They were about halfway across the lake when the moon sailed out, illuminating the landscape with silver. At once a starkin lord brought his sisika bird around and down, zooming straight towards them. The giant white bird screeched, its claws out-thrust.
‘Quickly!’ Molly cried. ‘If we can just make the rushes, we can hide’.
‘We’ll never make it!’ Jack yelled back, poling as fast as he could.
Peregrine pulled out his flute and held it to his lips. A cacophony of notes rang out, shrill and harsh.
‘What are you doing, you fool?’ Grizelda shouted. ‘Shoot your arrows!’
Still Peregrine played. It was a strange tune, filled with jarring dissonances. Yet the sisika bird shrieked in response and wheeled about, despite the yelling of the soldier on its back, despite the cruel whip and barbed collar yanking at the giant bird’s throat. Away the sisika bird flew, over the lake, over the dim-lit marshes, away from the small boat where Peregrine sat cross-legged and played his long white flute.
Silence fell.
‘You saved us!’ Molly said. ‘But how? What was that tune you played?’
‘I don’t know,’ Peregrine said. ‘I thought about compelling the bird to go away and played what came into my mind. It certainly wasn’t a very pretty tune!’
‘Amazing,’ she said and shook her head in wonderment.
Other starkin lords came against them as they noticed the dark shape of the eel-boat against the shining waters of the lake. Each time Peregrine played his flute and sent the sisika birds far away.
‘We should’ve just stayed at Stormlinn Castle and had you play your flute against all those soldiers,’ Jack grumbled. ‘We could have stayed snug and warm and had a good laugh watching them all run away’.
‘I don’t think it would work against an army,’ Peregrine said. ‘The soldiers would all need to be close enough to hear my flute, and I have a feeling that the song for each individual is different. Besides, how long would it take them to work out what I was doing and jam a bit of candle wax in their ears?’
Dawn came at last, the clouds turning softly pink, the water glimmering between black banks of stiff rushes. Molly swung a pot over the brazier, and made them tea from dried marshmallow flowers. There were only two horn cups on the boat, set in beautifully forged iron filigree, which they had to share among the four of them. The hot tea helped warm them, for it was very cold on the water, with a damp mist rising.
The day passed slowly. Peregrine and Jack took turns to pole the punt along, while Molly fished for their supper or carved her bog-oak. Grizelda rested, her dog at her feet as always. The starkin girl looked very different in Molly’s homespun clothes, which were all grey or brown or cream, the natural colours of the wool. None of her clothes had dried in time, which made Grizelda irritable. ‘They’re so itchy,’ she complained. ‘How can you stand it?’
‘I guess I’m used to it,’ Molly replied quietly.
It was a long, slow journey through the winding maze of the fenlands. They ate bread and cheese and dried fruit at noon, then dropped anchor a few hours later as the twilight closed down over the marshes. Nobody wanted to risk negotiating their way through the bogs and quagmires in the darkness. Molly had caught some fish and had packed plenty of food, so they had a feast and then settled down to camp on the hard boards. It was surprisingly cosy with the brazier glowing away and plenty of otter skins to snuggle under, and Peregrine entertained them with marvellous stories of ships and faraway lands and strange creatures, till they at last grew drowsy and fell asleep.
As soon as it was light, they kept on going through the marshes. It was hard to keep a sense of direction in the early morning mist, but Molly knew each tiny islet, each moss-hung tree, and so the small boat slowly wound its way deep into the swamps.
Midafternoon, the tall grey peak of Grimsfell rose on the horizon. Like the Isle of Eels, it was an island that rose steeply from flat, briny marshes, its lower slopes covered with leafless, twiggy trees, its height bare except for one dramatic rock that stuck into the grey sky like a broken fang. Below the rock grew an ancient oak tree, cleaved in two. Even from this distance they could see the clump of mistletoe that grew in its bare branches.
‘The lightning-blasted oak,’ Peregrine said. ‘Jack, can’t we get along any faster?’
Jack flashed him a hot and bothered look. ‘No, your Highness. Unless you’d like to lend a hand?’
Candles blazed in the great hall.
Vernisha sat on her gilded throne, scowling as King Merrik and Queen Liliana danced a joyous jig in the centre of the hall. Both were dressed in animal skins, and the king wore a set of donkey ears with as much dignity as if it were the starkin crown. They were smiling at each other, apparently oblivious to the jeering crowd.
