“That’s not what you were saying a few minutes ago,” he commented pithily.
Sir Tombin was struggling to get his wrist through the bars beside the lock so that he could turn his hand and insert the key.
“Done it,” he murmured at last as there was a soft but definitive click. “Now let’s try to get out of here without drawing attention to ourselves.”
He eased the cage door open.
“Got it!” yelled Samzing.
“Hush,” said Perima and Sagandran.
But the wizard continued to shout excitedly. “That spell I was telling you about. Well, not exactly the same spell, but one that’s every bit as handy if ever you find yourself locked in a cage.”
His cries were loud enough to have interrupted the singing and bellowing of the worgs. Dozens of carbuncle-swaddled faces were slowly turning in their direction.
“You blithering—” Sir Tombin began, all semblance of his customary gentility fleeing.
Samzing cackled. “Watch this, my hearties. Arkam! Barkam! Conflagrustius! Bazambadorus! Zoing!”
From the old wizard’s outstretched hand there sprang first one, then three, then a dozen, then countless hundreds of tiny red-orange, swiftly flickering forms. You couldn’t have called them living things and they didn’t have faces as such, but what they did have were mischievous, spiteful grins. The fiery entities never stayed in one place more than a split second (they moved far too fast for the eye to see them clearly, or really at all) but their grins had the curious property of moving just a little more slowly.
Perima stuffed a fist in her mouth to stop herself from screaming with horror as a pair of the imps rushed up the outside of her sleeve. Sagandran was embarrassed to discover he was no more in possession of himself than she was, as he beat at a cloud of leering flames buzzing around his head like a swarm of flies.
“You complete and utter—” Sir Tombin was saying, also apparently under attack. Flip was trying to dig a hole big enough to crawl into.
“You see what I mean?” said Samzing in great delight. “Now, my eager little legions, Candastura plangst!”
The burning imps flooded out of the open cage door and down the hill, pouring over the nearest worgs like breaking waves.
“Now, do you see?”
Sir Tombin was breathing heavily, leaning on the sword Xaraxeer. “Yes,” he gasped. “We see. But you might have warned us, dear chap.”
Commotion and consternation reigned among the worgs, but it wouldn’t be long before some of the fractionally less unintelligent of them thought about their captives.
“Talk later,” shouted Sagandran. “Let’s get out of here.” He grabbed Perima’s hand.
Bolster’s voice rang out through the hubbub. “Da prisoners! Dey’re gettin’ away!”
A handful of worgs stopped beating at their flaming clothes and began lumbering up the hillside.
“You run,” said Sir Tombin grimly, “and I’ll hold them off. Fetch Snowmane. He can’t be far away.”
Sagandran stared at him, poised half in flight.
“Go!” bellowed Sir Tombin. “Go now. Samzing and I – we’ll be all right. You’ll see.”
Perima tugged at Sagandran. “He’s right, come on.”
“STOP THEM!” bawled Bolster. By now, there was a small pack of worgs heading their way.
Running blindly, tripping and stumbling, Sagandran and Perima cut across the face of the hill at right angles to the worgs’ charge. The dark mouth of the forest’s edge was ahead of them. It might have seemed full of the menace of the unseen at any other time, but now it beckoned to them welcomingly.
The sky lit up as Samzing unleashed a further horde of fire imps on the worgs, slowing their advance. But it didn’t stop them. With Bolster now in the lead, they were coming closer and closer to the cage, outside the door of which Sir Tombin and the wizard were standing in defiance.
There was a glint of gray in the forest gloom. A snicker.
“Snowmane!” panted Perima, trying to urge Sagandran to run even faster.
A worg reared up in front of them.
“Gotcha,” he growled.
Two bulbous hands reached for their throats. Perima dodged sideways, grabbed the hand that had been grabbing for her, and sank her teeth into it. As the worg let out a shriek of astonished pain, she swung a kick into its knee.
There was the sound of bone splintering.
