`As long as there are animals around,' added Celeste. Seeing the dismay on Lyla's face, she bit her lip and wished she'd kept her mouth shut.
6
Petrie Wartstoe
Lem's pace slowed as he reached the village. Cautious and questioning by nature, he liked to know what he was walking into before it was too late. He was also not as keen to do this task alone as he'd made the others believe, but couldn't have them thinking he was afraid.
The village was a pitiful place with windowless cottages, sagging bark-roofed shanties, cracked mud walls and toppled fences that kept nothing in and nothing out. The few villagers he passed were gaunt-faced women or dirty-faced children peeking from doorways. All averted their eyes as if to return his look would cause them trouble.
Even the dogs, slinking from puddle to puddle, had nothing good to say.
`You are too well dressed,' growled one bent-eared hound.
`The fishermen from Mussel Cove will steal those boots,' warned a skinny cattle dog.
`The innkeeper is a thief and a murderer,' panted a third limping by with a sore the size of a dinner plate on its haunches.
`Go back. Go back,' barked a tan and black puppy that was so starved its flanks flapped together.
Lem scooped him up. `You poor little thing. If I get any food I will give you some.'
The pup snuggled its head under his arm.
The inn was a rambling manure-walled building with a shingle roof, four attic windows and one smoking chimney. To its left was a stable full of swayed-backed mules and horses. To its right lay a cobblestone yard jammed with vehicles. One was the potato farmers' wagon.
Lem placed the pup under the wagon. `Stay here,' he ordered. But the pup followed him through the inn door.
The stink of spilt ale, badly cooked food, and a floor that was never swept or washed of its layers of tobacco and phlegm, made Lem's empty stomach churn.
`Shut the door and sit down if you're staying,' grunted a man just inside the door.
The interior of the inn consisted of one large smoke-filled room with a ladder leading to the attic, a fireplace large enough for four men to stand inside and a sack- covered doorway leading to the ale room. Over the fire revolved a spit containing a lump of fatty meat, a roasting rooster and three crackling groundhogs.
A wizened old man turned the spit when he wasn't sticking his tobacco-stained fingers into the beef dripping and sucking them. Beside the sizzling carcases hung a soot-blackened soup pot and a smaller pot of mulled wine. The old man's finger dipped into these as well.
Pulled up around the fire were 20 split-log benches and 10 plank tables crowded with men drinking, talking, playing cards or sleeping. Around the inn's walls were smaller unlit tables where men could whisper secrets and not be seen. At one such table sat six drunken red-haired Huntsmen. Abel Penny lolled at another.
Lem wondered if he had changed into a giant pig and galloped all the way to the inn to reach it so quickly.
At a corner table sat the three farmers. The wounded one was resting his head on his arms.
Lem picked up the pup and whispered in its ear. `Who is everyone?'
The pup licked his ear and shared his thoughts. `The innkeeper, Petrie Wartstoe, watches you from behind the curtains. Abel Penny, the toll master, eats here every day. The farmers arrived this morning saying they'd been robbed by bandits and would have been murdered only a golden-haired cliff-spirit freed them.
`The bandits who robbed them never come to the inn. Instead they bartered the farmers' wagon and potatoes for snake meat from the red-bearded Huntsmen. The Huntsmen bartered the wagon and potatoes for ale.
`The men in the black-knitted hats playing cards over there are Mussel Cove fishermen. No one gambles better than a Mussel Cove fisherman.'
`The 12-fingered travellers in the capes and wide brimmed hats are merchants from Belem. Beware of them for they can rob the eye out of a needle while you're still sewing with it.'
Suddenly Lem's hood was snatched from his head. `Hey! No flea riddled mutts in here. We keep a clean establishment. Get him out!'
The speaker was a spiteful-looking boy with an oblong face, long yellow horse teeth, and broomstick arms and legs. He was so skinny that Lem thought a good puff of air would blow him over. For a second he was tempted to try. Then, remembering why he was there he opened the inn door and pushed the pup outside. `Wait,' he commanded.
`So what will it be?' demanded the bag of bones boy, hitching his filthy apron higher up his narrow chest.
