The Forbidden Fortress lived up to its name. Once the four adventurers had found their way in through its massive oaken doors, it was almost impossible to tell the darkness of the shadow world outside the castle from the shadow world within. Either way, it was intimidatingly dark, and the farther Jay and Carlos and Evie and Mal crept inside, the more their nervous whispers echoed through the ghostly, abandoned chambers.
Jay wished he’d worn something warmer than his leather vest. Mal’s lips were turning blue, Carlos’s breath appeared in white clouds as he spoke, and Evie’s fingers felt like icicles when Jay grabbed them. (Once. Or twice. And strictly for warmth.) It was colder than Dragon Hall inside, and there was no chance of anything getting any warmer; there were no logs on the fireplace grates, no thermostats to switch on.
“That’s modern castle living.” Evie sighed. “Trade in one big, cold prison for another.” Mal nodded in agreement. Privately, Jay thought that Jafar’s junk shop seemed downright cozy in comparison, but he kept that to himself.
Inside every corridor, a dense fog floated just above the black marble floor. “That has to be magic. The fog doesn’t just do that,” Mal said.
Carlos nodded. “The refracted energy seems stronger here. I think we’re closer to the source than we’ve ever been.”
As he spoke, an icy wind blew past them, whistling in through the shattered stained-glass windows high above them. Each step they took reverberated against the walls.
Even Jay the master thief was too intimidated to try and take anything, and kept his hands to himself for once.
Of course once they did find the scepter, he’d have to man up. Jay knew that, and he’d made his peace with it—no matter how well they’d all gotten along on the way there.
Villains don’t have friends, and neither do their children. Not when you get right down to it.
None of them had come there out of loyalty to Mal, or friendship. Jay knew what he had to do, and he’d do it.
Until then, his hands stayed in his pockets. If this haunted place was selling it, he didn’t want it.
“What’s that?” Jay asked, pointing. Green lights flashed through half-shattered panes of glass, but he couldn’t figure out the source.
“It’s what we’ve been tracking all along,” Carlos answered. “That same electromagnetic energy: it’s going crazy.” He shook his head at the flashing lights on his box. “This fortress was definitely exposed to something that’s left a kind of residue charge—”
“You mean, an enchantment?”
He shrugged. “That, too.”
“And so, even after all these years, this place is somehow still glowing with its own light?” Evie looked amazed.
“Cool,” Jay said.
Mal shrugged it off. “In other words, we’re getting closer to the Dragon’s Eye.”
“Yep,” said Jay. Like the rest of the group, he knew what everyone else in the Isle and the kingdom knew—that the evil green light meant only one terrifying person.
Even if it probably reminded Mal of home.
Corridors led to more corridors, until they passed through dark hallways full of framed paintings shrouded in cobwebs and dust. “It’s a portrait gallery,” Evie said, straining to see the walls through the shadows. “Every castle has one.”
“Mal, stop it—” Jay shouted, looking behind him and jumping away.
Mal reached out and tapped his shoulder. She was standing right in front of him. “Hello? I’m not back there. I’m over here.”
“Crap. I thought that picture was you.” He pointed.
“That’s not me. That’s my mother,” Mal said with a sigh.
“Whoa, you really do look like her, you know,” Jay said.
“You two could be twins,” Evie agreed.
“That, my friends, is called genetics,” Carlos said with a smile.
“Gee, thanks—I look like my mother? Just what every girl wants to hear,” Mal replied. Still, Jay knew different. What Mal wanted, more than anything, was to be just like her mother.
Exactly like her.
Every bit as bad, and every bit as powerful.
That was what it would take for someone like Maleficent to even notice her—and Jay could tell that this portrait gallery was only making Mal want it that much more desperately.
“Now, what?” Mal asked, as if she were trying to change the subject.
Jay looked around. Before them were four corridors leading to four different parts of the fortress.
A foul draft issued from each of the paths, and Jay could have sworn he heard a distant moan; but he knew it was only the wind, winding its way through the curving passages. He yanked a matchbook from his pocket and lit a match, muttering a quick “eenie-meanie-miney-mo.”