Again the worg roared its agony. It dropped like a stone, howling and clutching its injured knee.
“Where’d you learn to do that?” gasped Sagandran in amazement.
“It’s a girl thing,” panted Perima. “Tell you later. Come on.”
It was difficult to see anything at all once they were under the forest canopy. Only the pale cloud that was Snowmane offered them any guidance, and thorns and branches tore at their legs as they forced their way through the undergrowth toward that goal.
The worgs had clumsily tethered the stallion to a tree. There was no sign of the carriage. Sagandran guessed glumly the worgs must have smashed it up and used it as fuel for their bonfires. Perima seized the rope tying Snowmane, then ran her hand up it to reach the knot by his bridle. Her nimble fingers made short work of the tangled cord. Snowmane lowered his head toward the ground, bending his forelegs to make it easier for Sagandran to leap astride him. Once secure in his seat, Sagandran reached to haul Perima up behind him.
“Run like the wind!” he cried. “Back to the cage.”
The stallion needed no urging.
As they burst back out of the forest they could see a score or more of worgs tussling near the cage, flames dancing all over them with lightning speed. There was not the slightest sign of Sir Tombin and Samzing, or of Flip.
“Do you think the others have escaped?” shrieked Perima in his ear.
Hardly daring to turn his head as Snowmane galloped at full stretch across the hillside, Sagandran shouted back at her, “Either that or they’re …”
He didn’t like to finish. If Sir Tombin and the wizard hadn’t managed to get away, the only other place they could be was under that scrum of struggling worgs. If that were the case, his friends were as good as dead, or more likely dead already.
The biggest of the worgs, Bolster, looked up from the fray and saw them.
“Dere dey is! Forget dem others. Get da boy! Da boy’s da one I want.”
As Snowmane raced toward the worgs, Bolster drew his mighty club from his belt and prepared to swing at them. Galloping at full tilt, the stallion managed to veer away just in time. The scything blow whistled through the air not a handsbreadth from Sagandran’s head.
“Get da boy!”
Bolster began to plunge after them. For a beast of such obvious clumsiness and bulk, he could move with remarkable speed.
Snowmane’s flight took them down the hill and across the feasting ground. The horse danced nimbly around the bonfires, leaping over the unconscious forms of worgs. A few tried to stop the stallion’s dash, flailing out at them with fists or clubs, but Snowmane simply charged them down.
Bolster, running like the wind, his fat legs gobbling up a huge amount of ground with every stride, was coming almost abreast of them.
It was at that moment that Snowmane performed his daintiest maneuver of all. Not slowing his pace for a moment, he nimbly sidestepped. His rump caught the giant worg just below the chest, and Bolster stumbled and tripped before staggering backward and sitting on the embers of one of the bonfires.
His howl of pain and rage made the very trees shake.
Perima let out a wild laugh.
“Hold on tight,” shouted Sagandran. He’d seen two worgs ahead of them fumblingly unfurling the big net that had trapped them at the “Pull HERE!” sign. Snowmane was galloping straight toward it. Sagandran tightened his knees on the horse’s sides and hauled on the right rein, trying to persuade Snowmane to change course, but the stallion just put his proud head down and kept on straight forward.
“Sto
p!” Sagandran’s yell was lost to the wind.
Perima screamed in his ear.
Snowmane moved, if anything, even faster toward the outspread net. They were close enough now that Sagandran could see the two worgs’ slobbering grins.
“No!”
The stallion ignored him.
Sagandran gathered himself to leap off to the side, pulling Perima with him, and then …
… and then the proud stallion bunched his muscles and they were airborne, the great leap taking them clear over the snaring net.
The worgs bellowed in rage as they watched what they thought was their securely captured prey escape them. Snowmane landed almost perfectly, tottered momentarily before finding his footing, then careered onward toward a natural gap in the forest.
Perima was pummelling crazily between Sagandran’s shoulder blades. “We’ve done it! We’ve done it! We’ve escaped!”