Zed was clapping along; Rozalina waved a stick of jester’s bells. They were as calm and relaxed as if they were in their own great hall. Vernisha obviously found this disregard for their humiliation most aggravating, for she kept yelling at them to do something else. ‘Juggle, you fool! Do a cartwheel! Sing us a silly song!’
The four captives only smiled and bowed and did as they were ordered. Since Merry was a fine musician and both men had been trained since birth as warriors, they put on as fine a show as any jongleurs, and soon the crowd was clapping and cheering them in genuine pleasure. Vernisha’s bulbous cheeks turned magenta.
Lord Goldwin, the Count of Zavaria, sat beside her, toying with a dish of broiled boar’s head. A tall, handsome man with a fair beard and ice-blue eyes, he was the one who had persuaded her not to break the Yuletide tradition of truce. As always, two lean white hounds lay at his feet, eating tidbits from his fingers. The pug dog hated them and was continually yowling and yipping at them from his seat on Vernisha’s lap. The hound dogs ignored him, laying their heads on their long paws with a long-suffering sigh.
‘Such a shame Tom-Tit-Tot can’t change shape into a grogoyle,’ Liliana said with a scornful glance about the hot, crowded, gaudy room. ‘I’d love to have him fly through here, breathing fire and making everyone run and scream’.
‘Yes,’ King Merrik replied, turning her in a skilful spin. ‘But you know he can only change into something his own size or smaller. He’s been jumping around Vernisha in the shape of a flea, but I’m afraid if she gets any crosser she’ll have us burnt alive before help arrives’.
‘I’m not sure if it’s the food or the hope that help is coming, but I’m finding it easier to bear now,’ Liliana said.
‘Yes, thank Liah for Tommy-boy!’
‘Stop gossiping!’ Vernisha screamed. ‘This isn’t meant to be fun! Stars and comets, when can I have them killed?’
‘Just a few more days,’ Lord Goldwin soothed her.
Just then the grand double doors swung open and the steward hurried up the hall. ‘Your Majesty, a wicked winged beast is flying about the battlements!’
Vernisha smiled. ‘So? Shoot it down!’
The four captives looked at each other in sudden excitement and dread.
‘Well, we would have, your Majesty, but …’
‘But what, you flocculating fool?’
‘Princess Adora is being held upon its back by a warrior, your Majesty. If we shoot the beast down, she’ll be killed’.
Vernisha’s eyes boggled. ‘What! My daughter? But …’
Lord Goldwin was on his feet in an instant, the white hounds tense and quivering by his side. ‘Your Majesty! But how? We must save her!’
‘Let’s go see this winged beastie,’ Vernisha said and seized a whip, laying it about the shoulders of the poor hobhenkies chained to her throne. With a groan, they hoisted the gaudy chair high into the air and carried it down the hall. ‘Bring the prisoners!’
Liliana seized Merry’s arm and hurried after the procession of servants and courtiers, Rozalina and Zed close behind. ‘Is that what Briony meant by a bargaining chip?’ Merry whispered to her. ‘Vernisha’s own daughter?’
‘I thought s
he had been locked away in a tower,’ Zed said in a low whisper. ‘For refusing to marry again’.
‘Poor Adora,’ Rozalina said. ‘I don’t blame her, though. That vile woman has married her four times already, each time to an older and richer man. And none of her children lived past the age of three’.
There was deep distress in Rozalina’s voice. Princess Adora was her stepmother, although there were only six years between them in age. She blamed Rozalina for the deaths of all her children since Rozalina had once said that no child of Adora’s would ever live to inherit the throne of Ziva. Curse or prophecy, Rozalina herself did not know, but it was hard not to feel pity for the princess, once the most beautiful and celebrated woman in Ziva.
‘Pedrin must’ve broken her out,’ Liliana said. ‘What a brilliant idea!’
Up, up, up the winding staircases they climbed, the hobhenkies labouring under the weight of the laden throne, until they came out at last onto the battlements.
