"So anyway, I guess Thor got really drunk on eldvatten"
"Eldvatten?" I interrupted him.
"It"s this really, really strong alcohol that the Omte make. It"s like a cross between wine and moonshine, but I have no idea what"s in it," Konstantin explained.
"So the King is totally wasted at this point, and Bent didn"t know the full details of it, but another patron starts getting mouthy with Thor," he continued. "So the King starts. .h.i.tting this guy, and the guy gets p.i.s.sed, so he rips out Thor"s throat with his bare hands."
I gaped at him. "This is who we"re going to for help? Their King died in a bar fight!"
"We don"t have a lot of other options," he countered. "And besides, the King was drunk. He was probably less of a d.i.c.k when he was sober."
I leaned my head back against the seat. "We are so screwed."
The car started to slow down, and I looked out the window, hoping to see a palace or some sign that we were getting closer. But it was only cypress trees and dark water.
"What"s happening?" I asked.
"We"ve run out of road." Konstantin put the car in park and turned it off. "Now we get to finish the journey on foot."
EIGHT.
everglades The heat was oppressive. It"s hard to explain exactly what it felt like to come from twenty-degree temperatures and snowstorms to more than eighty degrees and humid. The air seemed to condense on my skin, and bugs buzzed wildly around me.
As we waded through the bayou, with the murky water coming up to our knees, I hoped against hope that Konstantin knew where we were going.
"Watch for alligators," Konstantin warned.
I looked around the water, which was getting harder to see in the fading light, but even in bright afternoon it would be hard to tell a log from a large reptile. "There are alligators here?"
"I have no idea." He glanced back at me, smirking. "I don"t know anything about what lives down here."
"I guess we"ll find out, then, won"t we?" I muttered.
A mosquito buzzed loudly around my ear, and I tried to swat it away to no avail. It finally landed on the back of my neck, and I slapped it hard to be sure I got it.
"You should be careful about making loud noises, though," Konstantin said as I followed a few steps behind him.
"Why? Will it attract alligators?" I asked sarcastically.
"No, but the Omte startle easily, and we definitely don"t want them startled."
Beneath the water, the thick mud threatened to rip off my boots with every step I took, making it very slow going. I told Konstantin that there had to be an easier way to get to Fulatrask, but he reminded me that the Omte didn"t want to be found. They made it as difficult as possible for anyone to stumble upon them.
It had gotten dark enough that we needed to pull out our cell phones and use them as flashlights to help guide our path. But there was still so much around us we couldn"t see, and the wetlands were alive with noisefrogs, insects, and birds were loudly chirping their nighttime songs.
Somewhere high above us, I heard the flapping of wings, but I couldn"t move my light fast enough to spot them. I"d also heard the high-pitched squeaks of bats, so I figured that they were zooming around to feast on the plethora of bugs.
Occasionally I felt something swim up against my leg, but since nothing had bitten me yet, I tried not to worry about it.
Lightning bugs flashed around us, their tiny bodies twinkling through the trees and reflecting on the water. In the twilight, surrounded by the music of the animals and the still waters underneath the thick canopy of branches, there was something beautiful about the marsh, something almost enchanting.
"Bryn," Konstantin hissed, pulling me from my thoughts.
I"d fallen a few steps behind him because I"d paused to look around, but now I hurried ahead. He held out his arm, blocking me, when I reached him.
"Shh!" he commanded, and then he pointed toward where his light had picked up two glowing dots on a log, just barely above the surface of the water. It was an alligator, not even a meter away from us, and it looked ma.s.sive.
"What do we do?" I whispered.
"I don"t know. Back away slowly, I guess."
He kept the light on the alligator, and we started to move away when I heard the sound of flapping wings again. It sounded much too large to be a bat, and it was followed by more flapping. Whatever it was, it was very close by, and there were more than one.
I turned my flashlight toward the sky, and it caught on a huge brown bird flying above us. The bird circled us for a moment before settling down on a long branch, and I finally got a good look at it.
