47
WHICH WAY OUT?
As Shimeran, Seezle, Kale, and the dragons approached the dungeon cell from one end of the long tunnel, four bisonbeck guards approached it from the other.
“We heard you coming,” said Dar when they reached the cell.
“So did they,” Kale answered, nodding to the burly men out of the prisoners’ sight.
Shimeran dropped to one knee beside the locked door and placed his hands in a cup to receive his sister’s tiny feet. Seezle stood on this makeshift boost and reached a hand inside the keyhole. In a moment the door swung open. Lee Ark, Brunstetter, Dar, and Leetu jumped into the corridor with their weapons ready. The bisonbecks charged.
Leetu slew the lead soldier with an arrow. Dar let fly two small daggers and downed another. Though Lee Ark and Brunstetter were massive, they moved with quick precision. The marione and urohm dispatched the remaining two warriors in a brief flurry of hand-to-hand combat.
“Is there any way to quiet that egg?” Lee Ark asked as he cleaned his blade before sheathing it.
The egg’s monotone thrum, drowned out in the din of battle, now sounded loud in the rock corridor. It hung against Kale’s back, gently vibrating.
The marione commander looked straight at Kale, and she suddenly felt guilty. “No, I mean, I don’t know.” She looked at Leetu and Dar. Both shrugged and looked to Fenworth. He shook his head and turned to his librarian.
“Well?” The wizard cocked an eyebrow.
“I believe,” said Librettowit, “Kale is carrying the book containing a reference to meech eggs in her cape.”
Kale slipped the sling off her back and quickly located the books. She pulled out a heavy brown volume.
Librettowit frowned and shook his head. “No, smaller.”
He rejected each book Kale found until she reached her arm into the hollow up to her shoulder and recovered a small blue leather book with ancient yellowed pages.
The librarian frowned as he opened it. “Someone has been restoring these volumes.” He leveled a glare at the o’rant girl. “Risky business. You could do a lot of damage.”
Kale shook her head and spread her hands in an innocent gesture. “Not me, it was the cape.”
Librettowit carefully turned the fragile pages until he came to a passage of interest. He harrumphed a few times as he read.
“I could send it to my castle,” suggested Fenworth.
“No,” said the tumanhofer and scratched his brow.
“Use it to bake a cake and then do the backward spell once we’re out of this hideous mountain.”
“No,” said Librettowit and squinted fiercely behind his spectacles.
Lee Ark, Brunstetter, and Leetu stood at attention. Dar shifted from foot to foot. With big yawns, the minor dragons disappeared into their pocket-dens. Fenworth stroked his beard, dislodging a whole family of mice and a sparrow.
“Just as I feared,” Librettowit said.
“What can we do?” asked the wizard.
“Nothing.”
“Nothing? You went to university so that in a time of crisis you come up with nothing? Preposterous. We should have brought a plumber instead of a librarian.”
He turned to address Lee Ark. “I knew it at the time, but he mopes if you leave him at home.”
The tumanhofer’s face went red beneath his whiskers. With his book tucked under one arm, he stepped in front of the old wizard and with a pointed finger jabbed him in the beard at waist level. “I didn’t want to come on this quest. I told you I’m a librarian, not an individual given to questing.”
Fenworth bent forward and growled. “You should have told me you were a plumber! I would have left a plumber at home. In fact, I did. I did leave the plumber at home and brought a librarian.”
Librettowit shook his fist in the wizard’s face. “You don’t even know a plumber.”
Lee Ark stepped forward, separating them. He stood between the angry men and patted each on a shoulder. “If the bisonbecks don’t hear the egg, they will hear you. I suggest we leave.”
Fenworth straightened and looked at the floor strewn with bisonbeck warriors slain minutes before. “Quite a good idea, actually. It’s getting crowded down here.” He looked down the dungeon corridor in both directions. “Which way would you suggest we go, Wit? You’ve always had a good head for directions. Especially underground.”
