Thursdays With the Crown Read online

  “The solid stone that formed the inside of the mountain, the heartstone, was carved out by the Builder to craft the Castle,” the Arkower explained. “And the outside of all three mountains was used to make the courtyard and outer walls of the Castle. That is why the mountains are so uniform in shape now. These mountains are called the Griffin’s Claws and are said to have magical properties.”

  “I’m guessing they do,” Rolf said drily. “Considering that Castle Glower is what it is.” But then he scuffed his foot along the stone and whistled.

  Celie sucked in a breath. So this was where the stone of the Castle had come from. The blue wizard-light made it appear green, but looking carefully she could see that it was the pale gold color of the Castle. She reached out and touched one of the walls, and thought she felt, just faintly, a tiny hum.

  “Castle Glower was really made out of these mountains?” Lilah asked in awe. Her head was tilted back, looking up at the carved interior.

  “Indeed,” the Arkower said.

  Celie thought that he flinched a little at the name Glower, but she didn’t have much time to decide. The Arkower led them to a ramp that spiraled upward, and they began to climb. Rufus’s claws slipped on the worn stone, and Celie leaned on his back to give him some additional weight to help anchor him in place.

  “I am sorry if your beast is struggling, Princess Cecelia,” the Arkower called back as they plodded on. “Once, long ago, the ramps were packed with earth and planted with soft moss, which helped the animals to keep their footing, and was delightfully soft on human feet as well. But no more!”

  “Why didn’t you replant the moss?” Lilah asked, but the Arkower appeared not to have heard her.

  Lilah raised one eyebrow, and Celie nodded. Here was yet another question that the Arkower hadn’t answered. Nevertheless they continued to follow him. Celie held out a small hope that they would, eventually, get some answers. Besides, where else would they go?

  “Do you feel anything?” Lilah whispered to Celie. “Anything like the Castle?”

  “I think so,” Celie whispered back.

  The hum wasn’t quite there, but she had a feeling like she was back in the Castle, if she didn’t look around too carefully. She’d almost convinced herself that it was all in her imagination, though, until Lilah said something.

  After climbing for what seemed like hours, they came to the top of the ramp. There they found themselves in a great, round room, the vaulted ceiling carved with images of griffins and riders, and a hole in the middle of the floor, surrounded by a carved railing, that allowed one to look down into the depths of the mountain. There was furniture scattered about: this was the Arkower’s home.

  “Please, be welcome, children!” The Arkower gestured for them to sit in some of the strangely shaped chairs. They were square, with low backs and legs shaped like Xs. Celie and the others looked around, then Rolf shrugged and flopped into a chair. Celie sank down into another, weak from not eating, and Rufus arranged himself at her feet.

  The Arkower went to a large bronze bell that hung from the ceiling and hit it with a mallet that dangled from a ribbon beside it. Rufus reared up at the sound, and Pogue gripped his head as though it were going to split in two as the sound reverberated throughout the mountain.

  As soon as the sound died away, a young man no older than Rolf appeared from a curtained doorway. He was a little shorter than Rolf, but with dark hair and eyes not unlike those of Celie’s brother. He froze, his mouth open to say something to the Arkower, when he saw them. His eyes went to Rufus and stayed there.

  “Food, Darryn,” the Arkower said without even looking at the boy.

  “Who are they?” Darryn said. “Why do they … how did they get a griffin?”

  “They’ve come a long way,” the Arkower said. “And they need food. Bring it, and when there is time I will tell you where the griffin is from.”

  Darryn swallowed a retort and ducked back through the curtain while the Glower children and their friends exchanged uneasy glances. They had all taken seats, and Pogue looked done in by the long hike up the spiral ramp, but Rolf looked ready to flee at any moment, and Celie kept one hand on Rufus’s harness.

  A few minutes later Darryn reappeared and sullenly laid out a platter of bread and cheese, bowls of strange fruit, and a pitcher of fruit juice and cups. He hovered near the Arkower’s chair, but the Arkower waved him out without saying anything. Glaring, the young man left.

  “Please, eat,” the Arkower said.

