Sagaria (75 page)

In the fringe of his vision, he saw Sir Tombin arrive at the side of the hulking wooden machine, pause as if he’d gone there merely to lean against it for a moment’s relaxation, then abruptly pounce behind it.

A few seconds later, the Frogly Knight emerged clutching a struggling figure by the back of the neck. A boy – a boy only a little bigger than Sagandran.

As Sir Tombin dragged his captive nearer, Sagandran realised there was something familiar about him, even though all the boy was wearing was one of the horribly greasy loincloths. This was someone he’d seen before, someone he knew pretty well.

Someone he didn’t
want
to know pretty well.

“Webster!” he gasped. “Webster O’Malley!”

CHAPTER 7

T
AMASH

 agandran had always dreamed of seeing Webster O’Malley sobbing piteously rather than wearing his customary bullying sneer, but he never thought it might be in circumstances like these. Indeed, he’d never thought it would be something he’d see at all. It had been just a cheering fantasy, made all the more attractive because of the delightful maliciousness behind it. Now, though, Sagandran felt guilty for all those times he’d mentally reveled in Webster’s downfall. The fact that Webster wasn’t too bright made his misery all the more pathetic.

The story emerged in fits and starts between bursts of weeping and choking.

Webster’s parents had gotten drunk the night after they’d driven out to their summer mansion by the shores of Eagle Lake. They had fallen asleep amid a litter of pizza boxes on the couch in front of their enormous flat-screen, high-definition television. Left to his own devices and with the memory freshly rankling in his mind of how Sagandran’s grandfather had so brusquely seen him off, Webster had decided to go and do a little snooping down by Grandpa Melwin’s shack. Perhaps there was a spiteful little trick he could play on the two Sackses. Or maybe he’d spy something embarrassing through a window that he could bring up when they were back at school. He’d scurried down the road to the cottage, curious as to what Sagandran was up to.

However, when he’d reached his destination the first thing he’d seen was Sagandran charging out of the house, struggling to put his arms into the straps of a backpack. This could be even better. Where was Sagandran going?

Webster had fallen in behind and followed Sagandran into the forest. He’d found it terrifying there, surrounded by the shrieks of the night animals and the grating of unseen branches, but if he turned back he’d be on his own, which would be even worse. So he’d stuck close behind the oblivious Sagandran. At last, he’d seen the object of his pursuit climb into a hole in the ground. Webster had dithered by the opening for a little while, as fearful of following Sagandran
as he was of staying where he was. In the end, the cry of a fox as it seized some smaller animal had settled the issue. Webster had scrabbled down into the old shaft just in time to see Sagandran vanish through a glowing barrier. Without thinking, Webster had plunged after him.

After a nightmare ride through interweaving tubes that seemed to be made of silver streaked with blood, he found himself in a world of cold and darkness.

The Shadow World.

Why were we taken to two different realms?
Sagandran wondered. The answer came to him almost immediately. Because of our motives. I was seeking to save Grandpa Melwin. Webster had venom and spite in his heart.

“I was still trying to make sense of what had happened to me,” Webster was saying (he’d recovered a little by now but was still, Sagandran could see, only a hairsbreadth away from another paroxysm of sobbing), “when two huge men in armor, like this one who grabbed me, came along. They accused me of having some jewel or other they wanted, and next thing I knew, I woke up slung over one of their saddles. I pretended I was still unconscious and listened to them talking. I soon learned they were planning to take me to the dungeons of a place called the Palace of Shadows, where I was going to be tortured until I told their master everything he wanted to know.”

They’d reached the Palace of Shadows, but as they’d entered it, the horse on which Webster was being carried had stumbled and he’d let out a yelp of fear. His success at feigning unconsciousness was at an end. The two Shadow Knights had dragged him down through a labyrinth of dimly lit corridors and stairways, and slung him into a squalid cell that stank of its previous occupants. There had been rats too, but they’d been the least of his worries. All he could think about was the torture that lay in store for him. Because they thought he was some other boy – a boy who had the precious stone their master coveted – they wouldn’t stop until he’d given them the information this other boy would have given them. Information that the, Webster, didn’t have. That meant that they wouldn’t stop until he was dead.

“But,” Webster continued, rallying himself, “they forgot to take account of the guile and pluck of the O’Malleys!”

Oh yeah?
thought Sagandran.
I’ve never seen much evidence of those.

“After I’d been there a few hours, a serving yokel came by with a dish of some vile gruel for me. I lay in a far corner of the cell and pretended to be dead. I must have been convincing, because he unlocked the door and came in. When he bent to put the dish down on the floor so that he could drag me off to wherever they drag the prisoners who’ve died, I leapt up and hit him with all the strength I had. As he reeled, I hammered his head against the wall until
I’d knocked him out. After that, all I needed to do was exchange his clothes for mine, and I was able to walk right out of there.”

It seems,
thought Sagandran,
to have been all a bit easy. Mind you, the Shadow Knights don’t seem over-endowed with brains, and their jailers are probably even dumber.

“I came out of the frying pan,” said Webster morosely, “only to be thrown into the fire. I was okay while I was still in the dungeon complex, and it was easy enough to tag along behind a bunch of guards who were headed for the surface. Even in the Palace of Shadows I was all right. I was just another serving boy going about his errands, so no one really saw I was there. It was when I tried to get back out of the palace gate that I was caught. Why would a serving lad need to leave the palace? If I’d thought about it beforehand, I might have dreamed up a convincing story, but I was too strung out to think straight. The gatesmen thought I was a slave trying to escape, which was more or less the truth, and grabbed me. The lucky thing … well, sort of lucky, was that they had no idea who I was. They didn’t realize I was the boy the Shadow Knights believed had the gem. So, instead of sending me back to the dungeons and the torture chamber, they herded me along to where a bunch of people who’d displeased the Shadow Master and were being consigned to the slave mines were.

