The Snowy Tower (10 page)

Albert Drummond was concerned. He had just received further intelligence from the rebels in the forest, via his hollow bung, that the children had disappeared and Sam was organising raiding parties to harass the Sedahs, which would ruin all his own carefully laid plans. He had also learned that the rebel training was not proceeding quite as well as he had hoped – the rebels were enthusiastic but under-resourced and disorganised. If it came to a fully fledged battle between the highly trained Sedah soldiers and the rebels, he feared they would come off much the worse.

Then of course there was the looming wedding of Queen Ashana and Governor Lazlac – a potential disaster. Master Drummond was racked with stress – there was much to do.

In the middle of the night he lay awake worrying, wondering how to solve the many
challenges which faced him. There was not much he could do to help the four children so far away, but perhaps he could do something to improve the professionalism of the rebel forces so that when the children returned they were ready to strike. At three am, a potential solution came to him. He thought of just the man to help him – a man who was clever, resourceful, brave and sly. A man who would make a perfect spy.

At dawn the next morning Albert was down at the village of Ainsley. A few discreet enquiries led him to the cliffs, where Fox was walking with a pretty woman in green silk skirts, whose name was Jess. Mia the monkey was swinging from Fox’s coat tails, chattering in jealous rage.

Fox seemed disconcerted to be interrupted in what was obviously a tender farewell scene.

‘Good morning, Albert,’ greeted Fox. ‘You’re up early. Have you come to wave your hat in farewell to the
Owl?
We sail on the hour, heading for the east to collect a delicate cargo of summer silks.’

‘No,’ replied Albert, smiling warmly and lifting his hat to Jess. ‘I’ve come to offer you a nearly honest job. I need you, and the pay could well be excellent.’

Fox grinned in curiosity. ‘It sounds intriguing, and I’m always on the lookout for new oppor
tunities, especially those that pay well and are nearly honest!’

Jess smacked Fox playfully on the arm. ‘Don’t tell me we might see an honest man of you yet!’

‘It’s possible, my dear,’ Fox conceded. ‘My latest exploits have made me rethink my priorities. Plus the Sedah soldiers are not big spenders when it comes to silk, so perhaps I need a new adventure after all.’

Jess smiled. ‘I cannot imagine you without adventure in your life.’

Albert grinned, relieved. ‘So I take it you are interested in my proposition? I need you to start immediately, working with me in her royal highness Queen Ashana’s special and highly covert employ. Come and report to me tomorrow at the White Horse Inn. Deal?’

Fox spat in his palm. ‘Smuggler’s honour.’

Albert hesitated just a moment, then spat in his own palm, shaking it vigorously with Fox’s. ‘Spy’s honour.’

‘I thought you said he would be nearly honest?’ Jess laughed.

‘How about you, Jess?’ retorted Albert. ‘Do you need a job too? I think we need all the help we can get.’

‘Why not?’ Jess smiled. ‘I think I’d make a very good spy.’

For the next two days, Saxon, Roana, Lily and Ethan rode northwards, following the valley floor, with steep hills rising on either side. The cobbled road gradually faded to a faint cart track. When the light dimmed at dusk each night, they found a camping spot. Huddled around a small fire, they ate cold supplies before falling into an exhausted sleep, wrapped in their blankets. They would have liked to keep riding into the night but there was no moon, and the track was too faint to see by starlight.

On the third day’s ride out of Bryn, they were riding through open fields. On either side of the track were huge round boulders, fissured and cracked, splotched with pale green lichen. The boulders were piled into stacks and towers, as if by the hands of some giant’s child. Dead trees twisted against the sky, their branches bleached and ghostly.

‘The Giant’s Marbles,’ commented Saxon, glancing at the crumpled map in his hand. ‘We are getting closer to the Silent Mountains.’

‘This place gives me the shivers,’ Lily whispered.
Aisha agreed, listening carefully, all the hairs on her back standing straight and stiff. She growled a low warning.

‘Shhh,’ hissed Ethan, holding up his hand. Everyone stopped for a few minutes, hearts thudding and ears straining. Up ahead, they heard the sound of distant hooves. Ethan gestured urgently. Carefully, quietly they all slithered down from their saddles, and led the horses off the track.

