The Superior’s presence saved them. Soldiers who might have caused problems stood cowed by the ancestral lace of his sleeves, the dusty embroidery of his silk travelling cap, the mildewed campaign tent bundled on to the backs of the pack-birds. Even the fact he was so tiny and crabbed seemed to speak in his favour. The pressure of his inheritance had squashed, like a blob of warm, pink wax beneath the cold weight of an ancient signet ring.
Just after sunset they found the remains of the bounty hunters’ camp, but this time there were signs that it had merged with another, larger camp, spreading across the crushed grass like a double-yolked egg. Hathin swallowed drily and stooped to pick up a green stick. She tried to count the thumbnail creases that striped it, but they were too densely packed and her eyes blurred.
Jaze knelt and prodded at a stripped stem with only the seed head left untouched. The seed head did not point along the well-trodden track, but along a narrower path.
‘It looks as if they took her straight to the Safe Farm, not to Mistleman’s Blunder. This is last night’s camp – she’ll be there by now.’ Jaze looked up at Hathin, and the evening light shifted in his eyes in a way that resembled sympathy. ‘It might buy your sister a little time. If Minchard Prox is in Mistleman’s Blunder, perhaps nobody at the Farm will work out who she is . . .’
Hathin could suddenly feel every ache of her journey, every blister from her new boots, every lost hour of sleep. She staggered over to a roll of cloth that had been unloaded from the Superior’s carriage, sat heavily upon it and dropped her face into her hands.
She did not raise her face again until bonfire smoke stung her eyes. She looked about her, and found that there were only a handful of Lace still sitting up around the fire. The Superior had retired to his tent, his guards to the perimeter of the camp. Jeljech had apparently fallen asleep against Therrot’s shoulder, her face locked in a frown, one of his arms still imprisoned by hers.
‘That’s right,’ Therrot said gently as Hathin came closer. ‘You’ve got to eat. Come and join us . . . Hathin, what are you doing?’
Tears streaming down her face, Hathin was scooping up the loose earth, making a mound.
‘She’s watching me, she’ll be scared, she’ll want to know what to do, what I’m going to do, what’s going to happen . . .’ Hands trembling, she was fashioning a little mountain, just as she had when she was helping Arilou find herself. She gave her little volcano a crater, with a kinked lip and a barb like a spear’s head.
She stood up and spent a few seconds staring at it. Spearhead in miniature, the mountain that had carried off Arilou. She recovered her breath, and then kicked her mountain so hard that she staggered and fell over sideways. She scrambled to her feet again, stamped in the lip of the crater, started avalanches with her heel, ground crags to rubble. She kept kicking until the mountain scattered into the undergrowth.
Arilou, I am coming for you. The mountains themselves will not stop me.
She walked back, shaky and muddy, and dropped into her previous seat. Although she had said nothing, she sensed that the other Lace had guessed the meaning of her mime as clearly as though she had shouted her thoughts.
She looked defiant, and braced herself for the tidal wave of her friends’ common sense. The wave did not strike.
‘It’s time,’ said Dance. Her words were met with a silence that was agreement, and Hathin realized that a conversation had been hanging in the air, waiting to be had. All the Lace had known. Hathin alone had been too distracted to notice it.
‘I know,’ Jaze said carefully. ‘We’ll never get this close to the Farm again – not so many of us, not so well armed and provisioned.’
‘Let us look at the map.’ Dance reached into her pack and pulled out a rather familiar-looking picture of Spearhead seen from above. Evidently she had responded to Hathin and Jaze’s information by raiding Bridle’s shop. Hathin glimpsed a Bridle map of Mother Tooth in the backpack as well, complete with the telltale rectangles of the mine huts and compounds. Hathin wondered whether Dance was planning a rescue raid there as well.
‘How many are we thinking?’ whispered Louloss, casting a glance towards the barbed black hulk that Spearhead had become. ‘Arilou, of course – but how many more?’
‘Who deserves to stay up there?’ asked Therrot, folding his arms. Everyone else stared into the campfire and nodded slowly.
