“Oh, man,” I said. “You’re right. That is a tongue.”
That didn’t make any sense, either. The Blind King hadn’t lost his tongue, and what we had in that box clearly wasn’t a dragon’s forked tongue. I mulled that over, replaying the story Eric had told me over and over.
Suddenly, the pieces of the story fell into place and I understood what we had to do.
“We have to get the others,” I said. “I hope we’re not already too late.”
Eric was halfway to the door by the time I’d disconnected my computer. I snatched the case of jinsei vials off my desk.
“Here,” I shouted, and tossed them to him. Then I grabbed the prize box, and we took off for the library with Niddhogg fluttering behind us.
“What are you two doing?” Clem asked when we barged into her library cell.
“No time,” I said. “Let’s go.”
She and Abi followed us out, and Hahen scrambled onto my shoulder. We hustled through the School, ducking and dodging around students on their way to the dining hall for dinner. My stomach growled at the missed meal, and I ignored it. We didn’t have time for food. We might not have time for anything.
The School wasn’t as responsive as I would’ve liked. We had to backtrack more than once, and we still ended up going in a frustratingly long circle around the building’s perimeter before we reached the courtyard. The statues of the blindfolded man and muzzled dragon waited for us in the otherwise empty courtyard.
“Here we go,” I said. I grabbed the dragon’s eye from the pouch on my belt. It was warm in my hand, throbbing with hidden life. I walked around the Silent Wyrm statue and saw that it had both eyes. My heart quickened. It looked like my theory was right.
I scrambled over to the Blind King and climbed up its body. The robes it wore offered plenty of ridges for me to cling to, and soon enough I was perched on its shoulder. I held onto the king’s crown and reached around to the front of its face with the other. I held the stone eye over the statue’s bandaged eyes, and it warmed in my palm. It grew until it was the size of a bowling ball, then floated away. The oversized eye settled over the statue’s left eye socket for a long time and then vanished.
“Whoa,” Eric said. “That was something.”
“You haven’t seen anything yet.” I slithered down the statue’s body, snatched the tongue out of the prize box, then climbed up the Silent Wyrm. Its sinuous body and arched neck were more difficult to navigate than the King’s robes, but my disciple-level core gave me the strength and skill to clamber up into position. I nimbly walked down the beast’s snout, crouched at the end of its nose, and lowered the tongue toward the cage that bound its jaws. This piece of stone, too, grew until it was large enough to fit in the dragon’s mouth, and then vanished into the statue.
“The bonds have been completed.” A man’s voice boomed through the courtyard. “As it was in days past, dragons and humans will now work together to reveal the way ahead. Follow the orichalcum path to your final challenge.”
The dragon’s head stirred beneath me and shifted until its eyes pointed at the courtyard’s blank wall. A red-gold light blazed from the statue to illuminate a section of the wall. Several of the ancient stones shifted apart to reveal a patch of darkness between them.
I jumped off the dragon’s head and motioned for the others to follow me to the wall.
“Niddhogg,” I said, “get Hagar. Tell her to hurry.”
“How did you figure that out?” Clem asked. “We didn’t find anything useful in the library.”
“Eric put me on the right path.” I threw an arm around my friend’s neck. “He found a bunch of good stuff about the first Gauntlet. When the dragons didn’t like the results of that challenge, they went to war. The Flame ended the fight by forcing them to exchange blood bonds. I thought that’s why the king was blind and the dragon couldn’t talk. But that’s not what happened. The king lost his eyes in the war, and the dragon lost its tongue in the same way. The Flame told them they had to work together. The dragon saw for the king, and the king spoke for the dragon.”
“Genius,” Abi said. “You think the other teams figured it out?”
“Yeah,” I said soberly. “I think they’ve already started the challenge.”
“What’s going on?” Hagar asked as she dropped from a second-story window into the courtyard. “This dragon won’t tell me anything.”
“It’s time for the third challenge,” I said.
“You’re kidding me?” Hagar snapped. “I’d just started on my dinner.”
She wiped the corner of her mouth absentmindedly, and I saw a red smear across the back of her hand. Once again, I was glad that I didn’t share Hagar’s dietary requirements.
“Sorry,” I said. “But we’re out of time.”
“I can always eat,” she said. “I don’t get the chance to save all of humanity from dragon tyrants very often.”
I took the key from the prize box and walked to the small hole in the wall. The orichalcum treasure fit perfectly into its housing. I twisted it to the right.
The wall split evenly down the middle. The light from the dragon shone on a path that led into the darkness beyond.
“Let’s do this,” Eric said excitedly. “I am so ready to show these dragons we can’t be beat.”
He punched the air, and fire blazed from his hands.
My team all waited for me to step onto the path first, then followed me. The orichalcum ribbon rolled out ahead of me, one step at a time. It gave me the eerie feeling of walking off the edge of a cliff again and again.
When Abi, the last of our number to enter, crossed the threshold, the wall closed behind us with a thunderous clang.
“The final team
