Sagaria (68 page)

Sagandran woke into a world of gray gloom and freezing cold. He let out a long yawn and watched it turn into a silvery cloud before his eyes. He and Perima were jumbled in a heap like kittens on the hard, icy barn floor, her arms around him, her body pressed against his back, warming it. The rest of him was chillier than the inside of a fridge. The drafts slicing in through the gaps in the barn’s walls penetrated even the supposedly windproof fabric of his anorak with ease. He felt that if he tried to make a fist, his fingers would break off at the joints.

Perima was still asleep. A soft snore whiffled in his ear.

Doing his best not to wake her, he unpeeled her hands from his chest and slid out of her grasp. Now that he thought about it, it would have been more gentlemanly of him to offer her the anorak to sleep in, but last night she’d seemed much more capable of withstanding the cold than he had, so it had never occurred to him.

Standing now, he gazed down at her slumbering form fondly. He’d never in his life felt so close to anyone else before, not even to Grandpa Melwin. He didn’t quite know what was going to happen when the time came for him to return to the Earthworld and her to stay in Sagaria. It was something he did his best not to think about. Much easier to worry instead about whether the pair of them were going to survive the next few days. The future beyond that could take care of itself.

Moving as quietly as he could, he tiptoed out of the barn. The Shadow World didn’t look any more hospitable than it had yesterday. It was still the same oppressive mattress of grubby clouds pressing down from the sky; still the same forlorn, desolate landscape of dreary grays and blacks; still the same sense of a world that had been repeatedly battered by clenched hands until it no longer had enough spirit left to resent them.

He found a place where enough of the barn wall still stood to shield him from Perima’s gaze should she waken, and he relieved his bladder.

Returning inside, he found Perima beginning to stir. There was a little glitter of drool by the corner of her mouth; her eyes still firmly shut, she wiped it away impatiently with the back of her wrist. His smile broadened.

A little while later, she was up and about. After she too had made a quick excursion outside the barn, they began to discuss the question of food. They were both starving. Their backpacks were still in Qarnapheeran. All the supplies for the expedition had been stowed inside Snowmane’s saddle bags.

“I think we’ll have to go back into that ghastly town we came through,” said Perima, looking worried.

“Ghastly or ghostly?” said Sagandran, trying to be cheerful. He couldn’t think of any other option either. He supposed they could push on aimlessly, hoping to find somewhere, but for all they knew it might be a hundred miles until they found another settlement, and the whole time they’d be getting weaker and weaker from hunger. They’d be easy prey for a party of Shadow Knights to pounce on.

“Both,” said Perima wearily. “It seemed totally deserted, and yet … and yet it didn’t.”

“I know.” He shivered, remembering the uncanniness of the empty streets
and the dead-faced houses.

If the place truly was as abandoned as it looked, then chances were there would be nothing they could find to eat. And if it wasn’t abandoned …

Sagandran shivered again. “I think you should stay here.”

He expected a bitter argument from Perima, probably to the effect that just because she was a girl didn’t mean she was any less effective in a fight, and that they should stick together whatever happened and so forth. To his surprise, no such argument came.

Instead, she simply looked up at him from where she was crouched on the floor picking through the litter to see if there might, by any good fortune, be something that could be useful to them, and said, “You’re probably right, only one of us should go. Then, if anything happens, there’s still one of us left to try to hook up with the others and carry on with our mission.”

He nodded.

Her face looked wan in the dingy light that groped in through the broken barn walls. “But I don’t think you should be the one to go,” she added.

“Huh?”

“More important than either of us is the Rainbow Crystal. Remember, numbskull? And the crystal’s been entrusted to you, not me.”

“I could leave it here with you,” he protested, knowing even as he spoke that he was lying and he couldn’t do that. Oh sure, she could guard it from those who craved it as well as he could and probably better, plus it was a boy the Shadow Knights were searching for, not a girl, but …

He didn’t rightly know what followed that “but,” only that it was something inarguable. Grandpa Melwin had given the Rainbow Crystal to him and him only, and Queen Mirabella had confirmed that it was his duty to bear it. Looking into Perima’s eyes, he saw that she knew this too, which was why she insisted she be the one to venture back into the town. Just like Frodo, who had been the Ring bearer in
The Lord of the Rings
, Sagandran couldn’t let the crystal out of his possession. Not because it was accursed and evil as the Ring had been, but because, like Frodo, he had been given a responsibility that couldn’t be shared.

Sagandran shrugged. He wondered if he’d ever be able to tell Perima about that marvelous adventure concerning the hobbits and the Ring. Perhaps he might be able to teach her to read it or take her to the movies to watch it. Probably not. His eyes stung. He turned away quickly so that she wouldn’t see his distress.

“No. Forget what I said. You’re right. If one of us has to go it should be you. It just makes me feel so … so …”

“Guilty, Sagandran? Don’t be.” Silently she’d risen from the floor and was standing behind him.

“Hey, cheer up.” She reached round to chuck him under the chin. “I’ll be as safe as you, or safer. Who could possibly want to harm a humble little peasant girl who’s lost her way?”

He tried to make a joke of it. “Just about anybody, if they knew what you were really like.”

She didn’t laugh.