“How scientific,” Carlos said, rolling his eyes.
“You got your way, I got mine. That one,” Jay said, pointing to the corridor directly in front of them. Just as he did, the wind blew out from that same passage, and the foul stench of something rotted or dead came along with it.
The wind snuffed the burning match out.
Evie held her nose, and Mal did the same.
“Are you sure about this?” Mal asked.
“Duh, of course not. That’s why I played eenie-meanie-miney-mo! One corridor is as good as the next,” Jay said, entering the corridor and not waiting for the rest to follow. It was the first rule of breaking into an unknown castle: you never let it get to you. You always act like you know what you are doing.
Jay had a feeling this fortress was playing with them, offering them choices when really all roads probably led to the same place. It was time to take matters back into his own hands.
“No, wait—you don’t know where you’re going. Carlos, check your box-compass-thing,” said Mal.
Carlos brought the box up to the intersection. It beeped. “Okay, I guess maybe Jay’s right.”
“Of course I am.”
They followed Jay into the dark corridor.
Carlos held the beeping box in his hands, the sound echoing off the stony walls. It led them to a dank, cold stairway that led further downward, deeper into darkness. The air felt colder and damper and in the eerie silence came a distant rattle, like bones striking rock, or chains rattling in the wind.
“Because that’s comforting.” Evie sighed.
“The dungeon,” said Mal. “Or you might know it as the place where my mother encountered the lovestruck Prince Phillip.”
Evie’s eyes were wide with awe. It was probably the most famous story in all of Auradon. “Maleficent was going to lock him down here for a hundred years, right? That would have been fun.”
Carlos looked around. “She nearly pulled it off, didn’t she?”
Mal nodded. “If not for that trio of self-righteous, busybody, blasted good fairies.” She sighed. “End of scene. Enter Isle of the Lost.”
“I don’t know about you, but I feel like we’ve been down here a hundred years already. Let’s get on with it,” Jay said.
He was more alert than he’d been all day, because he knew he was on the job now.
It was time to get to work.
Jay found a dungeon door. Carlos held the box inside, listening for its beep. “This is the one.”
He went ahead with the box, while Jay and Mal and Evie helped each other slowly down the steps, bracing themselves against the wall as they went. There was no rail, and the treads were coated in a black moss. Every step squished in the darkness, and it felt as if they were stepping on something living and wet.
“Suddenly the whole mud river thing doesn’t seem so bad,” said Evie.
“Seriously,” Jay said.
Mal didn’t say a word. She couldn’t. She was too distracted. Even the moss smelled like her mother.
It only grew thicker as they delved deeper into the dungeon. There were layer upon layer of gauzy cobwebs, a spider’s tapestry woven long ago and forgotten. Every step they took pulled apart the threads, clearing a way forward. All of them were quiet, hushed by the lingering menace in the air as their footsteps squished in the gloom.
“Here?” Mal asked, stopping in front of a rotten wooden door hanging partly off its hinges. When she touched it, the frame collapsed, sending the wood clattering against the floor. Even the heavy iron straps that had once bound the door fell against the stones and the wood, making an awful racket.
“Maybe we shouldn’t touch anything,” said Carlos, scrutinizing the device in his hands.
Mal rolled her eyes. “Too late.”
“I think this is it,” Carlos said.
Jay hoped he was right, that the box had led them to the Dragon’s Eye.
He couldn’t imagine what Mal would do to poor Carlos if it hadn’t. And Jay himself needed to get on with the job at hand.
Mal nodded, and Jay pushed aside what was left of the door. As they entered, he couldn’t help but notice that the shattered remains of the door and its frame looked like a kind of mouth—a panther’s mouth—and they were stepping through its open jaws, into the mouth of the beast.
“Did any of you notice—”
“Shut up,” Evie said tensely. They had all seen the same thing, which couldn’t be good. That was probably why nobody wanted to talk about it.
The four of them walked inside. The room was impossibly dark. There was not even a hint of light, not a glow from a distant window or a torch. Jay reached out, looking for a wall, something to touch.
“Maybe we should find a flashlight or something in Jay’s pockets, before we touch any—” Carlos warned, but it was too late.
