Battle of the Heroes

by Kate Forsyth

  TO MY DARLING ELLA, THE ORIGINAL LADY ELANOR X

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  1 TENTACLES FROM THE DEEP

  2 SEA-SERPENT

  3 QUICKTHORN

  4 THE WARSHIP

  5 THE IRON CAGE

  6 ON THE BRIDGE

  7 I SLEEP BY DAY, I FLY BY NIGHT

  8 APPLE REVERSED

  9 DREAMS

  10 KEY OF BONE

  11 SWORD IN ICE

  12 STATUES COME TO LIFE

  13 MAD MOB-BALL

  14 FIREBALL

  15 LADIES DO NOT SKULK

  16 QUICK AS A WINK

  17 DOWN THE WELL

  18 TIME OF THE DARK MOON

  19 BELLS OF VICTORY

  20 A TRULY IMPOSSIBLE QUEST

  Copyright

  A wild storm raged around the Lost Isles. Lightning stabbed down, splitting the darkness apart.

  A small boat painted with the eyes of an owl pitched up and down on the waves. Dark shapes crouched below the thrashing sail.

  Flash. A girl in rags of white gripping the tiller.

  Flash. A boy kneeling by the side of a huge dog howling at the storm.

  Flash. A girl fighting to calm a rearing unicorn.

  Flash. A boy in a torn cloak hauling at a rope, a small dragon with spread wings on his shoulder.

  Darkness fell again. Nothing could be seen but the flying tatters of foam, the white-crested surge of a wave. Hail clattered on the wooden deck.

  The sea began to swirl. The boat spun as helplessly as a leaf in an eddy. A great whirlpool formed, lit by flashes of green fire. The boat whirled around its outer curve, sucked towards the vortex.

  The sail tore free and was whipped away by the wind. The boat plunged, spray crashing over the hull.

  A giant tentacle writhed up out of the churning water and wrapped about the tiny craft. Timbers groaned and cracked. Another tentacle snaked up, then another. The mast smashed down. Dark shapes tumbled into the white froth.

  Then Owl-Eyes was dragged into the immense beaked mouth that lurked in the depths of the whirlpool.

  In an old stone cottage on Adderwell Island, four children knelt around a large obsidian ball set on golden claws. Within the smoky darkness of the ball, they watched the boat being torn apart and swallowed down by the monster in the ocean’s depths.

  ‘Lucky we weren’t on board.’ Sebastian felt sick and shaken.

  ‘Do you think it’ll work? Do you think they’ll believe we’re dead?’ Elanor asked.

  ‘I hope so,’ Tom said fervently.

  Quinn hurriedly draped a cloth over the obsidian ball. She did not want anyone to know they were using the witch’s ball to spy beyond the Lost Isles. ‘Those witches may still suspect a trick. We’ll need to remain as stealthy and secretive as we can.’

  Outside, the rain began to ease. Quinn’s tense white face relaxed. ‘That’s a good sign! If the storm lessens, we can try and get away from here.’

  The witch-sisters, Lady Mortlake and Mistress Mauldred, had summoned the tempest in their rage at the death of their mother, Githa, and it had kept the four friends marooned on the Lost Isles for days. At times, the storm had been so violent they had feared the witches sought to submerge the Lost Isles, just as the rest of the kingdom had been drowned nearly thirty years earlier. Willowmere had been torn to pieces and half-drowned in the stormy gale, and so the children and their beasts had taken refuge in Githa’s cottage so they were not an added burden on the people of the isles.

  ‘They’re trying to kill us,’ Elanor had gasped, after one particularly wild night in which it seemed the old cottage would be wrenched from its foundations and carried away by the wind.

  ‘Let’s make those witch-sisters think they have succeeded, then,’ Tom had said.

  So the people of the Lost Isles had woven four life-sized figures from willow twigs. They had also made a unicorn, a baby dragon and a dog, all from the same wicker as their basket-boats. With the figures arranged on board to look as real as possible, Owl-Eyes had been sent out into the stormy sea under the propulsion of magic. The children had not expected their boat to be devoured by a sea-monster, but now hoped their trick had worked and the witches truly believed them to be dead.

  ‘We’ve lost too much time,’ Quinn said. ‘We have to get back to Wolfhaven as fast as possible. I think we should leave now—if we can …’

  Everybody nodded, not quite looking at her.

