Unnerved, she turned her back on the tower and summoned up a mental picture of the place Ania had taken her to see the boats. Resisting the urge to run, she walked purposefully, and gradually the feeling of malevolence faded until she could smell the seaweed odor of the red lichen again.
She stopped when she came to the first canal and looked down at Mr. Walker. “The blackshirts keep prisoners in this part of the city, but almost no one else lives here. Can you smell people in any direction?”
Mr. Walker sniffed, turning his nose this way and that. “I think there are people that way.” He pointed across the bridge.
Rage started walking toward it, but Mr. Walker did not move. “What is the matter?” she asked.
“Trolls,” Mr. Walker said. “Everyone knows they live under bridges and that they especially love to eat goats. They will smell Goaty on us.”
Rage wanted to shout that there were no such things as trolls and that they probably did not live under bridges even if they did exist, but she mastered her impatience. “I’ve already crossed this bridge today and there was no sign of any troll!”
Still Mr. Walker refused to budge, saying that everyone knew trolls only came out at night because they couldn’t bear the sun.
“That’s vampires, and anyway, when I came back across this bridge the sun had set.” Rage and Mr. Walker were still arguing when she heard the sound of boots marching along the cobbles. Knowing there was no time to waste, she snatched him up, ran across the bridge, and pressed herself into a doorway on the other side, holding her hand over his mouth.
Not a moment too soon. A pair of black-clad men marched purposefully along the canal and crossed the bridge. Mr. Walker ceased his struggles and began to tremble in her arms as the men approached. Rage stroked his head and listened intently. She caught a snatch of the conversation and was elated to hear one of them speak of prisoners. It was too good an opportunity to miss. She set Mr. Walker down and hurried after them, leaving him to follow or not. The blackshirts walked so fast, she almost had to run to keep up. She prayed they would not hear her. Luckily, they were deep in conversation. Even so, Rage stayed close to the walls, darting from alcove to alcove and across bridges swiftly and lightly, prepared to freeze if either man glanced back.
Then, without warning, she lost sight of them.
The men had been striding along a broad street beside a canal. They had not passed any bridges, though there were a lot of tiny lanes running off to the left. Rage guessed the men had turned into one of them. She stopped and listened but could hear nothing other than her own wildly beating heart.
She went on cautiously, stopping to peer down every lane. They were all empty. A chilling thought struck her: what if the guards had become aware of her and were hiding somewhere, waiting to grab her?
Mr. Walker caught up, puffing hard. “I don’t like the smells here,” he whispered.
Rage swallowed her own rising panic. “Can you smell anyone hiding nearby?”
He sniffed in all directions, then began to sniff his way along the stones of a narrow lane. He stopped at the corner of another street.
“What is it?” Rage hissed. “Did they go this way?”
He didn’t answer her at once. He began sniffing the building on their right—a tower like the others, except for the door, which looked new and very solid, its lever gleaming as if it had been polished.
“Do you smell that they went in there?” Rage prompted. The building was surely too small to be a prison.
Mr. Walker looked up at Rage in triumph. “I smell them! Billy Thunder and Elle.”
Rage hugged herself in elation, but finding Billy and Elle was a long way from rescuing them.
“Their smell is not very strong,” Mr. Walker said. “I wouldn’t have noticed it at all if you hadn’t asked me to smell for someone hiding.”
Rage took a few steps back and looked up, deciding that the men she had been following must have gone inside the tower. There was a single lit window, about halfway up. She tried the door but couldn’t move the lever an inch. There was no way to get round the back of the building because it was built right up against the ones alongside.
“Here,” Mr. Walker cried, peering into what looked like an air vent in the wall. “I can get in here,” he announced.
Rage hesitated, not wanting him to go in alone. Bitterly she realized that she had no choice. “All right,” she agreed. “Just see if you can find them and come straight back. Don’t let anyone see you.”
“No one ever sees me,” Mr. Walker said.
Seeing his gallant, solitary little figure in the moonlight, Rage wondered for the hundredth time how the family who had owned him could have taken him to the dog pound.
“Be careful,” she called, but he had already gone.
She knelt down and tried to see into the vent, but it was too dark. Then she searched along the street until she found a crumbling building where she could wait unseen for Mr. Walker. There was a hole in its rear wall that opened into another lane: a perfect escape route if she needed one.
With nothing to do but wait, she sat down in the doorway, keeping an eye on the tower. Something dug into her. She wriggled and reached into her coat pocket until her hand closed around the hourglass. It felt hot. She took it out, and there was a gust of wind, then a sliver of mist shimmered and blew into a spiral that blushed red before her. A face appeared like a hologram; a shifty feline face with the suggestion of pointed ears and beautiful red eyes slitted with yellow, catlike irises.
The firecat.
“What do you want?” Rage demanded coldly.
The smoky image blinked at her. “Ragewinnoway not hurrying,” it accused.
Rage wanted to shout that she was in no hurry to sail over the edge of a waterfall, but she held her tongue. The firecat was likely to vanish once it understood that she had no intention of going down the River of No Return.
