Night Gate (18 page)

“Who took them?” Rage demanded. She ought never to have left them alone!

“Men in black clothes, like the ones that met the ferry,” Goaty wept.

Blackshirts!

“Tell me exactly what happened,” Rage told him. “Start from where Mr. Walker and I left.”

“We were hungry and Elle wanted to go and search for food, but Billy Thunder said no one must go anywhere until you came back. Bear was awake, but she started coughing and some blood came out of her mouth. Elle said she was going to find you, but Bear said no. Elle tried to leave and Billy ran after her, and then the men in black came and saw them. Elle fought, but there were too many of them. One hit her over the head, and she fell down. Then some more of them came to the trees. I ran back to Bear. I tried to make her get up and run and hide, but she had gone to sleep again and she wouldn’t wake. I was so scared. I…I hid, and I saw them take her, too.”

“They carried her?” Rage said in disbelief.

“They fetched a board and a whole lot of them carried her on it, grunting and groaning. They took her one way, and some other blackshirts took Elle and Billy another way.”

“Did they say where they were taking them?” Mr. Walker asked urgently.

“They said Bear must go to the conservatorium, but Billy and Elle were to be imprisoned. I heard one of them say that the High Keeper would have to decide what is to happen to them, since wild things are supposed to be harmless and Elle bit one of the blackshirts,” Goaty said miserably.

Rage patted his arm, thinking that Bear was safe enough for the moment. Ania had said sick animals were taken to the conservatorium to be healed. “We’d better find Elle and Billy first,” she announced. The blackshirt prison was sure to be close by the place where the rafts carrying condemned prisoners were launched, and she would use her memory of the river to bring them to that side of the city.

“Even if we do find them, how will we free them?” Mr. Walker asked. “There will be blackshirts guarding them, and they might even be in chains!”

“We’ll figure it out once we see where they’re imprisoned,” Rage said. If she had to, she’d find Ania and demand the help that the witch girl had offered on behalf of her mistress.

“I’m coming with you,” Mr. Walker declared.

Rage agreed, but she told Goaty to wait in the park. He hung his head in shame. “It’s because I’m a coward, I know.”

“It’s not that at all. Someone has to be here in case Elle and Billy manage to escape on their own and come here.”

Goaty only looked more depressed than ever.

Rage debated what to do. Her instinct was to rush off at once, but there would still be people awake and out in the streets. Better to wait until later, when the streets would be dark and deserted. Mr. Walker must have been exhausted, for when she told them what she had decided, he immediately curled up and fell asleep.

She heard Goaty sigh, and shifted closer to him. “I don’t think you’re a coward,” she told him. “If you had done anything other than hide, the blackshirts would have taken you away as well. Then no one would have been here to tell Mr. Walker and me what happened. Hiding was the most sensible thing to do.”

“Billy and Elle would not have hidden and let the blackshirts take me,” Goaty said sadly.

Rage took Goaty’s hand and they sat quietly, watching the thin moon rise higher and higher.

She was playing hide-and-seek. She charged at the dogs, and they raced away, barking wildly with excitement. Slipping into the undergrowth, she giggled to think how puzzled they would be, but instead of coming out on the other side of the shrub that ran between Winnoway and the Johnsons’, she found herself caught in a mass of dark, rubbery leaves.

As she pushed deeper into them, their peppery smell grew stronger and the air became hot and damp. The barking of the dogs faded to a dim echo, and Rage saw that the forest was transforming itself around her, growing and thickening.

All at once she came to a clearing amid trees bigger than any she had ever seen. They soared up, their leaves high above linking and twining to block out all but a few stray beams of sunlight. The air was a deep greenish color, and shafts of light sliced through it like cables of radiance anchored to the ground.

Without warning a man stepped into the clearing. Very tall, he was, with dark-tanned, muscular arms. He wore faded jeans, a grubby T-shirt, and battered hiking boots. He carried a big, lumpy, beaten-up backpack with all sorts of things hanging off it. His hair grew down to his shoulders in a wild tangle of curls like Rage’s, except it was black. This was not hair that would lie down and stay in Order, she thought, nor did the man look as if he would be easy to order around. His mouth had a harsh set, and the expression in his eyes was hidden by sunglasses that had been repaired with tape. A sweat-stained hat was pulled low over his forehead.

