The wind was growing stronger and the first drops of a new rainstorm warned them to find shelter. Brother and sister set off back towards their tent, shoulders hunched and heads down as the rain intensified. Soon Marcel was running, with eyes only for the ground ahead, trying to leap the larger puddles of melted snow, when he collided with a figure running blindly, like himself.
“Fergus! Watch where you’re going,” he cried in anger when he saw who it was.
There was no apology from Fergus. In fact, the boy cowered as though Marcel had punched him.
“What’s the matter? You’re as white as a ghost.”
“I found something,” he said faintly, barely able to look Marcel in the eye. “At least, I think I did.”
“What? What did you find?”
“I don’t want to say,” he muttered, then stood in a daze, letting water pour in a steady stream from his matted hair and down the sides of his face. “They’ll think I’m mad if I drag them out into this storm and it’s all a mistake.”
“What are you talking about?” Nicola cried impatiently.
Fergus came awake with a start. “Come with me, both of you. Then I’ll know.”
Tugged away with such force, Marcel could hardly refuse, and Nicola tagged along in bewilderment. Pulling up their hoods against the rain, they followed Fergus away from the camp. Despite their cloaks, they were already soaked to the skin and shivering when Fergus led them off a narrow trail and into the forest, about two hundred paces beyond the perimeter of the camp. “I was out in the forest patrolling with Zadenwolf’s men, but somehow I got lost. Had to find my own way back. I would never have seen it otherwise.”
Marcel still didn’t have clue what he was jabbering about. Finally, Fergus found the courage to push his way between two small bushes before stopping again beside a third. “Here, this is what I found,” he breathed.
Snow had been heaped around and under the bush in a way that seemed unnatural, but the morning’s rain had softened it and it was dissolving steadily even as they stood there watching.
“What are we supposed to see?” asked Marcel, still puzzled.
“This,” said Fergus, and pulling the foliage of the bush back a little he revealed something pale and pinkish-brown protruding from the snow. It was a hand, its fingers outstretched and frozen, like a grasping claw.
Nicola gasped in horror and took a step backwards. As for Fergus, his courage was returning now that he had company. He fell on to his knees in the melting snow and began to scoop it away, exposing the wrist and then the forearm. Marcel knelt beside him and together they worked towards the shoulder. “A dress,” said Fergus when he saw the cut of the clothing. “It’s a woman.”
A few more handfuls and finally a face was staring up at them, the eyes open even though they would never see again. Fear and a dreadful pain were frozen in the creased skin of the forehead and around the mouth. With a shock they realised that they knew this face – not well, not as a friend, but they knew her, and the true horror of what they had found suddenly overwhelmed them.
They turned aside to let Nicola see. “Remora!” she exclaimed, on the verge of tears. “The poor woman.”
“Who will save Bea now?” Marcel asked, then felt ashamed of himself. Bea was still breathing but Remora was already dead.
“Look at her lips!” cried Nicola suddenly. “They’re blue! She must have been caught out in the snow and frozen to death.”
“A wise old elf-woman like Remora?” said Marcel. “No, I can’t believe it. What if it was one of Pelham’s soldiers?” He looked around nervously. “There could be more…”
“No, it couldn’t be Pelham’s men,” said Fergus, interrupting. “Zadenwolf’s soldiers have searched the forest around here for miles. No one’s seen a thing.”
Marcel looked again at those lips, unnaturally blue, and a terrible thought came into his mind. “Remember how Pelham murdered his Queen?” he asked the others. “Her lips turned bright blue. Remora’s been poisoned!”
“Poison!” Nicola breathed.
“You know what this means, don’t you? It must have been someone in the camp. We have a traitor in our ranks,” said Fergus, touching the handle of his sword where it brushed against his left shoulder.
“A murderer, you mean,” seethed Nicola.
Marcel inspected Remora’s body more closely. The initial shock was fading a little and his eyes began to notice how she had been buried. “She’s under the snow,” he murmured.