‘They are not just prisoners of Minchard Prox,’ murmured Dance. ‘The Lord –’ she nodded towards Spearhead – ‘won’t like it. He dislikes intruders, but now they’re there he’ll see them as his to sacrifice or punish.’ Her tone was antagonistic but with a hint of affection, as if the volcano was a cantankerous uncle.
‘There is a way of getting up the mountain without the Lord noticing us,’ answered Therrot. ‘In fact – Hathin’s sitting on it.’
Hathin jerked herself forward on to her knees and peered over her shoulder at the long sausage of rolled cloth she had been sitting upon. For the first time she noticed its faint smell of smoky damp. She snatched back a corner of the sacking cover and found herself staring at an inky cloth that left shadowy blue stains on her fingertips.
She stared around her, and found her flabbergasted look mirrored in every face but two. From under Dance’s bandages, a single dark eye was staring at Therrot, a little orb of storm.
Therrot looked rueful and gave the tiniest of shrugs. ‘The Sours insisted – they thought we might need it to get their Lost back.’
Faces locked in a wince, half a dozen Lace turned to peer towards the Superior’s distant tent. Everybody’s mind was busy with the same image: the Superior riding along in his little carriage, unaware that his esteemed ancestors were bouncing above him in a bundle of blue cloth.
‘It’s just a flag, all right?’ hissed Therrot. ‘He can’t tell how it was made by looking at it, can he?’
‘Therrot,’ said Jaze, ‘when you pass through the Cave of Caves you might find a great number of angry people waiting to talk to you about this.’
‘All right.’ Dance pulled off her bandages and pensively gave her dreadlocks freedom. ‘We use the protection of the flag. But this is a task for those who have finished their quests, and those alone. The others have work still to do before they pass through the Caves. They will remain with the Superior for now.’
A slow nod from Jaze, Therrot, Louloss, Marmar. Nothing more need be said to make it clear that those who climbed the mountain were probably not coming back.
‘What about me?’ Hathin asked. Nobody answered. Nobody met her eye.
Suddenly inspired, she fumbled at her belt pouch. Yes, inside there was still a piece of cloth twisted into a tiny bundle. She pinched it, and it gave a little between her fingers with a grainy lumpiness.
‘Wait, you can’t go without me . . . I’m meant to come. Even if the flag hides you all from the Lord when you’re climbing, he will surely notice when his prisoners start to disappear down into the valley. Dance, I think I can distract him. I have this. It’s a gift, sent to him by his Lady.’
It was her pocketful of Sorrow, the keepsake that the white mountain had told her to take to Spearhead. Spearhead was unforgiving, but he had a weakness, like the chink in his crater rim. Unlike the King of Fans, he had not chosen to forget the past. Instead he burned with the memory of it, and the heart of that memory was his love for Sorrow.
It was Tomki who broke the astonished silence.
‘I think Hathin can do it. You know what she’s like when she’s possessed.’
‘When I’m what?’ Hathin stared at him, stupefied.
‘Oh . . . sorry.’ Tomki wrinkled his brow amicably. ‘Not possessed then . . . but, you know, when that other spirit takes over your body and makes everyone obey you.’
‘Oh, that spirit.’ Therrot’s forehead cleared. ‘The one that took control in the ditch outside Jealousy, and again in the marketplace when Hathin claimed that woman for the Stockpile, and again when the palace was under attack, and . . .’
‘I’ve never been eight feet tall—’
‘Not eight feet, certainly, Tomki,’ Jaze corrected Tomki gently. ‘Anyway, let it be. If Hathin does not want to talk about the other spirit, we should respect that.’
Hathin was about to protest again, but Dance was leaning forward. Red specks of firelight wandered lost in her eyes like the torches of benighted travellers. ‘Do you really believe that this is your path?’
Hathin’s sleep-starved world tipped and bobbed as she nodded.
‘Then come, Hathin.’ Dance stood. ‘We shall talk to the Superior about a parting of the ways. The rest of you, sleep. I will wake you when the night is darker.’
The Superior’s tent was perched on the edge of the forest, and about it fireflies surged and spiralled like mind-stars before a faint. As they grew closer Hathin’s numb mind suddenly realized that there were other lights, candles and burning brands. These were held up by a handful of guards who stood rigidly before the Superior’s tent, as if enchanted. Even then she might have sleepwalked into the midst of them if Dance’s large hand had not settled firmly on her shoulder and squeezed it, commanding her to remain still and silent.
