He burst out from behind the workshop and charged headlong at Madu. As Gustav tackled him to the ground, the surprised Darian dropped the rat, which quickly scampered off.
“Run, King Moonracer, run!” Duncan yelled.
“Where’s the snake?” Gustav demanded to know as he pinned Madu to the stone floor. Ella drew her sword and rushed to his side.
“How did you get up here?” Madu rasped.
“Where’s the snake?” Gustav asked again.
“Never mind the animal,” Ella said. “We just need to know where the Snake Hole is.”
“No way,” said Gustav. “I came here to fight a giant snake, and I’m not leaving until I fight a giant snake. Now, where is it?”
“Gustav, we don’t have time for this,” Ella said. “More bandits could come along any second.”
“I think I found the hole,” Lila called from a few yards off. There was a small metal hatch in the floor surrounded by crisp, translucent shreds of molted snake skin. Ella and Duncan ran over to Lila as she turned a wheel on the hatch door and lifted it to reveal an eighteen-inch-wide shaft that ran downward into pitch darkness.
“Nice job, Lila,” Ella said. She pulled a coil of rope from her belt. “You ready to head down there?”
Lila nodded and began tying one end of the rope around her waist.
“Starf it all!” Gustav griped. “Last time I was supposed to fight the dragon. But that didn’t get to happen! This time I was supposed to fight the giant snake. And we can’t even find the stupid thing!”
“You want so badly to see the snake,” Madu snickered from underneath him. “I would hate to disappoint you.” Suddenly he began to spasm and squirm. His skin appeared to crack all over, turning into thousands of individual scales. His nose went flat, his eyes turned yellow, and his entire body began to elongate.
“Oh, man,” Lila said. “That guy doesn’t just take care of the snake. He is the snake.”
With a slurping sound, Madu’s arms were sucked into his torso, and his legs fused together, blending into one monstrous tail. Within seconds there was a thirty-foot-long, sand-colored serpent slithering out of Madu’s empty vest and kilt. The creature swayed, raised its scaly head, and flicked a long, forked tongue at Gustav’s dumbstruck face.
“What are you slack-jaws doing?” Jezek barked at the gawking bandits on the ramparts of the front wall.
One timidly pointed at the battling troll and giantess.
“I see them, fool,” Jezek said. “Why are you standing here watching them? It’s all part of the invasion we were warned about. You men have bows—shoot them.”
“Um, you know, sir,” one of the bandits began. “We did shoot a couple o’ arrows into the hairy one, but he didn’t seem to be hurt by ’em. And the big one? I don’t know if it’s really worth us wasting ammunition.”
Jezek looked out at the monsters. “Trolls are tough, but not invincible. It’ll go down eventually. As for the giant . . . We may need a little something extra.” He took two bandits aside. “You know those crates of sleeping potion that were left by the castle’s previous owner? Go grab as much as you can. We’re going to need a lot.”
Down on the ground, an arrow hit Mr. Troll in the shoulder. “Hey, where that come from?” the monster asked.
“Those cockroaches on the wall are shooting at you again,” Maude said.
“Giant Lady better look at self,” the troll said. “Arrow Men shoot at Giant Lady, too.”
Maude craned her head around to see seven arrows sticking out of her back. She hadn’t even felt them. “Well, look at that,” Maude said. “You’re not still going to tell me we can’t fight back, are you?”
Mr. Troll scratched his furry chin. “Okay, Troll and Giant Lady fight back. But no crushing. Need to make fight last as long as possible.”
Maude shrugged. “Better than nothing. Okay, let’s wreak some havoc.”
Thwack! The tail of the giant sand snake smashed into Gustav’s chest and knocked him backward. With a gurgle, Gustav slid down the side of the dome and landed on his hands and knees.
“Hurry, hurry!” Ella urged. She held one end of their rope as Lila, with the other end tied around her midsection, slipped feet-first into the Snake Hole.
