If she explained why this was so important, they would want to know more. She might hesitate a little too obviously in her answers, making the older elves suspicious. They all knew of her odd pet, the pigeon, but none had guessed how it took news to her human friends in far away Elstenwyck.
‘Tell us anyway,’ she begged, hoping this would be enough.
‘Oh, it was grey, or brown … or black. I’m not sure, a bit of every colour,’ said Anders, who then went on with his story.
Bea barely managed to stifle a gasp. Gadfly! And if that amazing horse had grown wings again, there was only one boy who could make it happen.
But Anders kept calling them men. Perhaps Marcel hadn’t come at all. Maybe he’d sent two knights to rescue Long Beard. This idea took a stronger hold when Anders said, ‘One of them was wearing a sword on his belt.’
She couldn’t stay another minute in the Hidden Village. While others were still arriving to swell the circle of anxious faces, she slipped away unseen.
BEA MOVED QUICKLY THROUGH the forest, using trails that only the elves knew and that only an elf could travel. It was hardly a surprise that she spotted Gadfly first, across a shallow culvert in the foothills before the mountain became too steep. The mist Anders had spoken of lifted on a gentle breeze to reveal the horse’s companions, one on either side. Bea was too far away to see faces, but her heart sank a little when she saw that both were tall. Anders was right then: young men, not boys. If Marcel had sent these two, then they would be trustworthy warriors, eager to free her grandfather. So why did she feel disappointed? Saving Long Beard was all that mattered, wasn’t it?
The men were above the tree line now, where the ground was thickly covered by gorse and long-stemmed bracken. Bea would have no trouble staying out of sight no matter how closely she inspected them. That was her plan: to watch them until the other elves came to meet them, as they surely would. In the meantime, she would listen to them speak, even pick up their scent in the untainted air. Elvish skin gave off no scent at all, to help them stay hidden, and she missed the smell of humans.
She knew the ground of this culvert well. With a horse to find a path for, they would have to pass close to her, so she stayed in place and out of sight, watching through a tiny parting in the leaves as they approached with the clumsy plod of horse and human.
They strayed out of her sight for a time, but she’d been right about the path they followed and they would reappear soon enough, and much closer this time.
Gadfly’s head was the first to fill Bea’s small window from beneath the bracken, then moments later a face that lingered as it examined the path ahead. Bea hadn’t expected to recognise this face, but to her astonishment she did. It wasn’t the one she’d hoped to see, but familiar nonetheless. It was Fergus.
He was so tall, which was why, from a distance, she’d thought he was a man. His face had changed, was more weatherworn and definitely older, which was only to be expected, of course, after three years, now that she thought about it. What surprised her was how calm his face seemed, as though he was more at ease with himself than she remembered.
All this rushed through her head in the blink of an eye to make way for a much more exciting prospect. If one of these intruders was Fergus, then the other …
His companion stood on the other side of the horse, which blocked her view. Just as the hope leapt in Bea’s heart, Gadfly lowered her head and there he was, older and, like his cousin, more a young man than the boy she’d shared such adventures with.
So Marcel hadn’t sent others in his place; he’d come himself. If her grandfather was still alive, then here was his best chance of rescue. But Bea knew this wasn’t the only reason such joy flooded through her. It wasn’t even the main reason, she admitted to herself, and didn’t care if she should feel ashamed of that. Marcel had come at last; he was here on her mountain.
When he moved on with Fergus and Gadfly, she was quickly after them, planning where she might get ahead. Then what? Was she going to stalk them all day, like Frances and Marigold playing games with a lost woodsman? Before she had an answer, she sensed the arrival of others from the Hidden Village. Gadfly’s ears began to twitch, but neither of her human friends could know that so many eyes were watching them.
‘Look out,’ came a cry from Marcel.
Bea felt a pounding on the earth at the same instant and didn’t need to peek through the gorse to know a small boulder had been sent rolling down the slope.
‘Stay still. It’s going to miss us,’ said Fergus. Once the rock had thundered harmlessly by, he said in a lower voice, ‘No more berry juice pretending to be blood. That was a serious warning.’
