Shadow Spell (9 page)

Then he was gone, leaving a trail of smouldering undergrowth behind him.

Floyd watched him go. The BM's words hung about in his head, taking up a lot of room and looking very ominous. Consequences. Floyd didn't know what the consequences of killing the entire population of the Drift would be, but he had a nasty feeling he wouldn't like them. He wrestled with his thoughts for a while and then sighed. He couldn't work out the twists and turns of it all, but one thing he was sure of. His current future, the one where he stayed working for Mr Strood, was full of an awful lot of screaming. Besides, regardless of the consequences, he thought the Redstone kid was OK and somehow it just didn't seem fair.

‘Enuff is enuff,' he said firmly.

Then he dropped his spear, turned his face to the south-west and started to run.

From the top of the large folly, safely out of the way for the time being, Jibbit watched him go.

Nin got slowly to her feet. She had been having a sit-down with her head in her hands wondering what on earth to do next.

‘I should have stayed where I was and let
him
find
me
,' she said out loud. They could have been just missing each other for ages and the voices weren't helping. Every time she thought she heard him she wasn't sure because all the chatter got in the way.

‘And you can be quiet,' she snapped, feeling both irritable and near tears.

Something hissed behind her, a slow hiss. Spiteful.

‘
Ava, do you have to?
' sighed a female voice that Nin recognised as Enid's.

‘Enid!' called Nin on impulse. ‘Help me, I've lost Jonas.'

There was a long silence and then more whispering, but no answer. The ghosts weren't playing – if they could even hear her in the first place.

One of the voices began singing something, a daft little rhyme about ‘
when bogeymen come to play
'. It wasn't
nice. It made the BMs sound even more horrible than they were. Especially the bit about rending things limb from limb and ‘holding the darkness', whatever that meant.

Nin got moving again. She had to find Jonas. Had to. Or her bones would join those scattered throughout the Mansion. Trying not to let panic take over she went through the nearest arch into the next room and then the one after that. And the one after that. Then down some stairs. She called out and then stopped to listen and wished she hadn't.

The song about the bogeymen was still going, or maybe the singer was singing it over and over again. The goriness of ‘
… and then they pulled the bones apart and stripped the flesh right off them, and digging free the beating heart they squeezed till it burst open …'
clashed so horribly with the tinkly nursery rhyme tune that Nin began to feel sick. She plugged her ears with her fingers, trying to block it out. The singer raised his voice. There was a hard edge to it.

Perhaps it's Ava Vispilio again, she thought, although if she was honest it sounded more like Dark. She didn't like to think he could be so horrible. Perhaps he's just teasing me, she thought, trying to scare me. I wish he'd stop.

Spinning around, she wondered which way to pick next.

‘
And held the dark around their forms, so hidden they could claim, the poor and hapless children, that they wanted for
their game …
' The voice rose steadily to a boom.

‘STOP IT!' yelled Nin. ‘They aren't
that
nasty!'

‘
What do you know of the Dread Fabulous, little girl?
' chuckled the voice. ‘
What do you REALLY KNOW about bogeymen …?'

Silence fell. Outside, rain lashed the windows and a branch, growing from the outer walls of the Mansion, scraped against the glass. It should have been better without the singing, but it wasn't. She felt watched, and not by anything friendly.

‘It's just a song,' she said firmly, ‘it can't hurt me.'

The roar came suddenly. One minute the place was quiet, the next it was full of a top-of-the-lungs howl that Nin could feel vibrating in her bones. She screamed and ran, panic taking over in earnest. The roar echoed from room to room, rising in volume, sometimes in front of her, sometimes behind, driving her this way and that as she fled through room after room until …

She jolted to a stop, frowning. Blue and yellow light surrounded her, dappling the walls with the glow of late afternoon. It was familiar. She was back where she had started.

Nin walked further into the room and something caught her eye, something scrawled on the polished floor in chalk. It said:

Relief flooded through her. Jonas was nearby and he
would come back and find her. He had a better sense of direction than she did.

She settled down to wait. The room was peaceful now, the singing had stopped and the voices had taken up again, chattering on about Galig's Hall, whatever that was, and how magnificent it looked. They seemed close, so close she began to imagine they were coming from the room next door.

There were four archways out of the blue-and-gold room. The smallest and narrowest was on the opposite wall to the others, the same wall as the window. In fact, the reason Nin hadn't registered it straight away was because she had thought it
was
a window.

She frowned. Surely that was an outside wall and there couldn't be a room there? The arch should open on to empty air. Curious, she walked over to have a look.

There was a room all right.

It was lit by four great windows of stained glass, one in each wall, including the wall behind her, which shouldn't be possible because that was the window wall of the room she had just walked out of. By rights it should have three windows, not one.

‘Magic,' said Nin softly.

It wasn't just the room either. In front of her hung a spiral made of something soft and supple, like a twist of ribbon with colours coming off its glowing surface in silky veils. There was nothing visible supporting it, the thing just hung there, turning gently in an unfelt breeze.

Nin stepped closer. The colours were shadowy ones,
purples and blues and deep greys, but they gave off a glow like moonlight. Nin's fingers tingled and electricity crackled over her skin. This had to be the clue!

She wondered what to do next. She should go back into the other room and wait for Jonas, but …

Frantic that the other room would have gone, Nin spun around. It hadn't, she could still see its blue and yellow light through the doorway. She was about to head back in there when she hesitated. That room hadn't vanished when she went through the arch, but what if this one, the one with the clue in it, did vanish? They might never find it again.