Realizing that pursuit was fading behind them, Snowmane began to ease his pace. Sagandran looked back and saw the lights of the fires growing smaller until, as the horse rounded a stand of trees, the red glows were lost from sight.
Sagandran’s spirits didn’t match Perima’s wild exhilaration. Yes, he thought, feeling the pain of grief already spreading through him, we’ve escaped, all right. But what of the others? What of Sir Tombin and Samzing and Flip? Are they alive or dead?
The stars looked down in a cold silence. They held no answer for him.
CHAPTER 5
WONDERVILLE
hey rode all through the night until dawn began to color the skies. By then, Snowmane was moving slowly, exhaustion stiffening his stride. During the early part of the ride, Sagandran had been adroit at dodging the branches that came at his head out of the dark, but farther on, the forest had become less thick. Perima had fallen asleep for a while, her arms wrapped around his waist and her cheek pressed between his shoulder blades. Now she was waking.
“Where are we?”
“Your guess is as good as mine.” Just the sound of her drowsy voice was making him feel sleepy too. “But at least we’re out of the oldest part of the Everwoods, where the worgs are most rife. Look.”
The trees around them were young and slender, their bark gleaming in the sallow light of the early-morning sun. The sky above them was the pale blue-gray of a polished stone.
An hour or so later, Snowmane came to a little pond surrounded by rocks and wearily drooping willows. He halted and lowered his head to take a well-earned drink. Sagandran dropped to the ground and, reaching up, helped Perima down beside him. The stallion’s slow, regular slurping at the water was an oddly soothing accompaniment to the angry squabbling of the forest birds.
“That water looks good,” said Perima.
“Thirsty?”
“No. Well, yes, but that wasn’t what I was thinking of.” She giggled. “Fancy a morning swim?”
He stared at her. “How would we dry our clothes?”
“Who said anything about clothes?” She began to tug her dress off over her head.
Sagandran stared determinedly at the tree tops. He stared determinedly at the sky above the tree tops. He stared determinedly at Snowmane’s heaving flank. He stared determinedly at various other things before he began wondering what he was being so stuffy about. His legs and his rear felt as if someone had been using them for a punching bag. The water might ease the pain a bit.
There was a splash behind him and he turned to see Perima moving lithely through the water, her body as sleek as an otter’s.
He shrugged. What he was really worried about was not so much seeing Perima without any clothes on as her seeing him that way. Which, after all they’d been through, suddenly made him feel foolishly coy. That realization didn’t make it any easier to get undressed, but he managed it somehow, however clumsily, and dove into the water.
As soon as the coldness wrapped around him he knew that this had been exactly the right thing to do. He swam slowly and easily from one side of the pond to the other, small fishes darting away from him, and then he headed back to where Perima was joyously splashing. Her grin changed to an expression of mock terror as she saw him approaching, and he took great delight in swinging his arm around to send a great surge of water over her head.
Later they lay on the bank, drying off.
“You’re not like other girls,” he said languidly.
“I am so.” She pretended to be dismayed.
“I didn’t mean it that way. I meant, well, I don’t have to be embarrassed around you. You’re okay.”
“Thank you very much, Sagandran Sacks.”
“You know what I mean.”
There was a short silence before she said, “I do.” She touched the back of his hand lightly. “Let’s try never to forget that, you and me. We’re friends. There’s no need for any secrets between us, right?”
“Right.”
From the far side of the pool, a trail led away among the trees. It seemed to be made by larger forest animals – deer, perhaps. Still feeling slightly clammy under his freshly donned clothes, Sagandran led Snowmane along it, Perima on the far side of the horse’s head. Aching from their long ride through the darkness despite their swim, neither of them could face the thought of climbing onto the stallion’s back again, not for a while.
It was Perima who first voiced the question they’d both been trying to push to the back of their minds. “I wonder what’s happened to the others?”
