Keeper of the Realms: Crow's Revenge (Book 1) (43 page)

The Ivory Tower, so bright and wonderful in the daytime, was completely different by night. With the full moon shining behind it, it looked dark and menacing, like a sword carving up into the heavens. Charlie could just about make out the fluttering ribbon of birds streaming through the sky ahead of her. Spiralling downward, the crows passed through a large open window and into the tower. And just before the birds were swallowed by the shadows, she caught a glimpse of Narcissa’s lily-white dress fluttering in the wind as she was carried to safety.

Charlie put her head down and ran faster, tearing along
the boulevards and walkways. She finally slowed to a halt as she approached the Ivory Tower’s drawbridge. It was ram-packed with bloodthirsty and ferocious-looking Alavisian Watchmen. They all wore their cruel, spiked armour and all of them had their swords drawn.

‘You may not pass, little girl,’ snarled the captain. His large moustache quivered with arrogance. ‘And if you know what’s good for you I’d strongly suggest that you turn around, go back to the home and get on with your homework.’

Charlie threw them her infamous smile and calmly walked forward.

‘I’m warning you, girlie. Don’t come any closer or I’ll have my men cut off your arms and turn the rest of you into mincemeat.’

Charlie stepped on to the drawbridge and slowly raised her flaming hands.

‘Right, you horrible little girl, you had your warning! Lads, rip her apart!’

The Alavisian Watchmen bellowed ferocious war cries and sprang forward. Sprinting down the drawbridge, they raised their swords over their heads and screamed out their defiance. Charlie boldly stepped up to meet them. Thrusting her clenched fists forward in a violent motion, she knocked all the approaching guards off their feet with a gushing torrent of liquid light. With her Will rampaging through her body, she pushed her way forward, slapping, beating and kicking the guards aside like a gardener brushing past weeds and nettles. She saved the preening, self-important captain for last. Knocking him from his feet with a flurry of blows,
she stepped up to him. ‘I’m sorry, what was that line about mincemeat?’

‘Uh-uh-uh …’ stuttered the captain.

‘I didn’t catch that last bit. Could you say it again?’

‘Uh-uh-uh …’ he repeated.

‘Aah, I thought that was what you said,’ said Charlie with a somewhat naughty and impish smile. ‘Well, if you don’t object I’d like to go on in. I really do need the chance to have a quiet word with Lady Narcissa. You know, catch up on old news and gossip. I hope you don’t mind.’

‘Uh-uh-uh … p-p-please be my guest,’ stammered the captain. His eyes rolled wildly in his head.

‘Thank you.’

With a casual flick of her wrist, Charlie sent the captain flying to join the large pile of groaning and unconscious Watchmen stacked high across the drawbridge.

Once inside the tower, she trotted from room to room, calling out as she did so, ‘Oh, Narcissa! Lady Narcissa! Where are you? Come out, come out, wherever you are!’

Jogging up and down marble staircases, along deserted corridors and through still and silent rooms, she passed deeper into the tower.

‘Aren’t you getting bored with hiding, Narcissa?’ Charlie sang out as she passed into the Great Dining Hall. ‘Don’t you want to come out and play?’

‘I’m over here, brat!’ spat a hissing voice.

Charlie spun around to see Lady Narcissa standing at the far end of the room surrounded by a horde of very angry-looking guardsmen. Charlie throbbed with righteous anger. Her mind simmered and smouldered with the need to see
justice done. With the powerful, rolling force of her Will tumbling around inside her soul, she ignored the guards as nothing more than pesky distractions and focused purely on Lady Narcissa.

‘I want you to give yourself up and come with me to the Jade Circle,’ said Charlie in a voice that rumbled with the promise of lightning and thunder. ‘Justice must be done.’

The Great Dining Hall fell silent as Lady Narcissa and her guards considered her words … then fell about laughing.

‘What!’ cried Charlie, stamping her foot to illustrate her determination. ‘I mean it! I want you to give yourself up and come with me. You can’t get away with all that you’ve done.’

The guardsmen held on to each other and wiped tears of laughter from their eyes. Narcissa chuckled for a bit longer, then focused her cold eyes on the young Keeper.

