She said quietly: “You didn’t have to kill him.”
“Now, darling, I did warn you. I don’t like this kind of unpleasantness, but sometimes I find it necessary.”
“What do you want?”
“I should have thought it was quite obvious. Unless you’re both through the closest doorway in the next two minutes, I’m going to kill Peter’s mother.”
“If you touch my mother–”
“If I touch her, she’ll die,” said Mordion. “You saw what happened to him: the castle is a wonderful power source for me. You really should have thought better before trying to run a spell off my power source. I don’t particularly like sharing, Peter Carlisle.”
Annabel curled her fingers even more tightly around the pencil. “What do you want Peter for? You only need me.”
Nan. Nan, please don’t start acting out your unthinking altruism again.
“I believe you’re confusing the utensil with the food, darling,” Mordion said gently. “I need both. You’re a very useful little siphon, but one must siphon something, after all.”
“I see,” said Annabel, and her eyes met Mordion’s for a cold, bright moment.
The mirror went blank. It was only for the slightest moment, but in that moment, Annabel heard Peter sob. When it came back, Mordion was smiling pleasantly at them both.
“Time’s up,” he said. “Are you coming through?”
“I’m coming,” said Peter hurriedly. “I’m coming, I’m coming!”
Annabel didn’t recognise her own voice when it said: “No, you’re not.”
Peter looked at her rather wildly. “Ann? What– we have to go.”
“No,” said Annabel again. Was that really her voice, so cold and authoritative? “He’ll drain you and kill you, and he’ll do it by using me.”
“I don’t care!”
“I do. Your mother would.” The problem with the castle being so very finished now, thought Annabel, her ideas bright and sharp-edged, was that there was nothing to pick up and throw. So instead of throwing something at it, Annabel kicked the mirror, shattering the glass and the spell at once.
Peter’s eyes, wide and horrified, fixed on her face. “What did you do? Ann, what did you do?”
“You can’t go through to him,” Annabel said. “I’m sorry.”
“That’s rather unfortunate,” Mordion’s voice said. He was there in the kitchen window, a strained and almost transparent vision, and Peter’s mother was there, too. “What shall I do, I wonder? Perhaps I shall be merciful. I’ve made a door here: it’s unstable and I don’t think it will last very long, so you’d best go through it before it closes. Do that, and I won’t harm your mother.”
“I’m coming,” Peter said again, and this time Annabel didn’t waste time contradicting him. She simply seized the collar of his shirt in both hands and hauled him backwards with her, away from that door that must have smelled, or looked, or felt like Mordion, but looked no different to her. Peter struggled and yelled and cried, but she grasped his collar just the same, resisting his surges forward until they fell over in a tangle of scraped arms and legs.
“What a shame!” sighed Mordion. Annabel heard Peter sob, and was dimly aware that the doorway must have closed again.
“Please,” said Peter, and he didn’t try to stop the tears. “Please don’t.”
“If I did that,” said Mordion gently, “I’d lose something of my credibility, wouldn’t I? I don’t like to lose face any more than you like to lose face, Peter Carlisle.”
This time it was just his index finger that touched Peter’s mother: lightly, in the centre of her forehead. Her head dropped just as Brannen’s had, but not before Annabel saw her eyes roll back. Then the window glittered once and became just a window again, slightly reflective and not so clean as it had looked a moment before.
Peter was screaming hoarsely, tears streaming from his eyes, and Annabel, who didn’t dare to let him go just yet, thought he was shouting: “Why wouldn’t you let go, Ann! You should have let me go! She’s dead! Dead!”
“I know,” Annabel said, still clinging grimly to the back of Peter’s collar. She settled into her familiarly fat and oblivious other self, impervious to Peter’s struggling and bawled commands alike. Like a doughy sort of anchor she stuck to the ground, and to him. “And you’re not going to be if I can help it.”
“Then why did you let the cat in?” howled Peter. “Why– why didn’t you and Grenna keep all the mess down at the cottage? Why didn’t you die instead?”
