The Flame in the Mist (39 page)

Eventually the questions ebbed. Nox stared into the fire. Feo picked at his fingernails. Shade slumped back in her armchair. Nocturna’s eyes closed, her crimson mouth spreading into a contented smirk. Jemma could almost see the scene unfolding in those twisted reveries. The Mist spreading, bringing more of Anglavia under Agromond suppression. The crag’s magic strong again, and the renewed riches that would come from the sale of its rock. The rewards of finally having won Jemma over to their side.

Noon struck. Shade’s head lolled forward, her eyelids flickering shut. The keys dangled from her belt, tantalizingly close to Jemma’s grasp. But now, it would be up to Digby to steal them while Shade slept. She mulled over the night’s plan.
Imagine it, like it’s already happened
, Marsh would say,
like you’re already holdin’ them keys … unlockin’ the cell door …

“Dreaming again, Jem-mah?” Shade opened one eye. “I see those schemes you’re hatching, don’t think I don’t.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, sister dear.”

“Sis-ter, is it? Ha!” Shade closed her eye again.

Everyone dozed. Only Grandmama Mallentent seemed to be awake, her crazed paint-cracked eyes staring from her portrait as if they saw into Jemma’s duplicity. Jemma fixed her gaze on the fire, and on the family motto glaring at her from the mantelpiece:
Mordus Aderit
. She tried re-ordering the letters to make pleasant words, but it only yielded ones that seemed to taunt her:
Ruse. Dare. Dread
. Dread. The word slithered into Jemma’s head, then wormed into her bones, where it curled up and tightened like a noose.

Jemma mopped her mouth with a napkin, her stomach in revolt. The stew had been vile. The silkiness of the pancreas made her retch, and how could she have ever liked the bitter taste of spleen, with its crumbly texture? Even the crunch of the bees-in-syrupwater dessert was disgusting to her now.

“Thank you, Mama,” she said. “That was delicious.”

“You’re welcome, my dear. Now, let us retire for Repose.”

“Where will Jemma rest, Mama?” asked Shade.

“Why, in her old room, I suppose.”

Jemma’s heart skipped. Good! That meant she could retrieve her journal from under the mattress—

“But, Mama,” Shade said, tapping her black-varnished fingernails on the table, “should we not lock her up this afternoon, as well as tonight?”

“For Mord’s sake, Shade.” Nox sighed. “I object!”

“And who are you to object?” Nocturna snapped back at him.

“A mere precaution, Papa,” said Shade sweetly, making no attempt to conceal the smugness on her face.

And so, on the toll of two, Jemma was marched downstairs by Shade and locked in the cell closest to the kitchen, next to Drudge’s sleeping alcove. He was napping, his bony form rising and falling gently. Shade strutted away with a satisfied sneer on her face, leaving Jemma to Drudge’s snores and the drug-induced breaths of the three Goodfellow children that echoed from the end of the Corridor of Dungeons.

Three tolls of the bell. Three luminous orbs, spiraling above her head. The castle walls undulated, their gray stones crumbling inward into a cloudy mass that swirled her upward. She tried to yell
—Leth gith bal celde!—
but the cloudy mass sucked the words from her throat and spun them into the air. Their letters separated, rearranged themselves:
Leth gith bal celde … eth lithg …
the light … the light be …

“The Light be called!” Jemma woke with a gasp, feeling as though fire was pumping into her muscles. Shade’s old dress was drenched in sweat. She leapt from the pallet. “So those words
were
anagrams,” she muttered as she began pacing, “but of two words jumbled at a time, instead of just one!” She thought of when she’d first heard them in Bryn’s cave, and the times after that. “But why all mixed up, and not in plain Anglavian?” If only Noodle and Pie were there! Talking to them always helped her to think more clearly. She gazed at the pallet, remembering how they used to sit on her pillow, waiting for her to wake. “I mustn’t think of you, Rattusses.” She sighed. “I have to stay strong.” Then she noticed something sticking out from under the straw.

The corner of a thin, fragile-looking book.

