Back To The Divide (8 page)

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discontent," he said. "I don't think it's very good for anyone. You see, nobody's seen the king and queen since the announcement of their abdication. Now, you might say a tangle-king and -queen are neither here nor there to
me --
being a japegrin -- but they were harmless, and there are rumors that something nasty's happened to them...."

"There's no proof," said another japegrin. "No bodies. You can't go making allegations like that."

The first japegrin decided to change the subject. "The beach is worth a look," he said to Felix. "And there are some weird rock formations beyond it."

"With caves and tunnels and things?"

"Yes, I believe so."

"Have you been in any of the caves?"

"No -- you can get lost. There's an old hermit down there, a brittlehorn. If he likes you he might give you a tour -- the rocks grow in amazing shapes, like plants. But he won't show everyone. He has to like you first."

A brittlehorn was very good news indeed. Brittlehorns had quite a store of magical knowledge -- just like their unicorn counterparts -- and even if this one didn't have an answer to the marble spell, he might know someone who did.

Rutherford Aubrey Tripp always walked the same way to Wimbledon station each morning, his umbrella under one arm, his briefcase under the other. Normally, he wasn't terribly observant -- his head was far too full of protons and neutrons

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and quarks to bother much with the natural world. A herd of stampeding wildebeests could have galloped down High Street without attracting his attention. The only exception to this tunnel vision was the interest he took in his fruit trees. He had a passion for Victoria plums, beautiful, succulent, gorgeous Victoria plums, but this year the wasps had been a serious pest. They had badly damaged the crop, leaving it open to brown rot, and his mind turned over the pesticides he would be needing for the weekend.

Suddenly Rutherford came back to earth with a bump. He'd left his lab keys behind on the kitchen table, he was almost certain of it. He stopped and turned out his pockets, scattering coins and pens and computer discs on the pavement. As he bent down to retrieve them, he noticed a small white object next to a fallen plum. It looked remarkably like a dead wasp -- except that wasps weren't white. He rummaged in his briefcase for his glasses, and by the time he'd found them another wasp had landed on the plum. He bent down to look, and as he did so the second wasp crawled across the first one.

After a moment it froze, and the color seemed to leach away from its body as though it had been dunked in bleach. In less than a minute, it looked exactly like the first one. Someone's been spraying their plums with a very effective insecticide, thought Rutherford. I wonder what it is?

He wasn't a man to take chances with potential poisons, however, so he wrapped up both the wasps and the plum in a

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handkerchief and put them in his briefcase. He'd ask someone at work to do a quick analysis for him. Doctor Emily Parsons, maybe.

When Felix left Bedstraw's lodging house a little later, he took everything with him in his backpack -- he didn't know what the outcome of his trip to the beach looking for secret passageways was likely to be. On his way out he sneaked into the garden shed and found what he wanted quite quickly -- a ball of twine, just like the one Theseus had used in the minotaur's labyrinth. He was going to make sure he didn't get lost in the caves.

He walked off down the road and bumped into Bogbean, one of the japegrins he'd been speaking to over lunch.

"Guess what?" said Bogbean. "Someone messed up the incendiary spell this morning. They couldn't get into the library for ages, the doors were glued shut with super-molasses. Eventually they found a locksmith who knew the melting spell, and when they got in there it was chaos."

Felix fought to keep the anxiety from his face and said, "What sort of chaos?"

"Couple of the militia blinded -- not permanently -- and several more glued to their mattresses. Plumbing's all bunged up, and some of the prisoners have disappeared. But that's minor stuff...."

"Which prisoners?" interrupted Felix.

"Dunno exactly -- a brazzle and a tangle-child, I think. Just

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vanished, apparently. No one saw them leave -- and you can't really miss a brazzle, can you? But that's
nothing
-- Harshak has been resurrected. Can you believe it? I never realized Harshak was a real sinistrom; I always thought he was just a folktale."

"They don't even know where he is," said another japegrin. "He could be anywhere." He glanced nervously behind him.

"Harshak ..." said Felix, as though the significance had momentarily slipped his mind.

"Harshak,"
said Bogbean. "Sinistrom to the king of the nomads, five hundred years ago. The biggest, fiercest shadow-beast there's ever been. Killed a brazzle in single combat, and when the king ordered him back to his pebble as a punishment he actually refused, turned on the king, and ripped him to pieces. But the king's daughter was as bright as a riddle-paw, and she picked up the pebble and dunked it in her glass of fertle-juice. She presented the nugget of molasses to the library, where it supposedly remained on show for a couple of centuries. Then it was presumed lost, and my history teacher told me it probably never really existed."

"Your history teacher will be lighting the wrong end of his candle now, won't he?" said the other japegrin.

Bogbean laughed, but Felix was feeling more depressed by the minute. Thornbeak and Betony had disappeared. Were they dead, or in hiding, or had they escaped somehow? And now there was a new menace -- Harshak. And then he remembered that brittlehorns had ways of dealing with sinistroms, and he cheered up.

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When he reached the seafront, he recalled the last time he'd been there. It had been night, and he'd been carried there unconscious. He'd been dying. And then Thornbeak had worked her magic, and he'd been cured, and everything had been wonderful. Perhaps he'd be able to repay her a little. He took a deep breath, but suddenly it didn't feel quite right -- the air in his lungs was sharp and salty, like blood. The fear flooded back. Then he realized it was just the sea air, and he felt foolish. Bracing, that was the word. There was nothing wrong with him. He made his way to the end of the beach and started to clamber over the rocks. Before long he came to the caves, but he decided to look for the brittlehorn first. Only if he couldn't find him would he venture in alone.