Jay struck something with his hand, and the room was suddenly filled with the deafening sounds of metal and stone colliding and grinding and tinkling all around them.
And just as suddenly, they were bathed in the brightest light, a glow that burst from every corner of the room. The golden brilliance filled their eyes—and before they knew what was happening, the room was suddenly filling with sand.
Sand, sand everywhere…and they were falling into it, covered in it.
Evie screamed. Mal started to thrash. Carlos lost hold of his box. Only Jay stood perfectly still.
It wasn’t a dungeon, it was a cave.
A cave filled with sand…and, from what Jay could barely make out amid the massive dunes now surrounding him…treasure.
He looked around at the king’s ransom of jewels that glittered in between the dunes. Mound upon mound of gold coins shimmered in the distance, while hills of gold coins stretched as far as the eye could see. There were crowns and coronets, jeweled scepters and goblets, emeralds the size of his fist, diamonds as brilliant as the stars, thousands of gold doubloons and silver coins. There were larger things too: great obelisks, and coffins, lamps and urns, a pharaoh’s head, a winged staff, a chalice, and a sphinx made of gold.
A king’s ransom, he thought. That’s what this is.
Evie pushed the sand away and sat up, wearing a new crown on her head, quite by accident. “What is this? Where are we?”
“I can assure you this is not part of my mother’s castle,” said Mal wryly, as she spat out some sand and blew her purple bangs out of her eyes. She stood up, brushing sand off her leather jacket. “More residue from the hole in the dome?” she asked.
Carlos nodded. “It has to be. There’s no other explanation.”
“Wait a minute, where’s the scepter?” she asked Carlos, looking around. She sounded nervous. “It has to be here, right? Has anyone seen it?”
Carlos removed a golden bucket that had fallen on his head and picked up his box from where it was balanced on what looked like an ancient golden sarcophagus. He blew sand from the drive and checked the machine again. “It’s still working, but I don’t know. It’s not beeping anymore. It’s like it lost the signal, or something.”
“Well, find it again!” Mal barked.
“I will, I will.…Give me a second, here. You have no idea what sand can do to a motherboard.…”
Meanwhile, Jay was stuffing every pocket he had with as much of the marvelous loot as he could carry.
This was the answer to his dreams…the stuff he had been longing for…heaven on earth…the Biggest Score of his life, and his father’s!
It was…it was…
It dawned on him that he knew exactly where they were.
“The Cave of Wonders!” he cried.
“Come again?” asked Mal.
“This is the place—where my father found the lamp.”
“I thought Aladdin found the lamp,” said Carlos.
“Yes, but who sent him there?” asked Jay with a superior smile. “If it wasn’t for Jafar, Aladdin would have never found it. Hence it was my father’s lamp all along.” He looked annoyed. “But nobody ever mentions that part, do they? And my dad said he thought there might be other things hidden in the mist—he must have suspected this might be here too.”
“Fine. Cave of Wonders. More like Basement of Sand,” said Mal. “More important, how do we get out of here?”
“You don’t,” said a deep voice.
“Excuse me?” said Mal.
“I didn’t say anything,” said Jay, who was now wearing numerous gold chains around his neck and stacking diamond bracelets up his arm.
“Who was that?” asked Evie nervously.
They looked around. Nobody else seemed to be there.
“Fine. It’s nothing. Now, let’s find that door,” said Mal.
“You won’t,” said the booming voice again. “And you will be trapped here forever if you don’t answer me correctly!”
“Great,” Jay groaned.
“Is this another riddle? This whole fortress is, like, booby-trapped or something,” Evie grumbled.
“Multiple defenses—I told you,” Carlos said. “Burglar alarm. Probably for the Dragon’s Eye, don’t you think?”
“Cave? Should I call you Cave?” asked Mal.
“Mouth of Wonders will do,” said the voice.
Evie made a face. “That’s a terrible name.”
Mal nodded. “Okay, Mouth, what’s the question?”
“It is but a simple one.”
“Hit us,” Mal said.
The booming voice chuckled.
Then it asked in somber tones, “What is the golden rule?”
