It took more than an hour for the snakes to all slither down through the open doorway in the lake. The sun was fully in the sky before we made our way down to solid ground again. In fact, there were still a few snakes slithering their way toward the lake when we came down, but we had to risk it. Neel figured that the doorway might close up again after all the snakes had gone within.
He was right. No sooner had we followed—at a little distance—the last few snakes down the secret entrance than the doorway of water closed behind us.
It was dark as midnight below the surface of the lake. I held on to the back of Neel’s shirt as I basically stumbled through the archway and down the long flight of stairs. As unpredictable as it made him, I was grateful for his warm rakkhosh constitution. His back was like a little heater on my hand, a relief in the cold and clammy cavern under the lake.
“You know, I was ten when I found out what my mother was,” Neel whispered as we stumbled along, one stair at a time. “I always knew the other queens didn’t like her, but I thought they were just jealous because she was the senior rani and her son would be king.”
“Um … maybe we could exchange life stories later …” I hissed back. Neel was exhibiting a less-than-ideal sense of timing. We were climbing down a magical under-a-lake staircase into a kingdom filled with killer snakes. This really wasn’t the time for a heart-to-heart chat about our childhoods.
But Neel just kept rambling. “When it came out that she was a rakkhoshi in disguise, they wanted to exile both of us, or maybe kill us.”
The dank underwater air, not to mention my own overwhelming sense of doom, was making me shiver, and I wondered if all this gabbing was Neel’s way of dealing with his own nervousness.
“Okay,” I hissed as we kept climbing down. “I’ll bite. I’m guessing, since you’re here now and we all know your mom’s alive and kicking, that your father stopped people from killing you?”
“Yeah, but he threw her out of the palace and made Lal crown prince instead of me.”
Ah, so that’s how it happened, I thought, my eyes just barely adjusting to the darkness. The Raja had unfairly discriminated against Neel because of who his mother was. I felt a new sense of sympathy for the half-demon prince. His family life was a lot more complicated than I knew.
“So I guess after that, your mom got angry and ate everything in sight?”
“Basically.” We were nearing the bottom of the stairs. “The thing was, she’d promised herself she would live a human life when she fell in love with my father.”
“And she felt betrayed, after all that sacrifice.”
“I had to banish her from our lives, otherwise my father would have found a way to kill her for sure.”
When you got right down to it, the Rakkhoshi Queen hadn’t been treated very fairly. Not that it was an excuse for eating people, but it was an explanation.
As we got to the bottom of the stairs, the darkness grew steadily lighter—from black to gray and then ash. There was a light coming from somewhere ahead of us. As we went down the last step onto the muddy floor of the cavern, the light grew even brighter.
“There it is!” Neel whispered.
I looked where he was pointing. Wow. The light in the cavern was coming from a huge jewel in the middle of the otherwise empty room.
“It must be the python jewel.” I stepped forward. “It’s beautiful.”
“Just grab it, Princess, and let’s get out of here,” Tuntuni said, his claws digging painfully into my shoulder.
“Why is nobody guarding it?” Neel pulled me back behind him into the shadows. “Wait, something’s not right.”
We stood a couple of minutes in a dim corner below the staircase. Neel was directly in front of me, so I didn’t see what he did, but I did hear his intake of breath.
“What?”
“Well,” Neel whispered back, “there’s good news and bad news.”
“Good first.”
“Good news is—that probably is a python jewel, so it’ll work to read the map.”
“And the bad?”
“Bad news—it’s being guarded by the most humongous python I’ve ever seen.”
I peeked from behind his broad back and had to stifle a yelp. Tuntuni dug his nails in harder. I couldn’t blame him.
Just as Neel had said, a gargantuan python was prowling the room, slithering in broad circles around the stone. It was so big, it made that rakkhosh from my front lawn look like an overgrown garden gnome.
