SandRider

by Angie Sage

  “Quite,” Oraton-Marr replied. His eyes narrowed as he stared at Tod, half hidden in the shadows. “But she’s just a child. She’ll know nothing of any use.”

  “This is the ExtraOrdinary Apprentice, Your Highness,” Marissa said. “I assure you, she knows a great deal.”

  Oraton-Marr did not look convinced. “It’s a start, I suppose,” he said. “Bring the Apprentice to me. The deal was that you handed her to me, remember. So do it. Hand her over.”

  “Oh . . . yes. I’ll go and fetch her.”

  Marissa set off toward Tod, then she suddenly stopped dead and said a very rude, unwitchy word. Tod had disappeared. Marissa stared at the spot where Tod had been standing only a few seconds earlier and began to creep toward it as if somehow hoping to surprise her. Tod, amazed that her panicked UnSeen had actually worked, stepped to one side. But she had not fooled Oraton-Marr.

  “She’s over there, you idiot!” he yelled at Marissa, his harsh voice cutting through the soft silence of the clearing.

  “Where?” Marissa darted desperately from side to side, flailing her arms like a windmill in a vain attempt to grab hold of Tod. It would have been funny if Tod had not been so terrified.

  While Tod moved slowly enough not to make a sound, but fast enough to keep out of Marissa’s clutches, she became aware of two more figures emerging from the hut. How many more could it hold? And what was Marissa doing with them all? The first to emerge was another one she recognized: Drone, Oraton-Marr’s servant. And struggling in his grasp was a small girl.

  “Kaznim!” Tod breathed—and Marissa heard her.

  After that everything happened so fast that later Tod could never remember exactly how it all came together. But it did. The sequence of events went something like this:

  Marissa grabbed hold of Tod.

  Tod kicked Marissa.

  Marissa let go of Tod and yelled.

  Tod’s UnSeen evaporated.

  “Get her!” Oraton-Marr yelled to Drone.

  Drone let go of Kaznim and set off across to Tod.

  Marissa screamed.

  Kaznim, now free, pulled a stick from the hut and swung it at Oraton-Marr’s feet.

  Oraton-Marr fell over.

  Drone lunged at Tod.

  Marissa screamed.

  Tod kicked Drone.

  Drone fell over.

  Kaznim jumped on him.

  Marissa screamed, “Wolverines!”

  At the edge of the clearing Tod saw the yellow eyes of a pack of wolverines. “Please!” she yelled at the sentinel trees. “Please let me pass!”

  But Tod had no need to shout. In front of her the avenue was once again opening up. As Tod hurried forward she saw Drone try to grab Kaznim, so she grabbed her first. And as Tod and Kaznim made their escape, the avenue unfolded before them like a wave of green. Holding tightly on to Kaznim’s hand, Tod pulled the girl along with her, scrambling beneath the rising boughs. Behind them she was aware of the boughs dropping to the ground unusually fast, like a portcullis guarding a castle. As Tod and Kaznim ran along the avenue they heard the screams of Marissa, the yelling of Drone and the curses of Oraton-Marr grow ever fainter until they faded away. At the last pair of sentinel trees, Tod stopped and watched the boughs slowly come to rest. “Thank you,” she said. “Thank you for saving us.”

  Kaznim stared at Tod, totally confused. The Apprentice girl who had chased her with a tiger had just saved her from the evil sorcerer and now she was talking to trees. Kaznim noticed that Tod no longer had hold of her hand—she was free to run away if she wanted to. But Kaznim did not want to. Something told her that the Apprentice girl did not mean her any harm, and so Kaznim stood patiently beside Tod watching the last two great boughs settle back into their sentinel position. As the trees relaxed, they gave a satisfied groan, knowing they had done right by the Forest.

  FOREST STRANGER

  In the depths of the Big Freeze, when the winter mornings were dark and cold, the Forest slept late. And so it was in the treehouse. As the pale light from the sun crept around the wolverine-skin door flaps of the pods, their occupants all felt that it was much more sensible to stay curled up beneath piles of furs and goat blankets.

