Bet nodded, then dug into her satchel. She produced her small spellbook and flipped through the pages. She held the book open to a page toward the end. “Ahnqua,” she said as she circled her wand around Evin’s ear, then Jorick’s. “Fawel upwo.”

As Bet finished her spell, Evin felt as if the world had gone silent. The sound of the gnolls’ howling, the noise of the crackling bonfire, even his own breathing, all disappeared. And then, with a roaring whoosh, sound rushed at Evin all at once, the noises piercing his eardrums as though someone had shoved searing needles into his head.

Evin grabbed his ears, and at his side, Jorick did the same.

“What did you—” Evin began to say. The endless baying of the gnolls had suddenly ceased to be incomprehensible animal noise.

“We have been waiting too long!”

“We demand to know why the meat you had us steal is not fit for consumption!”

“These are not the humans we were promised!”

The noises the gnolls made were the same as before—all yips and howls and snarls—but somehow their foreign words were translated into fully formed phrases in Evin’s mind. Even so, so many voices spoke at once as the crowd of gnolls grew more and more riled up that it was difficult to make sense of it.

“Who are they talking to?” Jorick asked.

Evin shook his head. He was about to respond when above their heads came the whooshing sounds of a giant pair of wings.

Evin craned his neck and watched as the answer to Jorick’s question descended through the hole in the cavern’s ceiling.

Chapter Seventeen

As the creature soared through the smoke and was illuminated by the raging bonfire, Evin realized he’d seen it before. Or, at least, a painting that looked very much like it.

“Bet,” Evin whispered. “That’s the monster on the Practical Guide!”

She raised an eyebrow, then pulled the book out of her satchel. Just as Evin remembered, a painting of a similar monster stared at them from the book’s green leather cover.

Just like the illustration, the monster’s body was an unusual mix of three separate creatures: in addition to a long scaly tail and dragonlike wings, its body and front legs were sleek and tawny furred, like a cat, and its hind legs white and hooved. Most unusual of all was the fact that the monster had three distinct heads. The one in the center was like a maneless lion. The head on the left was the horned and bearded face of a goat. The one on the right was the long-snouted, scaly head of a red dragon with serpentine eyes.

Quickly flipping through the book, Bet opened to the page with Zendric’s notes on the creature. Beneath another painting of the creature—its dragon’s snout opened wide to spew forth fire—the page was labeled “Chimera.”