Night Gate (21 page)

It reminded her of the Museum of Natural History.

Billy walked to the nearest pillar, and Rage tried to reach him. But she was too late. He gave an anguished cry and started back in horror. Rage was close enough now to see that there was a glassed-in box set into the pillar. A group of tiny, squirrel-like animals, all stuffed, stared blindly and pitifully out into the darkness.

“Mama!” Billy cried, falling to his knees.

Rage thought she heard something. “Wait here with Billy,” she whispered to Elle, and crept across the room with a thudding sense of fear. She heard a man’s voice, muffled as if through a thick wall.

“Are you sure we should not reconsider?”

Rage could not see any doors, but she heard footsteps. She crept around the pillars, searching until she found a stairwell. The voices grew louder. The speakers were coming up the stairs!

Rage darted behind the nearest pillar just as an old man emerged from the stairwell. He wore a white tunic edged in gold, like the man who had alighted from the litter at the door to the Willow Seat Tower. Maybe this was the High Keeper himself. Studying the man’s cold, haughty expression, his small, pouting mouth and glittering black eyes, she could easily imagine him demanding that a man or woman or child be tied to a raft and sent to a horrible death.

The keeper turned and spoke down the stairs: “I see no need to reconsider my decision, Hermani.” He had a beautiful, deep voice that compelled attention.

Another old man emerged from the stairwell, carrying a jar in which something dark floated. He wore a plain white tunic. “High One, it is just that we do not know what the beast is yet. That is why I—”

High One!
Niadne had referred to the High Keeper of Fork as the High One.

“It is a form of dog.”

Rage’s heart jumped into her throat. Surely they meant Bear.

“High One, there are aspects of the form that do not seem to fit into our list of canine characteristics. If this is a new species and we conserve it—”

“What is it that you want, Hermani?”

The other man hung his head. “To tell you the truth, High One, I don’t like to conserve things that might be saved. The creature is old but—”

“The longer she lives, the more trouble we will have in conserving her well. The coat will dull and become threadbare. The claws will blunt and perhaps fall out, not to mention the teeth. If it is a new species, there is all the more reason to conserve it at its peak. You saw the pelt. It is already considerably scarred.”

“Someone has ill-treated the poor beast.”

“Witch women,” the High Keeper hissed, eyes black and small with hate. “The blackshirts that brought it in said it was with two wild things. I will interrogate them myself.”

Rage shuddered at the thought of Elle and Billy in the clutches of the High Keeper.

“High One, the witch women would not ill-treat a true beast any more than they would harm one of their wild things. And why would they send it here, in any case?”

“I don’t like to hear you talking this way, Hermani,” the High Keeper said icily. “You should know by now that the witch women are capable of anything. They are a constant danger to the wizard’s Order, and our only hope that he will return to us lies in obedience to his will.”

“If he does not return soon, there will be no one to admire our obedience, High One.” He waved his arm. “All will be lost when the river reclaims Valley. Surely anything would be better than that. Perhaps if we approached the witch Mother—”

“Silence!” the High Keeper roared, and Hermani shrank from the fury contorting his master’s face. But the High Keeper smiled now, the change of expression so complete as to be terrifying.

He is quite mad,
Rage thought.

“Do not concern yourself with the river, Hermani,” the High Keeper said pleasantly. “Once Wildwood is emptied of blasphemy and witches…”

It seemed to Rage that Hermani forced himself to speak, though his voice quivered. “High One, forgive me, but in the last seven days the waters have risen rapidly. Some of the deeper blackshirt tunnels have become saturated and are in danger of collapsing. Even tonight there was a report that a tunnel running to the ferry pier had collapsed. Yet there is no magic in Wildwood for the witch folk to draw on. It cannot be their fault. Something else must be—”

“Enough,” the High Keeper thundered. “I am disappointed in you. Let us proceed with this conservation. I am weary. Another five minutes and the beast will no longer be alive for you to—”

Rage had been creeping steadily nearer the two men, and at these cold words a great fury rose up in her heart. She groped in her pocket for the slender pouch of witch’s dust and hurled the remainder of it as hard as she could at the two men.

