They can’t be after Umber’s computer, Hap thought. How could they know about it—and what would they want with it?
“Oates, the rest are in my tower—come on!” Umber cried.
“You’ll let me in there?” Oates said, disbelieving. But as Umber raced to the tower door, Oates followed.
Umber vanished through the threshold, but scrambled back with a pair of thornies at his feet, swatting at his legs and inflicting them with tiny punctures. The rest of the thornies spilled out from the tower as one. The last had something tucked under its arm. It wasn’t the computer that they’d been after, Hap saw. It was a familiar pale box made from a material that looked like bone.
“The talismans!” Hap cried.
Umber swung the shovel at the thornie with the box, but it dodged the blow and tossed the box to another creature. Oates swung his ax again, but the agile things eluded him. Another one of Sophie’s arrows flew by and pierced one of the creatures in the shoulder, but it barely slowed.
The thornies bounded toward the stairs. “No!” cried Umber, and he and Oates pursued them, but the nimble creatures were too fast.
Hap gathered himself and leaped high, soaring over Umber and Oates. He’d aimed himself well, and was about to land with his feet on the thornie that carried the box, but the creature sensed him coming and tossed the box to its right. Hap came down with both feet on the back of his first target. The thornie crumpled under his weight but grabbed Hap’s boot as it fell. Hap tumbled to the ground, thumping his shoulder and elbow as he rolled.
The threshold was ahead, and nobody was there to stop the thornies from escaping, until Balfour and Lady Truden appeared, with a kitchen knife and cleaver for their weapons. “Stop them!” Umber screamed. Lady Tru swung the cleaver at the first thornie, and it struck the box, breaking it open. Amulets, rings, and charms spilled down the stairs. Every thornie that remained screeched and leaped on Lady Tru. She lurched back, crying out as the thorns pierced her skin. Her heel missed the step behind her and she lost her balance slowly, awkwardly, with arms wheeling. Balfour reached to save her, but his fingers only brushed the end of her long sleeve before she fell.
CHAPTER
20
The thornies sprang off of Lady Truden and scooped up the fallen talismans. Balfour stabbed at them, driving them down the steps. One of the creatures slapped at his arm, sinking its thorns into his flesh, and Balfour cried out and dropped the knife. The creatures swarmed toward Balfour, but then Oates was there, swinging his ax, and the thornies fled with whatever they’d picked up, leaving half of the magical things behind.
Umber rushed down the steps and knelt beside Lady Truden, who was sprawled over the bottom steps. “Tru!” he cried, touching her cheek. “Tru!” He looked up at the others, and the fear in his eyes had been joined by pain. “Balfour, stay with Tru! Sophie, get the sisters from Willy’s room and tell them Tru’s fallen and struck her head. Hap and Oates, with me!”
They followed Umber to the grand hall, and into the corridor that led to the archives and beyond to the caverns behind the Aerie. When they reached the door to the archives, Smudge was there in the corridor, staring down its dark length.
“Smudge!” Umber shouted. “Did some nasty creatures come this way?”
Smudge nodded, and then glared at Oates. “And here comes another.”
“Not now, Smudge,” Umber snapped. He darted into the archives and came out again with a glass jar filled with glimmer-worms to light his way. He shouted at Smudge over his shoulder as he ran on. “And come with us if you want to be useful for once!”
Smudge’s reply was to snort and shove the door closed.
“Where are we going?” huffed Oates.
“I think they’re trying to free Turiana!” answered Umber.
“The sorceress? But she’s all locked up,” Oates said.
“They got the key, Oates. And some of her talismans!”
Hap remembered the wounds on Umber’s throat. They tore the chain right off his neck, he realized, as the full danger dawned on him. And that key can open anything!
They turned down the side corridor that led to Turiana’s cell. Hap saw from a distance what the others could not, in the gloom. “The door’s already open!”
Umber skidded to a halt. “And Turiana’s cell?”
“Empty,” Hap said, squinting at the dark place. The cell door was open, and the ghastly sorceress nowhere in sight.
“Need to be sure,” Umber said. He jogged to the door and stuck his head through the threshold. “She’s gone,” he panted. “And we didn’t run into them on their way out . . .” His eyes expanded with alarm.
