Quest for the Sun (3 page)

In the morning, after a rather subdued breakfast, Kenta came up to me with Blue-bum perched on her shoulder.

‘Adam,' she said, ‘there's something Blue-bum wants to say.'

By now, like the others, I was used to Kenta's self-appointed role of chatterbot interpreter. ‘Yeah?' I grunted, not altogether enthusiastically. ‘What?'

Blue-bum peered up and chittered softly, then cringed and looked down, hang-dog. ‘You see? He's sorry. He knows snatching your ring was wrong. So now he's come to apologise.'

Blue-bum slid a sly little glance at my face … but then I couldn't help noticing his gaze slip downwards to the bump of the ring under my shirt. I stretched my mouth into a stiff, phoney smile. ‘That's OK, Blue-bum. Let's forget it, huh?'

I was turning away when Kenta spoke again. ‘I think there's something worrying him about the ring. That's why he wanted a closer look at it last night.'

I turned back slowly.

Kenta shrugged apologetically. ‘Something bothered him about it.' She glanced at the hunched figure on her shoulder for confirmation. Blue-bum chittered softly, nodding; then, very cautiously, pointed one crooked finger at the bump under my shirt, snatching it away again quickly as if it might be slapped.

He wanted another look. Why? He sat silently on Kenta's shoulder, head sunk, eyes lowered. I saw the others had gathered round expectantly. With an inward sigh, I drew the ring out into the slanting sunlight, but this time I kept the bootlace round my neck, holding the ring out for them to see.

The circle of faces gazed at it respectfully. All except Blue-bum. He was off again, pointing, pulling at Kenta's hair and jabbering in her ear, making chopping motions with his hand and scratching at his head in an elaborate pantomime of puzzlement. Perplexed, I found my own gaze drawn to the ring — the silver circlet whose contours I knew as well as the features of my own face. ‘I think he's trying to say that it looks … incomplete. Almost as if there's part of it missing …' said Kenta. But how could it be? It was the same as it had always been.

I stared at it, turning it in my fingers, seeing it for the first time through the eyes of other people. It was a man's ring, heavy and solid, cast from what I'd always imagined was pure silver. Plain, with no stones or decoration of any kind, no inscription, nothing. In cross-section, the back was similar to the curved D-shape of a man's wedding ring, but with two flat planes instead of one: the shape of a quarter circle, instead of half. At the front the silver thickened into an odd, angular design: a smooth, curved surface bisected by a deeply grooved angular channel.

‘I know what it reminds me of,' said Jamie. ‘A puzzle ring. I got one once in a Christmas cracker — sorry, Adam, I didn't mean it like that.'

‘You're right, Jamie,' said Gen. ‘They're made in two separate parts, but when you fit them together a certain way they interlock to form a single ring.'

Interlock
… where had I heard that word before? Spoken in Gen's soft voice, in bright moonlight on the fringes of Chattering Wood. She'd been reading from Queen Zaronel's diary …
on a velvet cushion tasselled with gold rested the twisted Crown of Karazan — plain gold and silver interlocking bands, unadorned with gems of any kind — and the Sign of Sovereignty.

Zaronel hadn't described the Sign of Sovereignty, and at the time I'd wondered why. Now I knew. She hadn't needed to — the description of the crown applied to them both. The Sign of Sovereignty was the Crown of Karazan in miniature:
plain gold and silver interlocking bands, unadorned with gems of any kind.

I stared down at my ring. Blue-bum was right. Part of it
was
missing. How hadn't I see it before? I had the silver half … so where was the golden one?

Matron.

I could imagine the scene as clearly as if it was an actual memory — and for all I knew it might be, seen through the misty eyes of the tiny baby I would have been when it happened, and locked away in my subconscious mind.

Matron's sharp eyes catching the gleam of the larigot in the folds of the shawl; her cold, bony fingers groping for it. The furtive light in her eyes as her hand encounters something else, even more unexpected … draws it out, turning away to shield her find from Cook. Prises the two halves apart, the golden one disappearing into the starched pocket of her apron, the other — the worthless half, in her eyes — poked back into the shawl, just in case the abandoned baby is ever claimed …

There could be no hope of getting it back. It wasn't the only thing Matron had stolen while she'd been at Highgate; her years of criminal activity had finally caught up with her, and now she was in prison. As for Cookie, even if she had known — which I doubted — she'd left Highgate and gone to work at a girls' reformatory school. I had no idea where and knew I'd
never see her again. Even Highgate probably no longer existed … not that any of it mattered. The ring would have been sold off years ago.

