Shadow Spell (17 page)

‘We're ‘ere!' Skerridge sounded ever so slightly amazed.

Nin turned her head to see life and movement and something like tall chimneys standing against the sky. Someone shouted.

‘Hilfian,' she sighed and finally closed her eyes to sleep.

Nin opened her eyes again, it was dark and she was safe and warm under a soft blanket of rabbit skins. There was a fire burning nearby and two red glows made a cosy light next to her bed. She was just trying to work out why they seemed familiar when someone said:

‘Jik?'

She pushed back the covers and sat up, leaning on her elbows.

‘Jik! I missed you.'

‘Mik yik tik.' Jik patted her arm with one dusty hand. It glittered in the dim light of his eyes.

‘You're all sparkly!' Nin yawned and flopped back down. ‘Rock crystals or something I s'pose.' The events of the last day began to filter back into her brain. ‘What happened to Floyd, is he all right?'

‘He's fine.' A shadow moved in the corner of the room and a light flickered into life. The yellow glow of the lamp showed her the face of an old black woman with bright blackberry eyes and fine white hair. She was
dressed in a shapeless cotton dress with a shawl around her shoulders.

‘Doctor Mel says all he needs is thawing out, a good meal or two and a rest. It takes a lot to kill a goblin-Grimm.' The old woman got busy over the fire in the middle of the room, setting a kettle and a pan of porridge on a griddle on top of the flames to cook.

Outside, beyond the dark walls, Nin could hear the sound of people coming and going.

‘This is Hilfian, right? What time is it and who …'

‘I'm Hen. You're with me because I'm the town witch and everyone else is spooked by the mudman.' The old woman chuckled. ‘Dunno how you did that, girl, but it was a fine job.'

‘Yik.' Jik looked suitably smug about things, making Nin laugh.

‘And yes, this is Hilfian. It's late morning and you've been asleep for three hours. The town is up and about, so I sealed the door to give you some peace and quiet.'

Nin sat up, pushed the blanket back and stretched, rubbing her eyes. She felt warm and clean and noticed that someone, probably Hen, had taken off her jeans and jacket. She got out of bed, and spotted her clothes in a tidy heap in the corner.

‘You can wash your face in this,' said Hen, pouring water from the kettle into a bowl.

By now the pan of porridge was bubbling and while Hen sorted out bowls, plates and mugs for tea, Nin pulled on her jeans and took a look around. Set against
the curving wall she saw a water barrel, a bucket of what looked disturbingly like blood, a bulging sack, and a twig broom. Apart from the fire and the cooking things, that was about it.

Seeing that Nin was dressed, Hen went to open the door. It wasn't that simple. The walls of the hut were of mud and the door was a wedge of plant-life, the stalks so thickly interwoven they made a dense curtain. At the edges of the curtain, the stalks had grown into the wall, sealing the entrance shut. Hen had to cut an opening using a knife.

‘Crowsmorte,' she said, seeing Nin's look. ‘Thank Crow for it. Useful for pretty much anything. Smear a drop or two of blood on it and the opening just seals up again.'

With the door open, bright morning sun fell in, lighting the earth walls to a rich loamy brown dotted here and there with a crowsmorte bloom. Nin went to get her first look at Hilfian, Jik followed her and they both settled on a bench by the door.

Hen's hut was near the centre of the town, not far from a well where people came and went with buckets of water. A range of lumpy constructions clustered around the well – the hut being one of them – all built from the mud of the Land and all covered in grass and wild flowers. Some of them ran into one another, like a long hill with holes for doors.

‘Don't they melt in the rain?' asked Nin, leaning to look back into the hut where Hen was dishing up.

Hen laughed. ‘Oh no, not if they have a good coat of grass. It drinks the water, see. Plus, its web of roots holds the mud together so that even in a real downpour the walls stay up.'

As well as people, both Quick and Grimm, wiry goats and skinny chickens ran all over the place, bleating and clucking. And there were mudmen too, trundling by, usually carrying something balanced on their heads. These mudmen weren't alive, like Jik. They were just Land Magic, mindless things created to do the bidding of their maker, and although it was Jik who was the exception, Nin thought it was the normal ones that were creepy.

There was a feeling of anxious movement about the place. The people hurrying to and fro didn't seem to be doing much. Knots of folk clustered here and there, talking. Probably about Strood and the spreading Raw.

Then Nin saw the bees, the same fist-sized ones she had seen on their way here. The low-flying ones hummed past, swerving round the townsfolk as they went about their business. High above, more of them flew to and fro in swarms. The sound was everywhere, like fuzzy background music. Now she saw that the strange, chimney-like things she had seen on her arrival were the hives. They were golden, shining in the sun, and stood on tall stilts that reared over the town. Their light reflected on the towering cliff of the Raw that loomed in the background, giving the mist a yellow glow.

‘It's beautiful,' said Nin, and meant it. It made her sad to think that this wonderful and strange place was waiting on the edge of destruction.

‘Here.' Hen held out a bowl of hot porridge with a dollop of honey in it and a spoon, then sat next to her.

‘If you're the town witch,' Nin said cautiously, after a few mouthfuls, ‘you'll know lots about magic and spells, right? So I was wondering if you could help me work out what this does.' She held out her arm. ‘I found it in Dark's Mansion.'

Hen nodded. ‘Hmmm, spotted it when I put you to bed. Powerful.' The old woman shook her head. ‘Many have tried finding Dark before, you know. Some people think it's like a challenge, or a promise. That finding him will somehow stop the death of the Land.'

