Gullstruck Island (48 page)

It was Tomki who broke the astonished silence.

‘I think Hathin can do it. You know what she’s like when she’s possessed.’

‘When I’m
what
?’ Hathin stared at him, stupefied.

‘Oh . . . sorry.’ Tomki wrinkled his brow amicably. ‘Not possessed then . . . but, you know, when that other spirit takes over your body and makes everyone obey you.’

‘Oh,
that
spirit.’ Therrot’s forehead cleared. ‘The one that took control in the ditch outside Jealousy, and again in the marketplace when Hathin claimed that woman for the Stockpile, and again when the palace was under attack, and . . .’

‘And when you hit me.’ Tomki smiled at Hathin with a hint of embarrassment. ‘You know, when your voice changes, and your personality changes, and the little worried crinkles in your forehead disappear, and you’re suddenly eight feet tall . . .’

‘I’ve never been eight feet tall—’

‘Not
eight
feet, certainly, Tomki,’ Jaze corrected Tomki gently. ‘Anyway, let it be. If Hathin does not want to talk about the other spirit, we should respect that.’

Hathin was about to protest again, but Dance was leaning forward. Red specks of firelight wandered lost in her eyes like the torches of benighted travellers. ‘Do you really believe that this is your path?’

Hathin’s sleep-starved world tipped and bobbed as she nodded.

‘Then come, Hathin.’ Dance stood. ‘We shall talk to the Superior about a parting of the ways. The rest of you, sleep. I will wake you when the night is darker.’

The Superior’s tent was perched on the edge of the forest, and about it fireflies surged and spiralled like mind-stars before a faint. As they grew closer Hathin’s numb mind suddenly realized that there were other lights, candles and burning brands. These were held up by a handful of guards who stood rigidly before the Superior’s tent, as if enchanted. Even then she might have sleepwalked into the midst of them if Dance’s large hand had not settled firmly on her shoulder and squeezed it, commanding her to remain still and silent.

Candle-pale, the Superior stood among his guards in the same spellbound state. He was talking to a tree. The tree had a face. The tree spoke back.

It was a wicked bride vine, she realized, the sort of creeper that covered every inch of a tree, then remained as a hollow vestige when the real tree had been throttled and rotted away. Like other children she had sometimes used them as hiding places, climbed up inside them using the side-winding vines like rungs.

The face in the tree was longer than a sleepless night and more bitter than a broken dream. Its black eyes gleamed with a frosted madness. Even the smile that opened in its face was not really a smile, just a jewelled multicoloured gash.

‘All you need to do,’ the Jimboly-tree told the Superior in a rough-cut Doorsy, ‘is get me that bird. The little bird in the cage. Otherwise . . .’

A lean brown hand reached out among the vines. It held a pot, shaped like a pot-bellied dignitary. It was one of the cremation urns from the Ashlands where the Superior’s ancestors were buried.

34

A Tooth for a Tooth

Hathin’s mind snapped out of its dream-like acceptance and understood what she was seeing. Jimboly must have been following them every step of the way, flanking them along the ditches, waiting for a chance to speak to the Superior when the Reckoning were not listening. Jimboly could have given them away to any roadblock they passed, but had probably been afraid that in a scuffle Ritterbit might be loosed from his cage.

The Superior’s guards stood poised, uncertain, staring at their master. The Superior had one hand raised as if he had held it up to halt his men, then forgotten about it. Dance hung back in the darkness, frowning at the strange confrontation, and Hathin remembered that Dance did not speak Doorsy.

‘I hope you have no ideas about attacking me up here,’ continued the Jimboly-tree, its face some twelve feet above the ground. ‘I think this is . . .’ she turned the pot and scowled at it, ‘the fifteenth Duke of Sedrollo?’

‘. . . Glorious-Victor-of-the-battle-of-Polmannock-Order-of-the-Silver-Hare-Vice-Admiral-of-the-Rainhallow-Expeditionary . . .’ managed the Superior in a wispy, breathless squeak.

‘Really? Well, if you guards take one step towards this tree, then the Vice-Admiral learns to fly. He goes away to explore the world, carried on the wind and the backs of beetles. He is swallowed by pitcher plants and is ground into the road by the boot-soles of soldiers. Besides, there are half a dozen more of your ancestors hidden in the forest. Some of their pots are missing their lids. Without me you have no chance of finding them before some spider monkey pokes his finger in to see how they taste.’

