The Runaway Dragon (17 page)

Behind her the others froze, wishing they could disappear. There weren’t any good hiding places within reach, and besides, they were watching Nort with horrified fascination. Nort was jarred by every stroke of the broom against the floor and seemed perilously close to being shaken loose.

Then Kitty looked down and saw the four of them standing there. She screamed good and loud before she started slapping at them with the broom. “SHOO! SHOO!” she shouted. “NASTY LITTLE THINGS!”

The four remaining humans ran every which way, racing to avoid Kitty’s angry broom. Swerving and skidding, they led the giant woman in a mad dance around the room. One of her blows caught Dilly with the edge of the bristles, and Dilly slid hard across the kitchen after one terrifying upside-down glimpse of Nort’s face. Kitty spun about, trying to swat the five of them at once.

Something thumped out in the hall, and Loris burst into the kitchen. “MOMMY, MY DOLLIES ARE GONE!” She stopped, flabbergasted. “MY DOLLIES! STOP, MOMMY, STOP!” Loris grabbed her mother’s arm just before Kitty could whack Cam a good one.

“NO!” Kitty cried, but in that instant’s pause, Nort jumped clear of the broom. Almost immediately, the
giant’s wife began swinging the broom again despite Loris’s protests. Seeing her mother had no intention of stopping her wild broomwork, Loris decided to rescue her dollies one at a time. She started crawling around the floor after them, ducking her mother’s broom and stretching her hands out now here, now there to grasp the five humans who darted between her fingers. Loris nearly caught Dilly, who was slowing a little and wondering how much longer she could keep running. It was only lunging behind a chair leg that saved Dilly for a few seconds more.

Then the door opened, and Lorgley Comprost stepped into the kitchen. “WHAT’S GOING ON IN HERE?” he boomed.

The door was still open.
“The door!”
Cam yelled at the others.
“Run!”
Suddenly all five of them changed direction, running straight for the door. Except Spinach, who was Loris’s most important target. She had to zigzag inventively to keep away from the giant child. Loris slid across the floor on her belly, her fingers brushing Spinach’s back. “ROSALINA LILIANA!” Loris wailed. “MOMMY, THEY’RE GETTING AWAY!”

Lorgley had been trying to calm his wife. On hearing his daughter’s words, he leaped to close the door, but his prisoners raced outside before he could get there. He tried to go after them—and so did Loris. In her haste to recapture Spinach, Loris tripped her father. She simply
sat down hard, but Lorgley fell flat on his back with a giant crash. “KITTY!” he bellowed. His wife hurried to help him up.

The three giants rushed out the door, but there was no sign of the little humans, only the nodding of daisies and snapdragons in the early summer breeze.

Bain looked hopeful for the first time that day when he heard Malison planned to aid him in his search. “You’ll use magic to find the prisoners, Empress?”

“What else would I use?” Malison drummed her fingers on the arm of her throne. It wasn’t the kind of question anyone actually felt inclined to answer.

Malison began to stand up, but just then Alya’s hiding place was revealed. Two slim hands appeared from behind the throne and a dagger crossed Malison’s neck, holding her in place. Alya rose over the sorceress like an angry dragon. “Take the spell off my brother and the others!” she commanded.

The initial alarm cleared from Malison’s face far too soon. “I’ve found one of your missing prisoners,” she told Bain spitefully.

Alya tightened her hold on Malison. “I said, take the spell off! Or it will have to stop when you die.”

“But you don’t
know
that will happen, do you?” Malison asked, finally addressing her captor.

Bain took a step closer. “Stay back!” his sister cried,
her voice and face showing an edge of desperation only when she spoke to him.

Malison laughed. “A dagger isn’t much good against a sorceress. You should know that by now. Go ahead—cut my throat.”

Bain was still moving in. Frantic now, Alya tried to hurt the sorceress, but Malison was already saying a spell, and the blade suddenly went useless and bendy. The sorceress spat out a second spell, searing words that made Alya fall sideways even as Bain finally leaped for the throne, determined to protect Malison against his sister.

