The Fourfold Key

The pulley stopped immediately.

Ruth opened her eyes and looked around, confused. There was no way she had stopped that on her own. Ruth tugged on the rope and realized that not only had it stopped, but it was cold. Ice cold. In fact, it had frozen solid.

“Hurry!” came a voice. “The freezing charm won’t last long in this heat!”

Ruth looked up and saw the last person she had expected to see there.

Lemonjello smiled, amber wings fluttering as she hovered off the ground. She extended her hand to Ruth. “Come on. Let’s go!”

“What—How?” Ruth sputtered as she allowed Lemonjello to drag her toward the exit.

“Never mind that right now,” the fairy whispered. “They can’t see us but they can hear us if we’re too loud.”

Ruth fell silent, letting her questions swirl in her head until she felt her head would burst from it all.

The two girls huddled at the edge of the forest, watching the entrance like it was the only thing in the world.

Lemonjello had already explained why she was here. Apparently, she was the thing that Ruth and Tom had kept hearing after they left her house - and the person Ramere had said was following them. She was the one that had made the guards in the Gnome King’s Dungeons go into their trances, and she had also made Tom, Ruth and Ramere invisible. When they had triggered the trap in the Whirlpool she had sped up the water, making them reach air sooner so she could get to them, since she had been watching from outside the whole time. She had then dragged them to shore and made sure the Keys were there; apparently one had been missing, but she found it and returned it to Tom’s pockets. During Tom and Ruth’s argument in Troll Swamps, Lemonjello had sent a wave of emotions at them, then set north in Tom’s mind, so he knew where to go.She had also aided them in countless other small ways throughout their trip.

Ruth didn’t know if she should be angry at the energetic fairy for following them after they told her not to, or relieved that she had done it anyway, saving her and Tom who knew how many times.

“So, what happened in there?” Lemonjello asked quietly. Ruth had already told her everything about their adventure up until entering the Mines.

“We snuck in, and the guard at the entrance was suspicious. He got a band of dwarves together and chased us. Tom wanted to run and hide in the tunnel somewhere, but I convinced him it was too risky.

“We turned around and we were going to get on the pulley you found me on, but I couldn’t stop and ran right into the first dwarf. Tom pushed him over the edge and pushed me onto the pulley right before they caught him.” Ruth wiped a tear from her cheek.

“Is there any chance we could sneak back in? To get them? We could use my magic.”

“No. I mean, maybe. But not for a while. All the dwarves are on alert now, looking for me.”

“Well, we could—Oh!” Lemonjello thrust Ruth’s head under the bushes and ducked behind it herself.

“What?” Ruth hissed, trying to peek over Lemonjello’s hand.

“There’s a big group of dwarves coming out of the tunnel. Phooey! There’s the Sorceress! And Tom! And, um, another guy next to Tom. He looks like you!”

Lemonjello lifted her hand off her head and Ruth peeked over the bushes excitedly. Sure enough, there was her father! He looked tired and washed out, but he was still the same man she had loved years before.

“Dad,” she whispered, her eyes filling with tears.

Tom walked next to her dad, giving him the occasional curious glance. Collen’s eyes were closed tightly—he’d been underground for years—and he stumbled with every step. His thin face and ragged beard looked much dirtier than it had in her vision. In fact, everything about him looked worse than he had last she had seen him.

Both her father and Tom had their hands chained behind them and were being shoved along behind the Sorceress by the dwarves.

The Sorceress led the line of dwarves, casting haughty glares at everyone. Her brilliant purple and black robes billowed our behind her, making it hard to see anything but her face. She had long, coal-black hair that flowed and tangled with the robes. Her eyelashes were dark and glowering, and her eyes a brilliant shade of green. Her lips were thin and had a stretched-out look to them. Her nose was small and round; too small and round for such a sour, gaudy face. In her hand, she held a flaming torch.

She led the procession to two poles standing side by side, and there she stopped and turned to face the crowd.