Ethan led Toffee up behind a large tower of boulders, twenty metres off the path. The others followed, Lily keeping her hand warningly on Aisha’s neck. Ethan crept back with a large branch and carefully swept the ground to hide their tracks.

Louder now came the sound of hooves. Ethan dropped behind a fallen tree trunk covered in velvety moss, wrapped his green riding cloak around him, and pressed himself into the earth. Through the tangle of roots he peeped at the path.

In a moment he saw a sight that made his heart tumble to his stomach in trepidation. Mounted on five sturdy donkeys rode five black-robed men. Thick black cowls covered their heads, shadowing their sallow faces. At their throats, their cloaks were fastened with a silver pin, depicting a glowing red eye, over two crossed silver cutlasses.

Ethan breathed in sharply, shrinking down into the leaf mulch. Sedahs! Sedah priests.

The leader carried a long leather whip. His eyes darted from left to right, silently searching the surrounding valley for signs of danger or ambush. His eyes lingered on the tree trunk where Ethan was hiding, and seemed to bore through the thick timber to the prostrate boy behind. Ethan closed his eyes, willing himself to be invisible, trying not to breath or move a millimetre.

I am a rock
, chanted Ethan to himself.
I am nothing but a rock
.

The leader’s donkey shied and brayed, cavorting and bucking, sensing Aisha hiding close by. A sharp crack of the whip urged the donkey forward once more. The leader’s eyes flickered over the large boulder tower, where the others were hiding. His eyes searched the mossy crevices and flitted forward. The convoy clattered on slowly, wending their way down the track towards Bryn. Ethan lay still for many minutes, not daring to move in case he caused a noise that brought the Sedahs back.

At last, he slowly rose and checked the path. There was no sign of the cavalcade of wraiths that had just passed by. Silently, the children remounted and urged the horses back onto the path. The horses
walked quickly, sensing the children’s anxiety. After ten minutes they risked cantering, to move as quickly as possible away from the menacing Sedah priests.

When at last they rode over the crest of the foothill, and slowed to a walk down the other side, they felt safe enough to talk.

‘What were Sedah priests doing all the way out here in the wilderness?’ Lily asked. ‘There is nothing but mountains and forest for kilometres.’

‘I wonder if they are travelling from the Tower of Sun and Moon, where my brother is being held?’ asked Roana anxiously. ‘Perhaps they were taking him back to Emperor Raef’s court. Perhaps we are already too late.’

‘There was definitely no sign of Prince Caspar with the priests,’ Ethan assured her. ‘There were five men on donkeys. I couldn’t really see their faces, but none of them were small enough to be a child.’

‘That may well be a lucky sign,’ said Saxon cheerily. ‘Perhaps those priests did come from the Tower of Sun and Moon, which may just mean that there are less priests there guarding your brother. Wouldn’t that be nice?’

‘It would indeed,’ smiled Roana, hope lifting the weight of anxiety from her heart. ‘But I wish I knew
what they were doing, and if my brother is indeed safe and well.’

‘The only way to find out is to
keep on going
,’ Lily said, with mock determination.

‘Onwards and upwards,’ laughed Saxon, drawing his dagger and waving it. ‘The tower awaits.’

‘Idiot!’ laughed Ethan, kicking Toffee into a trot.

The path twisted through the valley, turning into a grassy cart track studded with small white daisies and waxy yellow buttercups. Pink and purple wildflowers proliferated in the knee-deep grass. The children cantered along, drinking in the cool, sweet air, the horses’ hooves kicking up clods of mossy mud.

A glossy green and black duck with an orange beak scampered across the track, dragging its wing and squawking pitifully.

‘Oh look, the poor creature is wounded,’ cried Roana, sad to see the beautiful injured bird.

‘Don’t take any notice of that performance,’ laughed Ethan. ‘That duck could make its living entertaining in your Royal Theatre. The male duck pretends to be wounded, dragging its wing along the ground to distract predators from discovering that, a couple of metres away, his beautiful duck wife is sitting on a nest full of eggs or hatchlings.’

