Midnight Train

by Angie Sage

  “No . . . ,” Ratchet murmured. “No. It can’t be. Not the Puffer.”

  But it was. With much screaming of brakes, the Puffer drew slowly into the Halt and stopped. Two young teens, covered in soot, jumped down from the footplate and then, at the sight of Ratchet, stopped dead. “It’s him,” one said to the other anxiously.

  “So what,” said the other. “It’s three against one.”

  “Steady on,” said Ratchet. “I dunno who you are but I mean no harm. I’m just amazed to see the old Puffer out again. I never dreamed the day would come. It’s wonderful.”

  The driver, also covered in soot, looked down warily.

  “You stopped for water like in the old days?” Ratchet asked. “There’s a tank full here. I used to help out when I was a boy. Need a hand?”

  “Yeah,” the driver said in an oddly gruff tone.

  Ratchet strode across the platform to the pointy-topped tower and swung out a wide metal pipe that was tucked neatly against its side. Then, from inside the pipe he pulled down a waxed canvas tube. “Okay then. Unscrew the water top.”

  Ratchet didn’t think much of the two assistants; they seemed to have no idea what to do. The driver had to climb up the copper dome and unscrew the top himself. Ratchet swung the pipe over and the driver maneuvered it in. Ratchet disappeared into the tower and turned the wheel on the stop tap, and water gushed into the tank with a great hiss of steam.

  The driver seemed relieved, Ratchet thought. “You done this before?” Ratchet asked.

  The driver laughed. “No. It was a bit of luck finding you. Thanks.” And then he stopped. “Oh, rats,” he muttered.

  “Danny? Is that you?” Ratchet said.

  “Yeah. It’s me. Hello, Mr. Ratchet.”

  Ratchet tried to figure out how his lost and much lamented Flyer could possibly have transformed into the engine driver of the Puffer—a job Ratchet had craved as a boy—but try as he might, he could not. So he contented himself with a grouchy, “Is that your Flyer jacket? It’s in a terrible state.”

  “Yeah. Sorry about that. Now we must be getting on.”

  “Where you going?”

  “Rekadom, of course. Not much choice. We have to stick to the track, you know.”

  “Very clever, ha ha. Er. Do you need a hand? I’m a good fireman.”

  “No thanks,” said Danny.

  “You’d shovel the coal?” asked Benn.

  “All the way to Rekadom?” asked Alex.

  “I’d be happy to,” Ratchet said.

  “No,” said Danny. “We’re fine.”

  “You’re fine,” Alex corrected him. “Because all you do is yell, ‘Coal!’ So now you can yell it at someone else.”

  Danny quite liked the idea of yelling at Ratchet. “All right. Get yourself up here.”

  Ratchet jumped up onto the footplate and Alex threw him the shovel.

  “Coal!” yelled Danny, and with a slow chuffa-chuff . . . chuffa-chuff . . . chuffa-chuff, Big Puffer pulled slowly away from Netters Halt and set off along the track on the top of the cliffs. “Coal!”

  Chapter 38

  Zerra’s Reward

  “WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN?” KING Belamus demanded petulantly. His three Jackal stood before him looking, Belamus thought, decidedly ill. Still queasy from the effects of the guards’ sausages they had commandeered the night before, their long red coats stained with grime, their muzzles grubby, ears flopping forward and their lolling tongues letting go long strands of drool, they did not look good. Even multiplied to a small army of Jackal by the mirrored lobby, they were not impressive. Unfortunately, the effect was not helped by multiple views of the body of the crow-pecked Jackal that was curled up in a corner, having most inconsiderately died overnight. It looked like there had been a massacre. Belamus shuddered. This was a bad omen. Maybe he should go ask the Oracle what to do? But one look at his pathetic array of Jackal told him otherwise. He had to act now and finish the Beguilers fast, before he had no Jackal left.

  Belamus sprang into action. He sent one Jackal to the dungeons to collect the Beguiler children and take them out of the city to Oracle Halt. He then set off with his remaining two Jackal to the Silver Tower to wreak his revenge on his onetime friend.

  Hagos saw King Belamus coming. He sent Zerra to hide in Alex’s room and told Deela to hide too. “I will not,” Deela told him indignantly. “We are in this together, Hagos.”

  “Please hide, Deela,” Hagos begged. “This is looking bad.”