Lem lowered his voice. `I wish to speak to the inn keeper,'
`What business have you with Master Wartstoe?' demanded the boy in a voice loud enough for everyone sitting nearby to hear.
Well aware that others were now listening, Lem answered as quietly as he could. `Bartering business. But not here, somewhere safer.'
`Be you saying our inn ain't safe?' demanded the boy. This time his voice carried to every corner of the inn. Everyone looked around.
Lem was so angry he wanted to slap the loud-mouthed boy. Instead he stared mutely at the boy's filthy shirt and trouser cuffs, which were too short for his bony wrists and ankles, and at his fat-encrusted apron, which was long enough to trip him.
The boy flicked the crumbs off a nearby table. `Who will I say you be and where be you from?'
`Wolf, from the palace,' said Lem, giving up on speaking softly.
At the word `palace' everyone stared at him, and the serving boy scurried off, collecting empty tankards as he went.
`So you've something to barter,' said a man sliding along the bench until his nose was jammed against Lem's. `What might that be? I might give you more than the innkeeper, if it be a thing I desire.' He winked and tapped his large nose with a filthy fingernail.
Lem noticed that he had six fingers on both hands.
`I be Jessup Birdsnest, a Belem Merchant of unusual and unlikely oddities. I buy anything incredible and strange. A smoked human finger would be perfect, or a hangman's rope - used of course. A dragon's claw fetches top coin, as does an invisible feather from an invisible bird, made visible naturally. Perhaps you have a fairy wing, though they be hard to find nowadays, there being no fairies left on the peninsula. A piece of the High Enchanter's shadow would be worth a noble's fortune. So what do you have, boy? And how much do you want for it?'
`I'm looking for an oracle.'
The man slid away so fast he almost fell off the end of the bench. `I don't do business with oracles. Not in public inns anyway.'
The skinny boy returned at that moment. `What be wrong with public inns, Jessup Birdsnest?'
The Belem Merchant put his sixth finger to his nose and winked at Lem. `Nothing, Isaac Wartstoe! Public inns are fine places. And yours be one of the best.'
Lem followed Isaac around the tables towards the ale room's curtain at the back.
As they passed by Abel Penny, the fat man sniffed and a look of recognition crossed his face, so he stuck his leg out to trip Lem.
Lem jumped over it easily but nearly bumped into Isaac, just as the younger Wartstoe pulled aside the ale room curtain to reveal the innkeeper.
Petrie Wartstoe was as skinny as his son and so tall that he had to thrust his head forward to avoid knocking it on the ale room's ceiling. With his oblong face, yellow teeth, pointed nose and long black coat he looked like a scavenging funeral stork.
`Name of Wolf, eh? From the palace, eh? Haven't seen anyone from there for a long time. They don't like coming through Snake Tree Wood and they've nothing to barter. So what have you got? And don't try to rob me or I'll set my dog on you, and he has teeth as sharp as a cut-throat razor.'
Petrie Wartstoe kicked the wolfhound at his feet and the dog snarled showing his sharp teeth until Lem spoke to it gently, with his thoughts. It wagged its tail at him and told him a secret.
Lem nodded at the dog, then spoke to the innkeeper.`I want to know where to find Edith the oracle and I want to barter for food.'
`Plus two bar
rels of Du Lac Du Mont ale,' demanded a sweating Abel Penny pulling aside the curtain and filling the ale room with his large belly. `He owes me a double toll. I know it be him because I never forget a smell.'
`And two barrels of Du Lac Du Mont ale,' added Lem. `But only if we do our business in private.'
The innkeeper's eyes narrowed to slits. `You heard him Abel Penny. You'll get your ale. But only if you go back to your bench.'
Once the toll master was gone Lem asked the innkeeper where the back door was.
`It be the door past the privvy. Now what do you have? Or are you just wasting my time.'
Not at all sure that showing the jewel to this evil looking man was a smart thing to do, Lem took the red stone out of his pocket. It glinted in the lamplight like a ripe, shiny cherry.
`A ruby!' gasped Petrie Wartstoe, his skinny fingers shooting out to snatch it from the boy's fingers. But Lem had already closed his fist tightly around the jewel.
