“Don’t let go, Amy!” Gert yelled over the rising wind. She didn’t have to tell me twice. I held on for dear life as Gert and Mombi’s chanting rose in strength to meet the force of the storm. We were almost on top of the palace now. Suddenly, I could make out a teeming mass of figures in the overgrown and tangled gardens surrounding the palace.
“There’s still an army there!” Nox shouted. The ground was rushing toward us at a terrifying speed. The plants in the garden reached up with spiky branches, and a long vine uncoiled from one of the palace’s towers and whipped at us furiously.
“Look out!” I screamed, but the vine lashed across Mombi’s arm before she could move, leaving a broad, ugly gash. She yelped in pain and let go of me. I felt my other hand slipping out of Gert’s grasp.
“The plants are attacking!” Glamora shrieked. “They’re defending the palace!”
“Amy!” Nox yelled frantically on Mombi’s other side. The vine wrapped around Gert’s legs and yanked her away from me. Glamora cried out as I plummeted toward the waiting thorns. Just as I was about to slam into the ground, a huge gust of air picked me up and sent me spinning gently. Nox, I thought, struggling to get my bearings. Nox had saved me.
Gert sent a blast of fire at the vine still tangled around her legs, severing it in midair, and it reared back as she crumpled to the ground. I ran over to her. “I’m fine!” she gasped. “No time! You must hurry!” On the ground, the ticking noise was even louder and more incessant. I felt like it was trying to crawl inside my head, and had to resist the impulse to cover my ears.
“Soldiers!” Nox yelled. I reached for my knife and whirled into a battle crouch. My reflexes were back, and none too soon. These soldiers were different from the ones who’d attacked us back at the Woodman’s palace. They were entirely mechanical, whirring and buzzing like a clockwork army. Some of them stood on two legs and looked almost human; others had wheels, or tons of jointed legs like a centipede. Some carried weapons in metal claws, and others had swords and spears embedded in their tin torsos.
Nox flickered in and out of sight, teleporting himself back and forth between the soldiers as he hacked at them with his knife. A terrifying howl split the air, and I saw a line of three-headed miniature clockwork Totos descending on us from the direction of the palace. Their eyes glowed with an eerie red light that reminded me of Dorothy’s shoes. Each head’s jaws bristled with dripping, serrated fangs as long as my forearm, and the mechanical dogs’ tails were edged with jagged steel plates that they whipped back and forth. I readied myself to fight.
A fireball sailed over my head and landed among the tin soldiers, sending several of them flying. Glamora leapt to my side. “We’ll hold them off!” she yelled, sending another spray of flame into the oncoming army. “You and Nox find Dorothy!”
I ducked a stray blow and came up swinging, cutting a soldier in half on my upswing. “How will we get to the palace?”
“Nox can take you into the palace. We can only hold them for so long—you have to move as fast as you can.”
Behind her, Mombi threw fireball after fireball into Dorothy’s clockwork army; though each one landed, there were always more soldiers to rush in and fill the gaps she made. Nox was moving so fast behind me he was just a dark blur. Gert’s face was pale, but she was hovering over the battlefield, lashing out with a glowing blue whip she’d fashioned out of magic. I couldn’t just leave them out here to die.
“No thinking!” Glamora yelled. “Just go!” I knew she was right. This might be our last chance. If I couldn’t kill Dorothy now, this was it. The witches couldn’t last long out here.
I grabbed Nox’s hand. Dorothy’s shoes blazed to life on my feet, and I felt the answering stir of Oz’s magic. Not yet, I told it. I squeezed my eyes shut.
When I opened them, Nox and I were standing inside Dorothy’s banquet hall, although it was ruined almost beyond recognition. What furniture was left was splintered and broken. The windows were shattered, letting more of those sinewy vines creep in, and a mossy-green slime covered the walls. The carpet squelched underfoot. I didn’t want to know what it was soaked with. Inside the palace, the ticking was so powerful that the walls shivered with each stroke. It was like standing right next to a speaker at a concert. I could feel the noise like a physical force moving through me.
Nox squeezed my hand, and we raced through the palace, following the sound of the clock. As loud as it was, it was still stronger in some directions than others. But the farther we went, the more the palace twisted and turned. New corridors sprang up in front of us, and when we turned around the hallways we’d just been running down had been replaced by stone walls. I hadn’t spent enough time in the Emerald Palace to memorize its layout, but even I could tell this was like a fun-house mirror version of the real thing, all nightmarish hallways and unexpected turns. Sometimes a hallway seemed familiar, and I realized we’d already gone down it.