“Very good, Chief Guard,” Malison said. “Bring her where I can see her.”

Bain dragged Alya’s limp body out in front of the throne.

“Hmm,” Malison said. “The woman really should die. But I have something better in mind.” She was still smarting from the failure of her statue spell on Lex yesterday. “Bain, hold her so she’s standing up. You there”—she indicated another guard—“put her hand around her dagger as if she were about to strike.” The guards hurried to obey, and after a few more orders, Alya was posed exactly right. Malison performed the spell. This time it worked. Malison sighed happily, admiring the black marble statue. “I’ll call it
The Assassin’s Failure,”
she said as she stood up. “Put it over there. I’m going to find that princess.”

Meg hadn’t been very impressed by Alya’s plan, but she hadn’t wanted to say so. There had been some promising talk about putting sleepy herbs in the guards’ suppers, but when all was said and done, getting Alya close to Malison turned out to be the entire plan. From what Meg had seen of that sorceress, it might not be enough. Before everyone had gone back to bed, Meg asked Luli to tell her where Lex was, but Luli changed the subject.

In the morning, Meg was assigned to help dust the furniture in one of the lower hallways, and she couldn’t stand it another minute. When the other girl went off to get more water, Meg slipped away. She had hidden a couple of black towels under her skirt the night before as if they were extra petticoats. Now she pulled them out, folded them neatly, and carried them up the stairs, pretending she had a destination.

Meg flinched whenever she saw a guard coming, but she reminded herself that she was practically invisible. She kept walking, eyes lowered. The fortress guards she passed didn’t give her a second glance.

Of course, Meg couldn’t help wishing Malison’s fortress had fewer rooms, let alone fewer halls and stairways. She spent the morning looking in door after door after door, but she didn’t find Lex. She found rooms full of weapons in stacks: swords and spears and truncheons and maces and regular crossbows and larger arbalests like the one Lex had transformed for her a few days ago, back before they’d entered the enchanted forest. She found a
room all hung with black bats that opened their eyes blearily when the light fell across them. There was a room with a single pedestal in the middle, a tiny gold box sitting atop it, and another room that, while it was filled with glass models of palaces, smelled like barbecued chicken. Then Meg came across a swathe of dozens of guest rooms made up with black satin quilts. It wasn’t as if Malison had many friends to come and stay in those rooms, Meg thought as she marched up the next stairway.

“You there!” A guard hailed her, and Meg froze.

“Yes, sir?” she asked in her best innocent servant voice.

The guard was tall and a little plump, his black armor straining around his belly. His kindly face didn’t seem to match his current career, and Meg wondered what he used to do before Malison’s spell came along to change his life. “Have you seen any escaped prisoners?” the man asked.

“Not today, sir,” she replied.

“Very well. Go on, then.”

Cam had been in love with plants for a long time, but today he was feeling especially appreciative of daisies and snapdragons.
Giant
daisies and snapdragons, their tangle of leaves and stems providing very good cover for five small humans trying to hide from a family of giants.
Lorgley and Kitty gave up the search after peering into the foliage for five or ten minutes. If it weren’t for Loris, the escaped prisoners could have moved on immediately. The giant child poked about in the flowers and shrubs with seemingly endless patience.

She nearly caught Crobbs, too. The tall boy almost gave himself away when a giant bee landed on his head. But Cam grabbed his arm and said “No!” in such a fierce whisper that Crobbs managed to hold still, though he was shaking all over. The bee soon concluded that Crobbs didn’t have any nectar in his hair and flew off with a tremendous throaty buzzing sound. Crobbs dropped to his knees, slapping at his hair to brush the pollen out of it. “Well done,” Cam said as Loris moved on to another stretch of plants.

A little while later, Kitty saved them by calling her daughter in for breakfast.

“BUT I’M LOOKING FOR MY DOLLIES!” Loris exclaimed.

“YOU CAN LOOK AGAIN AFTER BREAKFAST.”

“MO-O-O-TH-ER!” came the giant child’s despairing cry.