Fig. 35
Giant SANDSNAKE
“Wow, snakes must have super–night vision or something,” she muttered. “I can’t see a thing.” She could barely move a knee or elbow without banging a wall. Claustrophobia had never been an issue for Lila in the past, but then again, she’d never been shoved into a seemingly bottomless hole that was barely wider than her body. It was beginning to creep her out. But she took a deep breath, thought of Liam, and continued to inch her way down the shaft. Then she heard Ella cry out from up above.
And Lila began to drop. She screamed, plummeting downward, before jerking to a stop.
“Don’t worry, Liam’s sister!” Duncan called down to her. “I’ve got the rope!”
“What happened to Ella?” Lila shouted upward, relieved but slightly worried (the way many people feel when Duncan comes to their aid).
“She and Gustav are fighting with the snake,” Duncan yelled down. “But they’re not doing very well. The snake knocked Gustav through the wall of that sack shop. He crawled out with a burlap bag over his head. I wish our lives weren’t in mortal danger right now, because normally that would have been hilarious.”
“Duncan, please hold on tight,” Lila said. She shimmied downward as fast as she could in the dark, tight tunnel, her heart beating faster with every crash, shout, and groan she heard from above. Then her feet hit the bottom.
“I’m here,” she said, not even sure if Duncan could hear her from that far down. “Gotta find the lever.” She tried to crouch down and banged her head into the wall of the far-too-narrow chute. “I don’t even have room to bend in here,” she grumbled. She poked around in the darkness with her foot, and it smacked into a stick that was jutting from the bottom of the shaft. “Aha!”
With both feet, Lila shifted the lever from one side to the other. Immediately, a series of mechanical gears and gizmos creaked into action.
Five stories below—beneath Gustav and Ella fighting for their lives, beneath Stanislav Flimsham preparing to announce his world-famous clown act, and just a few corridors away from Liam and Frederic staring in despair at their barely human jailer—the door to Deeb Rauber’s vault clicked, trembled, and swung wide-open.
25
THE VILLAIN GIVES TWO THUMBS-DOWN
They say laughter is the best medicine. Destroy the clowns!
—THE WARLORD’S PATH TO POWER: AN ANCIENT TOME OF DARIAN WISDOM
“Do we have to go on?” asked the leader of a team of jittery bear-back riders, cowering behind the curtain in the amphitheater. One set of performers after another had been subjected to heckling bandits throwing everything from rotten eggs to crowbars.
“Of course you do!” barked Stanislav Flimsham, whose stomach was doing more flips than his acrobats. “Do you want us all to be killed? Now get out there!”
Trembling, the bear-back riders took the stage. Even the bears looked nervous. Stanislav turned to his brother, Armando, who handled the circus paperwork.
“Why did you ever book us to play here?” Stanislav asked.
“They promised a really great buffet table backstage,” Armando answered. And he ran off before Stanislav could hit him.
Stanislav turned, cupped his hands to his mouth, and called out, “Clowns! You’re on next!”
When the bear riders left the stage a few minutes later, bruised and dizzied from being pelted with pebbles, they were followed only by an uncomfortable silence. A dead minute passed, and the bandits began growling and chopping into the railing with their axes.
Finally, Stanislav ran onstage.
“Fear not, fear not, my good, um, men,” he said. “For now you are about to be entertained as you have never been entertained before.” He raised his arms in the air. “Send in t
he clowns!”
Nothing.
“Send in the clowns!” he cried again. The ringmaster licked his lips nervously. “Prepare for a big surprise,” he added, his limp pompadour sagging onto the side of his head. “You never know what these clowns are going to do. Or apparently when they’re going to do it.”
Backstage, Briar peered at the secret pocket watch she’d hidden in the belt of her clown costume. The vault should be opening any minute, she thought, and she quietly stepped away from the others, heading toward the rear exit. She was reaching for the door that would lead her out into the rest of the castle when Rapunzel’s hand landed on her shoulder.
“You’re off to do something horrible, aren’t you?” Rapunzel said. “I hate making judgments about people without really knowing them, but I have to say, you do not give off good vibes.”
“You don’t understand,” Briar said impatiently. “The vault’s going to be open any minute now. I have to get down there.”
