Quest for the Sun Gem (3 page)

Ethan was about to return to the kitchen when a thought occurred to him. He grabbed a pitchfork from the wall.

‘Go on, Lily. I’ll come in just a moment. There is something I need to do.’

Back in the kitchen, Marnie had a pile of cloaks
and satchels ready for them. She had taken the pot from the stove and filled two pails with the steaming porridge, sealing them with tightly wedged lids.

‘Take this, my darlings,’ Marnie whispered. ‘Go to the tree house and stay hidden. Go by the stream and fields, and stay away from the paths. I will try to come for you there. If I have not come in three days, then you must go to your aunt’s and I will find you there.’ She paused and the children saw tears in her eyes.

‘Remember that your father and I love you both with all our hearts and we will always watch over you.’

Ethan and Lily hugged their mother in a wordless, hot, desperate embrace, thick tears choking their throats and making it impossible to see or breathe. Marnie looked carefully at each one of her children in turn, branding their faces into her memory. She dreaded that she might never see them again.

First Ethan – a strong, handsome boy of fourteen summers, with a crooked left eyebrow like his father, and light brown hair with a fine strand of white hair growing at the temple. She touched the pale white tuft with her fingertips and smiled. ‘My blessed boy,’ she murmured.

Next Marnie stroked her daughter’s face. Lily was a year younger than her brother. She was a sunny, happy girl, always singing and dancing about her work. A pretty girl, as agile as a monkey, with long unruly, honey blonde hair, just like Marnie’s own. Both had the same chocolate brown eyes, now clouded with strain and nerves. ‘My beautiful girl.’

‘I love you, Mama,’ whispered Lily into her mother’s shoulder. Ethan bit his lip sharply. Finally Marnie pushed them both away from her with a shudder.

‘May the Moon Goddess bless you both and keep you safe,’ she whispered. ‘Now hurry.’

Marnie shouldered her pack and set off to the royal hunting lodge to find her wounded husband – and the enemy.

Outside the kitchen door, Ethan quickly strapped the packs across Moonbeam’s back. Lily climbed up into the saddle, while Ethan passed her the pails of thick hot porridge. Then he scrambled up in front of her and they galloped off with Aisha at their heels, through the garden, thick with the scent of lavender and roses, past the barn and into the meadow towards the forest.

At the edge of the meadow, they opened the gate to the forest, hoping the animals would find their way to freedom. Behind them they could hear the bustle and shouts as the villagers planned their escape.

The village bell began to ring wildly again, signalling greater danger. The Sedah must have reached Kenley.

Ethan was about to turn Moonbeam’s head straight into the welcoming darkness of the forest when he remembered Sniffer and the hunt for the princess. He and Lily were now riding the royal horse and Sniffer would be tracking them instead.

He urged the reluctant pony across the meadow again and down into the shallow stream. With much kicking, clicking and encouragement Moonbeam splashed her way slowly along the stream, sliding and slipping on the smooth river pebbles. They felt as if they were a very visible target on the bright white horse, but at least they were not leaving any tracks.

Lily and Ethan both heaved a sigh of relief when the stream left the sunlit meadows and meandered up into the dark, safe forest. They grinned weakly at each other.

Ethan’s eyes scanned back across the meadows to the village for any sign of the invaders. He could see nothing, though he could hear faint screams now and a distant clash of steel. He resolutely closed his ears to the sound and turned his face forward to the job ahead.

‘First we should wend our way in a roundabout route to the tree house and store our packs, then I will go to get the princess while you stay at the tree,’ Ethan instructed.

‘I’ll come with you,’ Lily argued. ‘I should check how badly she is injured before we move her. You know how dangerous it can be to move someone if they are badly hurt.’ Ethan grunted at this and urged Moonbeam on, further up the stream into the forest.

After a few more minutes, they left the stream and climbed up the bank, out of the valley and up the thickly wooded side of a hill. Aisha slipped beside them as silent as a wraith, her legs and belly dark with water. Willem had trained her to hunt quickly and quietly.

