The Chestnut King: Book 3 of the 100 Cupboards (22 page)

“Help me,” he said. “We don’t have much time.” And then, ducking back into his little bedroom, Henry walked into the cupboard wall and disappeared.

*  *  *

Henry loaded his arms with books. Coughing, accidentally inhaling dust, he staggered back around and faced the grapevined doorway his father had made. Zeke and Henrietta stood on either side of it, looking around the room. The windows rattled, and the house shook. Dust drifted down from the walls.

“Over here,” Henry grunted. “These piles go through into the house. As many as we can take.”

The big dog knocked Zeke and Henrietta from behind and loped around the room, tipping book piles.

“Stay!” Henry yelled, shifting the weight in his arms. He’d never had much interaction with Caleb’s dog, though Beo’s sire still lived in his dreams and infant memories. He tried to whistle but only managed to spit. The dog ignored him, bounded around the table, snarled at the closed door, and collided with Henrietta.

“Beo!” Henrietta yelled. “Down!” The dog dropped to his belly and froze, staring at the door with his ears up.

Henry puffed his cheeks and slid back through the expanded cupboard and into the old house. When he set his pile down, Henrietta and Zeke each dropped a pile beside his.

“What’s going on?” Henrietta asked, but her cousin was already running back into the little room toward the cupboards.

“Fingerlings!” Henry shouted. Henrietta and Zeke followed him. In the library, Henry shoved his arms beneath another leaning pile, the smell of dust and ancient paper
filling his nostrils, sweat beading on his forehead. “Caleb and my dad are fighting them. They told me to get these through the cupboard.”

Henrietta laughed. “Poor fingerlings.”

Zeke smiled. Henry looked at them both and bit his lip with effort, wobbling beneath his new burden. Zeke steadied the pile with one hand.

“Caleb”—Henry groaned—“said it would be hard. And my dad”—he tripped and swayed—“doesn’t have much to work with. This place is—” He stepped through the cupboard doorway and wove his way around the little bed, out into the attic, and dropped the books onto sighing floorboards. “This place is dead,” he said quietly, and ducking around a wobbling Zeke, he hurried back.

Coradin looked at the men on either side of him. One was crawling slowly to his feet. Another lay unconscious, beaten down with blows of air whenever a foot touched the stairs. All lived. All had been pierced with arrows, but arrows were nothing. Somehow, he knew that to die, he and his brothers must lose their helmets. And their helmets were chained to collars and belts. The other three, also with feathered shafts in their bodies, walked into the grand entryway. The light in the house was orange and fading.

“They circle on horse,” one said, and he nodded at the stairs. “They avoid us and wait on those above.”

“The boy flickers,” said another. “He dances between worlds. They have an escape.”

Coradin nodded and twisted his swords in the air. The blades whispered with forgotten voices and quivered with stolen lives. The men on the stairs were patient and did not show more than shadows of themselves. They must be pressed on all sides. He pointed at two of the new men, his brothers. “Seek another stair,” he said, and his voice was his own. Pointing at two others, he gestured in front of him. “Press here.” While the others moved slowly away, he filled his lungs. He would take the prey.

Kill
.

Coradin knew the voice was in all of their heads. Their mother had commanded that father and son be brought alive.

Kill
, she said again.

Coradin turned, and sheathing the swords on his shoulders, he walked through to the back of the house. He would find a window.

Henry wiped his forehead. Beo the dog watched him. The bright faerie light was dying, but gray light filtered in through the windows. He wanted to take his sweatshirt off, but he knew he would regret it. It would end up like his backpack on top of the bell tower.

“Are we done?” Zeke asked behind him.

Henry looked back at the piles more than head high that still filled one end of the room. He shook his head. “No. My dad said to take as many as we could before he yelled. When he yells, we have to get through fast.”

Zeke filled his arms again and moved back through the
cupboard. Henrietta stepped beside Henry, blinking and sniffing in the dusty air, running her eyes over the disturbed piles. The house was still.

“What are we looking for?”

Henry shrugged, rolled his shoulders, and walked back to another stack. “A secret,” he said. “The secret to Endor. The secret to killing the witch.”

“But who’s going to go through all this?”

“I don’t know,” Henry said. “My dad wants me to take it to the faeren. I think he’s hoping we’ll find the real Black-star or something.” He staggered and nodded at Henrietta. She set ten more inches on top of the stack in his arms. “I don’t think we will,” he said. “Not in time.”