Hap guessed what Umber was thinking. “The gate to the caverns!”
They dashed again, threading their way through the underground passages and past the subterranean pond. Glimmer-worms clung to the cave walls and pointed stones, casting light too dim to form shadows. Umber wheezed and puffed with the effort, while Oates ran with a scowl on his face, ready to strike at anything that confronted them.
“Do you hear that?” Hap cried. From ahead came a tortured, rusty screech, and the deep ring and clatter of thick chains in motion.
“They’re raising the portcullis,” Umber shouted.
The passage made its final turn. Ahead was the portcullis, and beyond that the cavern that plunged deep under the mountains. Hap saw the surviving thornies in the shadowy alcove, struggling to turn the winch and raise the portcullis. The lock that kept it from turning had been opened and cast aside.
The iron bars crept upward, groaning and shivering as the portcullis moved for the first time in years. The sorceress was there, facing the deep cavern. The spiderweb cowl that she wore fluttered back, waving in the cold breeze that flowed from the depths. She sensed their arrival and turned slowly.
The silk that always covered her head was torn down the middle to reveal her face. Umber, Hap, and Oates stopped as one with their feet scraping on the stone. Hap heard Umber gasp aloud. “She’s beautiful,” Oates said.
And beautiful she was, a skeletal horror no more. Turiana was lovelier than any flower, any jewel, any sky filled with stars. When she used a hand to slide the waves of dark hair behind one ear, Hap saw the rings restored to her fingers, and the amulets that hung around her long, graceful neck. The talismans, he thought. He felt a twist inside his heart as her crimson lips curved into a smile.
The beauty was an illusion, he knew, and still he was frozen, entranced, even as he watched the portcullis rumble slowly up behind her, already as high as her knees. Umber and Oates were just as stunned and motionless beside him; Oates’s ax had drifted down until its head touched the stone at his feet.
When Hap finally saw the single thornie creeping up behind them with Balfour’s knife, it was reaching up to stab Oates in the back. There was no time to move, no time to shout. But in the next instant the thornie squealed and dropped to the floor, writhing and trying to pluck out the arrow that had sunk deep into the soft flesh of its head.
Sophie was behind them, reaching over her shoulder for another arrow while her eyes scanned right and left for the next target. Oates shot her a thankful look, and then stomped twice on the thrashing thornie at his feet, putting an end to its throes.
“Oates, stop the winch!” cried Umber, shaken from his trance. Oates grunted and charged at the thornies in the alcove with his ax poised to swing.
The portcullis was already waist-high. As Turiana bent low to pass under the bars, the next arrow struck her between the shoulders. The sorceress straightened, whirled about, and stabbed her fingers in Sophie’s direction. Sophie’s face twisted with pain, and she cried out and dropped her bow.
“You think you can hurt me?” the sorceress cooed in her silken voice. She raised her arms, and the arrow fell down behind her, bloodless, extracted by some mysterious means.
“Turiana, you must not leave,” Umber said, stepping toward her. “You told me you were no longer the evil creature you once were. Pro
ve it now by returning to your cell.”
Her eyes narrowed and her glance darted left as the thornies in the alcove cried out under Oates’s blade. The portcullis had still been rising, but it shuddered and stopped. Three thornies—the only still alive—scuttled across the floor and hunched at the sorceress’s feet.
“Oates—drop the gate!” Umber shouted. Oates threw a switch, and the chains rattled again, spinning fast and free. The portcullis fell, but something enormous rushed out from the depths of the cavern. It was the wounded troll that Umber had named Charrly. The troll seized the bars and howled as he staggered under the weight, and spittle flew from his quivering purple tongue. Charrly could hold the massive weight of the portcullis for only a moment. But that was enough for the sorceress to flow with liquid grace under the bars, with the thornies right behind her.
“You heard me well,” Turiana told the beast. Hap realized that when she was chanting in her cell, the sorceress had been calling out to this troll as well as to the thornies.
Charrly bellowed as he released the portcullis. The pointed iron bars slammed into the ground like a clap of thunder that echoed into silence. The sorceress stared back at Umber, and the thornies hopped and twirled and slapped the ground.
