Keeper of Dreams (40 page)

“Our enemy?”

“The builder of the castle, anyway. Come on, look at it and see if you can figure a way in.”

Mo led him to the obvious place first—the door. Enoch looked at it. Solid hardwood, snugly set into the wall.

“You can’t even get a sword blade in the crack.”

Enoch didn’t hear her. He was too busy looking at the keyhole, a little odd-shaped keyhole on the right-hand side near the edge of the door.

Mo saw what he was looking at. “You can’t pick the lock,” she said. “Everything turns to sand or ashes.”

But Enoch had the key out of his pocket, and he did not hesitate to touch it to the keyhole. He half-expected the key to dissolve into sand, even hoped that it would.

Instead, it fit snugly into the keyhole. He turned it in the lock. There was a clicking noise behind the door, and slowly, without either of them touching it, the door opened.

“Where’d you get that key!” Mo demanded.

“It’s the key to our new apartment in Arizona.”

“Well, fry my eggs,” said Mo. “You really did it.”

“And before lunchtime, too,” Enoch said, feeling very pleased. The key was good for something after all.

The Battle to Free the King

Enoch was perfectly happy to let Mo pass through the door ahead of him. She was the one with the sword, after all. “What happens now?” he asked.

“How should
I
know?” she answered.

“Where’s the king?”

“If you see a king, tell me and then we’ll both know.”

Enoch got the idea she wanted him to be quiet.

The doorway led into a large courtyard, which was cluttered with bright tents with slack banners. Every now and then a breeze came by, and the banners made a halfhearted effort to wave. Otherwise, there was not a motion or sound except the scuffing of their own feet on the dirt.

And then, suddenly, it began to rain. Not a cloud in the sky, not a clap of thunder, just a sudden downpour that drenched them immediately and turned the dirt to mud.

Instinctively Enoch dodged toward one of the tents. “Wait!” cried Mo. Enoch thought she wanted him to wait up for her, which was silly. She could just hurry. He was going to get into a tent before he drowned.

He was just opening a tent flap when she tackled him. Now he knew what the sportscasters meant when they said, “He took a good hit at the thirty-eight.” A good hit was when your mouth filled up with mud and your bones got scattered in odd places throughout your body.

When he had cleared the mud out of his mouth, he asked the obvious question. “What did you do that for?”

“You are too dumb to live,” she answered kindly.

“Maybe you don’t know enough to come in out of the rain, but I do.”

“What rain?” Mo asked.

It had stopped raining. But the ground was still wet. “So it stopped,” Enoch said. “It
was
raining.”

“Listen, Eeny. Around here, if it rains out of a clear blue sky, you
don’t
walk into the nearest shelter. You stand in the rain and wait for your enemy to make his move.”

“You mean the rain was magic?”

“The rain was water. It’s the tents that I don’t trust.”

In answer to her suspicion, the tents all vanished at once, leaving the courtyard empty. Where the tents had been, however, the ground was dry.

“The tents were
real
.”

“Of course. Don’t you understand by now, Eeny?
Everything
here is real. This isn’t a TV magic show, where you know the magician is a clever fake. Around here, when he saws the lady in half, the guy doesn’t put her in a box and she really ends up in two pieces.”

“Now I’m getting worried,” Enoch said.

“You’re a real quick learner, Eeny.”

The doors of the great hall stood open. Inside they could see a dim fire burning in the distance. Other than that they could see nothing. It was too dark inside and too bright outside.

“Maybe,” Enoch said, “maybe the door is open because this is just where our enemy expects us to come in, and so we should go hunting for another door. Or maybe our enemy expects us to think that way, and so he opened this door so we’d be sure
not
to come in here.”

“If we think like that, we’ll end up crazy or dead within five minutes. Come on, Eeny.”

“I don’t have a weapon,” Enoch pointed out. “I’d be useless to you in a battle.”

“Just start explaining something to whoever attacks you, Eeny. They’ll run away screaming, I promise you.”

Mo led the way into the great hall. It took a few minutes for their eyes to become accustomed to the dark, but during that time there was no attack, not even a sound except the fire crackling in the cooking pit in the middle of the room. Most of the smoke rose to a hole in the roof; the rest filled the room, so that Enoch’s eyes burned. Over the fire, a pig was roasting on a spit.

Around the outside walls of the great hall was a long, long table, and around the outside of the table was a long, long bench. On the bench were a couple of hundred men and women, dressed in brightly colored clothing, with food on the plates before them, with wine in their cups—and
each and every person was dead. Killed by the person on one side of them, while they were in the process of murdering the person on the other side.

Enoch began to sing softly. “It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas.”

“Can it,” Mo said. She walked to a table and touched the food on a plate. “Still warm,” she said.

Enoch couldn’t think of anything to say to that. It was just as well, for the pig roasting over the fire took that opportunity to speak. “Hi. Would you like some ham? Help yourself.”

It took a few moments to be sure who had spoken.

“That’s right, it’s me. Harvey Ham, here. Peter Porkchop. Billy Bacon. You’d have to go a long way before you got a hunk of meat as nice as me. The carving knife is right over there.” The pig rolled its eyes toward a small table near the fire.

Enoch, always obedient, started for the carving knife.

“Hold still, pinhead,” said Mo.

Enoch did as he was told.

“When a pig invites you to a ham dinner, I’d suggest you think twice before you RSVP.”

“I’m just being generous,” said the ham.

“Thanks kindly,” Mo said. “We’re vegetarians, at least for the moment.”

Mo led the way to the head table. There was a large throne there, but it was empty, and there was no food on the plate. “The king wasn’t in attendance,” Mo pointed out.

