2. Chapter 2
two
By the time we reached the road to Nick’s castle, the torrential snow threatened to obliterate our path. A wintry region of cold and white, Winkie Country had few visible dwellers; a cabin here and there, a distillery, a broken and iced-over windmill.
According to Rye, most of the residents of this quadrant inhabited the actual castle and the areas north of it where the lands grew warmer, if not more fertile, as they trailed off toward the Deadly Desert, the barren wasteland that bordered Oz on all sides.
Up ahead, atop the summit of a great and rocky hill, the dark castle we sought jutted from its craggy surroundings like the clawed hand of an undead beast—all towers and spindly spires. Light burned within its slim windows, promising warmth despite the edifice’s austere, even menacing appearance.
“Rye,” I said for what could have been the eleven-hundredth time since our return to the road.
“Awake,” he murmured as he had to all my previous prompts.
“I’d say we’re here.” I tightened my hold on the reigns and gave them a snap, prompting our poor horse to hurry one last time. No doubt he was just as eager to arrive. Arrive and, hopefully, thaw.
High above, Grip cut into view, a winged shadow sailing toward the towers as if familiar with them. Of course, he must be. Rye had said the bird had made many a trip from the Emerald City to Nick’s wintry fortress.
“Do I just go to the front door?” I asked, trading my attention between following Grip’s path and the winding road.
Unlike the Emerald City Palace, Nick’s castle did not have fortifications or checkpoints. There were no insulating walls, either. Just a climbing highway flanked by black rocks covered by white snow.
“To the top of the hill,” said Rye. “I’ve no doubt we’ve already been spotted.”
To this, I nodded, even though he couldn’t see the action, and I rode harder, up and up, my bones and body aching from the hours on the horse—my fingers numb to the point of frostbite.
Back and forth we went up the zig-zagging trail, taking switchback after switchback. Just as we reached the summit and the threshold of the colossal and towering snow-dusted iron doors, a voice hailed us from above.
“Who goes there?” hollered a boy from a nearby tower, a spyglass in one hand. “What business have you with the Emperor of the West?”
“I told him not to call himself emperor,” Rye said, finding enough strength, it seemed, to gripe.
I glanced over my shoulder toward him and gave the arm he’d looped around my waist a squeeze since it had gone limp. “What do I tell him?”
“The truth,” Rye said. “If it turns out Nick and his fortress have fallen as well, then we are lost regardless at this point.”
I frowned at this. For as long as I’d known Rye, he had always been stoic, but rarely bleak.
But maybe he was just tired. As tired and heartsick as I was.
And death. At this point, didn’t it flicker in the distance almost like a promise of relief?
“My name is Tip,” I called to the boy with the spyglass, which he raised to examine us more thoroughly. “I’ve come from the Emerald City, which has fallen to the army of Princess Langwidere of Ev. I am here with Rye, the King of Oz, to seek refuge and King Nickletin’s aid.”
Behind me, Rye moved, lifting his head. An instant later, Grip landed on the tower’s balcony ledge. The bird cawed as though to vouch for us.
The boy fled his perch.
“Tip,” said Rye. “Talk to me. I have to stay…awake. Now that I’ve gotten you here, now that I know you’re safe, I…”
I got down from the saddle just as the massive wrought iron doors of Nick’s castle—formally Morella’s—started opening. With my feet now planted on snow-covered cobblestone, I reached for Rye.
He shifted as though to dismount, but then he began to tilt my way.
Before Rye had met me, death hadn’t been able to touch him, because Rye’s curse had made him… Well, certainly not lifeless but, then again, not alive. That apparently didn’t mean he could not die.
“You can’t abandon me,” I told him, forcing strength into my voice. “I forbid you to leave this, all of this, in my hands.”
“Why…do you think I brought you here?”
His eyes rolled back in his head, and he tipped over onto me.
A pair of metal arms sleeved in black joined mine to catch him.
Rye fell into our grasp like a ragdoll, eyes fluttering open again as if that small action took every ounce of strength he had left. He caught my face in his hands.
“Are you going to pass out?” I asked him.
“I’m going to do something…I shouldn’t,” he murmured, leaning up to me—trying to.
But then Rye’s arms fell free as those metal ones gathered him away from me.
“Nick.” Rye’s focus shifted to the looming figure beside me—the figure I had yet to fully look at since I could not tear my gaze away from Rye. “I found her.”
“Who, friend?” asked a low but lovely voice as its owner cradled Rye’s scarecrow frame in those metal arms as though he weighed nothing. Which, in truth—at least in his scarecrow form—he nearly did.
“Ozma,” said Rye, the rasped coupling of syllables shocking me, both due to the name’s familiarity and the fact that Rye himself had never spoken it to me—not once. “Nick. I…found…Ozma.”
With that final word, that name, Rye’s eyelids fell.
“Rye!” I scurried after the cloaked stranger as he turned away with the man I hadn’t meant to fall in love with. A man I couldn’t allow him to remove from my sight. Not until I knew he was well.
Tall and broad-shouldered with a smooth, dark metal head, the figure carrying Rye ignored my efforts to keep up. Nick’s heavy boots—metal like the rest of him—clanked against the snow-shrouded stones as he walked, the tread of one imprinting the drifts with the interlocked letters O and Z.
“Where are you taking him?” I demanded, having to hurry to keep up.
“Don’t touch him,” snapped the figure—Nick—as I reached after Rye.
Though his icy retort should have been what prompted me to recoil, it was this new sovereign’s gaze that elicited this reaction from me. A pair of dark round goggles obscured his eyes—or served as them, I couldn’t tell which—while a mouthless metal mask embellished with artful copper swirls hid the man’s face.
Or…perhaps that was his face.
Hadn’t Jack told me The Woodsman was made of metal?
An ebony, knee-length, military-style frock lined with pewter buttons hid the rest of the man’s form. But his face, arms, and hands—didn’t they serve as evidence that Jack had known what he was talking about?
“I’m coming with him,” I insisted.
“Seize her,” said Nick, ignoring me to command the heavily armored black-clad guards between whom he passed.
“No!” I shouted, rushing ahead, straight into the grips of the guards who took hold of me as Nick had commanded. “Let me go!”
“Take her to the north tower,” commanded Nick. “And may no one speak to her.”
My mouth fell open at this, and I gawped after the metal man—the King of the West—as he took Rye away.
“Rye!” I screeched again. But then, when a strong gloved hand went to cover my mouth, I shouted no more.