“Mirror, mirror with an attitude,” he said, “pinpoint longitude and latitude.”
“—and Gnoflwhogir grabbed the boots.”
“So I could get there and start the stabbing,” Gnoflwhogir explained, somewhat unnecessarily.
The castle appeared at last, a blunt thumb of stone poking up out of the gray sea. Jonquil peered at it, adjusting the dragon’s heading, then glanced back over her shoulder. “The rest of us followed along after, and everything else you already know. Normal family rescue operation.”
“Well, thank you for coming. And also for helping out now, even though they shot arrows at you.”
“Of course. Something needs to be done about that sorceress.” Calla shuddered, holding Lord Thrombwobbley close. The mongoose wriggled in her too-tight grip. “Those monsters she’s been making…I tried to talk to some of them, when we were in the woods. There’s nothing there. They’re not real anymore. Like walking corpses. Puppets stitched together with resentment and animated by magic. All the forest animals are terrified it will happen to them. It’s horrible.”
As the castle loomed larger, I saw that the gate to the courtyard had been shattered by boulders, and the walls were breached in several places, talus slopes of rubble tumbling into the sea out of holes that looked like vast bite marks. The remains of the ice prison littered the shore, thousands and thousands of glittering white chunks bobbing in the surf. The monsters had broken free.
And they had launched a new plan to reach the half-destroyed bridge. Stone giants were getting on their hands and knees in the shallow water of the bay, lumbering into place one after another, their backs forming a broad causeway the othercreatures could use to stride, leap, or squirm their way across. There were more of the stone giants now, a few dozen at least. No doubt every rock formation in the surrounding area had been recruited to Angelique’s cause.
I recognized one with a sapling growing out of its elbow. Plunging them into a lake had never been more than a temporary solution. They were hardly going to drown.
Archers stood on what was left of the battlements, the distance making them tiny as finger puppets. They fired arrows too small for us to see at the cloud of gnat-like flying creatures surrounding them. An armed host had assembled at the ruined remains of the gate. Perhaps a hundred tin soldiers on toy horses, preparing to face the coming onslaught. A miniature lion paced impatiently to and fro.
At the very front, spread out across the ranks, were a dozen figures clad in green, one of them mounted and the rest on foot.
“Can this dragon go any faster?” I pleaded.
“Hold on.” Jonquil whispered something to the dragon, and it angled downward, its wings flexing as it slanted into a long dive. “So. We’re up against slashing claws, poisonous bites, stabby birds, invulnerable rocks, and what looks like an enormous hamster. Anything else?”
“I’m not sure.” I scanned the forested ground racing past, looking for any holes that might house an antlionlion. I didn’t see any, but something about the woods didn’t look quite right. For a moment, I tried to convince myself the movement might be caused by the wind. But it didn’t take me long to abandon that idea as wishful thinking.
“Are those trees,” I asked, “walking onto the beach?”
Part VIII
Siege Perilous
Chapter Thirty-Three
When Plants Attack!
The colossal trees had pulled their roots out of the ground and were striding toward the sea. High up on their trunks, luminous green eyes had opened in the bark. Below them, mouthlike hollows widened and howled.
I remembered the stories of kingdoms toppling when trees started walking. I could see why. The behemoths beneath us were hundreds of feet tall, dwarfing even the stone giants. Trees of that size would barely need to attack the castle; it would crumble beneath them if they tripped and fell onit.
This was magic at the level of the grandest spells I had seen my stepmother cast. Angelique was pulling out all the stops. She had to be testing her powers to their limits.
Unless she didn’t have any limits. Possibly the only thing hampering her had been the lack of a proper sorcerous education. If that was the case, she was learning quickly. Which meant things were likely to go poorly for the rest ofus.
Our descent brought us uncomfortably close to the highestbranches. They swung to and fro, stretching and bending into reaching arms. Their twig fingers grasped at the empty air.
“These tree things,” Gnoflwhogir said, “can we chop them down?”
“I doubt it,” I told her. Their trunks were as broad as a barn. Even with Gnoflwhogir’s comically oversized sword, it would take days to make a significant dent.
“Let’s try fire, then!” Jonquil prodded her dragon, and it exhaled a stream of flames onto the nearest tree, charring the bark and setting the needles alight. The tree took a step back, flailing its limbs in an attempt to put itself out. But the damage looked insignificant compared to its great bulk, and there were plenty more trees where that one came from.
More of them turned their attention to us, shambling nearer with murderous intent. They knocked down their lesser cousins in their fury. The dragon banked away from one tree only to get closer than I liked to another.
“DUCK!” I shouted. We bent low as a gnarled wooden appendage swept overhead, trying to scrape us off the dragon’s back.
Liam reached up and jabbed something into it as it passed. The tree shrieked and whipped its arm away. The dragon dropped into a steep dive, and the cries of the tree faded into the distance.