He stared at Rage in amazement. “Where the hell did you come from?”

His voice was muted, as if it came from behind a thick wall, but she heard it quite clearly. He looked exactly the sort of dangerous man that teachers warned against when they forbade talking to strangers, but Rage didn’t feel afraid of him.

“I’m from Winnoway Farm,” she said, and the man’s mouth fell open with astonishment. “My mam was in a car accident and she can’t wake up, so I’m trying to find some magic that will help her.”

“What is your name?” the man asked urgently.

“I’m Rage Winnoway,” Rage said. “Who are you?”

Before the man could answer he vanished. Billy emerged beside her, but he was no longer a dog.

“We couldn’t find you anywhere,” he said, pushing the toffee-colored lock of hair from his eyes.

Rage hissed at him to be quiet. She could hear a voice calling her name. Was it the dark-haired man?

“What was that?” Billy asked.

“Shh,” Rage whispered. She listened hard. Sometimes when you heard a voice a long way off, it sounded like it was your name being called, even when it wasn’t. But no, she was certain someone was calling her. Thinking about it seemed to make the voice louder. It was a man’s voice.

“Who is it?” Billy whispered.

“Ra-age,” the voice cried again.

“Who’s there?” she shouted. “Who’s calling me?”

The air shimmered, and the long, glowing lines of sunlight penetrating the green dimness wavered and became streamers, winding tighter and tighter into a greater brightness.

“Can…hear me?” The voice was coming out of the twisted sunbeams.

“Who…what are you?” Rage whispered, thinking of the firecat.

Beside her Billy began growling. Suddenly he was a dog again, and all the fur along his back had stiffened into a crest. She rested her hand on his head. He was trembling with tension.

“Don’t trust…” The man’s voice faded into a crackling sound, and there was a loud groan of pain.

“Who are you?” Rage asked again.

“Can’t…,” the voice said haltingly, as if it were in pain. “Spell…”

Rage had read enough stories to know what this must mean. “Someone cast a spell of silence on you?”

“Yes,” the voice said, sounding relieved. “Only…some things…”

“You can’t say some things?”

No answer. She thought for a minute. “What do you want?”

“To tell…to warn…” The voice groaned very loudly.
“Break…” Another burst of static drowned out the next words.

“You want me to break the spell that is holding you?” Rage asked.

“Break…break…” The voice faded into a wheezy scream.

“How?” Rage cried.

There was a bright ruby flash of light and a violent hissing sound.

Rage opened her eyes to find she was staring up into Goaty’s thin, worried face. “Are you sick?” he asked. “You were groaning in your sleep.”

Rage sat up feeling very muddled. “I was having a dream,” she said. She had been in a forest that kept changing. Then there had been a man wearing dark glasses, and a voice begging her to break a spell of silence. How peculiar it was that dreams stole bits of the day and wove them into stories that made sense while you were dreaming but none when you woke.

She shrugged, for she had far more serious things to worry about than a dream. Waking Mr. Walker, she told him they must go. Then she hugged Goaty, reminding him again to stay hidden until they returned.

“I’m afraid,” he admitted, nearly weeping again. “I don’t like being alone.”

“Be brave,” Rage said gently. “It gets easier each time you do it. Besides, maybe the others will escape and come back and then you won’t be alone.”

He took a deep breath and straightened his shoulders. “I’ll try.”

The streets were even darker than they had been in the early hours of the morning. A river mist had risen, damp and clammy, blurring the edges of every solid thing with shifting shadows. In the distance the black towers again looked like skyscrapers.

Rage carefully pictured the outer edges of the city and began to walk. Her mind drifted to wondering where the wizard had got the men and women who peopled Valley, and why some of their descendants had ended up being like Ania and others like the ruthless High Keeper. Maybe there was no answer. Sometimes in a family one of the children was nasty and sullen or a bully, while the others were especially nice, but they all had the same parents and lived in the same house.

