Miss Landon and Aubranael (Tales of Aylfenhame Book 1) (28 page)

Hauling Hidenory behind him, he opened the front door of the parsonage to find Mr. Ellerby standing on the other side.

‘Ah,’ said the other young man. ‘The ladies were beginning to feel concerned.’

‘We will be taking this
lady
to see Mr. Balligumph,’ said Aubranael, shoving Hidenory forward. ‘And then we are going to the Outwoods of Aylfenhame to find Miss Landon.’

‘Oh,’ said Mr. Ellerby. ‘Very well.’

Aubranael was surprised—nay,
astonished
—to find Grunewald awaiting them at the bridge. He was sitting with Mr. Balligumph, sipping a cup of tea and looking thoroughly comfortable. The Goblin King smiled pleasantly at Aubranael and Mr. Ellerby, and then smiled upon Hidenory with
very
warm approval.

Aubranael turned Hidenory over to Balligumph, with a quick recital of everything he had learned, and then turned his attention to Grunewald with a quizzical smile.

‘I was asked to come,’ said Grunewald in answer to his unspoken question.

‘Are you here to help us?’ said Aubranael. He found that difficult to believe: Grunewald had made it very clear that he had no desire to help Aubranael any further at all.

But Grunewald nodded once, and smiled. ‘To be precise, I intend to
begin
by paying my very particular compliments to the lady.’ He rose and did so, bowing over Hidenory’s withered hands and murmuring something about
excellent scheme
and
admirable wits
and
congratulate you most sincerely.

Hidenory smiled in triumph. ‘I knew
you
would appreciate the scheme,’ she said proudly.

But Grunewald’s tone turned gently chiding as he said: ‘But it is a
trifle
outrageous, do not you think? I cannot help being mildly discontented with you, my dear. This young man is quite a delicate flower, you understand. He could never keep up with you.’

Aubranael bridled at that, but he stopped himself from raising any objection. Grunewald’s observation was not entirely unfair, and besides, he appeared to be working his way around to declaring himself on Miss Landon’s side.

Hidenory realised the same thing, for she glared at Grunewald and snatched back her hands. ‘You admire my cunning but you will devote your own to undoing all my fine work? Ah! Treacherous indeed.’

‘You will have heard the adage,’ Grunewald said smoothly. ‘Never trust the Goblin King, eh? But no matter. This is how the game proceeds, is it not? It is all a matter of wit and counter-wit. You have played your very best pieces, and now we will play ours. And may the best goblin win.’

‘Much as I appreciate the prospect of receiving your help,’ Aubranael said, ‘I cannot understand you. Yesterday you swore you’d had done with me.’

Grunewald turned his glittering green gaze upon Aubranael. ‘Not at all, my dear fellow. I merely refused to give you the specific
type
of help you were requesting.’

‘And you warned me not to place myself too far in your debt,’ Aubranael reminded him. ‘Does that no longer stand?’

‘Oh, it does. But,’ he said gently, ‘has it not occurred to you, dear Aubranael, that this matter is somewhat larger than you and your romantic affairs?’

Aubranael blinked. ‘I do not understand you,’ he repeated.

‘That is very evident. But do not let it concern you. I am here on Mr. Balligumph’s request, and so it has nothing at all to do with you.’

Silenced, Aubranael felt a little injured by this cold statement. Then he realised that he would benefit from Grunewald’s help in finding Sophy, but without being considered to be any further in debt to the Goblin King himself. He swallowed his feelings of affront—if he had come to think of the Goblin King as a friend, he was indeed a fool—and nodded.

‘But,’ he said, frowning, ‘how do you know what any of this is about?’

‘I do not know, for certain,’ Grunewald said, with a sideways glance at Hidenory. ‘But the common thread to all your various little tales is the cat. Felebre. And that may be far more significant than you know.’

That silenced Aubranael altogether. Felebre? His friend and companion? The cat had always been enigmatic, but Aubranael had never doubted that she was much as she appeared to be. A cat. One who enjoyed the hunt and the chase, and who did not shun him because his face was unsightly.