“No, you don’t,” Rapunzel said. “Frederic and Liam will take care of that.”
“What else am I supposed to do? Go out there and perform a clown act?” Briar scoffed.
“That’s exactly what you’re going to do,” bellowed a leopard-skin-wearing circus strongman who had come up to them along with Armando Flimsham. “You clowns think you’re better than the rest of us,” the strongman said. “But if we’ve got to go out there and survive this audience, so do you.”
Hands on their shoulders, he turned both women around and steered them back toward the stage.
Ella hunkered down into the sword-fighting stance Liam had taught her, but seeing as she was facing off against a thirty-foot snake, proper fencing posture wasn’t all that helpful. She swung at the snake, but the creature easily curled its body to avoid the blow and rammed her in the chest with its flat, scaly head. Ella tumbled backward. She lay flat as the snake rose up over her. The beast’s mouth opened, and Ella could see the venom dripping from its fangs. But the monstrous animal only let out a gurgle of shock as Gustav grabbed it by the throat.
He dragged the creature to the edge of the roof and tied it into a tight knot around an iron railing. The snake hissed and spat angrily.
“Ha!” Gustav crowed. “I beat you, stupid snake!” He raised his fists in victory and marched back and forth, howling like a troll. This was the first time Gustav had ever actually bested a monster in battle, and he couldn’t wait to rub it in his brothers’ faces. Even Rapunzel would look at him differently after this, he thought.
“Gustav made the big snake into a pretty bow,” Duncan called down the hole to Lila. “Let’s get you out of there, Liam’s sister!”
Lila had never been happier to hear anything in her life. But as soon as she felt Duncan pulling her upward, she yelled for him to stop.
“Wait!” she cried. “When I take my foot off the lever, it starts sliding back. I think the vault’s gonna close again the moment I leave this hole.”
Ella ran over. She looked at the stopwatch Liam had given her to keep track of time. Unfortunately, watches don’t respond well to being dunked in moats full of bladejaw eels—it had stopped working. “Well, I think it’s been about an hour,” she muttered. “Which means Little Taylor should be letting the guys out of the dungeon any second now. Hold on a few more minutes, Lila.”
Fig. 36
LILA, descending
Lila began gasping for breath, praying that those minutes would pass quickly. As she often said, she was great with heights. But as she had only recently discovered, she was not so great with depths.
The curtain parted and the four “clowns” were unceremoniously shoved onstage. Snow spun around under the candle-powered spotlights, taking in three hundred of the angriest faces she’d ever seen. She fell, dizzy, into Rapunzel’s arms.
Not that Rapunzel was feeling any more comfortable in front of such an audience. She’d never even seen a circus before. She had no idea what clowns did. Caper? Frolic? Engage in acts of whimsy? While she puzzled over what those terms might even mean, she noticed Briar and Ruffian whispering conspiratorially.
The crowd began to grumble.
“Snow,” Rapunzel said softly. “You’ve got to do something. Be a clown.”
So Snow tripped Briar, knocking her onto her backside.
“How dare you?” Briar snarled. But the audience laughed.
Briar stood up, and Snow knocked her back down again. Bigger laugh.
“Stop that,” Briar hissed. She grabbed Snow’s ankle and yanked her to the ground. Biggest laugh yet.
But Briar wasn’t amused. I can’t let these fools waste my time any longer, she thought. I came here on a mission of my own, and I’m going to see it through. She stood up and stomped over to the side of the stage. She tossed a basket of juggling balls, colored scarves, and other clowning toys to the others. “Here,” she snipped. “You want to put on a show? Put on a show.”
Then she marched offstage.
Snow rifled through the basket of toys and picked up a wicker hoop. “What do you think we do with this?” she asked Rapunzel.
But Rapunzel was too distracted by Briar’s sudden exit. “Good luck,” she said to Snow. And she darted offstage as well.
Snow stood there holding the hoop in her hand. She looked to Ruffian for a hint of what to do next, but the bounty hunter was standing statue-still, like he was on guard duty. So Snow tossed the hoop over his head.
