Toothless Edith and Winkle, the woodland dwarf, came along due to their extreme dislike of Regent Griselda, having butted heads with her when she was a young, spoiled princess. Winkle, who barely came to Stain’s waist, had braided his long moustache into his beard to emulate whiskers that complimented his bunny suit. The small wooden box tucked beneath his left arm contained rats, as indicated by the scratches and squeaks within. He planned to turn them loose in the regent’s bed. Edith was dressed in a clean tunic and breeches like Stain. In one hand, she held her enchanted mirror. In the other was a basket covered with a cloth too thin to smother the stench underneath—worse than moldy cabbage and skunkweed combined. The paste, made of cow cud crackers and fermented dung beetle saliva, would be stirred into Griselda’s next meal.
Neither knew how or when they’d enact their plans, but anything they might do to belittle, terrorize, or frustrate Griselda along the way—such as helping a prisoner escape her keep—was high on their priority list. Dregs, walking tall in his pedestal shoes, came with a more selfless motive—shocking as that was for a hoarfrost goblin. His cousin, a smuggler named Slush, had some long-standing business with the regent, of which Slush never gave details. He and his crew had planned to meet Dregs the previous day for a drink at the Wayward Tavern, to celebrate the conclusion of those dealings. When they failed to appear, Dregs suspected they’d crossed the regent and been thrown into a cell alongside Crony. He had come to free them and send them back to Nerezeth.
The sunlit journey out of the ravine—one that Stain never imagined she would take—was bittersweet. The sky rose above her, endless and beckoning. She wanted to run toward the banks of the Crystal Lake at breakneck speed, wanted Scorch to be there alongside her. Instead, the day’s many losses and what awaited in Eldoria tainted the experience. Still, being outside the oppressive forest in the open air, daylight, and soft grass, her footsteps lifted higher, freed from gray billows of ash.
Stain’s body pulsed with energy—beyond what the quick supper of cheese, bread, and tea Luce had thrust upon her at home could’ve sparked. Sound became a living thing in the meadow all around her. Fluttering butterflies, chittering squirrels, gurgling water, and most of all, trilling birds. Their melodies charmed a sympathetic twinge within her throat, running deep into the dip between her clavicle. Unable to follow their notes with her own vocal cords, she fell into a quiet despair. She was as voiceless as the wind, yet held none of its power to alter the world with its presence.
The colors renewed her sense of wonder, momentarily. No one ever told her that one could taste color. Even muted behind the nightsky, green became the flavor of moss, fresh rain, and spring flowers. Blue was next, riding a lake-scented breeze that caused the nightsky to stick to her eyelashes before the magical cloth remembered to change positions and hover freely around her face. The rainbow-scaled fish that leapt in and out of the lake formed a prismatic tang upon her tongue. And then followed white, as clean as the plumed wings of swans, guiding them down from the sky to float atop ripples left in the fish’s wake.
She passed Luce upon their arrival. Her fingers raked his, the nightsky molding around their joined hands for an instant until she pulled free. She shared his ache to fly, an even deeper yearning now with her Pegasus gone.
Luce readjusted the bag upon his back and started forward once more, going slower so their three accomplices could catch up.
Stain braved sliding down to the margins where gray and pink pebbles crunched beneath her feet. Their pale shades tasted of comfort, warm even through her boot soles. And then she noticed it, the most extraordinary flavor of all: yellow. Sunrays imprinted their shimmer on her cape—comforting like a sip of spiced cider, a horse’s musky hide after a brisk run, or her fingertips in that moment before they sizzled, aglow with the promise of life. She impressed that moment of true light upon her heart . . . on the chance she and her companions might be thrown into the dungeon, unable to ever sample the delicacy again.
