SandRider (27 page)

To take her mind off people—or the lack of them—Tod turned her attention to the glimpse of desert on the far right of her view. It, too, was empty. There was nothing to see but sand dunes rolling into the distance like a long, slow swell on the ocean. The very thought of the sea made Tod feel horribly
homesick for the village where she had grown up. There had been sand there too, but it had been mixed with grasses, bounded by the ocean and home to a village of tall houses on stilts. The sand Tod now saw was vast and featureless. She watched the sun dipping toward the distant dunes and saw the sky turn as red as the mud from which the entire city seemed to be built.

Marissa kept Tod waiting. It was not until the room was nearly dark that she returned with a tray on which were a small candle, a large jug of sherbet and a plate of dates stuffed with marzipan. “His Highness is dining with the Queen tonight,” Marissa said. “He'll fetch you in the morning. You'll find some bedding in the garderobe and a bucket.” She sniggered. “Not quite the delights of the Wizard Tower but you'll be back there soon enough. Ha-ha. See ya!” With that Marissa was gone, slamming the door. Once again Tod heard the bolt being shot and the tippy-tappy footsteps departing.

Tod drank most of the sherbet—a sweet, slightly fizzy drink that tasted of a fruit she did not recognize—but she felt too miserable to eat. And then she resumed her place at the window and watched the nighttime lights of the city appear.

In the time-honored manner of jinn, Jim Knee was not as absent as he appeared to be. Lurking in the shadows at the foot of the tower—waiting for the onset of night, when the sharp eyesight of arachnid-eating birds was no longer a danger—was a fat yellow spider. It sat huddled in the dust-filled angle where the foundations of the tower rose up from the alleyway and tried to avoid looking at any of its eight hairy legs, which were folded beneath it in a most uncomfortable manner. Jim Knee had a revulsion for exoskeletons and a difficulty with more than four legs. The spider combined both to an unsatisfactory degree but he could see no other solution to his present problem, which was to obey his Master and keep his Apprentice safe—an Apprentice who seemed to have a remarkable talent for getting into dangerous situations. Jim Knee tried to shake his head but discovered he didn't really have one.

As the shadows of twilight began to deepen, the spider unfolded its legs, stood up, toppled over, untangled the third
leg from the fourth, and after three attempts managed to balance on all eight legs. Then it set off unsteadily to find some food. It had a long night ahead.

It was many hours later when the spider returned to the foot of the tower, replete with the liquefied insides of two moths and a baby beetle. All of its eight eyes looked up anxiously at the vertical red wall that rose before it, and like a climber checking his rope, the spider checked its spinnerets and spun a short length of silk. It tickled, but to the spider's frustration it was unable to giggle. It placed two wavering front legs onto the rough red mud of the wall and began to climb, remembering to keep four legs on the wall at all times.
Four legs down . . . four legs up . . . four legs down
. . .
four legs up . . .
was the rhythm to which the spider climbed.

Tod did not like spiders. So when a particularly large one sporting a nasty, poisonous-looking yellow body and long hairy legs appeared on the window ledge and began waving its two front legs at her, Tod fought very hard to suppress a shriek. She backed away from the window, where she had been gazing up at the stars, and watched it for some moments, wondering what to do. The thought that the spider might drop
into the room and then she would be spending the night with it at large gave her courage. Steeling herself, she ran at it and flicked it off the window ledge.

Jim Knee suddenly found himself flying. Instinctively, he stretched his hairy legs out like a parachute to slow his fall and the spinnerets in his abdomen began churning. He became aware that above him a silken thread was trailing in the breeze, and as the ground drew frighteningly close he felt the thread snag against the rough wall of the tower and his fall was abruptly halted. Jim Knee dangled ignominiously for some seconds as his spider brain struggled to take in what had happened. He swung back and forth like a demented pendulum until a deft twist took one of the swings close to the wall. Jim Knee's spiky pincers at the end of his two front legs (how he hated pincers) caught against the stone, and in a moment he was scuttling back up the wall, trailing the silken thread behind him.