With its large wingspan, pointed beak, and thick feathers down its long neck, it was unmistakably a bearded vulture. Bearded vultures weren"t native to this areathey were something that had been brought in with trolls from the old world, like Gotland rabbits and Tralla horses.
We were in Omte territory.
The cypress and willow trees around us towered several stories into the air, and from the corner of my eye I saw a flash near the top of one. I shone my light up toward it, and with the weak power of my TracFone, I could just make out the outline of a large tree house.
It wasn"t exactly a luxury tree house, but it was much more than the average one you might find in a child"s backyard. The wood seemed warped and worn, with moss growing over it, and a sagging porch was attached to the front. But it was easily large enough to house a family, and it even had a second story attached to the right side that climbed up along the trunk of the tree.
A large head poked out of the window, looking down at me. It was slightly lopsided, the way Bent Stum"s head had been, with one eye appearing larger than the other.
"Konstantin," I said quietly. "I think we"re here."
"What?" he asked.
No sooner had the words escaped his mouth than a ma.s.sive ogre jumped out of a tree and came crashing down into the water in front of us, sending muddy water splashing over us. As soon as the water settled, the ogre let out a long, low growl, and I knew we were in trouble.
"I told you that we shouldn"t startle them," Konstantin said.
NINE.
monstrosity I"d heard of ogres and seen pictures of them in textbooks, but I"d never actually met one in real life. I knew that the Omte occasionally gave birth to ogres and they had several of them living in their population. But it"s one thing to read about ma.s.sive, hulking trolls and it"s another thing entirely to have one standing directly in front of you.
The ogre stood well over eight feet tall, and he had thick arms bulging with muscles like boulders. His whole body tilted to one side, with his right shoulder rising above his left shoulder, and his right hand was even bigger than his left. His head was ma.s.sive, making room for a large mouth filled with uneven yellowed teeth. It all made his eyes seem disproportionately small, and he stared down at us with either rage or hungerI couldn"t tell which.
"Why disturb my home?" the ogre demanded, his voice booming through everything.
"We mean you no harm." Konstantin held up his hands toward him.
The ogre laughed at that, a terrible rumbling sound. "You no harm me! You can"t harm me!"
"That"s true," Konstantin allowed, and I wished that we"d brought some kind of weapon with us. We were defenseless if this giant decided he wanted to grind our bones to make his bread. "We only wish to speak to your Queen."
The alligator had begun to swim closer to us, but I"d hardly noticed it, since my attention had been focused on the ogre. It wasn"t until the ogre lunged, swinging his ma.s.sive fist out, that I realized how close the alligator had gotten. The ogre punched it, and sent it flying backward into the swamp.
Konstantin and I both took a step back, and I started to think that coming here might have been a very bad idea.
Then the ogre turned back to us with his beady eyes narrowed. "What you know of Queen?"
"We"re Kanin," Konstantin explained. "We"re allies."
"Friends," I supplied when the ogre appeared confused.
"Queen no tell me friends coming." The ogre bent down so he could get a better look at us, and the stench from his breath was almost enough to make me gag. "Queen tell me when friends visit."
"Well, it"s a bit of a surprise, actually." Konstantin smiled, hoping to make light of things, but the ogre wasn"t having any of it.
"Queen tell me to squash visitors," the ogre said. "Me think she want me to squash you."
"The Queen wouldn"t want you to squash friends, though," I said, hurrying to come up with a reason for us not to end up like the alligator.
The ogre straightened up again and glowered down at us. He seemed to consider my proposition, but before he could make a decision, we were interrupted by the sound of a fan propeller coming from behind him. A headlight bobbed on the water toward us, and within a minute, an airboat had pulled up beside the ogre.
A woman stood on it, one of her thick rubber boots resting on the front edge. She appeared to be in her late twenties, and with smooth skin, large dark eyes, and a totally symmetrical body. Her long chestnut hair was pulled back, and she wore a black tank top that revealed the thick muscles of her arms. She wasn"t much taller than me, but she could easily break me over her leg if she wanted to.
"What"s all the commotion about, Torun?" she asked the ogre, but her eyes were on Konstantin and me.