“Don’t do this, Turiana,” Umber said, clasping his hands.
“Do not dare to follow,” replied Turiana. She glided into the passage that led to the bowels of the mountains, and the troll and thornies followed. Umber watched them vanish, chewing on his bottom lip.
Hap heard a moan from behind them. Sophie sat on the ground, holding her stomach. He shot to her side in one great leap and fell to his knees, taking her hand between his. “Are you all right?”
“Yes,” she said. “When she pointed—I felt claws inside me. But it wasn’t real, I think—I hardly feel anything now.
But . . . Lord Umber?”
Umber was standing over them now. “Yes, my dear brave girl?”
“The king’s law,” she whispered, afraid to speak it loudly.
Umber nodded. “The law that says I will be executed if the sorceress ever escapes?”
“Oh no,” Hap whispered.
“I won’t tell if you don’t,” Umber said, rubbing the back of his neck. His gaze went to the crushed thornie at their feet, and his eyes narrowed. He dropped to one knee and tugged something out of the creature’s curled fingers. It was his precious transforming key.
They trudged back through the caverns, moving slowly until Umber stretched his neck and said, “I hope Tru wasn’t hurt too badly.” He broke into an urgent run and led them back to the Aerie.
Tru was still at the bottom of the stairs, lying peacefully on her back with her hands folded at her waist. Balfour sat on the bottom step with one hand across the lower half of his face. Laurel and Lily were treating his other arm, dabbing the wounds with ointment. They looked up as Umber approached, with their mouths drawn tight, and deep lines at the corners of their eyes.
“Shouldn’t somebody be helping Tru? She’s just . . . ,” Umber said, but his words faded. He took a few more steps to her side, each less steady than the one before, and sagged to his knees.
“The blow to her head when she fell . . . ,” Laurel said quietly. Umber laid one hand across Tru’s and clutched the front of his shirt with the other.
“She loved you, Umber,” Balfour said in a half-choked voice.
“I know she did,” Umber replied. He reached out and brushed a strand of silver hair away from Tru’s closed eyes. Then he bent low and pressed his forehead to hers.
Hap felt a hand touch his. He reached without looking and pulled Sophie to him, and buried his face in her hair and felt her tears on his neck.
CHAPTER
21
Correspondence arrived at the Aerie the next morning. Dodd set the letters and packets on the table in front of Umber, who was slumped in his chair with his hair hanging over his eyes. His hands were wrapped around a mug. Inside the vessel was not his usual dose of bitter coffee but the last drops of tea brewed with elatia. He stared at the boiled leaves at the bottom, perhaps trying to divine any meaning.
One of the envelopes captured his attention, and he set the mug aside and tugged it out of the pile. With his bread knife he sliced through the splatter of wax that sealed it. “It’s from Fendofel,” he murmured, pulling out a leaf-shaped note. “I’ve asked some of our captains to stop at the Verdant Isle regularly to see how he’s doing.”
Umber’s lips moved faintly as he perused the letter from the botanical wizard. He lowered it to the table, looked up at the ceiling, and uttered a vulgar phrase that Hap had never heard him speak before.
“What does it say?” Hap asked.
Umber dug his fingers into his eyelids and groaned. “First, some notes about how to care for and propagate the elatia plant. Advice that slipped his mind. And that’s splendid. But then, this.” He raised the note and read aloud: “‘My memory finally stirred concerning that thorny nut you showed me. It might be the seed of a thorn imp tree, one of the most sinister plants of legend. In fact that nut may well belong to the sorceress you have locked away, and any thorn imps that are born from the tree’s fruit would be quite dangerous. Those wicked but short-lived creatures would know her thoughts and do her bidding. I am terribly sorry that it took so long to remember, but hopefully you heeded my advice and did not plant it,’ blah, blah, blah.” Umber let the letter fall to the table, and he rested his forehead on the heels of his hands.
“You couldn’t have known that,” Hap said to the back of Umber’s head.
“He said it worried him. But I still planted it,” Umber muttered. “Now the sorceress is free, and Tru is dead.”