Librettowit signaled for the others to follow and led them back the way Kale had come with Seezle and Shimeran. As they passed the room where the orb had floated, Kale touched Leetu’s arm and whispered.
“I haven’t heard Risto’s voice in my head for a long time. What do you suppose he is up to?”
“He’s up to capturing us again. You haven’t heard him because the rest of us put a shield around you.”
“How?”
“The same way you blocked him with the words Granny Noon gave you. We knew you were in peril so we kept up the block for you.”
“You can do that?”
She nodded.
Kale looked at her companions trudging through the tunnel, following the tumanhofer. “All of you?”
“All of us in the cell.”
“What did you say?”
“We stand together under Wulder’s authority and offer a shield of protection from Risto’s poisonous words around Kale’s mind.”
“And the words worked?”
“The words didn’t work, Kale. Wulder worked.”
Another four bisonbeck guards barreled down the corridor at them. Lee Ark and Brunstetter sprang in front of Librettowit.
Leetu pushed Kale behind Dar and the wizard. “Keep that egg safe,” she ordered and ran forward to enter the fray.
The wizard changed into a tree. Dar stood ready with a dagger and his short sword drawn. The bisonbecks did not break through the comrades’ line of defense.
Kale gingerly stepped over the legs of one of the fallen warriors when Lee Ark gave the all clear and Fenworth was persuaded to change back into himself. The sight of blood still made her queasy. The still forms of the dead soldiers looked capable of jumping up and resuming their fierce battle.
Kale and the wizard fell into step together. Dar and the kimens guarded the rear, Lee Ark, Brunstetter, and Leetu followed directly behind Librettowit who seemed confident about his directions.
“Why can’t you just whirl us out of here, Wizard Fenworth?”
“Whirl? Whirl! What type of scientific activity is whirl?”
She decided not to let him distract her. “Whirl, as in move people without regard to time or distance from one place to another, as when you whirled our party from The Midways to your castle. Whirl, the useful action of a wizard in times of necessity.”
The wizard scowled at her with narrowed eyes but kept walking.
“You didn’t happen to pick up my walking stick, now did you?”
“No, I’m sorry. I didn’t see it.”
“You didn’t place it in your cape hollow?”
“No sir.”
Fenworth turned his attention to those in front of them. Kale peeked at the wizard’s frowning face. He didn’t look open to any more questions.
They moved on. The egg thrummed. Kale shifted the light weight to the center of her back. “About the whirling out of the mountain.”
“The walking stick would have been useful.”
“You could put your hand on my shoulder, sir.”
He promptly clapped his wrinkled hand over Kale’s blue scarf strap and gave her a gentle squeeze. They walked on, turning occasionally and once climbing two flights of stone steps. Soldiers in groups of four tried to stop them twice.
She could sense the whereabouts of the underground populace. She knew Librettowit was leading them to an uninhabited region.
“Wizard Fenworth, can you do something to get us out of here safely?”
“You know, dear girl, you have a mind like your mother’s.”
She held her breath, hoping the old man would say more.
He took a deep breath, coughed a little, and squeezed her shoulder.
“The cape did not mend the items you put in the hollow.”
“It didn’t?”
“Not by itself.”
She puzzled over the statement. “I didn’t do anything, sir. At least, I don’t think I did.”
“No?”
She tried to remember what she was thinking at the time. Something about doing something useful instead of sitting around in a daze. “I don’t think I did anything.”
“You didn’t happen to be wearing my hat?”
Oh no! I was! I wonder if it’s a great crime to put a wizard’s hat on your head. I mean, if you aren’t a wizard. If you’re just a slave girl. I mean, a servant.
There’s no use trying to keep it a secret.
“Yes sir. I believe I did. Just to have my hands free to sort through the debris and pick things up. I didn’t mean any disrespect, Wizard Fenworth.”
“The combination of the hat and the cape and your talents as an Allerion mended the broken items you put in the hollow.” He patted her shoulder. “I shall enjoy having you as an apprentice, I think. That is, if we get out of this mountain alive.”
“About whirling, sir?”
“No, Kale.”