, was barely enough to cover her head, although it seemed to be three or four feet in length. Everything else was hard to look at without gagging. Mama Cuchina was squat despite her great height and puddled out in the middle, like a top going both ways. Her skirt and apron fell around her legs, very much like a tablecloth. Her skin was a greenish-grey and mottled with warts and spots.
Mama Cuchina crossed the room, ignoring the children, to the stoves, and started to attend to whatever was boiling there. Lloyd could see, at her side, were several keys hanging from a ring. Turning, the fairy cook leered at her captives.
"G'morning, me little ones," she drawled, grinning happily. She tottered over to them, reaching for her keys. Lloyd eyed her hands, watching the one carrying a knife larger than himself with some concern, waiting for the one with the keys to unlock the cage. With a click, the flames on the lock died away and she removed it. "Mama Cuchina's come to make her Ladyship's breakfast."
Mama Cuchina reached inside to grip the first girl, the purple haired one who'd spoken to him first. Within a blink, Lloyd's sword carved a bleeding red gash in Mama Cuchina's grey calf. She bellowed, shocked and in pain. The little girl scrambled back into the cage, pulled up by a Sacaean child.
" i What? /i " the fairy cook screeched, gasping at the wound and then at the tiny thing that caused it, already darting back. Blood stained her leg and the floor, pooling out.
Lloyd looked for the next opening to attack. She lumbered toward him, favoring her good leg. Should he try to wound that one too? Mama Cuchina seemed to remember her knife. She lunged at him before he could decide. Lloyd tumbled out of the way, trying not to see how the knife had cleaved the stone floor. Tiny chips scattered, but Mama Cuchina just pulled her knife from the ground and chased after him, bleeding profusely.
Narrowly dodging the next swing of her massive kitchen knife, he raised the sword high. A light, brighter than Ursula's Thunder and Bolting spells, shone from it, zigzagging like lightning to Mama Cuchina's knife arm. She screeched, cursing up storms, doubled over, dropping her weapon to favor her scorched limb. Lloyd moved away quickly, seemingly splitting into five or six different people in a familiar form. He reappeared, among his dopplegangers at her neck, slicing it wide open.
The blood exploded onto the floor, but never touched him. It steamed away with her death, the hissing sound blending with the kitchen noise. What had been on the ground seeped into cracks and left the floor strangely dry, not even the rust-colored stains he was used to seeing.
The body crinkled, bone-dry. He wiped the blade of the Light Brand on her clothing, ignoring the crunch of bones, brittle and dusty now.
"Hey!" cried the violet-haired girl. "Help us get down!"
Sheathing the magic sword, Lloyd crossed the bare floor to the cage. The door was swinging wide open.
"Sit down on the edge, one of you," he commanded. The violet-haired girl obeyed immediately. She was tinier than Nino, and not harder to slide down safely.
The next child--the Sacaean and his baby brother--was a bit more difficult. He was large for a nine-year-old, which the violet haired girl, Brunie, said was his age. Udari, which was his name, handed down his little brother, thanking him in whatever dialect it was. Brunie took the baby, and Udari escaped the cage with Lloyd's help. Seeing that it was a relatively short drop, some of the older, larger children jumped down themselves, while Lloyd saw to the smaller, more frightened ones.
Brunie thanked him, after all the children were safely on the floor.
"Who are you?" she asked.
"Lloyd Reed," he replied. "Why did that . . . woman want to cook you?"
"Her Ladyship eats children," Brunie stated, instantly. "Gobbles them down, just like in the story. We've got to run, I know a way out. That's why I was put here, for very nearly escaping. But first . . ."
Brunie looked around, cautious. "I wanna tell you something important. Her Ladyship is kind of like . . . the Queen of Bern only it's not Bern, it's this place. She gets her power . . ." Brunie lowered her voice, gesturing for Lloyd to come closer. ". . . from her i hair /i ."
"Her hair?" Lloyd repeated. Brunie and the other children nodded and murmured in agreement.
"That's right," Udari muttered in a rough voice. He was cradling the baby now. Brunie returned it to him as soon as he had touched ground.
"Cut it, or burn it," Brunie suggested. Vengeance sparkled in her eyes. "It's great and golden and long. You can't miss it! After her hair's shorn, she's just a normal fae woman, like Mama Cuchina. You could kill her!"
"Alright," Lloyd said, contemplating this new information. Nino was being kept by a goblin queen. "Have any of you met a girl? She's twelve or thirteen or roundabouts. Her name's Nino."
Udari's eyes sparked. "Aye! The mageling 'er Ladyship brought in. I saw 'er before I and Shin were taken to the kitchen."
"I see," Lloyd nodded. Closer! "Is that all? Where was she?"
"In a dungeon, one of them," Udari admitted. "Dunno which."
"Thank you," he said. "Are you sure that you'll get out fine?"
"Uh-huh!" Brunie grinned, leading the group away, back the way he himself had come. "I got a bit of the talent myself--me and Ursley used to play with fire all the time! Don't worry!"
Lloyd stared after the gaggle of children, and then at the great door. There was nothing left except the heat of the kitchen. The soup would over boil, he thought ironically. It would've driven Uncle Jan mad.
". . .Ursley?"