When he reached the ninth cave mouth, he saw hoofprints in the sand. He went over and had a closer look. They were too delicate for cuddyak prints; they had to belong to a brittlehorn. Felix followed them into the cave, tied the end of the twine to a projection in the rock, and switched on his flashlight.

The cave branched into three tunnels, and the prints took the left-hand route. He followed them. After a little while the tunnel opened out again and the most amazing landscape lay before him, full of stalagmites and stalactites. Felix heard himself catch his breath. Twisted columns of stone rose before him, the color of Jersey cream. Hourglass pillars, veined with turquoise; filigree arches, in pink and orange and rust. Mounds of pearl-gray rock formations, layered like puddles of candle wax, and forests of tiny spikes as white as milk teeth.

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At one end of the cave there was a pool of water, as motionless as ice. The stonescape was reflected in it, a perfect mirror image. Felix had been to the Cheddar caves once on a school trip and been seriously impressed, but this was phenomenal.

After a minute or two he realized that the hoofprints led into the little lake and disappeared. He took off his shoes, put them in his backpack, rolled up his trousers, and waded in. It was quite shallow, and he thought perhaps he could see hoofprints on the miniature beach on the other side. The next moment he must have stepped in a pothole, because he was underwater. He thrashed wildly, fighting his way to the surface, and then he realized that his flashlight had gone out. Not only that, he'd let go of the ball of twine. He trod water, although it was difficult since the weight of the backpack was dragging him down. Eventually his hands found the edge of the drop, and he hauled himself back into shallow water. He just sat there for a moment, getting his breath back. He was in a mess. It was pitch black in there. He didn't even know which way he was facing, and he was very cold. Eventually he stood up and inched his way toward what he hoped was the bit he'd just come from. He just needed to be on dry land. The water got shallower and shallower, and then he was standing on a smooth stone surface and he felt ever so slightly better. He took off his clothes and wrung them out. The water had only just started to penetrate the backpack -- his other clothes were almost dry, and the matchbox containing the marble snail was still zipped up safely in a side pocket.

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He dressed as well as he could in the dark and then he just sat there, wondering what to do next.

After an age, from out of the darkest darkness, Felix noticed a faint glow. Gradually, it intensified. It was coming toward him -- and yes, he could hear the faint click of hooves. After a little while he could make out a four-legged outline walking toward him with its head bowed, suggesting that its owner was either elderly or infirm or severely depressed. It's the brittlehorn, thought Felix. He could see that its twisted ivory horn was glowing with an eerie green light, as though illuminated from within. Then it must have caught his scent for it stopped, raised its head, and looked straight at him.

"Am I glad to see you," said Felix.

"I can't really answer that," said the brittlehorn. "Not being you, you see."

"I got lost," said Felix, his words tumbling over themselves in his hurry to explain himself, "and my flashlight went out and the twine slipped through my fingers and I thought I was going to die down here and then you --"

"First things first," said the brittlehorn. "My name is Pewtermane. Last year, a sinistrom by the name of Architrex killed my daughter, Snowdrift. Since then I have only wanted solitude, which is why I came here. And you are?"

Felix was momentarily at a loss for words. Snowdrift had been his friend, she had carried him through the Geddon forest the previous summer, only to be poisoned by Snakeweed's sinistrom. And this brittlehorn was Snowdrift's
father?
Just as

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he was about to tell Pewtermane who he was, there was a distant rumble. Volume isn't everything, thought Felix fleetingly. Some sounds are just sounds -- but others hint at something more, like the rattle of a diamondback, or the hiss of an avalanche -- and this was one of those.

A huge cloud of dust raced down the passageway, a tidal wave of it, billowing as it came. The brittlehorn started to cough. Its glowing horn faded into the haze and disappeared -- but strangely, there was more light now, not less. Once the dust was in the cavern, it spread out, thinned, swathed everything in mist, and then, after a minute or so, started to settle. Breathing became easier and things gradually came into focus -- there really was a lot more light, as though the sky had been allowed in somewhere. There's been a rock-fall farther back, thought Felix. I wonder what caused it?

He didn't have to wonder for long, because the scruffy, dirt-encrusted brazzle that dashed out of the tunnel was undoubtedly Ironclaw. And the slightly cleaner one that followed him was almost certainly Thornbeak. And the tangle-child behind
them
was definitely Betony, carrying a lantern.

"Busy down here all of a sudden," said the brittlehorn. He closed his eyes, rested a hind leg, and appeared to doze off.

"Betony!" yelled Felix, wanting to jump for joy. "It's me!"

He heard Thornbeak say, "What's this, Betony? I didn't know you were friends with a japegrin."

Felix remembered his red hair.

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Betony said, "I'm
not.
I don't know who he is."

Ironclaw suddenly angled his head the way he did when he used his magnifying vision.
"Well, knock me down with an eggshell,"
he said. "It's Felix! Just the person we need."

Betony's mouth dropped open. Thornbeak picked up Betony unceremoniously in her beak, carried her across the water, and dumped her in front of Felix.

She scrambled to her feet and just looked at him. Her face seemed older; she'd grown. But not as much as he had -- he was now taller than she was, by a couple of inches. He noticed she was still wearing the necklace he'd made her the previous year. Then she grinned and the smile was just as infectious as ever, and her eyes were just as green as he remembered. Green like chips of malachite, not a human color at all. "I've missed you," he said.

"I've missed you, too."

They both laughed.

"You've turned up at exactly the right moment," said Ironclaw. "You see, the king and queen have been taken --"

"There's no time for that now," said Thornbeak. "There's a sinistrom after us, and I don't think he's had anything to eat for a while."

"About five centuries," said Felix. "His name's Harshak."