Jim had been right about something else, too: Smugsby was in a very bad mood.
“Someone who hates me sent you with that blasted tankard, I know it!” he growled, when Audun walked in the door. “Either I didn’t give him a job, or he didn’t get what he thinks he deserved. You brought me that . . . that thing so I’d drink myself to death!”
Audun shook his head. “That isn’t true. I brought it because I thought you’d like it.”
“I do, and that’s the problem,” Smugsby said, rubbing his temples. “I wouldn’t be too pleased with myself, though, if I were you. Every time my head pounds, I’m going to think of more work for you, and right now it feels like it’s the midsummer celebration and everyone is dancing on my skull! Go see Pringle. He’s got a list of things I want done today. And don’t dawdle if you want to keep your job.”
True to Smugsby’s word, Pringle kept Audun running all afternoon. He took a message to the captain of the guard, then brought back his reply. He rushed to the city with a note for a man who sold wine, and as soon as he returned he was sent back to the city with a note for a wool merchant.
Audun was relieved when Pringle finally told him that the rest of his errands would be inside the castle. He was walking through the Great Hall when the floor beneath him trembled and a loud rumble filled the air. A passing guard smiled in a knowing kind of way and said, “Must be that wizard. I expect we’ll have a lot of that kind of thing going on with him in the castle.”
Audun frowned. It had been easy enough to forget about Olebald Wizard while he was in the city, but he’d have to remember to stay on guard if he didn’t want the wizard to see him.
Late that afternoon Audun was returning with a message from the king’s chancellor when he saw an enormous man come out of Smugsby’s office. His shoulders were broad and his arms and legs muscled as if he lifted heavy objects daily. Although Audun was sure he’d never seen the man before, there was something familiar about the way he held his head. He nodded at Audun and winked, as if about to say something, and might have if Pringle hadn’t stuck his head out the door and told Audun to come in.
“Who was that?” Audun asked, shutting the door behind him.
“A new guard,” said Pringle. “He’s big enough to intimidate anyone, don’t you think?”
“Indeed,” said Audun.
He wouldn’t have thought any more about the new guard if the man hadn’t kept popping up. Audun saw him while passing through the Great Hall on two different trips, then once outside the kitchen, and again in the corridor by the room where he’d left his pallet. Although the man never spoke, Audun could sense his eyes following him every time they met. At first he thought the man might be working for Olebald Wizard, but he discarded that idea when the man didn’t approach him and neither did anyone else. Surely if Olebald knew he was there, Audun would no longer be walking around freely. But, the man made him nervous.
The sun had already set when Audun finally finished his work for the day. After making sure that no one, including the new guard, was following him, he slipped through a door and hurried around the side of the castle. He was about to do something he had told himself he wouldn’t do while on the castle grounds, but it was the only thing he could think of that would take care of the spiky plants. For just a few minutes, Audun was going to have to turn back into a dragon.
He waited until he was in the deepest shadows close to the wall of the keep before closing his eyes and thinking about being a dragon. When he next looked up, his eyesight was back to normal; washed in a pale light, the plants were no longer the dull grayish green they’d appeared through human eyes, but now showed patches of ultraviolet and a white so bright that Audun had to look away. The plants seemed to be watching him. He took a step closer and they swayed in his direction ever so slightly—as if a gentle breeze had blown them. When he was a few yards away, they began reaching for him.
If Audun had been a fire dragon, he would have blasted them with a heat so intense they would have blackened and withered like daisies in a forest fire. But because he was an ice dragon, he coughed. It wasn’t a loud cough, just the kind that ice dragons do when they are mixing the noxious gas stored in a sac near their lungs with the air they are about to exhale. When he did exhale, the gas formed a small cloud that was colorless and nearly invisible. As the cloud drifted through the cluster of plants, they jerked back and then began to shrivel and die. Not a single desiccated plant stirred as Audun walked between them to the grate in the wall.
