Legend of the Three Moons (7 page)

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.

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.

Edith's shack was just big enough for Edith, the children and fifteen dogs to sit around a fire of fence palings. Paid for, so she said, by her last customer, a Missen Bee woman whose missing husband had gone to Belem to sell the cat masks she had sewn, and never returned. `And probably won't.'

`You didn't tell her that did you?' asked a shocked Celeste.

`No. I told her that he'd come back when he was ready, but without the money he'd earned from selling the masks. Now sit down and sing me your song.'

Lyla, Celeste, Chad and Swift squashed up on a bench in front of rows of baskets full of dried herbs, weeds and thistles. Edith sat close to the fire with her favourite white, one-eyed bull terrier's head on her lap. Lem remained standing beneath a row of bags labelled
red back spider webs
,
bat wing grease
,
green frog's toe fungus
and
rats' toenails
.

When everyone was settled Lem began to sing.

`Three moons to save three Princesses born,

Five journeys to save a land that's torn,

One journey to find the dragon mocked,

One journey to find the merwoman locked,

One journey to find the poisoned tree,

One journey to set a chained eagle free,

Five journeymen to find the cage that swings,

Five journeys to free five Queens and Kings.'

Lyla asked Edith what she thought the song meant.

Edith stared at each of them in turn. `This is what I think. I have before me two travellers who pretend to be boys, three travellers who are, a green snake that can unlock doors and a patch-eyed pup that's worth more than the lot of you. What will you pay if I decipher it? Will you give me the pup?'

`No, not the pup. He belongs to me,' said Lem quickly, picking up Nutty. `But we'll give you enough meat for you and your dogs to eat for two days.'

`Done!'

They watched the old woman search through her many bookshelves, cupboards and drawers but she found nothing mentioning the moons' song. She then threw a handful of ivory bones onto her dirt floor but the bones predicted nothing. She took a metal wand and drew squiggles in the dirt. Again nothing. Next she poured a blue liquid from a goatskin into a silver bowl, dropped a silver thread into it and swirled it around while studying the ripples.

Finally, a smile of triumph crossed her wrinkled face and she glanced at Lem. `If I can decipher only one line, which line would you choose?'

He didn't hesitate. `The line about the dragon mocked.'

Edith nodded as if this was the right answer, then she spoke. `Only the one that speaks to animals can enter the ice mountain. Only he can accept the ice dragon's talisman, which is the first of five talismans that will free the Queens and Kings.'

Lem stared at the blue water and saw nothing, `Where will I find this ice dragon?'

Edith stopped stirring. `The bowl doesn't say. Perhaps the crystals will.'

She rummaged through her belongings until she found a silk bag which she emptied into her lap. Out rolled a collection of crystals some as big as chicken eggs, others as small as peas, some as round as oranges, some square or pyramid-shaped.

She held each one to her ear in turn, listened and then discarded it until the only one left was a blue pyramid with a scarlet eyelash inside it. `A sphinx's eyelash,' she told them and held the pyramid to her ear.

Her eyes lit up. `The ice dragon is imprisoned inside Tartik Mountain on Tartik Island. It is in great pain and can only be spoken to when shown its reflection in a mirror.'

Lem leant forward. `Where is Tartik Island?'

`So far west that if you miss it you will fall off the edge of the known world. That is all I can tell you.'

Lyla handed over the cloth containing the meat and bread. Edith looked surprised at its weight. `You have paid me well,' she said and began wandering around picking up small leather packets from her baskets. `So I have something extra for you.'

She gave a packet to Celeste. `These are honeysuckle seeds. Chew them when you wish to hide in darkness.'

She moved on to Chad. `Inside are eight Finders Keepers petals. Place them on your eyes to find the hidden way.'

She stopped in front of Swift and handed him a tiny packet. `This is lavender mixed with repulsata. Chew it when you wish to repulse someone.'

Reaching Lyla she handed her a blue packet. `This is peppermint root. If you chew it, it will make you as light as a feather.'

Finally she reached Lem and gave him a packet of dried buds, a small round mirror and a large ball of red string. `Snapdragon buds will protect you against unwanted magic. The string will find your way out of darkness and the mirror is to hold up to the ice dragon while reciting the spell,
ecco narcisso dragonucus attractivae
. Please repeat the spell.'

`
Ecco narcisso dragonucus attractivae
,' repeated Lem.

`Good. Now be on your way. I am tired and need to sleep.'

`Don't you get lonely?' asked Swift, as Edith led them back through the graves to the gate.

`I have my dogs, they are enough. I also have four more things to say, especially to you little tree talker. Do not bring me an unwanted present. The visitors I had earlier, are waiting at the crossroads. Find the sack you hid behind deadman's tree, cross the fields and collect what you buried near the barn. Turn right at the road beneath the plateau, this will take you to Mussel Cove where you will find a boat.'

They were half way along Marsh Pond Lane, when Swift asked Lem what he thought Edith meant by no unwanted presents.

`Or what she meant about Splash being able to unlock doors,' added Celeste.

`Or how she knew that Swift could speak to trees or that we hid the food sack and buried the casket,' said Chad.

`Oracles know everything,' announced Swift, who'd decided he liked the old woman and wouldn't mind visiting her again.

Lyla shook her head. `Not everything. She didn't know what the rest of the song was about.'