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  CONTENTS

  Chapter One Discovery in the Dungeon

  Chapter Two Igor

  Chapter Three Night Noises

  Chapter Four “The Most Dangerous Night”

  Chapter Five The North Tower

  Chapter Six The Tower Door

  Chapter Seven Much Ado about Nothing

  Chapter Eight The Morning After

  Chapter Nine Igor Explains

  Chapter Ten Into the World

  Chapter Eleven The Reward

  Chapter Twelve The Golden Collar

  Chapter Thirteen “This Way to Nilbog”

  Chapter Fourteen Through Caverns Deep and Dark

  Chapter Fifteen Over the River and through the Rocks

  Chapter Sixteen Nilbog

  Chapter Seventeen At the Goblin Banquet

  Chapter Eighteen Out of the Darkness

  Chapter Nineteen Trying to Get a Head

  Chapter Twenty Head to Heart

  Chapter Twenty-One Goblin Friends

  A Note from the Author

  About Bruce Coville

  Special thanks to Steve Clorfeine for the necessary solitude, and to Paula Danziger for the listening.

  For Laura

  CHAPTER ONE

  DISCOVERY IN THE DUNGEON

  I was found on the drawbridge of Toad-in-a-Cage Castle on a cold December night. I was naked, they tell me, wrapped only in a blanket and tucked in a basket. If the Baron had not been out riding that night he would not have seen me, and I would have been buried beneath the snow by morning.

  To the surprise of Hulda, his housekeeper, the Baron didn’t send me away. Instead, he hired a nurse to come and take care of me.

  I liked Nurse, despite her unusual fondness for toads. However when I was about five she fell into the moat and was eaten by something or other.

  After that I pretty much took care of myself.

  I had the run of the castle and could go anywhere I wanted—except the North Tower, which was always locked. Naturally, I wanted to know what was up there. But I learned early on not to ask about it. Questions upset people.

  Not that there were many people to upset; only the Baron, Hulda, and Karl, the young man who tended the library.

  I liked Karl. He was very smart, and when he had time he would give me lessons. However, this did not happen often, because caring for the library was a big job. (The Baron owned so many books he had had to knock out the walls between seven rooms to hold them all!)

  Most of what I knew about the outside world came from the books Karl shared with me.

  The library itself was my favorite place in the castle. Its floor was covered by a thick, soft carpet, its walls made of dark wood. Mazes of tall, book-crammed shelves filled the interior. The windows, which curved out from the side of the building, were twice as tall as a man; the huge velvet curtains that covered them used to be red and were still soft and warm. On cold days I liked to take a book and curl up on one of the sills. Wrapping a curtain around me like a blanket, I would alternate between reading and staring out at the distant village, the forest, the mountains.

  I often wondered what it was like out there, beyond the castle walls that I had never left.

  From one of the windows I could see the North Tower, which was shrouded in mist on even the sunniest of days.

  • • •

  One rainy evening in October Karl was repairing books, Hulda was sleeping, and the Baron was hidden away with one of the mysterious visitors that sometimes came to the castle gate. I was on my own, as usual. For some reason—perhaps because the voices that moaned along the hallway outside my room had been so loud the night before—I couldn’t settle down to read.

  I went to my room and played with Mervyn, the rat I had tamed the year before. When he ran off, I decided to go to bed. Slipping out of my clothes, I pulled on my nightshirt, then drew aside the curtain surrounding my bed and climbed beneath the covers.

  I couldn’t sleep.

  A streak of lightning sizzled through the night. I liked to watch lightning, so I got up and sat by my window. But the lightning did not continue. After a while I grew tired of watching the thick drops splat against the glass and decided to go exploring. I had been exploring the castle for years and still hadn’t discovered everything about it—partly because it was so huge, partly because it had so many secret passages and hidden rooms. These were what I looked for when I explored. To find them I pushed bricks, moved picture frames, and fiddled with the knobs carved in the mantelpieces of the fireplaces.

  Lighting a candle, I went to my own fireplace, which was tall enough to stand in. I pushed a certain brick and the fireplace swung around, putting me in the passage behind it.

  I had discovered this passage when I was only six. Once in it, I could get into any other room on my floor. But since it was my floor, since I was the only person living there, it didn’t do me much good.

  The worst thing about the secret passages was that they were so dark. When I first started exploring I had tried taking torches with me, but somehow the Baron always found out and told me not to. I understood why; some passages were lined with wood, or even drapes, and it would have been easy to start a fire in them. Finally I had started carrying candles. They didn’t provide much light, but they were better than nothing, and the Baron never said anything about them.

  About a hundred feet from my room a hidden stairway led to some secret rooms in the East Tower. Holding my candle before me, I made my way to the steps, then climbed three flights to a room dominated by a clock several feet taller than I am. I had seen this clock many times without ever really looking at it. But on this day I felt a hunch about it.

  Opening the glass-paneled door, I put my hand inside. The wood behind the counterweights seemed solid. But when I climbed a chair and moved the hands of the clock to point straight up, as if it were midnight, I heard the familiar whisper of a sliding panel. The back of the clock had disappeared!

