The Wildkin’s Curse (7 page)

‘I can climb,' she boasted. ‘I can climb anything.'

‘Even a tower that's twelve storeys high and made of glass?' Merry demanded.

‘There has to be a way,' she said stubbornly, colour rising up her face. ‘If I can climb Stormfell, surely I can climb a starkin tower, even if it is made of glass.'

‘You can hammer in anchors for ropes in a mountain, but not in a wall made of glass,' Merry pointed out.

‘There is another way.' Briony's quiet voice cut across them. She shook out the bundle of brightly striped material that she had taken from the chest.

It was a cloak of feathers. Old and tattered, it nonetheless shimmered with iridescent colours, blue-green shading down to brilliant crimson and red, and edged in silvery-white and black. One edge was charred and torn, where a row of feathers had been burnt away.

‘The Erlrune's cloak of feathers,' Liliana said softly, reaching out one hand to stroke it. ‘You think we can fly up to Rozalina?'

‘But what use is it?' Merry asked. ‘Surely it is damaged. Didn't the Erlrune fall from the sky?'

‘That must be where Prince Zander shot at the Erlrune,' Zed said, pointing out the blackened edge. ‘Look, quite a few feathers are burnt away.'

‘Seven,' Briony told them. ‘The feathers of a swan, an owl, an albatross, a raven, a pelican, an eagle and a nightingale.'

They looked from her to the cloak and back again, for the Erlrune's voice had been intense and meaningful.

‘You think we can mend it?' Merry asked. ‘We can give the cloak back its magic?'

Briony nodded. ‘If you can collect the seven missing feathers and sew them to the cloak in the true and rightful order, the magic of the cloak will be restored.'

‘So one of us will be able to fly? We could fly up to the tower and rescue Princess Rozalina and fly away again, down to a ship waiting on the sea below?' Merry asked in wonder.

‘It's mine!' Liliana said at once. ‘Rozalina is my cousin, and the cloak of feathers is magic born of Stormlinn. I shall be the one to wear it!'

‘A little thing like you?' Zed said gently. ‘How could you be strong enough to carry another girl in your arms? She's as old as you are, and could well be heavy. I'm the tallest and strongest, I am the one who must wear it.'

Merry turned away, bright visions of soaring high above the waves turned to ashes. ‘We have to find the seven feathers first. What were they again? Owl and raven and nightingale . . .'

‘And eagle,' Liliana said eagerly. ‘There are eagles nesting on top of Stormfell, I've often climbed up to see the eaglets. And there are owls in the forest about the castle too. If we go down the river, we'll pass right by Stormlinn Castle and that way we don't need to cut through the Gorge of Ghouls.'

‘Good idea,' Merry said, having no desire to face the ghouls ever again.

‘A swan feather will be easy enough,' Zed said. ‘Swans are the emblem of the Ziv. We have a whole flock of them at Levanna-On-The-Lake.'

‘What else were there?' Merry screwed up his eyes.

‘A pelican and an albatross,' Briony said. ‘And you must pluck each feather from the wing of a living bird. A feather fallen from the sky or picked up from the ground will not have the bird's blood and flesh still attached to its stem.'

There was a short silence.

‘Plucking a feather from the wing of an albatross won't be so easy,' Merry said.

‘You must manage it somehow,' Briony said. ‘Do not fear. All three of you have talents you are hardly aware of yet, and I and all my friends will be working for you, in whatever small way we can.'

‘We shall have to travel to Zarissa by sea,' Zed said. ‘Maybe we'll see an albatross.'

‘Perhaps a storm will bring one,' Liliana said with a glowing glance at her aunt. Briony smiled at her tiredly.

‘And perhaps pigs might fly,' Merry said curtly. ‘We need a better plan than “maybe” and “perhaps”.'

‘There is one of the Crafty that lives on the seashore beneath Zarissa,' Briony said. ‘Her name is Palila. She has sent me messages before, carried by a pelican in its pouch, and I have sent messages back to her the same way. I have seen her with pelicans in the Well of Fates, and I know she has the Tongue of the Heavens and can speak the language of birds. She may be able to help you with the pelican feather.'

