Back To The Divide (11 page)

104

Betony leaped off Thornbeak's back and ran over to the rope ladder that hung from the family tree house. The ladder was still anchored to the statues of her parents. She noted that someone had polished them recently -- her elder sister, Tansy, probably. Her brother, Ramson, had never polished anything in his life except his sickle.

"Tansy!" she yelled, cupping her hands around her mouth and aiming her voice up at the tree house. "Ramson! It's me, Betony, I'm back!"

Tansy's plain, pointed little face appeared on the balcony. "Betony!" she squealed. "We were so worried about you! We heard about what's happened in Andria -- Ironclaw dropped by last week to tell us he was going to rescue you." Then she noticed Felix. "Who's that japegrin with you?" she asked suspiciously.

"It's Felix," said Felix.

"The blue eyes," said Tansy. "Of course."

"I think I'll be off," said Ironclaw. He glanced at Thornbeak. "What are
you
going to do?" he asked.

"I'm not sure," said Thornbeak. "I used to spend every day in the Andrian library, but that's out of the question now."

Ironclaw studied his talons. "You could come back to Tromm Fell with me if you liked."

"And just what, precisely, am I supposed to do on Tromm Fell?"

"The perching rocks need a good clean, and it would be nice if someone else did the hunting because I've got this

105

fascinating little number series I ..." said Ironclaw, but he didn't get any further because Thornbeak pecked him.

"I thought hens liked that sort of thing," muttered Ironclaw, rubbing the affected area with his hind leg and making far more of it than necessary.

"Cleanliness, yes," said Thornbeak, ruffling her immaculate feathers and flattening them again. "Cleaning, no."

"I suppose I could pay someone else to smarten up the perching rocks. Even Granitelegs said they were getting a bit stinky."

"Ramson's looking for a job," said Tansy. "He failed his herbalist finals, so he can't work in Dibber's printing business, writing spell-books."

"What sort of job?" asked Ramson, sauntering into the yard. "Oh, hello, Betony." He looked at Felix. "And who are you?"

"Felix."

Ramson peered a little more closely at Felix through his tangle of blond hair. Then his mouth dropped open and his Adam's apple bobbed in and out a couple of times.
"Blazing feathers!"
he exclaimed. "So it is!" Then he added, "You've grown. Can't say I like the ginger hair, though."

Thornbeak told Ramson about the job.

"Scrubbing brazzle rocks?" said Ramson, horrified. "I'm an herbalist."

"No you're not," snapped Tansy. "Not until you've retaken your exams. I don't want you lounging around the place

106

all day, playing the same old tunes over and over again on that lute. He'll take the job, Thornbeak."

Ramson looked fed up, but he didn't argue.

"And he'll start immediately," Tansy added.

"Blazing feathers.
Tansy ..."

"Climb on," said Ironclaw, "we're leaving."

Felix watched as the brazzles became specks in the sky.

"I've got a throat lubricator to deliver," said Tansy. "See you in a bit." She put a purple gourd into a basket and hurried off down the lane.

"You can have Ramson's room," said Betony. "Come on, I'll show you around."

Felix had never been to Betony's home. The statues of her parents at the foot of the rope ladder were a forcible reminder of his own situation. He could see the family likeness, particularly in Betony's mother. He ran his finger over her. At least she wasn't dangerous, the way his own parents were. He shivered. His own parents had turned into a time bomb, relentlessly ticking away in another world. He decided to try and stop thinking about it, since there was nothing he could do until he found a sorcerer.

