Once Upon a Quest by Anthea Sharp

Author:Anthea Sharp
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Fiddlehead Press

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Maude awoke to find herself looking up at a ceiling high above her made from elaborately painted tiles. She stared at the tiles for a moment, trying to discern exactly what the colorfully painted figures were doing. It looked like a man chasing a unicorn through the trees. Behind him trailed a fox, and was that a bird or a dog behind the fox?

This didn’t look like the bedchamber at the inn. She blinked and tried to get her bearings.

She lay on her back in a rectangular container made of thick glass in a wide, spacious hall. The ceiling and walls were covered with elaborately painted tiles. Her hands were on her chest, her right hand on top of the left. The cool air smelled of licorice and stone. Where on earth was she?

She turned her head to her left to see Roderick doing something with a collection of crystal vials that sat on a tall, mahogany table. A large glass box rested next to the vials. She pushed herself up to a sitting position.

“Where am I?” she asked, her tone sharp although she could feel herself quaking inside. “And what have you done with Gerhardt?”

He’d better not have hurt Gerhardt, or she’d… Maude bit her lip. Was there even anything she could do to fight Roderick without him making her fall asleep again?

Roderick smiled and scurried over to stand next to the box. He held one of the vials in a hand.

“My dear Maude,” he said. “It’s so lovely to hear your sweet voice. It’s like listening to the beautiful melodies the birds sing to one another in the morning.”

“I am not your pet parakeet,” she said. She rested a hand on the edge of the glass box and peered over the edge. Wide tiles of polished granite lined the floor. “Why am I here? And where is Gerhardt?”

“I brought you to this secret vault under the ground,” Roderick said. “No one else—no one else alive, that is—knows this beautiful, wondrous palace even exists. I only found it myself last spring. It was carved out of the very rock itself, hundreds of years ago. This is where I will give you one more chance to agree to be my bride.”

Maude opened her mouth, but she was so infuriated she couldn’t speak. The man was clearly insane.

Roderick showed her the vial he held. It contained what appeared to be a cloud of blue smoke.

“This receptacle contains the young gentleman who told you which trail you’d find your brother on earlier this morning,” he said. “Although he did not, of course, know what shape your brother would be in at the time.” He held up the crystal vial and raised a thick, bushy eyebrow. “I turned that young man into a vapor, and captured his essence.”

He set the crystal down on the table and touched one side of the glass box that sat in the middle of the table. “This contains the inn itself.” He waved a hand at the other vials.

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