  “No,” said Deela, and she took Hagos’s hand. “Together, okay?”

  The door burst open and King Belamus strode in, leaving his two bedraggled Jackal out on the landing. They did not add to his kingly dignity.

  “I think,” the king said to Hagos, “that we will go and see the pretty lights on the cliffs, eh?”

  “Pretty lights?” Hagos said with a careful smile. “Ah, you mean the Xin.” So that’s it, Hagos thought. He’s going to get the Xin to push me off the cliff. Then he can pretend he had nothing to do with it. But Hagos was determined not to let the king see how afraid he was.

  Belamus laughed, enjoying himself now. “I do indeed mean the Xin. Those charming Xin that you created to push Beguilers off cliffs. Fascinating creatures, with which I’m sure you would like to be reacquainted. And your little Min friend here, he will enjoy a cliff walk too, I am sure.”

  “No!” Hagos protested. “No, he wouldn’t.”

  Belamus was pleased to have at last rattled Hagos. “Well, that’s a shame, because he’s going anyway,” the king said snappily. “Now, are you coming or do I get the Jackal in to fetch you?”

  “We’re coming,” Hagos said hurriedly.

  Outside on the landing, the king told the Jackal, “Take them to Oracle Halt. Wait for me there.” Hagos and Deela were hustled down the stairs with the king following behind, enjoying the defeated droop of his ex-Enchanter’s shoulders.

  Zerra crept out from her hiding place under Alex’s bed and took stock. It was not lost on her that she had felt safer and more cared for with Hagos in the past twenty-four hours than she had with her own mother for the last thirteen years. The thought of Hagos being thrown off the cliffs by the Xin gave her an empty feeling in the pit of her stomach. She had to do something.

  A little reluctantly, Zerra left the security of Hagos’s rooms and set off down the stairs. She emerged stealthily from the Silver Tower, crept out into Star Court and then down the street, at the end of which she took the ginnel that led into Gate Court. As she slipped in through the little door behind the line of Jackal chariots, a flurry of activity caught her eye at the entrance to the dungeons, and she ducked down behind the nearest chariot.

  Horrified, Zerra saw her little brother and big sister, each with their wrist on a long chain attached to a Jackal, blinking as they emerged into the evening sunlight. Zerra, who made a point of never ever crying, found her eyes grow blurry. Roughly she wiped her sleeve across her face and gulped down the lump that had risen in her throat. Louie looked so lost, she thought. His eyes were big with fear, and he was clutching something tightly to him. Francina looked disheveled and terrified. Her blue tunic was streaked with dirt and her leggings were torn at the knees. Louie looked like he’d fallen into a slime pit. Even his hair had strands of muck in it.

  Shocked, Zerra watched Louie and Francina, pulled impatiently by the Jackal as though they were bad dogs on a leash, stumbling out through the city gates. Something inside her chest did a painful twist.

  Suddenly a quarrel erupted at the gate. The aunt and nephew were back on duty and the nephew was saying, “Look, Auntie—”

  “Don’t call me Auntie on duty. I’m ma’am to you. How many times do I have to tell you?”

  “Sorry. Ma’am. But it’s not my fault that the stupid Beguiler Bell didn’t ring this time,” the nephew was saying. “It rang for the old Enchanter just now, didn’t it? So you can’t blame me. And I oiled it yesterday like you said.”

  “You must not have
done it properly then,” his aunt told him. “It’s not reliable. We’ve got two Beguiler kids—two—walking right underneath now and it’s silent as the grave.”

  “Maybe they’re not Beguilers,” the nephew said sulkily.

  A gasp came from his aunt. “Be careful what you say—hey, what are you doing? Put that pole down!”

  There was a sudden clang as the nephew jumped up and hit the Beguiler Bell, which obligingly rang. “There,” said the nephew. “Happy now?”

  Zerra nervously watched the gate guards return to their positions, and then she took a deep breath and walked as confidently as she could toward the city gate. As she approached, the guards stood to attention and saluted. Zerra smiled, pleased at their deference. But suddenly the woman guard barked, “Make way for the King’s Majesty! Make way!” Zerra wheeled around to see King Belamus rapidly approaching.

