Legend of the Three Moons (18 page)

`And never came out,' added Chad, pointing to a gap in the cacti wall that even Nutty couldn't squeeze through without being stabbed with finger-length spines. `I think it's time you read Edith's spell.'

Swift took the parchment from his bag, unrolled it and read it. `Thorn-resisting spell, lasting one hour only. Ingredients: one beetlebug, four human hairs braided with four horse hairs, one drop of the spell-maker's blood, some dog drool, three globs of spit and one pinch of pine sap. Place ingredients on this parchment and stir before spreading over face and hands while reciting,
Spikus nulifydus esvanit
.'

Chad found a squashed beetlebug inside the jawbone of a mule, plucked four tail hairs from a dried horsehide and plaited them with four hairs from his own braids. Swift stuck his finger into Nutty's mouth for some dog's drool, scraped some pine sap from Chad's jacket and pricked his finger so he could squeeze a drop of his own blood onto the parchment with the other ingredients, then spat three times into it and stirred the lot into a gooey paste. He applied half to Chad's hands and screwed-up face, and the rest to his own, while saying, `
Spikus nulifydus esvanit
.'

`How does it feel?' he asked Chad.

`Sticky and disgusting. Come on.'

As they walked up to the gap in the cacti wall they were astonished to see the spines retracting, so they pushed through the maze's entrance. Behind them, Nutty gave a goodbye bark before loping off to tell Lem that they had found the maze.

On the other side of the cacti wall the boys found a narrow path leading to three archways.

`Which one?' asked Swift, as he tied the yellow string to a cacti leaf near the entrance.

Chad opened Edith's packet of Finders Keepers Petals, placed two on his eyelids then pointed to the middle archway.

Swift followed his cousin as, time and again, Chad used the petals to choose the way to go - even when the afternoon light faded and the maze turned into a shadowy fortress of narrow pathways, zigzagging dead ends and over-grown tunnels.

On they walked, and when the string ran out they used arrows as markers. Nine arrows later they stepped out of the maze into a circular arena.

Around the arena sat fifty or so travellers who, judging by their clothing, came from all parts of Ifraa. Some were hollow-eyed countrywomen with large knuckled fingers, but most were tired-faced men, many with the down of youth still on their upper lips. In front of each was a pile of gold coins that they could not stop playing with, or counting over and over again.

One after another, the men and women realised strangers had emerged from the maze, and quickly gathered their treasure close, wrapping their arms around it or covering it with their coats or aprons. But when Chad and Swift walked by without showing any interest in their hoard, they pointed and begged the boys to bring them more treasure.

The coins they wanted were piled all around the white trunk of a lifeless tree in the centre of the arena.

`It looks very dead,' whispered Swift. `I wonder if it is my father, or yours.'

Chad, who'd been trying
not
to think the same thing, agreed that the tree did look very dead.

`One way to find out if it is,' said Swift. `We'll lay our coats over the coins and, as I am the lightest, I will walk over them and talk to the tree.'

Chad put his coat down and, after Swift walked across it he laid his own down. From the edge of it he could just reach the tree's white trunk with his out-stretched fingers. `Tree, are you Queen Ona or King Tefan?'

There was no answer so he asked again. Still nothing.

Swift looked back to Chad and shrugged. He was about to ask one last time when, as if waking from a long sleep, a wheezing voice slipped into his head. `I am Queen Ona, who are you?'

`I am your nephew Prince Swift. Your son Prince Chad is here too. We need your talisman to break the High Enchanter's spell.'

When the tree finally spoke again, its voice was full of tears. `I have no talisman, Prince Swift.'

Swift was about to argue that it had to have one when Chad shouted, `Swift, the coats are sinking. Jump!'

Swift leapt for the closest branch and hung there as the coats were sucked beneath the gold coins. He climbed into the tree's fork and reminded the poisoned tree of the necklaces that had been given to the three princesses when they were babies.

`It is hard to think,' sighed Queen Ona. `The coins have poisoned my roots… Wait, I recall something blue hanging from the tip of my highest branch.'

`It's hanging from the highest branch, Chad. Can you see it? Can I reach it?'