  Galen was the first to emerge from her pod. Silently she set about making goat milk oatmeal laced with honey and setting the water on to brew Forest coffee, which Galen made from dried acorns—although Silas Heap was convinced that she actually used dried goat dung. The pleasant smell of the oatmeal drifted up through the trees, wandered into the top pod and woke Ferdie from a deep, leafy sleep. Slowly, Ferdie opened her eyes and remembered where she was. The soft morning light filled the pod with shifting shadows and Ferdie’s gaze wandered around the cocoon in which she had spent the night. She loved the pod. It felt safe and yet exciting at the same time. As her eyes became used to the dim light, Ferdie counted her companions: there were three sleeping, breathing bumps of blankets.

  Three?

  Ferdie sat up fast. Who else was with them? A host of ghostly tales from the previous night flooded into her mind. Was it a witch child? A tree spirit? Or maybe even a were-wolverine, creeping into Forest beds at night and eating its bedfellows at the dawn of the new day. An awful thought occurred to Ferdie. Maybe all three bumps beneath the blankets were were-wolverines. Maybe they had already eaten Tod and Oskie and were now waiting for her to wake up. In fact, maybe they had already eaten everyone in the entire treehouse.

  Ferdie, still jittery after the Witch Circle, panicked. “Aaaargh!” she yelled.

  Three figures leaped up. Not one of them was a were-wolverine.

  “Oh,” Ferdie said, somewhat embarrassed. “Sorry. I thought . . .” Her voice trailed off. What she had thought seemed so stupid now. She looked at the young girl with the dark curly hair and wide-open eyes, and tried to remember seeing her the night before. She was sure she hadn’t. And from Oskar’s expression, he hadn’t seen the girl either.

  “This is Kaznim,” Tod said. “I was looking for her in the Castle. Remember?”

  “You found her here?” Ferdie asked, puzzled.

  “Well, not here in the pod, exactly,” Tod said evasively.

  “So where, exactly?” asked Oskar, who always knew when Tod had something to hide.

  “Um. Well, somewhere really weird. In the Forest.”

  Ferdie and Oskar stared at Tod. “You’ve been into the Forest? While we were asleep?” asked Ferdie.

  “Um. Yes,” Tod admitted.

  “Well, you might have taken me,” Oskar said. “You know I wanted to explore.”

  “Like Ferdie said, you were asleep,” Tod said. “Anyway, it was an emergency.”

  Ferdie and Oskar looked unimpressed. “What about the Tribe of Three?” they both said.

  “I know, I know,” Tod protested. “But you were asleep. Snoring, in fact. Okay?”

  “Okay,” Ferdie and Oskar said reluctantly.

  “Well, tell us then,” Ferdie instructed.

  And so, while they all sat wrapped in blankets and furs and the warmth of their breath misted the chill morning air, Tod told them about her time in the Nighttime Forest.

  As she drew to a close, Oskar and Ferdie looked dumbstruck. “Oraton-Marr?” they exclaimed.

  “Yes,” Tod said. “It was him.” She turned to Kaznim, who had listened silently to the conversation so far. “Could you tell my friends what you told me last night?”

  “She understands what we say?” Oskar sounded surprised.

  “I am not an animal,” Kaznim told Oskar crossly. “Of course I understand what you say.”

  “I’m—sorry,” Oskar stammered, embarrassed. “I . . . I thought you might speak another language.”

  “I am a Draa,” Kaznim said proudly. “Kaznim Na-Draa. Draa speak many tongues.”

  Ferdie smiled at Kaznim. “Hello, I’m Ferdie.”

  Kaznim smiled uncertainly.

  “And this is my twin brother, Oskar.”

  “Sorry if I was rude,” Oskar said. “I
didn’t mean to be.”

  Ferdie continued, “I was helping Tod to look for you in the Castle yesterday. We couldn’t find you anywhere. You just vanished.”

  Kaznim looked at Tod. “Your tiger was chasing me,” she said accusingly. Tod laughed and Kaznim looked offended. “It was not funny,” she muttered.

  Tod hurried to explain. “I wasn’t laughing at you, honestly. But the tiger wasn’t a real one. It was a jinnee. Called Jim Knee.”

  Kaznim looked at Tod in awe. “You have your own jinnee?”

  Tod shook her head. “He’s not mine. He was helping me, that’s all.”

  Kaznim was still impressed. To have a jinnee helping you was a sign of great power.

  “I’m sorry he frightened you,” Tod said. “He didn’t mean to. He’s nice, really.” She paused and then said, “So . . . where did you go?”

  Kaznim took out her precious blue piece of paper. “Here. To this funny little shop with the long name.”

