by Lari Don
“Is he near here?” asked Helen.
“No,” whispered Lavender. “He is there!” She pointed to the amber glow.
“The city!” said Rona. “But we never go to the city! There are no places to hide, because all the dark corners are filled with desperate humans. We are warned never to go to the city.”
“Well, the Master is there,” insisted Lavender.
“I can go,” said Helen. “I’ve been there lots.”
“At night?” asked Yann. “On your own?”
“If he’s there and the clue’s there, I will go and find him.”
Yann laughed. “Then we will follow you!”
So they fitted themselves back on the dragon, with Helen now up near Sapphire’s head, so she could add her knowledge of Edinburgh to Lavender’s connection with the purple feather.
They flew high over the bypass circling the city, over numberless houses and shopping centres on the outskirts, then inwards to the tree-filled squares and elegant roads of the New Town. Finally, they were above Edinburgh Castle. Lavender asked Sapphire to fly round the castle several times.
The castle was lit up against the dark sky. It squatted on a huge black rock, looming over the modern shops of Princes Street to the north and the winding maze of the Old Town to the east.
Lavender pointed to the Old Town; the rows of tall, many-windowed buildings piled higgledy-piggledy on the hill sloping down from the castle. “He is in there, somewhere.”
Helen guided the dragon down to land in Princes Street Gardens, below the castle. Sheltered under the trees, they decided that Sapphire would have to stay out of sight in the gardens, because she could hardly be hidden on open streets, but they hoped that it was too late, dark and wet for Yann, Catesby and Lavender to be noticed as they searched the city.
Leaving Sapphire in the darkness, they walked past tall statues and clambered over a fence onto a shiny wet city road. Lavender flew on ahead, so intent on her feather she hardly noticed if her friends were behind her. The others followed up the curving road towards the tallest buildings.
Suddenly a hand shot out from a doorway and grabbed Helen’s sleeve. She gave a startled yell and yanked herself away. “Gie me a shotty on yir donkey, love,” croaked the man crouching on the step.
“Not tonight, mate,” she muttered and they accelerated up the hill.
Rona giggled and whispered, “Donkey? You might need to spend more time grooming, Yann!”
Lavender led them into a dark space between two buildings and up a smelly set of stone steps. They turned sharply into a courtyard with high walls rising up all round them, and faint streetlight reflecting off dozens of small windows. Catesby stretched his healing wing, circling slowly up and peering through the glass.
“Why would he be here?” asked Rona, “This is no place for a fabled beast to hide.”
“He isn’t up here,” said Lavender, “He is down there.” She pointed to the ground.
“Down where?” asked Yann impatiently.
But Helen nodded slowly. “There are cellars and tunnels all over the Old Town. I did a tour with my Dad last summer. The hill these houses are built on is soft sandstone, and when people got crowded or needed storage space in the olden days, they just dug into the hill. Not downwards, but inwards, because the houses are built right on the side of the steep ridge. Most of the cellars and vaults are closed up now, but he might have found a way in.”
“Is his entrance in this courtyard, Lavender?” asked Yann.
“I don’t know. I just know he is under us.”
“The entrance won’t be here,” Helen said. “If the cellars are built inwards, then the cellar sunder our feet will have entrances in the building slower down the hill. You stay here, I’ll look around.”
“I’ll come too,” offered Yann.
“No, Yann, I’ll go with her,” said Rona. “I won’t be mistaken for a donkey!”
Yann, Catesby and Lavender hid in the darkest corner of the court, while Helen and Rona went back down the stone steps.
They went a short way down the main street and up the next close. It was pitch black and the girls reached out to each other, holding hands as they felt their way along the walls. At the top they found another small courtyard, lower than the one they had left the others in.
By the dim glow of reflected street lights, they saw piles of stone blocks and a small concrete mixer. There were wire fences, decorated with signs about hard hats, blocking off an open door into the bottom storey of a high grey building with no lights at its many windows.
The girls retraced their steps and took Lavender and the others quietly to the building site.
“Yes,” said Lavender, her voice abrupt. “He is in there.”
So they squeezed between sections of the wire fencing, stepped round bags of cement and coils of cables and went in the open door. They all stopped for a moment, relieved to be dry.
The door led to stairs: a wide clean set of steps heading upwards, and a narrow dingy set of steps leading down. Helen led them downwards, and after twenty or so steps found herself facing a narrow door. Once they were all crowded in front of it, she pushed it open and moved cautiously into the space beyond. Yann had to duck and breathe in, to squeeze through the door behind her.
When Lavender swirled a few light balls into the cold dark room, Helen saw three doorways. “Which way now?”
Rona went down on her hands and knees and sniffed. “That way.” She pointed to a door on the left.
She saw Helen looking curiously at her and smiled, showing her sharp little teeth. “Seals have a good sense of smell, though usually we track fish not fauns.”
They went further in, through half a dozen rooms with small doors, low ceilings and cracked walls showing bare stone under crumbling plaster. There were no windows in any of these rooms, no fireplaces either; they were just damp spaces hacked roughly out of cold ground. Although there was no furniture, Helen saw that some of the rooms had square cupboards chipped out of the walls. One of them held two old candles, stuck in their own wax.