Chad stared up at the spindly branches. At first all he could see were twigs sticking up like starving fingers, then he saw a flash of blue. `I can see it but you can't reach it. The branch is too thin, it will break. You'll have to use my bow to hook the necklace off.'

He leant over the coins and handed over his curved bow which Swift held out in front of him as he climbed as high as he could, trying to ignore the ominous creaking of the dead wood. He hooked the bow's end through the sapphire's chain and was about to climb down when the branch splintered and broke. With a surprised howl, Swift fell to the stoney ground but the bow, necklace and branch fell into the gold.

Chad pulled him to his feet. `Quick! The bow is sinking. I'll hold you while you lean over and grab it.'

With Chad holding on to his shirt, Swift had to lean so far over the gold that he was almost horizontal before he reached the bow. Slowly and carefully he withdrew it from the gold and there, still linked around its end, was the chain and its dangling sapphire.

Chad hauled Swift away from the tree and out of the sinking gold. `That was close,' he told his wide-eyed cousin.

Swift unlinked the necklace from the bow and handed it to him. `The poisoned tree is your mother, Chad, so I think you should wear it.'

Chad threaded the sapphire's chain between his fingers and stared at the tree, wondering how it really could be his mother. He wished he'd been the one to touch it. Maybe if he had spoken to it, to her, he would feel something, but all he felt was numb. `Do you think she will die before we find all the talismans?'

Swift glanced at Chad's face. He'd never seen his cousin look so serious or his eyes so sad. `No, I don't, because now she has hope. But I do think we should get out of here. Edith's thorn-disappearing spell will wear off soon and it's getting dark.'

With a last glance at the poisoned tree, Chad ran after Swift, who was looking for their arrow marker. It took time because the gap in the cacti wall had grown over.

When they began hacking a new hole with their swords, the travellers began moving towards them. None of them left their treasure though. Some crawled and pushed their gold before them, others staggered under the weight of the coins that they'd shoved into their pockets. All of them were calling out, `Wait for us. We want to leave too.'

A second after Chad and Swift pushed through the cacti, the prickly wall grew back behind them. The travellers still trapped in the arena let out a chorus of disappointed shouts and cries.

`If they'd left their gold they might have gotten through,' said Swift.

Chad shook his head. `They couldn't leave it. They are enslaved by it; by their greed and desire for it.'

Nine arrows and eight slashed cacti walls later they found the end of the yellow string, which they followed until they arrived at the middle archway. They reached it just as Lem stepped through the maze's entrance.

`Go back!' shouted Swift.

`Only two can leave the maze,' Chad added.

`Then come quickly,' yelled Lem. `Spear is hurt and she is asking for you.'

`How hurt?' Swift was about to run towards his brother when Chad grabbed his arm to stop him.

`Lem would never call Lyla Spear,' he said. Then he called out, `What's your birth name?'

Lem looked annoyed. `Wolf of course. Hurry Arrow, Spear is in pain.'

`What did you sit on in the Forest before it broke?' continued Chad.

`A bench of course.'

`No!'

`A log.'

`No!'

Lem stamped his foot angrily. `What does it matter?'

`It matters because you aren't Arrow's brother, Wolf. You're a shape-thief!'

Lem's handsome face contorted. `Liar!'

Even before the word was properly out of his mouth, his face and body began to distort. He grew taller and wider, his face bulged and gained three chins, his blonde ponytail became a frizzy red topknot and his green eyes turned watery blue. The Lem who'd been calling to them became Hanging Hannah running at them.

`The lavender and repulsata seeds!' Swift said.

To give Swift time to use them, Chad reached for his bow and pulled an arrow from his quiver. `Stop!' he shouted. He took aim. `Or I will shoot!'

To his surprise Hanging Hannah stopped, but then an even stranger thing happened. Her shoulders grew even wider and her barrel body more muscular. Her triple chin became a chiselled jaw, and her red topknot disappeared leaving her head as bald as a buzzard's egg. Now, instead of Hanging Hannah threatening them, a cruel-faced man with arms the size of hams and legs as round as jetty pylons was blocking their way.

With an evil chuckle he pulled a whip from his belt. `Think you can escape Jeg the slave trader and best shape-thief in Belem?'