“Don’t know,” said Annabel, her face blank and stupid. She let herself sink so deeply into that blobby imperviousness that her neck almost disappeared into her shoulders. “Sorry.”
“Get off!” snarled Peter, his face flushed and streaked with tears. “Get off, Ann!”
“All right,” said Annabel, without moving. Peter was like a wounded animal when he was hurt: he would bite and snarl and scratch, but so long as she held on for long enough and didn’t mind the blood, and so long as her skin was thick enough, nothing would penetrate it deeply enough to really hurt. Like Grenna’s kicks on her well-padded body, Peter’s sharp hurt would only go surface-deep.
She held onto Peter until he stopped sobbing and until the only sound he made was a snuffling of breath in and out. Then she let go of his collar and Peter flung himself away from her, scrambling to his feet. He didn’t look at her, just stood where he was with his back to her, trembling, then started across the courtyard for the kitchen door.
Annabel caught up with him at the door more because he had stopped than because she had been very swift to move.
“It’s no good going in there,” she said. “She’s– she’s already dead.”
“I know.”
“And it’s no good going after Mordion, either.”
“I know.”
“Because he’s a lot stronger now.”
“I know. I saw.”
“But we might be able to get out.” An idea had stuck fast in her mind; an idea that said if the tunnels weren’t the doing of the castle, or of Mordion, or Rorkin, perhaps they were a different thing altogether. And perhaps a different thing altogether was what they needed to get out of the castle. “We need to find another one of those tunnels. Now that I know about the pencil, maybe I can make sure we get all the way out.”
Annabel almost felt the gust of relief that came with the exhale in Blackfoot’s inaudible voice. At last, he said. Drag him with you if you must, Nan: we’ll find a tunnel and be done with this place.
“Not yet,” said Peter, rousing himself. His face was still red and wet, and he wasn’t steady on his feet, but he kept walking anyway. To Annabel’s dismay, he was walking back into the castle again.
“Peter.”
Peter kept walking with a rigidity that Annabel knew well.
“Peter.”
Let him go, Nan.
“We need to follow him,” Annabel argued. “He’s just upset because of his mother.”
Of course he is. That’s natural.
“No, I mean he’s upset because he thinks it’s his fault: you know, for not listening to us before. So he’s just going to keep pushing and doing things this way because it has to be the right way to do things, or it’s all his fault.”
There are other ways of looking after the child than following him willy-nilly into danger, protested Blackfoot.
“I can’t stop him if I’m not there,” panted Annabel, stomping heavily up the stairs after Peter.
Peter’s shoulders stiffened when she caught up with him on the stairway that led to the lower rooms. “Leave me alone, Ann.”
Annabel, trotting faster than was comfortable, gasped, “If you keep walking, I’m going to throw something at you.”
“Leave me alone, Ann! My mother is dead.”
“That’s why,” Annabel said. “That’s why you have to stop and think about what you’re doing. Because Mordion killed your mother, and how else are you going to do something about
it? How are you going to stop him like this?”
“How?” Peter stopped at last. “I’ll go through one of his doorways. We’ll see who wins when it’s me against him, face to face.”
“Yes, we will,” said Annabel, hauling on her girdle. She could feel the burn of her lungs. “And then Blackfoot and I will have to fight off Mordion while he uses your magic to come after us.”
“What–” Peter’s tone was a mix of incredulity and outrage. “What do you mean, when he comes after you? Why would he win?”
Because Mordion has made stealing magic a way of life, said Blackfoot. And because he’s roughly three hundred years older than either of you.
“That’s right,” Annabel agreed. “He’s older and sneakier, and nastier.”
“All right, I won’t!”
“Good, because you wouldn’t w–”
“I said I won’t! We’ll just run away, then!”