She pulled it out. Its cover was made of the softest moleskin she’d ever felt, bound around seven or eight sheets of cracked, yellowed vellum. Slowly, she opened it, hardly daring to hope what it might be. In the middle of the first page, hand-written in scrolled capitals, she read:

The elegant slant, the graceful flourish … Jemma recognized the writing immediately. The letters needed no coaxing: they were simple anagrams. Her skin tingled as she read.

“
The Forgotten Song
. This is it—Majem’s missing book!” Beneath the title, other words shone from the page. “
Rof het Rien Foe. Yam ey valprie …
For the Fire One. May ye prevail …”

Heart thumping, Jemma paced again as she sped through the following page.

Guidance. A song. Rhymes and secrets. A code she had to decipher. For her eyes only … It was thrilling. And ominous. There were two more lines, and she read them slowly, a strange sense of destiny creeping under her skin.

“A flame in the mist …” Jemma’s entire body tingled. “Fierce as the sun …” Majem’s words sank into her like a solemn oath, and she turned the page, prepared to take that oath.

The Opening Call
, she read at the top. She was getting used to the archaic language, and swiftly interpreted the instructions. She had to be ready, then focus, then say what was written below with force, three times. In Anglavian, not in its jumbled form.

“I can do that,” she said. “So, let’s see what this Opening Call is.”

The next words made her stop in her tracks.

The words she had pulled from thin air. Had dreamed, over and over. They were here. Majem had written them, almost three hundred years ago! How was that possible? Had her ancestor somehow been speaking to her across time, and through the ether, as well as through her book? Whatever the case, the result was that Jemma had already deciphered the Code. She had the key to unlocking the rest of the Releasing Rime’s meanings—now, just when she needed it.

“The Light be called,” she whispered, her nerves shimmering as she reread the words that had just revealed themselves. Then she took a breath and drank in the second line:

Magically, the letters unraveled. She went cold.

“Scagavay.” The name barely croaked past her lips. “Be gone now.” Jemma felt as though spiders were crawling under her skin. She began pacing again, drumming the two lines into her mind with each step until she was sure of them, then turned the page, hoping that what she’d find there would somehow calm the spiders down. It didn’t.

It made no sense at all.

Drawn across each page were four series of five straight lines spattered with black-tailed dots, like tadpoles sitting on a fence. The following pages were the same. The spiders were running amock now, turning agitation into desperation. How would she find guidance, if she couldn’t even begin to understand this?

“Trusssst!”

Jemma wheeled around. “Drudge! You startled me—”

“You … learn Opnn Call … Good!” The old man
beckoned to her, and she went to the door. He reached through the bars, took the book from her, then tapped on the offending page. “Thisss,” he said, “fffrrgot … Frrrgotn sss-sss …”

“
That’s
the Forgotten Song? But it looks like rubbish—pages of it!”

“Mew,” Drudge wheezed. “Mew …”

“Mew? Like a cat?”

“Gnaaaaaa! Mew … Mew … sick.”

“Sick cats?” Jemma frowned. “Drudge, I don’t— Oh! You mean, this is
mu
sic?”

Drudge’s face cracked into a smile, and he nodded fervently as he scanned over the next pages. Then he handed the book back to her. “Me, teach you,” he mumbled. “Sssong.”

“
You?
But … how do you know it?”

“Me, good … read—”

“You mean, you’ve read the book? Was it you who put it under the straw? Of course, it must have been! But where did you find it, and how did you know I’d be here, not upstairs?”

“No quesssstnnnss! No time! Trusssst, Jmmmaaaah, trussst!” Drudge grabbed Jemma’s forearms and closed his eyes, swaying slightly. Then she heard the strangest sound, like the keening of the wind, but softer, soothing, its rhythmic pitch flowing in waves from Drudge’s hands, through her body. It was not audible in the dungeons, but somehow filled her head, a melody that contained fragments of Marsh’s nursery rhymes, of the song she’d heard her mother sing in her dreams, and the song Freddie and Maddie Meadowbanks had sung the night of her welcome-home feast in Oakstead. Every note of it seemed to resonate in every cell of her body. She felt as though she’d known it forever.