  Celie knew that they should be polite and wait for their host, but the Arkower just sat there with his hands clasped, staring at a tapestry on the wall. She shrugged, and lunged for the bread at the same time as Rolf. They nearly knocked their heads together, and Lilah clucked her tongue, but it didn’t stop her from hacking an enormous chunk off the cheese and shoving it into her mouth almost whole.

  Pogue didn’t seem all that hungry, but Lulath urged him to eat, and he took a slice of bread and some small, round green fruits.

  “The brain is needing the food, friend Pogue,” Lulath told him. “For the making of wellness once more.”

  “Is he badly injured?” the Arkower asked, without much interest.

  “He is hitting this his head when the Castle is so suddenly bringing us to here,” Lulath explained.

  “I still don’t understand why that happened,” the Arkower said, giving Celie a narrow look. “Why you? Why now?”

  Celie swallowed her mouthful of bread and cheese. “The Castle was in distress,” she told him. “We should be asking you what happened! It started bringing in new rooms, rooms none of us had ever seen before, or rooms that weren’t supposed to be there, like the holi—the Heart. Something must have happened here to make it do that.”

  “It brought us here because of you and your nephew,” Rolf said, rather brusquely. “You and your nephew broke the Eye of the Castle, and he hid it away. When we brought the piece back to the Heart it woke the Castle up. The Castle threw some sort of temper tantrum and sent us here. We don’t know why.”

  The Arkower gazed at him in astonishment. “You think I am to blame for your predicament? It sounds as though you made a muddle of things just fine by yourselves.” He held a hand up to forestall Rolf’s retort. “But as for why the Castle appeared to be ‘in distress,’ as you put it …” He sighed heavily. “That I can tell you: the missing piece of the Eye was stolen.”

  Celie nearly bit her tongue at this news. She was eating more of the sweet green fruits and feeding bread to Rufus, and he almost bit her finger, too, she was so distracted.

  “Someone stole the piece of the Eye?” she repeated.

  Her heart sank. Now it would take them even longer to find the piece of the Eye — if they even could — and get home to Sleyne. She wanted so badly to make the Castle whole again! But if the rest of the Eye was stolen, and even the Arkower didn’t know where it was … there was probably no point in Celie and her companions trying to find it.

  “When we first sent the Castle to Sleyne someone took the remaining piece of the Eye away for safekeeping,” the Arkower said. “One could almost call it stealing, except that at the time I thought guarding the piece seemed like a fine thing to keep this particular person out of the way. But he refused to tell me where it was hidden, and I only recently found it by accident. No sooner had I brought it here than it was stolen from me, so I guess the old fool was right — he was a better guardian than I.” The Arkower almost seemed to be talking to himself.

  “Do you know who stole it?” Lilah asked.

  “No, but I know where it must be now,” the Arkower told her.

  “Where?” Celie leaned forward, dropping the rest of her fruit for Rufus to eat. “We’ll help you get it back.”

  The Arkower shook his head at her. “Don’t you see? It must be in Sleyne now. That’s why the Castle is acting so strangely.” He shrugged. “It must have been in one of the rooms the Castle hadn’t sent to Sleyne before.”

  �
��We’ve explored those rooms from top to bottom,” Pogue argued. “I’ve gone over every inch of them myself with the Royal Wizard. There’s nothing that would be a broken piece of the Eye.”

  “Clearly you didn’t look hard enough,” the Arkower said, and returned to contemplating the tapestry.

  Celie and the others looked at one another in shock.

  “He thinks that the piece of the Eye is in Sleyne?” Lulath said in Grathian. “But why would the Castle send us here if that were true?”

  Even though he wasn’t Sleynth, Lulath always spoke of the Castle as though it were a person, with likes and dislikes and motives that humans could understand.

  “He’s awful,” Lilah said in Grathian. “So rude! And you’re right, we wouldn’t be here if the entire Eye was in Sleyne.” She sighed heavily. “We’re not getting home anytime soon, are we?”

  “Probably not,” Rolf agreed, also in Grathian, with his eyes on the wizard. “I was hoping we could con him into handing over the other half of the Eye, and then send us back, but if he doesn’t have the Eye — and I believe that part of what he says — then we’re probably going home empty-handed.”