"Squash visitors!" Torun told her, motioning to us with his ma.s.sive paw.
"We"re from the Kanin tribe," Konstantin rushed to explain before she became sympathetic with the ogre"s position. "We"re only here to talk to your Queen. We think we may have information that she may find useful."
She narrowed her eyes at me. "You look familiar." Then she tilted her head. "Didn"t the Kanin just send us WANTED posters with your face on it? You killed someone important, didn"t you?"
"That"s part of what we would like to speak to the Queen about," I said, trying to remain unfazed.
She thought for a moment, then nodded. "All right." She leaned down and held out her hand to me. Her grip was almost bone-crushingly strong, and she pulled me up onto the boat with ease.
"But me squash!" Torun yelled plaintively as she helped Konstantin onto the airboat.
"Not this time, Torun," she said and turned the boat on. Torun splashed the water with his fists in a rage, and she steered us away from him, turning back.
There were no seats on the boat, so I held on to Konstantin to steady myself and hoped I didn"t go flying off into the swamp as she picked up speed.
"Who are you anyway?" she asked, speaking loudly to be heard over the large propeller.
"I"m Bryn Aven, and this is Konstantin Black."
"I"m Bekk Vallin, one of the Queen"s guards," she explained. "The Queen won"t give you amnesty, if that"s what you"re looking for. But I"ll take you to her anyway. She might be curious about what you have to say."
"Thank you," Konstantin said. "All we really want is an opportunity to speak with her."
Bekk didn"t say any more as she drove us along, weaving through the trees. It was only a few minutes before we reached their palace anyway, and it wasn"t exactly what I was expecting.
It was a square fortress, made of what appeared to be mud and stone, with thick layers of moss and vines growing over it. With the rest of the Omte living in tree houses, I"d a.s.sumed this to be higher off the ground, but it was nearly flush with the swamp, sitting on a small hill above it.
Konstantin and I followed Bekk up the muddy bank toward a ma.s.sive iron door. Rust left it looking dark brown, and it creaked loudly when an ogre opened it, causing a nearby bearded vulture to squawk in protest.
Inside the palace, it was just as humid as it was outside, and moss grew on the interior walls. Slugs and snails seemed to have made themselves at home in here, and a giant spider had spun a web in the corner of a doorway.
Bekk said nothing as she led us through. Iron chandeliers dimly lit the way through the smallest palace I had been to. It reminded me more of the ruins of a castle in Ireland I"d seen in textbooks than of an active palace where trolls lived and worked.
A set of stairs ran along the side of the wall, jutting out from the stone with no railing or wall to keep one from falling over the other side. Bekk went up them, so Konstantin and I followed her.
At the top of the landing there were three heavy wooden doors, and Bekk pushed one of them open. It was a small room, with a dingy-looking bed, a metal toilet and sink in one corner. There were bars on the only window to prevent an escape, though bugs and birds could come and go as they pleased.
"You will wait here until I come get you," Bekk instructed us.
"Will that be soon?" I asked.
"It will be whenever the Queen decides," Bekk replied curtly.
Since we had no other choice, Konstantin and I went into the room. As soon as we did, Bekk shut the door loudly behind us, and we heard the sound of locks sliding into place. Just to be sure, Konstantin tested the door, and it didn"t budge. We were trapped inside.
"Does this make us prisoners, then?" I asked.
Konstantin sighed. "It does seem that way."
TEN.
confined There was blackness, and then strong hands were on me, closing in, crushing me. I didn"t remember anything before that, but all I knew was that I had to fight if I wanted to survive. I lashed out, hitting everything I could until I registered Konstantin"s voice, crying out in pain.
"Bryn!" he shouted.
And slowly, the world came into focus. Early morning sunlight streamed in through the open window of our cell. Konstantin stood with his back pressed against the wall, wedged in the constricted spot between where I knelt on the bed and the mossy stone behind him.
I blinked at Konstantin, trying to understand what was happening, and without warning he lunged at me, grabbing my wrists and pinning me back on the bed.