Rage stiffened as the Willow Seat Tower came into view. Thinking of the High Keeper must have been enough to encourage the city to bring her here. The street seemed too narrow and close around her, and Rage had the eerie sensation that she was being watched by unfriendly eyes. She noticed that the buildings around the Willow Seat Tower looked wrong. It was as if their shadowy outlines were distorted, so that one side of a wall was higher or wider than another, and windows were not properly square or round.

Unnerved, she turned her back on the tower and summoned up a mental picture of the place Ania had taken her to see the boats. Resisting the urge to run, she walked purposefully, and gradually the feeling of malevolence faded until she could smell the seaweed odor of the red lichen again.

She stopped when she came to the first canal and looked down at Mr. Walker. “The blackshirts keep prisoners in this part of the city, but almost no one else lives here. Can you smell people in any direction?”

Mr. Walker sniffed, turning his nose this way and that. “I think there are people that way.” He pointed across the bridge.

Rage started walking toward it, but Mr. Walker did not move. “What is the matter?” she asked.

“Trolls,” Mr. Walker said. “Everyone knows they live under bridges and that they especially love to eat goats. They will smell Goaty on us.”

Rage wanted to shout that there were no such things as trolls and that they probably did not live under bridges even if they did exist, but she mastered her impatience. “I’ve already crossed this bridge today and there was no sign of any troll!”

Still Mr. Walker refused to budge, saying that everyone knew trolls only came out at night because they couldn’t bear the sun.

“That’s vampires, and anyway, when I came back across this bridge the sun had set.” Rage and Mr. Walker were still arguing when she heard the sound of boots marching along the cobbles. Knowing there was no time to waste, she snatched him up, ran across the bridge, and pressed herself into a doorway on the other side, holding her hand over his mouth.

Not a moment too soon. A pair of black-clad men marched purposefully along the canal and crossed the bridge. Mr. Walker ceased his struggles and began to tremble in her arms as the men approached. Rage stroked his head and listened intently. She caught a snatch of the conversation and was elated to hear one of them speak of prisoners. It was too good an opportunity to miss. She set Mr. Walker down and hurried after them, leaving him to follow or not. The blackshirts walked so fast, she almost had to run to keep up. She prayed they would not hear her. Luckily, they were deep in conversation. Even so, Rage stayed close to the walls, darting from alcove to alcove and across bridges swiftly and lightly, prepared to freeze if either man glanced back.

Then, without warning, she lost sight of them.

The men had been striding along a broad street beside a canal. They had not passed any bridges, though there were a lot of tiny lanes running off to the left. Rage guessed the men had turned into one of them. She stopped and listened but could hear nothing other than her own wildly beating heart.

She went on cautiously, stopping to peer down every lane. They were all empty. A chilling thought struck her: what if the guards had become aware of her and were hiding somewhere, waiting to grab her?

Mr. Walker caught up, puffing hard. “I don’t like the smells here,” he whispered.

Rage swallowed her own rising panic. “Can you smell anyone hiding nearby?”

He sniffed in all directions, then began to sniff his way along the stones of a narrow lane. He stopped at the corner of another street.

“What is it?” Rage hissed. “Did they go this way?”

He didn’t answer her at once. He began sniffing the building on their right—a tower like the others, except for the door, which looked new and very solid, its lever gleaming as if it had been polished.

“Do you smell that they went in there?” Rage prompted. The building was surely too small to be a prison.

Mr. Walker looked up at Rage in triumph. “I smell them! Billy Thunder and Elle.”

Rage hugged herself in elation, but
finding
Billy and Elle was a long way from rescuing them.

“Their smell is not very strong,” Mr. Walker said. “I wouldn’t have noticed it at all if you hadn’t asked me to smell for someone hiding.”

Rage took a few steps back and looked up, deciding that the men she had been following must have gone inside the tower. There was a single lit window, about halfway up. She tried the door but couldn’t move the lever an inch. There was no way to get round the back of the building because it was built right up against the ones alongside.