  None of us know how to behave around Quinn anymore, Sebastian thought. It was so strange to think the raggedy witch-girl they’d been travelling with was really a queen.

  Quinn had always believed she’d been abandoned by her parents as a baby. Thirteen years earlier, she had been found bobbing about on the ocean’s waves in a basket, and had been taken in by Arwen, the Grand Teller of Wolfhaven Castle, who had raised her to learn the witch’s craft.

  Yet here on the Lost Isles, Quinn had discovered the truth of how she came to be forsaken in that floating basket. Her father had been King Conway of Stormness. He and his queen, her mother, had drowned in a shipwreck by this very island. A tiny baby, Quinn had been saved by the people of the Lost Isles and put to sea in one of the little coracles woven from willow twigs. The basket-boat had bobbed its way across the ocean to safety at Wolfhaven Castle, with nobody realising that the baby tucked inside was the daughter of the drowned king.

  Now Quinn’s great-uncle Ivor was King of Stormness, not knowing that she—the true queen—had survived the wreck.

  ‘What, no arguments? What’s wrong with you all?’ Quinn demanded.

  ‘Nothing,’ Elanor said, after a little pause, then added hesitantly, ‘your Grace.’

  ‘Oh, go boil your heads!’ Quinn cried. ‘So my father was the king! I’m still exactly the same. It doesn’t change anything.’

  ‘It does change things,’ Sebastian insisted. ‘It changes everything.’

  Quinn shook her head stubbornly. ‘No, it doesn’t. I have no proof anyway—only a silver baby’s rattle and an old man’s story. Do you think King Ivor will surrender his throne to me with that proof alone? Do you think I want him to?’

  ‘But you have the right.’ Sebastian was puzzled.

  ‘It seems to me that all the recent kings of Stormness have met with an untimely end,’ Quinn said. ‘I have no desire to be the next to die.’

  ‘That was because of Githa’s evil plots,’ Tom pointed out. ‘But you defeated her. She’s dead now.’

  ‘Her daughters are still alive and they have taken over our castle and imprisoned our friends and families,’ Quinn answered. ‘And don’t forget—they just did their very best to kill us too.’

  ‘It just feels weird,’ Tom said. ‘I mean … knowing you really are—’

  ‘I’m Quinn,’ she pleaded. ‘As I ever was.’

  He gave a crooked smile. ‘Very well, then, Quinn, what do you think we should do now?’

  ‘Let’s look in the obsidian ball again and see what is happening at Wolfhaven Castle,’ she suggested. ‘We must be very careful, though. We don’t want the witches to realise we’re watching.’

  The four friends held hands again, and Quinn carefully cast aside the covering cloth. Looking down into the swirling darkness of the ball, she chanted:

  ‘MAGIC BALL, BLACK AS NIGHT,

  SHOW US THE CASTLE HEIGHT,

  AND THE ENEMIES WE WISH TO SMITE,

  KEEP US HIDDEN FROM THEIR SIGHT.’

  Sebastian saw the dark mist part within the ball. Wolfhaven Castle stood on its stony outcrop, black-armoured knights marching along the battlements. More knights practised with sword and spear in the outer ward. Lord Mortlake stood watching
, his helmet with its boar tusks tucked in the crook of his elbow. Rank after rank of bog-men stood at attention behind him, staring sightlessly ahead.

  A giant boar thundered across the lawn, its hooves tearing up the grass. Lady Mortlake rode on its back, her black hair streaming behind her. She drew the great tusked pig up to a snorting halt beside her husband. ‘We’ve done it! Those wretched children have all drowned!’

  ‘What of their beasts?’ her husband snapped. ‘You know I want the unicorn for its healing horn and the dragon’s teeth so I can conjure up another army of bog-men.’ He gestured towards the rows and rows of bony, leathery creatures standing so still behind him. ‘And that griffin would be of use, too!’

  Lady Mortlake slid off the boar and reached out one hand to stroke her husband’s cheek. ‘We could not kill the children without killing their beasts, my love, you know that.’ As his anger flared, she soothed him. ‘You don’t need the beasts anymore! You are the only heir to the throne now that Lady Elanor and that other troublesome girl are dead. All we need to do now is kill the king.’

  A cruel smile curved Lord Mortlake’s lips. ‘You are right! But can it be done? Your mother failed at the crucial moment.’

