The Puzzle Ring (36 page)

She shook her head. ‘I can't go! You and the boys are only here because of me. I can't ride away and leave you here. Scarlett! Take my guitar for me.' Hurriedly Hannah passed her guitar up to Scarlett, who slung it over her shoulder, her face pale.

Angus hesitated, then nodded his head sharply. He released the halter, bringing his hand down on the water-horse's rump. The horse reared, whinnying, then took off into the darkness, his tail whipping behind him. In a second he and his riders were out of sight.

Hannah felt weak-kneed. She gripped her rowan stick and told herself she had done the right thing.

‘Let's find running water to cross. That'll help shake them off our trail. And remember they hate iron.'

‘What about brass?' Donovan joked weakly as he slung his flugelhorn over his shoulder.

The only answer Angus made was to pull a slender black knife out of his boot, holding it close to his body.

It was so dark now they could barely see each other's faces. A bitter-cold wind shrieked down the mountainside, bringing with it swirls of snow. Mist billowed up from the ground.

‘She comes,' Angus said. ‘Let's run.'

The four companions ran through the stinging storm, trying not to stumble or turn their ankle on the rough ground. Twigs whipped their faces, and an eerie howling rose high on either side. A huge black dog leapt at Hannah
out of the darkness. She smashed her stick over its head and it yowled with pain and fell back. Hannah ran on.

She heard the tumult of water over stones. Angus plunged into the stream and waded downstream, holding his bow high so the string would not get wet. Hannah hitched up her voluminous skirts and followed. Within seconds her boots were filled with water and her feet were numb. She lost her footing and fell, and at once her skirts were like lead weights, dragging her down. Donovan helped haul her up, and Hannah ran on again.

A howl rose close behind them and was answered by another to their left. They heard galloping hooves, and mad gibbering, and the clank of weapons. Angus turned back anxiously, his finger at his lips, then hurried on. Hannah tried her best to be quiet, but her breath came harshly and the water splashed noisily about her knees.

Suddenly eerie green lightning flashed across the sky, illuminating the darkness. Hannah ducked her head, but it was no use. There was a roar of triumph behind them, and the sound of a hundred hooves and a hundred flapping wings.

‘Run!' Angus roared. He burst out of the water and bolted across the grass, the children close on his heels. Into the forest they fled, hoping to lose their pursuers among the trees. The flying creatures wheeled away, their riders screaming their frustration, but others came racing through the trees. Hannah caught glimpses of them every time she glanced over her shoulder. In the darkness all she could see were squat shapes that ran with long swinging arms like apes, or scuttled like spiders, or hopped and bounded at great speed. One seized her by the shoulder and flung her to the ground, but she cracked her stick against its snout, and it squealed
and cowered away, paws over its eyes. Donovan seized her hand and dragged her up, and clinging to each other, they ran on.

Suddenly one of the giant winged creatures plummeted out of the sky, landing right in front of Hannah. She screamed and scrambled backwards, her heart thumping. Green lightning played all around the rider, so Hannah could see her clearly.

It was Irata, the black witch. She was tall and pale and strong boned, with thin black brows that flared out above slanted eyes, and a sulky mouth that was red and swollen as if she had been biting her lips. Her hair was black and writhed about her. In one hand she held a long wand of twisted wood. Irata leapt down and, in two quick strides, was towering over Hannah.

‘What do I find here? Someone aiding and abetting Morgana's escape? Have you never been warned not to meddle with those of fairykind, human?' Suddenly her eyes sharpened and she leant forward and seized the hag-stone, which hung on its cord around Hannah's neck. ‘What is this? The royal hag-stone!'