Running away is a very sensible option, said Blackfoot. And I would like you to consider, Nan, with your newfound maturity, that the feeling you’re indulging toward Peter—the one that’s telling you to get him out of the castle at all costs—is the same one I would very much like to indulge toward you. Unfortunately, it seems that I can’t do so without your permission.
Annabel pulled in a deep breath and let it out. “All right,” she said.
I would be relieved if I thought that was directed at myself, Blackfoot said, rather grittily.
“I’m sorry,” Annabel said. It was strange how different it made her feel, being told she was the Queen Heir. As much as she didn’t want to be the heir, for a range of reasons that were as varied as some of them were ridiculous, she could already feel the weight of it. It was a weight that told her Peter and Blackfoot were no longer just friends, but subjects to be protected: from themselves if necessary– from all other comers at any cost. “I’m sorry, Peter. I’m sorry I couldn’t protect your mother as well.”
“You can’t protect anyone,” Peter said. “You don’t have magic, and you can’t even climb a flight of stairs without losing your breath.”
“I know,” said Annabel. “But I can kill Mordion.”
Peter stopped in his tracks so suddenly that Annabel walked into him. “You can kill him? How?”
“Never you mind,” said Annabel, who had the smallest sprouting of an idea that needed much more time to grow before it withstood the scorching light of Peter’s scorn. “You have to promise that you won’t go after him by yourself, though. Not until tomorrow, anyway.”
“You can really kill him?”
“Yes. Promise me.”
“All right, all right! I promise. I won’t try to go after him until tomorrow. But what are you–”
“Never you mind,” Annabel said again.
Peter, more suspiciously, said: “If you can kill him, why not draw him back now?”
“Can’t,” Annabel said. “Not yet, anyway.”
“Why not? You did it with me.”
“Yes, but it’s different. There are things that I need to have ready before we try anything. He’s dangerous, and if I draw him back into the here and now without being ready for him–”
“I’ll look after him. You just stay behind me.”
“What rubbish,” said Annabel, well aware that Peter needed to be shoved out of his unthinking misery. “You’re just annoyed that you can’t do the drawing back. There’s need to pretend you can out-magic anyone and everyone.”
“I’m not pretending!”
“Then there’s something wrong with your head. Mordion has the power of the whole castle behind him now: do you really think that’s not going to be a match for you?”
If it came to that, it wasn’t just the power of the castle that Mordion had behind him: if Rorkin was bound to the castle and Mordion was feeding off the castle, then Mordion was also feeding off Rorkin.
“Well,” Peter muttered, “we don’t know, do we?”
“You promised, Peter.”
“All right, all right! I won’t do anything until tomorrow! I don’t expect you to be here to help me, Ann. I’ll make sure you’re safe, I promise: I won’t make the same mistake again. I’ll be ready for him this time.”
14
It was sometimes difficult to remember how young Peter was. He was always so sure of himself, always so solid and unshakeable, that Annabel quite often forgot he was younger than she was. There were very few times during their friendship when Peter had been anything less than bossy and self-assured: in fact, Annabel could only distinctly remember two of them. The first had been when one of his spells went horribly wrong and his dog died. Annabel had stayed out of the cottage for the first time in her life, while Peter cried, clung around her neck, and bitterly repulsed any attempts she made to talk to or reason with him. She didn’t leave him until he’d reasoned himself out of his instinctive clinging, and although Grenna beat her for staying out in those days, Annabel was well-padded enough to bear the hits. She would have gone through worse to stay there with Peter.
The second time was that night: the night after Peter saw his mother die. He cried bitterly at first, but worried Annabel more by the silent sleeplessness that came upon him afterward. His eyes, wide and red-rimmed, were luminous with tears in the moonlight, and Annabel wasn’t sure she even saw him blink. In this mood, he was very capable of getting up and going in search of Mordion. It wasn’t until Annabel, made restless by that thought, tried to get up and draw all of the exits shut, that Peter threw his arms around her neck and said: “Don’t go, Ann! You can’t– you can’t die.”