On the other side of a small hill, the castle came into view. In earlier years, Stain had climbed trees to see out of the ravine’s sunken bowl, glimpsing Eldoria through tightly knitted branches and thick leaves. Back then, the honeysuckle growth had only begun and the kingdom remained resplendent with its sparkling white fortress skirted by well-kempt cottages, plentiful farms and gardens, and busy thoroughfares. Today the castle still jutted from the epicenter, but its gleaming windows, glittering walls, and elegant towers and turrets were smothered by nettled, drossy vines; the same plague strangled every cottage and thoroughfare like a rumpled green skirt. The honeysuckle—a deep, bloody pink from the rain—hung in clusters like plump leeches, sucking away hope and freedom. And the jarring buzz of bees could be heard even from afar. Instead of a thriving metropolis, Eldoria now resembled the ruins of some ancient, forgotten place fallen to hazard and woe—an architectural boon of mankind reclaimed by nature in its most unnatural form.
The kingdom’s isolation affected Stain as if it called to her, as if it belonged to her. How she wished she could thrust her fingers into those bristly vines and renew the beauty and majesty that lay dormant beneath. But that honor belonged to the prophesied prince and princess. She had no part beyond this moment: rescuing Crony and seeing her safely back to the ravine where they would live in seclusion for the rest of their days. Yet she longed for a role in grander schemes. Interactions with the people of this land. A life of consequence like the one spread out at the tender, privileged feet of the princess.
At last, Stain and her companions arrived at the doorway to the secret tunnel leading into the dungeon. Though instead of a doorway, it was a deep, dark pit. An untrained eye couldn’t see it, hidden as it was by an outcropping of mossy rock slanted like a roof at the edge of the lake. The hole—brimming with water—favored a wishing well and had the same proclivity to prey upon a mind’s fancies. Stain peered within then leapt back when a sea serpent’s scaly coils rippled, stirring a formidable wave. A giant head surfaced with fangs opened on a hiss—as chilling and fetid as a demon’s breath—that plastered her hood to her skin.
“You’ll need this to clear the way,” Luce said, withdrawing a hand from his pocket.
Me? She mimed the word with quivering lips.
“I can’t open this door. You have to do it. Drop the key onto the serpent’s tongue.”
She shuddered at the thought of facing the fanged creature alone. But Luce wouldn’t pass off the task unless he had no choice. He wanted to save their friend as much as her.
Trembling, she held out her upturned palm.
Much like the doorway wasn’t a doorway, the key Luce dropped into her palm was little more than a pebble. Leaning over, Stain held her breath and waited for the snake’s reappearance. Its head lifted and its jaws unhinged. Stain tossed the pebble onto a forked tongue the size of a shovel. The serpent clamped its fangs shut and submerged once more.
Stain stood beside Luce, her skin chilled with nervous prickles, wondering what would happen next. She hadn’t long to wait before the entire scene below resolved to steam. Once the mist cleared, all the water had dissipated. A glistening white stairway came into sight, winding far into the dark pit, formed of the serpent’s coils now hardened to a statue of salt. Either the snake had been an illusion, or a shifting, spectral guardian who had an appetite for stone and once satiated, repaid the favor with safe entrance.
Luce admitted to not being sure either way, and when asked by Stain where he got the pebble, cryptically replied, “It’s a typical piece of rock, soaked in a mixture of brine along with a bloody thorn pulled from a mongoose’s paw, and a few other arcane ingredients. I found the recipe upon the pages of a grimoire years ago . . . perhaps I’ll show you one day, should that book ever reach its rightful owner again.”
Luce lit a torch and led the way. Stain took the first few steps down behind him. As soon as she was out of the sun’s reach, she lifted off her hood. The cape’s nightsky elements withdrew into the silk—leaving her face and hands bared once more. From there, she took the long stairway with her four compatriots as the cape’s lace hem swished freely at her ankles.
Luce was quiet. Stain knew his moods well and dreaded what he must: that Eldoria’s mages had already imprisoned Crony in some perpetual form of torture, leaving them helpless to intervene.
The three shopkeepers—descending in single file behind Stain along the grainy serpentine stairway—didn’t share her and Luce’s trepidations. They tittered on about their hopes to make their way into the upper levels of the castle to catch a glimpse of history.
“Always hoped to gander a peep at the fabled princess,” Winkle said, his voice so high and shrill it made the squeaks within his box grow louder in competition.
Edith whistled through her gums. “Dregth, tell uth again of your couthin. How he’th heared the printheth thinging.”