The first flowers of spring thrust their blooms up through the dark mulch of rotting leaves and moss. Birds twittered from the branches of the trees surrounding them. Their nostrils filled with the deep, warm scent of rich earth, pungent mulch, tangy leaves and fresh air.

On the ridge was a huge ancient tree, its branches spreading up to the sky. Here Ethan and Lily had built a tree house to play with their friends. The tree was easy to climb with plenty of footholds.

High in its branches was a platform of rough
hewn planks. A patched roof and walls sheltered it from the rain and wind. Here Ethan and Lily had hidden in their free time to play knuckles or cards with their friends, read books or daydream about faraway adventures.

They tethered Moonbeam at the base of the tree. Aisha flopped down into the soft mulch at the bottom of the tree, while Ethan and Lily nimbly climbed up one-handed, carrying their packs and pails.

They dumped their bundles and spread out the cloaks. The smell of the warm porridge made their stomachs rumble.

‘So now for the princess,’ Lily exclaimed. ‘I hope she’s still there. We can eat when we get back.’ Ethan stared longingly at the pails but simply nodded and swung his legs over the side of the platform for the climb down.

‘We will need to be careful,’ Ethan said. ‘There may be soldiers travelling back and forth along the track between Kenley and the hunting lodge. And we need to try to hide our tracks. I don’t like the idea of that Sniffer breathing down our necks. He gives me the creeps!’

At that moment Sniffer was outside the gate of Lily and Ethan’s cottage. Around him Sedah soldiers rampaged, searching houses, barns and chicken coops for hidden people, animals and valuables. Any villagers found – though the Sedahs found fewer people than they expected – were rounded up ignominiously and herded into the largest storehouse for guarding.

Sniffer ignored the chaos and screams around him. He fingered Moonbeam’s hoofprints in the soft earth outside the fence, quietly snuffling to himself. He picked up and sniffed a tiny tuft of white hair that had caught on the rough timber of the fence, where Moonbeam had rubbed her itchy cheek.

Sniffer opened the gate and, crouching, almost on hands and knees, crawled down the front path. Moonbeam’s hoof had dislodged a fresh wedge of moss from a crack, and the metal horseshoe had left a white scratch on the red brick path. Sniffer carefully followed the clues – a broken twig of lavender, a crushed sprig of thyme, a hoofprint in a moist patch of earth.

The trail led around the back of the pretty stone cottage, pausing at the kitchen door, then down through the back garden past the vegetable garden,
beehives, chicken pen, barn and orchard, down to the back gate and into the meadow.

Here the hoofprints were deeper and further apart. The horse had been galloping. Sniffer smiled to himself and started to lope across the meadow, easily following the swathe of bent and trodden grass the horse had left as it galloped through the fresh spring growth. This would be easy – like taking candy from a babe. The infidel princess would soon be in his hands, and Governor Lazlac would be pleased with him – very pleased.

Moonbeam’s hoofprints were easily seen on the bank of the stream. Sniffer smiled again. He squatted beside the trail. There, clearly marked in the mud, was the pawprint of a dog. A large dog. Sniffer ran his hand lovingly over his knife. He would make short work of that dog, no matter how big it was. He snuffled in pleasure.

He stood up and moved down the bank. He carefully forded the stream and searched the bank on the other side. Nothing. He frowned momentarily. He looked upstream. Nothing. He looked downstream. Nothing. His experienced eyes scanned the stream floor. Wait. A small boulder upstream looked like it may have been dislodged.

Sniffer set off upstream towards the forest, wading slowly and carefully through the gurgling water, his eyes peeled for the tiniest sign of his quarry.

Princess Roana was still lying under Ethan’s cloak and a coverlet of leaves and branches, the dagger beside her. She was dozing fitfully, shivering with cold and shock. The sour smell of vomit emanated from beside her. Blood still oozed from a wound on the side of her head, matting the golden ringlets into brownish clumps. Her face was streaked with tears.

Lily wrinkled her nose.