But it had been Felebre who had guided him to Hidenory, he remembered. How else had the cat been involved, and what did it mean?

‘Very well, now,’ said Balligumph, interrupting his train of thought. The troll had hitherto watched the proceedings with great interest but without making any attempt to intervene. Now he stood up and clapped his hands together, instantly focusing everyone’s attention upon him. ‘Who is to come along to the Outwoods?’

Everybody volunteered without hesitation, excepting Hidenory and Grunewald.

‘Ye’ll come along too, miss,’ said Balligumph, eyeing Hidenory with a glimmer of fury in his bright blue eyes.

Hidenory waved a hand dismissively.

‘An’ what of His Majesty?’ said Balligumph, looking at Grunewald.

‘I can do a little better than that, I believe.’ Grunewald produced a gleaming silver horn from somewhere, put it to his lips, and blew a long note. The sound was so loud Aubranael was forced to cover his ears; even then the noise beat down upon him, a riotous racket comprising the mingled notes of thousands of horns blown at once. Finally the notes died away, leaving silence.

Balligumph nodded approvingly, and Hidenory began to look afraid. Miss Daverill and Miss Ellerby were standing as far from the troll as they could, Aubranael noticed, and now they began to back away from Grunewald as well. Poor Mary looked terrified but grimly resolved; she had Thundigle at her knee, patting her leg to comfort her. Mr. Ellerby was keeping up a protective stance over the entire group.

Would this curious mix of company be enough to find Sophy, he wondered, and to rescue her from any dangerous predicament she might be in? He could only hope so.

Then the wind began to blow. It was a harsh, cold wind, utterly unsuited to the warmth of an afternoon in June, and it brought with it the distant howling of hounds.

Aubranael stared at Grunewald, awed and afraid. Could it be… had he just…?

He did not have time to complete these fragmented thoughts, for a terrific gust of wind threatened to knock him off his feet. He saw it then, approaching from across the fields: the Goblin Hunt. Borne by the wind, they came: a sea of hounds, ghostly and insubstantial, galloping through the air at full tilt and baying for blood. Suddenly he was surrounded by the dizzying whirlwind of the Hunt; ghostly shapes swirled and danced around him with appalling speed, bringing a wind cold enough to chill him to the bone. Each hound bore an insubstantial goblin upon its back, and each rider bore a raised spear or a knife or a garden rake—anything at all, it seemed, so long as it could be enthusiastically brandished.

Grunewald shouted something over the wind. It was in a language Aubranael could not understand, but it brought the Hunt into a knot gathered tightly around the Goblin King and Hidenory. Grunewald shouted something else, and abruptly the Hunt wheeled and galloped away.

‘Follow them, then!’ hollered Balligumph. ‘An’ be quick, now, or ye’ll be left behind!’

A flood of energy rushed through Aubranael, strengthening his tired limbs and clearing his mind. He remembered the day he had met Miss Landon: he had been running through Grenlowe in pursuit of Felebre, and he had almost knocked Sophy down.

Well: to run swift and sure was something that he knew how to do. He would do it again, and if he was lucky, he would find Miss Landon once again.

Chapter Sixteen

After another hour or two of walking—or perhaps it was ten or twenty or more—Sophy was no longer feeling grateful for her guides. She felt like a long-suffering nurse escorting a party of young children. Pinch
would
insist on teasing Tut-Gut, and he would not leave off, no matter how earnest her entreaties; and then Tara-Tat began needling Graen, and before long the two were squabbling mightily in their high, piping voices. Pinket alone proved a restful companion, but perhaps that was merely because he lacked the means to make any noise. She had no notion what might be passing through the wisp’s thoughts—if anything at all.

But after a long time—two hours or ten?—the combatants appeared to exhaust themselves, and a heavy silence descended on the company. It possessed a decided air of sulkiness and more than a hint of petulance, but Sophy cared not a whit for that. She took full advantage of the reprieve: collecting her scattered thoughts, calming her shredded nerves and reassembling what was left of her patience.

