Shadow Spell (19 page)

Stanley snorted. ‘It's a big bovver to those of us wiv lungs!'

Jibbit yawned and settled down, opening his stubby wings so that they lay at right angles to his back. It helped with keeping his balance and judging by the foamy water dashing ahead, balance was going to be very necessary. Which was fine, because he was good at balance.

Evil Kid settled next to him, eyes glittering in the depths of its hood. ‘So, when are we going?'

Stanley looked back. His raft was filled to capacity,
every square inch lined with rippled golden fur – currently rather foul-smelling and miserable. In some places they were lying two deep. Behind this raft was another, also filled to capacity and watched over by one of the other guards. Still further up-river, Dunvice and Lord Greyghast were busy shepherding the next batch of whining tiger-men on to the third raft. Beyond that, Hathor was Grimm-handling the fourth raft into position. And so on.

‘Now,' said Stanley as calmly as he could, and cut the rope that tethered the raft to sanity.

Trailing behind Hen and Jik as they walked across the town, Nin found herself lingering to stare. To her right, the view beyond the edge of Hilfian was masked by the wall of Raw, its chilly fingers reaching into the blue sky where they hung, unmoving in the still air. Horrible though it was, Nin knew that it gave Hilfian a protecting wall to hide behind. At least they knew Strood's army wouldn't come that way.

In the other direction were hills, rising in steep mounds of purple and green. At their foot, between them and the town, stretched fields of clover and buttercups. To the south the hills dipped and Nin could make out the green blur of a wood. This wood was the town's weak spot, the point where Strood could break through. So this was where they needed to build their defences. Even now, pits were being dug in the fields. Set with stakes and covered with grass matting, they would make a fine trap.

Since Taggit's arrival, the town had exploded with busy life. People ran to and fro carrying shovels, lengths
of wood, water and food for the workers. A goblin-Grimm blacksmith had set up a sharpening service and was working his way through an armoury of knives, scythes, pitchforks and a few things Nin couldn't name.

Right in front of the town hall was a stretch of open land, where (according to Hen) market stalls selling chickens, chestnut flour, honey and household goods usually stood. Now it was full of men shaping wood into rough stakes. They were laughing at a joke one of them was telling, something to do with why there were never any bogeymen-Grimm. Nin tried to listen. It sounded rude and she wasn't sure she understood it anyway, so she gave up and hurried after Hen instead.

The town hall was the only wooden structure in Hilfian and even this had a grown-together look about it, with leaves sprouting from its walls and daisies nodding in the mud packed between rough-cut boards. Next to it was a bell tower, built of mud on a skeleton of branches and joined to the town hall roof by a rope bridge.

Inside, the large hall was being turned into a hospital by Doctor Mel, a dark-haired woman with a warm smile that Nin remembered from blurry images of early that morning. She was giving crisp orders to a group of older women as they put together makeshift beds, and gathered bandages, bottles of bee venom (a wonderful painkiller, said Hen) and pots of healing crowsmorte paste. Hilary was there too and she broke off long enough to come over and say hello.

The town hall had a cellar, a dug-out room of bare, packed earth. In it, around the walls and piled on top of an old table, was stacked a collection of magical devices, brought in by the townsfolk. Jik immediately set to rummaging through them, finding out what they did and how they worked. It was a job nobody else wanted because it could be dangerous and they would all rather keep as many of their body parts attached as they possibly could. For the present anyway.

Leaving him to work, Nin and Hen went back outside. Nin's job, said Hen, was to help her make Land Magic. They settled outside on the green, close to the town hall and got to work.

Being busy helped because Nin was worried about Jonas. She didn't doubt that he was still alive. He
had
to be, but she missed him and wondered where he was. She had decided to allow a day here in Hilfian before she went on with her search for Dark, partly to talk to Hen and see if she could help, but mainly to wait for Jonas. Also, she felt a kind of responsibility for the townsfolk of Hilfian. Strood was attacking them because of her, so maybe she should stay and help. And anyway, she had no idea where to look for Dark next. He could just as easily be here as anywhere else. So she would stay for a day, help the town prepare and find out anything useful that she could. Then move on tomorrow, hopefully with Jik if not with Jonas to help her.

Hen started her Land Magic with heaps of silvery dust – dried-out silt dredged up from the river bed. She
organised it into mounds about four feet long, then used a stick to draw lines suggesting cat-like limbs and a head. She put a cord around the neck of the first one and told it to guard the hills. The silt-cat sat up and yawned, the sketched outline suddenly very real. It looked at Nin with eyes that glowed yellow-white, then padded away to do its work. It moved like silk, flowing along in an almost liquid way.

Hen handed her more cords. ‘You heard what I said?'

Nin nodded dumbly.

‘Then send the others to join that one. I'm going to make smoke hawks to keep an eye out for the army.'

Nin had only just finished the cats, when she got a visit from the doctor.

‘How are you?' asked Mel, with a warm smile. ‘Now, I'm just going to listen to your breathing for a minute. How's the cough?'

‘Gone. I feel a bit wheezy though.'

‘Not surprising, with all that Raw cluttering up your lungs. It'll clear soon.' Mel smiled again, a twinkling smile from bright grey eyes. ‘Now let me see your fingers and toes. People have come out of the Raw with frostbite before now. Those that
do
come out – you're lucky your friends found you.' She laughed. ‘But then you're the Redstone girl, so you would be, wouldn't you?'

Nin made a rueful face. She had already heard a couple of people say things like ‘… but with Ninevah's Luck we'll make it,' or ‘… they'll hold – with Ninevah's
Luck …' She was beginning to feel like some kind of fluffy mascot.

