The Blackhope Enigma (14 page)

Inko shrugged.

“You know a way, Inko,” Angus said. “I know you do.” The servant boy shook his head vehemently. “Let’s take a look then, shall we?”

Angus pulled Inko along the bank of brambles. Darkness was falling fast, but it didn’t take long before they found a narrow trail almost overgrown with thornbushes.

Inko shrank at the sight of the path.

“Did you think I wouldn’t find the way?” said Angus. “Just for that, you go first.” He pushed the boy forward.

Blaise struggled to keep his temper. “It’s not a good idea to do this when we can’t see where we’re going.”

“What, do it in the daylight when Marin can see us coming? Use your head, Blaise,” Angus said. “Move, Inko! Blaise, you go next.”

Avoiding the thorns as best he could, Inko tiptoed a few paces along the path. Blaise pulled his fingerless gloves out of his pocket and put them on. Angus snorted at this, but Blaise ignored him and followed Inko.

Suddenly, the brambles came alive. Branches twisted and vines sprang up, waving in the air, seeking to trap the two boys climbing the path.

Inko gasped and struggled against the thorny arms that caught him. Blaise could just make out dark coils crisscrossing the servant’s white shirt and red sash, pulling him deeper into the thicket. The path was closing up around Inko and Blaise knew he would be trapped, too, if he didn’t do something.

A thick vine began winding itself around Blaise’s ankle.

As he stamped on the creeping thing at his feet and thrust the encroaching branches away, he heard Inko make a hoarse, screamlike sound. But it was too late to help him. Blaise hacked at the vine with his heel until he felt it break.

Angus was shouting at him, but he couldn’t hear him. Blaise broke into a run, crashing through the undergrowth back to the relative safety of the clearing, desperate to be free of the snakelike vines. He came to the clearing and ran around the arch, looking for the path back to the palace. But it was too dark, and he could not remember how Hugo had led them there.

Angus puffed into the clearing behind him, speaking gently as though Blaise were a skittish colt. “You’re fine, pal. It didn’t get you. You are absolutely fine.”

“You made that kid go in there, and now he’s probably dead!”

“Calm down. It’s over and you’re OK,” Angus soothed.

“Shut up. Just shut up. Who are you, anyway?”

“I’m your friend.” Angus held his hands up as he got closer. “Come on, relax.”

“Stay away from me!”

Angus went to tackle Blaise, who lurched away, but not fast enough to stop Angus from grabbing the strap of his bag.

“Slow down,” Angus grunted.

“Get off!” Blaise gritted his teeth and found his footing.

Then Angus pulled his bag strap, and Blaise fell back again. They pulled each other around the arch in a clumsy tug-of-war.

Somewhere in the background, Blaise could hear voices shouting but he didn’t dare to look. Angus was wearing him down, and he did not have much struggle left in him.

At the precise moment that Angus was about to overpower him, Blaise went limp. He ducked his head and shoulders through the strap of his bag and let it go as Angus gave a tremendous tug. The big man reeled, clutching the bag, and tripped — backward through the arch.

Sunni and Dean, surrounded by Marin and his dryads, hobbled as fast as they could into the clearing. They arrived just in time to see Angus evaporate before their eyes as his body crossed the stone threshold.

Marin’s blue lantern cast a strange, almost underwater glow on the ruined archway and the figure of Blaise, sitting slumped against the stone, gulping huge mouthfuls of air, his chest heaving.

“Get up! Get away from there, Blaise! Don’t go under the arch!” yelled Sunni.

“Sunni? Is that you?” Blaise looked toward the light, dazed but smiling, and tried to get up. But his hand strayed a few inches beyond the line of the arch and his body was suddenly jerked backward by an unseen force.

“No!” Sunni screamed.

Marin leaped forward, one hand outstretched to pull him free, but Blaise’s arm and head had already gone. Within seconds, the invisible force dragged him under until only his other hand was left, clinging to the arch.

Sunni shrieked Blaise’s name, but he could no longer hear anything. All Sunni could do was watch, helplessly, as his hand was sucked away and nothing of Blaise remained.

A
fragrance of crushed leaves floated all around as the dryads circled Marin’s two prisoners. Sunni looked at the spot where Blaise had clung to the arch, eerie in the blue light. She hadn’t even been able to talk to him, to tell him how glad she was he’d come looking for them. Her shoulders drooped. Dean huddled close to her, and she was grateful for his warmth.

“We are too late. Too slow!” Marin wrung his hands. “And you know those trespassers. Do not try to deny it!”

“We know the boy. That was Blaise,” said Sunni. “But we don’t know the man with him.”

“That is a great pity. He is somehow familiar,” Marin muttered but then stopped abruptly, as if he had said too much.

“What’s happened to them?” Sunni asked, pulling Dean closer. “Are they — are they still alive?”

“For now, yes, but later, who can say?”

Sunni bowed her head.

“This upsets you,” Marin said.

“Yes, it upsets me. They might die!”
And it’s my fault for getting Blaise caught up in this
, Sunni thought miserably.

“They would not be the first. Nor the last.”

“Meaning us, right? And you wouldn’t care about us dying, either,” she said.

“The monsters took them, didn’t they?” asked Dean, his lip trembling.

“What do you know of monsters, boy?”

“Hugo said —”

“Ah, yes, your friend Fox-Farratt.” Marin hung the lantern on a branch and drew back the deep violet cloak he had put on in the cavern, to reveal the dagger at his belt. “Listen well. Do you still refuse to tell me the name of the dog you spy for?”