When the voices began again, her heart sank with dismay and she stared hopelessly at her troublesome companions. ‘Please,’ she sighed. ‘Please, just a little more peace!’

The company halted as one, and four small faces stared up at her in blank incomprehension. The murmur of voices continued, but she could plainly see that the mutterings were not coming from any of her companions.

‘But who is speaking?’ she said, staring all around herself in puzzlement. ‘I see no one.’

A shriek of laughter split the air, muffled as if reaching her ears from some distance away. The sound resonated in her memory: she had heard it before, and not very long since. When she had journeyed through the Outwoods before, on her way to see Hidenory, she had heard just the same style of conversation: low mutterings, a babble of voices all talking at once, and an occasional cackling laugh that raised the hairs on her arms.

‘Where is that coming from?’ she said, frowning.

Her companions began to hear it, too, for their faces echoed her confusion—and curiosity. They rambled through the trees in a scattered way, Tara-Tat with Tut-Gut, Pinket with Pinch, and Graen following Sophy herself, all searching for the source of the noise.

At length a shout went up. ‘Here!’ carolled Pinch, and Sophy heard the rustling crash of a small person hurling himself into the undergrowth. He kept up the shout, like a rider leading the hunt as he barrelled away through the trees. Sophy followed.

She soon saw what had attracted Pinch’s attention. As she covered the ground with her long strides—never quite catching up with Pinch in spite of her much superior height—she glimpsed a long table through the trees, with a gaggle of fae seated around it. The table was
very
long indeed, she realised: it stretched on and on through the forest, and while she could see the head of the table she could not see the other end.

It was undoubtedly the same table she had seen before.

A tall, velvet-upholstered chair stood at the head of the peculiar table, and in it sat an Ayliri girl, her skin and hair as dark as Aubranael’s, her build lithe and youthful. Sophy could make out very little else, for the lady was slumped over onto the tablecloth, her face resting on her folded arms. She appeared to be asleep.

Some manner of party was in merry progress around her, none of the guests seeming to notice their slumbering hostess. Sophy saw brownies like Thundigle, hobgoblins like Tut-Gut, elves and flower-fae like Pinch and Graen, knobbly-kneed goblins, a troll almost as large as Balligumph taking up three places all by himself, and even an assortment of hatted-and-coated woodland creatures sitting up at the table. They were all drinking tea, but not in the refined way Sophy was used to. Each guest had an enormous tea cup set before them and they were guzzling tea at a mighty rate, pausing frequently in the midst of their chatter to refill their giant cups from one of the teapots that were clustered atop the table.

And there were a great many of these, all in different sizes and decorated in riotous colours. As far as Sophy could see, they were never empty, no matter how many times the tea cups were refilled.

Pinch drew up and stopped near the sleeping hostess, his whole body registering a mixture of surprise and glee. He began to bounce on his toes, and as Sophy came up behind him she heard him say: ‘The Teapot Society! What felicity!’

‘But what is that?’ Sophy asked, gasping for breath after her headlong dash through the trees. As she stood taking in the strange sight, Tut-Gut and Tara-Tat and Graen and Pinket appeared beside her and stared too.

‘A tea party that never ends!’ Pinch said, beaming up at her. ‘Each pot contains a different kind of tea, and they will pour forever. Imagine it! Lavender and honey! Jasmine and cream! Thyme, moonflower, honeysuckle, white ginger, sunblossom, sweet and sour apple, lemon and sage!’

Sophy noticed that, in between bouts of tea-drinking, the guests were also eating. There were little coloured boxes nestling between the teapots, though she could not see what they contained. ‘What are they eating?’ she asked Pinch.

His eyes rolled up in an expression of acute ecstasy. ‘Only the very
best
cakes in Aylfenhame!’

‘And I suppose the cakes never run out, either,’ Sophy surmised.

Pinch shook his head gleefully. ‘An empty chair!’ he shouted in delight, and ran towards it. The chair in question looked placed especially for him, Sophy realised, for it was tall enough to allow him to reach the table, just wide enough to accommodate his tiny frame, and three tiny teapots with matching cake-boxes were set out ready.