“Fellow dwarves!” she began, her oily voice slipping into Ruth’s heart. “You are here to witness the death of two traitors!”

Ruth was sure her and Lemonjello’s horrified gasps could be heard over the cheers and taunts of the dwarves as they chained Tom and her father up to the poles hand and foot. They piled wood at the foot of the poles, and some between, making it so the blaze would spread to both of them, then backed up for the Sorceress to continue.

“These two men have caused me much trouble. This one,” she pointed to Ruth’s father, “his family has pushed me away from them, leaving me with nothing but what I have now. This dwarf has aided this man’s daughter in a plot against me. For this, they must die!”

Roars of celebration tore into Ruth’s heart as she sat, spellbound, in the bushes, watching her father and friend sentenced to death by a hideous monster. But the cold thought that had haunted her returned. Could the Sorceress be Arnada? My great-aunt? She burned with shame at the thought of being related to such a beast.

“Kill the traitor!” shouted one dwarf.

“Burn them both!” screamed another.

“The Sorceress is a selfish twerp who cares for nothing but herself!” cried another voice.

Immediately the cries stopped. The Sorceress raised her hand. Her gaze held ice and iron.

“Who said that?” she demanded vehemently.

“I did,” the voice answered. The dwarves parted to reveal a scrawny dwarf with a small beard and a brown tunic, standing calmly at the back of the crowd.

“Ra domenish lapelty,” the Sorceress hissed.

The dwarf crumpled to the ground, dead.

“Idiot,” the Sorceress muttered.

“Idiot?” the dwarf’s voice echoed. “Well, that’s not very nice.”

The Sorceress whirled around. The dwarf was standing on the other end of the crowd, glaring reproachfully at her, but there was a mischievous twinkle in his eyes as well. She looked back at the place she had killed him. The dwarf was still there in a crumpled heap.

“Who are you?” the Sorceress demanded.

“Me? Oh, nobody special. I followed you all the way here.”

I followed you all the way here? Ruth didn’t think that made sense. She looked over at Lemonjello to see if she thought this was weird. Especially the fact that the dwarf had been killed and then reappeared again alive and well. Lemonjello was laying beside her, her face ashy pale, her eyes blank and lifeless.

Ruth froze, then jumped over and began to shake her, too frightened to say anything.

“Don’t touch my body!” cried the dwarf. “It’s not dead!”

Ruth stopped.

“Not dead?” came the Sorceress’s voice. “Of course it’s dead. As should you!”

Ruth looked over the bush. The dwarf was staring right at her. Lemonjello was staring right at her. The dwarf was Lemonjello doing some super-powerful mind trick to distract them!

Ruth left the real Lemonjello where she was and hurried through the woods around the clearing until she was right behind the two poles with Tom and her dad.

Lemonjello-in-disguise ran behind the crowd until she was at the very back, and began to shout hateful things about the Sorceress.

“The Sorceress doesn’t care about any of you! She’s killing these people because they angered her! Not because the dwarf ran off. She was mad at the human because his family angered her! She’s mad at the dwarf for helping the girl defy her. The Sorceress doesn’t care. Once she gets what she wants out of you she’ll be gone, or she’ll kill you so none of you know what she did, and she can live her life as a normal, conniving crook! Listen, you don’t have to obey her! She may be able to control a few of you, but she can’t punish or destroy every single dwarf here. Stand against her. You know it’s the right thing to do!”

Ruth hurried behind Tom’s pole, since it was closest to her.

“Shh,” she warned, and began to inspect the lock.

This was it. It wasn’t exactly the moment she’d romanticized and dramatized in her mind, but here it was. She was using the Key. She began to unknot the Key from her leg, taking care to stay behind Tom’s pole as much as possible.

“ENOUGH!” the Sorceress shrieked. Her eyes blazed with fury. “KILL HIM! KILL HIM NOW!”

But the dwarves hesitated. It seemed that Lemonjello had gotten to them.