Tod was horrified to see two yellow spider legs waving at her as they felt their way over the windowsill. Once again she steeled herself to flick the spider away but this time the spider was prepared. It wrapped its legs around the window bar and Tod recoiled. She watched the spider, wondering what to do.
Slowly, the spider unwrapped its legs from the bar and once more waved them around. Tod was dismayed. It was obviously one of those aggressive ones that jumped on people and bit them. Tod made a decision: she was going to have to kill it. She picked up the brass tray that Marissa had left behind and slowly advanced.

The spider saw what was coming and thought fast. There was a flash of bright yellow light and Tod dropped the tray with a clang. She stared at the window where the flash had come from: the spider had disappeared but in its place were two sets of elegant fingers clinging to the window bar. Suddenly Tod understood. “Jim Knee!” she gasped. She rushed to the window to see the jinnee dangling precariously two hundred feet above the ground.

“Kindly desist from attacking me with that tray, Apprentice,” Jim Knee said. “I have come to rescue you, if you will allow me to do so.”

“I am so sorry!” said Tod. “Can I help . . . er, maybe I could pull you inside?”

“No, thank you,” Jim Knee said. “Before my plan was so rudely interrupted I intended to leave you a thread.” He sighed. “Now I shall have to
Transform
once again into a
nasty little hairy thing with too many legs and a bad attitude. I do not like the way a spider thinks, I can tell you. Right then, I will be off.”

Tod felt desolate. “Please don't go, Jim Knee. I am truly sorry.”

“I'm not leaving you forever, child,” Jim Knee said wearily. “Before my fingers give up, you need to understand what to do. I will leave a thread behind, which will go all the way to the ground. When I am back on the ground I will
Transform in
to myself and attach the thread to a cord. You will then pull the thread up and the cord will come with it. You will loop the cord around the bar and drop it back to me. This is important because once you are on the ground we can pull it all down and no one will be any the wiser. Got that?”

Tod laughed with relief. “Yes! It's brilliant. Oh, thank you. And I am
so
sorry about the tray.”

“I hope you are. And now I am going to
Transform
, so please try to restrain yourself.”

Sheepishly, Tod stepped back. There was another flash of yellow light and once more the spider sat upon the windowsill. The next moment it was gone. Tod rushed to the window and saw it flying down through the air, a thin thread
trailing behind it, glinting in the light of the torches burning in the alleyway below. She took the fine, slightly sticky thread between her finger and thumb and wrapped it around the bar, just to be sure.

While Jim Knee attached the cord below, Tod went to the cupboard and took out the rugs and the bucket. Then she slipped off her cloak, placed its hood over the bucket and rolled up one of the rugs to form the shape of her body. She arranged her “bed” carefully in the shadows opposite the door and stood back to inspect her work. Tod was satisfied. Anyone taking a quick look—particularly a lazy pig like Marissa—would think she was sleeping quietly. Tod drank the rest of the sherbet, put the dates into her pocket and returned to the window.

Everything worked as Jim Knee had planned. Tod watched the jinnee tie the end of a long length of worryingly thin cord to the spider thread and at a signal from him, she pulled the thread very carefully upward, holding it away from the rough stone of the walls, praying that it would not break. But the jinn spider had spun a particularly strong silk. Soon Tod had the cord looped around the bar and was running it back down to Jim Knee. Now came the scary bit. She had to wriggle out
through the gap between the bar and the edge of the window and
not fall
.

As Tod climbed out the window, a high, thin bell tolled in the distance. Determined not to look down, she grasped both lengths of the cord, leaned outward—just as she always used to when climbing down the side of her house in the PathFinder village—and began her descent.

Halfway down Tod very nearly fell off in surprise. A cacophony of chimes all across the city began to strike up. It was the midnight chiming of the thousand Red City clocks—the very moment that Jim Knee had timed his rescue for. The huge variety of chimes filled the air; moderate, mellow tones keeping pace with each other, deep, slow, resonant chimes overtaken by rapid, excitedly tinny chimes. Long and deep, high and fast, doubles and trebles, every clock in the Red City waited twenty-four hours for its moment of glory and made the most of it when it came. They each chimed twenty-four times and were still going when Tod reached the ground.