“We. Are. Not. Spies.” Sunni began quivering with outrage.

Marin let his cloak fall back. “Then I will learn it from your two cohorts while they are still alive. And you will come with me.”

“Through the arch?” Dean could hardly say it.

“Yes. You obey me and you stay alive. Disobey me and you die or become lost forever.” He touched the leather satchel slung across his chest. “If I see trickery from either of you, I will finish the first portrait. And you will be next, girl.”

Sunni wanted to shake him by the shoulders and shout in his face that he was making a huge mistake. But a voice inside said,
You’re alone. They’ve all gone — Blaise, Hugo, and the stranger. Your only chance is to find them, if they’re still alive. And you can only do that if you’re with Marin
.

She nodded once at their captor. “All right. Whatever you say.”

Marin pointed at the bonds around their wrists and ankles. “Just as those shackles loosen and stretch, they also tighten if you try to run away.” The vines contracted slightly as he spoke, as if to make his point.

“We get it,” said Sunni.

He swept his arm toward the sky, and the dryads shuffled away, melting into the black woods.

“We go through together, as one, and stay together on the other side.” Marin linked arms with them, marching them toward the arch. Dean’s legs almost crumpled beneath him, but Marin hauled him up and dragged him along.

As they disappeared under the arch, a great breeze swirled, stirring the leaves into rustling whirlwinds.

Blaise had been yanked from darkness into light. He lay flat on his back, staring up into a blue canopy of sky. The air was perfectly still. What new world had the arch led to?

The last thing he remembered was Sunni, right there with Dean. He had to get back. Maybe she was still there, waiting for him.

Head spinning slightly, he sat up. He was on what looked like a long, narrow lawn surrounded by tall hedges. And he was not alone.

“Didn’t want to leave you behind in that state. You’re lucky I managed to pull you through.” Angus sat cross-legged nearby, with Blaise’s bag on the ground next to him. “Have you calmed down? I thought I was going to have to slap some sense into you back there.”

Blaise was so astonished, he could barely speak. “They . . . they were there, in the clearing, Sunni — and Dean, I think. They’d found us. And now . . . now they’ve gone. What did you do?”

Angus grinned. “No hard feelings, eh? I wasn’t trying to hurt you.”

Tell that to Mr. Fox-Farratt and Inko
, Blaise wanted to yell. But he had to be cautious. A few minutes before, Angus had been wrestling him and now he was all smiles, acting like he had just been horsing around. The guy switched moods like a light going on and off.

Blaise tried to look casual as he glanced over his shoulder. “Where’s the arch?”

There was only a hedge behind him with no sign of the stone ruin.

“There’s no arch here. We’ve passed into another underpainting. Corvo must have painted this place first and then painted the arch and woods on top of it. After I pulled you in, that bush behind you just grew across and the path was cut off.”

“It just grew in front of your eyes?” Blaise didn’t think his spirits could sink any lower. How could he get back to Sunni now?

“Another example of the Raven’s skills.”

Blaise stood up abruptly and took a running leap at the hedge, scrambling onto its flat top. For the few moments, he clung there. He could see an endless network of hedges — they were in a vast garden maze in the middle of nowhere. There was nothing else in the distance, no trees, no sign of the palace or the hillside. No sign of Fox-Farratt, either. Blaise dropped down.

“We’re in a giant maze. There’s nothing else but this.”

“Drat,” said Angus. “Those Renaissance people and their fashionable amusements. Guess a labyrinth in the floor wasn’t enough for il Corvo — he had to put a maze somewhere, too.”

This could be the way out of the painting
, Blaise thought.

A large leaf fluttered to the ground by his foot. He picked it up and saw that it was etched with brown lines and squiggles.

“I found one of those too,” said Angus, pulling a similar leaf from his pocket. “It didn’t come from any of these bushes. And it looks like bugs have been at it.”

Blaise studied the markings. No bug had made them — they were too organized and regular. He ran his finger over them and came to an upside-down U shape.
These lines look like the shape of a maze
, he thought, tracing his finger along them.
This could be the arch. And this may be the pathway I’m standing in
.

“What do you reckon it is?” asked Angus.

“Just another example of the Raven’s skills,” said Blaise sarcastically. He snatched up his bag and walked away briskly, turning right into a new path. The leaf told him that the path would soon turn left. It did, but as soon as Blaise rounded the corner, the hedge grew up behind him, cutting off his way back.

“Hey!” Angus shouted from the other side of the thick, leafy barrier. “It cut me off.”

“Follow your own leaf,” called Blaise. With any luck, he was through with Angus for good. He was going forward alone, whatever happened.

He heard the painter swearing as he stomped in another direction. “Don’t think we won’t meet again, my friend!” he yelled.

Blaise was almost lighthearted as he followed his leaf map. Then a distant rumbling began, as if a far-off thunderstorm were coming. He looked up at the cloudless sky, but there was no sign of rain. The noise grew more insistent, like a drumbeat, moving closer. He stepped in close to the hedge.

Suddenly a huge golden stag with a crown of antlers sailed over him, then vanished into the maze beyond. Behind it came eight hunters on horseback, their crossbows trained on the stag. The riders, clad in crimson and black, stopped to scan the maze from their lofty vantage point. Blaise shrank into the hedge, but one keen-eyed hunter spied him. He raised his crossbow, took careful aim, and fired.

Now that they were through the arch, Sunni had to squint hard against the bright daylight. There was no sign of Blaise or the other man in this odd garden of tall hedges.