Simple, she thought. I wait here, just inside the arch, and when Jonas comes back I'll call.

Picking a spot where she could see through into the other room, she settled down, sitting with her back against the wall. To pass the time she busied herself looking around the clue room, then wished she hadn't.

The windows were staring at her. The four panes were each filled with the image of a lion. The rain had stopped and the late-afternoon sun breaking through the clouds brought the colours to vivid life. The yellow lions had red manes and their scarlet claws and teeth were bared as if ready to attack. The eyes were emerald green and were watching Nin carefully.

Spooked, Nin switched her gaze back to the softly swirling colours of the ribbon, noticing that faint shadows hung about it, shifting against the glow. Even so, she could still feel her skin prickling under the lions'
emerald gaze. Trying to ignore them, she concentrated on her inspection of the clue, but the lions kept distracting her. Their gaze seemed just as penetrating, even when she wasn't looking at them. She began to feel clammy, her scalp prickled and a thin trickle of sweat ran down her spine. She was suddenly aware that all the voices had stopped.

They're listening, she thought, waiting for something to happen.

From the windows, four sets of emerald eyes raked over her hungrily, as if she was dinner or something. She looked at them, thinking that she might see them move, but they didn't. Then she thought they might move when she
wasn't
looking, so she studied the ribbon, then looked back quickly at the windows to catch them out. Nothing had changed.

‘This is ridiculous,' snapped Nin.

With one part of her brain she heard movement in the other room, a firm tread.

Jonas, she thought, thank goodness for that! I can get out of here. She got up and stepped forward, reaching out for the clue.

A boy stepped through the arch into the room. He was about the same age as Jonas, though taller, and was wearing a green jacket, brown trousers, interesting boots and an awful lot of jewellery. His dark, curly hair was tied back with a green handkerchief.

Before she had time to register that it wasn't Jonas and to stop herself from doing what she had started to do,
Nin's hand was closing over something cool that seemed to stir and shift against her skin. She pulled the clue down, holding it in her palm where it swirled gently, as if deciding what to do next.

The boy drew in a breath. ‘Oooo, big mistake that!' he said. ‘Let's hope it's not fatal!'

There was a moment of utter silence while Nin stared at the new boy in astonishment, and then the windows imploded, their stained images splitting into a thousand fragments that whirled about the room in a storm of splintered light and jagged sound.

Nin screamed as the boy stepped forward, grabbed her and pulled her down, below the level of the flying shards. Even so, the whirling glass was dangerously close and she felt a splinter brush across her wrist, drawing a line of blood. Then the whirlwind calmed and she could look. It wasn't good.

The shards were coming together again, but not as a flat image in a window. This time the lions were in three dimensions, formed of crystal slivers sharp enough to spill blood.

Nin shivered. The lions shone like jewels in the light, sending diamonds of colour glancing off the walls. One of them moved, tinkling faintly. Its emerald eyes found Nin. The others followed its gaze. Nin wondered why they didn't pounce.

‘It's a cat thing,' said the boy. ‘As soon as you start running, they'll chase, right? They're just waiting for you to move, so keep still!'

‘I didn't mean it,' said Nin trying not to panic. ‘Here, have your silly clue!' She threw the shadow ribbon into the room. Or at least she tried to. It wouldn't leave her hand. Not panicking got suddenly harder. The ribbon shifted, twining its silky length around her fingers.

‘You've got it now,' the boy said. ‘It's a spell of some sort and I'm betting it won't leave you till
they
take it back. Name's Seth Carver, by the way, I'm a treasure hunter. You're Nin.'

‘How …?' Nin sent him a look, still trying to untangle the spell. It wouldn't let go and taking hold of it was like trying to pick up water. Every time she went to pull it free, it slipped out of her grasp, slithering up her wrist and forearm to weave itself even more tightly around her.

‘Oh come on! You're famous,' he said cheerfully, getting between Nin and the glass guardians. ‘Stories about you are halfway round the Drift.'

One of lions took a step forward, its ruby-tipped paws clinking on the ground. It opened its mouth and gave a snarl like grinding glass. Its emerald gaze was cold, fixed.

‘See these boots,' he said calmly.

Nin glanced at the cracked leather bands strapped around Seth's calves, ankles and feet. The hide looked as if it had been dipped in tar and was scored and scratched with a dozen symbols.

‘They're travelling magic, but they won't work unless I'm on open land. So what we have to do is get out of
here and then we're away.'

‘But …'

‘We can come back and find your friend later. And don't worry about these, they are only after
you
. You're the one who picked up the spell.'

Seth pushed her backwards to the door. The lions followed, pacing them. The second one gave a low, grating growl.

‘When I say go, you run, right? Listen to me, I'll tell you which way to go, got that?'

Nin nodded.

‘Right,' said Seth. ‘Now RUN!'

Nin ran. So did Seth.

So did the lions.

They thundered through the Mansion, diving through arches, skidding across rooms and trying not to crash into walls and pillars. Behind them came the lions, one after the other, their manes and paws scraping against the arches as they ran, their tread like breaking glass.

Nin tumbled down a flight of stairs, past tall windows, but no doors. She could sense the lions at their back, pausing, cat-like, at the top of the stair. Then taking a step. And another. Then bounding on after them, splintered colour swirling in the air as it caught the light of the windows.

They'll tear us up like rags, Nin thought, suddenly
knowing why some of the skeletons had been scattered and broken. They were the ones that had found the clue.