I might as well face it: it was gone. I knew it was crazy to feel such a sense of loss for something I'd never even known about till a few moments ago.

But crazy or not, I did.

With breakfast over and the issue of my ring resolved as far as it was ever going to be, Richard turned to me, hands stuck deep in his pockets, and said bluntly, ‘So,
Zephyr
: what's the plan?'

He put a deliberate emphasis on the name. I shot him a sidelong glance, but his face didn't tell me whether he meant it as an acknowledgement, a joke … or a challenge. Feeling my cheeks burn, I opted to ignore it. ‘We need to find the Stronghold of Arraz. And once we've found it, we need to sneak in and get close to Zeel …'

‘And then what?' Jamie was looking dubious — and who could blame him?

Yes … then what? It was a good question, and one I didn't feel ready to answer. ‘Then we see what happens,' I told him, trying to sound confident.

The first part of the plan was unexpectedly simple. Out came the map, and there it was: the Stronghold of Arraz, complete with a picture of a castle with strange, twisted turrets and even what looked like some kind of drawbridge. It looked closer than any of us had dared hope: we just needed to make our way over the low ridge that formed the side of the dragon's head, then southwards round the edge of the valley.

We'd be there by nightfall. My stomach turned at the thought, but I gave the others a cheery grin. ‘Simple, huh? What are we waiting for?'

They hoisted their packs, Blue-bum scrambling into Kenta's
for his usual free ride. ‘Want to lead, Rich?' Rich swaggered to the front of the line, the others taking up their positions behind him: Jamie, Gen, Kenta, then me, tagging along at the rear, thinking my own uncomfortable thoughts … and keeping a watchful eye on Blue-bum.

By mid-morning we were working our way along a narrow sheep track on the western side of the main Draken range. Striding along behind Kenta, I could see Blue-bum's wizened monkey-face peering out of the top of her pack, gazing left and right at the unfolding view. Not that there was much to see: the eastern side of the mountain range was called Morningside, I remembered; this was Dark Face, and it was well named. To our left the bare slopes of the mountains reared above us into a thick pall of cloud, the only sign of life occasional glimpses of the shaggy-coated mountain goats who'd made the track; on our right the ground fell away in a tumble of loose scree and jagged rock, losing itself in a haze of darkness and distance far below.

The others struggled and stumbled on, occasionally almost losing their footing on the narrow path. Every now and then Kenta's face would turn towards the abyss, then quickly away; and when it did, I could read the pale, tense expression on it more clearly than words. It was full of dread.

She wasn't the only one who was afraid of what we'd find at the end of our journey. And yet … I thought back to Blue-bum's behaviour when we'd found him close to death at the edge of Chattering Wood, when any mention of Karazeel or Evor had sent him into a jibbering frenzy of terror. But now, with every step taking us closer to Karazeel's stronghold, he seemed as relaxed as a tourist on a bus trip.

And I wondered why.

 

As the day wore on the air thickened and darkened and our progress slowed. It had been a long time since I'd seen the last pale smudge of life on the mountainside; the track had long
since disappeared. We'd been picking our way behind Richard along a contour line for what seemed an eternity, and now, with visibility at a few metres, had finally come to a stop.

I edged my way past the others to join Rich. His face grim, he pointed out over the well of blackness at our feet. I followed his gaze, space tipping beneath me in a wave of vertigo, groping behind me for the steadying solidity of rock.

At first I thought it was the storm he was showing me. It had been building for hours, and now the bank of cloud hung so close I could almost reach out and touch it — a low black ceiling illuminated by irregular flashes of white light and jagged javelins of purple. Then one bolt more violent than the rest lit the cauldron of the valley in a blue flare and I saw it far below us, swimming in a soup of swirling mist.

The Stronghold of Arraz: a crippled insect rearing skyward.

The flash was gone; dark descended. But the burning after-image of the shattered shape with its splintered tentacles remained stamped on my mind, black on blinding white, all stark angles and silent pain.

If you drew a picture of a scream, that's how it would look.

We slid and scrambled down the mountainside, zigzagging to lessen the steepness of the slope. The sense of height and nothingness below us was dizzying, and it wasn't long before I threw pride to the winds and lowered myself to my bum, using hands and feet to feel my way down, and the seat of my pants as an emergency braking system.

