Hamish shrugged and gave a casual wave. “Fair enough. Chop off ’is hand … then the girl’s too.”
Kate looked desperately at the wizard. “Dr. Pym, do something!”
“Now!” Hamish cried, slamming his fist on the table. “Make with the choppity-chop!”
A soldier stepped forward, pulling his ax free from his belt. He didn’t get more than two steps before he was sent sprawling, his ax clattering away across the floor. Captain Robbie had struck him across the chest.
“What—” Hamish began. But Captain Robbie turned on him, and the righteous fury in his voice overrode the King’s.
“No, brother. I won’t let you do this.”
If it was possible, the tension in the hall became even greater.
Hamish rose up to his full height, which being a dwarf was not that considerable. His small eyes burned with anger, but he kept his voice low. “I think maybe you’re forgetting who’s king here, eh, brother?”
“I am no traitor,” Captain Robbie said. “And perhaps we should retrieve this book just to keep it from the witch. But we should be helping these children. Not seeking our own gain.
“This boy is right. You dishonor our people, and I do you good service by stopping you. You have lost yourself, brother. This corruption and laxity has gone on too long. It must be stemmed. Think what our mother would say if she could witness what you have become.” He gestured to include the entire hall, the overturned tankards, the drunken dwarves.…
For a brief instant, Hamish seemed to waver and Kate allowed herself to hope. Then he raised his hand, jabbing a short finger at Captain Robbie. “Hold that traitor.” Three dwarves rushed forward. Captain Robbie made no attempt to resist.
“Your Highness,” Dr. Pym said, “if I may speak. It’s true, I would rather I controlled the book myself, but forced to choose between having it in your possession or in the Countess’s, I choose you. But I warn you, a severed hand will not open the vault. A living child must perform the duty. Ensure their safety, and I promise, the children will help you.”
For a moment, Hamish looked as if he might argue, then he grunted and, picking up a slice of chocolate cake, waved it toward the wizard and Captain Robbie. “Fine. Lock the two a’ them together. I’ll deal with ’em when I get back. We leave immediately.”
The two lines of armored dwarves turned and marched out of the hall.
Dr. Pym knelt beside Kate and Michael. “I’m sorry for this. You will have to manage on your own.”
“Wait!” Kate said. “You were telling the truth? About the vault?”
“Oh yes, it will open for you.”
“But how do you—”
“My dear, the moment you stepped into my cell, I saw that the book had touched you. That could only have happened if you and your brother and sister are the children I have been waiting for.” Then he smiled, and in the way he looked at her, it was as if her face held confirmation of something he had long suspected. “And that it should be you, of all children. I was not mistaken in the signs.…”
“What do you mean?! I don’t—”
“There is no time to explain. However”—he lowered his voice to a whisper—“you must be the one to pick up the book. Not Hamish. You understand? I can’t tell you how to do it, but you must make sure you are the one. It is essential.” Then he put his hand on Kate’s head and mumbled a few words. She felt an odd tingling.
“What did you do?”
“The book has chosen you, Katherine. You alone can access its full power. But it will not do your bidding until your heart is healed. I hope I have given you the means.”
Before Kate could ask what he meant, the dwarf guards were dragging him away.
“Someone bring them brats,” growled Hamish. “And wake up Fergus.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Granny Peet
“Come now, wake up, wake up! No good pretending you’re still asleep …”
Emma groaned and burrowed under the stiff, heavy blankets. She lay there in a state of half sleep while the woman’s voice kept chiding her to get up. Her first thought was that the voice belonged to Miss Sallow, the ornery, House of Bourbon–hating housekeeper at the orphanage. That would mean that everything that had happened—finding the book, going into the past, the Countess, Gabriel—had been a dream. But it had all been so real! Everything had seemed so … What was that smell?
