Kendra Kandlestar and the Shard From Greeve by Lee Edward Födi Page B

they had come.



IT WOULD BE HARD TO DESCRIBE the despair that our three small companions now felt. Here they were, having crossed river and forest, having survived wild beast and vicious monster, only to find their journey obstructed by a plain wall of rock. They were so close to the town of Ireshook, and yet it might as well have been on the other side of the world.
    “Who ever heard of such a ridiculous thing?” Jinx growled. “How are we supposed to reach this miserable town?”
    Such was her wrath, that she turned and hurled her poker at the wall. As soon it struck they heard a loud “OUCH!”
    “Eek!” Oki cried. “Who said that?”
    “Why, it was me,” came the voice again, and now they found themselves staring up into a face of stone that had appeared in the wall.
    “Who are you?” Kendra asked.
    “Why, I am the gate to Ireshook,” the face replied, his features rippling in the rock. “It says so right here above my brow. Can’t you read?”
    Kendra looked way up and indeed could now see some lettering chipped into stone above the gate’s face.
    “Well, I can’t read very well,” Jinx snapped, retrieving her poker, which was now slightly bent. “The professor has been trying to teach me, but he’s a hard person to spend any amount of time with. I prefer to polish my weapons.”
    “Indeed— I imagine they would need a lot of polish if you go throwing them at hapless doorways so often,” the gate remarked with a slight sniff.
    “I had no idea you would actually feel anything,” Jinx offered in apology.
    “You are no better than one of those Ungers and such,” the gateway admonished. “Those monsters always think they can just hammer their way through me. Fools! I’m an enchanted gate, of course, built to protect Ireshook from thugs and ruffians. All the violence in the world will do you no good here.”
    “Then how may we pass?” Kendra asked, fiddling with one of her braids.
    “Why, you must use your intellect,” the gate replied cheerfully. “Which means you must answer my riddles. There are three of you, so that means three riddles.”
    “This is just like the door in the castle of Krodos,” Oki said. “Except he asked just one riddle.”
    “Did you say Krodos?” the gateway asked with curiosity. “Why, the riddle door there is my cousin.”
    “Your cousin!” Kendra exclaimed. “How can a door have a cousin?”
    “We were built in the same workshop,” the gateway replied. “Old Yanu the Dwarf built us. That was hundreds of years ago, but I remember it as clearly as yesterday. My cousin complained without end as Yanu chipped and chiseled him into existence.”

     

    “That door did seem to have a rather nasty demeanor,” Oki recalled.
    “Yes, my mother said it was because he had a vein of gold streaking through him,” the gateway said.
    “So he was rather vain then?” Oki asked.
    “Vain? Oh, I see your pun!” the door said. “He was vain because of the vein! Quite clever! Hee hee . . . ho ho . . . ha ha!” The gateway laughed so hard that grains of sand trickled from his granite eyes.
    “Ratchet would be very proud of me,” Oki beamed.
    “Yes, you’re a real wit,” Jinx muttered. “Well, come on, gate, give us your riddles.”
    “Very well,” the gateway said, after recovering from his bout of laughter. He cleared his rocky throat and declared:

    I can ban the brightest light,
    Protect you from the cold of night.
    Your only mission is to draw me,
    But not with lead, or ink, or artistry.
    What am I?
     

    “Oh dear,” Oki murmured with a twitch of his little nose. “That’s a tricky one.”
    “I never thought I’d say this, but I wish Bumblebean was here,” Jinx declared. “He’s the one who solved our last riddle.”
    “We’ll just have to do it without him,” Kendra said. “Let’s think it through. What can you draw with, if not ink or lead?”
    “How about chalk?” asked Oki.
    “No, the riddle says no ‘artistry,’” Kendra