They crumpled soundlessly, just as the blackshirts had done.

“Elle!” Rage cried. “Come and tie these two up and follow me! Billy, hurry before it’s too late!”

Not waiting to see if they obeyed, she hurtled down the steps, only to find herself in another huge room with more glass cases in pillars, except there were no windows in the walls, and it was brightly lit. There was a square hole in the floor, which must lead down to yet another level.

Then she saw that there was no need to go further.

Billy cannoned into her.

Incapable of words, Rage pointed to an enormous glass case set against the far wall and lit from above. Bear was inside it, lying on a bed with wheels. A tube from a metal tank fed into the side of the case, and a hissing noise filled the air.

“No!” Billy screamed. He lifted the metal tank with a deep-throated groan and heaved it at the glass case with all of his might. There was a tremendous shattering crash, and then the air filled with a sickly sweet smell. The hissing sound became louder.

“Hold your breath and let’s get her out of here!” Rage gasped.

Billy crunched over the broken glass and tried to shove the bed, but Bear’s bulk was too much for him to move alone.

“Elle!” Rage screamed.

The Amazon came running down the stairs. “It took me a while to find something to tie—” She paled at the sight of Bear.

Somehow they managed to get the unconscious Bear to the top of the stairs. Rage saw that Hermani had awakened. He said in a slurred but urgent voice, “You heard the bells before? It means someone has escaped the prisons. Blackshirts will pour through the tunnels into the conservatorium any minute, wanting instructions from the High Keeper.”

Ignoring him, Billy peered into Bear’s face and patted her loose jaw. She did not respond. Rage laid her head on the old dog’s chest with a feeling of dread and heard a heartbeat tap against her cheek. It sounded uneven and too slow, but it was there.

“She’s alive!”

Billy burst into tears and kissed Bear’s gray-flecked muzzle and forehead.

“You must listen to me,” Hermani cried frantically. “There is a chute over by where you came in. Under the pillar with the case of squirrels. The pillar can be pushed aside. It will bring you to a tunnel that lies below the network of blackshirt tunnels. It’s your only hope.”

“Why would you help us?” Rage demanded.

The keeper looked at his master, who had begun to stir. “Because I would save the beast,” he hissed, nodding at Bear. “Go, or it will be too late for all of you.”

“They’re coming,” Elle said. “I smell them.”

Rage could hear nothing, but she ran to the gleaming case with the stuffed squirrels and pushed on it. It slid aside with a faint sigh, and there was the promised chute.

“How can we trust that man after what he did to Mama?” Billy demanded.

“We have no choice. Help Bear down the chute, and you two go after her!” Rage commanded.

“What about you?”

“I’m coming, too, of course. Now go!”

Leaving them to drag Bear over to the chute, Rage ran back to the two keepers. The High Keeper’s eyes were fluttering. “How do I close the pillar back over the chute?” she demanded of Hermani.

“A lever on the underside of the case. Push it and you will have just enough time to jump through before the pillar moves back into place. Now go! He mustn’t know I helped you.”

Rage did not waste time on thanks. In seconds she was hurtling down a smooth chute in pitch darkness. At first the speed was terrifying, but then the tunnel leveled out and flattened so that eventually she simply slid to a halt.

Elle and Billy were leaning anxiously over Bear, but they looked up at Rage in puzzlement. She realized that the faint source of light that bathed them all was coming from her. Looking down, she was astonished to find her pocket glowing. Reaching in, she found the hourglass. It was warm to the touch and radiated a bright ruby light. How strange! She held it before her like a beacon and saw that the chute became a proper tunnel that ran away into the distance.

Bear started to retch and cough violently.

“Mama!” Billy turned his attention back to his mother.

The old dog struggled to sit. “Where are we? What has been happening?” she rasped.

“There’s no time to explain now,” Rage said. “We need to go on if you can.” They had to find Goaty and Mr. Walker, and they had to get out of the tunnel in case Hermani had betrayed them. After that, there was really nowhere to go but back over the river to the wild side—if they could get on the ferry.

“What did you do to it?” Billy asked, glancing at the glowing hourglass as they helped Bear to her feet.