A stream of loose stones skittered around me as I descended, larger rocks bouncing past every now and then as one of the others momentarily lost their footing behind me — along with a frightened gasp and the slithering rush of a body temporarily out of control. I'd hang onto whatever I could find and brace myself for the impact of a sliding body; if one person lost control, they could easily take all of us with them.

At the steepest parts I waited, anchoring myself as securely as I could and giving the others a hand down. Jamie and the girls were pale, their faces set and stony with determination. Blue-bum had either taken pity on Kenta or decided he'd be safer under his own steam: he was picking his way downwards at the
back of the group, using his tail for balance and muttering to himself. For once I was glad I didn't understand Chatterbot.

Slow though our progress was, with every flash of lightning our destination grew closer. At last we were level with the topmost pinnacles of the castle, then below them; and finally we were just above what I'd thought was the drawbridge.

What had looked like a narrow gangway from high above was a steep-sided ridge of natural rock: a long spur linking the western flank of Dark Face to the isolated crag on which the Stronghold of Arraz was built.

We were huddled on a small platform of rock slightly above the ridge, tucked behind a rocky buttress. Here, lower on the mountainside, there were vestiges of vegetation: dry tufts of grass; stunted thorn bushes; even an old tree with a few crumpled grey-green leaves clinging to its branches, its trunk gnarled and bent, twisted roots like arthritic fingers holding grimly to cracks in the rock.

At the edge of our platform the ground fell away in a perpendicular cliff face, curving round as far as the eye could see in both directions. This must be the Cauldron of Zeel, I realised; and like Dark Face the name was no accident: it was a steep-sided witch's cauldron with no way down that I could see … and the Stronghold of Arraz as its centre-point.

Above us to our left a dark ribbon of track wound down from the mountains to join the ridge. I couldn't follow it far: it climbed steeply southeast, narrowing into distance and darkness before being swallowed by the cleft of the mountains.

This would be the link between Morningside and Dark Face used by King Karazeel's men — the route Danon of Drakendale had warned us to stay well clear of. I could see why. Even in the poor light it had the look of a well-used thoroughfare … and as we watched, a straggling caravan of dark, shambling shapes appeared in the gloom and wound its way slowly towards the ridge. Glonks, bound for Arraz.

The caravan was lit by flickering torches, the clank of
armour and the scrape of hooves carrying across the darkness between us. We watched its progress in silence — if we could hear them, they would hear us if we made the slightest sound. I found myself checking the direction of the wind like an animal sensing the hunt; the air had the heavy stillness that comes before a storm, but the faint stirring of a breeze was on my face, bringing with it the scent of hot animal hide and leather. And something else …

The rotting, maggoty reek of
them
— the Faceless. I saw them, almost invisible in the darkness, drifting alongside the solid, clanking figures of the soldiers. A greasy sheen of sweat broke out on my skin. I glanced at the others — a warning glance I knew wasn't needed.

In absolute silence, hardly daring to breathe, we watched as the convoy made its slow progress along the ridge. The rock, wider than a road at first, gradually narrowed to a slim finger that fell away steeply on either side like a knife edge. Illuminated by the flickering light of the torches, the track hung in the air like a tightrope of light suspended over a chasm of swirling darkness. The animals, forced into single file, plodded stoically forward, the shadowy shapes of the Faceless between them.

At last, when the shuffling figures were dwarfed by the towering darkness of the fortress, the natural rock gave way to a bridge of stone, lights set at intervals into its balustrade. We saw the flash of steel as their pale glow played over the armour of the guards flanking the bastions, two by two. The convoy crawled to a halt. There was a distant whirring as the drawbridge was lowered, any sound its landing might have made drowned by a crack of thunder as lightning split the sky.

For an instant, the castle seemed to blaze an impossible, fluorescent blue; instinctively, I flung up one hand to shield my face. Head ringing, dazzled, I lowered my hand and blinked into the darkness, trying to focus.

The convoy was gone. All that was left was the swimming emptiness of the chasm, the black bulk of the castle almost
invisible above. The lights lining the bridge were pinpricks, tiny glow-worms in the vast darkness.

We had a problem.

The only way to get to the Stronghold of Arraz was the one we'd just seen — and crossing the narrow, heavily guarded link between the mountains and the fortress would be suicide.