My fingers and feet felt like ice. The cold of the cave had seeped into my bones, making me shiver from the inside out. Saving my parents, Lal, and Mati depended on us getting to the Mountains of Illusions. And us getting to the Mountains of Illusions depended on us being able to read the moving map. And us being able to read the moving map
depended on us getting that stupid python jewel—and somehow getting by that huge snake. But there was no way we could possibly do that and still be alive.
My stomach clenched and my teeth started to rattle so much I was afraid the snake might hear them. I was having trouble getting in enough air and started seeing black spots in front of my eyes.
“Breathe, Kiran.” Neel turned around, placing a warm hand on my shoulder. “You’ve got to keep it together. We need that jewel. Our families are counting on us.”
His words melted a bit of the brain freeze that was paralyzing me.
“How are we going to get it without that thing noticing?” It seemed impossible.
“It’s impossible!” The talking bird was totally histrionic. “Impossible, I tell you!”
“We’ll let the python notice, that’s how we get the jewel.” Bringing his lips to my ear, Neel whispered his completely insane idea. I realized that it just might work. Problem was, if it didn’t, we’d all be snake chow.
“Are you sure?” I asked again, trying to keep my teeth from rattling.
“It’s the only way I can think of,” Neel muttered. “Believe me, if I could think of a better plan, I would have suggested it.”
“We’re all going to die, we’re all going to die,” Tuntuni mumbled, a yellow wing over his eye.
“Shut up, Tuni. Just stick to the plan.” Neel grabbed the bird and plunked him on his shoulder.
With a crooked smile he said, “Just don’t screw up, okay, Kiran?” And then Neel stepped into the light of the python jewel.
It took the serpent a minute to notice him. “Hey, snaky!” Neel waved his arms, distracting the snake away from me, and away from the jewel as well.
Then Tuntuni, who was now flying around in high circles near the ceiling, started singing a childish snake-charming song:
“Baburam Sapure
Where do you go, Bapure?
Come on, Baba, come and see
Snakes for you and snakes for me.”
As Neel had planned, the python hissed and turned away from the treasure it was protecting. It slithered rapidly toward Neel. I crept out of my hiding place and toward the jewel. I was supposed to grab it while Neel distracted the serpent. The problem was, Neel hadn’t calculated how much faster the snake would be able to travel over the muddy ground than I was. As I tried to run toward the jewel, my feet got more stuck in the cloying silt. No matter how hard I tried to urge myself forward, the ground didn’t seem to want to let me. Oh, this was bad. Very bad.
“Come on, snaky, is that the best you can do?” Neel taunted, even as the python gained ground toward him. “You need a little snake charmer to teach you a lesson?”
Tuntuni sang:
“These snakes are alive
In your basket they thrive
Bring me one or two
And I’ll beat them black and blue.”
So far, Operation Distract and Annoy was working, but at this rate, there was no way that I would make it to the jewel before the snake reached Neel. In fact, it was on him now, and even though he fought its parries with his sword, he couldn’t seem to injure it. Tuntuni carried on singing near the ceiling but seemed too afraid to help in the fight.
With a hiss, the snake almost knocked Neel over. I struggled to hurry, but the cavern floor’s muddy surface was like walking through molasses. My thighs burned from the strain of fighting to move faster and faster. But I hadn’t progressed anywhere near where I needed to go. At this point, I was still closer to Neel and the serpent than the jewel.
Then the snake grabbed a hold of Neel, wrapped itself around him, and began to squeeze. It was obvious how much stronger the animal was than the half-demon prince. Neel was struggling. He had kept a grip on his sword and tried to injure the python with its slashes, but the snake’s skin was unbelievably tough. The sword barely made a dent. Tuntuni, to his credit, made a few haphazard dives down from the roof, flapping his wings in the snake’s eyes, but he couldn’t break the python’s concentration now that it had its prey. Neel’s face got redder as the snake squeezed.
“Princess, do something, the slacker’s gonna die!” Tuntuni shrieked.