‘Whu-heu-nerp,’ commented the Superior, his face grey.

‘The girl will be sleeping. Send someone to knock her on the head and bring the cage to me. Then you can have a family reunion.’

‘I . . .’ The Superior stared shakily up at the little pot, which Jimboly was tilting dangerously so that the lid slipped to one side. ‘I gave my . . . my word to the girl . . .’

The pot upended, and the lid fell away, followed by a flurry of fine powder that dusted leaves and pattered on ferns. The Superior gave a wail of anguish and ran forward to clutch at it, trying to cup it in his hands. He fell to his knees, staring at his grey-freckled fingers, his face so colourless that it appeared he too might crumble to ash.

‘Now.’ The lean brown hand had reappeared among the vines, holding a second, slightly bigger pot. ‘The
sixteenth
Duke of Sedrollo . . . ’

‘Stop!’ Hathin could not contain herself. Ritterbit’s cage still in her hand, she ran out into the circle of torchlight. ‘Listen! Sir, your ancestors are not in those pots! There has been no human ash in them for years!’

‘Whu-what? But where . . . ?’

‘Don’t listen to her!’ screamed Jimboly. ‘Grab her! Take the bird!’

‘Oh, someone fetch a flask of water! He’s going all blotchy . . .’ Hathin knelt beside the Superior. ‘It’s true, sir. All the ash was stolen years and years ago and . . . and used to make dye . . .’ Too late Hathin was regretting sliding off down the toboggan slope of truth. ‘. . . and someone, um, filled the urns with animal ash. Sheep. And goats.’

The Superior whimpered faintly and stared out into the twisted madness of the jungle. Hathin wondered if he was imagining a spectral landscape obscured by mounds of rich velvets, toothpicks, hair combs and paper money, amid which scrambled ghostly goats and sheep, uttering soft, confused bleats as their hoofs slithered on vast cascades of mutton-fat soap.

‘Sheep?’ he remarked in a tiny, choked voice. ‘Goats?’ he added, then fell over on to his side, gurgling for breath.

‘You fool!’ screeched the Jimboly-tree. ‘What good is he to either of us now? Stamp your foot through the drum of his existence, why don’t you? Well, I hope he dies from it!’

‘Please, sir,’ Hathin put a tentative hand on the Superior’s shoulder. ‘It’s not . . .’ Not that bad?

‘All these years I’ve been . . . I’m . . .’ He still seemed to be choking. ‘I’m . . . an
orphan
. I’m . . . I’m
alone
. I’m . . . I’m . . . I’m . . .
free
.’ He pushed himself up on one elbow, staring at his hands as if for the first time they had become his own. ‘I can . . . I can do
anything
. I can leave Jealousy! I can break my spectacles and run off barefoot to become a . . . a . . . cobbler! I can . . . I can marry my housekeeper! Do I have a housekeeper? I never had time to notice! But now I can get a housekeeper! And marry her!’

He struggled to his feet and staggered away wild-eyed, presumably in search of a housekeeper.

As more of the camp came running in, drawn by the sound of raised voices, the spellbound guards remembered themselves and set about slashing at the wicked bride vine turret. Jimboly’s face disappeared, and a turbulence rippled downward through the leaves. Two ferns at the base thrashed asunder, and then Jimboly’s lean figure could be seen sprinting off into the jungle.

‘Stop her!’ Hathin called out in Lace. ‘She knows who we are! She knows who Arilou is!’

Dance lurched out of the darkness in pursuit of Jimboly, past the startled guards, all of whom had sufficient presence of mind to get out of her way.

Hathin snatched up a lantern and gave herself no time to think before plunging into the jungle too. She stumbled on with the lantern in one hand, Ritterbit’s cage in the other, while great leaves slapped at her face. Other lanterns bobbed around amid the trees like overgrown fireflies. Eventually the giant fireflies convened, illuminating a dozen grim faces. Nobody had found Jimboly.

‘She will not have gone far,’ said Jaze. ‘She cannot.’ He pointed towards Ritterbit, whose wings were now flickering so fast one expected him to whittle himself out of his cage. ‘But our eyes are still full of firelight – we need time for the darkness to clean them before we have a hope of seeing her.’