She ripped the hag-stone from Hannah's neck and brought her wand down in a whistling blow that sent Hannah sprawling. Irata raised her arm again, only to find her blow blocked by Angus's long black knife. For a moment they fought, perfectly balanced, then a whip came snaking along the ground, wrapped about Angus's ankles and brought him crashing down to the ground. The whip had been wielded by a small, squat, loathsomely ugly hobgoblin, with only a few wispy silver hairs on his leathery chin. He wore rough furs and skins, pinned together with wood, and a tall
red-brown cap, which made Hannah shudder. She had heard of Red Caps, who dyed their hats with blood.

Angus rolled and tried to leap up, but Irata nonchalantly waved her wand. Where an old man with burly shoulders and a silver beard had been was now suddenly, horribly, a warty brown toad.

Ribbett
,
ribbett
, the toad croaked.

Donovan had been close behind Angus. He cried out in dismay, then seized a rock from the ground and bowled it overarm, with stunning accuracy, right at Irata. It struck her on the temple, and she fell back. At once the green lightning was extinguished and the scene was plunged once more into darkness.

Donovan ran forward and scooped up the toad from the ground. Hannah raced after him. ‘Here!' she gasped, holding open the capacious pocket of her apron. Donovan dropped the toad in and together they bolted for the trees, Max trailing behind them, panting and holding his chest as he fought for breath.

Green lightning blazed up again, lighting the forest for miles around. A tornado sprang out of the ground and seized hold of them all. Hannah was flung under a bush, Donovan was sent sprawling on the ground, but Max was spun higher and higher into the air. Gasping, her hair all over her face, blood running down from a scratch on her cheek, Hannah saw Irata, her wand drawing circles in the air, her face a white mask of fury.

‘How dare you think to stand against ME!' Irata screamed. ‘Poor, pathetic, BREAKABLE human!'

She stopped the gyrations of her wand and the tornado suddenly blew itself out. Max fell out of the sky. Down he
fell, arms and legs flailing helplessly, then he thudded into the rock and lay still.

‘No!' Donovan screamed. He cast one swift, compelling glance at Hannah, jerking his head to one side as if to tell her to go, then scrambled up and ran out into the clearing. Hannah, too shocked to even move, watched in bemusement as Donovan raised his flugelhorn to his lips. He blew a high, shrill note of defiance, then stepped forward to face Irata.

‘Leave them alone! I'm the one you want,' he said clearly. ‘I'm Eglantyne's son.'

‘You?' Irata screamed. ‘That's not possible! Eglantyne died! I caused the vehicle she was in to spin and crash, and I saw it explode with my own eyes.'

‘She didn't die right away,' Donovan said steadily, though his eyes widened with sudden shock. ‘She had time to give birth to me first.'

‘But the vehicle went right over the cliff. I saw it burst into flames.'

‘My father . . .' Donovan's voice faltered, but then he went on. ‘My father managed to drag her free first. He was badly burnt saving her.'

Hannah was transfixed. Donovan grimaced at her, jerking his head to one side. She knew he meant for her to try to escape while he kept Irata occupied, but she could not tear herself away. It was clear to her that Donovan had only said he was Eglantyne's son to distract Irata while she and Max escaped, but it seemed he had spoken more truly than he knew.

‘Allan was hurt? Eglantyne died? Oh no!'' A voice spoke sharply from the crowd. Hannah turned her head and saw a tall man with copper-coloured curls and a wild beard
hurrying forward, his pale face set in a grimace of distress. He looked exactly like Hannah's photo of her father.

He was dressed like a court jester, in a tunic quartered in orange and purple, with orange hose tied with cross-garters of purple. On his feet were ridiculous purple shoes with long, backward-curling toes with a bell at the tip. More bells hung on his dangling asses' ears. He carried a hobby-horse with the face of a devil, a mandolin slung across his back. He put out one hand to Donovan and said hoarsely, ‘Can you really be her son? But you're so old, so tall! What are you doing here?'

‘Who gave you permission to speak?' Irata screamed. ‘Dance for me, fool!'

The Red Cap cracked his whip at the jester's legs. The jester at once began to play his mandolin and dance, skipping nimbly over the whip. His copper-coloured hair blazed in the green light.