  ‘Of course we can!’ Lady Mortlake replied. ‘My sister and I shall cast another spell at sunset on the night of the dark moon. That is only three days away. Our only problem is … we shall need blood.’

  ‘We have a dungeon full of prisoners,’ he answered indifferently. ‘Use their blood.’

  Lady Mortlake smiled. ‘As always, you are full of wisdom, my lord. We’ll make a spell of such power that we can strike down the king from afar.’ She vaulted back onto the giant boar and wheeled the beast around. ‘I shall go and tell my sister! She wants to kill them all now. I will tell her to wait till the moon is dark before she takes her revenge.’

  As the boar bounded away, the vision slowly dimmed and faded. Quinn swiftly flung the cloth over the obsidian ball once more, making sure that no-one could use it to spy on them.

  Sebastian sat back on his heels, looking around at the white faces of his friends. ‘They plan to murder them all! For a spell to kill the king!’

  ‘We have to get back fast!’ Quinn cried. ‘The moon is waning now. We only have a couple of nights till the moon is dark … before they’ll all be dead.’

  She jumped up and began to pace back and forth, her ragged white skirt fluttering around her bare feet. Fergus the wolfhound gazed at her with anxious eyes, whining. He didn’t like being in the witch’s cottage, even though the people of Willowmere had scrubbed it from floor to ceiling. A strange smell still clung to its stones, making all of the magical beasts uneasy. Quickthorn the unicorn stamped his great hoof, a rim of white showing about his dark eyes, while the griffin, Rex, lashed his lion’s tail. Beltaine the baby dragon was perched high up in the smoke-blackened rafters, her blue eyes slitted, spitting out a shower of fiery sparks. The wolf cub Wulfric was pressed, shivering, against the wolfhound’s shaggy side, while Fergus’s tail was tucked between his legs.

  ‘Without Owl-Eyes,’ Elanor said, ‘how on earth are we to get home?’

  ‘We’ll go in coracles, just like Quinn did when she was a baby,’ Tom suggested.

  ‘All that way, in a tiny little basket-boat?’ Sebastian cried.

  ‘If Quinn could do it as a helpless baby, we can do it now,’ Tom said.

  ‘But what about the beasts?’ Sebastian asked.

  ‘Ela and Quickthorn can fit into one coracle,’ Tom said. ‘I’ll go in another with Rex. He can fly most of the time and just come down to the boat when he grows tired. Sebastian, you go in another coracle with Bel, and Quinn can take Fergus and Wulfric in hers.’

  ‘It’ll take us forever to paddle all that way,’ Sebastian groaned.

  ‘Not if I ask the sea-serpent to tow us,’ Quinn said.

  The others stared at her in amazement. ‘Do … do you think that’s wise?’ Tom asked.

  ‘Why not?’ Quinn scowled at him.

  ‘Well, he’s just such a dangerous creature …’

  ‘I saved his life,’ Quinn said, gesturing towards the sea-serpent scale resting against the wall. Large and round like a shield, it had been cut from the breast of the sea-serpent by Githa. But Quinn had healed the wound with water enchanted by Quickthorn’s horn and stopped the great beast’s life-blood from ebbing away. ‘I’m sure he will tow us if I ask.’

  ‘I’m not being towed along by that thing!’ Sebastian declared. He turned to Tom and Elanor. ‘You should have seen the sea-serpent kill the witch! I’ll have nightmares for years.’

  ‘I’m the one who got bitten,’ Tom said. ‘You think I want to go anywhere near a monster like that again?’

  ‘It’s the only way to get back to Wolfhaven in time,’ Quinn insisted.

  Sebastian thought of the poor people of Wolfhaven Castle, imprisoned in the dungeons and now threatened with death. It had been three weeks since the castle had fallen to Lord Mortlake’s sinister forces. In that time, Sebastian and his friends had been on the run, battling all kinds of dangerous monsters and wicked enemies. Somehow they had survived. Now it was time to fulfil the last part of their quest. He and his friends had to find the sleeping heroes under the castle, awaken them and beg them to help save the castle and rescue the prisoners.

  He remembered the prophecy that had set them out on this impossible quest in the first place:

  WHEN THE WOLF LIES DOWN WITH THE WOLFHOUND,

  AND THE STONES OF THE CASTLE SING,

  THE SLEEPING HEROES SHALL WAKE FOR THE CROWN,

  AND THE BELLS OF VICTORY RING.