‘We don’t have time,’ said Therrot, who was still catching his breath. ‘We don’t have the time to search an entire jungle for one dentist.’

‘Then . . . Then I have to climb Spearhead
now
, don’t I?’ faltered Hathin. ‘If I take a curved route up the mountain through the jungle, steering away from the roads and the Farm, she’ll follow me, and she won’t be able to run off and tell anyone we’re here or get in your way. I can draw her off, and distract Lord Spearhead like we planned when I reach the top.’

‘I can go instead,’ Therrot said quickly. ‘It doesn’t have to be Hathin. I can take the bird and the gift for the Lord—’

‘Hathin is Sorrow’s chosen messenger,’ Dance cut in. ‘But . . . you can go with her, Therrot. Keep Hathin safe, and report back to us if she is granted an audience with Lord Spearhead.’

Spearhead did not have Crackgem’s spitting madness, Sorrow’s barren beauty or the King of Fans’ rock-strewn majesty. Spearhead wore his jungle like a ragged wolf’s pelt. He bristled like a wounded beast. A cloud of rage cloaked his head, and he could see nothing beyond it.

Hathin was still carrying her lantern, for if she did not, how would Jimboly see her? The canopy above was dense and cut out a good deal of the light. Therrot had been ordered to follow under cover of the shadows, the better to surprise Jimboly if she attacked. Even though Hathin knew that he must be behind her, matching his step to hers to hide the crack of undergrowth beneath his feet, it was hard not to feel alone, hard to resist the temptation to look for reassurance.

For reassurance? But what was Therrot? He was not her big brother. He was just a shape behind her in the darkness, a man with blood on his hands, somebody she did not really know.

Her eye dropped to Ritterbit’s cage, and a smile crept on to her face despite herself. She felt a little throb of fellowship every time his fantail bobbed between the bars. A black bead of an eye gleamed in the darkness within, and found an answer in the black bead in her stomach. Perhaps Ritterbit was her little brother now.

A few of the trees seemed to fold and ooze like raw pastry, and had great holes in them. Climbing through one she laid her foot down, only to feel the ground tremble beneath it, like the flank of a vast animal. Occasionally there was a hint of panicked motion in the trees above, a monkey’s trapeze swing, a bird belting through the foliage like a slingshot. But they did not seem to be fleeing from her, rather she thought they were all moving past her towards the lower ground.

She walked and walked, and her chest tightened as she started to see occasional blackened trees. They seemed to stand as warnings to the others around them, like courtiers who had said the wrong thing. Warnings to the other trees, and to Hathin herself.

The ground grew steeper, the going more difficult, the air colder and harder to breathe. The mist-clouds came down and softly surged through the trees to meet her. Was Therrot still behind her? She dared not look back.

A mist-filled ravine gaped unexpectedly to her right, trees leaning over it dangerously with their roots splayed as though it had just opened and they were bending over to peer in. From its depths came a fluctuating hiss and the damp, stinging fragrance of singed greenery.

She began edging along the side of the crack, but flinched into a crouch as she felt the ground shift slightly again beneath her feet. There was a distant sound, which to her bewildered ears sounded like some great beast coughing, and then suddenly the leaves around her were shaking as something fell upon them like rain. Tiny grey rocks the size of birds’ eggs were falling and bouncing, light as hazelnuts. They stung her back and neck, and she ducked beneath one of the tipping trees.

Lord Spearhead had noticed her. He would not let her talk; he would not even let her approach.

To her right, away from the ravine, a phantom forest of stencilled grey ferns and boughs twitched and jumped with the stony downpour. And it was from this dancing, ghostly forest that Jimboly came leaping, her red bandanna like a war-flag.

As the dentist’s weight slammed into her, Hathin lost her grip on the lantern and it bounced to the ground to light the world lopsided. It was all Hathin could do to throw one arm around the nearest stooping tree to stop herself tumbling backwards into the chasm. There was now only a frail net of dry vines between her and a long, dark fall, and these were creaking and starting to give as Jimboly’s weight forced her backwards. One of Jimboly’s lean, strong hands dug into Hathin’s face, forcing her back, and the other grabbed at the handle of Ritterbit’s cage. With a strength born of desperation Hathin yanked the cage free and beat Jimboly across the face with it, seeing her enemy’s eyes fog.