About two feet across and built into the wall for drainage, the grate covered a round opening at the bottom of one of the walls. Time and rust had loosened it so much that Audun was able to lift it free with no effort at all. The opening was too small for a dragon as big as Audun, and since he had to change back, anyway, he crouched down and, a moment later, tried to see if his human form could fit. Although it was tight, he was able to wriggle inside. He thought about going to look for the king himself, but he had no idea what the man looked like or what he would do with him once he got him out, so he wriggled back through the opening and set the grate where it belonged. Midnight was only a few hours away and Audun guessed Owen would be furious if he rescued the king without him.
The full moon was peeking over the castle wall when Audun returned to the stable yard. Owen had yet to arrive, so Audun sat on the ground to gaze up at the sky while he waited for the prince. It wasn’t long before he heard someone approach, but the boy who sat down beside him was Jim.
“I wish I could fly away from here,” Jim said, sounding wistful.
“Where would you go if you could?” asked Audun.
“Somewhere I wouldn’t have to hide and could just be myself. The problem is, I wouldn’t know how to get there.”
Audun felt sorry for the boy. He pretended not to notice Jim scrub his eyes with the back of his hand as he climbed to his feet.
Jim straightened his back and glanced at Audun. “Where’s your friend?”
“What friend?” asked Audun.
“The one who’s meeting you at midnight. I told you I know everything that goes on around here.”
“He should be here soon,” said Audun.
“Who is that?” said a voice out of the near-darkness. “I told you to come. I never said you could bring someone else.”
Audun waited while Owen came close enough that they could see each other clearly. “I didn’t invite him, but it might not be a bad idea to have him along,” said Audun. “Jim knows his way around the castle better than anyone.”
“He doesn’t know it better than I do,” Owen snapped. “Look at him—he’s a kid. He’ll just get in the way.”
“I can help!” Jim rushed to say. “And I bet I know ways into the dungeon that you’ve never seen.”
Owen narrowed his eyes. “He told you we were going to the dungeon?”
“No, I just know a lot of things,” Jim said. “And I’m small. I can fit places you can’t.”
“All right,” Owen said. “Since you already know all about it, you can come, but stay out of my way. And it’s up to you to keep an eye on him,” he added, glancing at Audun.
“No problem,” said Audun, giving Jim a pointed look.
Owen acted as if he knew where he was going, but when they reached the base of the first tower, he stopped and kicked at a pile of gravel. “I know it was here,” he said. “I found the tunnel years ago when I was playing with my friends. It was behind a couple of big boulders.”
“I think Dolon had it filled in after he took over the castle,” said Jim. “If it were daylight out, you’d see the new stones and mortar.”
“There was another, smaller entrance,” said Owen, “but it had a grate over it. I don’t recall exactly . . .”
“It’s this way,” said Jim. “Follow me!”
He took them around the castle wall to the side he had visited with Audun earlier that day. It was darker there because the tower itself was blocking the moonlight, but with his sharp dragon eyes, Audun could see the ground where the spiky plants had been standing. It looked ghostly in the gloom, as if a patrol of guards had been mown down and deflated at the same time.
“What happened to them?” Jim asked.
“Looks like something killed them,” said Audun.
Jim glanced at him in exasperation. “I know that! I just wonder how.”
Owen nudged the limp remains of a plant with the toe of his shoe. “Could have been a lot of things.”
The prince seemed to be having difficulty determining where to step, so when he stumbled and nearly fell, Audun set his hand on his arm to guide him. Owen tried to shake him off, saying, “I don’t need your help.”
“What harm is there in accepting what little help I can give you? Or would you rather trip over a rock and break your neck so that your father rots in the dungeon for the rest of his life?”
“Well, if you put it that way . . . ,” said Owen.
“It’s over here,” Jim called from the middle of the dead weeds.
Audun helped the prince down the slight incline, the weeds crunching beneath their feet. Releasing his grip on the prince’s arm, he lifted the heavy grate as easily as if it were made of paper, then bent down to peer into the opening.
“It’s a tunnel,” said Jim, squatting beside him. “It opens into another tunnel that goes all the way under the dungeons. It smells in there and there’re a lot of rats, but there’s water running through the bottom.”
