by Philip Reeve
“Ninnis!” shouted Henwyn. “Give us the Elvenhorn!”
“Never!” shouted the cook, in a voice that was all cracked pride and scratchy anger, nothing at all like her usual one. “Do you know how long I have waited to undo the spells and wake the power of this place, Henwyn of Clovenstone?”
“Grumpling will start chopping bits off you if you don’t,” warned Skarper.
“He will never reach me,” said Ninnis proudly, and she lifted the horn, making ready to blow it. “When the third blast is sounded the last of the curses which your Lych Lord wove around this place will be snapped. The sleeper will wake, and the power of Elvensea shall be mine.”
“Oh no it won’t!” shouted Flegg, leaping so suddenly out of the shadows behind Ninnis that Henwyn gave a yelp of surprise, and Breenge nearly dropped her rabbit. Flegg’s knife flashed in the sunbeams.
“No!” shouted Henwyn. “You mustn’t stab a woman!”
“You can’t attack people from behind, it isn’t sporting!” yelled Rhind.
But they were too late to stop Flegg. Ninnis gave one terrible cry as the knife sank into her back. Then she fell forward, dropping the Elvenhorn. Flegg caught it before it hit the floor.
“My scratchbackler!” growled Grumpling. “Nice work, Flegg.”
Flegg chuckled to himself. “You don’t think I’ll let you scratch your nasty old back with this after the trouble I went to gettin’ it back, do you, Grumpling?” he asked. “Use your tail like the rest of us.”
And he raised the Elvenhorn to his mouth.
“No!” shouted everyone else – all except Gutgust (who shouted “anchovies” but probably meant “no”) and Grumpling, who was experimentally scratching his back with the tip of his tail.
“Flegg, did you not hear her?” demanded Henwyn, running towards the little goblin. “At the third blast…”
“‘The power of Elvensea will be mine,’” said Flegg, darting round to the far side of that eerie-looking pool. A chilly light seemed to gather in his eyes. “That’s what Ninnis said. I fancy a bit of power, me. Flegg, King of Elvensea, master of all that elvish magic and whatnot. Why do you fink I tagged along on your stupid quest, except to get my paws on this hooter? Once I’ve tooted it you won’t think again about droppin’ me down pooin holes or orderin me about. None of you will dare! Oh no! You’ll go down on your stupid knees an’ beg me for mercy. Flegg the Conqueror! Flegg the Magnificent! Flegg, the Master of the World!”
Grumpling stopped scratching his back, lifted his axe, and leaped clear across the pool, ready to slice Flegg in half. But Flegg was too fast. He nipped nimbly out of the way and, while still in mid-nip, blew upon the horn.
The third blast filled the pillared hall like a thunderclap. Everyone covered their ears, except for Breenge, who covered her rabbit’s ears and winced as the deafening brassy note rolled around and around the building, and spilled out through the doors and windows into the heavy, waiting air of Elvensea. The mist in the strange pool writhed and whispered. Some of the pillars trembled, vibrating with the sound. Cracks spread across the ceiling, and huge pieces of stonework came crashing down. One landed squarely on top of Grumpling, smashing him flat in a cloud of dust and swearing.
And then the sound faded, and the stones stopped falling, and all was quiet again.
“Well,” said Skarper, “I don’t see any sleeper waking up.”
Flegg sneered at him. “He won’t be up here, will he? He’ll be in one of them fancy palaces down below. He’s probably puttin’ his socks on now and coming up to see who’s woke him, so he can thank me in person.” He went out through the doorway on to the sunlit pavement, looking down at the thousand towers of Elvensea, the glitter of the blue sea far below. “Well, come on sleeper!” he shouted. “Old elf king or whatever you be! Let’s be having you! Wakey wakey!”
The stairways below remained deserted. No elven army issued from the weed-wigged buildings. Looking down, Skarper could see the faces of the sea captains looking up at him from the stranded Sea Cucumber, but nothing else moved.
And then something did.