The Sorceress was appalled. Her mouth opened and closed as she tried to regain her composure. She drew herself up. “Fine. I’ll do it myself!” She sent the death spell spinning after Lemonjello and leapt over to Ruth’s father, throwing the flaming torch into the wood at his feet.

The wood had not been soaked in any kind of fuel so the blaze crept slowly up the first piece of wood. Her father, who now had his eyes open, had been watching everything with increasing panic. When the Sorceress lit the wood, he shouted in alarm, his voice hoarse from little use, and began to stamp at the fire. But he was chained securely hand and foot and his legs could only reach so far. The fire began to spread.

Ruth finished untying the Key from her leg and hurriedly slid it into the lock. Though the Key was much larger than the lock on Tom’s chains, it shrunk itself to the correct size as Ruth brought it near. Two faint clicks and Tom was free. She slunk over to Collen as the Sorceress turned to inspect the second dead Lemonjello. She had failed again, for yet a third dwarf had appeared, taunting the Sorceress and urging the other dwarves to join in. A few of them did, though warily, like they weren’t sure who to believe anymore.

“Dad! Stay quiet. It’s Ruth,” she said as she slipped behind his pole.

“Ruth?” Her father’s eyes lit up, and he tried to turn and look at her.

“No, no. Don’t look over here. Try to get the fire out!”

“Ruth,” Collen repeated, the word coming out choked and awed.

More dwarves were joining the shouting, and some were closing in on the Sorceress, backing her up toward the two poles Tom and her father were chained to.

Tom stood with his back to the tree like he hadn’t been unchained. Her father shouted and stomped with more vigor than before, but the fire grew and soon reached Tom’s pile. Tom gritted his teeth and stood his ground though, refusing to give Ruth away. She had just slipped the Key into the lock on Collen’s wrists when a flaming log rolled off the pile onto her foot. She shrieked and leapt away, swatting at the flames, into plain view of the whole crowd.

“Look! That girl is freeing the prisoners!” shouted one dwarf, pointing at Ruth. As soon as Tom realized Ruth had been discovered, be scrambled away from the flames slowly licking their way towards him. The other dwarves stopped to stare, then began to advance. The Sorceress saw too, and with a cry of rage rushed toward Ruth.

Ruth scrambled back to her father. She had just turned the lock and slipped the chains off her father’s ankles when she felt arms around her. She kicked at the arms that had her, but they held firm, and then, much to her amazement, set her down a moment later. Ruth blinked in surprise and turned to see a dwarf stomping on the flames with passion. Looking past the dwarf, she saw the other dwarves were pushing the Sorceress back, keeping her away from Ruth, Tom, and her father. A few, she could see, were still fighting for the Sorceress, turning against their own kind as they hacked them down with shining, silver weapons.

Her father leaped over to Ruth, wrapping her in a tight embrace.

“Ruth,” he whispered, hugging her tight. “I missed you so much. I didn’t think I’d see you ever again. I’m so, so sorry for disappearing like that.”

“We all thought you were dead,” she sobbed, burying her face in his chest. “But then I got here accidentally and I met Idabelle and she told me about you and sent me to Tom and we found all the Keys together and came here but we couldn’t find you and they caught Tom and they were going to kill you and him and I thought I was going to have to watch you both die! It was horrible.”

“It’s all right now. Everything’s okay now.” Her father leaned in close. “Romela channete omala leonet,” he whispered.

Before Ruth could ask what the strange phrase meant, a flaming log rammed into Ruth and her dad. It seared into Ruth’s skin, and she screamed in pain, letting go of her father as she did so. A flurry of black and purple rushed at Collen.

The Sorceress had her father by the neck. They levitated high above the crowd, the Sorceress’s lips twisted into a cruel smile as she began squeezing the life from him.

“Dad!” Ruth stared in horror at the Sorceress. Her father kicked and struggled, but it was no use. The Sorceress chuckled faintly, sending shivers down Ruth’s spine. How dare she find amusment in the murder of her father?

“This man,” she announced, holding him out to the crowd, “has insulted me greatly. His grandparents - my parents - caught me testing my true power, and they disowned me for it. My own family turning against me!”

