Keeper of the Realms: Crow's Revenge (Book 1) (22 page)

With a loud cracking noise and a powerful boom, the Portal snapped shut. The force of Charlie’s Will, now unfocused, sent her ricocheting across the room. With a thud, she crashed against the far wall, then rebounded into a tangled heap on the floor.

‘You idiot!’ screamed Stix.

Beside him Stones was raging. The Delightful Brothers weren’t happy.

‘You incompetent fool! Look what you’ve done! I can’t believe you opened a Portal right in a fountain! What were you thinking?’

With murder in his eye, Stix stalked forward.

‘Well, what did you expect, you chumps?’ screamed back Charlie. She was fed up with being bullied, fed up with being pushed and prodded around and, what’s more, she felt exhausted after opening the Portal. ‘It’s the first time I’ve ever done that! How was I to know that that was going to happen? Besides, did you not say to Stones: “What’s the worst that can happen?” So surely some of this blame lies with you. Perhaps you should have taught me better! So stop bullying me and leave me alone! I’m wet, tired and hungry! I’ve worked all day long with my arms stuck in hot stinking vats and I’ve had to sleep in a room full of creepy-crawlies, so if you think you could do better under the circumstances go ahead!’

Such was the anger and rage coming from Charlie that
Stix actually stopped in his tracks to stare at her. With a sudden start, Charlie realized he wasn’t exactly looking at her, rather he was staring at her hands. Looking down, she was stunned to see they were still giving off a soft golden glow. Stix nervously licked his lips as though he was threatened by what he saw. As the Delightful Brothers gazed at Charlie, it took her a few slow seconds to realize that, in their odd sort of way, they were giving her a touch more respect. As though she could one day, given time and training, become someone to fear.

‘Oh, my sweet chops!’ wailed a voice in the distance. ‘Where did all this water come from? What in Bellania is going on here?’

Charlie sat upright. The glow in her hands extinguished as she looked up at the Delightful Brothers and around at the soggy, partly flooded room.

‘That sounds like one of the Alavisian Watchmen,’ growled Stones. ‘We’d better get out of here. I’d hate to have to explain to Mother how we managed to ruin one of her halls.’

‘You’re right, let’s go,’ agreed Stix. Beckoning Charlie over, he headed for the nearest doorway.

As Charlie hurried after the two brothers, she gazed at the mirror in passing. Had she really done that? Had she really just opened a Portal to London?

‘Hurry up, brat!’

Hastening from the room, Charlie had to duck as two lost and wayward pigeons nearly knocked her on the head as they frantically flapped across the dining room in the near-darkness.

28

The Morning After

Eager to avoid getting caught, the Delightful Brothers ran back down the winding passageways with Charlie held between them. Tearing open the bolted doorway to the cattle pens, they threw her inside and scampered off. No doubt, thought Charlie, to make themselves look as innocent as possible.

Lying there in the dark, she raged at her predicament. How had she ended up in this situation? How was she going to escape from this cursed tower? Picking herself up, she stomped her way up and down the room – squishing hundreds of bugs at the same time – cursing her bad luck.

A sudden idea wormed its way past her angry thoughts of escape and stopped her dead in her tracks. What did fate matter when she’d just opened some sort of a Gateway to London? What did they call it … a Portal! She’d opened a Portal. She could do magic!

A thick grin slowly blossomed across her face.

Magic!

Ignoring the rustles and scamperings, scuttlings and scurryings of the many long-legged creepy-crawlies that
infested the cattle pens, Charlie immediately began to practise.

‘So tell me, what news?’ ‘My lord, the Lady consented to your offer,’ said the Shade, rubbing itself cat-like against Bane’s massive leg.

‘Of course she did.’

‘But, my lord, she has requested the gold and rubies as a down payment. She will not part with the child until then.’

‘Bah! Gold and jewels are nothing to me. I have no use for such trinkets. Power is what truly matters. Power and might are the only things worth caring about. Financial seductions are only for the spineless, weak and worthless,’ growled Bane.

With a sweeping wave of his hand he sent a trickle of sapphires, rubies, emeralds and diamonds tumbling to the floor.

‘Give the money-hungry woman what she desires. I care not. Just bring me the squirming maggot of a girl. This matter is dragging on far too long for my liking. Take a full pack of your siblings, make sure the deal proceeds
and ensure that nothing goes wrong. I wish to have that writhing, scurrying wisp of a girl and the pendant under my control by tomorrow’s last bell. Now go, for I must discuss weighty matters with my God.’

Bane watched as the Shade silently and sinuously writhed off to do his bidding. No doubt the matter would be finished and finished soon. With luck he would be sucking on squishy young Keeper bone marrow and gnawing on stringy ligament and cartilage in no time at all.

Rising from his seat on the Devouring Throne, Bane made his way to the rear of the Throne Room. Passing into a concealed shadowy tunnel, he went to greet his source of power. His Dark God.

‘No, Mother, we don’t know how the Lower Dining Room came to be in such a mess,’ said Stones for perhaps the ninth time that afternoon. ‘It was probably the chef, drunk out of his mind and just causing trouble. You know how he favours the cooking sherry.’