Zeke stepped back out of the cupboard and reloaded. “In time for what?” he asked.

“In time for me,” said Henry, and he disappeared.

All the way through his room and in the attic, Henry felt the pull of his father. He felt Mordecai grasping for strength where he could find it, and the air moved, chased by a distant rumbling.

Henrietta screamed.

Henry dropped his pile and rushed back into the little attic room and through the cupboard wall.

“Maccabee!” he heard his father yell. “Maccabee!”

The dog was on his feet, hackles up and lips curled back, a rumbling in his chest. Zeke was on his back, the load he had been carrying scattered around him.

In the window a man crouched, his eyes hidden in the shadows of a silver helmet, a long sword in his right hand.
His left gripped Henrietta by the hair, winding tighter in her curls. She stood on her toes in front of the man, biting her lip, with tears streaking down her dusty cheeks, thrashing and thumping her fists against his shins.

“Coradin,” Henry said. He knew who it was, even without the notches in his ear. His shirt was ripped where dandelions had sprouted from his chest.

“Brother,” Coradin said, and slid into the room. Lifting his long blade, he set the edge against the back of Henrietta’s neck. “Brother, what will you do for your cousin?”

“Nothing,” Henrietta grunted. She tried to twist, but the whispering sword edge against her neck changed her mind. Her eyes widened, and Coradin let her sink to her heels. Henry watched a trickle of blood appear on the side of her neck. The blood stopped, grayed, and then drifted away in powder. “Go, Henry,” Henrietta said. “Go.”

Henry backed up to the closed door. Beo was motionless, frozen, poised to attack if the man should step free of Henrietta. The house shook, the door rattled, and air swirled into the room from the windows. Mordecai was busy. Zeke slid backward toward Henry and then stood up.

“Brother,” Coradin said, his voice crawling out from the silver helmet. “Come to me. I do not need your cousin’s blood. I do not need your friend’s. Our mother calls for you.”

Henry slid his hand into his pouch and felt the tiny kitchen knife nestled with his baseball. Coradin’s helmet was chained on. He didn’t stand a chance.

“Zeke,” Henry said. “Go.” His mind groped around for
strength, but everything in this land had been drunk dry long ago. He couldn’t reach into the sky as high as his father. He had only himself and the heat in his blood. The golden and green laughter. But there was no laughter in him. The dandelions burned in anger, and every inch of Henry’s skin flushed with the heat. His eyes turned as black as Nimroth’s marble, and the world shifted.

Zeke hadn’t moved.

Coradin’s sword was forged of lifeless steel but woven and triple-braided with gray death strands. Henry could see his own strands mingling with the death all around him. The dead woods, the dead papers, the dead stone, all gray and stiff and motionless. Only Henrietta and the dog and Coradin swirled with life. Henrietta was all fear, the dog all anger, Coradin all strength and confusion, bound by the thick gray ropes that stretched back from his head.

The heat in Henry grew painful, building to a golden explosion. He couldn’t hold it. He had nowhere to put it.

“Let her go,” he said. “I’ll come.” He stepped forward.

“No,” Henrietta said. “You moron. Go. Get out of here.” She jerked and tried to push back against the sword. Coradin pulled it away with her motion. “Come on, Mr. Finger! Cut my head off.” She looked back at Henry. “Leave!” she yelled, and choked on a sob of anger.

Henry took another step closer. He was beside Beo now, and he could feel the dog’s growling strength and anger. It fed his own heat.

“Henrietta.” Henry’s voice was flat and calm. “I’m dead anyway.” Henry lifted his right hand and held the palm out
flat. His dancing dandelion brand was huge, but it was as small as he could make it, living its anger, blazing its life, telling the story of its strength in flame. Henrietta blinked. She could see fire on her cousin’s palm. Henry watched its reflection twist in the silver of Coradin’s helmet.

The fingerling’s sword flicked up and then slashed down at Henry’s forearm. Henry jerked back in time, pulling out his kitchen knife as he did. He swung his right hand across stacks of ancient papers, and his dandelion anger rushed out through them, crackling, blazing, exploding toward the ceiling in golden flame, dancing in strange colors where the fire found charms and ancient inks.

Coradin came forward fast, dragging Henrietta and slashing at Henry.