A collective gasp rang about the crowd. Ruth dropped to her knees, the sentence refusing to make sense. ‘My own family.’ I’m related to the Sorceress! Her guess had been correct. Her head whirled with the hugeness of it all.

Her father’s breathing was ragged and forced, and his eyes rolled back into his head. He had lost the strength to fight, and his legs dangled uselessly beneath him. Tom knelt beside Ruth, wrapping his strong arms around her. They both knew there was nothing they could do to help him.

“And so for that, I have made it my duty to hunt down and kill my whole family. Every. Last—” The Sorceress stopped, her eyes twitching.

Ruth looked on with horror. The point of a silver dwarves’ blade stuck out of the Sorceress’s chest, dripping with dark red blood. The Sorceress stared at it blankly, then dropped Ruth’s father out of the sky.

“NO!” Ruth screamed, and rushed forward toward his falling body.

He was twenty feet up.

Fifteen.

Ten.

A blur of amber wings flashed through the air, catching her father’s falling form right before it broke on the ground. Together, they hit the ground and rolled, crashing and tumbling through the withered grass.

Lemonjello.

Ruth’s left leg raced her right as she sped across the field and dropped to her knees in front of them, tears running freely as she struggled to breathe between sobs.

Her father lay unconscious on the ground, his head lolled back and his leg bent at a terrible angle. His chest rose and fell deeply. He was alive. Ruth breathed a sigh of relief, almost collapsing with the effort.

Lemonjello, on the other hand, was breathing quite shallow and quick. Her wings were crushed beneath her, her arms and legs scratched and bloody. Blood streamed from her nose, and a gash on her forehead. She opened her eyes feebly as she asked, “Is he okay?”

“Yes,” Ruth breathed. “But are you?”

“Ye—I really don’t know. What about the Sorceress?”

Ruth had forgotten about her. The Sorceress was lying a few feet away, and from the looks of her, she was dead. Blood was leaking from her chest and her eyes were closed.

Above her, levitating in the air where the Sorceress had been only a few moments before, with the controversial expression of confusion, revolution and awe on his face, was Kilp. In his hand was the bloody sword that had pierced the Sorceress. He dropped to the ground by the Sorceress. “This doesn’t mean I’m on your side,” he told Ruth’s huddle, “but I’m tired of being under someone else’s rule. Maybe I can convince the dwarves to join me instead?” He looked at the dwarves. The dwarves looked unsure.

“If you’re not on our side, why did you kill her before she killed him?” Ruth asked, gesturing to her dad.

“I admit, it was a mistake on my part, wasn’t it? I saw my chance and took it, but if I’d waited, I might have succeeded in killing two birds with one stone. As it is, I was hasty in my decisions. But, no matter. I can kill him now.” Kilp dropped to the ground and rushed at Ruth and her father, sword raised.

“Come on! Help him!” Ruth screamed at the dwarves. To her relief, a few obeyed, but they weren’t close enough. She would have to buy them some time. She raised her hand, preparing the words on her tongue. “Ra domenish lapelty!” she cried. Her mind whirled with power and her gut tugged.

A bolt of blue magic fizzed from her hand right at Kilp. Kilp’s eyes widened. With a cry, he threw himself to the ground, missing the spark of magic by inches.

“How—?” Kilp choked, then changed his mind, eyes narrowing. He shouted a phrase that Ruth didn’t understand. There was a huge explosion of light that threw Ruth off her feet. She landed hard on her back, the light leaving her momentarily blinded. Blinking away the light, she saw Kilp’s back, racing off into the forest. Ruth did not pursue him. She’d had enough trouble for one day. Besides, she felt strangely drained, and her legs could no longer hold her. Her head pounded like a monster was in there, raging and thrashing for an escape. The pounding grew worse and she gasped in pain, clutching her head. The throbbing dulled as blackness clouded her vision. No pain there, she thought sleepily, and gladly let the blackness draw her in.