“An underground river runs beneath the city,” said Owen. “It’s why Desidaria was built here and why we rarely run out of water. I’ve seen it on my father’s old maps.” Reaching into his tunic, he pulled out a candle and flint. “We can light this in the tunnel. Stay here. I’ll go first.”
“I think I should go first,” said Audun. “You never know what you’re going to find in a place like this.”
“I’m not going to argue about it,” Owen said. “Just stay here until—”
“Come on in,” Jim called from inside the tunnel. “There’s plenty of room in here.”
“People are supposed to listen to princes,” Owen grumbled, as he crawled through the opening. Audun followed, reaching back to grab the grate and pull it roughly into place. When he turned around again, Owen had lit the candle and was holding it up to examine their surroundings. The tunnel was wider than the opening to the outside, but still not big enough to allow them to stand. It went back only a dozen yards or so before ending in a mound of stone and gravel. The sound of rushing water was audible even near the opening and grew louder the farther in Audun went.
“The other tunnel is this way,” Jim said, as he scurried off, still doubled over, into a side passage. “We’ll have to go down because it’s under this one and . . . Hey! It’s filled with water! It wasn’t the last time I came here, I swear it!”
“I believe you,” Audun said, squeezing in beside Owen and Jim. The tunnel was short, ending in a hole in the ground as wide as the tunnel itself. Water rushed only a foot or so below them. “I bet the wizard brought the water level up just so people couldn’t get into the dungeon through these tunnels.”
Owen nodded, the flickering light of his candle making his shadow on the wall nod with him. “The whole castle shook this afternoon. I even felt it outside.”
“What are we going to do?” asked Jim. “I know of two other ways in, but if this tunnel is flooded, they will be, too.”
“I’ll go,” said Audun.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Owen said, scowling. “You won’t be able to breathe in there and there’s no telling how far you’ll have to go before you reach air again.”
Jim shook his head. “You can’t go in! I’ve been down there and I can tell you that it’s a really long way. I suppose we can check the other openings. Maybe one of them . . .”
“You said yourself that if one is flooded, the others will be as well. I’m a strong swimmer and can hold my breath for a very long time, much longer than either of you. I’ll have the best chance of getting in there and back out again.” Although Owen knew that Audun was really a dragon, Jim had no idea. The last thing Audun wanted to do was let someone else in on a secret that no one was supposed to know.
Owen held up his hand in protest. “It’s my father and—”
“Exactly,” said Audun. “I don’t want to be the one to tell your father that you died trying to rescue him. Don’t worry, I know what I’m doing.”
“You won’t have any light,” said Owen. “How will you see where you’re going? I have another candle, but it won’t do you a bit of good underwater.”
“I can see in the dark better than you can,” said Audun. “There is one thing, though. I’ve never met your father or seen what he looks like. How will I know who to bring back? From what I’ve heard, Dolon has been collecting prisoners in the dungeon since the day he took over the castle.”
“Here,” said Jim, reaching into the neck of his tunic. “I have this.” A jeweled locket lay on his palm and when he pressed a tiny knob on the top it split in half, revealing a miniature picture on each side. “That’s my father,” Jim said, pointing to the picture on the right. The man was dressed in heavy robes with a jeweled chain around his neck. Jim tapped his finger against the other picture. “And that’s King Cadmus. He and my father were friends.” The king was a distinguished man with hair as blond as Owen’s.
The prince glanced up and gave Jim a searching look. “Your father was the gem merchant, wasn’t he? My father counted him as a good friend.”
“This should help,” said Audun, examining the miniature portrait of the king closely. “There is one other thing that might be useful. Would you happen to have something of your father’s, Owen? Perhaps a piece of clothing that you took with you when you left?”
Owen looked thoughtful but shook his head. “The only thing I have of my father’s is this ring,” he said, holding up his hand. “He gave it to me for safekeeping just before Dolon’s men took him away.”