The dusty stone floor was uneven and Yann kept tripping over his hooves. “Can you put some light balls lower, Lavender, or I’m going to break a leg,” he muttered. The purple fairy flicked her wand and a couple of light balls floated down to bounce and roll along the floor, so they could see where to put their feet.
Helen pushed past a rotten wooden door hanging off its hinges, into a larger room with a choice of two doors. Rona sniffed and shrugged. Everyone looked at Lavender. She rotated a few times in the air, then slowed down and sank to the ground. She shook her head and burst into tears. “He seems to be everywhere. The rock is reflecting the magic around and I can’t see anything clearly. I’m so sorry.”
Helen held her hand out to the fairy and said soothingly, “Calm down. We’re in the right place. You’ve brought us this far, we’ll find him. Just be calm.”
Yann said, less gently, “At least tell us if he is near. Are we in danger yet? You have to tell us!”
Helen shook her head at him and stroked Lavender’s long hair. The fairy said, “I can try to get it outside my head. Then it might make more sense. Hold on.”
She screwed her tiny face up in concentration, moved her lips in a silent spell and waved her wand. The dust that their feet had disturbed on the dirt floor began to lift and swirl, creating patterns in mid-air. But just as Helen was starting to see a picture in front of her, Yann sneezed, and the dust shapes exploded.
Lavender stamped her foot on Helen’s palm and glared at Yann.
“Sorry!”
The fairy used her wand to gather the dust again and they all held their breath as it settled into lines and shapes in the air. Helen peered at the shifting, shimmering sculpture in front of her, seeing lots of irregular boxes piled in heaps and rows.
Suddenly, she realized that it was a model of the tunnels around them. The room they were in was at the centre, with rooms and tunnels to either side, two layers of tunne
ls above them, and one layer, partly filled in, below them.
It was like the most complicated 3D chess board she had ever seen; a secret city of cellars and vaults.
And in a dusty box, one layer above them and further in towards the centre of the hill, was a purple glow.
“That’s him,” pointed Lavender. “That’s where he is. We need to go on to the left and up. And we need to be very, very quiet.”
Chapter 18
“We need to get closer, to see if he has his creatures here with him,” whispered Yann.
“Oh, I hope not.” Helen shivered, remembering the writhing snakes and kicking fauns.
“I hope he does,” Yann replied, “because one of them may be able to help us.”
He didn’t explain what he meant as they crept through the left-hand doorway and further into the hill, looking for a way up into the next level.
Two rooms along, there was a collapsed ceiling and the rubble made a ramp to the upper level of the underground city. Climbing the ramp as slowly as possible, trying not to make any noise, they emerged into rooms with slightly higher ceilings and a few shelves hammered onto the walls.
They moved one step at a time, peering round every doorway, not wanting to walk straight into the Master or any of his court.
Suddenly, they heard a booming noise, followed by hoarse shouting.
“Doesn’t anyone understand it? Are you all fools? Can no one unriddle this for me?”
Then the booming started again. Helen wondered if it was a foot kicking a door, or a hand slapping a wall. It was certainly the Master, frustrated and angry, and that meant they were not too late. But how could they get the clue for themselves?
Yann beckoned them back to the previous room.
“He is here, and so is the clue. I can get it for us. Watch and do not interfere.” He took a small white object from the pouch hung round his waist, and held it in his right hand.
“The tooth,” Helen murmured.
“The tooth of the creature that bit me,” he agreed. “We just have to hope the Master still has the little beggar near him.”
Then Yann spat on the tooth and waved it in small circles in front of him, muttering a harsh monotonous chant.
Nothing happened.
Yann drew larger circles, and chanted faster. There was a scrabbling sound from the room they had just left. Rona jerked forward, but Yann held up his left hand and waved her back.
Then a weasel came into the room. It entered sideways, its feet sliding out from under it, its teeth bared and its eyes wide open in fear.
The weasel was moving in the strangest way, sliding along the flat floor towards Yann as if it were falling down a steep slope.
Helen had to take a step backwards to get out of the weasel’s path, as it seemed not to notice any obstacle in its way. As she moved back, she saw that the animal’s paws were bleeding from being dragged across the stone floor.
The weasel finally shuddered to a halt, crushed against one of Yann’s hooves.
“Get me the clue. Bring it to me now, without being seen.” The weasel whined and wriggled.
“You are in my power and you will do my bidding. Bring me the clue.”
Yann lifted the tooth high into the air and the weasel shot out of the room like an arrow from a bow.
Lavender said grimly, “What magic is this, centaur?”
“It is magic that will lead us to the Book.”
“It is magic that we are not permitted. It is possession. Who gave you this power?”
Yann answered, through tight teeth and narrow lips, “I won this power. When you were fighting seagulls, I went into the deep dark trees and found some of the ancients. I fought and won a duel and, as my prize, I requested this spell. You can make powerful magic from a tooth of a creature that bit you.”
Helen tasted blood on her tongue. She had bitten her lip. The weasel pushing and pulling against itself reminded her of films she’d seen of caged animals in laboratories, driven mad by electrodes in their brains. She realized that she knew very little about her new friends, about their rules and their beliefs. Was she right to pick sides in a battle when she didn’t really know what they were fighting for?