His whip flicked out and ripped the bow from Chad's hand. While still in the air, a second flick snapped the bow in half. The arrow dropped to the ground.

`No boy ever has escaped, and no boy ever will! I told you I would have Arrow as my apprentice.'

Swift swallowed all the lavender and repulsata seeds at once and, in an instant, waves of vomit-making, revolting manure stink wafted around him. It was so bad it made Chad's eyes sting and his stomach churn.

`Follow me,' Swift said, running towards the shape-thief, who fell back against the cacti like a deflated balloon the moment he smelt the lavender and repulsata seeds. The boys edged past his beefy, outspread legs, pushed through the maze's entrance spines and exploded out into the clearing. Behind them the slave trader let out a howl of frustration as the cacti grew back before he could follow them.

Swift was still running as he passed the last handcart and almost tripped over Nutty lying on Hanging Hannah's sack. He scooped up the pup and kept on going but Nutty struggled out of his arms and ran back.

`Maybe there's food in the sack,' said Chad. He upended it and out fell the Queens' jewel casket and Lyla's parchment. Chad picked them up and stuffed them in his bag.

`Do you think Jeg stole them?' Swift asked as they raced away from the clearing and the slave trader's still-threatening voice. `Do you think the others are safe?'

`The faster we get back to them, the faster we'll find out,' Chad panted.

The road was dark and they'd slowed to a jog to avoid tripping on anything, when they felt the first gust of hot air on the backs of their necks. They turned to see a wall of flame rushing towards them.

`Run for the bridge,' Chad urged, as whirling balls of flame leapt from pine tree to pine tree, turning the tops of each into flaming torches.

Resin-filled branches exploded and white-hot smoke scorched their backs and legs, but nothing was going to stop them from getting to the third bridge. They slid down the slope, fell into the stream and crawled through the shallows beneath the bridge's arch. They sat there, up to their chins in the safety of the water, while the fire moved, as if it had its own mind, and the falling, burning trunks bombarded the stone above them.

`Do you think cacti can burn?' Chad asked, shouting to be heard above the crackle and roar.

Knowing that Chad was thinking about his mother, Swift shook his head.

Suddenly a huge crack appeared in the bridge, right above them.

`Out!' Chad commanded.

With Nutty paddling fast beside them, the boys swam or waded downstream.

The forest on both sides was alight, sometimes tendrils of fire even met overhead, and the flaming trees dropped burning branches and pinecones all around them. The three dodged everything in their way until they could take refuge under the second bridge. There, with stinging eyes and raw throats, they examined each other and found that Chad's braids had been burnt off leaving four small stubs, and Swift's white curls had been singed shorter than Celeste's shorn hair.

They were wading and swimming towards the last bridge near the road leading to the signposts, when a huge flame - in the shape of a sword-wielding warrior - detached itself from the burning forest and leapt onto the riverbank.

The flame warrior danced along, keeping pace with them, as it swung its flaming sword at their exposed heads.

One swipe came so close it burnt Chad's nose, so he dived and swam as far as possible underwater. When he surfaced, he couldn't see Nutty and Swift anywhere.

To make things worse there were more flame warriors, dancing along both banks, and they were twice as tall with fierce flame faces and longer swords.

They leant out to slice off Chad's head, so he dived again and this time only surfaced for breath, until he reached the bridge. Swift, with a scorched face, was already there, lying in waist deep water.

`Have you seen Nutty?' Chad asked. `I've lost him. Do you think the flame warriors got him?'

Swift shook his head, then winced because his neck was burnt. `I don't know. I lost my sword and bag.'

Chad looked around desperately for the pup. `Lem is going to hate me.'

Swift peeked out from behind the bridge's central pylon. `No he won't. Not after we tell him about the flame warriors, who are growing bigger as the fire grows bigger. How are we going to reach the others? And what if their part of the forest is on fire too?'

`Stop the bad thoughts, Swift, I'm thinking.' Chad fingered the sapphire necklace while he thought.

Swift fell silent, but all around them the fire roared and pinecones sizzled as they fell into the water.

`I have it,' Chad exclaimed. `Swords and arrows won't hurt them at all, but water will. We'll stand back to back and swipe them with our wet shirts.'