Nin remembered the skeletons in Dark's Mansion. She sighed, feeling sorry for them.

‘Look,' said Hen. ‘Truth is, the Drift has been dying ever since the plague killed the Fabulous. Strood is only speeding up the end. You think that Dark will be able to stop him, but what exactly do you think can be done? Dark may be a sorcerer, but Strood is immortal.'

Nin put down her empty bowl and leaned to pick up the mug of honey tea that Hen had set down by her foot.

‘Reverse the spell that separated Strood from his Death,' she said. ‘Then he'd be mortal again, right? There must be a way of … of putting the Maug back into him. That's what he calls his Death,' she added by
way of explanation, ‘the Maug. It's like a big shaggy-dog thing made of darkness.' She shuddered, remembering.

Hen's bright eyes watched her closely. ‘It took seven sorcerers to make that spell. Do you think that one will be powerful enough to undo the work of seven?'

Nin stopped halfway to a sip of her tea and turned a serious face towards Hen. ‘I didn't think of that. But we have to try, we can't just sit here and watch death racing towards us.'

Hen nodded. ‘Anyway, there's an answer.' She leaned towards Nin. ‘Spells that work against the grain of nature always need more power than spells that work with it.'

‘And people are meant to die, so putting his death back into him should be a whole lot easier than taking it out?'

‘Exactly.' Hen chuckled. ‘So keep on trying. There's hope yet.'

Finishing her tea, Nin put down the mug. ‘I want to talk some more about Dark later, if that's OK, but can I see Jonas first?'

There was a moment of silence. Jik sent Hen an anxious glance.

‘I want to see Jonas,' said Nin again, a trickle of fear stealing into her heart. ‘Seth is here, so Jonas must be.' For the first time she wondered why he hadn't been part of her rescue party in the Raw.

Hen seemed about to speak, but changed her mind as a shadow fell across them. It was Seth. He must have heard what Nin had said, for he looked worried. His
green eyes fastened on hers.

‘I'm sorry, Nin. I asked Hen not to tell you until I could see you myself. I thought I should explain.'

Nin felt the chill inside her deepen as Jik moved to let Seth sit beside her.

‘I don't know how to say this, Nin,' sighed Seth, ‘but I'm afraid Jonas is dead.'

‘There was nothing I could do, it was all over by the time I got out of the lake and back to the mansion,' Seth told her. ‘Dark must have had a trap set to go off when anyone left by the front door. Of course, Jonas would have been in such a hurry to get out, to find you, that he didn't stop to check.'

‘It doesn't make sense,' said Nin patiently, her head spinning as she tried to take it all in. ‘Why set a trap to go off when someone's
leaving
?' She was trembling all over and the tears were close.

Seth shrugged. ‘Let's face it, Dark knew that most people who got in would never get out again, they'd get lost, or torn up by the lions. But if they were lucky enough to find their way out, then the trap would zap them as they left. A last way to make sure nobody stole the spell.'

‘That's cruel,' said Nin coldly, feeling a stab of hate for Simeon Dark. After all, he was a sorcerer, just like all the others. Selfish, arrogant and careless of the Quick lives he could shatter with a word.

‘It was a lightning-spell,' Seth was saying. ‘There wasn't much of him left by the time I got there, he …'

‘Then it wasn't him,' said Nin firmly. Relief swept through her and she smiled, almost laughed. ‘He got away somehow, the remains must have been someone else, see?'

Seth looked thrown for a moment, then gathered himself. ‘Nin, I understand how hard this is, but I think you have to face facts. It was Jonas, I know.'

‘You can't
know
unless you were there,' said Nin.

For a flicker of a moment, Seth's eyes slipped away from hers, but she was so filled with gladness that Jonas wasn't dead, she didn't notice.

‘You only think it was him because it seems logical,' she went on. ‘It's all …' she hunted for a word, ‘circumstantial!' she finished triumphantly.

Seth nodded in a distracted way. He looked bemused. The conversation was clearly going in a different direction from the one he'd imagined, the one where Nin sobbed her heart out and clung to him for comfort.

‘But I'm sure as I can be, Nin,' he said. He hesitated as if he'd planned something further to say, but wasn't sure he should say it. ‘I feel guilty. It should have been me dead, smashed to bits when the Dark Thing dropped me, but somehow …'

Nin patted his hand comfortingly. ‘Don't worry, Seth. I don't blame you for thinking he was dead. And if you'd realised it wasn't Jonas, you'd have stayed to find him, I'm sure. As it is, he'll get here somehow, I know Jonas.'

The corner of Seth's mouth twitched downwards and for a second she thought it was anger because she wouldn't believe him. Then he smiled.

‘You're something else,' he said, his green eyes glinting with humour. ‘I admire your faith, girl. You'll find out the truth in time, eh.'

When he had gone, Hen took Nin out to see the town. It was bustling with life. According to the old woman, most of it didn't live there. Hilfian had been falling apart as years passed and more and more Quick left the dying Land to take their chances in the Widdern. Suddenly, that was changing again.

‘For the last couple of days,' explained Hen, ‘Quick, Grimm and even a couple of Fabulous have been rolling in from all over the Drift, chased here by the spreading Raw or by Strood's guards raiding their homes.'

Nin could see it as she looked about her. Hilfian was filling up with worried folk, all looking for company, help, and maybe a plan.