Seven Sorcerers (30 page)

‘What? Flowers and things?’

‘People mostly,’ said Taggit with a grin.

Jonas stared at him and then laughed. It hurt his head and shadows clouded his eyes for a moment.

‘Now, you get started with the story and I’ll sort out this cuppa, then we’ll do your ’ead. Want some cake? It’s sticky lemon. Not sure it’s s’posed t’ be sticky, but that’s ’ow it came out so that’s what it is.’

‘Um. Maybe just a small piece,’ said Jonas cautiously as he wondered where to start.

Deep under the pile of earth Jik stayed still and thought. He was perfectly comfortable where he was, cocooned in the mud he was born from, but he knew he had to get out if he was to help Nin. He wondered what had happened to Jonas – had he been buried too and if so was there anything Jik could do about it, or had the Quick’s oxygen run out already?

He listened for signs of struggling. There was nothing to hear but the sigh of the Land, which was everywhere all the time anyway. He began to move, swimming through the mud like a fish would swim through water, curving round the bigger rocks and pushing the stones
aside as he went. He soon fell out the other side, but there was no sign of Jonas.

Jik set off, running quickly down the middle of the tunnel until he came to a fork. Which was a problem as he had no idea which way to go. He scanned the ground. The earth was packed too hard and was too stony to show any footprints, but there was something dark and wet-looking on the floor to the left.

Jik hadn’t had much experience of human insides. If he had, then he would have recognised the dark wetness for what it was, the blood that had dripped from Jonas as the guards carried him on down the left-hand tunnel.

As it was Jik kept out of its way in case it meant puddles further on. He chose the right-hand fork and kept going.

ost of the Sunatorium trees grew on the left with the crystal wall on the right. At the top, the glittering surface had grown around the branches, leaving them room to poke through.

‘It’s alive,’ said Milo. ‘It was one of Mr Strood’s experiments. He blasted a fortune-teller’s crystal ball with leftover magic from a wand and it started to grow, so he trained it over a frame to make the Sunatorium. It screams if you break it and it’s poisonous.’

He was sweeping the Sunatorium path, which was scattered with fallen leaves and petals from the greenery. Nin followed, holding the sack open for him. The soft rustle of the trees and the splintered sunshine was already doing her good. While they worked she told Milo about Errol. She didn’t think she would be able to talk about it, but once she started it all poured out.

‘So that’s it,’ she finished sadly. ‘My brother has to be dead. Nothing could survive the Maug, right?’

Milo looked at her oddly. ‘You did.’

‘Yeah well, how often is a snail going to drop out of
the sky and whack a guard on the head?’

‘But that’s not the point, is it? The point is that YOU are lucky. He doesn’t have to be.’

Frowning, Nin turned this over in her head. ‘You mean, like,
he
doesn’t have to be lucky to escape the Maug, because if
I’m
lucky then I’ll find my brother. And that means he’ll have to have escaped the Maug somehow so that
my
luck can work. Right?’

‘I think,’ said Milo.

Nin dropped the sack and beamed at him. ‘Milo, you’re brilliant!’

Milo beamed back at her. ‘You can’t go looking for him like that, you’ll stick out a mile and the Eyes’ll spot you. Look, when I come back at lunchtime, I’ll bring you a uniform. That way you’ll look like a servant.’

‘A disguise, you mean?’ said Nin, eagerly, her hopes rising even further. ‘Thank you, Milo, that’s perfect!’

The top of the House was a world of slanting roofs, unexpected windows and crumbling chimney pots. In the centre, rising above the weathered brick and tiles, was the bell tower. Skerridge knew that the bell ringer would be somewhere about, but that was no problem. The creature wasn’t a guard. If anything, it would probably look the other way as soon as it saw him.

Moving fast, though not at superspeed just in case he melted the tiles, Skerridge soon reached his destination at the far end of the Terrible House. The crystal roof of
the Sunatorium.

He stared at the shiny expanse sweeping away to nothingness before him. Its uneven surface splintered the light and made the whole thing sparkle like it was studded with diamonds. It made his eyes water. Where the crystal had grown around the branches of the trees below, allowing them to burst out into the air, leaves rustled in the breeze. They looked out of place against all that glitter.

What Skerridge had to do was aim for one of those branches. What he had
not
to do was break, chip or crack the poisonous crystal.

He drew in a deep breath and let steam whistle out slowly from between his teeth. Then he picked a branch and hopped nimbly on to the top of the roof.

‘Shoulda lowered meself carefully,’ he muttered, as his feet went from under him. ‘Make a note fer nex’ time.’