That carved black dragon’s head, resting on the pavement, very slowly opened one eyelid. A red-gold iris like a ring of fire twitched to focus upon Flegg. A pupil narrowed to a black slit in the sunlight.
Skarper pointed a helpless paw.
“Dra-Dra— It’s a dra—”
Lizard-fast, the huge head lunged. Flegg turned just in time to see it coming. “Eeek!” he said – and vanished into a huge red mouth which slammed shut on him with a squelchy crunch.
“—gon!” said Skarper.
The dragon let out a long rasping breath, flexing its nostrils, baring its teeth, as if after its long sleep it was reminding itself how all the deadly mechanisms of its body worked. Its wings rose and flapped like black tents. Its tail dragged rattling over the tiled roofs of buildings. The Elvenhorn clattered to the pavement, rolled away, and went tumbling off down the stairs. But by that time, Skarper and the others were all back inside the pillared hall, and swinging shut the golden doors to hide themselves from the dragon’s dreadful gaze.
“It wasn’t cushions, that word in the old text,” said Zeewa, in a small, quivery voice. She had come to the same conclusion as Fentongoose, but she had come to it the hard way. “It was dragons!”
“Do you think all the dragon statues are going to come to life?” asked Rhind. “I mean, there were hundreds of them!”
“I think they were just statues,” said Henwyn. “This black one looked different all along. It was never a statue. It must have been a real dragon that went to sleep here when Elvensea sank.”
“Well, it’s awake now,” said Skarper. “And who knows how many others are waking up too, and thinking about breakfast?”
“Oh, that is the only one,” said a smug voice behind them. “The last of the dragons of Elvensea. But one dragon will be enough!”
They turned. Ninnis, who they had all thought Flegg had killed, was rising to her feet again.
Except that she was not Ninnis any more, or at least, not the Ninnis that they knew. Her shabby pinafore and homespun dress were turning into garments of some rich fabric soft and dark as smoke, spangled with jewels that shone like evening stars. And her round brown face was growing longer and paler, and her blackbird eyes larger and greyer, and her sparse hair ripening thick and butter gold. A proud and haughty queen of Elvensea she seemed, and she smiled coldly down at the frightened band of humans and goblins who stood before her, and said, “Which of you was it who blew the horn?”
The air in the hall crackled with magic. It made Skarper’s nose itch. It made little sparks jump in Zeewa’s hair. Spurtle gave a hiccup and turned into a sofa.
“Anchovies?” said Gutgust, who was having trouble keeping up.
With vast slithering sounds, the black dragon coiled itself around the building, pressing against the walls like an affectionate cat rubbing itself against its owner’s leg. Through the little high windows Skarper and his friends saw tiny bits of it: a tail-tip like the fluke of an anchor, the ember of an eye.
“Which of you sounded the Elvenhorn?” asked Ninnis again, and she came pacing towards them with a careful, graceful tread.
“It wasn’t any of us,” said Skarper. “It was Flegg. We told him not to. And now he’s dead. That dragon scoffed him.”
Ninnis smiled a cold smile. “A pity. I should have liked to thank him for breaking the final spell. But Mortholow was grateful to him, too, for waking her from her long nap, and she showed her gratitude in her own way.”
“Mortholow?” asked Prince Rhind nervously.
“My pet,” said Ninnis, gesturing with one long, pale hand at the dragon. It seemed to be sharpening its claws against the hall’s walls. “My faithful steed; the hammer of the sea.”
“Oh,” said Prince Rhind.
“In h
er belly your friend Flegg will be transformed into fire; a far more glorious fate than most of you mud-born mortals can hope for.”
“Ah,” said Prince Rhind.
“Ninnis?” asked Henwyn. “That is … are you Ninnis still?”
“I was never Ninnis,” said the elven woman. “There was no Ninnis. That was only a name I used. That was only a face I wore, so that I could go among you mud people unnoticed through all the years of waiting. I am Hellesvor, last of the royal line of Elvensea. I am the vengeance of the elves. You humans have grown sentimental about my kind. You have forgotten how, in days of old, our dragon cavalry laid waste to your shabby towns and common little kingdoms. You have forgotten the terror and the rage of elves. Now that you have raised my home and woken my dragon, I shall have to remind you.”