A creature out of a nightmare wheeled about the towers, uttering a high, defiant, spine-chilling scream. Bat-winged, with the graceful golden body of a lion and the deadly curved tail of a scorpion, fire spat from its gaping jaws. On the grogoyle’s back was a tall man with brown hair and a greying beard, dressed in a long twilight-grey cloak. Zed grinned broadly and waved his hand, for the rider was his own father, Lord Pedrin. His father was holding a slender, fair-haired woman before him, keeping her steady as the grogoyle spun and soared.
Vernisha said, ‘Tell him to come closer. I want to see if it really is Adora’.
A chalk-faced soldier climbed up onto the battlement and shouted through a speaking-trumpet, ‘Come closer!’
The grogoyle dived. Many of the lords and ladies screamed and threw themselves to the ground. The pug dog whimpered and burrowed under Vernisha’s voluminous skirts. As the winged beast sped overhead, Liliana could clearly see the petrified face of Princess Adora, her red widow’s veil whipping in the wind.
‘I have liberated Princess Adora!’ Pedrin cried. ‘I will exchange her for the safe return of King Merrik, Queen Liliana, Queen Rozalina and Lord Zedrin’.
‘Shoot them down,’ Vernisha said. ‘At last, some proper entertainment!’
‘But your Majesty! Your daughter!’ Lord Goldwin gasped.
‘What use is she to me anyway?’ Vernisha replied indifferently. ‘Won’t do as she’s told, all her brats die. She’s costing me a fortune in that tower of hers. Shoot her down!’
The soldiers ran forward, knelt and raised high their longbows. At a gesture, they fired. Arrows sprang towards the grogoyle, who twisted and dived. Adora screamed.
‘Blazing balls, they missed! Fire again!’
‘But, your Majesty … you promised me your daughter’s hand … you said I’d be your heir!’ Lord Goldwin was aghast.
She smiled coyly at him and reached out one squat hand to pat his cheek. ‘Why marry her when you can have me? Perhaps we can make our own heirs, eh?’
Lord Goldwin turned so pale it looked as if he might faint.
Again and again the starkin soldiers fired, while the four prisoners watched in an agony of fear. The grogoyle adroitly swerved and ducked through the wall of arrows, then soared away, disappearing into the blue sky.
‘Stupid soldiers!’ Vernisha grumbled. ‘Tell them to practise firing against each other! Now, my darling, let’s go eat. I need to keep my strength up if I’m to give you an heir’. She smiled at Lord Goldwin and held out one ring-laden hand. Looking sick and shaken, he bowed and kissed it, then followed the swaying throne back down the stairs towards the banqueting hall.
Slumped with disappointment, the four prisoners shuffled after, their faces all turned back to stare to the small square of blue sky slowly dwindling behind them.
CHAPTER 21
The Seal Ring
THE EEL-BOAT SLOWLY NEGOTIATED ITS WAY DOWN THE river, through shallow channels of water surrounded on either side by reedy beds and clumps of tall grasses and marsh weeds. Many times the boat almost ran aground on mud, and the long-handled shovels were used to push the boat back into deeper water.
The sun was only a small red ball bobbing on the horizon when at last they came close to Grimsfell. Surrounded by marshy fenlands, bogs and quagmires, the island rose steeply from one small half-circle of solid ground, where trees and bushes grew in a tangle. A few broken walls and doorways showed the ruin of what once must have been a village. Peregrine saw the bare boughs of apple trees, the pale drooping catkins of a hazel tree, and the tangled hoops of blackberry brambles. At either end of the beach were two huge boulders carved into the shape of a woman standing upon a striped archway.
‘Taramis, the goddess of the rainbow and the bridge between worlds,’ Peregrine said. ‘I wonder why someone would put a statue of her here, so far from anywhere. They look very old’.
‘They mark the beginning of the road,’ Molly said.
‘The road?’
‘Yes. A causeway once led straight through the marshes to Grimsfell. The Count of Ardian built it when the starkin first came a-marching into the fenlands. Grimsfell is the biggest island in the fens, you see, and the count thought to use it. Yet none of the hearthkin would ever stay here. They were afraid, you see, of Old Grim’.
Peregrine nodded in understanding.