She opened her eyes and found that she was lying in a bed in a dimly lit wooden cabin. The air was smoky and close, the floor made of packed earth, and what she’d taken for blankets were actually piles of old animal hides. She turned her head. In the center of the room, a thin boy crouched at a fire, his back to her, stirring something in an iron pot and filling the cabin with the smell of cooking meat and vegetables.
Okay, Emma thought, so it wasn’t a dream.
“There you are. Sit up now. You’re not dead. Not yet anyway.”
The person speaking shambled into view from behind the bed. She was a very fat, very old woman, and she had a great deal of tangled gray hair and a face with more wrinkles than Emma had ever seen. Her hands were gnarled with arthritis, and dirt was caked under her yellowed, claw-like nails. She wore an old black dress and a black shawl and at least a dozen long, dangling necklaces that were decorated with charms, feathers, beads, tiny jars and vials, bits of root and bark, dried flower petals, the tooth of some enormous animal, and several small, beautifully carved wooden boxes. She shuffled forward in a pair of extremely worn deerskin moccasins, her necklaces jangling softly. If Emma had seen her on the street, she would’ve thought she was a crazy lady. She pretty much thought the same thing now.
She drew back as the woman reached toward her.
“Who are you?! Where am I?! Where’s Gabriel?! Don’t come near me!”
“Touchy one, aren’t you?”
“You’d better get away, or when Gabriel gets here, he’ll kill you!”
“Gabriel, Gabriel. He warned me you’d be a fighter; yes, he did.” The old woman had a mumbly, singsongy way of speaking.
“Gabriel brought me here?” Emma said, relaxing her guard a little.
“If he hadn’t, think you’d be alive and talking to me? No’s the answer. Ah, but do you not remember? Think now.”
And in a flash, it came back to Emma.… Standing on the edge of the chasm, feeling that sudden hot jolt … looking down and seeing the feathered end of the arrow sticking out of her side … her fever as Gabriel carried her through the maze. Instinctively, her hand went to her stomach.
“Now, now,” the old woman said, “let Granny do that.”
She pulled up Emma’s shirt (Emma noticing only then that she’d been changed into a fresh, unfamiliar set of clothes). There was a patch of hardened mud a few inches to the side of her belly button. The old woman’s yellow nails picked at its edge, and the mud began to flake off. Emma stared, half horrified, half fascinated, expecting to see a great hole going straight through her side. But when the last of the mud had flaked away, there was only a small pink scar.
“Hmph,” the old woman said, “not bad work.”
Emma was dumbfounded. “But how …”
“I know a thing or two, yes, yes, old Granny Peet knows a thing or two.” She shuffled away, cackling softly to herself.
“I want … oh.” A wave of dizziness swept over Emma and she had to lie back down.
“Food, what you need now. Granny’s own stew. Make you strong.”
“I need to talk to Gabriel. My brother and sister are lost.”
“Not lost, no, not lost.” The old lady was mixing and pounding something in a bowl, moving about with practiced assurance, adding a sprig of this, a dash of that, opening various vials and jars attached to her necklaces to tap in a bit of this silver powder or shake out a few drops of that green liquid, mixing and grinding all the while. “Found.”
“What do you mean? You mean they’re here? Where are they?”
“Not here, no. Still under the mountain
. Found a friend. Always where you least expect it.” She glanced toward the boy at the fire. “Hurry with that stew.”
“What’re you talking about? What friend? Where?”
The old woman scraped what she’d been mashing into a wooden cup, added water, swirled it about, then held it toward Emma. “Drink.”
At first, Emma tasted only dirt, but when she got past that, there was mint and rosemary and honey and what she could only call sunlight and, if it were possible, birdsong. She lowered the cup. She could feel a soft golden wave traveling through her blood, spreading down to the tips of her fingers and toes, to the ends of her hair, warming her from within. “Wow.”
The old woman smiled, multiplying the wrinkles in her face. “Maybe Granny knows something, hmm?”
“Who’d they find, Kate and Michael?”
“The wizard.”