“You’re right,” Fergus agreed. “Whoever killed her must have piled snow on to her body, to hide it. If the rain hadn’t melted it from around her hand I would never have seen it.”
“But there hasn’t been any snow since last night,” Marcel pointed out with a frown.
“That doesn’t make sense,” said Nicola. “Remora only left our tent this morning. Mother said so.”
Fergus was taking a closer look now as well. “See how hard the snow is around her face? No, your mother must be wrong. Remora was killed during the night some time, when the snow was still falling.”
“But she wouldn’t have gone out in the dark to look for the things she needed,” Marcel objected. He was becoming uncomfortable with the things they were talking about and the suspicions they seemed to lead to.
“Marcel,” Nicola said cautiously, with an edge to her voice that he didn’t like at all, “Remora had plenty of potions and ointments. I saw them in the bag she brought with her. She didn’t need any more, not when she arrived here only yesterday.”
It was clear now what they were suggesting, though neither of them could say it out loud. That job fell to Fergus. “Are you saying your mother lied to you on purpose? But if she did that, then she must have known what happened to Remora…” It came to him suddenly, what was in the minds of his two cousins. “You can’t think she’s the murderer, your own mother?”
Could Eleanor have killed Remora? Marcel dared ask himself. What were those berries he had caught her hiding?
“I don’t understand,” confessed Nicola in despair. “Why would anyone want to kill Remora? She was here to save Bea’s life!”
Bea! Marcel’s head shot up. “What did you say?” But he had heard well enough. Ever since they’d uncovered Remora’s face, wild ideas had been spinning and swirling around inside his head, too terrifying to make sense. But with those simple words from Nicola he was beginning to guess the truth. And what a monstrous thing it was.
He felt tears behind his eyes, hot and heavy, like the breath in his throat. He forced them back with a painful gulp and pushed out words instead. “She was warning me this morning. The people you love might be first. She already knows Bea is going to die.”
Though every part of him wanted to fight his own suspicions, Marcel made himself say it out loud. “That’s why she killed Remora. So that Remora couldn’t save Bea. She wants Bea to die.”
The ideas whirling around each other grew wilder. “Fergus, when Bea was wounded, did Zadenwolf’s men find anything out there in the forest? Any trace at all?”
“I told you. Nothing, not even a footprint. But there must have been someone. Starkey saw a man in red running away through the trees…”
Fergus didn’t finish what he was saying. His eyes widened in shock until he had to blink away the rivers of rainwater that streamed down from his sodden hood. “You don’t think there was anyone running away, do you? You think Starkey was lying. But Starkey couldn’t have fired that arrow. He was there, with the others, when it happened.”
“Hector,” said Nicola instantly. “And there’s only one man he takes his orders from.” She had been following the trail of suspicions even more closely than Fergus, it seemed.
“I can’t work it out,” Fergus moaned in frustration. “First you think your own mother poisoned Remora and now you accuse Starkey of having Bea shot. Which one is the traitor?”
But Marcel already had an answer for his cousin. “It must be both of them. Mother couldn’t have dra
gged Remora’s body into the forest by herself. She would have needed a man to help her.”
It was all too much for Fergus. “No, Marcel, this is madness! Starkey tries to kill Bea with an arrow. Your mother kills Remora, so that Bea will die too. Why would they want her dead? She’s just a little girl.”
“A little elf-girl, Fergus. She’s King Long Beard’s granddaughter. Don’t you remember the vow he made? If she dies, he’ll take revenge against Pelham. And if the elves go to war…”
“Then so will Zadenwolf,” whispered Fergus, understanding at last. He too had begun to feel the horror of such a hideous crime like a weight he couldn’t throw off.
“Your own mother…” he said, staring at first one, then the other, but when he couldn’t find words to follow he turned away, afraid to look into their faces any longer.
Marcel looked down at the lifeless body still half-buried beneath the snow. “They’ve killed Remora. Now they’re sitting back until that wound kills Bea as well.”
