Darkhenge (24 page)

But the King was urgent. “She's getting away from us. We have to run!”

They ran till they were breathless. The wood had a new, silver glimmer; after a while Rob saw the moon through the dark mesh of treetops. It made things easier, but it had brought out animals, or Chloe had.

The King grew more and more nervous; as they burst through into a place where the trees lined a long track, he drew closer to Rob, grabbed his sleeve, stopped him.

“Be careful. She'll have left traps.”

He was right. They found two chasms opening in the ground, as if Chloe had slashed the avenue as she had the paintings, and then a dangerous gushing stream they had to wade across, fast and deep, its bed of chalk and streaming weed.

Once over, they found a strange bogland of tussocks and hollows; it was hard to struggle through, and looking up, Rob knew that the trees had closed in around it. The King dragged a mired foot from the soft ground and toppled. Rob had to steady him; for a moment they were chest to chest.

“Why don't you take that stupid mask off?” Rob breathed.

He'd thought the King would pull away. Instead his voice came soft and sly. “You do it, Rob. I won't stop you.”

Startled, Rob put his hand up to the face of blackthorn. Then he stopped. And drew back.

The King's mouth widened into a smile. “Exactly.
Because you don't want to know who I am.
Who it is that Chloe loves.”

“She loves me.”

The King shrugged. “Does she?” His face came close to Rob's ear. “She ordered me to cut the beanstalk. With you on it.”

“Liar!”

“I'm afraid not. She's not the Chloe you know, Rob, or the one you've invented. This Chloe has never existed before.”

A growl, close behind. They both turned.

An animal was squatting under a low bough of oak. Its eyes were small and red, and in the moonlight its muzzle pointed straight at them, intent.

Rob froze.
What is it?
he wanted to whisper, but the King's sudden rigid fear turned him cold; he kept totally still.

The beast yawned.

It stood up and ambled out into the moonlight and became a wolf, huge and silver. The long nose sniffed, the narrow, shrewd eyes moved from Rob to the King, as if it smelled their terror, sensed exactly their inability to run, deliberated between them.

“Listen to me.” Rob kept his voice low; even so the wolf's ears pricked. “Edge closer. We can climb the tree behind me. Move slowly. Don't turn your back on it.”

He tugged his foot from the bog. Took one squelchy step.

The King was frozen in fear.

“Come on.”

“I can't. Not the trees.”

“The trees won't—”

“The trees are my enemies. I came from them. They want me back!”

“For God's sake…”

The wolf crouched. Rob didn't wait. He leaped back, felt the tree's hard bark, turned and swung himself up into it, and as soon as his foot thrust into ivy, the night erupted behind him with a great splash. And a terrible scream.

She heard it.

She had dismounted and was leading Callie down the chalk track to the Woven Castle, but the scream made her pause and look back. It was faint and far but she knew who it was. She had got to know his voice, and his fear.

“No,” she said petulantly.

A bell rang. It chimed from the structure ahead of her, startling her. Its rich note hung in the frosty stillness, making the cold deeper, freezing her breath, shivering the moonlight into a thing of white beauty.

Was the caer inhabited? None of the others had been. Was it defended?

She looked back up the dark avenue of trees and said, “I just want them slowed down. I don't want them hurt. Do you understand that?”

The Unworld forest creaked and rustled.

As if it leaned toward her.

As if it listened.

The King's knife slashed wildly; the wolf stood its ground. Its head was low, its snarl ferocious; saliva dripped from its fangs, skin drawn back from the red gums. And in the shadows of the wood Rob was sure there were more, a slinking pack, running in swiftly.

“Come on!” he yelled, cold with fear.

The King turned and ran. He made three steps before the wolf was on him, and another before its weight flattened him on the soft ground. Rolling, he fought it off, but the jaws were snarling, grabbing an arm and shaking, jerking back from the knife.

“Rob!” he screamed.
“Rob!”

Rob tore the crane-skin bag off and hurled it down, then threw himself after it. He landed hard, falling forward on his hands, pain in his side.

Kicking out, he screamed and yelled at the beast; it leaped back, growling, and he grabbed the King, straddling him, heaving him up. “Move!”

Dragging the torn arm over his shoulder, he ran with the stumbling man, but there was no way, he knew, of getting him into the tree.

Gray bark reared; he turned, his back slammed against it.

Together, they faced the wolf.

Well, it wasn't like the other caers.

There were no walls, or at least not solid ones. It was a castle made of rope, or what seemed like rope; vast thick skeins of looped stuff, twisted and slightly fuzzy to touch, hanging from trees and posts and timber pillars, making a honeycomb of openings and tunnels.

The colors too were varied. In most places it seemed red but there were flecks of blue and yellow and green. It was like wool magnified a hundred times, a knitted castle, matted fibers under a microscope.

There were so many openings she had no idea which to choose; this caer was a labyrinth. As she hesitated, the bell chimed again, deep inside, this time more urgent.

Chloe bit her lip. This wasn't right. Whichever way she chose would be the right way, because this was her world. She was the writer of the story. Choosing an entrance, she led Callie into it, but after only a few steps four or five dark red openings led off in different directions, and she could see through the openwork walls. It was utterly confusing.

“Now what!” she snapped.

The answer came from behind her, though there had been no one there.

“This is how it is for poets. Always choosing and selecting.”

She turned, icy with fury.

He was leaning in a loop of the stuff, as if it was a swing, like the one in her garden at home.... His face was dark but she recognized the star mark on his forehead.

The three scars on his hands.