“That might work,” said Audun. He pulled Owen’s hand closer as if to get a better look, and quickly sniffed the ring. When he had a good sense of its owner, Audun turned and lowered his legs into the water before anyone could stop him. It was warm, with a strong current that Audun hadn’t anticipated.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” asked Jim. “I mean, you’re the first friend I’ve made since I got here and I really don’t want to lose you.”
Audun grinned. “I don’t want to lose me, either. Don’t worry, I’ll be back before you know it.” The last thing he saw before the current carried him away were the worried faces of his two new friends.
As the water swept Audun under the castle, he considered changing into a dragon, but the space was narrow, and he didn’t know how wide it would be up ahead. He’d never taken off the amulet that allowed him to breathe underwater, so he wasn’t worried about air. However, his human body was far more fragile than his true dragon self, a fact he’d forgotten when he had said that he would go. The current was fast, and if it hadn’t been for his dragon strength he would have been hurled into the wall. As it was, it took all of his efforts to stay in the center of the channel while avoiding the debris that churned in the water around him.
After what seemed like hours, Audun finally saw a glimmer of light ahead. He was swimming toward it, hoping that it was an opening into the dungeon, when he sensed a change in the current. Something big was coming.
Even with the eyesight of a dragon, Audun couldn’t see more than a few feet away in the darkened water. He was turning in a circle, trying to see what was coming up behind him when a tentacle wrapped itself around his neck and jerked. Audun flailed his arms as the tentacle dragged him backward. There was a loud sucking sound and he slid down the gullet of a river monster.
The tentacle let go with a slurp and Audun slid on his back down a bumpy surface. He was stunned. He’d never been swallowed before and it wasn’t at all what he would have expected: he hadn’t been chewed into bits, nor was he dissolving in a vat of stomach acid. Instead, he floated in water that smelled faintly of rotting fish and was warmer than the water he’d just come from. The light he’d been trying to reach was still visible, although it was wavery, as if he were looking through a thick layer of ice. The roar of the underground river was muted.
Audun twisted his body around until he felt footing below him. Using his hands and feet, he tried to climb up the bumpy surface, but it gave too easily under pressure; he felt like he was climbing in old fish pudding. He could always turn into a dragon if he had to, but the thought of doing it inside another living creature made his stomach turn. There had to be another way out.
Water sloshed around him every time the creature moved. With his hand touching the inside of the beast, Audun could feel its body slosh, too, which made him realize just how much of the monster was made of water. It seemed more like a water-filled bladder armed with a tentacle than like the sea monsters Audun had met near the islands. And if it really was mostly water . . .
Audun reached into the satchel where he’d hidden the objects he usually carried in the pouch under his wing. The piece of ice felt colder in his human hand than it had in his dragon talons and he dropped it sooner than he’d intended. It fell into the water which instantly turned slushy with the cold. The monster shivered and Audun’s human body shivered with it.
A groaning sound filled Audun’s ears and he looked up as a wave of warm water washed over him. It took only moments before this water had turned slushy as well. Hoping that the monster would groan again, Audun doubled his efforts as he fought his way to its mouth. He was ready when the creature’s jaws gaped open. Grabbing hold of the creature’s lip, he somersaulted out of the beast and into the underground river which was already turning colder. Although he kept his head down, he grazed his back on the ceiling of the tunnel, cutting through his clothes and scraping away skin.
With powerful thrusts of his legs and arms, Audun swam away from the monster toward the light in the ceiling. It was another wide hole covered with a metal grate. Audun struggled against the current, trying to stay under the opening long enough to grab hold of the grate. It took all his strength, but Audun was able to push it aside and pull himself out of the river with a whoosh!
He stood for a moment, trying to get his bearings as water sluiced off his clothes. Squelching with every step, he began to search for Owen’s father.
The only light in the otherwise dark dungeon came from smoking torches that sputtered at the slightest puff of air. At first, Audun caught only a faint whiff of the king’s presence, and thought it might have been left from visits in times past. That changed, however, when Audun reached the intersection of two corridors and the scent became much stronger.
