“Oh, lummy!” shrieked one of the pirates. “Mummies!”
“They’re alive!” howled another.
“Have your money back!” yelled Razorback, throwing the coins at the mummies as they loomed up in their rotted and ragged old bandages. “I don’t want none of it!”
“Too late!” intoned the mummies, as they shambled forward. “Come! Join us in our tombs! Stay with us forever!”
The terrified pirates scattered in all directions as the long, bony fingers of the mummies reached for their throats. A few guns went off, spouting smoke. But the shots went straight through the musty old bandages, and judging from their snarls and from the hideous light burning in their empty eye sockets, being shot at only made the mummies angrier.
“Let’s get out of here,” breathed Esmeralda, at Trundle’s shoulder. “Those mummies might not be too fussy about who they attack next!”
Even as she spoke, the lid of one of the caskets they had tipped over in front of the door flew open, and a withered and bandaged arm reached up, bony fingers snatching for Trundle’s throat.
He whipped out his sword and struck at the clutching hand, severing it at the wrist so it plopped down into the sand. But the hand just reared up on its fingers and came scuttling after Trundle like some dreadful spider thing.
Even a bolt from Percy’s crossbow didn’t slow the horrid thing down. Biting his lip in terror, Trundle whacked at the hand with the flat of his blade. Whack! Whacketty-whack!
“I think you got it, Trun,” Esmeralda said, prodding the crushed hand with her toe.
“Are you sure?” stammered Trundle.
“I’d say so!” Esmeralda replied. “And now, we’d better make ourselves scarce!”
The three friends ran again, the yelling and wailing of the belabored pirates following them along the tunnel.
“Perhaps they’ll all be killed?” Trundle ventured hopefully.
“Don’t bet on it!” panted Esmeralda. “My aunt Millie is back there, too. I think she has magic enough to deal with a few mummies.”
This new tunnel was quite different from the previous one. It descended steeply, winding around and around itself like a corkscrew until, quite suddenly, it split in two, each fork blocked by a wooden door.
“Now what?” wondered Trundle. “Which way do we go?”
“The chances are that one way will lead us on, and the other will be a terrible trap!” said Percy.
“Look at this,” said Esmeralda. Carved low into the wall at the very place the tunnel divided were some words, half hidden by drifting sand.
Percy stooped and brushed the sand aside, revealing more words.
Beware, beware, the sinister path—
The other leads to home and hearth.
“What does that mean?” asked Esmeralda. “Which path is which?”
“Sinister used to mean ‘left,’” said Percy.
“So we should follow the right-hand tunnel?” said Trundle. “Home and hearth sound good to me!”
He cocked his ears. “Can you hear that?”
The sounds of pursuit could be heard again—not terribly close yet, but not far enough away either.
“I was right,” said Esmeralda. “Some of them must have gotten away from the mummies.” She looked at Percy. “But can we trust this clue, Perce?” she asked. “Isn’t it a wee bit too convenient?”
“I don’t care about that!” said Trundle. “Whatever is ahead, it can’t be worse than what’s behind!” And so saying, he turned the handle of the right-hand door and stepped through.
“My word, it’s nice to be home,” Trundle said, closing his front door behind himself and resting his lamplighting pole against the wall. He sniffed the appetizing scent of cabbage broth. “Just what I need at the end of a busy evening lighting the lamps of Port Shiverstones.”
Rubbing his hands together, he headed for his small kitchen, looking forward to nothing more energetic than a quiet evening with his snout in a good book.
Of the Badger Lords of Old and the six lost crowns, of Esmeralda Lightfoot and the Herald Pursuivant, of Millie Rose Thorne and Captain Grizzletusk’s pirates, he remembered not the smallest thing!
Trundle poured himself a bowl of broth and sat down in his comfy armchair by the fire. He picked up The Book of Unbelievable Jaunts and Escapades and opened it where he had left off the previous evening.
Chapter Seven. The Extraordinary Adventure of Gruffly Grimm and the Swampy Thing.