  “It is a funny shop,” Ferdie agreed. “I go there to see Oskie. He helps out downstairs.”

  Kaznim nodded. “Yes. I saw him there. He had insect eyes.”

  Oskar grinned. “I did. And I saw you too, once I took my insect eyes off. You were brave being with that horrible ghost. She can be really nasty at times.”

  Kaznim nodded. “I could tell. But she said she would show me the Way out, so I followed her. And I went into the Hidden arch and through lots of Ways, just like I did with Sam and Marwick. The boy on the desk was nice at first and he gave me the numbers, you see, so I knew where to go.”

  “Was it a long way?” Tod asked.

  “It was,” Kaznim said. “And some bits were really scary. But I didn’t care. I just wanted to go home to my Ammaa. But . . .” She trailed off and bit her lip. Tears welled up in her eyes.

  “Didn’t you find your Ammaa?” Ferdie asked gently.

  Kaznim shook her head. “The sorcerer got me.”

  “Oraton-Marr?” asked Tod.

  Kaznim nodded. “He was on a ship in the Port of the Singing Sands. I didn’t know that was where he lived. I thought he would be in the Red City where they have lots of nasty sorcerers. Bubba saw me and called out. Then he got me.”

  “Who’s Bubba?” asked Oskar.

  “My little sister. The sorcerer stole her so that my mother would make sure the Egg hatched.”

  Ferdie, Oskar and Tod exchanged glances. This must surely be the Orm Egg.

  “The Sorcerer does that kind of thing,” Ferdie said. “He stole our little brother.”

  Kaznim looked at Ferdie with fellow feeling. “Did he give him back?” she asked.

  “No,” Ferdie said. “We took him back.”

  Kaznim looked at Ferdie with disbelief. Ferdie put her arm around the girl. “And we will take Bubba back too. You’ll see. Come on, let’s go down and find some breakfast.”

  But first there was something Tod really wanted to know. “So . . . why did the sorcerer bring you into the Forest?” she asked.

  Kaznim gulped. “He was cross because I had stolen the Egg Boy’s box, but I gave it back because he said I would never see Bubba again if I didn’t. And then when he opened it he saw that the Egg Timer was missing and he was so angry . . .” Kaznim stopped and looked scared. “I told the sorcerer that the nasty boy in the shop had the Egg Timer. I hoped he might go and find the boy and scare him. But then the sorcerer told me that I had to take him there.”

  Tod’s hand closed over the Egg Timer in her pocket. She remembered Septimus’s conversation with Beetle about the importance of not using the Manuscriptorium Way and she was now totally on Septimus’s side. The thought that Oraton-Marr could just walk into the Manuscriptorium whenever he felt like it was horrifying. So why had he ended up in the Forest instead? Tod was about to ask exactly that when Kaznim began to speak once more, her voice trembling.

  “So I went back to the little alleyway where I had come out and there was nothing there,” Kaznim said. “The arch had gone and I was so scared that I couldn’t see it however hard I tried. The sorcerer got very angry. He said he would take me to the Red City and then I was even more scared. I thought he was going to give me to the Red Queen for her to kill. She likes doing that, you see. She killed my father.”

  Tod looked at Kaznim, surprised. “But you said that Dandra Draa killed your father.”

  “Well . . .” Kaznim looked embarrassed. “He died because of what Dandra Draa did. But the Red Queen was the one who swung the sword that cut off his head. Not Dandra Draa.”

  “The Red Queen did that herself?”

  “Yes. After she had thrown him to her lion just for fun. You are lucky you have such a nice Queen here. I don’t think she would ever cut off anyone’s head, however mad she was. But in the Red City the Queen does that every week. So I thought she would do the same to me.

  “I asked to say good-bye to Bubba but the sorcerer just laughed. And then everything went very fuzzy and I didn’t know where my hands and feet or even my head was; I felt like I was falling apart. The ground seemed to disappear and the next thing I knew, I was somewhere else and I was being sick all over the sorcerer’s pointy feet. I knew I was in the Red City because the ground I was being sick on was covered with dark red sand. I guessed some horrible spell had brought me there.”

  “You’re right,” Tod said. “It was a really horrible spell.” She knew enough Magykal theory to understand that Oraton-Marr had done a Darke Transport—he had taken a living person with no Magykal skills on his own Transport with no regard for her safety. No wonder Kaznim had been sick, Tod thought. She was lucky to still be alive.