Drudge released her forearms, and the sound stopped.

“That was beautiful!” Jemma tingled from head to toe; she felt full, and light. “But I don’t know how I’ll ever remember— Drudge, are you all right?”

He looked deathly pale. “Show,” he rasped, pointing at his head, then hers, “efffrrrrt.” He heaved several breaths, and his face started returning to its normal sallowness. Then he touched Jemma’s sternum with a bony finger. “Remmmemmb, here. Song here.”

“Oh!” A bolt of energy shot from his finger through Jemma’s chest and down to her toes. She almost dropped the book. Drudge took it from her, turned several leaves, and handed it back. At the end of the music symbols, the text resumed:

“The Song doth open Portals to the Angelic Realms,”
she read aloud.
“Once hearde by the Fire One it shall be remembered always.…”

Drudge was breathing more easily now, and he patted the book. “Finishhh.”

Jemma read out the remaining text on the page.
“Scagavay being thus weakened shoulde thenne be assailed with the Releasinge Rime of Saeweldar, whych is the opposite of Scagavay
. Saeweldar. The opposite of Scagavay. So … Saeweldar is some sort of Entity as well?”

Drudge nodded, his silken hair wisping across his face. “Scagaaav—baaad! Saewldrrr—good!” He nudged the book. “Reeead, quick!”

Clang!
The clock tower tolled out. One … two … three …

“Four, already! There’s no time now, Drudge. Shade will be here any minute. But Drudge, if you know it, why can’t you just tell me?”

“Wrrrds, not remembrrr. You … musssst learn … by heart. Finissssh. Tonigh. Promisss!”

“I promise. Tonight.” Tonight, she, Digby, and the triplets would be leaving here. Suddenly it hit her: that would also mean leaving Drudge. Again. Her heart sank to her stomach.

“Gnnnn …” Drudge patted her hand. “No, sssad.”

“Drudge, come with us! Gordo will have the cart, and—”

“Gnnnnaa!” He shook his head and smiled. “Me ssstay. Trusssst, Jmaaah!”

“But, Drudge—”

“Trussst! You, your path. Me, mine. Remembr. The ligh … be …”

“The Light be Called. I’ll remember.”

Drudge teetered into the kitchen, and Jemma gazed after him. A faint blue aura seemed to be outlining him—the same as she thought she’d seen emanating from him the night she escaped. She blinked, and it was gone. Then she tucked the book back beneath the straw. It was such a small, shabby volume, but it breathed the wisdom of her ancestor, and gave her enormous hope.

The Light be called …
The words spun through Jemma’s head, buoying her for the rest of the day. Even when discussion turned to the next day’s ritual, she was able to smile through Shade’s eager anticipation of it and ignore the pit in her stomach. At nine-thirty, after a light supper of weasel-milk cheese and pancreas paté, Shade led her once more down to the dungeons.

“Clothing a lamb in wolf hide doesn’t make it a wolf,” Shade sneered, looking Jemma up and down. “Tomorrow, we’ll see what you’re really made of.”

“Speaking of tomorrow,” Jemma said as they crossed the kitchen, “I think it would be wise to make sure that Drudge has done as we instructed with those three brats, don’t you?”

Shade scowled at Jemma, but nevertheless walked with her down to the larger dungeon second from the end. The triplets were huddled together on a pile of fresh straw, the blankets heaped on top of them rising and falling with the deep breaths of Slumber Potion–induced sleep.

“Satisfied, Jem-mah?”

Jemma nodded, steeling her expression against the heartache she felt for Flora, Simon, and Tiny as Shade marched her back to her cell.

Shade clanged the door shut, and locked it. “Breakfast at
seven. Ceremony at seven-thirty sharp. I trust that you will be
ready
for it. Good night to you.”

“And to you, sister dear.”

Shade’s footsteps echoed into the distance. Condensation dripped. The almost-half hour until Digby’s arrival yawned ahead of her. Remembering her promise to Drudge, Jemma sat on the pallet and tried to decipher the remaining lines at the end of Majem’s book.