He did enjoy a good adventure—and Gruffly Grimm was his all-time favorite hero. He sighed as he settled down to read, a small part of him wishing he could be a brave and bold adventurer like Gruffly.
Knock!
He frowned, glancing toward the door. Who could that be, disturbing him at this time of night?
Knock! Knock!
“I bet it’s those Stubbleberry twins, playing knock and run!” he grumbled. “They’re always up to mischief, those two!”
Knock-knock-knock-knock-knock!
A positive fusillade of knocks resounded on the outside of his door. Putting his book down, Trundle marched across his small living room. He could hear unfamiliar voices shouting from outside the door. A male voice and a female voice.
“Trundle! Let us in! The pirates are coming! Open up!”
“Go away!” Trundle called crossly. “Pirates, indeed! In Port Shiverstones! What nonsense!”
The knocking started up again with renewed vigor, until his poor front door was shaking from the assault.
“I’ve had enough of this!” Trundle declared, snatching the door open and intending to give the noisy visitors a piece of his mind. “Now look here . . .” Two hedgehogs stood on his doorstep—a middle-aged fellow in robes and a young female with a ferocious expression.
“You prize idiot, Trundle!” yelled the girl. “What’s the idea of—oh!” She stared beyond Trundle. “Oh! Lawks! Percy, it’s a magic room! It’s the spitting image of his living room in Port Shiverstones. We have to get him out of there!”
“Now just you hold on a moment,” cried Trundle as two pairs of hands grabbed at him. “If you think you can just turn up and—awk!” He was dragged bodily across the threshold, and the door was slammed shut at his back.
Trundle sat in the sandy tunnel, staring around himself in shock and amazement.
“Jiminy!” he gasped. “I thought I was back home! I forgot everything! What happened?”
“Magic happened,” Esmeralda declared, helping him to his feet. “Didn’t I tell you to be prepared for the unexpected?”
“Well, yes,” Trundle admitted. “But the problem with that is—”
“Pirates!” warned Percy. “Getting closer!”
“The left-hand door it is, then!” said Esmeralda. “Lead on, Percy!”
Percy threw open the other door and they all piled through, Trundle still feeling rather foolish to have been so easily deceived by the magic room.
They slammed the door and went pelting along the new tunnel as fast as their legs would take them.
The tunnel rose steeply, getting narrower and narrower until they had to move in single file. But then, quite suddenly and startlingly, it opened up, and they found themselves gazing down into a huge round chamber stuffed solid with a dazzling confusion of golden treasures.
There were golden statues and sarcophagi; there were golden thrones and golden tables laden with golden goblets and plates and bowls. There were golden caskets and coffers and chests, and golden trinkets and ornaments and baubles. And the glorious treasures were all jumbled together in the cavern as though they had been thrown in there and forgotten.
The tunnel had brought them to a lofty gallery, far above the teeming golden hoard. Blinking in wonderment and awe, they climbed down a flight of stone steps.
“Such wealth!” breathed Percy as they wound their way between the towering golden treasures. “Such beautiful things!”
“But is the altar in here?” Esmeralda wondered.
“I d
on’t think it is,” said Percy. “The rhyme said the altar was made of stone, but everything in here is of gold.” He pointed to where another flight of stone steps zigzagged up to a dark hole in the far wall of the cavern. “I think we need to go up there and hope for the best.”
They were right at the top of the winding stairway when a bloom of red torchlight appeared on the far side of the cavern. The pirates had arrived.
Quick as a flash, Esmeralda brought her hand down on her palm light, plunging the three of them into darkness. “Shhh!” she hissed. “Let’s see how many of them are left.”
Grizzletusk was in the lead, carrying a flaring torch. Trundle saw the greed ignite in his eyes as he stared down at the gleaming treasure trove. He went stomping down the stairs, the torch held high. There were a lot of “ooohs” and “ahhhs” and “luvaducks” as the pirates that came after him caught sight of the wonderful confusion of golden objects.
Only Aunt Millie seemed indifferent to the wealth on display, as she plodded grimly down the stone steps with her raven on her shoulder.