  I jumped off the chair. Squeezing my way through the clock’s door, I found myself in a narrow passage. Keeping one hand against the smooth, cool stones of the wall, I moved slowly forward. Even with the candle, I didn’t notice the stairway going down until I put my foot on a spot that wasn’t there.

  The jolt knocked the breath out of me. Had I not been going slowly, I probably would have broken my neck falling down that stairwell, which stretched as far as I could see, no matter how high I lifted the candle.

  I began to count as I walked. Fifty steps. A hundred steps. Two hundred steps. By now I must be down among the wine cellars.

  Three hundred steps! I began to wish I had changed back into my clothes. The air was cool down here.

  I had to be far past the wine cellars now, all the way to the dungeons. I shivered. I had never been to the dungeons before. In fact, I only knew they existed because Karl had told me about them, hinting that they held dark secrets.

  Four hundred steps. Four hundred and fifty.

  How far into the earth does this stairway go?  I wondered as I neared the five hundredth step. But number five hundred was the end of it.

  Keeping my left hand pressed against the wall, I moved slowly forward.

  Fifteen paces brought me to a wooden door held together by thick iron crosspieces.

  I could either turn ba
ck or open the door. Grasping the latch, which was enormous, I struggled to lift it without making any sound. It’s hard to say why I felt a need to move so quietly. I was sure I was alone. But something about moving in the darkness inspires silence.

  Besides, I liked to keep secrets.

  When I managed to lift the latch the door swung open easily.

  I saw a light flickering in the distance.

  My heart began to beat more rapidly. Who could possibly be down here?

  Again I thought about turning back. But my curiosity was driving me on, and I felt confident I could move so silently no one would know I was coming—though I don’t think even then I really believed there was anyone there.

  I started toward the light. Soon I could tell that it came from beyond a curve in the wall. As I continued forward I could see the outlines of the stones in the floor. The wall itself was damp and slightly chilly beneath my fingers. Even so, I pressed myself against it when I reached the curve. Inching my way forward, I saw the source of the light—a torch, stuck in a bracket.

  To my astonishment, I also heard someone singing! The voice was little more than a low growl, but the tune was rollicking.

  I could not make out the words.

  I stopped and tried to talk myself into turning back. But in my whole life I had never met anyone besides Nurse, the Baron, Hulda, and Karl. I had to know who was down here.

  Dropping to the floor, I set my candle down and began to creep forward. Beyond the torch an open door led to the source of the singing.

  Closer I crept, closer still, until I had almost reached the door. I took a deep breath.

  Slowly, ever so slowly, I poked my head around the corner.

  CHAPTER TWO

  IGOR

  “BOO!”

  I screamed and jumped into the air, then landed on the floor with a thump. My heart was pounding so hard I thought it would beat its way out of my chest, my hands trembling so violently I could not push myself off the floor.

  About three feet away from me a strange-looking person rolled on the floor, shaking with laughter. His snorts echoed weirdly from the stone walls.

  After a while the man (if man he was) caught his breath and pushed himself to a sitting position. He had huge, deep-set eyes and a balding head that glowed softly in the torchlight. His nose looked as if it had once been squashed, for it spread broadly across his face—most of which was covered by a huge black beard that hung halfway to his knees. A large hump rose from the upper right side of his back. He wore an old fur coat that reached almost to his feet, which were covered by battered boots laced with thick strips of leather.

  Next to him lay a lumpy brown something.

  Still chuckling, he pointed at me and said, “Good joke on you, boy!” His voice was low and gravelly.

  I pushed myself to my knees. “Who are you?” I asked. “What are you doing here?”

  The stranger stopped snorting. “Me Igor. Igor!  Igor live here. Igor always live here.”

  “What do you mean ‘always’? I’ve lived here for eleven years, and I’ve never seen you.”

  He smiled, displaying a set of crooked yellow teeth. “You are baby in this castle. Igor been here more than . . .” He stopped and began to count on his fingers. Finally he looked up and said, “More than six hundred years.”

  It was my turn to snort. “No one has lived anywhere for six hundred years. People die before they get that old.”

  Igor shrugged, causing his hump to shift like someone rolling under a blanket. “Igor done that before. Not much fun.” Grabbing one of the thick, rusty chains that hung from the wall, he pulled himself to his feet. The hump caused him to stoop, so he was only a little taller than me.

  Reaching down, he picked up the brown something that had been lying beside him.

  “What’s that?” I asked, climbing to my feet as well.

  “Igor’s bear !” he replied, swinging it through the air and whacking me on the head.

  “Hey!” I yelled, expecting it to hurt. It didn’t. Whatever this bear was, it was soft.

  “See?” said Igor proudly. “Bear good for bopping.”

  “Can I look at it?” I asked, holding out my hands.

  Igor stared at me. “No bopping!” he warned.

  I shook my head. “No bopping,” I promised, not bothering to add that I would have been terrified of trying to bop him.