‘Foolish girl, did you think that I would come with you that easily? And if I was stupid enough to follow your request, do you honestly think that the Jade Circle would be able to hold me? With Azariah Keeper out of the way, I
own
half the Jade Circle. They won’t punish me, they will welcome me with open arms! This city is all but mine for the taking. I promise you this, Charlie Keeper, Sylvaris shall fall beneath Bane’s fist.’

‘Oh yeah? Well, you’ve got to get past me first!’ hollered Charlie, and held up a blazing fist to show just how powerful she had become.

‘Oh, has the little brat found her Will?’ said Narcissa with a leering grin. ‘You impudent, silly little child, how could you be so stupid as to think that I wouldn’t have taken your
powers into consideration? I have planned for every eventuality! My servants will make short work of you and when they are done I will send you broken and helpless to Bane, who will take your pendant and reward me so very, very well for my labours.’

Charlie crossed her arms and sneered dismissively at the ring of armoured guardsmen that circled Lady Narcissa. ‘What? You think that those weasels dressed in tinfoil can defeat me? I don’t think so.’

‘Not enough for you? Well, how about these?’ Narcissa waved lazily at a dark corner of the Great Dining Hall. A sibilant hissing oozed its way across the room to reach Charlie’s ears. Rustling and mewling, the darkness uncoiled itself to reveal a living carpet of Shades. ‘And, of course, if those aren’t enough to satisfy you, I have the latest addition to my household guards. I’m sure I don’t need to introduce him to you.’

Crow stepped out from behind a column to stand by Narcissa’s side. He rubbed his quivering nose and grinned nastily at Charlie. ‘Hello, my little filly, my pretty, pretty filly. Are you ready to play?’

62

Battle Royal

‘So where’d she go?’ said Jensen.

‘Bless me Leaf, I don’t know!’

‘Well, we’ve gotta do something! We can’t just let her wander off like that. She’ll get in trouble, I just know she will,’ said Jensen with a look of anguish fluttering across his face. ‘Wot are we gonna do?’

‘Sic Boy!’

‘Wot?’

‘Yeah, Sic Boy’ll do it for us! Won’t ya, lad?’ Kelko scratched at Sic Boy’s huge head. ‘Who’s a good boy, then?’

‘Wot are ya going on about?’

‘Her scent! He can pick up her scent and track her down!’

Jensen nodded, his green skin glowing in the light from the Colosseum’s torches. ‘Yer right!’

Moving quickly, the two Tremen led Sic Boy down into the arena, where the discarded Zephyr lay abandoned on the ground. Charlie’s towel was on a hook at the side of the playing area. ‘Sic Boy, now listen ta me,’ said Kelko, taking the towel and holding it to the big dog’s nose. ‘Ya know Charlie, don’t ya, boy? Charlie?’ The giant dog’s ears
pricked up at the sound of her name. ‘We got ta find her. Find Charlie, boy. C’mon, find Charlie.’

Sic Boy sniffed at the towel, then at the ground where the Silent Duel had taken place. With his nose to the ground, his hulking body took off in the direction of one of the gates. Smiling to each other, Kelko and Jensen raced after him.

Charlie dodged a dagger, evaded a snarling bite from a frenzied Shade and only just managed to duck beneath a large table that Crow had venomously thrown from across the room. Her predicament was getting dangerously out of hand.

Skipping over an upturned chair, Charlie vaulted over the back of a guardsman who had bent to retrieve his sword, leaped on to the mantelpiece and from there somersaulted on to a large dining table.

‘Get her, you scabs!’ shrieked Lady Narcissa. ‘A thousand gold pieces to the man who catches that little minx!’

Mr Crow stood beside her as they both watched on, observing the guards attempt to grab the young Keeper.

Charlie groaned. She couldn’t believe what an impossible mess she’d made of things. How could she have been so stupid? She needed to get out of here. She needed to get somewhere where the Shades and guardsmen couldn’t overwhelm her with their sheer weight of numbers. Focusing her Will, she bowled over three guardsmen with her gleaming fists, leaped over a spitting and hissing Shade and
sprinted for the doorway. Scrambling through the massive double doors, she scuttled around a corner, then dashed up the nearest flight of stairs. The Shades and the guards swiftly gave chase as she raced, helter-skelter, for the rooftop. Reaching the tower’s summit, she spun around to face the oncoming tide as her attackers howled up the last flight of stairs.