“I can’t go down the river until my friends are free,” she said slyly. “They are imprisoned in this tower, and I must get them out.”
“Ragewinnoway must take hourglass to wizard. Wizard helping friends.”
“I won’t leave the others, so if you want me to deliver the hourglass, you’d better do something to help them,” Rage said bluntly.
“Can’t do something,” the firecat burst out.
Rage felt her anger fade because the firecat’s frustration sounded genuine. Giving up all pretense, she said, “Look, no one can go down the river without being killed. You know that, don’t you? You might as well tell me the truth about the hourglass and what it measures.” She had no expectation that it would answer her question. But she was wrong.
“Hourglass is measuring life,” the firecat spat. “Wizard’s life. When sand runs out, no more wizard and no more magic for waking mother of Ragewinnoway.”
It vanished.
Rage stared at the hourglass in horror. Most of the sand had fallen to one side of the hourglass. She told herself that the firecat had lied to pay her back for refusing to go down the river. But what if it had told the truth and the wizard really would die if he did not get the hourglass before the sand ran out? Yet it made no sense that a wizard powerful enough to create a magical land would bind his life to the sand in an hourglass. And what part did the firecat play in all this? Despite its violent desire for her to obey the riddle etched on the base of the hourglass, it had never shown the slightest sign of love or fear of its master.
Of course there were no answers, only more questions. And the answers no longer mattered. Whether or not the wizard’s life was at stake, Rage knew she would not survive a journey down the lethal River of No Return.
She thrust the hourglass back into her pocket, dismissing all thoughts of the wizard, the firecat, and the hourglass. Right now, the important thing was to get her friends out of the hands of the blackshirts. She left the safety of the crumbling building and paced up and down the street, wondering what was taking Mr. Walker so long.
She w
as in front of the doorway to the tower when it suddenly burst open and a group of blackshirts crowded out. Rage froze. But to her astonishment, they didn’t seem to see her. Ania’s spell must have worked after all, though she did not understand how Mr. Walker and Goaty had been able to see her—unless it was that she had not wanted to hide from them.
Rage dared not move as the blackshirts milled around her. Ania had said that the success of the spell depended on this. A trickle of perspiration ran down between her shoulder blades.
“Come on!” one of the blackshirts shouted back into the doorway.
Rage could see stone steps going up. She heard the sound of boots and four more blackshirts appeared.
“We should have relieved the others guarding the ferry pier half an hour back!” the man holding the door ajar said angrily. He had a red stripe on his shirt.
“It’s not our fault that the tunnel collapsed,” one of the latecomers said.
They marched away. On impulse Rage ran softly forward and grabbed the edge of the door to stop it swinging shut. In a twinkling she was inside and creeping up the stairs, hardly able to believe her luck.
She climbed and climbed, wondering what could be in the lower part of the building, since these steps were the only way in and they went straight up without a single doorway leading off them. They brought her to a long stone corridor, and she saw light flowing from a doorway ahead. This must be the room with the lit window she had seen from the street. Summoning her courage, she made her way to the door.
“I know what you are up to!”
Rage nearly jumped out of her skin as the voice and a burst of sneering laughter cut through the silence. But there were no footsteps. Whoever had spoken had to be inside the room.
“What do you suppose they were up to?” another man asked in a conversational tone.
Rage pressed herself to the wall and edged closer to the door.
“I’ve no idea. They both look human to me, but the female is furred, so she must be some kind of wild thing. The boy looks completely human, but what boy would associate with witches and wild things?”
“Maybe the witches made some wild things that could pass as human.”
“I didn’t think there was enough magic left in Wildwood for any more making.”
“Unless Boone is right and they’ve found a way to get it from this side of the river. They do say the river is getting worse.”
“Well, it’s for the High Keeper to decide what they are, when he gets round to taking a look at them.”
“Boone said there’s no hurry.”
“They’ll die like the other ones if they’re here too long. If they’re wild folk, I mean.”
The other man laughed harshly. “One less wild thing to bother about.”
The two men were silent for a time, then there was a slapping sound.
“Is it true that the real animals in the provinces are getting sick?”
“Maybe, but who cares if a few animals die? Ahh! Now I’ve got you!”
There was another period of silence and some more slapping. The sound was tantalizingly familiar. Rage had a vision of herself playing Snap with Mam. The men were playing a card game! Figuring this out made her feel bold, and she went right up to the door and peeked into the room.
The men were seated at a table. There was nothing in the room but the table and two chairs. Rage withdrew. The conversation of the blackshirts suggested they were guarding Billy and Elle. But where were they? And where was Mr. Walker?
Rage took a deep breath, then ghosted past the door and down the shadowy hallway. It turned sharply to the left, and she peeped around the corner. There was a window in the outer wall, and in the blue-tinged moonlight she could see metal bars set in the wall opposite.
Creeping up to the bars, Rage saw a small stone cell. A man in it was sleeping soundly, his back turned to the bars. She craned her neck and saw another two cells, empty, but the third had three fairies in it, all with delicate dragonfly wings. Only one of them was facing the bars, its tiny mouth opened in a perfect O of amazement at the sight of her.
