Michael Mathias - Kings, Queens, Heroes, and Fools

“Your problem is your pronunciation of the words in the spell,” Phen scolded him. “You can’t speak like a village hick when you’re using magic. Very, very bad things can happen.”

“The boy found, and looted, a dead man,” Oarly grumbled between snores. “Now he’s grown bigger than his britches.”

Brady laughed. “No, Oarly, he’s right. Hyden Hawk might turn one of us into a goat by accident if he gets his words wrong.”

The dwarf didn’t hear. He was already snoring again. What Oarly referred to as peaceful sleep sounded more like a cavern full of angry bears. Oarly was happy to be off of the ship, and ecstatic to be underground. He had said so at least a hundred times while they were exploring the first tunnel. The quality of Oarly’s snoring shifted and began to sound more like a trapped and wounded animal bellowing for its life. Hyden tried to blame the terrible sound for his mispronunciation of the spell words, but Phen wasn’t buying it.

“If you can’t say the words with Oarly snoring,” Phen lectured. “How are you going to be able to say them when arrows are flying at you?”

“All right, Phen,” Hyden sighed and tried again. This time the orb appeared in the correct shape and with the proper amount of yellow light emitting from it, for its size. The sphere was only the size of an acorn, though-far too small to light anyone’s way.

“You’re getting closer,” Phen encouraged. “It’s more in th-”

“Shhh!” Brady hissed suddenly. “Can you hear that?” he added in a whisper.

The light in Hyden’s hand dissapated, leaving them in relative darkness. The sloshing water surging in and out of the cavern’s mouth had a blue-tinged glow deep within it. It kept the space swirling and drifting in a perpetual glimmer of subtle illumination. Over the sound of the ocean, a long deep hissing sound could be heard. The shimmering of the water played on the stalactites crazily. Hyden could barely see Phen, who was sitting only a few feet away from him.

“What is it?” Phen whispered. The sound was growing louder.

“Look,” Brady pointed toward the black gaping maw of the tunnel they hadn’t explored yet.

They could barely see what he was pointing at. A faint green glow was flickering slowly along the tunnel walls. It was growing brighter, as if someone were carrying a green-tinted lantern out from the tunnel’s depths. The hissing sound came again, and this time the fact that it was coming from something very big and very alive was unmistakable. Oarly’s snore rumbled through the cavern over the hiss, then stopped abruptly as Brady cuffed him in the side of the head.

“What… what?” Oarly grumbled angrily.

“Shhh!” both Phen and Brady hissed in unison.

A soft “Ooh,” was all that Hyden could manage to get out of his mouth as the thing came into view.

With eyes the size of chicken eggs, Phen quickly scrambled to Hyden’s side.

The huge eel-like thing undulated forward. None of the companions dared to move for fear of alerting it to their presence. Its slimy, scaled skin radiated a phosphorus green glow. It turned its hovering head toward them and a long purple-black tongue flickered forth. Hyden couldn’t judge how big it was until it lurched swiftly at them and put its head close enough that it nearly licked his face.

Its milky white eyes had no pupils and were as big as Hyden’s head. At least twenty feet of the thing was out of the tunnel now. The creature’s head was viper-like and swaying sinuously above the rough floor. The underside of its body was lined with row upon row of palm-sized suckers. Its mouth was wide enough to swallow a man whole. Hyden felt the strangest sensation as the serpent weaved in place, tasting the air around them.

Hyden’s chest began to tingle. When he looked down, he saw that it wasn’t actually his chest, but the medallion that hung there. Tiny little sparkles of light were jumping from the teardrop shaped jewel mounted in the disc. They weren’t alive, but the prismatic flashes of pink, turquoise and lavender light resembled fleas or fireflies shooting out like a fountain. The strange emissions faded after they went more than a foot or two away from the jewel.

The serpent hissed, and Hyden sensed its disapproval of them trespassing in its home. He tried to speak with it in his mind, as he had with the dragon, Claret, and King Aldar’s great wolves, but the scaly creature’s only response was to flick its tongue at the dragon’s tear hanging around his neck.

Hyden could hear the breath trembling in and out of Phen’s lungs, and he smelled something rancid. After a moment the serpent eased away from them and slipped itself headfirst into the water. The eerie light of the distant sun shining through the submerged cavern mouth died out as the creature filled the hole. Hyden counted his heart beats as it slithered past them. He was at ten when Phen broke his concentration.

“What was that?” the boy rasped.

Hyden figured that he could have gotten his count up to as many as fifteen or even twenty before the serpent’s tail finally disappeared into the water, taking its phosphorus glow with it. By Hyden’s estimation, the thing had to be nearly a hundred feet long.

“I don’t know what it was, lad,” Oarly murmured in a shaky tone. “But it made me shit me britches.”

“I thought that was its breath,” Brady said with a gagging cough. “Make some light, Phen.”

Almost instantly a globe appeared in Phen’s palm and ascended to a spot about a foot over the boy’s head.

“It’s going out to feed,” Hyden said after taking a few deep breaths to calm himself. Oarly’s stench was foul.

“Let’s go see what’s back there while it’s gone,” Phen suggested.

“You go, I’ll stay,” said Oarly. The look on his hairy face was a comical mixture of disgust, embarrassment, and relief as he stood and unsnapped his belt. He waddled gracelessly to the water and waded into it until he was standing waist deep. The water clouded around him, causing the others to retch and turn away.

“If you stay with the dwarf, Hyden,” Brady said between heaves, “I’ll go with Phen. That way we will both have light. The smell is killing me.”

“I don’t think you should go in there,” Hyden told Phen. “What if it comes back?”

“You just want to go yourself,” Phen argued. “Besides that, it will take a long while to fill that thing’s belly. You said it went out to feed.”

“Aye,” Hyden sighed. Phen was right, he did want to go himself, but someone needed to stay with Oarly. “Go then, but straight in and out. Brady, if you don’t see anything after awhile just drag him out of there. If that thing comes back, you’ll be trapped.”

“Yes, sir,” Brady replied.

Hyden was glad to see Brady’s gleaming sword come out as he and Phen started down the tunnel. To his surprise, he managed to get his little orb of light to appear on the first attempt, and this time it was the correct size and brightness.

“Most things with a glow like that are night feeders,” Oarly said from the water’s edge.

Hyden glanced toward the dwarf to respond, but found him on the bank bent over bare-assed and ringing out his clothes. The sight of the Oarly’s furry little rump caused Hyden to bite back a laugh. If the dwarf hadn’t so brutally tricked him with the squat weed and the cinder peppers, he might’ve felt sorry for him, but after that horribly painful night at the Royal Seastone Inn, when the peppers made their way out of his system, he just couldn’t find any mercy for Oarly in his heart.

“Well, it’s not night time and the thing is off to feed,” Hyden replied.

“Maybe it’s because it lives in a cave underground, or because it’s always dark in the depths of the sea,” said Oarly. “But my gut tells me it might be guarding something back there-probably a nest.”