“All right,” said Annabel soothingly, settling back down again. “It’s all right, I’m not going anywhere. I was just going to make sure all the doors were safe.”
“Don’t go, Ann.”
“I’m not. I’m not going.”
“If you die too–”
“I won’t.”
“You can’t leave.”
“I won’t.”
But it wasn’t until Annabel said, very carefully, “I promise I won’t go through any of these doors without you,” that Peter closed his eyes and went to sleep.
The morning came slowly, stifling and heavy in its sense of menace. Peter was still clinging tightly around Annabel’s neck when she woke from a short, shallow sleep, and though she couldn’t sense or see magic, the castle was feeling especially perilous around her. Annabel stared at the grand ceiling of the throne room for some time, almost determined on drawing Rorkin back into the castle properly, but found she couldn’t do it. Not when Mordion was doing so much harm around the castle. If Rorkin was lying, two wizards running around the castle would be far more dangerous than one: if he was telling the truth, it was very likely that Mordion would kill him. Annabel was quite sure that as much as the walls she had drawn around Rorkin prevented him from escaping, just so much did they stop Mordion from getting to Rorkin.
Peter was sleeping deeply, but when she tried to get up, he held her tighter and complained in a sleep-fogged voice: “No! You promised!”
“I know,” Annabel murmured, extricating herself as gently as possible. “I promised. I won’t go through those doors without you.”
Peter’s face crumpled in his sleep, but although he whimpered and curled around Blackfoot instead of Annabel, he didn’t wake up. Much to Annabel’s relief, neither did Blackfoot.
“You’re getting old,” she told him softly, gathering her skirts around her so she wouldn’t rustle too much. “You’ve been sleeping in the warmth for so long that you’ve gotten soft.”
True to her word, Annabel didn’t try to leave by any of the doors in the throne room. Instead, she drew a quick sketch of the throne room and added a faint door behind one of the decorative pillars. She had to flip between that sketch and her original sketch of Rorkin’s quarters to make sure she’d drawn the door correctly with all its cheerful patterns, but when it was done, she was certain it would lead exactly where she meant it to lead.
Annabel
closed her fat, scribbled-over sketchbook and put it carefully in her satchel with the pencil. Then she threw one last look over at Blackfoot and Peter, and opened her newly-drawn door right into Rorkin’s quarters.
“Oh, hallo,” said Rorkin’s voice listlessly.
“Hallo,” Annabel said, looking around the room with a frown. “What happened here?”
If the room had been ridiculously cluttered yesterday with knick-knacks and odds and ends on every surface, and cobwebs and dust on those, it was now conspicuously bare. The easy chair, desk, and chair were still there, but everything else was gone. Even the furniture had a scrubbed look about it, as if it had been drawn with single, bare strokes of the pencil.
Rorkin, who was sitting in a depressed sort of heap on the floorboards instead of in one of the chairs, looked up fiercely. “What happened? Calamity! Infringement on my personal space! I have no socks.”
“You mean Mordion has siphoned off a bit more power from you?”
“They were nice socks, too,” Rorkin said sadly. “Now when my toes wriggle, I feel a draft.”
Annabel sighed. “I can draw more socks for you. That’s not important.”
“It’s not important until you’ve got a draft around the toes. Then you understand.”
“How much more of the castle does Mordion have today?”
“Everything but the windows and a few doors,” said Rorkin, pleasingly prompt. “What are you going to do about it?”
“Don’t know yet,” Annabel said. “I have a little bit of an idea, but it’s too small to be any good at the moment. And if Mordion is going to be taking over the castle so quickly, I won’t have enough time to make it any bigger.”
“You need time? I could probably get you some, but it wouldn’t do you much good and it’s awfully hard to get out of your hair if you get it stuck.”
Annabel, ignoring this as incomprehensible, asked: “How long will it be before Mordion has control of the whole castle?”
“A day or two, I expect,” said Rorkin.
“What will happen then?”
“Then he’ll have access to everything and everyone.”
Blackfoot Page 21