“And that’s it, really. I’ve been here ever since.” Webster puffed his chest. “I’ve learned how to survive here. After the first day, which was real hell,” he said, shuddering at the memory. “I discovered how to keep out of the overseers’ way. If you play your cards right, you hardly get beaten or whipped at all. It’s just that there’s nothing you can do to escape. At the slightest sign you have any impulses in that direction at all, they whip you to within an inch of your life. Then, if you persist in trying to get away, well …”

He nodded toward the gruesome spectacle being enacted on the distant scaffold. There was no need for further words.

Webster resumed after a moment. “I can show you the ropes, if you’d like. The food’s lousy and—”

Then a thought struck him that should have struck him before. He twisted around in Sir Tombin’s grasp and looked up at the blank visor. “How come this scumbag’s just listening to me?” he whined querulously. He tried to raise his arms to defend himself from an inevitable blow.

“He’s one of us,” said Sagandran.

“A Shadow Knight’s a slave?”

“No, we’re not slaves. We’re just pretending to be, and he’s just pretending to be a Shadow Knight. He’s a friend of ours.”

“Sir Tombin Quackford at your service,” said the Frogly Knight, releasing Webster at last.

“Great!” enthused Webster, rubbing his hands together. “The first things you need to know are—”

“Are the best ways of getting back to those dungeons,” interrupted Sagandran determinedly. “I came here in pursuit of my Grandpa Melwin, and it’s in the dungeons that he’ll most likely be.” He gave a terse explanation about Grandpa Melwin’s being kidnaped by the minions of Arkanamon. Some instinct told him to keep quiet about the Rainbow Crystal and its importance to the fate of the three worlds. Webster had given them a good tale and it appeared to have convinced the others all right, but Sagandran had never known the school bully to tell the truth when a lie would do.

Webster’s face whitened. “I … I don’t know if I can face that place again.”

That seemed genuine enough,
thought Sagandran.

“May I remind you of something, young Master O’Malley?” said Sir Tombin with deceptive gentleness.

“Yes?”

The great helmeted head looked studiedly from one side of the compound to the other. “There is no one in this place, boy,” he continued, “who would think twice about the sight of a Shadow Knight running a slave through with his sword. No one who would intervene. It’s the kind of thing they’d expect a Shadow Knight to be doing. Now, you can either assist us by leading us to the Palace of Shadows and the dungeons therein, as my good friend Sagandran has so courteously requested, or I must consider you a danger to us, a loose cannon, an untidy end that I must not leave unravelled. Do you take my meaning?”

Webster gulped audibly. In the distance, an overseer chose that moment to whip a slave to the ground who’d offended him, and then kept on beating the man’s cringing body. The slavemaster’s whip didn’t stop rising and falling until the form on the ground was still. Terribly still.

The sight seemed to tip the balance in Webster’s mind. “I’ll take you there,” he said decisively. “All right, I’ll do that.”

“And soon,” urged Sagandran. “People are beginning to notice we’ve been standing here in the one place an awfully long time.”

“Okay,” said Webster, holding up a hand. “Okay. Okay. I said I’d do it. Just let me collect my thoughts a minute, right?”

“A short minute, boy,” said Perima.

Webster blinked, as if seeing her for the first time. “Wow,” he said in a low voice. “You’re the pretty one, aren’t you?”

Sagandran’s fists clenched.

“Right,” said Webster, not noticing. He winked at Perima and looked smug. “What we’ve got to do is dodge having to go into the palace by the front gate. That way we’d have to get past the sentinels there, and our chances of doing that are zilch. Instead, we’re going to go to the palace by following the route I was brought here by – brought to the slave mines
from
the palace. It’s a short cut, see?”

They nodded and mumbled agreement. The idea seemed to make sense.

“Just so long as it’s not another tunnel,” Perima muttered.

“Er, how do you mean ‘another’ tunnel?” said Webster. “You been through one already?”

It wasn’t the time to explain to him how they’d got here. The companions unanimously felt, without consulting each other, that to tell a stranger about it would, in some obscure way, be a betrayal of King Brygantra and his men.

“You mean,” said Perima with a dismay that was only a little exaggerated, “it is a tunnel?”

“Uh, yeah. We start off by going into the mineshaft. That’s the way I came out when they were herding us down here.” The boy seemed unable to take his eyes off her face. Sagandran sometimes had the same difficulty, but that didn’t stop him hating Webster for it.

“Look,” Webster was continuing, “it’s gonna look kind of funny if I’m the person leading you, what with us having a Shadow Knight along and all. Do you think Sir Tombin could march us around to the mouth of the shaft and down into it? Keep us to the right side, between the railway track and the wall.”

“Even better,” said Sir Tombin, “I shall herd you in front of me.” He raised his voice once again to that military bray he’d used before. “Enough lazing, you scurvy slaves! To the pit you shall go. Get moving, slimebags! Get moving!”

Forming an untidy bunch, they shuffled ahead of him back along the side of the mounded black earth that surrounded the mineshaft’s vent. Soon they were looking into its gaping maw. If he’d been on his own, Sagandran might have chosen to pause there awhile. Not because the prospect of venturing into something that looked as if it wanted to swallow him whole was in any way intimidating, you understand, but just to admire the view. Sir Tombin, however, would brook no delay, driving his charges inward and downward, keeping close to the right wall as Webster had dictated. Moving toward them, a party of slaves were grunting with exertion as they strained to push a wagon of ore up the incline. Their overseer glanced across incuriously at the little band of strangers before resuming his physical chastisement of the laborers under his command.