“But you weren’t yourself when you planted it. Lady Truden gave you too much elatia and—”
“Don’t!” Umber snapped. “Don’t blame her. It was my dark mood that started it all. And if I wasn’t so insatiably curious about that sort of thing, I wouldn’t have planted the nut. So don’t blame anyone but me.” He rapped his temples with his knuckles. “Oh, Hap, I didn’t mean to scold you. But the circumstances—so ill-fated. All our ships these last few days have been slowed by bad winds. Bad winds, Hap! If the letter came a day sooner, none of this would have happened. How can death be so capricious? Why should someone die because the wind blew north instead of south?”
Hap didn’t have an answer. He curled up in his chair with his arms wrapped around his knees. When a minute passed, he spoke softly. “That’s what you want me to be someday. Like the wind. Steering fate this way or that.”
Umber stared, and shrugged, and nodded. “But always for good, Hap. Always for good. There are a billion lives to save in my world—maybe twice or three times as many. And yes, you will be the capricious fate that rescues them. But you could never be an ill wind. Your heart is too . . . benevolent.” Umber raised his cup of tea and let the last drops fall into his mouth.
“What do you think Turiana will do, now that she’s escaped?” Hap asked.
Umber tapped the table with his cup. “No idea. I’m not even sure which powers she’s regained. The thorn imps only got half of her talismans, and I don’t know exactly what each of them was for. If I’m lucky, she’ll go into hiding or find a new lair far from here. If I’m unlucky, she’ll make her presence known around Kurahaven, and everyone will find out that she’s escaped.”
“That would be bad, wouldn’t it?”
“Only if you’re not in favor of my execution,” Umber said with a sad grin. “In which case, I might ask you to use your Meddler powers to whisk me away.”
“What powers?” Hap mumbled. “I haven’t seen the filaments in so long. How will I ever do the thing you need me to do?”
Umber tugged at his nose, thinking. “I am getting worried, honestly. It feels like we’re running out of time. Both of us.” He tipped back in his chair, balancing it on two legs. “Maybe if Willy wakes up again he’ll have some answers.”
Hap tried to eat but found
his appetite lacking. He wanted to talk to Balfour, but his aged friend had wandered outside to stare at the sea, and asked to be alone when Hap came near.
So Hap went upstairs, meaning to return to his room. His chest tightened as he approached Lady Truden’s room, and he was startled when Sophie stepped out in front of him. She gasped and jolted, and her posture went rigid. There was something in her hand, a small rectangle, and she tucked it swiftly out of sight behind her. “Oh—Happenstance,” she said.
“Hello, Sophie.”
“I . . . I wanted to take this before anybody found it,” she said. She brought the thing out of hiding. It was the small but perfectly rendered portrait of Lord Umber. Hap had seen it before, accidentally, when he saw Lady Truden gazing at the painting in her candlelit room. “Remember this? She asked me to paint it for her,” Sophie said softly.
“I remember.” Hap felt the wound in his heart open a little wider.
Sophie tucked the picture into the pocket of her paint-stained apron. “She would have been so embarrassed if Lord Umber found it. So I took it back.”
Hap nodded. “That was nice of you to think of that. Even though . . .”
She shook her head and sniffed. “Yes. Even though she’s gone. She wasn’t always kind, and I know she was mean to you at first. But she always thought she was doing what was best for Lord Umber. Do you know what makes me saddest, Hap? That she felt the way she did about him, and she never got the chance to tell him. Now she never will.” Sophie leaned against the wall and bent her head sideways until it touched the stone.
“That is sad,” Hap said.
Sophie straightened up. “It shouldn’t be like that. People should tell people how they feel, before it’s too late.”
Hap looked at her, and she was leaning toward him, gazing into his eyes without blinking. His feet felt like they were melting into the floor.
“I care about you, Happenstance. I care about you greatly. When we found you I thought you were just a little boy. But you’re so much more than that.” Her hand brushed his cheek, and her fingers pushed into his hair, over his ear. “I’m afraid, Hap. People are dying. A wicked man is king. The sorceress has escaped. And Lord Umber might be in trouble. I don’t know what’s going to happen to any of us. But I think you might not be around for much longer. I’ve never spied on you, but I’ve overheard things. There’s something Lord Umber wants you to do, far away from here. I’m right, aren’t I?”
The End of Time (Books of Umber #3) Page 16
