The Hero’s Guide to Storming the Castle. Christopher Healy

silver pin-striped pants. On their way to the stairwell, they passed a cleaning boy who was hard at work sweeping.

      “Don’t step in the dirt pile,” Liam helpfully warned his captors. As the two guards looked down, Liam quickly reached out, snatched the broom from the cleaning boy’s hands, and bashed it over the heads of his two armed escorts, cracking the long handle in two.

      “Aw, man,” the cleaning boy griped. “They make us buy our own brooms, you know!”

      “Sorry!” Liam shouted as he dashed away down the corridor. While the two disoriented guards struggled to their feet, the fugitive prince zipped around a corner. Straight ahead of him was an open window, an easy path to freedom. But before leaping through it, he paused.

      Briar is planning more than just a wedding, he thought. I’ve got to figure what.

      As the footsteps of the pursuing guards echoed from around the corner, Liam abandoned the window and darted up the nearest staircase. He’d heard Briar brag about the view from her top-story bedroom, so he headed straight to the upper level. As he dashed down hallways looking for a room that could be hers, he ran past several surprised servants and even a few befuddled guards.

      “New prince here,” he announced as he sprinted by and waved. “Just taking a tour of the place!”

      He turned down a corridor that dead-ended in a door that was framed by a twisted border of thorny vines and bright red roses. Thank you, Briar, for having just as little subtlety as I’d hoped.

      He strode up to the two sentries flanking the door and said, “How goes it, my good men?”

      “Um, okay?” one answered.

      Liam slammed their heads together, sending both men to the ground. He opened the door and stepped over the unconscious guards into Briar’s room. I’ve got to make this quick, he thought as he glanced around the room. He saw a carved ivory bed, platinum-plated vanity, dress dummies draped in extravagant gowns, framed portraits of Briar doing things she obviously never did (like taming a panther and throwing a spear into the moon). If Briar had some diabolical secret, where would she hide it? he asked himself. Someplace not even her maids would go. But someplace that has special meaning to her. Hmm. What has special meaning to Briar? Briar has special meaning to Briar! “The mirror!”

      He dashed to Briar’s full-length dressing mirror, reached behind it, and instantly found the latch to a hidden compartment. “Man, I’m good,” he said as he pulled out what appeared to be the princess’s personal journal. What he saw when he flipped through the pages made him shudder. There was a map, which Briar had labeled “The Kingdoms Fall.” On it, the nations surrounding Avondell had all been numbered and X’ed out. The notes scribbled beside each eliminated nation were as baffling as they were unsettling. Next to Erinthia (#1) was scrawled, “Marry in. Simple enough.” But by Valerium (#2) Briar had written, “King abdicates throne”; and by Hithershire (#3) it said, “Royal family imprisoned.” Liam saw his friends’ kingdoms on the list as well: Sturmhagen—“Army disbanded”; Harmonia—“Scandal ousts king”; Sylvaria—“Monarchs disappear into wilderness.” But none of these events had occurred. Was Briar able to see the future? Or was she planning on making these things happen herself? Was she plotting a takeover?

      It made sense, Liam thought. Briar never stopped wanting. And when you already own a kingdom, what is there left to yearn for but more kingdoms? The only question was how she planned to do it. What was the key to her scheme?

      He turned the page and saw: “The key is JJDG!”

      Well, that sort of helps, Liam thought. But what the heck does JJDG mean?

      He kept reading.

      “I’m so close I can taste it. It all begins with the wedding. Then JJDG. Then—”

      Liam was startled by the sound of footsteps running up the hall outside. He quickly shut the diary and slapped it back into its hiding place behind the mirror as his two frustrated prison guards rushed into the room.

      “Here I am, gentlemen,” Liam said, holding up his hands in the air. He was going to have to play along with Briar until he could find out more. “I give up. Take me back to Briar Rose. I’ll do whatever she wants.”

      The men grabbed Liam’s wrists and pulled them behind his back. “We’ll give her the message,” said one prison guard. “But you’re crazy if you think we’re not following through on her orders first. She said dungeon, so dungeon it’s going to be.”

      “Yup,” said the second guard while holding up a squirming burlap sack. “I’ve got the extra rats right here.”

      Liam went quietly this time, and moments later he was thrown into cell 842 on Dungeon Level B, a tiny stone room containing nothing more than a pile of hay on the floor and a few lovely landscape paintings on the walls (this was still Avondell, after all). The guards emptied a bag of live, skittering rats into the cell with Liam and then slammed the iron-bar door shut with a loud clang. A second later, the rats all scampered back out between the bars and ran off down the hall. The guards shrugged and walked away.

      “That happens every time,” came a rickety voice from the cell across the corridor. A scrawny older man with a wild, knee-length beard waved to Liam from behind iron bars of his own. A second prisoner, just as hairy and emaciated as the first, stood by his side.

      Fig. 6 CREMINS and KNOBLOCK

      “They always seem to think the rats will stay in the cells for some reason,” the second man said. “But of course they don’t. If I were that size, I’d have slipped through these bars ages ago. I don’t know why you don’t leave, Kippers.” That last bit was addressed to something sitting on the floor of the men’s cell.

      “Is he talking to that piece of straw?” Liam asked cautiously.

      “Shhh,” the first man whispered. “He thinks it’s a wiener dog. We’ve been in here a very long time.”

      “Hah! You ain’t kidding,” the second man said, picking up the piece of straw and petting it. “You know, I was clean-shaven when they first put me in here. Had a chin so shiny it could light up a room. Ain’t that right, Kippers?”

      Wow, these men must have been jailed here since long before Briar Rose’s reign of terror, Liam thought. “What are you two in for?” he asked.

      “Attempted assassination,” the first man said. “We’re innocent, of course—but I got tired of saying that after about the eighth or ninth year.”

      “Ooh! And now we get to guess why you’re locked up!” the second man hooted, hopping up and down on his calloused feet. “We don’t get to play this game very often; it’s exciting. Okay, lemme see. . . . You’re wearing a cape, so . . . I’ve got it! You’re a cape thief! They don’t tolerate stealing another man’s cape around these parts.”

      “Nah, you’re all wrong, Knoblock. Look at him,” the first man countered. “Flowy shirt cuffs, spiffy belt buckle—not to mention that lustrous head of hair. He’s the swashbuckling type. You were doing a stealing-from-the-rich thing, weren’t you, kid?”

      Liam shook his head. “I’m sorry, but no. I’m just here for safekeeping until Briar Rose marries me.”

      The two old prisoners gaped in astonishment. “Could it be?” the first asked, his frail voice quivering. “Are you the kid from Erinthia?”

      Liam took a step closer, peering through his cell door at the other men. “I am Prince Liam of Erinthia. Who are you?”

      The prisoners gripped the bars of their cell and howled with glee.

      “Well, I’ll be dipped in griffin dung!” the man named Knoblock cried. “Finally!”

      “You’ve got to get us out of here,” the other said with desperation.

      “Well,