Marcel cupped his hands to the sides of his mouth and shouted loud enough to bring an echo. ‘You won’t scare us off. We know there are no ghosts on this mountain or trolls to roll rocks at us. We’ve come to help Long Beard. Show yourselves so we can talk.’
Bea had reached the others by now. Ebert was there, and Kertigan, leading a small party of younger elves. She didn’t like the look of the bows in their hands.
‘How can they know who we are?’ said Kertigan.
‘They’ve been here before,’ said Bea. ‘Don’t you remember the humans Long Beard let pass through on the way to Lenoth Crag? I went with them.’
‘Yes, and they tried to kill you,’ said Ebert, showing he did recall after all. ‘They murdered Remora too, when she was sent to heal your wound.’
‘No, that was Damon and Eleanor,’ Bea tried to explain, but none of them would listen. The suspicion of outsiders that seemed to live in their blood had hold of them. The gentle elves she loved could become a dangerous race when their secrets were threatened.
‘The price of safe passage is never to return. These two have betrayed that trust,’ said Kertigan, fitting an arrow to his bow.
Ebert nodded his approval. ‘They know about Long Beard. The secret of Baden Dark is at risk. Don’t let them come any closer, Kertigan. If they won’t turn around, kill them where they stand.’
‘No, you can’t,’ Bea begged. She had to stop this madness. But she was young, only a girl, and she’d already sensed how little she counted among the elves now that her grandfather was no longer their leader. What could she do if they wouldn’t listen to her?
The answer came with surprising ease. She would let the human half of her respond and before she could change her mind, she stood up to let herself be seen.
Shock rose up around her; elvish gasps that made too little noise to be heard by human ears. ‘Get down. Hide again before they see you,’ snapped Ebert in a voice almost as silent.
Marcel and Fergus were turned towards Gadfly, wondering why the muscles of her neck quivered in nervous waves. Bea had time to feel the sun’s touch on her cheeks, drawing an image in her mind of her mother who had done exactly this on a day long ago. She had let herself be seen by the woodsman who would become Bea’s father.
The other elves might pull her back out of sight if she stayed too close, so she moved down the slope and it was this movement that caught a human eye. By a quirk of fate, it was Marcel who looked up first. He didn’t call her name, or speak to Fergus beside him. He simply stared, wide-eyed, as though he was taking in every detail of what had suddenly appeared from amid the bracken and gorse. Bea had never felt the feelings that sparked across her skin and scuttled through her stomach at that moment. She wasn’t even sure she liked them, because there was doubt mixed with hope for things she couldn’t give a name to. The elf in her was battling with the human, the urge to stay hidden against the desire to be seen. How had her mother stood like this with no human blood in her veins at all?
And still Marcel didn’t call her name.
Fergus looked up to find Marcel transfixed and quickly moved to his side when he saw why.
‘Isn’t she beautiful,’ said Marcel. ‘Elves are such a part of the forest.’
‘Is it Bea?’ Fergus asked as he peered hard through bewildered eyes.
‘No,’ Marcel replied quickly. ‘Bea is smaller and she doesn’t wear her hair like that. Don’t you remember how untidy it was, like vines growing wild around her face.’ But after declaring this, his brow began to crease in uncertainty.
Bea felt her own do the same. Marcel hadn’t recognised her. He didn’t even believe it was her when Fergus said her name. Should she call out his? Would she have to tell him who she was?
Fergus solved her problem. Narrowing his eyes against the morning glare, he said, ‘No, you’re wrong. It is her, just grown up a bit.’
He seemed ready to rush towards her, held back only by Marcel’s odd reluctance. Then a terrible thought came crashing into Bea’s mind. If they did come to her, excited and arms outstretched, it might look like an attack. The elves behind her would …
The thought had barely formed in her mind before she was on the move, darting quickly through the undergrowth until she stood in the path of Kertigan’s arrows.
Fergus greeted her eagerly —‘Bea, it’s so good to see you,’ — but Marcel stayed silent still, as though his tongue lagged behind what his eyes could see. Then they came, his first words to her in three years.