Rage put her finger to her mouth, wondering what crime the little creatures could possibly have committed. The fairy nodded and poked at her two companions. All three crept to the bars, close enough for Rage to see that they were pale and notice that they smelled bad. Her heart twisted in pity. The poor fragile things were clearly sick, despite what Ania had said about none of the wild things dying of hunger.
“Are you from the secret coven?” one of the fairies whispered through cracked lips.
“No, but I’m going to try to get you out,” Rage said softly. She examined the bars. There was no lock. In fact, there didn’t even seem to be a door.
“When they put us in here, the bars slid aside,” the fairy said.
This reminded Rage of a movie she had seen about men in a prison. When it was breakfast time, all of the cell doors had opened simultaneously at the flick of a single switch in the office of the prison warden.
“I have an idea, but first I must see if my friends are all right,” she whispered.
“The not-dogs?” another fairy asked, coming up to the bars. Then she flinched and drew back as if the metal had burned her.
“They are down at the end,” the other said, pointing carefully through the bars.
Rage hurried along the corridor to the last cell, where Billy and Elle stared out at her happily, their fingers curled around the bars. “We could smell you,” Elle said joyfully.
Rage put her hands on theirs and squeezed hard. “I am so glad to see you both,” she said fervently, blinking to stop herself from crying out of sheer relief.
“How did you find us?” Billy asked, bringing her down to earth.
“Mr. Walker sniffed you out,” Rage answered. “Have you seen him?”
Billy shook his head. “I thought I could smell him ages ago, but not now.”
Elle nodded confirmation. “He was near and then he had a going-away smell.”
Rage decided that the vent Mr. Walker had used to enter the building must have led to the lower level of the tower. He’d probably gone outside by now and was heading back to Goaty. At least she hoped so.
“Have you found Mama?” Billy asked eagerly.
“She’s been taken to a place where they look after sick animals. We’ll search for her when I’ve got you two out of here.”
“What are you going to do?” Billy asked.
“Just be ready to run,” Rage said. She went back to the fairies. “Are there any more wild things in here?”
The fairies shook their heads. One said sadly, “There were others, but they faded. It was the iron bars.”
“What about the man in the other cell?” It would be a problem if all of the cells opened and he attacked them or started shouting.
“The blackshirts brought him in last night,” a fairy said. “He was groaning, but he hasn’t made any noise today.”
The smallest of the fairies held out a tiny bag to Rage. “It is witch’s dust,” she whispered. “It’s for making us look sick when we come to Fork, but you can use it to wish the guards asleep. You have to throw it over them, and you mustn’t breathe any in yourself.”
“It doesn’t last very long,” another warned.
Rage pocketed the tiny bag and crept back to the room where the blackshirts were playing cards. This time she noticed another open door behind the one to the guards’ room, and stairs going down. She wondered if this led to the tunnel the departing blackshirts had talked about.
“…don’t see why we can’t just go in and clean Wildwood out once and for all,” one of the men said. “It would be more merciful than letting the creatures die slowly, and it would teach the witches a lesson. That’s what Boone thinks we ought to do.”
There was the sound of cards being shuffled.
“Keepers would never abide it. They don’t want their hands dirtied with violence.”
“Their hands wouldn’t have to be dirtie
d, would they? Besides, wasn’t it the High Keeper himself who wanted to see what would happen if wild things were kept behind iron bars?”
Another slapping sound.
Rage peeped around the corner again. The men hadn’t moved from their seats. She poked her head right into the room and saw that there was a big wheel set into the same wall as the door. It might be a central control for the cell gates, but even from that distance she could see that there was no way to turn such a wheel quietly. She thought of the little bag of witch’s dust.
“I heard the witch folk claim it’s not them using up magic from the land,” said the guard with his back to the wheel.
Rage took a deep breath and stepped into the room. The lanterns hung on the wall gave off a bright but flickering light, but if she could move quietly enough, perhaps Ania’s spell would stop the men looking her way until it was too late.
Pleasepleaseplease, she thought, and again she grew hot with anxiety.
She took another step into the room, legs shaking.
The blackshirt with his back to her groaned, and the other gathered the cards up with the same burst of sneering laughter she had heard from the hallway.
She took a step nearer. She was so close to them now, she dared not breathe, but neither lifted their eyes from the cards.
“What about the man in the first cell? What did he do that he’s locked up here?”
Rage waited, curious despite her fear.
“He’s a keeper, if you can believe it. Boone said he was found in the provinces snooping around. There’s some suggestion he’s mixed up with the witch women.”
“A keeper working with the witch women!” the other exclaimed. He lifted his head so that he was facing Rage.
She gasped. She couldn’t help herself. The blackshirt’s eyes widened and focused on her. She hurled some of the witch’s dust over the two men, who instantly toppled sideways under the yellow shower.
Still holding her breath, Rage shoved the pouch into her pocket and ran to the wheel. There was a blue arrow on it, pointing up to the roof, and another blue arrow on the wall. If she was right about the wheel controlling access to the cell doors, she must have to turn the wheel arrow to match the arrow on the wall.