She turned to walk away, but Rona put her hand on Helen’s arm. Rona’s face was pale. “Don’t judge us. Please. Don’t judge us yet.”
Before Helen could respond, there was the faint sound of scratching coming down the tunnel. The weasel slunk into the room, so low to the ground it was like a snake. It had the roll of hide in its mouth, dragging it along like a dead rabbit. It dropped the clue at Yann’s hooves and cowered away.
Catesby flew down awkwardly, picked the leather parchment up and gave it to Yann, who unrolled it slightly and nodded.
They all looked at the weasel. It was writhing in pain, trying to back away from the centaur, but it was pinned to the ground by a power no one could see. Yann lifted his front hoof and Helen stepped forward, thinking he was going to stamp on the animal.
Yann turned to her, his face twisted in disgust, sweat sliding down his cheeks. “Back off, girl,” he ordered.
Helen held his eye, took two more steps over to the shaking weasel and stood astride it, protecting it with her body.
Yann shook his head very slightly. Then he dropped the tooth on the stone floor and ground it into grit with his heavy hoof.
The weasel collapsed in a pile of fur. Helen bent to touch it and felt its narrow ribcage vibrate. “It’s still alive.”
Yann closed his eyes for a moment. “No power is worth that price.”
Catesby cawed sharply and Yann replied, “I will hear you later, friend, but now we have the clue and we must get out of the Master’s maze before he misses it.”
They crept back to the top of the ramp leading to the lower rooms, each of them unwilling to look the others in the face. Helen was just about to step onto the rubble when the walls reverberated with a roar of anger.
Four feet and four hooves slid down in an avalanche of stone and plaster, with a flurry of wings battering eyes and heads. They landed hard at the bottom of the ramp, and leapt up to run as quickly as possible through the tunnel.
They heard the noise of a chase behind them. Wordless shouts, footsteps and hoofbeats.
“Move,” panted Yann. “Just get out.”
The centaur could have galloped past the others and got out well ahead of any creature behind him, but he stayed at the back and urged the rest on. Helen found herself at the front, running as fast as she ever had, trying to remember the way they had come in, trying to follow confused instructions yelled from behind her.
“Go right,” screamed Lavender.
“No … left then straight on,” shouted Rona.
Catesby squawked instructions too, but no one bothered to explain them to Helen if they didn’t agree with them.
They crashed noisily through dark rooms they had crept carefully through before. They were moving too fast for Lavender’s light balls to keep up, so Helen was running in the dark, bumping into walls and corners.
Suddenly she heard her running footsteps echo all around her. She stopped and Rona banged into her back. Lavender hurled some light balls ahead of them, revealing a large chamber, much bigger than any room they had passed through on their way in.
Helen started running again, heading for a closed door at the other side of the chamber, barely noticing the faded murals on the walls and the carved ceilings above. This hadn’t been a storage room or a home for poor city dwellers.
She reached the wooden door and pushed it. It moved a few centimetres then stuck. She threw herself against it. It wouldn’t move any further. She looked round. The only other exit was the doorway they had come in. And that doorway was now filled with the stooping form of the Master.
“I can’t open the door,” she said desperately.
“Let me try.” Yann pushed past her.
He shoved with his horse and human shoulder sand the door scraped open a little more. But t
he Master was striding towards them, laughing. Several panting fauns were trotting behind him.
“I need more time to open this!” Yann called, shoving again.
Helen stepped forward, towards the Master. She had no idea what she was going to do, as she swung the first aid kit off her back.
There was a blur of ungainly feathers past her left ear, and Catesby flew at the Master’s head.
The Master flicked his hand at the bird and tossed him high into the air, but Catesby swooped down again.
This time, as he got near to the bull’s black head, his feathers began to glow, gold and orange and copper. His tail feathers began to spark and he screamed a high-pitched song.
Helen heard Yann shout, “No!” as he galloped past her to the bird.
In an instant, the phoenix burst into flames, right in the bull’s face.
The Master bellowed, as the bird wove a trail of fire round his head, round his horns, setting his curly hair alight. There was a puff of purple from the bull’s right ear and a small scream from Lavender. Then the shape of the phoenix melted into a ball of heat, which suddenly dropped out of the air; an egg laid by a bird of flame.
Helen was forced back by the heat, but Yann dashed forward and caught the glowing egg before it hit the ground. “Farewell, friend,” he whispered, as he placed the egg gently in his pouch.
Yann cantered back to the door and, with one enraged shove, pushed it half open.
While the fauns panicked round their Master, flapping their arms to put out the flames on his head, the remaining friends slipped through the door.
The door had been blocked by cardboard boxes. Ordinary twenty-first century cardboard boxes.
They were standing in a storeroom, with a set of wooden stairs leading upwards. Rona went first, a pale and shaking Lavender clinging to her hair. Then Yann scrambled up, while Helen closed the storeroom door and pushed the heaviest boxes back against it.
As Yann reached the top with his front hooves, the steps under his back hooves cracked and the staircase collapsed.