‘I’ve missed you.’
They were better aimed than any arrow could be. She took the last two paces, and they embraced as only the closest of friends can do when they have been apart for so long.
‘I thought you’d never come,’ she had time to say before Fergus spoke again and not to her.
‘Marcel, up the slope. Can you see him?’
Bea turned as well, to see Kertigan where she had stood earlier. The arrow was back in its quiver and the bow over his shoulder as he advanced towards them.
‘Thank you,’ she whispered when he was close.
He shrugged and said, ‘Didn’t seem right to kill them when you were so keen to cuddle them instead.’
‘Kill us!’ cried Fergus. ‘Didn’t you hear Marcel calling? We’ve come to help.’
Kertigan had forced Ebert’s hand by showing himself and striding down to meet the intruders. Now, the other elves stood up into the light. Although a few of them still had arrows fitted to their bows, Ebert’s face seemed more threatening.
‘Some would rather do without your help,’ said Kertigan after a check over his shoulder. ‘Make no mistake, you two are not welcome here and you are certainly not trusted.’
They were hardly likely to make that mistake when Fergus’s sword was slipped from his belt by a hand he didn’t even see and suddenly a dozen elves appeared in a circle around them.
‘Who are you?’ demanded one with a long grey beard and eyes that looked them up and down with deep suspicion.
Bea jumped in quickly to give their names.
‘Marcel,’ muttered Ebert, tasting the sound on his tongue. ‘I seem to recall … yes, three years ago I went with Long Beard to a battle near Elstenwyck. The battle never came because a terrible dragon rose up and killed that treacherous dog from Lenoth Crag. What was his name?’
‘Zadenwolf,’ another reminded him.
‘That was it. And the beast was Mortregis, the great dragon of war. We thought it would destroy all of Elster that night, until a young wizard forced it back into its own flames.’
‘Yes, it was Marcel,’ said Bea, taking hold of his sleeve near the elbow to show which of the two was the wizard. ‘He’s older now, but it’s him all the same.’
Suspicion would never completely leave the elvish faces, but at least now it was joined by a deep respect.
‘Is that how you came to know of Long Beard’s fate, your magic?’ asked Ebert.
Bea held her breath. Marcel couldn’t know what trouble she would be in if he told them of the pigeon. In fact, if he even glanced at her, Ebert would suspect.
‘Magic, yes,’ said Marcel without taking his eyes from the grim-faced elder. ‘And I’ve come to put it at your service to save him.’
CHAPTER 12
Reunion
BLINDFOLDS PREVENTED MARCEL AND Fergus from learning where the Hidden Village lay amid the trees and boulders of the mountainside. These were removed only when the intruders were seated inside a cottage where they would bang their heads against the roof if they tried to stand.
‘Where are the others?’ Fergus asked as Kertigan slipped out through the cottage door, leaving only Bea to watch over them.
‘They’re deciding what to do with you. There’s no leader yet to replace my grandfather and so they talk in circles, endlessly, and never seem to make up their minds.’ Bea shrugged to show what she thought of that. ‘At least we can talk now without anyone to overhear us. I’ve looked for you every day in the forest, Marcel. I never thought you’d come on Gadfly. Your messages in the pigeon’s eggs said you’d destroyed the last page from the Book of Lies.’
‘I don’t need that magic now. I have my own,’ he said, as though it was nothing.
Since the remarkable Gadfly had been left tethered in one of the few grassy pastures to be found on the mountain, she was quickly forgotten. When Fergus yawned, rather obviously, and shuffled away on his bottom to rest against a wall, there was just the two of them. Bea felt herself shaking as though she’d been caught in a snowstorm. Nerves, she admitted. So long apart, when they had once been so close. Time could bring a friendship alive but it could also deaden the spark.
‘I haven’t heard from you for so long,’ she said.
‘I’ve been in Noam,’ he told her quickly.
Yes, but the pigeon seemed to bring news from Nicola rather than Marcel long before he left Elstenwyck. She kept the thought to herself.