  Igor handed me the bear. I had never seen anything like it. Between two and three feet high, it was made of fur sewn together with crude stitches and stuffed with something soft. It was like a doll, only shaped like a bear instead of a human.

  “Where did you get this?”

  “Made it,” said Igor, reaching out to take it back. I let go reluctantly. The bear was nice to hold.

  Tucking the bear under his arm, Igor moved a few steps away. His left boot was twisted sideways, and it dragged behind him, giving him an odd, shuffling gait.

  “How did you get here?” I asked.

  “Igor always been here,” he said with another of those shrugs. “This Igor’s home.”

  “Surely you weren’t born here.”

  “Born?” Igor wrinkled his brow as if he didn’t understand. Then he smiled. “Oh, born. No, Igor not born here. Don’t think Igor was born. Igor just is. Igor just here .”

  Clearly I wasn’t going to get anywhere with this line of questioning. “Where do you get your food?” I asked.

  “Take it.”

  I don’t know what prompted me to get indignant about that, but I did. “I think I had better tell the Baron about you,” I said. “You live in his castle without his knowing. You steal his food. He’s not going to like this.”

  I regretted the remark the moment I made it. For one thing, the Baron could spare the food. For another, Igor swung to face me with a look that made me want to melt into the stones of the floor.

  “Stupid boy!” he cried, shaking his bear at me. “You not tell Baron. Not tell anyone—or Igor fix you good.”

  I shivered.

  “Igor got to eat,” he continued in a voice like a growl. “Igor got to live. Igor live here. Only food in dungeon is mushrooms and little critters. Igor need more than that, so Igor take food. That part of the deal! ”

  “What deal?”

  “Igor got job. Igor do job, Igor get food.”

  “What is your job?”

  “Igor watch things.”

  “What things?”

  He put a crooked finger to his lips and shook his head. “Old Baron say, ‘Igor, if you know what good for you, keep your mouth shut.’ Igor know what good for Igor. Igor keep mouth shut. Boy keep mouth shut, too, if boy know what good for him .”

  “My name William . . . is William,” I said, inching my way toward the door. “And I won’t tell anyone about you. I promise.”

  “Wait,” said Igor. “Don’t go. Stay and talk to Igor.” He put his face close to mine and grinned. “Igor like talking to William.”

  Though he scared me, I liked talking to Igor, too. I had almost convinced myself to stay when he got an odd look on his face. Furrowing his brow, he whispered, “William hear that?”

  I listened and felt a chill. Something was moving in the darkness beyond Igor’s cell.

  “Go, William!” he cried. “Go now! Run fast. Come back later.”

  “Wait,” I said. “What’s going on? Will you be all right?”

  “Go!” cried Igor. “This Igor’s job. William go! Now!”

  Without waiting to see if I had done as he commanded he went shuffling down the corridor, dragging his bear by a back leg.

  Soon he had disappeared in the darkness.

  CHAPTER THREE

  NIGHT NOISES

  I stood for a moment, trying to decide what to do. Though I barely knew Igor, I felt that if he was in trouble I should try to help. On the other hand, he hadn’t acted frightened so much as agitated.

  What had made the noise? The sound was different from the moans and cries that so
often disturbed my sleep upstairs. This sound was more . . . solid.

  Holding my breath, I listened. I could hear Igor, a fair distance away now, still thumping down the hall. His footsteps stopped. A door creaked open.

  Then his voice came thundering out of the darkness.

  “William go. Now! ”

  I turned and ran, stopping only to retrieve my candle.

  As I rounded the curve beyond his cell I heard Igor’s voice, faint now, call, “Go now, but come back soon!”

  I trudged up the five hundred steps to the East Tower, considering telling the Baron, or even Hulda or Karl, about Igor.

  I didn’t.

  For one thing, Igor had asked me not to. For another, it was easy to not say things in that castle—especially things you weren’t sure you wanted to say. After all, it was practically impossible to get the Baron’s attention; he hardly knew I existed. Karl was always absorbed in his own work. And as for Hulda—well, Hulda couldn’t hear much better than the bread dough she was kneading when I went to see her the next day. I would have had to shout at the top of my lungs to tell her about Igor.

  It’s one thing to whisper a secret, something else altogether to scream it out.

  “Don’t you be picking at that dough, William,” Hulda bellowed as I stood watching her, trying to decide whether or not to say something about Igor.

  She didn’t shout out of anger. She always shouted, because of her bad hearing. It had been a relief to me when I finally figured that out; for years I had thought that she was permanently mad at me.

  Knowing she wasn’t serious, I darted my fingers into the floury mass being pounded beneath her plump hands and snitched a blob of dough.

  “Do that again,” she shouted, “and Granny Pinchbottom will come tweak your cheeks while you sleep!”

  I made a face. Hulda had been telling me Granny Pinchbottom stories for as long as I could remember—grisly tales about an ugly old woman who liked to punish naughty children. The story that had frightened me most was about Hulda’s finger. She had told it to me one morning when she caught me sticking my own finger into the sweet jar.