The rain fell more heavily than ever now, tumbling straight down on the three children, cascading over their foreheads and cheeks and making watery beards on their chins.
Fergus made a sudden decision. “We have to tell my father all this. He can make Starkey and Eleanor testify in front of the Book…”
“No, Fergus,” Marcel replied softly. “I don’t need Lord Alwyn’s magic book to be sure. People can hide themselves from you and pretend they’re a different kind of person but in the end it gets too much for them and they show their real faces.”
He looked over at Nicola, her cloak so drenched with rain that it stuck to her skin. “Ask her,” he urged Fergus, nearly shouting now. “Ask Nicola what she thinks. We know what Eleanor’s really like, both of us, and if she was your mother, you’d know too.”
“He’s right, Fergus. Even before this I didn’t want to be near her any more.”
“Then it’s up to my father. Once he knows what they’ve done, he’ll make sure those two murderers get what they deserve.”
Damon? Marcel wasn’t so sure about that, and Fergus wasn’t really the best judge of his own father’s character. He had fallen under the man’s spell from the moment the magical door to that prison had opened.
“I don’t know, Fergus. Maybe we should keep this a secret until we know more.”
Fergus’s voice developed a hard edge. “You don’t trust my father, do you?”
What could he say? No, he didn’t trust Damon, not as much as he needed to. If they ran to him now and poured out their story it would sound wild and ridiculous, and even if Damon was an honest man, he might not believe it. If he wasn’t honest, if he was part of the plan to kill Bea… then all hope was gone.
There in the middle of the waterlogged forest, with the rain beating down relentlessly around them, Marcel couldn’t tell Fergus any of this. He needed time to make his own plan, and to gain that time he would have to delay his cousin. “This is all happening too fast,” he said, feeling his head whirling. “We have to talk, Nicola and I. Eleanor’s our mother, after all, and we’re about to accuse her of murder.”
Fergus showed signs of wavering. “But we’re still going to my father, right? You do trust him.”
“All right, we’ll show Remora’s body to Damon. We’ll tell him everything, but not yet, not until Nicola and I have talked it over,” he said, glancing at her bewildered face. “Give us until this afternoon. After that, it will be up to your father.”
Fergus smiled at this show of trust and started moving off, back to the trail that led to the camp site. “This afternoon, then.”
“Yes, come to our tent after lunch,” Marcel responded, following after him.
Even as he said it, he knew it was a lie. He couldn’t risk telling Damon. And he couldn’t just sit back and watch Bea die. Without Remora, what chance did she have? Just look at the way she’d deteriorated since the elf-nurse had disappeared. She’d been so much better last night, but then this morning she’d started bringing up all the broth that Eleanor fed her.
Sudden terror seized his heart. He stopped dead. Behind him, his sister stopped too. “Nicola,” he said, turning round, “Do you think… maybe Eleanor isn’t just waiting for the bleeding to kill Bea…”
“What are you talking about, Marcel?”
“Poison!” he yelled, and before he was even aware of what he was doing he had burst through the bushes and was bolting as fast as the slushy ground would let him along the track towards the camp.
He charged past the mystified Fergus, but he could hear Nicola panting behind him, struggling to keep up.
“Wait!” she bellowed, her breath coming in gasps. Finally she caught at his trailing cloak and he was forced to stop. “You’re not going to Damon later, are you, Marcel?”
“What makes you say that?”
“I could tell, the way you were so desperate to convince Fergus.”
Despite his panic, Marcel was impressed. He might as well tell her everything. “Nicola, I’ve got to get Bea back to Long Beard, before another drop of that broth touches her lips. There’s not a moment to waste!”
“I’m coming with you.”
She wasn’t asking him, she was telling him, and though he didn’t say so, he was glad. They were brother and sister. Together they had tried to love their mother and together they had come to despise her. He nodded his assent.
“How will we carry her?” she asked briskly.
Marcel answered with a single word. “Gadfly.”