‘I’ll be sixteen on my next birthday,’ Marcel was saying. ‘Then I’ll have full responsibility as Master of the Books. I’ll be the new Lord Alwyn.’
‘You don’t look a bit like him,’ she said, trying to make him smile. When it didn’t work as she’d hoped, she hurried on, looking more at her fidgeting hands than Marcel’s face. ‘I can’t believe it’s three years since I crept into that little room in Mrs Timmins’ house when he was trying to change everything about you.’
‘Thanks to you, his magic didn’t work. That doesn’t mean I haven’t changed a bit since, though. You too, Bea.’
She wanted him to tell her what changes he saw in her, but he was waiting for her to speak.
‘Nerrinder’s done her best to turn me into a proper elf,’ she said. ‘She wants me to marry Kertigan one day, the elf who stood up after me on the mountainside. She braids my hair to make me look older, so he’ll notice me.’
She shook her head a little to show that she had loosened the braids. Marcel noticed and finally gave her the smile she wanted.
‘This is how I remember you.’ He reached out to stroke the long strands that fell past her ear, her shoulder, all the way into her lap. ‘I like it better this way.’
There was deep affection in his touch, the first time he had let her see it. The movement had revealed a little of the skin near her collarbone.
‘The scar,’ he said, wincing when, without a thought, she slipped her hand inside the neck of her dress to touch it. ‘I thought you were going to die. It was the worst time of my life; harder than facing Mortregis, harder than last year in Cadell.’
Again, his fondness for her was clear in every word and Bea felt herself relax, expecting this to be the start, that they would talk more easily, the way they’d done three years ago. She could feel all the things she wanted to tell him rushing to her tongue. But before she could get the first words out, his voice changed, became hard and solemn.
‘I promise you, Bea, if I’d had the powers I have now, you wouldn’t have suffered the way you did.’
While the words were meant to show how much he cared for her, they came from a part of Marcel that didn’t matter to her.
‘That’s why I’ve come,’ he went on. ‘As soon as Nicola sent me your message, I knew my magic was the thing that could save Long Beard.’
And now it was gone, the softness she had seen in his fac
e. He only wanted to talk about Long Beard’s rescue and, while that was as important to her as ever, she felt something had slipped away at the very moment it had been within her reach.
‘They don’t want your help, Marcel. Not Ebert anyway. If it was up to the rest of the elves, I think they’d try to rescue him, but Ebert goes on about a special trust that he and Long Beard have been given. No one else knows anything about it, but they don’t doubt it’s real. Secrecy, you see, it’s part of the way elves live.’
‘And this strange place where your grandfather has been taken prisoner …’
‘Baden Dark. It’s a horrible place. Ebert’s afraid the evil inside it will get free and rise to the surface,’ said Bea.
‘Rise to the surface!’ Marcel repeated immediately, and Bea was startled by the look that took over his features: part fear, part excitement, but mostly an eagerness to know more. ‘So this place, Baden Dark, you called it, it’s underground?’
‘I think so. To reach it, Long Beard and Ebert had to climb down through tunnels beginning inside the mountain.’ And she waved her hand to show that it was behind him before she remembered he wasn’t supposed to know where they were.
‘How far beneath the surface?’
‘Marcel, I told you, I don’t know.’
He seemed to understand finally that she couldn’t tell him any more. He looked weary, his eyes drooping despite the frenzy of his questions. At least the talk of Baden Dark had ceased and Bea was glad about that. She wanted to talk as they had started to earlier, about how close they had been when they’d fallen for the tricks of Starkey and Damon and Eleanor, and then fought against them once they discovered the truth. She looked up at him and said, ‘Marcel, what you said in the forest. I missed you too.’
Did he even hear her?
‘I’m sorry, Bea. I haven’t slept for the past two nights. We’ll talk again later,’ and with that he lay down on the cottage floor and was asleep within moments.
‘IT’S TRUE,’ SAID A voice from the other side of the cottage. ‘He hasn’t seen a bed since he left Noam.’
The Book from Baden Dark Page 9