“What would have happened if we had carved the ham?”

Mo shrugged.

“What if I had gone into the tent?”

“Listen, Enoch, that’s why curious people make lousy knights. If you always have to find out what’ll happen if you do some stupid thing, then your career will be brief. It’s what you are willing to never find out that keeps you going in this business.”

While Mo said this, she was busy looking around, poking at things on the table, studying the clothing of the nearest dead people.

“What are you looking for?” Enoch asked.

“I don’t know. A clue or something. The king is in here somewhere, but I don’t want to spend a year looking for him.”

“You’re just going to get hungrier,” said the pig.

“You be quiet,” Mo snapped at the animal.

“I hang here all day over a hot fire, nicely basted with garlic and butter, but do you think anyone ever eats? ‘I’m sorry, but I already ate.’ ‘I’m sorry, but I’m a vegetarian.’ And if they do eat, I get nothing but complaints. Needs more salt. Not hot enough. Do you think I ever get a word of thanks?”

“Thank you very much,” Enoch said.

“Don’t talk to him,” Mo said. “It’ll only encourage him.” She turned over the king’s empty plate to look on the bottom.

Something on the king’s throne caught Enoch’s eye. It was a small lizard about a half-inch long, poised at the back of the armrest. “Look at that,” Enoch said.

The lizard was holding so still that Mo had a hard time seeing where he was.

“Is that the clue?” Enoch asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Does it talk? Hey, lizard, hi, how are you?”

“Eeny, don’t talk to the lizard, you look like an idiot. Next thing you’ll be talking to the chairs.”

“Ever since a roast pig talked to me I’ve been open to conversing with anything,” Enoch said.

“Well, leave the lizard alone. It looks dangerous.”

The lizard moved slightly, bunching itself a little.

“Do lizards jump?” Enoch asked.

“Why?”

“If they do, this one’s about to.”

Without another word, Mo lunged with her sword and hacked down at the lizard, cutting it neatly in two. She was very quick.

“Good aim,” Enoch said. “Remind me not to point it out if anybody I like is getting ready to jump.”

“Listen, Eeny, didn’t you learn anything from the squirrels? Anything that looks like it’s going to jump on me, I make sure it doesn’t.”

Enoch remembered the wound on his neck and smiled at her. “If you were really nice, you would have only wounded it.”

“You’ve got good eyes, Eeny. I didn’t notice it had moved.” They went around the head table and examined the body of the lizard. Mo picked up the front half. Something sparkled.

“Look,” Enoch said. He took the back half of the body and showed her. Protruding slightly from the body was half of a clear, glowing green stone, cut like a Tiffany diamond. Mo mumbled something and took the matching half out of the front of the lizard.

“Let’s put them together,” Enoch said.

“Let’s wait and do it later. Putting things together and taking them apart can have dire consequences here. It may cause us more problems than we want.”

“It may solve all our problems.”

Mo tossed her half-emerald to Enoch. “You’re so smart, see what happens.”

Enoch put the two halves together. Instantly there appeared before him in the air a three-dimensional model of the Castle of Contempt. When he rotated the stone, the outer walls were stripped away and room after room was revealed.

“A map,” Mo said.

Enoch took the two halves of the stone apart. The map disappeared. “It doesn’t show where the king is being kept.”

“But it can show where the rooms are. We can save hours, and not miss anything.”

The pig spoke up again from the fire. “That map isn’t worth the thin air it’s made out of. I advise you, don’t pay the slightest attention to it.”

“Let’s get away from the pig. Bring out the map.”

They easily found the secret passage behind the throne and ducked through it into a bedroom. And from there they explored every room of the castle and found nothing. No danger—and no king.

It was nearly dark.

“I’m getting hungry enough that the talking pig is beginning to sound like Canadian bacon to me,” Enoch said.

“We’re not eating the pig and that’s final,” said Mo. “Now let’s get out of here for tonight. We can come back tomorrow and figure out
something. But I have no intention of being here in the castle after dark.”

It was a good idea, except that the door to the castle was closed and locked, and on this side there wasn’t a keyhole.

So back they went to the great hall and sat down on the floor near the fire, where the light was brightest.

“If someone had told me when I went into Oglethorpe’s that I’d end up spending a night in a room full of two hundred dead people,” Enoch began.

“You would have come anyway,” Mo said.

“Yeah, probably,” said Enoch.

The pig sighed. “I don’t suppose I could interest you in tripes,” he said.

“No,” Enoch answered sharply.

“Think of something,” said Mo.

“I got us the map. I noticed the lizard. Now it’s your turn.”

“I’m always thinking. You’re the one who needs to be reminded.” So they lay in silence on the straw-covered stone floor, while the pig sizzled over the coals.

Enoch must have dozed off. He was wakened by something chewing on his arm. He opened his eyes and saw a red, fiery eye staring back at him.

“Excuse me, Mo,” he said. “There seem to be rats in here.”

Mo didn’t answer. Enoch looked at where she had been lying. She was gone.

Enoch got to his feet. The fire was nothing but red coals now, and the rats were barely shadows. The one that was gnawing his arm was stubborn, but Enoch finally got him off. The others kept a reasonable distance, much to Enoch’s relief. His arm hurt where the rat had been dining, but he had been living with the pain of the squirrels’ attack for some time, and this new wound was almost unnoticeable.

Enoch walked nearer to the fire. The smell of roast ham was unbearable, and he was so hungry.

“Mm, mmm, good,” mumbled the pig.

“Why didn’t you wake me up when the rats came in?”

“I’m not allowed to bring up any subject except eating me.”