To the echoes of the last long, low booms, Tod helped Jim Knee pull down the cord. As they slipped away into the
shadows, the jinnee allowed himself a smile. “Perfect. No one will have heard a thing with all that racket going on.”

In the room at the top of the tower, the door opened and Marissa peered in. “G'night,
Alice
,” she said. “Sleep well. You've got an
egg
-citing day tomorrow. Ha-ha!” Marissa stared at the unresponsive form for a few seconds. “All right, sulky brat. Be like that, then.” She turned on her heel and slammed the door behind her.

In the stillness of the room, the bucket fell out of its hood and rolled across the floor.

Ferdie, Oskar and Kaznim were sitting in the chill of the courtyard, wrapped in the discarded wolverine skins. “What's the time?” whispered Ferdie.

“You keep asking that,” Oskar said, a little snappily.

A few seconds later a high, clear chime rang through the night air. “That's the midnight Harbinger bell,” Kaznim said.

They listened as the sound of the bell died away. “But it's
not chiming midnight,” Oskar said.

“Just wait,” said Kaznim. A few seconds later the midnight peals began. The courtyard turned into a bowl of sound and the three sat suspended within it, entranced. As the last deep chimes faded Oskar whispered, “That was so beautiful.”

They sat in the silence and waited. Nothing happened. “I thought Jim Knee said Tod would be here at midnight,” Ferdie whispered.

“He did,” Oskar said. And as he spoke, the door to the courtyard opened and in walked Jim Knee and Tod.

“Tod!” Ferdie and Oskar shouted together.

“Shh!” hushed Jim Knee. He looked around the courtyard anxiously. “This place gives me the creeps,” he said. “Let's go.”

No one needed any persuasion.

“Kaznim knows the way,” Ferdie told Tod.

Tod was feeling a little edgy. “I bet she does,” she said. “Just like she knew the way to the ambush at Oraton-Marr's tower.”

“Oh, Tod, that's not fair. Jim Knee explained,” Ferdie protested.

“Explained that she double-crossed us? He explained that, did he?”

“Stop bickering,”
Jim Knee intervened. “Miss Na-Draa was
under a Witch's
Draw
. It was not her doing. Anyway, no one is going anywhere with Miss Na-Draa unless she decides to come back to the Forest with us.”

But Tod had not escaped from Oraton-Marr's clutches only to run back home. “We're not going to the Forest,” Tod told the jinnee. “We're going into the desert to get the Egg of the Orm. You
know
that, Jim Knee.”

“I know no such thing,” Jim Knee replied. “My Command is to keep my master's Apprentice safe.”

“
And
to seek out the Egg of the Orm,” Tod told Jim Knee.

“Indeed. But my Master gave me two separate Commands. And if two Commands are incompatible—which these are, for I cannot seek the Egg of the Orm
and
keep you safe—the human safety Command
prevails. So I am taking you back to the Forest.”

“I'm not going,” said Tod.

“Yes, you are.” Jim Knee took a step toward Tod only to find his way barred by Ferdie and Oskar.

“Are you Commanded to force me to do something against my will?” Tod demanded.

“Well . . . no. I am not.”

“But I am refusing to go,” Tod said. “And if you make me
go I will fight you. And because you are much more powerful than I am, I shall get hurt. Which is hardly very safe.”

Jim Knee was shocked. “I would never hurt you, Alice,” he said. He sighed. “You have the luxury of free will. I do not. I gave that away in exchange for my succession of lives. So I will leave you to enjoy your free will and trust that it all turns out as you wish. Farewell.” With that Jim Knee bowed and walked into the center of the courtyard.

“Wait!” Tod called.

Jim Knee turned. He had expected a change of heart at the last minute. Humans were prone to panicking when left alone, especially young ones. “Yes, Alice?” he asked, a little smugly.

“Will you wait a moment, please? I want to write a note for you to give to Septimus. To tell him where we are. And where the Egg is.” Tod rapidly scribbled the note and handed it to Jim Knee.

Jim Knee looked at the note disdainfully. “I am not a Message Rat,” he said.