Another promise. Another complication added to her Quest.
“That’s nice,” said Shrub. “What’s to stop it eating us on the way back? Reckon it’ll remember you promising to change it back?”
“We’ll shorten his chain,” said Anya. “For now. Oh, I must pull some feathers.”
She walked to the end of the fallen creature and looked at its tail. It had a dragonish body, but its tail did end in a clump of feathers, not as abundant or as handsome as a rooster’s. Anya was reaching down to take ahold of some to pull out when Ardent suddenly barked.
“Don’t! They’re metal. They’ll c-c-ut you.”
Anya hesitated. “That’s harpies, isn’t it?”
“Oh,” said Ardent, his ears drooping. “Yes. Got them mixed up.”
Even so, Anya gingerly touched the closest feather with the tip of her forefinger before proceeding. The feather felt like a chicken’s, though coarser. It certainly wasn’t sharp metal.
She grabbed several and pulled them out easily enough, and put them through her belt.
“I do seem to recall there’s something funny about keeping cockatrice feathers,” she said, looking at them. “The recipe says ‘fresh-pulled.’ I hope these’ll last long enough. Anyway, I’ll take some and we’ll look for more upstairs.”
“Otters must be immune to the warbling as well as the stare of c-c-cockatrices,” observed Ardent, eager to regain some reputation for knowing his monster lore. “Like weasels.”
“And newts,” said Shrub. “It just sounded like a huge chicken to me.”
Anya shuddered. She didn’t like to recall how she had been so easily overcome by the creature’s magic. Leaving the now rather bare tail, she followed the cockatrice’s chain back to where it was connected to the wall by a huge iron staple, which despite its evident age and the rust on its surface felt very strong when Anya pulled on it. Picking up the chain, she pulled it tight and looped it back through the staple several times and then tied it in a knot, so when the cockatrice woke up it wouldn’t be able to reach the lower steps.
“I suppose we’ll have to send Smoothie first, with a plank, when we come back,” said Anya. “Maybe it’ll get the idea and shut up.”
Shrub had spent the time investigating what appeared to be a pile of rubbish in one corner. It was only when Anya got closer that she saw he was digging away at a pile of old bones. A human skull rolled out and Anya pushed it aside with the toe of her shoe. Luckily, it was very old and just clean white bone.
“A thief, I reckon,” said Shrub. “Not good enough to get past. Ah, I was hoping to find something like this.”
He dragged out a long key.
“Take this, Princess,” he said. “It was made by a wizard too, though probably not the Good Wizard.”
Anya picked it up. It was very light. She’d thought it was metal, but looking at it more closely, she could see the key was carved from bone.
“Skeleton key,” said Shrub. “It’ll open one door and then fall into dust. I was hoping to find lock picks too, but they’re all rusty and useless. I ’spose you don’t know how to use them anyway?”
“No,” said Anya. “It’s probably something I should learn. Thank you for finding this, Shrub. And thank you, Smoothie, for saving Ardent and me from the cockatrice.”
They went on through the cellar until they found another set of steps leading up. This time it ended in a locked door, but the key was in the lock on the other side, so under instruction from Shrub, Anya slid Gotfried’s recipe book through the gap under the door and pushed the key out with a long splinter from a barrel. It fell on the book and Anya dragged it back to their side. A few seconds later, the door was unlocked and open.
Again, Shrub went first, to have a look around.
He returned after a few minutes to report. The questers held a quick, whispered conference.
“We’re still below street level,” he said. “There’s a passage and lots of doors on both sides. Look like storage rooms to me, so maybe one will be full of ingredients.”
“I c-c-can sniff them out,” said Ardent.
“Any sign of sorcerers?” asked Anya. “Or guards?”
“All quiet,” said Shrub.
“Let’s go look, then,” said Anya. “Ardent, sniff out what we need.”
Ardent found the alchemical ingredients store behind the third door he sniffed at, and it wasn’t even locked. Anya turned the handle and pushed it quietly open just enough for Shrub to go in. But he backed out almost straightaway.
“This is it!” he said excitedly. “Shelves and shelves of bottles and jars and tubs and stuff!”
Anya pushed the door open wider and slipped in. It was as Ardent had sniffed and Shrub had reported: a huge storeroom lined with shelves from floor to ceiling, and every shelf groaning with the weight of hundreds of different containers, all of them neatly labeled, though the handwriting and the faded ink indicated it had been done by many different people over a long time.
The princess put Denholm’s cage down on the floor and, taking the match from behind her ear, used it to light a much larger lamp that was near the door. It was a very old bronze one that had no globe; it just burned oil from its spout. But it was full, and the flame burned clean and high and delivered a surprising amount of light.
Everyone else came in, and Smoothie carefully shut the door behind them.
“They’ve got everything!” Anya marveled as she read the labels. “Blind eyes, undersea terror type two. Baby basilisk teeth. Bone, powdered, wyvern. That’d be super poisonous I expect—”
“Princess!” barked Ardent, not too loudly. “We have to get what we need and get out again.”
“Yes, sorry,” said Anya. “I got carried away. It’s alphabetical. Look for ‘Hail, three day old’ and maybe … ”
She glanced down at the cockatrice feathers she’d thrust through her belt. They had lost their reddish-gold color already, and when she touched them, they turned to dust, which fell down her leg, making a horrible muddy stain on her wet trousers.