Lady Narcissa eyed her two wayward sons. She didn’t really believe a word they were saying, but without proof it all amounted to nothing. Oh, she trusted them all right, trusted them with her very life, but it was the little things that she had to look out for. Some days she still thought they hadn’t managed to grow up at all. Big kids was what they were. But dangerous, lethal kids.

‘So if you knew nothing about it why weren’t the two of you in your quarters when I came looking?’

‘Because we’d already heard the alarm. We had gone to investigate,’ said Stix. ‘That’s our job, isn’t it, to protect your safety at all times?’

‘Hhmpf!’ sniffed Lady Narcissa. She still wasn’t buying their excuse, but neither was she all that annoyed. She loved her sons. As ugly and as mean-spirited as they were, they were completely loyal and for that she could forgive them almost anything. ‘Oh well, I’ll guess we’ll just have to find a scapegoat or two … Go and grab a couple of servants and behead them. That should set a good example to everyone else. After all, we can’t have people thinking I’ve gone soft, can we?’

‘No, Mother,’ murmured the Delightful Brothers in unison. They were only too glad to be off the hook.

‘Good. Right, then, what time is it?’

‘Three o’clock,’ replied Stones.

‘Hmm, the Shade is due at midnight. Just think, nine more hours until we’re rich. Rich beyond our wildest dreams! Stix, I want you to put the Keeper brat back to work in the Spinnery, and Stones, I want you to concentrate on security. Between now and tonight nothing must go wrong. Now, enough with the talking. Get to it!’

29

The Breakout

Charlie was in a foul mood.

She hadn’t been able to sleep last night, not even a wink. She had tried for hours to open another Portal but got almost nowhere. The best she had been able to do was make her hands glow, giving off that strange golden light. Which was, she admitted to herself, kind of cool. But the downside was that when she did it for too long she got a pounding headache, the kind that throbbed and pulsed painfully behind her eyelids. Exhausted, she had tried to sleep, but guilty thoughts of Kelko and Jensen had kept her awake. After yesterday’s confrontation on the drawbridge she doubted they would ever want to see her again. It hurt her to think that she had treated her friends so shamefully.

Eventually, she had abandoned all thoughts of sleep and decided to practise her K’Changa instead. And that was how Stix found her, slipping from K’Changa pose to pose, flipping and tumbling and leaving a trail of squashed insects in her wake.

And now, once again, she was back at the vats, working her arms until they were stiff and her lower back cried out
in protest. But unlike yesterday she had no friendly companion. When Aranea found Charlie and Melita laughing together she banished Melita to work with the cotton bales, leaving Charlie to heave great armloads of silks and threads into the slippery, stinking dye all by herself.

Pulling a face, Charlie spread another pile of threads over the drying racks. ‘Stinking tower,’ she grumbled. She stomped her way back over to the vats. ‘Stupid bracelets.’ She slapped in another load. ‘The Delightful Brothers are chumps, Narcissa’s a witch and Aranea is nothing more than a greedy idiot!’ She stamped her foot as her fury grew to an almost uncontrollable level. ‘Got to get out of here,’ she muttered to herself. ‘Got to get out. Got to –’

Her cursing tumbled to a halt as her gaze fell upon the shelves with all the ingredients necessary to mix the dyes. An idea slowly began to swirl and take shape in her head.

She knew what the Isiris Bracelets were capable of and she knew how they stopped her escaping from the tower. But she knew that they didn’t stop her fighting back. Maybe that was a weakness she could exploit.

Charlie grinned as she looked first at the jar with the Firehaven Sourlax, then the Hyron stones and then at the threads drying on the racks. She was no longer just a girl trapped in a tower. She was more than that.

She was a girl with a plan.

The Delightful Brothers approached Lady Narcissa.

‘Mother, it’s nearly time,’ rumbled Stones.

‘Good.’ The thought of Bane’s down payment arriving shortly caused her eyes to glitter. ‘Good indeed. Stix, go and grab the brat. I want her presentable for the Shades, so get her washed and put her in some new clothes. I don’t want any trouble from her, so take the ring with you too. Stones, I want you and the Alavisian Watchmen to go and greet the Shade, but don’t allow it entrance to the tower until you’re certain it has brought all of the payment. OK?’

‘Yes, Mother,’ chorused the brothers.

‘Excellent.’ She eyed her two sons with pride. ‘Now go and get it done.’

First checking the heft of his bow, Stones turned and trudged up the spiralling stairs to muster the Watchmen. Stix flexed his shoulders and, with the ring on his finger, descended into the lower levels to deal with Charlie Keeper.

Using a thick but scruffy pair of gloves that she had found next to the vats, Charlie dipped thread after thread into the Firehaven Sourlax. Standing on a stool, she began to hang them from the top of the doorframe, using the Hyron stones as weights to keep them fixed in place. Careful not to allow the soggy fibres to touch her, Charlie leaned back to admire her work.

The latch on the door lifted and Charlie, caught off guard, lost her balance and fell backwards. Fortunately a pile of unprocessed silks and cotton broke her fall. A round of vicious laughter caused her to look up. It was Stix and behind him stood Aranea.