“Wait—you mean Dr. Pym?! They found Dr. Pym?! How do you know?”
“Saw it, how else? Silly question.”
“Well, we have to go find them! Dr. Pym has to kill that stupid witch! She’s awful! Where are they? We should go right now!”
The old woman shook her head, picking up a basket from the floor. Emma could hear jars rattling inside. “You have a different path.” She pulled back the leather flap hanging over the doorway, briefly letting in the full morning light. She turned to the boy at the fire. “Make her eat. I’m going to Gabriel.”
“Wait!” Emma called. “I want to—” But as she stepped out of bed, her strength failed her and she crumpled to the floor.
The boy left the fire and helped Emma back to bed. It was then Emma saw that he was not a boy at all, but a girl, maybe a year younger than Kate, but thin and wiry with close-cropped hair.
She was rough, more or less shoving Emma into bed; then she went to the fire, ladled stew into a wooden bowl, and carried it over, wiping a spoon on her shirt as she came. “You can feed yourself, can’t you? You’re not a baby?”
“Course I can,” Emma said stubbornly, though truth was, even after drinking the old woman’s potion, she was weaker than she had ever felt in her life. She took the bowl and spoon from the girl. The stew was a yellowish broth with hunks of meat, vegetables, and potatoes. It smelled like heaven.
The girl sat on a stool, crossed her arms, and stared at Emma as if to make sure she finished it all.
Emma wanted to stare back, but she was also ferociously hungry, so she alternated between glaring at the girl and slurping up greedy spoonfuls of stew.
“I thought you were dead. Gabriel brought you in last night. Another five minutes, Granny said, it’d have been too late.”
“She’s your grandmother?”
“Nah. Everyone just calls her Granny. Granny Peet. She’s a wisewoman. Does magic. That’s how she cured you. Course she owns your soul now.”
Emma stopped eating.
The girl gave a lopsided smile. “I’m kidding. She’s not like that. You believed me, though.”
“Did not.”
“Sure you did. You thought Granny Peet had your soul in a jar or something.”
Emma decided she didn’t like this girl and was going to ignore her.
“Gabriel said the witch had you locked up but you escaped; that true?”
Emma shrugged as if it was no big deal.
“She’s got them men digging in the Dead City, down under the mountain. I snuck in there. Seen ’em.”
Emma stopped eating, her curiosity piqued. “What’s the Dead City?”
“Place the dwarves used to live. See, long time ago, they had a city under the mountain. Then one day there comes this big earthquake, right?” The girl seemed to get excited telling the story. “Half the city just got swallowed up. Killed lots and lots a’ dwarves. That’s when they left and built that other city. Now-days, people think it’s haunted. Won’t even go there. But I ain’t afraid.” She looked at Emma. “You know what the witch’s got ’em digging for?”
Emma stared down at her food. “No.”
“I won’t tell anyone.”
“I said I don’t know. How come the Countess doesn’t have you locked up?”
The girl laughed. “She don’t mess with us. Only the townspeople. You ask me, they deserve what’s happened to ’em. Lettin’ themselves get caught like that. I’d have fought her. I don’t care if she killed me. Them townspeople’re a bunch of cowards.”
Emma spooned up a last carrot, then lifted the bowl and drank the broth. She was thinking of the children trapped in the mansion and how if they tried to escape, the Countess would hurt their mothers or fathers. “What’s your name?”
“Dena.”
“Well, Dena, you don’t know what you’re talking about. So why don’t you just shut your stupid mouth.”
The girl jumped up, her hands balled into fists. “If you weren’t sick and smaller than me, I’d make you take that back.”
Emma threw away the bowl and leapt out of bed. The old woman’s stew must’ve had something in it besides meat and vegetables because Emma suddenly felt as strong as she ever had.
“Go on and try it!”