“Wish me luck, Sagandran.”

He turned. Her face was that of a haughty Princess of the Blood Royal. It was also the face of his dear and mischievous friend. Perima could be either or, if she wanted to be, like now, both at the same time.

Feeling oddly shy, Sagandran touched her cheek.

Perima leaned forward and kissed him on the nose. “We’d better not go in for a repeat performance of the Tunnel of Love,” she said lightly. “Not when your face is as dirty as it is. Besides, I’m too hungry.”

She skipped away from him.

“Now, I’d better seem as forlorn and witless as I possibly can. How does this look?” She pulled a grotesque face.

He chuckled despite himself. “Not as witless as usual, but pretty bad.”

She gave an exaggerated flounce. “Boys. They’re all the same.”

He giggled again. Then they became serious once more.

“You will take care, won’t you, Perima?”

“Of course. I’m not an idiot.”

“You … matter a lot to me.”

“I know.” Other times she might have said this gaily, teasingly. Not now. Her face was completely somber.

“Then you’d better go before I break down and try to stop you.”

“I’m gone. Watch.”

She gave him a sad little wave and slipped out through one of the gashes in the wall.

The air felt damp against her skin as Perima crept along the road back into town. Although there seemed to be no one around, she still found herself instinctively skulking close to the wall. The silence was uncanny. There were no birds here, no insects. She hadn’t realized how much their sounds were a constant part of life at home.

She’d managed, she thought, to successfully conceal from Sagandran the terror she felt at the prospect of venturing alone back into the grim settlement. Last night (whatever the word “night” meant here, when the day was almost as dark), she’d thought her heart would freeze solid from fear as they passed between the blind, forbidding faces of the houses. There was the constant sense that they were being coldly observed by creatures – people? – who were both there and not there. Even the memory of it made the air want to coagulate in her lungs. Yet there had been no real choice but for her to return alone this morning. To let Sagandran re-enter the town would be to risk his capture, or worse; and to risk Sagandran was to risk the Rainbow Crystal and, by extension, the three worlds.

She sniffed. It was difficult to care very much about the Earthworld and the Shadow World. They meant little to her emotionally because she’d never been to the Earthworld, and the Shadow World seemed a dead loss already. She supposed she ought to feel guilty about the remoteness she felt about both of those realms, but she cared very much indeed about Sagaria.

And about Sagandran.

There was a sign by the edge of the road. They must have walked past it last night without seeing it or hearing it, because she became aware of its creaking as it swung askew on rusty hinges long before she could see it. When she came closer she could read the words:

Perima wondered what they meant. “Here There Be Demons,” perhaps. Or “Beware of the Monsters.”

She tossed her hair, annoyed. For all she knew, the sign said, “Welcome.” Why did she have to throw the gloomiest interpretation on it? Pausing, she let out a big sigh. Her question was simple enough to answer. Here in the bleakness of the Shadow World it was difficult not to put the gloomiest interpretation on everything.

She started walking again.

When she saw a trace of movement on the road ahead it took a few moments for her to react. It seemed so incongruous amid the Shadow World’s omnipresent lack of life that her eyes initially discounted it.

Farmers
? she thought hopefully, remembering the scraggly folk who’d promised friendship to Sagandran and herself when they’d been trailing along helplessly behind Deicher. If they are farmers and if, by any chance, they have some food to spare, no matter how humble, then perhaps she wouldn’t have to
make the frightening trip into the town after all.
What if they’re aren’t farmers
? She dropped into a low crouch, sheltering in the lee of the wall.

The people slowly came closer. It was hard to make out much in the murky light of the Shadow World morning, but she could distinguish two tall figures and a much shorter one. And a horse. They didn’t seem to be in any hurry. Either they were dawdling or they were deliberately checking their surrounds at every step, searching for somebody, perhaps.

Searching for Sagandran! Searching for her!

Two Shadow Knights. One of them must have lost his mount somewhere. Yes, that had to be it. And the third, smaller figure? Well, perhaps some of the Shadow Knights were shorter than she’d so far seen, or perhaps the two had already taken a captive?

Sagandran?

Had they already found him?

Was it only Perima they now sought?

No. Surely it couldn’t be. The Shadow Knights were coming from the wrong direction. Sagandran was, must be, still safely ensconced in the barn behind her.

Unless …

Unless, after she’d left him, the stupid boy had suddenly decided it was wrong to let her go on her own after all. He could have decided not to let her know he was following her, avoiding the road and instead cut across the open ground, secretly keeping an eye on her from there. She’d been making cagey, unhurried progress; he might have easily got ahead of her, then run smack into the arms of a Shadow Knight patrol. A fitting reward for his idiotic, clumsy, moronically chivalrous attempt to protect her – as if he were somehow better, through mere malehood, at looking after himself than she was.

Men!

If Sagandran’s neck had been in front of her, Perima might have gladly wrung it, but that was a treat she could store up to savor later, once she’d rescued him from his captors.

If she rescued him from his captors.

Perima didn’t make the mistake of underestimating her own abilities, but she also tried to never overestimate them, either. One Shadow Knight was pretty doughty opposition. Two Shadow Knights, even worse. This was going to take every ounce of her cunning and resources.