Nicola managed a brief smile and a nod. “I’ll go and get her. You wrap Bea up as warmly as you can and I’ll meet you back here on this trail in a few minutes.” Then she was gone.
With the rain still falling there was no one in sight as he cautiously approached Bea’s tent. He listened for sounds of activity within, every nerve strained.
When he entered he was relieved to find Bea alone, sleeping fitfully. He knelt to rouse her, but even as he did so he felt a soft draught against his cheek and heard the gentle whoosh of the tent flap being cast aside.
Marcel’s heart almost jumped out of his mouth as he turned to find Starkey staring down at him, a strange smile on his face. Clutched to his chest was the familiar leather sack containing the Book of Lies.
“I saw you return from the woods just now, Marcel. I need you to help me with the Book.”
Then, before Marcel had time to reply, the heavy canvas was swept back once more to reveal Eleanor. In her hands she was holding a bowl of steaming broth.
Chapter 16
Saving Bea
HOW MARCEL LOATHED THEM both, even his own mother. He wanted to shout at them, to let them hear the hatred in his voice, and tell them he had guessed their dreadful scheme. But these boiling, spitting impulses lasted less than a moment. He had to keep his wits about him if he was going to save Bea.
“Bea is asleep,” he whispered as he came towards his mother, holding a finger to his lips. When he was close enough he tried to take the bowl from her hands, murmuring, “I’ll feed this to her when she’s awake.”
“No, wake her now. She needs the broth to build her strength,” insisted Eleanor who would not let go of the bowl.
Marcel knew he must wrest that bowl from her grasp. It was his only chance. Once he had it, he could pretend to trip as he walked towards Bea’s bed and let the bowl drop at his feet.
Eleanor looked down at his hands, which clutched the sides of the bowl like her own. “I’ll feed her myself,” she announced, and to show her determination she tried to wrench the bowl free. But Marcel’s hands stuck fast. They struggled, mother and son staring into each other’s eyes, all pretence of affection now dead.
Then the bowl tipped over and the contents spilled into the dirt.
“You stupid, stupid boy!” Eleanor raged at him. She swept back her hand, ready to slap him across the face for his clumsiness.
But Starkey caught her by the wrist before she could deliver the blow. “Leave him. Whether the elf-girl l
ives or dies will mean nothing if we can conjure Mortregis from this book,” he growled, brandishing the leather sack in his other hand.
Starkey’s sudden intervention and his imperious tone had clearly aggravated Eleanor. “This story of a dragon is nonsense!” she snapped. “Damon thinks so too. I’m just glad we talked you out of telling Zadenwolf your foolish ideas!”
This insult made Starkey furious. “You might question me now, but you won’t call it nonsense when the Book brings us our victory. Come here! Read the verse for yourself. It speaks of a great dragon, one so powerful it can bring down kings and set new ones in their place. It must be Mortregis.” He dragged the Book out of the sack and opened it at the last page.
Eleanor glanced at the verses and swallowed her own fury for the moment. “Yes, but what is the magic?”
“It seems clear enough. See the last two lines? One who understands the verse will command the beast.”
“Not you though, Starkey. You’ve been trying to decipher its codes for days now,” said Eleanor, with a mocking edge to her words.
“No, not me,” he said without argument. Instead, his eye came to rest heavily on Marcel.
Marcel’s former terror returned. He didn’t like the way they were staring at him.
“I know you have some special feel for the Book, Marcel. Those verses were in your mind even before you read them. There is magic in your hands. The elf-woman sensed it. You are the one to summon up the dragon.”
“No, not me!” he gasped, dismayed at what Starkey was suggesting. “I don’t feel anything special about this book.”
He should have known. Hadn’t he seen the Book of Lies do its work many times before? But lying is an easy habit, the words coming to the tongue before the mind has even realised, and he so desperately wanted to believe the words himself. While the golden verse illuminated the tent, his own words began to appear on the page opposite.
The Book of Lies Page 18