He found himself on his front slithering face-first towards a sheer drop, right past the branch he had been aiming for. Panic stirred in his insides. He was gaining speed as the roof curved away before him, a glittering slide into thin air. He could feel the coolness of sea breezes on his face, see the gulls whirling in the emptiness ahead, hear the crash of the waves hurling themselves on to the rocks below.

A splash of green appeared to the left. Skerridge reached out to make a grab at it, but it was too late. Leaves brushed his fingers and then they were gone. The only result was that now he was spinning like a
Catherine wheel as well as hurtling towards certain death.

‘GAAAAAH!’

In a second Skerridge plunged over the edge. Below him the waves dashed their frothy selves nonchalantly over the jagged rocks. This is it, thought Skerridge, and shut his eyes. He opened them again pretty sharply when something stabbed him in the ear.

Far below the waves and the rocks were still doing their thing, but they weren’t getting any closer about it. Which was nice.

Gently, so as not to disturb anything, Skerridge turned his head. The thing sticking in his ear was now sticking in his eye. But at least that meant he could see that it was a twig. Twigs belonged on branches and branches were usually found on trees. Skerridge grinned broadly.

Somehow, by some phenomenal piece of luck, he had caught himself on one of the lower branches sticking out of the side of the Sunatorium wall. So here he was, dangling by his fancy waistcoat, far above certain death.

There was a loud crack. Skerridge winced as his branch jerked under him. With one hand he grabbed hold of the branch where it poked out of the top of his waistcoat above and behind his head. With the other he undid the buttons.

Reaching up awkwardly he slashed at a shoulder seam with a claw, cutting it open. Once one arm was out, the waistcoat sprang free, flicking over the branch and dangling loosely from his other arm. This was a good
thing as Skerridge was fond of that waistcoat and didn’t want to lose it entirely.

Gripping the branch he swung round so that he was facing into the crystal wall. The branch gave another crack and this time it dipped as well. Skerridge hung on grimly. He went hand over hand towards the crystal wall where the branch was wider and he was able to pull himself up. All he had to do now was squeeze in through the glass where the branch came out.

His heart sank as he looked at the gap. Bogeymen were pretty good at squeezing through tight spaces, but it added another dimension when the tight space you were squeezing through could kill you horribly. Still, he had come this far so he might as well go on. In fact the way things looked, he had no choice.

Skerridge pulled the damaged waistcoat from his other arm and tucked it into his pocket with his sack. Then he flattened himself against the branch. Aiming his fire-breath at the twigs in his path, he let out a short, controlled blast and burnt them back to the branch so that they would not get in his way. Carefully he began to inch forwards.

At last, propped in the crook of the tree on the inside of the Sunatorium, Skerridge stopped to rest. The gap had been so narrow that when he squeezed through, the edge of the crystal wall had scraped gently down his back. He had felt the sting as its rim rubbed over his skin.

The crystal hadn’t been broken, and that might be the saving of him, but he had a nasty feeling that even that
much contact might be enough to give him a dose of Temporal Phase Fever.

Which meant that he had better stop hanging about and get himself to a place where he could be ill in comfort. Just as he was about to move, he heard voices.

When Milo came back, he had a brown cloth dress, a white full-length pinafore and a cap, all stuffed into his sack.

‘They should fit,’ said Milo, ‘you’re quite small and thin. I sneaked them out while nobody was around. I thought it was safest not to tell anyone about you just yet, not even Samfy.’

Nin ordered Milo to look out of the crystal wall while she nipped behind a tree and changed into the dress. Then she bundled her own clothes up and stuffed them into her rucksack.

‘I’ll hide that in the dusters box for you,’ said Milo. ‘What’re you going to do now?’

‘Find Toby. Find our memory pearls. Escape.’

‘If anyone can, you can! Look, I’ve been thinking about where your brother might hide. There’s the great library, for a start. Nobody goes there much so it’d be quiet. Or there’s the storeroom, which is one floor below that and has got plenty of supplies in it. They’re the best places. After that you could see if he’s wandering about on the thirteenth floor. There’s nothing there but a locked room.’

‘Great! You wouldn’t happen to know where the memory room is, I s’pose?’

Milo shrugged. ‘Only the BMs know that, and they wouldn’t tell anyone.’

‘Is it a secret?’

‘Nope, they just don’t wanna tell. Mean-minded lot, bogeymen.’

‘Well, I’d better get on anyway. The storeroom sounds like a good start.’

But she sat quietly with Milo for a moment longer, enjoying the sun through the trees, before starting her search.