She got a chuckle from the crowd. So seven more hoops quickly followed. As well as anything else Snow could find to throw at him.
Ruffian sighed.
“Finally, something enjoyable,” Rauber said as he kicked his feet up onto the railing in front of him.
“I am so glad you’re being . . . entertained,” Rundark remarked with obvious disgust.
“See the way the big, grumpy-looking clown just stands there while the little, energetic one keeps bouncing stuff off his face?” Rauber said, grinning. “It speaks to me.”
Lord Rundark crossed his arms. How pathetic, he thought, that some of the last breaths you take will be wasted on laughter.
From a few seats away, Vero saw Falco run into the amphitheater. The scout was headed straight for Lord Rundark, but Vero grabbed him first.
“What is it, Falco?” Vero asked.
Falco started swinging his arms and doing a goofy dance. Then he pointed out to the hallway.
“A circus monkey has escaped into the castle?”
Falco shook his head. He clamped his fist over his nose like a ball, made a triangle in the air over his head, and waddled back and forth.
“There is a big-nosed unicorn pretending to be a penguin?” Vero tried.
Falco shook his head again, gnashing his teeth in frustration.
“Why the Warlord insists on using a man who does not speak as his messenger, I will never know,” Vero said.
Falco pointed out at Snow and Ruffian, then back at the hallway.
“Clowns!” Vero said, proud of himself. “There is a clown out in the castle. Oh, yes, now that you mention it, some of the clowns appear to be missing. It is, as we say in my country, suspicious. Falco, go wait in the hall. I will inform the Warlord.”
Falco ran back out, but Vero went straight to Deeb Rauber. He whispered in the Bandit King’s ear. Rauber’s eyes widened. Something strange was going on outside. Had he been too cocky, too quick to dismiss the League of Princes and their assault on his castle? He leapt from his seat to follow Vero.
“You are leaving?” Rundark asked.
“I hate to blow the surprise, but I’m gonna be a special part of the final act,” Rauber said haughtily. “I gotta head backstage and get ready. Enjoy the show.”
“Oh, I will,” Rundark said.
Slinking through the halls of Rauber’s castle, Briar froze when she heard footsteps from around a corner. She ducked behind an ogre-size suit of armor and saw two bandits open a closet door and start pulling armfuls of clinking glass bottles from a crate insi
de.
“Think this is enough?” one bandit asked the other.
“It’ll have to be,” the second bandit responded. “I can’t carry any more’n this. We’ll come back for another batch if we need to.”
“I think that seems likely,” said the first. “We’re talking about taking down a giant.”
They’ve seen the giant? Briar thought. Better move fast.
As soon as the two bandits left, Briar rushed over to the closet. On the floor sat a wooden crate labeled SLEEPING POTIONS—PROPERTY OF Z.
Fig. 37
POTIONS
I don’t know who this Z is, Briar thought as she picked up one of the flasks of pinkish liquid and swished it around, but I thank him for this little gift.
Out by the front gate, archers on the Wall of Secrecy continued to rain arrows down on Maude and Mr. Troll. But now Rauber’s men also had to dodge the large chunks of rocks that Mr. Troll hurled at them.
“HWAH!” Mr. Troll grunted as he slung another heavy rock upward and knocked his fourth bandit from the wall. “Ha-ha! ’Nother one down.”
Maude, who was on her knees, hunched over to provide cover for the troll, grabbed another huge boulder and crushed it into dozens of smaller rock bits. “You sure I can’t just kick down the wall?” the giantess asked.
“Battle be over too fast,” Mr. Troll said. “Troll and Giant Lady can’t let Arrow Men go inside. Got to give friends enough time to get shiny sword. This very important part of—”
“Less talk, more rocks,” Maude interrupted.
“Oh, yeah,” Mr. Troll said, and chucked two more huge hunks of stone.
Maude grabbed another boulder to break up but suddenly stopped. “Hmm,” she said. “I’m not sure why, but I’m suddenly feeling tired.”
“What Giant Lady tired for?” Mr. Troll asked. “Troll doing most of the work.”
“Guess I’m just not as young as I used to be,” Maude said.