‘What of the albatross?' Liliana demanded. ‘Could she not call one of those for us too?'

‘I would not ask too much of her,' Briony said drily. ‘As it is, she will demand a price for her help.'

Merry looked down at the gleaming cloak of feathers, with its charred and blackened edge.
What price?
he wondered.
What price must we all pay at the end of this impossible venture?

A shiver of foreboding ran over him.

 

 

T
HREE SMALL, ROUND BOATS CAME WHIRLING DOWN THE
rapids and shot out onto the gleaming dark waters of the Stormlinn, disturbing the reflection of pointed pine trees, immense, brooding mountains and, far above, icy white pinnacles against a colourless dawn sky.

‘Whoo hoo!' Zed dug in his paddle to stop his coracle from spinning round in circles. ‘That was so much fun! Why haven't we tried racing down rapids before?'

‘We liked our lives too much?' Merry replied, releasing his white-knuckled grip on the woven sides of his little boat finger by slow finger. Made of a lattice of willow twigs, covered with tallow-smeared hide, the coracles were so flimsy and unstable that Merry had expected to be capsized long ago. He could hardly believe they had managed to travel down the swift, rocky, treacherous Evenlode without one of them being killed.

‘Oh, come on, Merry. I know you don't like boats but surely you must've enjoyed that! I'd do it again if I didn't have to carry my coracle all the way to the top of the rapids first.'

‘Not so loud.' Liliana looked about anxiously. ‘Someone will hear you.'

‘Who?' Zed asked, amusing himself by spinning his coracle first one way, then the other, with deft strokes of his paddle. ‘We're in the heart of the Perilous Forest, there's no-one for miles.'

‘Don't you know sound carries over water? If there are any soldiers nearby, they'll hear us.'

‘If there were any soldiers nearby, Tom-Tit-Tot would have seen them when he flew over the lake,' Merry said. ‘Wouldn't you, boy?'

Tom-Tit-Tot had just flown down to perch on the woven rim of the coracle, sending it rocking so wildly that Merry's heart had lurched into his throat. The omen-imp now bobbed his scaly head up and down. ‘Saw no soldiers, spied no soldiers, no soldiers to be seen or spied.'

‘You can never be too careful,' Liliana said darkly.

‘Oh yes you can! Come on, Lili, stop being such a wet blanket. I'll race you to the shore!' Zed dug in his paddle and sent the small, light boat skimming over the waves. Liliana at once began to paddle furiously, sending water spraying behind her. Tom-Tit-Tot flew up in the air with a squeal as he was splashed, then shot away over the water at high speed.

Merry did not even try to compete. He knew Zed would win, no matter how hard he tried, and the way the little boat bounced over the water made him feel quite sick. He followed behind sedately, enjoying the spectacular view of the forest and mountains on either side.

Slowly, a towering crag came into view at the far end of the lake. Perched at its very pinnacle was the ruin of an old castle. Built of pale stone with tall towers topped with pointed roofs of blue slate, Stormlinn Castle must once have been very beautiful. Most of the towers had fallen, though, and the archway to the grand gatehouse was a gaping hole of shadows. Dark spires of fir trees marched along the shoreline, half-obscuring the narrow road which zigzagged up the cliff face to the ruin. Merry's paddling slowed as he gazed at the castle, so small and so valiant, with the great grey mass of mountain frowning above and the dark abyss of water below.

Far ahead, Liliana turned and urged him on, and rather reluctantly Merry increased his pace. He came in under the weeping branches of a willow tree just as Zed and Liliana's coracles both banged violently into the bank.

‘I won, I won!' she cried.

‘You did not,' Zed protested. ‘I was so far ahead of you. Besides, you cheated. You didn't tell me where to go until I'd rowed right past it.'