  “I’m not going home empty-handed,” Celie argued. “We’ll find the piece of the Eye, and then we’ll make him send us home.”

  “Assuming he can,” Lulath pointed out. “He is very old, and not very helpful.”

  The Arkower looked over at them then, and they returned to eating.

  Celie gorged herself until she was almost sick, and then she worried that she would do something embarrassing like burp or fall asleep and tumble out of the odd chair she was sitting in. She shook her legs and then started to her feet as Darryn returned. He ran in, face flushed, and tugged at the Arkower’s sleeve. The elderly wizard, who really had fallen asleep, grunted at him in irritation and tried to shake him off.

  “It’s happening,” Darryn whispered, but loudly enough that they heard him. “And it’s my turn!”

  “Excellent,” the Arkower said. He got to his feet. “If you will all excuse me, I have some business to attend to. There is a sleeping chamber just there to the left, if you are tired.” Then he led Darryn back out through the curtained door.

  Celie and the others looked around at one another for a moment.

  “What do you think is happening?” Rolf tossed the last hunk of bread to Rufus, who caught it neatly. “And what do you think the Arkower would do if we explored the mountain?”

  “I’d like to find out what Darryn meant by it being his turn,” Pogue said. He tried to stand, swayed a little, and had to sit down again.

  “Be resting, friend Pogue, I will be going,” Lulath said. “I am only telling them I shall be looking for a water pot.” He grinned at them all and then went to the curtain, listening carefully before parting it to walk through.

  And Rufus was right on his heels.

  “Rufus, no!” Celie hurried over to grab his harness. Rufus started to croak, and she looked around helplessly.

  “Perhaps our bold Rufus is also needing to make the water?” Lulath said with a wink.

  Celie grinned back, signaled to the others that it was all right, and she and Lulath went to spy on the Arkower.

  Chapter 6

  The corridor that Celie and Lulath found behind the tapestry spiraled down the outer edge of the hollow mountain. It was only dimly lit with lamps, and there were no carpets or moss on the floor at all. Rufus’s claws clicked and rasped, and Celie was about to send him back when he stiffened and turned down a little side corridor that she hadn’t even seen in the darkness.

  “Are you hearing that?” Lulath whispered.

  “Yes,” Celie whispered back, and they followed Rufus to another curtained doorway.

  There was a sound coming from the other side of the curtain. A sound that raised the hairs on Celie’s arms and made Rufus hiss. It was a sound that neither of them would ever forget.

  Celie pulled Lulath down to her level and whispered directly into his ear. “It’s a griffin egg. It’s hatching.”

  “Ah,” Lulath breathed.

  Rufus lunged through the curtain.

  “Rufus, no!”

  Celie couldn’t help herself. She leaped after her griffin, chasing him into the room where an egg lay in the middle of a pile of blankets. The Arkower, Darryn, and another young man were gathered around it, and they all looked up in shock at Celie and Rufus as they barged into the room.

  “Get away,” Darryn snapped at them.

  Lulath followed Celie. “That is not being of a politeness,” he said severely.

  “It doesn’t matter, just stay clear,” the Arkower said, his eyes on the egg in front of them.

  It looked exactly like Rufus’s egg: as big and orange as a pumpkin. Even from a pace or so away, Celie could feel the heat coming off it. It was rocking back and forth, getting ready to hatch any minute. Rufus was cooing and trying to cuddle the egg, so she grabbed his harness and hauled him away just as the egg tilted and almost stood on one narrow end.

  “What an excitement!” Lulath exclaimed. The Arkower shushed him, so the Grathian prince moved closer to Celie, his face eager. “To be seeing a griffin hatch,” he said in a quieter voice. “Should I be fetching our friends?”

  “No,” the Arkower said. “There are too many people here already.” He glared at Lulath and Celie.

  “And are you to be the rider of this griffin?” Lulath asked Darryn, ignoring the wizard’s look. “What the very thrill!”

  “Be quiet,” Darryn snarled. “He should only know my voice!”