Although he tried to be as quiet as possible, even the small sounds he made drew the prisoners to the doors of their cells. A few of them watched him walk by in silence while others cried out, asking for his help, yet each time he tried to talk to one of them, they were too frightened and distrustful to listen to what he had to say.
Finally, he noticed a man who pressed his face against the bars in the square window of his door and didn’t hide when Audun approached. “Be quiet, you idiots!” the man shouted, making his long, scruffy beard bob up and down. “Can’t you tell—that’s a dead man walking there. You don’t want the kind of help he can give you!”
“Pardon me,” said Audun, “but I was wondering if you know where the king is being kept.”
“Why?” asked the man. “Do you want to drag him off to drown him so you’ll have company in your watery grave?”
“Not at all,” Audun replied. “I’m not dead and I don’t want to hurt anyone. I’m here to help the king escape.”
“Really? In that case, I’m the king. Which one are you looking for?”
“King Cadmus,” said Audun.
“Well, then, I’m King Cadmus! Let me out.”
Audun sighed. “I can’t take everyone in the dungeon, and if I let you out they’ll all want to go. I’m here to rescue the king. Once I get him out, I’m sure he’ll do his best to come back and free the rest of his subjects.”
“Why would he want to do that? There are murderers and cutthroats down here. Most of these men deserve to be right where they are. I’m different, though, so let me out.”
“Why are you in here?”
“Because I’m King Cadmus, remember? You have a very short memory, don’t you, boy?”
Audun peered at the man. He was old and wrinkled and his beard must have taken years to grow. The man in front of him didn’t look anything like the clean-shaven man in the picture and he smelled so awful that Audun’s eyes teared. “Never mind,” Audun said, as he turned away. “I’ll just have to keep looking.”
“Don’t be a dunderhead!” yelled the man. “I’m Cad-mus and you have to get me out.”
“No!” shouted a prisoner on the other side of the corridor. “I’m Cadmus. Take me with you!” Audun glanced at him, but he was much too young to be the king.
While voices up and down the corridor clamored that they, too, were Cadmus, Audun went from window to window, trying to find the prisoner who looked like the man in the picture. None of them were right, however. Some were too young, some too old, some had eyes too far apart or noses too small, yet now that they knew that Audun was there to free the king, every one of them claimed to be King Cadmus. Unfortunately, they all smelled horrible.
Reaching the end of the row, Audun closed his eyes. Taking a deep breath, he tried to sort out the awful smells. There, that was it. It was true, Cadmus was here, but he was behind him. Audun retraced his steps all the way back to . . . Audun groaned. The crazy old man he’d been talking to was Cadmus after all.
“I told you so,” said the king.
“Why don’t you look anything like the picture you gave the gem merchant?” asked Audun.
“Is that the picture you saw? I must have given that to him six or seven years ago. I pass out so many of those things that it’s hard to keep track. I’ve had a beard for the last five years at least. Now, how about letting me out?”
“I’m doing this on your son’s behalf,” Audun said, wrapping his fingers around the window bars. With one powerful jerk, he yanked the bars from the window, but left the door still in place.
“Is that the best you can do?” asked the king. “I can’t fit through that little hole. I may have lost weight, but I’m not a skeleton like that guy.” Audun peered behind the king at the skeleton sitting in the corner. Someone had rearranged his bones so that he was in a sitting position, with one knee resting on the other and his hands palm up beside him. An old metal cup had been placed on one of his hands so that he looked as if he’d been drinking.
“I’m not finished,” said Audun. Bracing his feet against the wall on either side of the doorway, he gripped the door through the window hole and pulled. The top of the door broke free, leaving the bottom intact.
“You’re not very good at this, are you?” said Cadmus. “Why, if it were up to me—”
“Pardon me, Your Majesty,” Audun said, as he reached through the opening and picked up the king. “We don’t have time for criticism.”
Slinging the king over his shoulder, he turned and started down the corridor while prisoners shouted and pleaded for him to take them, too. He really would have taken them with him if he could have, but he knew that the return trip wasn’t going to be easy. In view of what had happened on his way in, he was already considering how he was going to carry the king back with him. It had been difficult enough to fight the current when he was by himself, but carrying this old man would make it that much harder . . . unless, of course, Audun was a dragon.