Candle-pale, the Superior stood among his guards in the same spellbound state. He was talking to a tree. The tree had a face. The tree spoke back.
It was a wicked bride vine, she realized, the sort of creeper that covered every inch of a tree, then remained as a hollow vestige when the real tree had been throttled and rotted away. Like other children she had sometimes used them as hiding places, climbed up inside them using the side-winding vines like rungs.
The face in the tree was longer than a sleepless night and more bitter than a broken dream. Its black eyes gleamed with a frosted madness. Even the smile that opened in its face was not really a smile, just a jewelled multicoloured gash.
‘All you need to do,’ the Jimboly-tree told the Superior in a rough-cut Doorsy, ‘is get me that bird. The little bird in the cage. Otherwise . . .’
A lean brown hand reached out among the vines. It held a pot, shaped like a pot-bellied dignitary. It was one of the cremation urns from the Ashlands where the Superior’s ancestors were buried.
34
A Tooth for a Tooth
Hathin’s mind snapped out of its dream-like acceptance and understood what she was seeing. Jimboly must have been following them every step of the way, flanking them along the ditches, waiting for a chance to speak to the Superior when the Reckoning were not listening. Jimboly could have given them away to any roadblock they passed, but had probably been afraid that in a scuffle Ritterbit might be loosed from his cage.
The Superior’s guards stood poised, uncertain, staring at their master. The Superior had one hand raised as if he had held it up to halt his men, then forgotten about it. Dance hung back in the darkness, frowning at the strange confrontation, and Hathin remembered that Dance did not speak Doorsy.
‘I hope you have no ideas about attacking me up here,’ continued the Jimboly-tree, its face some twelve feet above the ground. ‘I think this is . . .’ she turned the pot and scowled at it, ‘the fifteenth Duke of Sedrollo?’
‘. . . Glorious-Victor-of-the-battle-of-Polmannock-Order-of-the-Silver-Hare-Vice-Admiral-of-the-Rainhallow-Expeditionary . . .’ managed the Superior in a wispy, breathless squeak.
‘Really? Well, if you guards take one step towards this tree, then the Vice-Admiral learns to fly. He goes away to explore the world, carried on the wind and the backs of beetles. He is swallowed by pitcher plants and is ground into the road by the boot-soles of soldiers. Besides, there are half a dozen more of your ancestors hidden in the forest. Some of their pots are missing their lids. Without me you have no chance of finding them before some spider monkey pokes his finger in to see how they taste.’
‘Whu-heu-nerp,’ commented the Superior, his face grey.
‘The girl will be sleeping. Send someone to knock her on the head and bring the cage to me. Then you can have a family reunion.’
‘I . . .’ The Superior stared shakily up at the little pot, which Jimboly was tilting dangerously so that the lid slipped to one side. ‘I gave my . . . my word to the girl . . .’
The pot upended, and the lid fell away, followed by a flurry of fine powder that dusted leaves and pattered on ferns. The Superior gave a wail of anguish and ran forward to clutch at it, trying to cup it in his hands. He fell to his knees, staring at his grey-freckled fingers, his face so colourless that it appeared he too might crumble to ash.
‘Now.’ The lean brown hand had reappeared among the vines, holding a second, slightly bigger pot. ‘The sixteenth Duke of Sedrollo . . . ’
‘Stop!’ Hathin could not contain herself. Ritterbit’s cage still in her hand, she ran out into the circle of torchlight. ‘Listen! Sir, your ancestors are not in those pots! There has been no human ash in them for years!’
‘Whu-what? But where . . . ?’
‘Don’t listen to her!’ screamed Jimboly. ‘Grab her! Take the bird!’
‘Oh, someone fetch a flask of water! He’s going all blotchy . . .’ Hathin knelt beside the Superior. ‘It’s true, sir. All the ash was stolen years and years ago and . . . and used to make dye . . .’ Too late Hathin was regretting sliding off down the toboggan slope of truth. ‘. . . and someone, um, filled the urns with animal ash. Sheep. And goats.’