It's as if she's fighting us.

They've got the heart going again, and there's still brain activity, but this shouldn't be happening. Even looking at her face, I can see a change.

“Chloe,” Katie says. “Chloe?” She bends down and kisses her on the forehead.

Are there places too far away even for love to reach?

Behind spines and thorns and briars?

I won't believe that.

I will never believe that.

Though I am small, I have fought
in the ranks of the forest.

“T
HE
B
ATTLE OF THE
T
REES
”

R
ob had never had to fight.

In school he had always been popular, not one of those who got picked on. He was tall and had always been absorbed in his art, and though he'd once done a term of martial arts classes, the real thing had never happened.

Besides, this was an animal. It had no mercy, no fear.

It wouldn't hesitate.

Rob felt the weight on his arm ease; the King pulled himself straighter.

The wolf paced toward them, head low. Its ears were flat, its teeth yellow. When it leaped, the impact would be staggering, its bite would rip through muscle and bone.

He searched under his coat. Then flicked one despairing glance sideways.

The crane-skin bag lay under the trees, where he had tossed it.

He inched a foot toward it. The wolf's hackles rose, the growl deepening in its throat.

And to his astonishment the tree bent down between them. At least that was what he thought was happening; then with a flash of understanding he saw one dark bird had landed on the branches above, its weight bending them. Then another, and a third.

Long-legged, thin-billed, the three silent cranes perched in the branches. In the dimness they gleamed pale. The King whispered, “The
guardians
,” his voice a cracked breath of hope.

The cranes looked at the wolf.

Doubtfully, its amber eyes moved from Rob, surveyed the birds.

Nothing moved.

And then with a crashing of branches they could hear something approaching through the icy forest, its weight vibrating the ground. Something vast, something enormous, something that cracked and splintered its way through the undergrowth, so that Rob flattened his back even harder against the tree, wishing it would open, wishing there was a doorway inside it that would open and swallow him.

The wolf slunk back. Its teeth were still bared but its eyes darted in fear.

To the left, a thicket of blackthorn trembled. A shadow shouldered through, leaves and berries dropping from it, soil sliding from it, as if it had reared itself up from some mud hollow.

A great horned head, a dark pelt, rain-soaked, two tiny red baleful eyes.

A bull.

“Quietly.” It was Clare's whisper. Rob felt a hand grab his, pull him gently behind the tree. The King seemed transfixed; Rob had to tug at him urgently before he stumbled, and at the movement the three cranes all swiveled their beaks and looked down, fixing him with their gaze.

Clare drew him around the bole of the gnarled oak into the dimness behind, but even as they moved the bull lumbered forward, dropping its head. Its mouth opened like a pit of darkness; it bellowed, a terrifying roar of defiance, advancing on the wolf.

The wolf snarled, but it was slinking, its belly low, its ears flat.

Then it turned, and ran.

“She's totally useless.” Chloe folded her arms in fury. “Twice now she's supposed to have stopped you, and yet here you are.”

Vetch nodded mildly. “It's gone on longer than you think.”

“And you brought Rob here. Of all people!” Without waiting for him she turned and marched into one of the looped openings, holding Callie's harness tight. The horse's bulk was warm and comforting, her flank steaming slightly after the swift ride, but even behind the thud of hooves Chloe felt Vetch's presence stride after her like a shadow.

“You won't slow me down,” she said angrily. “I'm going to the Chair. I'm going as far in as I can get.” She glanced back and saw how his dark eyes watched her, irritatingly calm. “I could kill you,” she said. “I could make you die, just by wanting it.”

“Perhaps you could,” he said. “But you won't.”

She walked faster, but he was tall, and kept up easily. Ducking under skeins of the flecked ceiling, she said, “Out there I was small and weak. Have you any idea what it's like to be a little girl? I didn't have any power, but that's different here. The King told me about the Chair. Whoever sits on it holds all the power of the Unworld. Was he lying to me?”

“If this world is yours,” Vetch remarked, “you could make such a chair, couldn't you?
If
it is. But have you thought, Chloe, that in fact it may not be?”

She stopped, dragging Callie around. Vetch was a little breathless, but then so was she. “No I haven't! I don't believe that. You're full of tricks and lies and stories. You never tell the straight truth.”

He smiled ruefully. “Now that's unkind, coming from you.” Taking a step forward, he put his hand on Callie's slender neck and smoothed her mane. The horse whickered, nestling up to him. “Because you never do either, do you? You pretended, but you were bitter in secret. Rob, your parents—you never really told them how you felt.”

He was looking down at her; she felt humiliated. “What was the point? I couldn't explain.”

“Then how can you blame them for not knowing?”

“I do! I blame Rob.” She wished she was older, taller. She wished she knew how to argue, how to be logical, how to use words back at him. Tears choked her; she swallowed them, turned, marched on.

The thick wool grew tangled. She had to step over it, duck under it, draw Callie around vast impenetrable knots that blocked the way; she strode fiercely through openings and gaps, taking any way that seemed open, and all the time Vetch came behind, silent, as if he was biding his time.

She wanted to race away from him, but the castle tripped her and snagged her; it looped around wrist and ankle. Denser now, it closed in, growing colder, as if she was forcing her way to the heart of the mesh. Small things began to scuttle past, always running outward; they looked like mice and spiders and beetles, and once a snake, wriggling in panic. And the tunnels weren't still either. Sometimes they rose under her feet, or twisted, or even rippled, so that she and Vetch and the horse all lost their footing and staggered against the stretchy, yielding threads.