She came closer to Henwyn, looking curiously at him. Henwyn gripped his sword, but he dared not raise it. He could feel the magic coming off her, like heat off a sun-warm stone, and he knew his blade would be no more use against it than Flegg’s had been, and that if he tried to use it she would do something dreadful to him. So he stood there, and let her circle him.
“You have his eyes,” she said at last.
“No, they’re my own,” he said. “Er… Whose eyes?”
“The mortal sorcerer,” she hissed. “The one who called himself Lych Lord.”
“Gosh, do I?” said Henwyn. “I expect it’s just a family resemblance. I’m his descendent, you see. He was my great-great-grandfather or something.”
“He sailed to Elvensea once,” said Hellesvor. She seemed to choose her words especially for hissing; her voice was like surf sliding over shingle. “One of seven sorcerers from the east, of whom he was the subtlest. Our strength was failing, even then. Many of our kind had lost faith in me. They left Elvensea and sailed into the west, in search of new lands, not yet polluted by you grubby mortals. Only a few remained; those who were still loyal to me. Still we harried the coasts of theWestlands with sword and bow and dragon fire in the hope that we might drive your kind away and have the woods and hills and rivers for our own again. Then your great-great-grandsire and his six friends came. They tricked us. They said they sought peace, and came with gifts, but as soon as their black ship was in our harbour they struck at us with their spells. Strong, they were, stronger than we had ever imagined mortal sorcerers could grow. They toppled our towers; they tore our dragons from the sky with bolts of fire.”
“I have heard of that battle,” said Henwyn. “The people of the Autumn Isles saw the glow of it.”
“One by one, all my warriors fell,” said Hellesvor. “Gortheren, Gwaynya, Gwyngala, Moren the Fair; all fell in flames, and the sea swallowed them. And when only I was left, your grandsire turned his spells on me, and forced my dear Mortholow to the ground, and bound us both with his magic…” She shuddered, and it seemed to Henwyn as if he could see the memories moving behind her eyes, like cloud shadows scudding over a grey sea.
“He took the Elvenhorn,” she said. “The enchanted horn that our forefathers used to raise Elvensea from the ocean, and he used it to sink our land again, to hide it in the deeps. Poor Mortholow went down with it; I saw her shining black scales dwindle, twined here about my palace, deep in her enchanted sleep. But not me. I wish I had slept too, but your Lych Lord had other plans for me. He bound me fast with chains of slowsilver and took me in his black ship back to the Westlands. He imprisoned me in one of the tallest turrets of his fortress of Clovenstone. And there I stayed, through all the centuries of his rule. I was a trophy of his first great victory.”
“That must have been awful,” said Zeewa.
The grey eyes turned on her, as cold as ever. “You cannot possibly imagine, little mud-born mortal. There were times when I almost wished that I had been born a mortal too, so that I could at least look forward to death setting me free.
“But as the centuries passed, so the power of the Lych Lord faded. Magic was waning from the world. There came a time when even that jumped-up mortal sorcerer could no longer work his spells. Then the armies of the kings of men assailed Clovenstone, and in the tumult and confusion before the Black Keep was sealed, I managed to escape.
“There was no point in returning to Elvensea. The spells which the Lych Lord laid could be broken only by the Elvenhorn, which was sealed up with him in his keep. I didn’t think that it would work anyway, with magic in such short supply. So I fled into the wild places of the world. I wandered in those mountains where dwarves have not yet dug their mines, and in those forests where humans have not yet begun to cut down trees. And then the Slowsilver Star came, and I felt magic bloom again. My fingertips tingled with uncast spells. I had nothing of my old power, because that had come from Elvensea. I could never be more than a hedge witch in your Westlands. So I disguised myself as an old woman and went down into the lands of man and started looking for a way to get the Elvenhorn and return to my rightful home.”
“Couldn’t you just have come and asked for the Elvenhorn?” said Skarper.