The Superior whimpered faintly and stared out into the twisted madness of the jungle. Hathin wondered if he was imagining a spectral landscape obscured by mounds of rich velvets, toothpicks, hair combs and paper money, amid which scrambled ghostly goats and sheep, uttering soft, confused bleats as their hoofs slithered on vast cascades of mutton-fat soap.
‘Sheep?’ he remarked in a tiny, choked voice. ‘Goats?’ he added, then fell over on to his side, gurgling for breath.
‘You fool!’ screeched the Jimboly-tree. ‘What good is he to either of us now? Stamp your foot through the drum of his existence, why don’t you? Well, I hope he dies from it!’
‘Please, sir,’ Hathin put a tentative hand on the Superior’s shoulder. ‘It’s not . . .’ Not that bad?
‘All these years I’ve been . . . I’m . . .’ He still seemed to be choking. ‘I’m . . . an orphan. I’m . . . I’m alone. I’m . . . I’m . . . I’m . . . free.’ He pushed himself up on one elbow, staring at his hands as if for the first time they had become his own. ‘I can . . . I can do anything. I can leave Jealousy! I can break my spectacles and run off barefoot to become a . . . a . . . cobbler! I can . . . I can marry my housekeeper! Do I have a housekeeper? I never had time to notice! But now I can get a housekeeper! And marry her!’
He struggled to his feet and staggered away wild-eyed, presumably in search of a housekeeper.
As more of the camp came running in, drawn by the sound of raised voices, the spellbound guards remembered themselves and set about slashing at the wicked bride vine turret. Jimboly’s face disappeared, and a turbulence rippled downward through the leaves. Two ferns at the base thrashed asunder, and then Jimboly’s lean figure could be seen sprinting off into the jungle.
‘Stop her!’ Hathin called out in Lace. ‘She knows who we are! She knows who Arilou is!’
Dance lurched out of the darkness in pursuit of Jimboly, past the startled guards, all of whom had sufficient presence of mind to get out of her way.
Hathin snatched up a lantern and gave herself no time to think before plunging into the jungle too. She stumbled on with the lantern in one hand, Ritterbit’s cage in the other, while great leaves slapped at her face. Other lanterns bobbed around amid the trees like overgrown fireflies. Eventually the giant fireflies convened, illuminating a dozen grim faces. Nobody had found Jimboly.
‘She will not have gone far,’ said
Jaze. ‘She cannot.’ He pointed towards Ritterbit, whose wings were now flickering so fast one expected him to whittle himself out of his cage. ‘But our eyes are still full of firelight – we need time for the darkness to clean them before we have a hope of seeing her.’
‘We don’t have time,’ said Therrot, who was still catching his breath. ‘We don’t have the time to search an entire jungle for one dentist.’
‘Then . . . Then I have to climb Spearhead now, don’t I?’ faltered Hathin. ‘If I take a curved route up the mountain through the jungle, steering away from the roads and the Farm, she’ll follow me, and she won’t be able to run off and tell anyone we’re here or get in your way. I can draw her off, and distract Lord Spearhead like we planned when I reach the top.’
‘I can go instead,’ Therrot said quickly. ‘It doesn’t have to be Hathin. I can take the bird and the gift for the Lord—’
‘Hathin is Sorrow’s chosen messenger,’ Dance cut in. ‘But . . . you can go with her, Therrot. Keep Hathin safe, and report back to us if she is granted an audience with Lord Spearhead.’
Spearhead did not have Crackgem’s spitting madness, Sorrow’s barren beauty or the King of Fans’ rock-strewn majesty. Spearhead wore his jungle like a ragged wolf’s pelt. He bristled like a wounded beast. A cloud of rage cloaked his head, and he could see nothing beyond it.
Hathin was still carrying her lantern, for if she did not, how would Jimboly see her? The canopy above was dense and cut out a good deal of the light. Therrot had been ordered to follow under cover of the shadows, the better to surprise Jimboly if she attacked. Even though Hathin knew that he must be behind her, matching his step to hers to hide the crack of undergrowth beneath his feet, it was hard not to feel alone, hard to resist the temptation to look for reassurance.
Gullstruck Island Page 35