The ladder led up to a platform, which went all the way around the tree trunk. There were three rooms on the first floor: a living room, a storeroom, and a dispensary for preparing potions. Sawn-off branches made a spiral staircase to the next floor, which had two tiny bedrooms and a bathroom. A barrel stored rainwater for showers and drained on

107

to the garden below. Above that there was another floor, with two more bedrooms. The kitchen was in a covered area on the ground, where the stove was. The living room was the only room that had been properly finished; the floor was sanded and varnished, and there were colorful cushions scattered around to sit on. Candles stood in lots of little niches and the door was a curtain, made of some thick blue material. There was a painting of some toadstools on one of the walls, and a weird and wonderful plant was growing in a blue ceramic pot on the window ledge. It looked like a succulent of some sort -- a desert plant, anyway. Its stem was thick, bulbous, swelling out like a beer belly beneath rolls of pale green flesh. If it had possessed a head instead of a coronet of spiky leaves it would have looked like a football-sized statue of a sumo wrestler or a jade Buddha. In the middle of the coronet sat one bright red flower.

"Hello, Socrates," said Betony to the plant. "I haven't seen you for ages."

"Socrates?" queried Felix.

"What's wrong with Socrates?" demanded the plant. "Good old-fashioned mythical name. Betony, I'm as dry as a fire-breather's backside. Tansy's awfully forgetful."

Felix's mouth dropped open.

Betony watered the plant, and then she went around lighting candles with a wave of her hand, muttering the incantation. "Don't fight; flame, light; ignite; burn bright."

Felix remembered trying to prove that he could do magic

108

in his own world by trying the same spell and being bitterly disappointed. He realized he'd got the words in the wrong order, so he tried again. This time the candle burst into flame immediately, and he felt so pleased with himself that he started lighting as many as possible and racing Betony to reach them.

"Hey," said Betony, "you've really got the hang of this now, haven't you? Have to get you out of those japegrin clothes, though. They're frightful." Felix emptied out his backpack, found some relatively clean stuff, and changed into it. Then he dismantled his flashlight and dried each bit separately. When he put the pieces back together again and the light worked, he felt like Einstein.

Betony decided to smarten herself up as well. Her clothes were still covered with the dust from the tunnel, and it was a relief to get rid of them. She'd had to leave all her stuff behind in Andria, but when she tried on some of her old things she found that they were too small. She borrowed a plain sludge green dress of Tansy's, but it didn't do a thing for her and she kept tripping over the hem. I know, she thought, I'll see if Agrimony will lend me something. She told Felix she wouldn't be long and that Socrates would keep him company for a bit. Then she climbed down the ladder, leaving out the last few rungs and jumping nimbly to the ground. Although Agrimony had been a bit of a pain at school she'd behaved rather well the previous year, and she had gone up in Betony's estimation. She'd been brave and

109

unselfish, and she'd even admitted there was more to life than dancing the star squirm or the dusk hop or placing first in toadstool tests. Betony was really looking forward to seeing her -- would the improvement have lasted or had it been just skin-deep?

"Oh, hi, Betony," said Agrimony with a disbelieving glance at the dress.

"I know," said Betony. "Can you lend me something? I left everything behind when I was running away from Harshak down a collapsing secret passage after heroically saving the library from an incendiary spell."

"I don't think anything of mine will fit you."

"I can't wear what I came in. Reciting a
level thirteen
spell makes you perspire like anything, and then I got some dust and some sinistrom blood on me as well."

"I've grown more than you have," said Agrimony, flicking through her wardrobe. "Everything I've got has a bust these days."

"They actually had a triple-head guarding the library, Agrimony.
A real live triple-head.
It was huge. It flew off when it saw Snakeweed drive past in an otherworld vehicle. A
self-propelled
thing."

"Try this," said Agrimony, pulling out a slinky embroidered little number. "It's last year's style, I don't wear it anymore."

"Thanks," said Betony flatly, putting it on.

110

"I have to think about my appearance," said Agrimony. "When I got back from Andria last year I became quite a hit at the storytelling sessions. It's not just having something exciting to tell, you know, it's the way you do it. I'm a natural, apparently. I'm going to be apprenticed to the chief storyteller."

"Betony, darling!" screeched Agrimony's mother, Grisette, appearing in the doorway. "How lovely to see you!"

"Thornbeak and I saved the library from an incendiary spell," said Betony.

"That's nice," said Grisette, looking at Betony appraisingly, "but I think the bodice is a little full for you. I could put a couple of tucks in it."

