Whatever Nathan had expected — some kind of dungeon or torture chamber — it wasn't this. Unlike the rest of the fortress, this room wasn’t all stone. The floor was wood, and the ceiling and walls were crisscrossed with wooden beams. In one corner, red and yellow flames crackled in a large fireplace loaded with logs. A stack of cut wood lay nearby. Each end of the room was draped with a wide, colorful tapestry unlike anything Nathan had ever seen except for in the movies.
There were no windows. No light coming in. Only the fire and the torches, two on each wall. The room was vast, and at its center was a long table roughly hewn from trees without the same talent that had gone into the construction of the fortress itself. But it was a table, and good enough to use for a table's uses. The chairs around the table were only slightly better constructed.
What drew Nathan's immediate attention, though, were the plates of food that were spread out across the table. At the center was the largest roasted turkey Nathan had ever seen. He could smell it now, even over the stench of Cragskull, and his mouth began to water. He didn't remember when he'd eaten last. There were large iron pitchers that he thought must have water in them, or at least something he could drink. There were plates of boiled potatoes and some kind of green vegetable that he wouldn't even think about eating if he weren't so hungry. There were other things as well, but Nathan ignored them.
Slowly, he stepped toward the table. Cragskull didn't try to stop him. The monster just stood near the open door and watched as Nathan made a plate for himself of turkey and potatoes and some kind of cake that he'd never seen before. He sat down on one of the uncomfortable chairs and started to dig in. There were no forks or knives that he could see, other than the huge carving knife sticking out of the turkey, but Nathan didn't care.
He'd eaten with his hands before.
Most of the turkey was gone, and a few of the potatoes, when Nathan paused a moment in his eating. He glanced up at the turkey. At the huge carving knife jutting from its breast.
One of the doors slammed open behind him with a crack that made him jump from his chair, knocking over his plate and dumping potatoes onto the floor. Nathan spun to see that, by the huge double wooden doors, Bob Longtooth had entered and now stood by Cragskull. The sabertoothed-tiger man's huge tusklike teeth jutted down from his upper jaw, even as Longtooth gnashed his teeth, smacking his lips.
Nathan didn't know if he was reacting to his own presence, or the presence of the food. But he didn't want to know. Quickly, he scrambled under the table and came up on the other side. His eyes were wide as he stared at Longtooth, and the slashes in his back began to burn like some phantom reminder. But Nathan didn't need anything to remind him who had made those slashes.
"Hello, boy," Bob Longtooth growled happily. "Looksss like the General couldn't sssave you after all."
As hard as he could, Nathan tried to come up with a response to that. Some defense of the General. But what could he say? Finally, he only said, as defiantly as possible, "He'll come after me."
From the hallway beyond the wooden doors, two dark shapes appeared. There came a loud snorting and Longtooth and Cragskull scrambled quickly aside. Now Nathan saw that there were not two but three dark shapes, and they ambled powerfully into the room, snorting and grunting, scraping the wooden floor with their knuckles.
The Simian Sisters. Nathan blinked twice. Stared.
"They . . . they shouldn't be here," he said, almost to himself, as he stared at the three identical mountain gorillas.
But even as he stared at them, he knew what was to come next, and he backed up even further as he stared out into the hallway. He stopped only when he backed into a tapestry-covered wall that allowed him to move no further.
The Jackal Lantern entered the room.
Nathan knew what the Jackal Lantern looked like. His father had read him the books and shown him the pictures. But really seeing him . . . Nathan didn't feel angry anymore. He tried to get mad, but he just couldn't. His breath came in short, ragged gasps, but he paid no attention. He was barely thinking, completely consumed with fighting his fear and the hot, burning sensation of impending tears that came to him now.
It moved like a huge dog, though its upper paws were more like hands than anything a dog might have. But for a dog, it was awfully mangy and lean, and he knew that it was really a jackal, which was like an African coyote or something.
The Jackal Lantern moved into the room and stood on its hind legs, arms crossed before it, to stare at Nathan as best it could stare. For the Jackal Lantern had no real head to speak of. Once upon a time, according to the stories, it had had a real head. But now it only had a pumpkin, face carved to look vicious and savage. And inside that pumpkin, orange light burned so brightly that it shone like a flashlight across the room.
It stared at Nathan, and the boy looked down to see that its face — its eyes and nose and mouth — was projected onto his shirt by that bright light. He was marked by it where he stood in the dimly lit room.
Then he couldn't look at it again. Nathan knew if he looked up one more time, if he opened his eyes, he would start crying and he didn't know if he'd be able to stop. So he didn't look. He just wrapped his arms around his body and shuddered and tried to pretend he was anywhere but there.
"You're unkind, young Nathan," the Jackal Lantern said. There was a weird kind of echo to his deep voice, as if it came not from his mouth, but from the flame inside that pumpkin head.
"The Simian Sisters have done nothing to you, boy, yet you insult them?" the Lantern persisted.
Nathan bit his lip. Then, at length, he repeated himself. "They shouldn't be here," he said. Then added, "my daddy told me about them, but he hasn't put them in any of the books yet."
At that, the Jackal Lantern laughed, and the motion of his head cast a flickering image of his face across the walls of the room as he moved with his mirth.
"If you weren't a child, and too young to account for your foolishness, I'd eat your dripping heart for my supper," the Lantern said cruelly, and then its voice became amused again. "But of course, supper's already laid out, is it not?"
Nathan tensed, thinking the Lantern would approach. It did not. Instead, it waved a hand at one of the Simians, and the gorilla fled the room instantly.
"You wouldn't understand the rest of it, boy, but I'll tell you this much, what your idiot father puts down in those books has nothing to do with what really happens here."
The Simian who'd left the room returned, and Nathan was astonished to see that she held a large stack of books in her hands. His father's books; copies of all the Strangewood books. He almost asked how they could be here, in Strangewood itself. But then he remembered that he was here. And Grumbler had stolen some of his clothes and brought them here.
At a nod from the Jackal Lantern, the Simian dropped the books into a stack in front of the fire. Ol' Jack, as some of them called him, dropped onto all fours and sauntered over to the pile of books. His pumpkin head hung just as a dog's head would from his shoulders, but where there should have been a hanging, lolling, panting tongue, there was only a burst of orange light from the flame inside his head.
The Jackal Lantern was the most frightening thing Nathan had ever seen. As the boy watched, it trotted to the books, lifted its leg, and let loose with a stream of steaming, acrid-smelling, yellow piss, which was soaked up instantly by the books. His father's books. All the love Nathan's father had ever given Strangewood.
The Lantern stood again on two legs and glanced over at Longtooth. "Bob," he said, "the boy seems to think the General will come for him. I want Our Boy to come, but the General could be a problem. I doubt he'll come, but to be safe, take that stupid pony and go down into the wood after him. If he gets to this fortress before you, don't bother coming back. And when you find the dwarf, tell him I want to see him as well."
With a nod and a short bow, Bob Longtooth withdrew. Then, at the Jackal Lantern's instructions, Cragskull and the Simians sat down to feast upon what was left on the table.