When the doctor had gone, Hen and Nin began piling up the boulders that Seth was bringing them. He was covered in dirt and sweat from digging pits and paused for a moment to give Nin a broad smile and a wink.

‘You look better. How's the cough?'

‘Fine,' said Nin, taking a deep breath to show him how clear her lungs were. She coughed hoarsely, put a hand over her mouth and gave him a look that made him laugh.

‘Look,' he said, ‘come and find me later. I've got a present for you. A bit of magic – you'll love it!'

Nin blushed and went back to helping Hen arrange boulders. The job was made instantly easier when Floyd turned up. He looked grey and somehow smaller, but otherwise fine. He gave her a bashful smile and said, ‘Thanks, kid,' and Nin patted his arm and said, ‘I'm glad you're all right,' and that was that.

At Hen's command, the piled-up boulders stirred into bouldermen nearly as huge as a Grimm guard. Bluelight eyes shone out from crevices where the boulders didn't quite fit. The spaces weren't even either, so one or both eyes could be too far to the side, or in a forehead, or where a nose ought to be. The bouldermen were to stand guard in the river where they could wait for days, ready to wreck any craft that tried to pass them. Just in case Strood's army thought about sneaking in that way.

Nin and Floyd watched them stride off, the ground shaking with their weight.

‘There are times,' said Nin thoughtfully, ‘when I realise all over again just how creepy this world can be.'

Next, Hen set her to strip the leaves and petals from piles of crowsmorte flowers to be turned into healing paste. The leaves she put in one pile, the petals in another and the cleaned stalks she passed to Hen to shred. Floyd went off to join the diggers.

‘So,' said Hen as soon as they were settled, ‘you want to find Simeon Dark, eh? Where are you going to start?'

Nin had already discovered enough to know that it was Hen who had found Jonas when he was lost in the Drift four years ago, and had brought him up. Hen had been born in the Drift, her parents having found their own way in without the help of bogeymen. She was one of the few Quick still living who remembered Celidon and the Final Gathering, though she had been a very little girl at the time. And she certainly knew all about magic.

‘Enid thinks Dark might be disguised as a Quick,' said Nin. ‘Not stealing a body like Vispilio, just making his own look different. But really he could be anything, Fabulous, Grimm or Quick. And it needn't be a human Quick. I mean, there's the Great Bear In The Wood idea.' She crinkled up her nose.

‘But you think there is something wrong with all that?'

‘What's he living on?' said Nin at once, suddenly realising that it had been bothering her for ages, she just hadn't had time to put it into words. ‘Neither depends
on dread or desire and he needs that, doesn't he? To keep his spell going.'

Hen smiled and her berry eyes twinkled. ‘He's a clever one, Dark. You're right. The other sorcerers' spells depend on Quick to keep them going. Senta exists in the blood of her children. Vispilio needs a Quick heart to live in. Azork feeds on Quick life.'

Nin nodded. ‘And Enid is a place of safety, and Nemus is shelter in the night. Both things the Quick need.'

‘But Dark, now what's he done?'

‘Huh!' She frowned. ‘Well, he's become a legend I guess. You know, the mysterious Seventh Sorcerer.'

‘And why's that so special?'

‘All the other Fabulous that are left, they're magical in their own way, but they can't actually
do
magic. Bogeymen can change shape, but just because that's what bogeymen do. They can't fly like faeries, or swim in the Land like Jik. Only sorcerers can cast spells and
make magic
. So a sorcerer could do any of the things the other types of Fabulous could do, but where a BM does superspeed because it's the way they are made, a sorcerer could do it simply because he can do
anything
!'

Hen nodded, smiling. ‘You're certainly learning about the Land.'

‘Thanks. Anyway, what I'm getting at is, that's why sorcerers are special. So, because he's the only sorcerer left, Dark is the last bit of real living magic in the whole world. The last bit of that old magical world of Celidon.'

Nin's face cleared and her eyes brightened as it all clicked into place. ‘Of course! Simeon Dark, it's like, he
is
Celidon, right? And the Quick don't want Celidon to die. They don't want magic gone from their lives forever.'

She looked up at Hen and smiled. ‘It's perfect. Nemus and Enid give the Quick something they want. But with Dark it's not what he
gives
them, it's what he
is
, that the Quick desire.
Simeon Dark is still alive because everyone wants him to be!
'

‘Exactly,' said Hen. ‘And it wouldn't have worked unless Dark was the only one left.'

‘That's not very nice is it! I mean, counting on the others ceasing to be sorcerers just so's he could go on living.'

‘Sorcerers aren't known for being nice,' chuckled the old woman.

Nin laughed, then sighed. ‘Doesn't get me anywhere though, does it? I may know more about how his spell works, but I've still got to find out where he's hidden!'

Suddenly, a shout went up from some of the townsfolk and a shadow fell over the square. Everyone stopped what they were doing and looked up.

Over the town, bees were swarming in great clouds, their furry golden bodies clustered so thickly they blocked out the sun. They were pouring out of the hives in streams and their buzz filled the air. Swirling together, the great mass circled the town once and then headed out over the river, disappearing swiftly into the distance.
Soon, they were nothing more than a dark strip on the horizon and the sky was clear again, save for the distant, circling shapes of Hen's smoke birds. A shocked silence fell across the town.

Puzzled, Nin turned to Hen, but one look at the old woman's face told her everything she needed to know.

The bees had gone because death was coming to Hilfian. Strood's army was crossing the Heart.

All morning, while Nin had been stripping stalks and thinking about Simeon Dark, Jik had been finding interesting things in the town hall cellar.

The Quick clearly had a mania for collecting any bits of old Celidon that they came across, even if they didn't have a clue what it did. In Jik's view, that just went to prove how much they missed it and wanted it back, even the deadly bits.