You can see where Agrimony gets it from, can't you? thought Betony.

Felix lay back against the cushions and leafed through
Moss, Molds, and Mistletoe -- an Herbal Primer.
It was an old-fashioned schoolbook, handwritten by a scribe. Some of it was quite unpleasant:
First, rot your toadstool until the smell makes you vomit. Scrape off the pink mold, mix it with an equal quantity of your own blood, and let it fester for two days.
He put it back on the shelf and chose another:
Fire-breathers: Structure and Function.
It was fascinating; he hadn't realized that fire-breather dung was red-hot and was used to get an oven going. Nor had he known that elderly fire-breathers who had retired from commercial flying still worked part-time --

111

they stripped paint for decorators, operated kilns for potters, and ran beach barbecues in the summer. He put the book back and selected another.
A Child's Book of Shadow-beasts and Scourges.
He looked at the pictures of sinistroms and worrits, remembering his own encounters with them. The last section dealt with creatures that weren't shadow-beasts but could be big trouble nonetheless -- cutthroats and carrion-wings and brandees, things he hadn't even heard of. There was an anecdote about someone called Leona, who was half-lion and half-amberly (whatever that was).

... and the worrit found himself up against the best magical mind he'd ever encountered. Leona twisty-stripped him -- she reversed the worrit's own magical powers and told him jokes until he laughed himself to death.

The best magical mind he'd ever encountered? Was Leona a historical figure or was she still alive?

"Are you just going to sit there reading, human?" demanded Socrates, dropping a dead leaf. "I thought I was going to have some interesting company for a change."

Felix grinned. "Is Leona a real person?" he asked.

"She's a riddle-paw."

"What's that?"

Socrates described Leona, and Felix realized that Leona was almost certainly a sphinx. This was definitely worth investigating; an accomplished sorceress was precisely what he needed.

112

"Why do you want a sorceress, anyway?" asked Socrates.

Felix told him everything. His visit to Betony's world the previous year, the need to find the reverse-marble hex, the japegrin takeover in Andria, and the disappearance of the king and queen.

"Hmm," said Socrates, rearranging a petal, "you've got a couple of root-tangling problems there, haven't you? But Leona's supposed to be very clever; she probably knows a royalty location spell."

"And the marble thing?"

"Worth a try."

"It's not very clear from the book where she lives."

"That's because she doesn't live in one place. She chooses a town and terrorizes it for a while."

"So she could be anywhere?" said Felix, feeling depressed.

"Oh, I know the general area," said the plant. "Well, more or less. I originally came from a king's garden, you know, in a city west of here. The fruit trees used to talk about her. It's a long way, though. You'd have to fly."

No problem, thought Felix. I'll speak to Ironclaw tomorrow.

"He didn't get very much done, did he?" said Thornbeak, surveying the small area of rock that Ramson had cleaned. She pecked at it, and another shower of dirt fell off. "I'm not sleeping on this until it's decent, Ironclaw."

"I haven't got time for housework," said Ironclaw. "My

113

dirt-board was ruined by a japegrin, and I've got to make another one."

"Can't you sort out the old one?"

"No," snapped Ironclaw.

"Let's see it, then."

They flew over to the little hollow in the rocks. Ironclaw's beak dropped open. The dirt-board had been restored to its former glory, but it was covered with calculations.

"I see," said Thornbeak.

Ironclaw wasn't listening. He put his head on one side and studied the figures. After a moment or two he saw a mistake. "Granitelegs," he said. "He never could get the hang of probability. The second half of all this is rubbish."

"You said the dirt-board had been ruined."

"Granitelegs must have reversed the spell," said Ironclaw. "Well, this is excellent." He started to erase some of the numbers.

"Hold on," said Thornbeak, "you can't just rub out all his work."

"Why not? It's no good."

"Granitelegs has done you a favor," said Thornbeak. "The least you can do is give him a chance to copy down the correct part."

Ironclaw glared at her. "But I've got something really important I want to work on."

"What?"

"It's a present. For you."