“LORIS, I’M COUNTING TO FIVE. GET YOUR BOTTOM IN THIS KITCHEN THIS MINUTE! ONE … TWO … THREE …”

“I’M COMING,” Loris said sulkily, and she went in the house, slamming the door behind her to further
express her indignation. From within, they could hear Loris getting in trouble for slamming the door.

“Now they open the windows,” Nort remarked.

“Come on,” Dilly said. “We have to cover as much ground as possible before that girl finishes her breakfast.”

ILLY AND THE OTHER FOUR ESCAPEES CLIMBED
out of the flowerbed into a narrow groove of dirt that marked the edge of a field of green grass that the giants apparently grew in front of their home for decorative purposes. It was slow going. Dirt that would have seemed fairly smooth to the giants was a jumble of clods large enough to trip smaller folk. “This is worse than walking on that rug,” Cam said. “On the other hand,” he added, “we’re free!”

“Free is good,” said Dilly, “but how are we going to get
down?”

“We could catch a bird and fly down,” Crobbs said.

“A bird might eat us,” Spinach said. “In this place, we’re not much bigger than a worm.” A few minutes later her point was proven when they came across an actual worm.

“Blech!” said Crobbs.

“Blech is right,” Nort told him. The worm didn’t seem particularly interested in them, but it was just so big and round and gooshy-looking.

“Worms are good for the garden,” Cam told the other four. But Dilly noticed he didn’t get any closer to this worm than the rest of them. The travelers moved a little faster until they were well past it. Then Spinach thought of half a dozen questions about worms. Cam answered every single one.

How he could be so patient was beyond Dilly. “Why do you ask so many questions?” Dilly said, trying not to snap when she said it.

“Because,” Spinach said, surprised, “I don’t know anything. It’s hard to know things when you’re in a tower.” She swept her hand in a circle, pointing all around them. “I want to know
everything.”

“Huh,” Dilly said, feeling a lot less irritated all of a sudden.

Meg was peeping into what felt like the hundredth room of the morning with not a single sign of Lex’s ever having been there when two guards came around the corner and looked right at her. She ran the other way, but three guards appeared ahead of her and she was surrounded. “Come along,” one of the guards said gruffly. “She wants you in the great hall.”

So once more Meg found herself standing in front of
Malison’s throne, wishing she were somewhere else. “How did you find me?” Meg asked.

Malison didn’t bother to answer. “Have you seen my latest creation?”

“Creation?”

“Over there.” The Empress of the Southern Reaches pointed.

“It looks like—oh, Alya,” Meg said, dismayed.

“I
thought
you would appreciate my work. Well, my work …” Malison laughed. “That statue’s just a trifle. I’m really in the business of conquest.”

“I know, I know,” Meg said, “the Southern Reaches.”

“Simply a beginning,” Malison said. “Later this week, say, on Thursday after I’ve had a nice lunch, I’m going to start on the Northern Reaches. The Kingdom of Greeve seems like an obvious choice, for example.”

“It does not!” Meg cried.

“Do you have a mommy and daddy?” Malison cooed. “Too bad you won’t be there to see the castle fall down on their heads and their people join my army of servants.”

“You mean slaves. Servants get paid. They even get days off sometimes,” Meg said bitterly.

Malison stroked her chin in a villainous gesture her evil-regent uncle had taught her. It wasn’t quite the same without a black goatee, but you can’t have everything. “Days off? No. I believe we may actually agree on something, Princess. My servants will henceforth be referred to as slaves. Bain, make a note of it.”

“Yes, mistress,” Bain said with a deep bow.

He was such a
minion!
Meg made the kind of face usually reserved for three-week-old meat. “You’ve
ruined
him.”

“He’s an excellent chief guard,” Malison said sweetly. “But enough small talk. Before I punish you for escaping, I have a few questions. First of all, who helped you? Was it my servants? My slaves, rather? I might have to start fresh there.”

“Of course not! I stole this dress from those stupid women,” Meg said.