“They must have escaped,” said Sagandran promptly – too promptly. “I can’t think the worgs would have been able to capture them, or even” – he gulped – “anything else. After all, Sir Tombin was there and he still had Xaraxeer.”
They walked on a little longer. “Those worgs outside the cage,” she said at last. “When we were riding away. They didn’t look as if they had been recaptured.”
“No, they didn’t. I think Sir Tombin and Samzing were already gone by then, and Flip would have slipped away easily without being seen, he’s so small.”
A short way ahead of them, a blue bird that seemed to be following them alighted on a branch and stared at them, chattering.
“You know,” said Perima slowly, “it’s a funny thing, but I feel that Sir Tombin has sort of become like a father to me. Whoever would have imagined I’d start thinking of a giant frog as being like a father.” She gave a short bark of laughter. There was no humor in it.
“Same here,” said Sagandran, “and the funny thing is, we both already have fathers.”
She gave a sigh. “Yeah, I know.”
Snowmane turned his head to regard them each in turn.
“Do you miss your father?” said Sagandran softly, focusing on the blue bird.
“Yes, I think I do.” Her voice was thoughtful. “I suppose I do. He’s a complete pain in the neck but it seems odd not having him around to be angry with.”
“Like Flip was saying about that guy he can’t stand back in Mishmash, what’s his name?”
“Tod.”
“Yes, Tod. What was it Flip said? Something about how he’d be able to enjoy life a lot better if the people he disliked weren’t around, but still not wanting them not to be there?”
“Something like that.” She kicked at a stray divot that had been plucked up out of the trail’s earth by the hoof of some unknown animal. “I dislike the old goat, of course, but I suppose I must love him at the same time. What’s your father like, Sagandran?”
Sagandran told her how his own father was lots of fun, most of the time, and a good guy to have on your side, but how Dad hadn’t been getting on so well with Mom recently, so Sagandran didn’t get to see him as much as he wanted to, and how Dad maybe had some new woman he was with, and …
“I’m sorry,” said Perima when Sagandran’s voice dwindled away into nothing. “Maybe things’ll have changed for the better once you get back to the Earthworld.”
“If I get back to the Earthworld,” corrected Sagandran gloomily.
“When,” said P
erima.
“But then you won’t be there.”
“That’s something we’re going to have to figure out when we get to it.”
Snowmane tossed his head, as if he were trying to tell them something.
Perima chuckled, her mood abruptly lightening. “He’s right, you know.”
Sagandran knitted his brow as he glanced across at her. “Right about what?”
“If we want to see Sir Tombin and Samzing and Flip again, let alone our fathers, the first thing we’ve got to do is find our way out of this forest.”
“Too true.” Sagandran couldn’t seem to cheer up the way she had. He was missing their friends more than he quite knew how to express, but it was more than that. Ever since Queen Mirabella had made him aware of the meaning of the crystal he wore around his neck, he’d been bearing the burden of knowing that he was responsible for more than just himself. The freedom of worlds was at stake. I wish I were braver, he thought.
The blue bird fluttered down from its latest perch to land on the trail in front of them.
“Hello,” said Perima to it. “You’re a handsome fellow, aren’t you?”
The bird looked at her in disgust, as if she’d said exactly the wrong thing, and turned its back on them. It took a couple of paces, then flew off in a streak of blue to land on another branch a hundred yards distant. As they plodded slowly closer, they could see that it wasn’t a branch but something artificial, and closer still, it became evident that it was a signpost.
Unfortunately, they couldn’t make out the writing on the sign. The marks looked as if someone had thrown a plate of spaghetti at the flat surface of the wood, then left it there to dry. The sign’s sharp end was pointing off to the right, down a narrow, overgrown path they’d not been able to see until now.
“Can’t you read it?” said Sagandran. “You’re a Sagarian, after all.”
“Can you read all the languages of the Earthworld?”
He gave her a resentful “you’re right” look.
The blue bird was still perched on top of the sign. “This way for fun, fun, fun,” it chirped.
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