  GRIFFIN FEATHER AND UNICORN’S HORN,

  SEA-SERPENT SCALE AND DRAGON’S TOOTH,

  BRING THEM TOGETHER AT FIRST LIGHT OF DAWN,

  AND YOU SHALL SEE THIS SPELL’S TRUTH.

  It had seemed an unattainable goal, but the four friends had achieved such incredible things in the last three weeks. Could they somehow manage this final challenge?

  Sebastian squared his shoulders. ‘All right. We’ll have to risk it.’

  ‘And once we get there, we’ll need to slip back into Wolfhaven Castle without those witches seeing us,’ Quinn said, biting her thumbnail.

  ‘We could try at night,’ Sebastian said. ‘That creepy mist will help hide us. But Lord Mortlake’s knights will be guarding the castle gate. It’ll be impossible to get in that way.’

  ‘Well, we need to get into the caves under the castle,’ Quinn said, ‘so we can awaken the sleeping heroes. The best way would be to go back through the secret water gate under the bridge.’

  ‘So that means we need to paddle the coracles through the harbour mouth and all the way to the bridge … right under the enemy’s nose,’ Elanor said, her forehead creased in thought. ‘It’ll be dangerous.’

  ‘We’ll just have to hope the mist and the darkness hide us,’ Quinn said. ‘And somehow keep our wits while we’re in it. We’ll need to find those sleeping heroes fast and give them our gifts!’

  ‘Beltaine is losing her baby teeth,’ Sebastian said, looking affectionately at the little dragon. He held up a small tooth, shining bone-white and sharp as a dagger. ‘I got this one from her this morning.’

  ‘So we have all four of the magical ingredients now!’ Quinn lifted up the translucent sea-serpent scale so the firelight glowed through it. ‘Let’s go find the sleeping heroes!’

  Tom stared out across the lagoon to the churning ocean. It was still dark and wild, but the sky overhead was a delicate blue.

  ‘I will call the sea-serpent and see if he comes.’ Quinn hurried down the steep path towards the lagoon, the others following behind.

  Tom couldn’t help hoping that the sea-serpent wouldn’t heed her call. He would never forget the terrifying moment when his foot had been pierced by a sea-serpent’s fang. It had been like one of those nightmares when time slowed and matter became so heavy that nothing could shift it. The memory of stumbling into the shadowy vale of deat
h shot a cold bolt down his spine.

  Elanor turned and waited for him, whispering, ‘Are you all right? Does your foot hurt?’

  Tom shook his head. His foot had healed, but he feared it would take longer for his spirit to follow.

  I just have to stop thinking about it, he told himself.

  Then he heard Quinn calling. ‘Sea-serpent, are you there? Do you hear me?’

  She stood on a rock, arms stretched out, her staff in one hand. Her wild black curls flew in the wind. Sebastian was close behind her; Tom and Elanor stood on the path above.

  Tom saw a long, dark, slender shape writhing swiftly through the water. His legs wobbled. He found it hard to catch a breath.

  ‘Do not fear,’ Elanor whispered, taking his arm. ‘He’s our friend.’ But her voice was shaking so much she could hardly speak.

  The sea-serpent burst from the water. His red eyes gazed down, unblinking, at Quinn. His long body, silver scales striped with black, coiled and twisted below him, deep into the water.

  Sebastian rushed forward, trying his best to protect Quinn from an attack, but the snake did not strike. Instead, he bowed low before Quinn.

  ‘I knew you would come,’ Quinn said gently. ‘Will you help us?’

  The sea-serpent bowed his head once more, his body coiling and uncoiling beneath him.

  ‘Then come back here to us at sunset.’ Quinn pointed to the sun and then to where it would set in the west. ‘I shall expect you.’

  The sea-serpent slithered back into the water.

  Elanor sat down abruptly. ‘I thought you were done for, Quinn!’

  ‘I knew he would not hurt me,’ Quinn answered serenely. ‘I saved his life.’

  Four coracles raced along through the dark waters, tied together by a long rope to the neck of the sea-serpent. A white wake of foam arrowed behind them.

  ‘We’re going really fast,’ Tom called to the others.

  ‘Is it long till dawn?’ Elanor’s voice was so faint it was hard to hear her. ‘It’s scary racing through the darkness. I can’t see the waves before they hit us.’

  ‘Not long,’ Quinn called back. ‘Look, there’s a little line of light to the east.’