`In exchange I want a large sack of food, two barrels of ale, and information as to where Edith lives. Agreed?'
`Agreed,' muttered the innkeeper unable to keep his greedy eyes off Lem's fist.
`Be warned' added Lem, `if you rob me I shall tell everyone in the drinking room where you have hidden the treasure you have amassed since the coming of the High Enchanter.'
`And what treasure be that, Master Smartyboots Wolf?' sneered Petrie Wartstoe, edging closer in the hope of grabbing the boy's wrist and prying open his hand.
Holding the ruby behind his back Lem whispered, into Petrie Wartstoe's dirty ear, exactly what the wolfhound had told him about where the innkeeper kept his ill-gotten treasure.
Petrie Wartstoe straightened up so fast he hit his head on the ceiling. He swore loudly, kicked the wolfhound and pushed his gawking son out through the curtain into the drinking room. Then he pounced on Lem and shook him like a sack of wheat. `Who told you? Was it my lazy son? I'll have his tongue if it was!'
Lem pulled his arms free. `No one told me. I'm an information collector. And there are other information collectors who know your secret waiting for me outside so don't think of harming me the way you did the Shelley Islands trader.'
It didn't take mind-reading skills for Lem to realise that Petrie Wartstoe wanted to strangle him and throw his body down the same well he'd tossed the strangled Shelly Island trader.
Lem held up the ruby so it glittered in the lamplight. `All I want is two barrels of ale for the toll master, your largest sack of food, and the place where I can find Edith. When I am gone you can hide your treasure somewhere else. Is it a deal?'
`It's a deal,' growled Petrie Wartstoe grinding his long tobacco stained teeth together while his head no doubt filled with plans of how he and Isaac could follow Lem and do him harm.
7
The Oracle
Lem arrived back at the barn just as the golden-rimmed moon disappeared leaving its sister moons to rule the night sky.
`Why did you take so long?' demanded Swift. `We thought something bad had happened.'
`I took the long way back because I think I was followed,' explained Lem unpacking five cheeses, a haunch of beef, a parcel of boiled potatoes and some bread, biscuits and nuts.
`The innkeeper is a murderer so it might be him. Or it might be the toll master. He was at the inn so I paid him his toll. The three farmers were there too and the red-haired Huntsmen.
`By the way Celeste, the farmers think they were saved by golden-haired cliff spirit.'
His cousin laughed and broke off a piece of cheese to nibble. `Did you find out where Edith lives?'
Lem clicked his fingers and a scrawny black and tan animal stuck his small triangular face around the barn door. `This is Nutty,' Lem said. `He knows the way to Edith's place.'
Lyla frowned at the tail-wagging pup. `You aren't thinking of keeping him? He smells!'
`I'll bath him.'
Lyla frowned harder at the pup. `Don't you think the five of us plus a snake are enough to worry about? How will we feed him?'
`He hunts rats and rabbits and he's a great watchdog. He knew I was being followed before I did.'
This last bit of information swayed Lyla who within minutes of her brother leaving for the village had felt guilty at not being the one to go as she was the eldest. With her usual `give in' shrug she cut off a piece of meat and held it out to Nutty. `So where does Edith the oracle live?'
`In a cemetery at the end of Marsh Pond Lane, which crosses the road that goes to a city called Belem. The innkeeper says ghosts and spirit-dogs guard the tombstones and Nutty trembled all over when I asked him about Edith.'
Nutty growled a warning.
`Someone is coming!' hissed Lem shoving the food back into the sack. `We have to get out of here!'
They snatched up their bags and weapons and raced out of the barn and into the wheat stubble where, lying flat, they waited. A few seconds later two men slipped inside the barn.
It's the innkeeper Petrie Wartstoe and his rude son,' whispered Lem. `Let's go.'
They avoided the inn and most of the dwellings, and were soon through and out of Wartstoe Village. They peeked through the window of the last hovel and saw a weeping woman sitting at an empty table with three hungry-eyed children staring at her.
`Nutty told me that the farmers pay three-quarters of their harvest to General Tulga's Raiders, which doesn't leave them enough to eat,' Lem explained.