“And then hired your own ship?” agreed Prince Rhind. “Why go posing as a cook?”
“Do you think I wished to be your servant, Sheep Lord?” hissed Hellesvor. “Do you think it pleased me to work in the kitchens of Dyn Gwlan, stewing apples and brewing soup? You mortals – your tastes are as as bland as your faces. When I set dishes before you fit for an elven king – seared crabs’ hearts on a bed of rosemary, for instance, or my tagine of seahorse entrails with fried coral polyps – you turned up your lumpish, mud-born noses!”
“We are simple folk in Tyr Davas,” said Breenge. “We don’t like that fancy foreign cooking. You used too much garlic. We liked your rhubarb crumble though. And you did a lovely jam roly poly.”
The elven queen narrowed her eyes; her thin mouth turned down so far at the corners that it looked like a childishly written letter n. “And how do you think I felt?” she whispered. “I, before whose dragons the armies of the kings of men had once fled in terror, when you asked me for another helping of my lovely jam roly poly?”
“A bit put out?” asked Skarper.
“It was a rhetorical question, fool.”
“Oh.”
“It made me curse the Lych Lord even more furiously. For not only had he drowned my home; one of the spells he laid on me meant that I could never return there – not alone. I could never order a ship or boat to Elvensea; nor could I pilot it myself, for the spell would stop me turning its prow towards the west. And so I found another way. I placed that old scroll about the Elvenhorn in the library of Dyn Gwlas, and made sure that Prawl saw it, and showed it to you, Prince Rhind. I knew your greed for gold and glory would drive you to make the journey to Elvensea, and I knew that your greed for rhubarb crumble would make you bring me with you. You would hire the captain, you would give the orders, and I would be carried here as your passenger.”
“I say!” cried Rhind. “It wasn’t greed for gold and glory that made me want to sound the Elvenhorn and raise this place. I did it because … well … I thought elves were nice.”
Hellesvor laughed. You would think a bit of laughter would be better than an n-shaped scowl, but this wasn’t a nice sort of laugh at all. It was like a cold bell clanging.
“Oh, we are nice,” she said. “I am glad some memories of the old days, when elves were alone in the world, have echoed down even through mortal tales. We were very nice. We were peaceful, and gentle, and we loved nature in all its moods. But we could not share it with you mortal monkeys.”
“Well, you’re going to have to, I’m afraid,” said Henwyn. “There’s only one of you, and there are loads of us. We’re just going to have to find a way to get along.”
“Why?” demanded Hellesvor. “One elf is enough to destroy you all, if that elf is Queen Hellesvor and the finest sorcerers you can field against her are fools like Fentongoose and Prawl. One elf is enough to turn all your mo
rtal cities to dust and ashes, if she is mounted upon the black dragon Mortholow. The smoke of their burning will spread across the world, and the elves who departed will see it even from their new lands across the sea, and come home to help me make the Westlands beautiful again. But there has been enough talk.”
“Well, you’re the one who’s been doing all the talking,” said Skarper.
Hellesvor ignored him. “I shall arm myself, and have Mortholow carry me east, and we shall light some torches upon the Autumn Isles and the Nibbled Coast to warn the Westlands that Hellesvor has returned!”
She turned her back on them and went striding towards the doors, and suddenly it was as if a spell had been broken. Henwyn and Rhind both lifted their swords and started after her, completely forgetting the things they’d said earlier to Flegg about stabbing women in the back. But before they could reach her, Zeewa bounded in front of them, raised her spear, and drove it hard between Hellesvor’s shoulder blades.
At least, she tried to. Those jewelled black robes, which looked so soft, were harder than tempered steel. “Ow!” yowled Zeewa, dropping the blunted spear and clutching her jarred hand.
Hellesvor turned, furious, her face paler than ever. She took hold of Zeewa by her hair, plucked her off her feet and flung her across the hall. Zeewa hit the polished floor, slid for a few feet, and vanished with a cry of terror into that milky moonpool which opened in its centre.
“Zeewa!” shouted Henwyn, as he, Skarper and Gutgust ran towards the pool.