It has to be my father!
Hannah thought with a surge of excitement and incredulous joy.
I have to rescue him! But how?

A low groan caught her attention. Max was moving feebly. One of his legs was bent awkwardly. Hannah bit her lip. She had to get him away somehow. She put her hands in her pockets to touch her key and hag-stone, an action she did unthinkingly now whenever she was troubled, and found two things. One, a large, damp, rather slimy toad. Two, a small ceramic honey pot with a fat cork.

Of course! Linnet's invisibility spell!

Hands shaking in excitement, Hannah drew out the cork and dipped her little finger into the paste. She smeared it on her forehead, trying hard to remember the rhyme Linnet
had told her. ‘Things seen and things not seen, let me walk between,' she muttered under her breath, hoping it was right. She then slowly crept towards Max.

No one paid her any attention. The crowd laughed at the jester riding his hobby-horse round and round, pretending to whip it with his hood. It was the strangest sight Hannah had ever seen. The crowd was filled with all manner of extraordinary beasts and creatures—black, horned dogs with eyes that glowed red, grinning dwarves with enormous heads and feet, tiny fluttering fairies with wings like butterflies and stings like wasps, old women dressed in grey rags with eyes all swollen with weeping, hags with blue faces and black claws, and squat hobgoblins each with a single, enormous eye that glowed like an open furnace. One of the most awful sights was a creature like a centaur, except that it had no skin. Hannah could clearly see the knotted muscles and blue, pumping veins running all over its body. The man-figure carried a spear in its long, skinless arms which it beat in time to the jester's song.

There was one tall, elegant man in black satin with a white cravat and pointy shoes whom Hannah thought she recognised. He was dancing arm-in-arm with a sneering young woman who wore a cloak made of living larks all chained tightly about the throat, their wings beating frantically. Dancing beside them, laughing and calling mocking comments to each other, were a dozen other couples, dressed in extraordinary garments made of jewels and furs and leaves and scales. One had an adder wound about his throat like a poisonous necklace; another wore a giant stag beetle as an ornament in the writhing snakes of her hair.

Hannah reached Max and quickly smeared some of the fern-seed paste on his brow and repeated the spell, then helped him sit up. He winced and repressed a grunt of agony. His leg looked very bad. Hannah did not know what to do.

‘Splint it,' Max whispered. ‘To support it while I walk. Find two sticks, as straight as you can.'

Hannah nodded and searched the clearing till she found two straight branches. No one saw her, though she pulled one stick right out from under the heel of a squat, green bogey-beast. Slowly, trying to be quiet, she tore her petticoat into long strips and used the strips to bind the broken leg to the sticks. Max could not help a sharp cry of pain. At once some of the goblins glanced around, and a few rose from their haunches, looking around the clearing suspiciously. Hannah shrank back into the shadows under the trees, trying to calm the hurried tempo of her breath. Max was biting his lip to stop himself screaming out in pain. The jester shouted out a loud ‘Hurrah!' and began to dance a sailor's hornpipe. The goblins turned back to watch, sniggering and nudging each other. Hannah bent over Max again, her hand trembling uncontrollably as she did her best to straighten the broken leg and strap it tight to the sticks. Max was a sickly yellowish-white when at last he stood, leaning heavily on Hannah's rowan stick. They began to move away, step by slow step.

‘Enough!' Irata cried. ‘You need to learn some new tricks, fool. You begin to bore me. Perhaps we should set the Wild Hunt onto you. We have not enjoyed a good chase for a while.'

At once the jester stood still, his mandolin clasped to his chest, his hobby-horse drooping from one hand. His face was still and expressionless.

‘So, boy.' Irata glared down at Donovan. ‘You claim to be Eglantyne's son. I cannot believe her son would be such a fool. Surely you realise that means I must kill you now?'

Hannah froze in her tracks, turning to look back at Donovan in horror. He stood very still, his fingers white where they gripped his flugelhorn.