  “We walked along some alleyways and we came to an iron door in a wall. There was a woman standing there with a green headband and a long green cloak. I thought she was one of the Red Queen’s guards and the door led to where the lion lived. But when she saw us, the green woman looked almost as scared as I was. And even more scared when Oraton-Marr asked her where the Apprentice was.”

  “Apprentice?” Tod asked.

  “Yes. The woman said there had been some trouble with some mold or something. The sorcerer grabbed her by the throat and said lots of the bad words that I used to hear the Egg Boy say when he thought that no one was listening. He told the green woman to open the bad-word door and he would go and get the bad-word Apprentice himself, seeing as everyone else around him was so bad-word useless. Especially bad-word witches. And then I understood that the woman was a witch, not a guard, and that I wasn’t going to be eaten by a lion. So I felt a lot better. She opened the door and we went into a nice courtyard with a palm tree and a fountain. We walked over to the palm tree and then something really strange happened. It got cold and dark and smelled funny, and suddenly we were in a tiny hut. And then I came out of the hut, and I was in the Forest.” Kaznim looked at Tod. “And so were you.”

  Oskar, Ferdie and Tod looked at one another. There were so many questions they were longing to ask Kaznim about the Orm Egg, but at that moment a bell rang far below and they heard Sarah yell, “Breakfast!”

  Kaznim yawned again. “I am so tired,” she said. Like a small animal she lay down on the leaves and curled into a ball, and her eyelids fluttered closed.

  The Tribe of Three left Kaznim to sleep and slowly climbed down through the trees, discussing what to do. By the time they reached the fire-pit platform they had agreed on two things. First, they would tell no one about Kaznim or what had happened the night before in the Forest. And second, they would be going through the Forest Way into the Red City as soon as they could.

  SLIPPING AWAY

  They found Galen stirring a bubbling pot of oatmeal. Tod gave her back the WitchFinder and Galen put it in her pocket with a smile. “Find any witches?” she asked.

  Tod hated to lie so she said, “Yes, I did. Marissa Lane.”

  Galen looked surprised. “She’s trouble, that young woman,” she said.

  “She is,” Tod agreed.

  Galen’s green eyes looked
up keenly and Tod felt as if Galen knew exactly what had happened the previous night. But Galen did not comment. She turned her attention to the oatmeal, which was sticking to the bottom of the pan. “They’re nasty baggages, those Wendrons,” Galen said. “You want to keep out of their way, you know. Especially at night.”

  Sarah and Jenna joined them for breakfast. Both sat quietly. Sarah was concerned about leaving Galen alone. Her old teacher seemed so frail in the morning light, her fragile hands shaking as she spooned out the oatmeal. Jenna was tired; she had not slept well in her pod. Silas, anxious to be away as soon as possible, had skipped breakfast and was busy packing their bags.

  Tod was sipping her hot oatmeal, trying to work out how they were going to get away from the treehouse without being noticed, when a soft whoop-whoop came up from the Forest floor. Jenna hurried over to the edge of the platform and gave an answering whoop. Turning back to Galen, she said, “Ariel and Star are here. Can they come up?”

  Galen did not like witches in her treehouse, but she knew that Ariel and Star were a little different. She nodded and picked up two more bowls. Witches were always hungry.

  “Thank you, Galen,” Jenna said, and let down the ladder.

  In the confusion caused by the arrival of Ariel and Star, Silas Heap’s sudden appearance, his overeager helping of the young witches onto the platform, and Sarah’s consequent irritation, Tod, Ferdie and Oskar slipped away. In a moment Ferdie and Oskar were shimmying down the rope to the Forest floor and Tod was climbing up to their pod. Quickly, she wrote a note: Please do not worry. We are fine and will be back at the Castle very soon. Alice TodHunter Moon, Ferdie and Oskar Sarn. She placed it in on the pile of blankets where it could be easily seen, then she woke Kaznim and hurried her down to join the others on the Forest floor.

  Ariel and Star had a message from Septimus saying that he wanted Tod and Jim Knee back as soon as possible. While Jenna busied herself getting Sarah and Silas—who were on the verge of an argument—ready for the journey home, she had no idea what was happening fifty feet below on the Forest floor. Four guests—one of them uninvited—were leaving.