Aisha spied the flapping duck, and she lifted
her paw and flagged her tail in her classic hunting pose, before giving swift chase. Sure enough, the wounded duck rapidly recovered and soared away to safety, leaving Aisha barking madly in frustration.

‘Aisha, no!’ scolded Lily, trying to look stern. ‘You should know better than that!’ Aisha slunk back to the track, ears and tail down, looking crestfallen. A moment later she was bounding gracefully through the tall grass chasing a pheasant. Everyone laughed at her flapping ears and athletic leaps through the swathes of grass.

‘Did you know that ducks are very romantic?’ asked Ethan. ‘They mate for life, and there is nothing sadder than the lonely sound of a duck crying for its lost mate.’

The horses splashed through a shallow rivulet and up the other bank. The cart track wound on through the valley, then over a dilapidated bridge. From here the cart track dwindled to a narrow path that rose steeply up a ridge into the rolling green hills, scattered with thick copses of trees. Herds of deer scattered as the horses approached. Wild, woolly sheep with chocolate faces ran in fright. Black lambs with long woolly tails leapt up rocky screes as nimbly as mountain goats. There was no sign of shepherd boys or farmers.

The path wound steeply up the ridge, so the riders had to lean forward over their horses’ necks. Caramel complained noisily as she climbed, hurrumphing her displeasure. The horses paused at the very crest of the hill.

‘What an amazing view,’ breathed Lily, exhaling a misty puff of air as she gazed back the way they had come.

Below their feet spread a misty vista of open valleys bathed in sunshine, rounded green hills and the winding grey snake of the River Bryn, growing fatter and wider as it descended. In the distance were the hazy golden turrets and rooftops of Bryn.

To the north, the cliff crumbled away, dropping to another steep valley. These valleys and hills were swathed in shadow, with dark grey clouds and racing rain squalls. The hills rolled away for kilometres, growing ever more steep and sheer, until they grew into snow-white mountains, wreathed with cloud.

‘Brrrr,’ shivered Ethan, flexing his stiff fingers on the reins. ‘It’s getting chilly. Perhaps it’s time to unpack our woolly mitts.’

‘It’s hard to believe that it is now summer in the south,’ Lily agreed.

They dismounted, swigging icy water from their
bottles and nibbling some dry oat biscuits. They unpacked the thick cable-stitched fishermen’s sweaters, scarves, snug hats, and the thick woollen gloves that had been hurriedly knitted by Marnie and Cookie.

It was too cold to stop for long, so they remounted and continued down the steep slope. Here the riders had to lean right back, their stirrups far forward, holding the reins firmly.

Moonbeam slipped as a patch of gravel tumbled away, and Roana screamed as Moonbeam slithered a few metres down the slope before regaining her footing. Goats bounded away at the commotion, their bells tinkling. The horses reached the valley floor, only to clamber straight up the other side again. The horses plodded up and down, their sides heaving and sweaty, their breath laboured. Chilly fingers of mist clutched at the children as they passed. They huddled further into their cloaks, glad of their thick gloves.

The open landscape gave way to a birch forest, with beards of golden lichen hanging from the branches and moss blanketing the fallen logs. A huge trunk had fallen right across the path, which the horses had to leap gracefully. A lone deer skittered across the trail, its white bobtail flashing. Hares and rabbits dashed through the undergrowth,
but Aisha for once ignored them, tired by the endless ascending and descending.

The smell of damp leaf mulch and rotting wood clung to their clothes and skin. Patches of dappled sunlight shattered the dark gloom of the wood. And still the path wound and climbed.

‘Look,’ cried Lily, pointing ahead. A fine dusting of white covered the rocks, trees and leaves. ‘Snow. Isn’t it beautiful?’

Soon small balls of white fluff were drifting from the heavens, floating softly to the ground and landing lightly on faces, manes, shoulders, haunches, ears and hair. Snow flakes wafted against the dark green trees, shimmering with light, like thousands of soft white stars. It was enchanting, like an exquisite fairyland. Everyone snuggled deeper into their cloaks, the horses surging forward into the snow country.