The pirates spread out among the treasures, fingering them and stroking them.
“Watch out for mummies!” someone warned.
“There are no mummies here, me hearties,” said Razorback. He gave Captain Grizzletusk a hard look. “I says enough is enough!” he growled. “I vote we forget them there crowns and concentrate on making ourselves rich!”
“You mutinous hog!” growled Grizzletusk. “I make the decisions around here, and I say we get them crowns first, then come back for this lot afterward!”
“Sez you!” snarled Razorback.
“Yeah, sez me!” roared Grizzletusk, aiming his pistol at the glowering bo’sun.
A moment later, and Razorback’s own gun was out and leveled at his brutish leader. The other pirates became silent, watching the two huge hogs as they faced off.
Wouldn’t that be perfect? Trundle thought to himself. If they had a falling out and all killed one another!
But before anything more could be said, Millie Rose Thorne stepped between the two hogs. “Idiots!” she shouted, glaring at the protagonists. “Cut out the nonsense! We have work to do!” A dangerous light glittered in her eyes. She lifted her hands, and black threads began to spin out from her fingers. “Or do I have to show you who’s really the boss here?”
Grizzletusk and Razorback lowered their weapons, and a relieved sigh went through the other pirates.
“She’s the boss!” croaked her raven, launching itself from her shoulder and flapping heavily to a large casket topped with a statue of a golden scorpion. The raven came down to perch on the scorpion’s glittering head. “Crowns first! Booty later!” it croaked. “That’s the way to do it!”
As the heavy black bird settled on the head of the golden scorpion, Trundle became aware of a whirring and clicking and clunking sound, as if some kind of machinery was grinding slowly into action.
“Strike me pink!” screeched the raven, leaping into the air as the casket under him split slowly into two halves. There were more clanking noises, and a moment later, a large, rusty iron claw emerged from the open casket and snapped at the raven. There was a loud squawk, and suddenly there was no raven anymore and the air was full of black feathers.
“What in the Sundered Lands is that?” murmured Percy.
The pirates nearest to the cracked-open casket backed off nervously as a large shape heaved itself out into the torchlight.
It was a monstrous scorpion—but a scorpion made entirely of rusty iron! It moved with slow, clanking purpose, its claws opening and closing and its curved tail lifted high above its body.
“Kill it!” roared Grizzletusk, firing his own pistol at the looming monster.
There was a lot of yelling and shooting and billowing smoke and coughing and choking, but when the gun smoke cleared, the scorpion was still there, not in the least bit damaged—and it had a limp pirate in each claw.
“Run for it!” someone howled, and the pirates scattered. But the great clanking and whirring scorpion leaped forward with startling speed—and snap! snap! Two more pirates lay dead.
Millie Rose Thorne held her ground, her hands reaching out toward the monstrous mechanical device, threads of black spinning out from her fingertips.
The long, segmented tail of the scorpion struck out, the barbed stinger cutting through Millie’s mystical webs like a sword through string.
“My magic threads!” screeched Aunt Millie. “Ruined!”
“Arrrgh!” howled the pirates, falling over one another as they made a frantic scramble for the stairway out. “Gangway! Help! Arrgh!”
“We’d better get going,” mumbled Esmeralda from their high perch. “I think this is going to get nasty!”
Trundle didn’t need a second telling. The great iron monster was springing and leaping this way and that among the fleeing pirates, its sting stabbing down, its claws clashing. He saw the sting stab into Grizzletusk’s back as he tried to escape. He saw Razorback trampling his comrades as he made a wild but futile run for the stairs.
Esmeralda ignited a palm light, and the three friends turned away from the gruesome carnage and headed into the tunnel that led from the top of the stairs.
“Well, I guess they got theirs,” said Esmeralda as they tried as quickly as possible to get out of earshot of the grim and grisly goings-on in the golden chamber. “I can’t help feeling sorry for poor old Aunt Millie, though. What a way to go!”