As the blade flicked through flames, Beo leapt, his jaw cracking shut on Coradin’s wrist. The sword dropped as Coradin staggered under the weight of the snarling dog. Henry lunged for Coradin’s other arm, slashing the kitchen knife between Henrietta’s scalp and the fingerling’s hand. She fell free, her curls left behind.

“Go!” Henry yelled. Coradin’s fist thumped into his cheek and then closed around his left wrist. Henry dropped the knife but shoved his fiery hand at the fingerling’s head, forcing it up beneath his helmet.

The room was a bonfire. The air was disappearing fast. Zeke dragged Henrietta away toward Mordecai’s opening, and the two of them disappeared in the smoke.

Beo dropped Coradin’s wrist and lunged for his throat
as the man writhed beneath Henry’s burning touch, skin and hair singeing. Kicking the dog, he grabbed at Henry.

The door burst open as Henry was thrown to the floor, ripping the sword and scabbard free of Coradin’s shoulders as he fell. The flames, licking the high ceiling and funneling out the windows, suddenly bent toward the two fingerlings, who staggered back into the hall.

Henry slid across the floor toward his father’s swirling doorway, still tall and uncollapsed. Beo snapped at Coradin’s collar, pushing the fingerling farther into the flames. Henry couldn’t whistle. He whooped for the dog, called his name, and crawled through into his old attic bedroom.

Dropping the sword, he spun on his knees and grabbed at his father’s magic, struggling to collapse the seam, to let the little pyramid burn.

“Beo!” he yelled. The doorway was shrinking. Heat—painful, blistering heat—surged from the cupboard wall as the seam closed.

The dog leapt through, knocking Henry onto his back. Henry grabbed for the sword and drew it, expecting Coradin to follow. The seam closed, and only smoke and heat wormed through into the attic.

Henry slid farther back from the wall, panting. What had happened to his father? His uncle? Would the whole house burn? That’s not what his father had told him to do. Was his father’s body in the house? Would he burn, too? A tiny flame danced in the mouth of the cupboard and then died. The heat and smoke faded.

“How long does the water take?” Zeke asked behind him. Henry looked around. His friend was holding a crowbar and standing on the bed beside a small diamond-shaped cupboard. Number 18. Henrietta had fallen through it into a shipwreck. It had flooded the whole house. Now it was open again, and the wood around it was splintered.

“I don’t remember,” Henrietta said. “It seemed fast.”

“Why?” Henry asked, still breathing hard. Instead of an answer to his question, a long blade, hissing like a snake, slid through the Endor cupboard and twisted around, searching for flesh. Zeke jumped off the bed and brought the crowbar down on top of it. The head of the crowbar tumbled off and bounced against the wall. The blade slid back through.

“Oh no,” Henry said. “He saved the cupboard. It didn’t burn. They can follow us.”

Still kneeling, he put his head in his hands. He had burned the books and manuscripts but not the door.

“Burn this one,” Henrietta said. Her thick hair, cut with the kitchen knife, stood out in uneven curls around her head. Her face was filthy. “Burn it on this side. I saw your hand. You could light anything.”

Henry held out his palm. His anger, the heat inside, was gone. His mark was faint, tired, and slow. Henrietta wouldn’t be able to see it at all.

He looked at the doorway. It would be dangerous. The sword could come slashing back through. Stretching forward, he put his palm down on the bottom of the black
cupboard. He tried to pull strength to himself, to build up the heat that had exploded out of him in Nimroth’s old library.

Dandelions sprouted between his fingers, blossoms glowing. Broad-bladed leaves twisted around his wrist.

“I’ll get some matches,” Henrietta said, and she ran downstairs. Henry tore his hand free and slid back. He glanced at Zeke. Beo was on his side, panting in the corner.

“Grab some of the papers,” Henry said. Zeke hurried out into the attic and came back with a slim stack. Henry flipped through them in the dim light. The language was nothing he could understand, and the writing looked like something that should have been chiseled in sandstone rather than inked on paper. Where there were drawings, they all looked more like engineering illustrations than anything magical. One picture, blotchy, looked like a floor plan.

As Henrietta thumped back up the attic stairs, Henry wadded the old papers and crammed them into the cupboard around the dandelions. His cousin stepped into the little room and tossed him a small pack of cardboard matches.