  Cracks appeared in the smooth surface of the egg. Celie could hear the little griffin pecking and clawing to break free. Tears started in her eyes as she remembered Rufus’s hatching. She’d thought he wouldn’t make it, and then he’d almost flown into her arms.

  “Oh.” She sighed, earning a dirty look from Darryn.

  The egg rocked again, and half the shell broke away, revealing a wet, dark gold lion’s rump. Then the rest of the shell collapsed, and the newborn griffin shook its bedraggled wings and eagle head free.

  “What is this hideous beauty?” Lulath breathed.

  The newborn griffin blinked its big golden eyes, looked around, and then made straight toward Lulath. Darryn, an expression of awe on his face, dropped to his knees in front of the little creature and reached for it, but it went right around him with single-minded purpose and threw itself at Lulath’s feet.

  “Don’t touch it, Prince,” the Arkower cried. “It’s for Darryn!”

  Lulath put his hands behind his back, but Celie could see that they were shaking and Lulath’s face was filled with longing. The baby griffin was hardly bigger than one of his dogs, and it was crying piteously.

  “Then you must be taking care of it with a quickness,” Lulath said to Darryn. “It hungers.”

  “Yes, be quick now,” agreed the other young man. He handed Darryn something that looked like a small cake made out of seeds. “Feed it!”

  Darryn waved the cake in front of the griffin’s beak, but it just cuddled up to Lulath’s shins and wouldn’t look at the boy. It was crying even louder now, and Rufus was hovering over it, wings half raised in distress.

  “Control your beast,” the Arkower snapped as Rufus hissed at Darryn when he tried to shove the cake into the newborn’s beak.

  “This is awful; they’re both upset,” Celie told the Arkower. “He doesn’t want him!” She pointed at Darryn. “Back away,” she urged the boy.

  “No, it’s my turn!” Darryn sounded near tears.

  “You’ve tried,” Celie said, softening. “He’s got to eat … if he won’t take it from you, let Lulath try.”

  “No!”

  Darryn tried to pry open the griffin’s beak and force the cake in. The little griffin screamed, and Lulath moved so fast that Celie didn’t even see what had happened. All she knew was that suddenly Darryn was halfway across the room, lying on his back with a stunned expression, and Lulath was picking up the
newborn griffin and the fallen seed cake. The little griffin took the cake eagerly from Lulath’s long fingers and began to munch as Lulath crooned to him in Grathian.

  “Is he not the very wonder of wonders?” Lulath said a moment later, in Sleynth. His voice was reverent. “I shall be naming him Lorcan the Destroyer.”

  “No! It’s not fair!” Darryn scrambled to his feet.

  “The griffin has chosen,” the Arkower intoned, but his face was not pleased.

  “It’s my turn!” Darryn repeated.

  “And you failed,” the other young man said sadly. “Again. Just like we all fail, time and again.”

  He met Celie’s eye and gave a grim nod. He held out the basket of seed cakes to her, and she took it, handing them one at a time to Lulath as Lorcan snaffled his way through cake after cake.

  “How many eggs have you tried to, um …?” Celie trailed off, unable to think of a word for what she had with Rufus, and now Lulath had with Lorcan.

  “Bond?” the young man asked.

  “Yes,” Celie said.

  “I’ve tried with two eggs; this was Darryn’s second.” He flicked a glance at the Arkower, and then looked away again.

  Celie wondered how many eggs, over how many years, the Arkower had tried to bond with. Tried, and apparently failed.

  “I am a wizard,” the Arkower said, seeing their looks. “I have no need of a griffin. They are for fighters, not thinkers.”

  But Celie knew that he was lying. And so did the young man.

  “I’m Ethan,” he offered.

  “Celie.”

  Her heart was pounding, and she asked the question she couldn’t hold back any longer. “What if Darryn had been the only person here?”

  “It wouldn’t have mattered,” Ethan said, and Darryn made a small noise that almost made Celie feel sorry for him. “In the wild his parents would have fed him,” Ethan continued. “But since they’re … gone … the griffin would have gotten sick from not eating,” Ethan said, and Darryn clenched his fists and turned away. “If they don’t like you, they don’t like you, and if there’s no one that they do like …”