  Flustered, Zerra leaped out of the way, hoping the king had not noticed her. But no such luck—the king stopped and regarded her with an unnervingly friendly expression. “Spy,” he said. “I wish to thank you for alerting me to the perfidy of the Beguiler in the Silver Tower. As a reward you will accompany me to see not only the end of that devious rat but also the end of the very last two Beguiler children in the land.”

  Zerra stared at the king. She thought of Francina and Louie being led out of the city in chains, and she just knew that the king was talking about them. And then she thought of Hagos and how kind he had been to her and how he had made her feel—for the first time in her life, ever—that she mattered, and she began to feel quite ill.

  Belamus seemed amused at her hesitation. “Come, Spy, do not be shy. You deserve to be in on this at the end.”

  Miserably, Zerra thought the king was right. She did deserve this. She had caused it all to happen by Naming Alex in Luma, and now she deserved to face the consequences of what she had done.

  “Guards.” Belamus was now addressing the aunt and nephew. “You will accompany us. We no longer need to guard the gates of Rekadom, for the very last three Beguilers in the land will soon be no more and your king will be free from that pernicious prophecy of the Oracle—that he will die by the hand of an Enchanter’s child.” He laughed and pointed up to the Beguiler Bell. “And that will never ring again.”

  Glancing at one another in confusion, the aunt and nephew did as they were commanded and took their places on either side of the king.

  “Lead on, Spy,” King Belamus told Zerra. “You will escort us to Oracle Halt.”

  Dutifully, Zerra walked out through the gates, but as she passed beneath the Beguiler Bell, it rang.

  The king froze. “What is wrong with this bell?” he demanded. “Why does it ring?”

  The nephew looked terrified. “It hasn’t been working right today, Your Majesty. I tried to oil it, really, I did. But it doesn’t ring when it should. And now it rings when it shouldn’t.”

  Not wishing her nephew to be thrown into a dungeon for bad bell maintenance, the aunt stepped in hurriedly. “It was damaged by that Beguiler fog the night before last, Your Majesty. We have tried our best to repair it, I assure you.”

  “Huh,” grumbled the king. “Well, we won’t be needing it anymore anyway. Get a move on, Spy.”

  Zerra led the way along the well-trodden path around the city walls and then headed across the dusty expanse of scrub toward the old train platform of Oracle Halt. Ahead she could see her brother and sister stumbling along behind the Jackal. Beyond them, waiting on the Oracle Halt platform, were the figures of Hagos and Deela dwarfed by their two Jackal. And beyond them all lay the cliff edge and the wide blue stretch of the ocean, darkening with the ending of the day.

  Chapter 39

  “By the Hand of an Enchanter’s Child”

  “COAL!” YELLED DANNY.

  “Coal, Driver!” Ratchet yelled in reply, reverting to his boyhood role and the old protocols with great enthusiasm as he threw in another shovelful.

  Danny grinned. “You’re out of a job!” he yelled to Alex and Benn. “I’ve got a much better one here!”

  Alex and Benn were out of the heat and hassle of the driver’s cab, standing on the walkway that ran along both sides of the locomotive. It was hot as they chuffed slowly along the cliff-top track, but despite the heat, Alex was shivering. In the short time since she left Luma, Alex had learned to recognize and control the Twilight Terrors—the feeling of dread and fear that overtook her every evening as twilight descended. But tonight it was tinged with another, deeper fear—a fear that something terrible was about to happen.

  “Hey, look!” Benn called out. “There’s a weird bunch of people at Oracle Halt.” He turned to Alex and laughed. “Looks like they’re waiting for a train!”

  On the weed-strewn, crumbling platform of Oracle Halt, the weird bunch of people were waiting not for a train, but for a king.

  Four humans—two children and two adults—chained to three seven-foot-tall jackal-headed creatures wearing long red coats were watching the approach of a round figure on spindly legs. It wore a winged crown, the tips of the wings catching the last rays of the setting sun, and was bedecked with multicolored silks that flapped in the breeze that was blowing in off the ocean. It also wore a grim smile of satisfaction—King Belamus the Great was about to defeat the Oracle and its pernicious prophecy that had dogged his life for the last ten fear-filled years.

  On the platform the two children—a small boy clutching a large feathered lizard to his chest and a tall girl—were looking not at the approaching king and his two guards with their javelins, but at the slight figure of a girl wearing a combat jacket and grubby trousers who was leading them. “Franny, look—it’s Zerra!” whispered Louie.