“Nothing,” Rage said. “It did that on its own.” Was it possible that she had somehow invoked the wizard’s magic? Taking the hourglass and holding it high to light their way, she took the lead.

Billy’s mind must have been on the same track. “Maybe the hourglass gives wishes if you just think about something. Like the bramble gate tried to make us human after you wished for it. Did you want it to be light?”

“I don’t think I thought about light.”

“Try wishing for something new,” Elle suggested.

Rage doubted it would be that easy, but she said in a loud, formal voice, “Please take us to Goaty!” When nothing happened, she told the others what the firecat had said about the sand representing the wizard’s life.

“But it has almost run out,” Billy said, looking aghast.

Rage nodded. “I don’t think we can do anything to save the wizard, if what the firecat said is true. We can’t survive a trip down the River of No Return to find him.”

Elle, Billy, and even Bear stared at her. Rage remembered that she hadn’t told them about what Ania had shown her. So as they walked she explained all that had befallen her since they had parted in the park of stone trees.

“A waterfall,” Billy murmured. “But it must be possible to go down it safely, if the wizard went there.”

“He had magical powers to protect him,” Elle said.

“If the wizard could use his magical powers, he would have come back to get the hourglass and save himself,” Billy said. “That means he went down the river without magic.”

“We don’t know that. He might have got there some other way altogether. He might have even used a gate like the one that brought us here,” Rage said. “But
we
have only one way to get there, and that would kill us.”

“Maybe,” Billy said. Then he sighed. “Well, who knows what is true, anyway? The firecat might have lied about the sand showing how much time the wizard has to live. Before, it said the hourglass contained all that the wizard knew.”

“It might have lied about everything,” Rage said. “But I do believe it wants us to take the hourglass to the wizard. I just wish we knew why.”

They walked in silence for a while.

“When I was in that prison cell, I kept wondering why the firecat just didn’t magic itself to the wizard with the hourglass, like it magicked itself to us,” Elle said presently.

Rage was surprised—usually Elle wasn’t interested in thinking about things. But then again, she wasn’t usually stuck in jail.

“I was thinking about the firecat, too,” Billy said. “I don’t think it can magic itself anywhere. I think it only magics an image of itself to us. That’s why it won’t appear properly and wouldn’t unlock your door in the banding house. It can’t.”

“But if it’s not following us physically, how does it know where to send its image?” Rage asked. Then she stared at the glowing hourglass.

Billy nodded. “It has to contain some sort of spell that lets the firecat see us. It knows the hourglass is the one thing you wouldn’t lose or give away. You said yourself that it warned you to be careful not to break it.”

Rage did not know what to say. Any of their guesses could be right or completely wrong, depending on which part of the firecat’s story was true—if any. Rage’s thoughts went on turning this way and that, like the tunnel, never reaching any conclusion. When they came round a bend and found the way split into three identical tunnels, she felt it was a perfect symbol of their journey. Every question to do with the wizard and the firecat led only to more questions.

Now that they had stopped, Rage was alarmed to hear how raggedly Bear was breathing. “Let’s rest for a bit while we decide which way to go,” she said lightly. It was a measure of Bear’s exhaustion that she did not even argue. She slumped to the ground, and when Billy lifted her head onto his lap, she did not push him away.

Rage turned to Elle. “What can you smell down the tunnels?”

Elle sniffed the first. “Buildings, people, and metal.” She sniffed the second. “Flowers, trees, earth…” She frowned. “Animals, too, but their smell is old and faded, as if they were there once but have long gone. I smell…sadness.”

She turned her attention to the third tunnel. “Water,” she said. “And something else…I don’t know what it is. I’ve never smelled it before. It makes me want to sneeze.”

She turned to Rage expectantly.

“I don’t know what to do,” Rage admitted. “I thought it was hopeless to try to find the wizard, once I saw the waterfall. But maybe I was wrong about the riddle. Maybe it means something completely different.”

“Well, we can’t stay in the city,” Elle said. “Those blackshirts will be looking everywhere for us.”

“Especially since we stole Mama out from under their noses,” Billy said. “The High Keeper will want to know how we escaped.”