“The golden rule?” Mal asked, scratching her head. She looked at her team. “Is that some kind of jewelry thing? Jay?”
But Jay was too busy grabbing as much gold as he could get and didn’t seem to hear the question.
Carlos began frantically reciting every mathematical rule he could thing of. “Rules of logarithms? Rule of three? Rules expressed in symbols? Order of operations?”
“Is it maybe something about being nice to each other?” asked Evie tentatively. “Do unto others what you want done unto yourself? Some kind of Auradon greeting-card nonsense?”
In answer, the cave began to fill with sand again. The Mouth of Wonders was not happy, that much was clear. Sand appeared from everywhere, filling the room, filling the spaces between the stacks of gold coins, rising like water filling a sinking ship. They would soon suffocate if they did not give the Mouth the correct answer.
“It’s the Cave of Wonders, not the Fairy Godmother!” shrieked Carlos. “The Cave doesn’t care about being kind! That’s not the golden rule!”
The cave continued to fill with sand.
“Come on—this way!” Mal tried to climb the stacks of gold coins—thinking she could avoid the sand by getting closer to the ceiling—but they collapsed beneath her each time she attempted to scale them, and she only ended up buried in more treasure. She tried again, and this time Evie gave her a push from behind, so that she was able to grab on to the tall statue of a sphinx.
She mounted the creature’s back and reached to pull Evie up beside her, but the sand was still rising, already engulfing her leg, threating to keep her down.
“I can’t make it!” Evie shouted.
“You have to!” Mal yelled back.
But Evie had disappeared under the flood of sand.
Jay couldn’t believe it when he watched her go under. “Evie—”
“Come on—” Carlos said, feeling beneath the sand for her. “She has to be down here. Help me find her.”
“I can’t find her,” Jay shouted.
Evie popped back up, spluttering, spitting coins out of her mouth. Mal and Carlos and Jay looked relieved.
“Here—” Now Mal offered Carlos a hand to pull him up, but the sand was already at his chest. “C’mon,” she cried, “climb the sphinx!”
“I can’t,” he said.
“What?”
“My leg is caught.”
Evie climbed up on the sphinx and tugged at his arm on one side, and Mal from the other, but no matter what they did, Carlos didn’t budge an inch. He was stuck, and the sand was still rising around him. It came from the walls and from the floor, and now Evie noticed that it was coming from the ceiling too.
Mal tugged again at Carlos’s arm, but instead of pulling him from the sand, she pulled him out of Evie’s grasp. Evie tumbled into the ever-growing mounds of sand, crashing against chalices and crowns.
The sand covered her: first up to her knees, then her shoulders…
Carlos reached for her, and they held hands as the sand kept rising.
“At least I have my heels on,” Evie said, trying to sound brave. The sand was up to her neck, and Carlos could barely keep his chin above the surface now.
“JAY! WHERE’S JAY?” yelled Mal, looking around, coughing up sand as she frantically held Carlos by the arm.
“JAY!”
Jay was flailing in the sand; it was in his hair, in his eyes. He was also covered with gold doubloons. Gold. So much gold. He’d never seen so much gold in his life. He had all the gold in the world, it felt like.
He would die buried in gold.…
The golden rule…
What is the golden rule?
Why, he knew the answer to that.
He could almost hear his father whispering the answer in his ear.
Meanwhile, Carlos and Evie had disappeared beneath the sand again, and Mal herself was about to go under.
The sand was nearly at the ceiling. Soon there were would be nowhere to escape to—no way to avoid the sand, and no air in the chamber. They were running out of time and out of room.
But Jay knew the answer.
Jay knew he could save them.
“WHOEVER HAS THE MOST GOLD MAKES THE RULES! THAT’S THE GOLDEN RULE!” Jay cried triumphantly, raising a fist in the air.
There was a great booming chuckle, and the sand slowly started to melt into the drains. Soon Jay and Mal and Evie and Carlos were standing right back in the fortress, out of the dungeons altogether.
The Cave of Wonders had disappeared, but then so had all its treasure.
“Fool’s gold,” said Jay sadly, looking at his empty pockets. “All of it.”