They were twenty paces beyond the cottage when Lyla stopped, took a cheese out of the food sack and handed it to Chad.
`Run back, knock on the woman's door, and leave it on her doorstep. Don't let her see you.'
Chad grinned and did as he was told. He caught them up as they reached the cross roads of Marsh Pond Lane and Belem Road.
His sister and cousins were staring at a large cage hanging from a tree that grew in the centre of the crossroads. Inside was a pile of bones and a skull.
`Nutty says the bones belong to a farmer who couldn't pay his taxes. He also says we're being followed.'
With the food sack swinging between them, Celeste and Lyla raced down the spiralling mist-filled lane with the boys on their heels. Nutty growled again and Lem hissed that two men were gaining on them, so they ducked down behind a boulder and a dead tree and waited.
As the mist thinned, then swirled and thickened again around them they caught a glimpse of two hunched figures wearing wide brimmed hats and long coats, skulking along the lane.
`Belem merchants,' breathed Lem.
Huddled together for security and warmth they waited behind the tree to see if the men would return. Around them echoed the usual hoots and screeches of the nocturnal hunters and the squeaks, squeals and gurgles of their little victims.
The damp night air was suddenly pierced by a blood-curdling baying followed by screams of terror. Moments later, the two Belemites raced back the way they'd come. Behind them galloped a pack of gaping-jawed, red-eyed dogs.
Again the children waited. This time to make sure that the frightening dogs didn't return. When they didn't, Lem wrapped a lump of greasy meat and a loaf of bread in a cloth, and Lyla hid the sack between the tree and rock.
They set off again creeping along the lane until they reached a stone wall, behind which stood rows of crooked gravestones. Many were decorated with statues of stone angels, stone urns pouring out stone water and stone harps being played by suspended stone hands.
`Creepy,' whispered Swift, moving closer to Lyla.
`There is nothing to be scared of,' said Chad, who'd boasted, as they crept through the fog, that he was not afraid of ghosts or spirit dogs, even if everyone else was. He marched boldly up to the wrought iron gate but just as he lifted its latch out from behind the gravestones leapt a pack of snarling dogs. They crashed against the gate sending Chad stumbling backwards. `What a racket,' Lem said, tucking a whimpering Nutty inside his cape. `It's just as well the graves contain dead people, or their occupants would be going stone deaf.'
The vigorous
noisy assault on the gates went on until a sharp whistle made the dogs fall silent and drop to their haunches.
A bent figure, holding a lantern, stepped out from behind a stone angel. `Who be there? Be you alive or dead?'
`Do you have many dead people visiting you?' asked a shaken Chad.
`Enough to keep me company. Which be you?'
Celeste put her arm around Chad's trembling shoulders. `We are alive and looking for Edith the Oracle. We have food to pay her with.'
The figure held the lantern up higher so that they could see the holder's face. `I be Edith. What do you want? Quick now because I be freezing out here and I be disturbed already this night.'
`Could you decipher a song?' asked Lem.
`Depends. Who be you? From where do you hail?'
`We are five travellers called Spear, Splash, Wolf, Tree and Arrow and we come from the Forest,' said Lyla, hoping that the old woman wouldn't see that she and Celeste hadn't tied their hair back to look like boys.
`We travelled through the Snake Tree Wood to find you,' added Swift. `And I had to limp all the way because I have a sore foot.'
`And who asked you to do that?' snarled Edith.
`Malcolm Leftfoot and Mistress Emma told us you were here,' said Lem, coming to his brother's rescue. Then, because he didn't like the way the old woman snapped at them, he added, `Although they said you were probably long ago burned as a witch.'
The old woman pulled her scarf further over her grey barbed-wire hair. `Well they're wrong! So, come in. If you don't fear the graves and the spirits.'
`What about your dogs?' asked Chad, who was wondering if the others had noticed how all of the dogs had a missing part. Most had only one ear or none, four balanced on three legs, a couple had one eye and none had tails. The only thing they had in common was their sharp teeth and the ferocious gleam in their eyes.
`If you are afraid of dogs you won't get far in this world,' snapped Edith as she unlocked the gate's padlock.
Legend of the Three Moons Page 5