‘Well, I couldn't go shouting it out,' Liliana said. ‘Someone might have heard me. You should have been a bit more patient.'

‘Oh, yes, Mistress Impatience! You can talk.'

‘You just don't like being beaten by a girl,' Liliana said, leaping to shore, her satchel over her shoulder and her longbow in her hand. With a quick deft movement she hauled her coracle onto solid ground and dumped it upside-down, pushing it under a bush. In seconds it was virtually invisible.

Zed said crossly, ‘You did not win! Tom-Tit-Tot, who won?'

‘Me,' the omen-imp replied, hanging upside-down from the willow tree. ‘I was the one who really won.'

‘You're no use at all,' Zed said. ‘Merry, who won?'

‘It was a tie,' Merry said, cautiously reaching out for the shore. At that moment, Zed jumped out of his coracle and it spun sideways and knocked against Merry's, rocking the little boat so wildly that Merry was almost sent head first into the water.

Liliana stretched out her hand and caught him. ‘You right there? The water will be freezing, you don't want to risk it.'

‘Freeze your knees, make you sneeze,' Tom-Tit-Tot said at once, flapping around Merry's head and almost sending him overboard again.

‘I'm fine, thanks,' Merry replied curtly, clambering out of the boat and wishing he did not always feel like such a clumsy fool when Liliana was around.

‘Merry doesn't really like boats,' Zed said in explanation as he seized Merry's coracle, stowing it away beside his own. By the time Merry had swung his lute and his satchel onto his shoulders, the other two were striding away through the forest, still arguing in low voices. Merry scrambled along in the rear, wishing he was tall, strong, handsome and fair, and not such a cabbage-head when it came to boats.

The three companions had left the Erlrune's house a week earlier, three days after Liliana's unexpected appearance. Those days had been spent making plans, sharpening weapons, packing bags, choosing supplies and equipment, and building the coracles to Liliana's strict instructions. Both Zed and Merry had been very sceptical about the strange little boats at first, but Liliana had been right. The coracles were able to twist and turn easily on the fast-moving river, easily avoiding rocks and submerged logs, and were so light the three friends could simply hoist them up by a strap and carry them around any waterfalls or natural weirs that blocked their passage. Consequently, they had come down the Evenlode much more quickly than Merry had expected, even though the trip had kept his heart pumping and his knuckles clenched the whole way.

Otherwise it had been a chilly and dismal trip, since Liliana would only let them light the smallest of fires despite the bitter cold of the night air. She always made sure the fire was well concealed, and she doused it as soon as they had finished cooking their meal.

‘What are you so afraid of?' Zed had asked one day. ‘You can't be afraid of the wildkin, since you are one of them, and we're miles away from any starkin settlement.'

‘I am not afraid,' she had flashed. ‘I'm careful and canny and wise, and you would do well to follow my example. Besides, do you think the starkin have forgotten my aunt's prophecy? They know that one of the Stormlinn shall smite the throne of stars asunder . . .'

‘With the Spear of Thunder,' Zed and Merry both chanted in unison.

Liliana had to laugh. She went on, a little more gently, ‘Starkin soldiers come often to search the castle and the forest. I have almost been caught before. If I did not know all the secret ways in and out of the castle, I would now be in a cage in Zarissa like my cousin.'

‘Well, you're with us now, we'll look after you,' Zed had replied confidently, and was quite aggrieved when she had said sarcastically, ‘Forgive me if I don't faint with relief.'

Merry could still hear the low voices of the other two arguing, although he could barely see them in the soft, dappled light of the forest. The Erlrune had woven them cloaks for the journey, and like everything she made they were imbued with magic, being grey at dusk, green at noon, and black at midnight, as changeable as water. Now he could hear Liliana say, ‘Why do you find it so hard to be beaten by a girl? Typical starkin—'

‘If you call me “starkin scum” one more time, I swear I'll knock you down just like a boy and then see how you like it,' Zed replied furiously.

‘I'd like to see you try,' she replied coolly, one hand flying to her quiver of arrows.