Putting aside the concerns that had made him refrain from changing into a dragon earlier, Audun resolved that he would have to return to his normal shape if he were to have any chance of reaching the outside world. He had even thought of a way to keep the king from seeing his true form. He hoped the old man wouldn’t be able to feel the difference between human and dragon once they were in the water.
After setting the king beside the opening to the tunnel, Audun took Frostweaver’s fabric from his satchel and held it up so King Cadmus could see it. “We’re about to go into some very cold water. This magic fabric will keep you warm, but you have to keep it over your head, so you won’t be able to see anything. Don’t struggle while I carry you, or I might lose my grip and drop you. Do you understand?”
“Of course I understand,” grumped the king. “What kind of idiot do you think I am? You’re going to carry me to who knows where and I won’t be able to see where we’re going until we get there. And if I try to get away, you’re going to drop me.” King Cadmus peered over the edge into the ink-black water where chunks of ice floated by. “I see what you mean by cold. I thought you were making up excuses for wrapping me in a blanket so I couldn’t see where we were going. Who would have thought there’d be ice in the desert? So how am I going to breathe down there?”
Audun didn’t think he had any choice; he had to tell the king about his amulet. “I’m wearing something that lets me breathe underwater. I believe you’ll be able to breathe, too, as long as I’m carrying you. It’s an—”
“You believe? You mean you don’t know? Now, isn’t that a fine kettle of fish! I’m supposed to trust you with my life and you don’t even know what you’re doing! And this is all on my son’s behalf? Which son is it? I have three, you know. Do they know what you’re up to? Maybe they’re out to kill me, too. Never mind. They’re all good boys. We’d better get out of here before those fool guards wander down this way in one of their drunken stupors and trip over us. Hand me that fabric. I’ll do it myself. I don’t trust you not to . . . There, that’s it,” King Cadmus said through the fabric. “I’m trussed up like a goose and ready to go. I don’t care how you get me out of here. Just do it! Hey, are you going somewhere? You’re not going to leave me here!”
Audun had slipped into the river feet first and was treading water. While the king flopped around like a blindfolded fish, Audun changed back into a dragon. It was a relief to be himself again, and the current that had felt so strong and cold before now seemed gentle and refreshing. Because the hole was too small for him to fit through as a dragon, he reached up with both forelegs and plucked the king off the floor. Careful not to poke the man through the fabric with his talons, Audun dove into the river and swam upstream, easily maneuvering around the debris.
The king had begun to struggle as soon as he entered the water. Audun worried at first, but the old man continued to shout and thrash around long after he would have drowned if the magic hadn’t been working. Satisfied that the king was all right, the dragon sped through the water, reaching the hole in the ceiling near the outer wall in minutes.
With a powerful heave, Audun tossed the king through the opening onto the floor of the tunnel. He heard Jim and Owen shout, but by then he was so busy focusing on turning back into a human that he missed whatever they were saying. A moment later he pulled himself out of the water, landing on his stomach beside the partly unwrapped king with an oof!
“You got him!” Owen shouted, pounding Audun on the back.
“You shouldn’t have doubted me,” Audun said, although he’d had moments when he’d doubted he could do it himself.
“Your friend swims like a fish,” said the king, as he kicked the cloth off his feet. “I wouldn’t have thought he was human if I hadn’t seen it with my own two eyes. Didn’t feel like a human, though.” He rubbed his chest where Audun’s talons had pressed against him. “Strongest grip I ever felt.”
Owen put his arm around his father’s shoulders. “Thank goodness for that. But now we have to get you out of here, Father. I have a horse waiting in the city. You two should come with us,” he added, glancing from Jim to Audun. “This is no life for you here, Jim. And I can use your help, Audun. My father and I are going to get his throne back.”
“Jim should go,” Audun said. “But I have to stay here. I came to Desidaria to find someone and I’m not leaving until I do.”