‘She’s vomiting, perhaps she is concussed,’ Lily murmured, running her hands over the princess’s head, neck, back and legs. Lily had helped her mother tend to the sick and injured, and had been learning the skills of the healer since she could toddle behind Marnie’s skirts.

‘She has a nasty gash on the back of her head and quite a deep cut on her arm,’ Lily listed. ‘Lots of scratches and bruises, and the ankle is very swollen. But nothing seems to be broken.’

Princess Roana moaned and her eyelids fluttered
open, blue eyes staring around her in bewilderment.

Ethan and Lily hoisted the barely conscious princess up into Moonbeam’s saddle. Lily climbed up behind her to hold her in the saddle. Ethan and Aisha padded along behind. Ethan walked backwards, gently ruffling the leaves with a fallen branch to disguise their tracks.

At the tree house, Ethan and Lily worked together to pull Princess Roana up the tree. The princess did little to help them and she did not speak, crying out only when she was unexpectedly jarred.

By the time they reached the top and all three had collapsed on the tree house floor, the princess’s lips and teeth were smeared with blood from biting against the pain. Ethan made a bed for Princess Roana from the cloaks, with some spare clothes rolled into a pillow, while Lily bathed the princess’s wounds and scratches in water scented with lavender oil.

Lily then carefully removed the princess’s high-heeled white leather boots. The princess winced as the leather peeled away from the swollen, angry ankle. Lily bathed it in icy cold stream water, then bound it tightly in bandages and propped it up on one of the satchels as a pillow.

Lily spooned some white willow bark decoction into Princess Roana’s mouth, then bathed her brow and neck in lavender-scented water.

‘This will help you sleep,’ Lily murmured.

Princess Roana bore all this silently, but at the mention of sleep she suddenly pushed Lily’s hand away with a peremptory gesture.

‘I cannot rest now! Tell me, girl, what is the news of my father, the king?’ she commanded.

Lily froze, her cheeks blanching. ‘My brother said your father died in the attack this morning. I’m sorry.’

Roana bit her lip sharply, struggling with her emotions.

‘And the queen and Prince Caspar?’ she demanded coldly.

‘They have been taken prisoner by the Sedahs with the others who were at the ceremony,’ Lily replied in a low voice.

‘I see. And you should address me as “your highness” when you speak to me. That will be all.’ Roana turned her face away to the wall, only her trembling hands giving away any sign of emotion.

Lily blushed furiously at this rebuke and busied herself stirring the porridge.

‘Your highness, would you like something to eat? It might make you feel better.’

The princess took a mouthful of warm porridge, then gagged and spat it out in disgust.

‘What is that foul gruel?’ she snapped peevishly. ‘I cannot eat food that is fit only for pigs. Take it away.’ She turned her back on them and grumbled as she tried to make herself comfortable on her rough bed.

‘Sorry, your highness, but we are all out of roast peacock today,’ retorted Ethan softly. The princess deigned not to hear him.

Lily laughed silently and pulled a face at Ethan. Together they sat cross-legged on the floor to eat their own porridge.

‘A hot cup of tea would be lovely with this but we daren’t light a fire,’ Lily whispered.

‘I wish I knew what was going on,’ replied Ethan. ‘I wonder if Mama and Dadda are all right. What are we going to do? We can’t just sit here and wait. We must do something!’

‘Mama said we were to stay here, hiding, until she came for us. Besides, we have to look after her.’ Lily shrugged over her shoulder at the silent princess.

Ethan scowled, shoulders hunched as he dug into the platform with the blade of his dagger.

Back in Kenley, a soldier in black armour reported to Captain Malish that a group of villagers had been seen skulking off into the forest following a huge man with a black beard.

‘Get me Sniffer,’ bellowed Captain Malish. ‘I want him to track those villagers and bring them back to me – on the double!’

‘Sniffer’s gone, sir,’ murmured the unfortunate soldier. ‘He was seen splashing down the stream following some scent or other.’

‘Well, get after him and get him back here immediately. I want those villagers caught. Understand?’

‘Yes, sir,’ saluted the soldier, racing after the mysterious Sniffer as fast as he could.