A second later and the two would’ve been rolling on the ground, fighting and punching like wildcats, but just then the flap over the door opened and a man stepped in. He had the same long dark hair as Gabriel, but he was smaller, more slender, and his face was young and unscarred. Whether he understood what had been about to happen or even cared was impossible to tell, for his expression did not change. Glancing at Emma, he said to the girl, “She needs shoes.” Dena hesitated for a moment; then, huffing in annoyance, she bent and pulled a pair of worn mocs from under the bed and shoved them in Emma’s hands.
“Come with me,” the man said, turning and raising the flap.
“I want to see Gabriel.”
The man looked back over his shoulder. “Gabriel sent me.” And he stepped outside. Emma slipped on the moccasins and ran after him, throwing one last defiant glance at Dena.
The village was nestled in the shoulder of the mountain between a pair of pine-studded ridges. Stepping out of the hot, close cabin, Emma paused to take a breath. The air was cool and fresh and filled with the smells of a summer morning. Emma saw that there were maybe two dozen wooden cabins, some set back among the thick-waisted trees, others crowding in to form the borders of a central thoroughfare that stretched up the slope (if “thoroughfare” can be used to describe a twenty-foot-wide strip of dirt). Emma walked behind the young man, wondering where all the people were; then they rounded a curve, and she saw. The entire village, or what she assumed was the entire village, was gathered in front of a single cabin. The people were listening to a group of six or seven old men. Emma was too far away to hear, but it seemed like a council of sorts. As Emma and the young man approached, the old men fell silent, their eyes trained on her. Emma’s guide nodded respectfully, then held back the flap of the door so she could enter the cabin.
The room was dark, and darker still once the flap fell to. The young man hadn’t followed her in. Emma stood there, letting her eyes adjust. There was a foul, poisonous smell in the air. A large dark shape came toward her. Emma blinked and recognized Granny Peet. The wisewoman took Emma by the arm and drew her into the cabin.
“Where’s Ga …”
The question died in her throat. The old woman had led her to a bed at the back of the room, where Gabriel lay, eyes closed, naked to the waist. Half a dozen deep cuts crisscrossed his arms and there was a vicious gash in his side. But it was not the wounds that made Emma suck in her breath and bite down on her lip. Blossoming outward from each of the cuts, visible under the surface of the skin, were thick black tendrils.
“Poison,” Granny Peet said. “It reaches his heart, he’s finished.”
“So do something!” Emma pleaded. “Save him! Do something! You gotta!”
“Not so easy, child. The ingredients in the antidote are very difficult to find. Used all I had saving your life. Gabriel insisted.” She picked up a bowl half f
illed with a chunky yellowish paste and began stirring. “I don’t know, I don’t know.…”
Emma looked down at the giant man. He’d saved her, and now he was dying. It wasn’t fair. There had to be something—
Emma yanked her head back. Granny Peet had suddenly snatched at her face.
“What’re you …”
But the old woman wasn’t looking at Emma. She was staring at the end of her thick yellow fingernail, from which hung suspended a single one of Emma’s tears. Granny Peet gave a thoughtful sort of mumble, then shook the tear into her bowl, told Emma to hold still, and collected half a dozen more tears, adding them all to the yellowish mixture.
“Hmm,” she murmured, shuffling around the bed, stirring, “maybe …”
“You …” Gabriel’s eyes were open. “… Wanted to see you …”
Emma forced herself to smile and put as much cheerfulness and confidence into her voice as she could manage. “I’m okay. All because a’ you. And you’re gonna be okay too. Granny’s gonna fix you like she did me. She says she can for sure. Good as new.” Across the bed, the old woman began smearing the concoction on his wounds. Emma could hear it beginning to bubble and hiss.
“I am … glad to see you well,” Gabriel said, and closed his eyes.
Please, Emma thought, please let him be okay.…
She placed her small hands in one of his. The medicine must’ve burned terribly, for he clenched his hand into a fist, crushing both of Emma’s. But she didn’t let go. She would not let go.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN