The Frost Child (4 page)

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Workhouse, but she often went as far as the opening in the wall that led to Hadima. She told herself that it was important to inspect it, but really it intrigued her, seeming to reek of mystery and of the strange lands beyond.

As she approached she thought she glimpsed movement in the mouth of the opening. She took a quick look around to make sure there was no one watching--she was supposed to be invisible to ordinary people, hidden in the shadows of time, but there was no point in taking chances. Then she clambered up the wall beside the bridge, unaware of the Albions on the other side. She put her hands on the parapet and stared hard into the opening, but nothing moved. Probably a bird roosting--or even a rat, she thought with a shudder. If she had looked down just then she would have seen a circle of violet eyes looking up at her from the darkness, and the gleam of cold chrome talons within striking distance. Cati was invisible to ordinary people, but the Albions' violet eyes saw much that ordinary people did not.

A gust of cold air struck her. She shivered. It was a long way back to her warm bed. She crossed the bridge again and climbed down to the riverbank, setting off for home at a fast pace. One of the boy Albions gave Agnetha a questioning look, showing his scimitar-shaped talons. For answer she jumped onto the riverbank and started to follow Cati.

They were skilled trackers. Within minutes Cati was walking, unknown to herself, within a deadly circle of the pale-skinned creatures. Four moved silently through the fields at either side of the path. Two more had circled on

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ahead and glided along the path in front of Cati, with the rest following behind. At times they drew close enough to touch her, and yet she did not know they were there, although she was uneasy, and more than once stopped and looked around her. They stopped too, starting off again at the exact same moment as she did.

They had the gift of moving silently. Cati's ears were extraordinarily sensitive due to her time with the Dogs of Hadima, but she did not hear them. And though her sense of smell was acute, she did not smell them, for the Albions were entirely odorless.

Encased in their deadly cage, Cati walked all the way back to the Workhouse, the Albions almost toying with her--one of them would get close enough to touch her, then duck back into the shadows so that she thought that she had brushed a moth or a cobweb.

At last she stood in the shadow of the Workhouse, silent presences all around her. She looked up at the crumbling walls, while violet eyes gazed expectantly at Agnetha. Agnetha stood without moving. Moonlight gleamed on steel. Agnetha pondered, then shook her head. They would leave the girl alone. They had got what they came for, and there might be others who would miss the girl and raise the alarm. The Workhouse was silent and unmanned. They would tell the Harsh queen, and await further orders. The girl could wait, for a greater prize was at stake: the queen had promised them what they longed for most. She had promised them that once the Workhouse had fallen, that they would relish the

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thing that they now found intolerable--they would be able to stand in the sun without pain. She had promised them light.

Without even the faintest of rustles the Albions faded into the night. Cati was alone again, without ever realizing that she had been surrounded. She yawned and trudged up the stairs and into the Workhouse, leaving the night to its wild and scurrying creatures.

Rosie woke feeling stiff and frozen. The cell didn't look any better in the daylight than it did at night, and it certainly wasn't any warmer. She crawled to the top of the steps and examined the door. She remembered again how she had freed the Yeati by picking the lock of his cage in the basement of the Museum of Time. But that trick wouldn't work here. The door was padlocked on the outside. She sat down on one of the lower steps and tried to think. She was a prisoner. The man who held her must have had some purpose. Why did you keep a prisoner? Perhaps to question them? (Rosie tried to push the notion of torture out of her mind.) Or as a hostage or some other kind of pawn? If she found out, then perhaps she could turn the situation to her advantage.

The door at the top of the stairs flew open.

"Good morning!" Johnston boomed.

"Not so good from down here, fatso," Rosie said, but her voice quavered, more from weakness and hunger than from fear. Johnston roared with laughter.

"The little squeaker has spirit! Come on up and have

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some breakfast. Sorry about putting you down there, but I had to check you out. The Resisters are suspicious folk. Anyway, the Navigator wants to see you in an hour!"

"Not taking any breakfast from you," Rosie muttered as she made her way up the stairs. Johnston took hold of her arm lightly, but she could feel the strength in his huge hand. Her resolve faded as she went along the corridor and smelled good things cooking. There had been little food in Hadima, and none on the road, otherwise she would have been more cautious.

Johnston led her into the kitchen. In contrast to the rest of the house, it was spotless. A table was laid with an oilcloth cover, and pots and pans gleamed on the wall. Johnston went to the oven and took out a platter laden with bacon and sausages, fried mushrooms and tomatoes, and hot buttered toast. He put the platter down in front of Rosie.

"Eat up! I've had mine." And he watched as Rosie overcame her suspicions and started to eat. The food was delicious and it was a full ten minutes before she had enough.

"Wonderful." Johnston beamed. "Excellent! Have some tea. Sugar?"

Rosie took the mug of hot, steaming tea from Johnston, feeling warmth creep back into her body, the feeling of well-being so strong that she had to remind herself that the smiling man had in fact kidnapped her and locked her in a freezing cell.

"When are we going to find my friends?"

"In a little while."

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"In a little while? What does that mean ... ?" Rosie was feeling light-headed. Johnston swam in and out of focus.

"It means that I'll let you go when I'm finished with you," Johnston said softly.

Fell for the oldest trick in the book
, was Rosie's final thought before her head hit the table.

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Chapter 5

Late the following morning Cati went back to the Hadima entrance and scouted around, but could find no tracks on the riverbank. It was cold and the sky was a strange silvery gray color. The movement in the mouth of the entrance played on her mind. She had brought a rope and a grappling iron with her, and she stood for a long time looking up at the entrance. Before he had gone back to sleep, Dr. Diamond had made it plain that he did not want her going anywhere near the entrance.

"It is far too dangerous, Cati," he said. "We don't know enough about it." Cati thought about what he had said.
But I am the Watcher
, she said to herself, and she took the grappling hook from her pack.

It took several goes before the hook gripped. She tested it with her weight, then climbed rapidly upward. She grabbed the slimy edges of the entrance and pulled herself in. The tunnel smelt of mud and algae, and she wrinkled

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her nose before climbing upward, slipping several times on the slimy floor.

In a few minutes she had emerged into a courtyard. She'd been here before, when she and Owen and Dr. Diamond had opened the wooden doors of the shop with the sign
J. M. Gobillard et Fits
on the window, and had found the tunnel that led to Hadima. Little did she know then who Gobillard would turn out to be--a friend of Owen's grandfather, maker of an amazing trunk that could enclose a deadly whirlwind of time, a trunk that used the Mortmain as a lock. Owen had met Gobillard in the prison in Hadima and had got his grandfather's maps from him. But Gobillard had died there.

Then, the first time Cati had entered the courtyard, it had been an empty, sleepy place, the row of shops closed and almost derelict, weeds growing in the center. But something had changed. Cati's eyes narrowed as she moved cautiously forward.

Someone had been here. On every surface--the walls and fronts of the shops, and even the dusty glass--words had been scrawled in red ink. They were words in some strange language that she did not recognize, but their jagged forms spoke of hate and envy and bitterness so strongly that Cati gasped and took a step backward.

She forced herself to move forward toward the wooden double doors that led downward to Hadima. The graffiti was concentrated there, an almost continuous scrawl. One of the tunnel doors was slightly ajar, as though someone had passed through in haste. Cati stared

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at it. The Hadima entrance was no longer intriguing. She dreaded what lay beyond it.

Instinctively she reached out to the open door and closed it. She made her way back down the tunnel, casting nervous glances over her shoulder. When she got to the end she cast the grappling hook onto a branch of a tree growing out of the bank and, using the rope as a swing, descended to the opposite side. It was only then, as she loosened the grappling hook from the branch, that she noticed something different. The sky had gone from gray to a sullen zinc color, with a dull red at the edges, and the cold was biting. Something was terribly wrong.

I need to contact Owen
, she thought, and set off up the river as quickly as she could.

Owen too had seen the sky from the kitchen. He went outside. Without thinking he leaned on the thwart of the
Wayfarer
, and as he did so he felt a shock through his sleeve, a bolt of anxiety from the boat itself. He looked at the sky again. How ominous it was! He knew that it was time to contact the Watcher. Without stopping to tell his mother, he set off for the Workhouse.

A few minutes later Martha, who had been in the shop, became aware of the odd light. She went to the back door and looked up at the strange, dull color. Her first impulse was to find Owen. She called him but he wasn't in the house or the garden. Then she saw his red jacket, two fields away, moving toward the Workhouse. She drew breath to call to him, but the sound never left

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her mouth. There was a great howling, like the cry of a terrible beast, and, almost instantly, Owen disappeared as if he had never been, as a curtain of needle-sharp sleet swept in front of her. The storm had struck.

Cati had never heard anything like the shriek of the wind as it drove sleet and snow horizontally across the town. Blindly she made her way upriver, using the water underfoot as her guide. Soon she was soaked to her hips. There was some shelter from the wind in the trees and bushes along the river, but there was no hiding from the terrible cold that tore at her exposed flesh. She rubbed at her nose and cheeks.
You can't get frostbite that quickly
, she thought, but still she rubbed at the exposed parts.

Through eyes narrowed against the cutting sleet she could see that the water at the edge of the river was starting to freeze, and the water that flowed around her knees was a milky color, as though just about to turn to ice.

But it wasn't the air searing her lungs that caused the sudden pang of fear, or the weariness in her limbs as the cold sapped her strength. It was what she could hear, carried on the storm, faint and far away, yet still terrifying. Voices crying out without words. Voices that she had heard before. Harsh voices. Cati tried to run, but she had been frozen by the Harsh before, and their cries drained her of energy and hope. Grimly she put her head down and battled upstream. The snow and sleet whirled around her, so she could only see for a few feet, but she

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could feel the Workhouse nearby. Its old stones called to her. She stumbled and found herself in the center of the river, the icy torrent up to her waist now. The water threatened to sweep her downstream. Her feet were too numb to gain any purchase on the slippery rocks. Frantically she looked up and saw that she was just under the tree trunk that served as a bridge. But her hands wouldn't reach. Three times she tried, and three times she failed. Fatigue had her in its grip now. She could close her eyes, she thought, and let the river carry her away, floating gently downstream ...

"Quick!" a voice snapped from above. "Grab my hand!"

Without opening her eyes, she responded. A strong hand gripped hers.

"Help me," Owen panted. "I can't lift you on my own!"

With one final effort, Cati grasped the stub of a branch with her free hand and heaved herself upward. Between them they managed to get Cati onto the log. She lay there panting.

"What happened?" Owen shouted above the noise of the storm. "Where did this come from?"

"I heard voices," Cati said, her voice weak. "I heard voices in the storm."

"What voices?"

"The Harsh ..." Her voice was shaking. "A long way away. But they sent the storm, Owen. They're be hind this."

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He knew that she was right. The storm was unnatural. He touched her cheek. Her skin was icy--frozen not just from without by the storm, but also from inside. Once you had been frozen by the Harsh, a sliver of ice always remained within.

"Come on," he said, "we need to get you warm."

It was easier to go along the riverbank and use the cover of the trees, but still it was half an hour before they reached the Den. As Cati pulled off her wet clothes and climbed into the sleeping bag, Owen lit the Primus and put water on to boil. The little stove helped to warm the Den as Owen lit candles. Snow had gathered on the sheet of perspex in the ceiling, blocking out the light.

Owen made soup from a packet and gave a mug to Cati. She gulped down the hot liquid gratefully.

"In a minute," she said, "I might be able to feel my toes."

Owen went to the entrance and looked out. Even in the most sheltered part of the riverbank, the wind howled like a demented thing, and snow had started to pile against the wall of the Den.

"We're not going anywhere for a while," Owen said.

"I felt them," Cati said.

"What?"

"The Harsh. Like the time they caught us on the riverbank. The way the cold gets inside you."

"You said they were far away?"

"That's what it seemed like."