Charlie grinned and released her Will. A thick wall of golden light blossomed across the stairs. It crackled and hummed, and even though the guards struck at it with their swords and the Shades lashed at it with their shadowy claws, it refused to break. Their way was barred. Charlie smiled in relief. Finally she’d created a moment’s respite in which she could plan her next move.

So deeply was she concentrating that she failed to notice the long line of birds appearing over the side of the rooftop in a flutter of black wings. Mr Crow silently tiptoed out of the sudden merging of feathers and sneaked forward.

‘Hello, my pretty!’ he screamed into her ear.

Lashing out with a hand, he knocked her to the ground. Immediately Charlie’s barrier of golden light collapsed into nothing, allowing the Shades and guards to rush, hollering and screaming, on to the roof.

‘Well, my filly,’ continued Mr Crow as he cruelly stamped on Charlie’s fingers. ‘I believe that the time has finally come for you to pay the piper.’

Dazed and slightly concussed, Charlie crawled away on shaky hands and knees until she reached the very edge of the roof. Flopping on to her back, exhausted and terrified, she faced her doom.

‘Well, I don’t know about you,’ said a new but familiar voice right by her ear, ‘but I’m getting a real sense of déjà vu!’

‘Cor!’ said Kelko. ‘Will ya look at all dis mess. How d’ya think that happened?’

‘What d’ya think, ya silly excuse for a Treman,’ said Jensen as they slipped past the mountain of groaning Alavisian Watchmen lying upon the drawbridge. ‘Charlie must have happened, ya flea-brained numbskull! I’d say she’s really come ta grips with her Will.’

‘Burn me Sap! Ya think she did all of dis?’ muttered Kelko as he tried to wedge his stomach between two piles of unconscious bodies. ‘Hhmpf, we might as well turn around and go on home. Someone who can cause dis much damage clearly ain’t gonna need any help from us.’

‘Wot, are ya mad? That weird Ravenman or wotever ya call him … er, Crowman is in there! Not ta mention the fact there’s probably a whole legion of Shades and other nasties hidden inside with Lady Narcissa. We’ve gotta go in and help her. If she ain’t managed ta get herself inta trouble by now, I can almost guarantee that she’ll be in trouble before the night’s end. So suck in that big tummy of yers and let’s get going!’

Wheezing and puffing, Kelko squeezed his way forward to follow Sic Boy and Jensen into the Ivory Tower.

‘Nibbler!’

‘Well, who else did you think it would be?’

‘What … I didn’t think it would … oh, never mind!’ said Charlie. ‘Just keep them off me, OK!’

‘No problem,’ replied the small dragon. Opening his mouth wide, he released a rippling jet of flame. The Shades and guards jumped for cover. ‘Wow, I never thought I’d go through all this again, but y’know what? It’s still fun!’

Charlie rolled her eyes. Here she was almost half beaten to death, chased by just about every single bad guy in Sylvaris, and Nibbler thought it was ‘fun’? She wanted to scream in frustration.

‘So tell me,’ continued Nibbler, ‘how come you’re back up here anyway?’

‘They killed Azariah!’

Nibbler’s wave of flames disappeared in a puff of black smoke. ‘They what?’

‘Yes, you heard me. Him,’ said Charlie, and pointed at Mr Crow. ‘And her.’ She pointed at Lady Narcissa, who had just that second appeared on the roof. ‘They killed Azariah. They’re murderers!’

Nibbler growled deep and low, then, roaring out his defiance, he sent a massive explosion of fiery waves bursting across the rooftop. ‘Let’s get them.’

‘That’s what I was trying to do,’ explained Charlie. ‘But with all of them together, they’re too strong.’

‘Well, let’s even the numbers up a little, shall we?’ snarled Nibbler.

Leaping into the air, he flew towards Crow. The lawyer squeaked in surprise. Jumping up to meet the young dragon,
he burst apart into a hundred black crows. Nibbler and the birds came together like a clap of thunder. Snarling and hooting, clawing and snapping, the two mighty adversaries tumbled out of sight.

Which left just Charlie with everyone else.

She clambered to her feet and, slipping into a K’Changa stance, danced from foe to foe, kicking and punching, pushing and pulling. Golden flaming hands glowing with power knocked back guard after guard and Shade after Shade. But the odds were still too high: she wasn’t going to win this. More and more reinforcements flowed up the stairs to join Narcissa’s troops and no matter how many Charlie defeated another two would spring up in their place.