She stopped in her tracks. “What am I saying?” she gasped. “This whole business was her fault! Good riddance, I say!”
Trundle couldn’t help but agree. All the same, being chopped into confetti by a gigantic iron scorpion was a pretty awful way to go!
“Ahh!” breathed Percy. “I think we’ve come to journey’s end at last!”
They were only a few minutes out from the golden chamber, standing at the curved entranceway to a small domed room. It was quite empty and plain, save for a six-sided block of white stone that stood in the middle of the floor.
Trundle’s fingers and toes and whiskers were prickling, as if there was something different in the air of this little round room.
“This must be the stone altar in the rhyme,” whispered Esmeralda. Even she seemed to understand that this was a special place where it would be wrong to use loud voices.
“I do believe it is,” said Percy, tiptoeing into the room. “The stone altar of the Badger Lords. I never thought I’d live to see it!”
They stepped quietly across the floor and walked around the altar. On its six sides were depicted carvings of six badgers, each surrounded by bowing or kneeling hedgehogs, and each one with a different crown on his head. Above each side, a hollow had been cut into the top of the altar—six hollows into which, Trundle guessed, the six crowns would fit, neat as neat. In the very center of the altar, Trundle noticed a small, deep slot.
“I wonder what that’s for?” he said.
“Who knows?” murmured Esmeralda. “Come on, Trun, get the crowns out. I’m dying to see what happens next!”
Trundle retrieved the dwindling box from his backpack. He unlatched the lid, and kneeling on the ground, he tilted the box and shook it gently. The Crown of Wood came rolling out, tiny at first, but quickly growing to its full size.
Esmeralda picked it up and popped it in the hollow above the picture of the Badger Lord wearing the same crown.
Meanwhile Trundle gave the box another little shake, and the Crown of Ice rolled out and grew. Percy retrieved it and put it in its place.
But just as Trundle was about to give the box a third shake, a ragged and grim-faced apparition appeared at the entrance, her head scarf in tatters, her prickles battered and bent, and her dress cut all to ribbons.
“Step away from the crowns,” she growled. “And quick about it!”
Millie Rose Thorne held a pistol in each paw, and she looked in just the right mood to use them.
“How did you get away from the scor
pion, Aunty?” Esmeralda asked warily as Millie Rose Thorne limped into the chamber. “I bet you had to use up a whole lot of magic to escape,” she said. “In fact, I’d guess you’re all magicked out right now.”
“You’re quite right, my dear,” said her aunt. “But I don’t need magic to deal with you three—not when I have two primed and loaded pistols. Now get away from that box.”
The three companions backed away from the altar, leaving the dwindling box lying on its side on the ground.
“Did any of the pirates survive?” Trundle asked.
“I doubt that very much,” said Aunt Millie. “But they did what I needed them to do. They got me to this place.” She gestured toward Esmeralda with one of the pistols. “Now then, my dear, I need you to take the rest of the crowns out of that remarkable box and place them on the altar.”
“Not on your nelly!” snapped Esmeralda. “I’m not doing your dirty work for you!”
Aunt Millie leveled a pistol at Trundle. “You have to the count of three, then I shoot your witless little friend!” she snarled.
“Hey, less of the witless,” said Trundle.
“All right,” Esmeralda said quickly. “I get it! The loony aunt has the guns, everyone has to obey her.” Muttering under her breath things that Trundle guessed her aunt was better off not hearing, Esmeralda went to the dwindling box.
Suddenly she shouted some strange words and flung her arm out toward her aunt. A ball of lightning whizzed through the air. Millie Rose Thorne blew at the hissing ball like someone puffing out a candle. The lightning fizzled away and vanished.
“Oh, rats!” groaned Esmeralda, wringing her stinging hand.
“Try that again, and Fatty dies!” snarled her aunt.
“Fatty?” gasped Trundle. “Now look here—”
“Shush, Trun!” said Esmeralda. “We have to do what she wants.” She looked at her aunt. “I know what you’re up to, Aunty,” she said. “We know all about the Sect of the Sinister Spell.”