The Kingdom - Clare B Dunkle - Hollow Kingdom 01 - The Hollow Kingdom

“Em, what are you doing here?” Kate asked.

“The pages volunteered to watch the children whose parents are asleep,” said Emily. “I have six babies up in my room right now. But Mongrel and Lash wanted to kiss their mommies and daddies good night, didn’t they?” she baby-talked to the little goblins. “Actually Mongrel gave his mother more of a lick,” she confided. The fuzzy, floppy-eared goblin looked up at Emily with his big brown eyes and gave her a swipe on the cheek. “That’s my boy.” She smiled down at him. “Aren’t they the cutest things?”

“Yes,” murmured Kate, ruffling Lash’s feathers. “Em,” she said, hesitating, “I don’t know—nothing may happen, but I may—”

“You’re going to go bring them back, aren’t you?” said Emily.

“How did you know?” gasped Kate.

“I already told all the pages you would,” she said. “You’ve never been afraid of anything. Besides, you already know your way around Liverpool; you were there once for three days.”

“But, Em!” spluttered Kate. “It’s hardly that simple!”

“I never said it was,” replied Emily carelessly, “but I know you can do it. Good luck.” She kissed Kate on the cheek, and Mongrel stretched up to give her a damp swipe on the chin. “Bring me back a box of that almond brittle like you did last time. Now, let’s go find Lash’s mommy.” And Emily walked off, leaving Kate to stare after her in stunned disbelief.

Agatha was bustling about the darkened banquet hall with a pot of Marak’s concoction in one hand and a lantern in the other. Her wrinkled old face was wet with tears.

“Agatha,” Kate said urgently, “I have to talk to you.” The dwarf woman motioned her to sit down on a pallet.

“Old Mandrake won’t mind,” she sighed.

“I must go after the sorcerer,” Kate explained. “No one else can. I know that world, it’s my world, and I can travel in the daylight. I’m well protected, too. Marak said once that I was better protected by my charm than he was by his magic.”

Agatha stirred the concoction for a minute while she considered this plan. “You’re right, my lady,” she said. “You’re the best one to go. You’ve a powerful lot of magic in you, as I should know better than most. You used it on me once to get away, and oh! was Marak mad at me!”

Kate remembered the meeting in the forest when the old dwarf had glued her feet to the ground. “I didn’t use magic at all,” she protested. “You just gave us a sporting chance.”

“Be sporting to the King’s Bride!” Agatha chuckled. “You know better than that. There’s nothing sporting about it, dear, nothing at all. No, you worked a fine persuasion spell on me, and being mostly dwarf, I fell for it right away.” She sighed again. “The King always used to do it, too, when he wanted to get out of his lessons. No, you’re right, you must go, dear. What a day it will be when the elves save the goblins after all!”

“But I can’t get past the door,” Kate pointed out. Agatha turned to look at her, black eyes thoughtful.

“You’ll have to talk to the snake,” she decided.

“What snake?”

“That one, dear,” said Agatha, pointing to the golden coils above her neckline.

“Oh!” said Kate, dumbfounded. “It can talk?”

“Yes, but not many know it. It only talks to the King ceremonially, but sometimes a King’s Wife comes along that it’ll talk to. I don’t even know if the Kings know.”

“Marak never mentioned it,” murmured Kate, “but then, he only brought it up to tease me because he knew how much I hated it. How do you know, Agatha?”

To her surprise, the little woman began to chuckle. She rocked back and forth in quiet mirth. “Oh, because of the King’s mother, Adele. She got in more trouble! If you told her she should try flying, she’d have jumped out a window just to see. She wore that poor thing out. And they talked. I used to hear them sometimes when I was looking after the baby. It’s terribly old, that snake, and it’s seen everything. If anyone can get you out and save the King, it’ll be the snake.”

“But how do I talk to it?” asked Kate, nonplussed. “It’s been nothing but paint for the last year and a half.”

“I don’t know,” said Agatha slowly. “The only time I know it wakes up is when you’re in real, right-now danger. If you do something dangerous, that’ll wake it up.”

“But then it’ll bite me,” Kate pointed out in alarm.

Agatha sighed. She picked up her spoon and stirred the pot again. “I don’t know, dear,” she admitted finally. “It’s your snake.”

Kate thought about this. “All right,” she said gloomily. “I’m off to stab myself. If it bites me, you can put me down here next to Marak and feed us both that nasty concoction until the King wakes up and renders judgment. Which he may never do, but I don’t think I have much of a choice.”

“Good luck, my pretty lady,” said Agatha, patting her on the hand, and she went back to her work as Kate stalked out of the hall.

A few minutes later, Kate sat at her dressing table, staring at herself by the light of her bracelet. She had taken a small knife out of Marak’s workroom, and she looked at it nervously. How much danger was enough? What if the snake bit her? Would she sleep, too, or would she still be awake even though she was paralyzed? Kate shuddered. Best get on with it before I lose my nerve, she thought. She lifted the knife and moved it slowly toward her chest.

Kate heard a metallic zing, and the head of the golden snake reared up before her face. She dropped the knife, staring into those golden eyes.

“Don’t bite me, don’t bite me!” she begged.

The snake studied her face, weaving back and forth. It flicked its golden tongue out as it gazed regally at her.

“What are you doing, King’s Wife?” it hissed softly. “I have guarded one hundred and sixty-seven King’s Wives before you. You are the one hundred and sixty-eighth. Fifty-four King’s Wives have tried to kill themselves. You are the fifty-fifth.”

“I wasn’t trying to kill myself,” gasped Kate. “I’m in danger.”

“You put yourself in danger,” hissed the snake. “You had a knife. Twenty-eight King’s Wives have tried to kill themselves with knives. One, with a two-headed battle-ax.”

“Ugh.” Kate grimaced. “I wasn’t going to do anything with the knife. I just wanted to talk to you.”

The snake twined down Kate’s left arm and turned from her wrist to get a better look at her. “If you wanted to talk to me,” it hissed, “why didn’t you just do it?”

“Well,” began Kate, and then realized that she had no answer. The snake studied her.

“I have guarded one hundred and sixty-eight King’s Wives,” it hissed. “Sixty-four of them were unintelligent. Two of them were so stupid they didn’t know their own names.”

“I see,” said Kate a little coldly. “But wait! I need your help. The King has been enchanted by a sorcerer. I know where the sorcerer is, and I need to go find him, but I can’t get out the door.”

The snake studied her for another long moment, weaving slightly. “I must see the King,” it hissed. “Only eight King’s Wives have left the kingdom. Four of those were on the migration. For two more, the Kings erased the Door Spell. Your King,” it said softly, “has not done that.”

“He ran out of time,” Kate answered unhappily. She walked back to the banquet hall, explaining the last few days’ events on the way. She stopped at Marak’s pallet, her heart sinking at the sight of his motionless form.

The snake uncoiled almost all the way in order to glide back and forth across the King, keeping only the smallest loop about Kate’s wrist. At last it returned, twining quickly up her arm and rearing its head above her shoulder.