Molly went on, ‘But when the prince woke Old Grim and took him away, people thought it’d be safe. They came and built this village and carved those statues to guard and protect the road. For a while it all flourished. But then Old Grim came back and put a blight on the place, and everyone fled. The village fell into ruin and the road with it. And then my da broke the dykes and flooded the marsh again and the causeway was drowned. It’ll still be there, though, under the water’.
There was a grating noise from the bottom of the boat.
‘I think we might’ve just hit it,’ Jack said with a grin. He poked overboard with one of the long-handled shovels and knocked on stone.
‘I’m not sure we’ll get any closer,’ Molly said. ‘The bogs are very treacherous around Grimsfell. That’s why they built the causeway. We can probably wade ashore from here’.
‘But our feet will get wet,’ Grizelda objected.
‘Never mind,’ Molly said. ‘We’ll take off our boots and stockings and carry them, and then light a fire. I can make us some hot soup, we’ll soon get warm again’.
‘Eel soup, I bet,’ Grizelda muttered but took off her boots—shiny crimson once more—and looped up her skirt so her legs were bare. Peregrine unhooded Blitz and flung him into the air, and he soared far above them, his wings bent and black against the red-streaked sky. Jack dropped anchor—a boulder tied with rope—and then the four of them waded to shore through the icy water, their boots in their hands. The water was so shallow that it scarcely lapped at their ankles.
‘It’s too late to do anything now,’ Grizelda said. ‘Let’s make that fire and have something to eat’.
Peregrine hardly heard her. He was staring at the narrow grey stone on the peak of the hill. At the base of the rock grew the oak tree, its broad, knobbly branches as thick as a strong man’s torso, its ancient trunk wide enough to hide a draught horse. Long ago it had been cleaved in two by lightning. The few ragged brown leaves which clung to its branches showed the tree still lived, as did the great cluster of golden-green leaves hanging high in the heavy boughs, dangling small white berries.
‘I can’t believe we’ve found it,’ he whispered. ‘I can’t believe we’re actually here’.
He bent and hastily dragged his stockings and boots onto his wet, cold feet. ‘Come on! Let’s go and take a look’.
He bounded up the path, Jack at once close behind. Molly dropped the heavy pot and the sack of food and limped after them, finding it hard to manage the narrow rocky path with her crutch. Grizelda sighed, rolled her eyes and charged after them, pushing past Molly so she could catch up with the boys.
It was a hard slog and Molly’s hip was aching by the t
ime she reached the top. She paused to catch her breath and surreptitiously rub her hip. She looked up at the grey fang of rock looming above her, sharp against the darkening clouds. From the base of the rock ran the stony path of an old dried-up stream. Molly could see from the mosses on the rock where the spring must once have run.
‘Here, Molly!’ Peregrine cried.
He and Jack and Grizelda were all perched on the low, broad branches of the oak tree, gazing out at the view. Blitz crouched above them, his feathers ruffling in the cold wind. Whining, Oskar was standing on his hind legs, his paws up on the tree trunk as if wishing he could climb up and be with his mistress. Molly went to join them. She could not climb the tree but she leant against its ancient fissured trunk and looked out at the fenlands. As far as the eye could see, the peat-bogs stretched, a crazy pattern of mud and reeds and grasses, with the occasional winding snake of shining water, a few crooked trees holding up stiff, cold branches against the sky.
‘He was here,’ Peregrine said. ‘Prince Zander, I mean. He came here with the spear and he banged it three times against the stone and roused Lord Grim. Then, as Lord Grim emerged from under the hill, the soldiers seized him and bound him with bells. Then Prince Zander mocked Princess Shoshanna and told her that he’d make sure her prophecy never came true. And then he threw the spear into the bog. He was fat and lazy. He can’t have thrown it very far. Maybe a hundred steps’.
He stared out at the bog, his hands clenched into fists. Mist swirled about the bases of all the trees, making their branches look like black skeletal fingers. Birds called eerily. The sun slid further behind the horizon, and at once it grew colder and darker. Molly shivered, her feet like lumps of ice in her damp boots.
‘How do you know all this?’ Grizelda demanded.
‘I’ve seen it in the Well of Fates,’ Peregrine said. ‘The Erlrune showed me. I wanted to know what had happened to the spear. He threw it that way’. He pointed towards the west, where the mud and marsh seemed thickest. ‘I’ll find it tomorrow,’ he said, utter conviction in his voice.