  “Shh,” hissed Francina.

  “Zerra has come to rescue us!” Louie whispered excitedly.

  Francina said nothing. She was pretty sure that was the last thing her sister was planning.

  The king’s procession had reached the wide steps at the far end of the platform. “Stand aside, Spy,” the king said. With the two gate guards by his side, he strode past Zerra and approached the group of prisoners. Zerra hung back and anxiously watched a cluster of sharp-looking lights flickering along the edge of the cliff. They gave her the creeps. She walked slowly up the steps and saw the king jabbing the Enchanter threateningly in the chest.

  “So, RavenStarr,” Belamus was saying. “Here are those pretty lights we have come to see. We’ll let them get on with things, shall we?” The king waved his arm at the lights that had formed up into a net and were, Zerra was sure, dancing toward her. She glanced around to see if there was anywhere she could hide. There was nowhere at all.

  “Jackal!” Belamus sounded somewhat overwrought, Zerra thought. “Unchain the Beguiler and his little friend.” The king let out a high-pitched laugh. “We don’t want you going over the edge with them, do we? Not my last Jackal in the whole world. Oh no!” He wheeled around to Louie and Francina’s Jackal. “You! Unchain the Beguiler brats. They can have their own little dance with the Xin.” Belamus rubbed his hands together. “Oh, I am so looking forward to this. Goodbye to the last Beguilers in the kingdom!”

  Suddenly Hagos understood. It was not only him and Deela who Belamus was planning to send plunging off the cliff—it was also two innocent children. Released from his chains, Hagos made a decision. He threw himself at the king and sent him flying off the platform and onto the track.

  From her vantage point on the Puffer, Alex peered at the group of figures on Oracle Halt. “There’s some kind of fight going on,” she said. “Hey, they’re on the track.” She quickly made her way back to the driver’s cab. “Danny, slow down!” she yelled, climbing onto the footplate. “There are people on the track!”

  “People?” Danny looked shocked. “What kind of people?”

  “People people!” Alex yelled.

  And then, from the coal tender behind, a terrified yell came from Ratchet: “Skorpas!”

  Alex and Danny wheeled arou
nd to see a huge pair of pale-yellow claws emerging from a mound on the desert side of the track. As the Puffer chuffed past, the Skorpas shot out from its lair. Ratchet stared at it in horror—the monstrous thing was nearly as big as the train. He saw it raise its huge, segmented tail over its head, and then a luminous yellow streak of venom came shooting out from the barb. “Get down!” Ratchet yelled, but his warning came too late. The venom hit Danny’s Flyer jacket square in the back, the force throwing him to the floor. Ratchet scrambled from the tender and fell to his knees beside Danny. “Don’t move,” he told him. “Just a drop of this stuff will kill you. Stay completely still and let me take the jacket off.”

  “No,” Danny protested. “We’re going to crash into those people. Put the brakes on.”

  “Hey!” Ratchet yelled at Alex and Benn. “Get back here! Brakes, brakes!”

  Alex heard the panic in Ratchet’s voice. She scrambled back to the cab and stopped at the sight of Danny on the floor. “The brake lever!” Ratchet yelled. “There!” Alex grabbed the lever and pulled it down as hard as she could.

  “Not so fast!” Ratchet yelled, but he was too late. The wheels locked and the heavy locomotive went skidding forward, heading straight for the knot of people brawling on the track.

  The screaming of the brakes and the sight of the oncoming train broke up the fight at once. Everyone, except the king, jumped off the track. But Belamus stood his ground, watching the oncoming train with anger in his heart. “You don’t fool me!” he yelled at Hagos. “It’s a Beguilement!” He stood firm, waving his arms, yelling, “I’m not afraid of your cheap tricks, RavenStarr. I’m not!”

  “Belamus, it’s not a Beguilement!” Hagos yelled. “It’s real!”

  “Get out of the way!” Alex yelled at the figure with the winged crown and flowing silks that stood right in the path of the Puffer, waving its arms. Desperately she pulled on the brake lever again, but the mountain of iron, boiling water and steam continued to skid inexorably toward the king, its locked wheels screaming metal on metal. Alex closed her eyes. She was going to kill King Belamus. Palla’s prophecy was about to come true.