by V M Jones
The memory of that whisper of feeling on my fingertips in the dark niggled at the back of my mind. Had it been something — or nothing? Or had I dropped it — whatever it was? I gave the sorry little pile a poke with my finger, scowling at it doubtfully. There was the wedge-shaped stone that had stopped the stone door from closing; crumbs, and sand, and tiny balls of cotton; a long, tapered filament of something that looked like stiff nylon … I picked it up, puzzled, then grinned. A Tiger-Lily whisker!
A Tiger-Lily whisker! What else? Among the bits was a tiny feather, palest grey shading to silver, with three faint white bands at the tip like miniature new moons, or a three-tiered rainbow. I held it up, feeling like a prize idiot. ‘I thought there was something else … this might have been it, I guess …’
‘But that’s just a feather!’ said Rich, unimpressed.
‘I dunno, Richard.’ Jamie clambered to his feet and came over to look. ‘It could be magical. There must be a reason for it being there, after all.’
Rich rolled his eyes. ‘Get real, Jamie! Just being in the secret passage doesn’t automatically make it some kind of holy relic. That shelf would have got covered in all sorts of rubbish over the years — bird bones and bat shit and stuff like that. Lucky you didn’t pick up a handful of that too, Adam! Well done finding the book and the coins and the … cylinder-thing, though.’ I knew he was thinking — but tactfully not saying — for all the good they might ever be.
‘I’m afraid I agree with Richard for once,’ said Gen apologetically. ‘Sometimes a feather’s just a feather, even in Karazan.’
I stowed the book and the cylinder safely away in my backpack, and was on the point of tipping the junk collection onto the ground when something stopped me. Turning away so the others wouldn’t tease me, I slipped the whole lot back into the depths of my pocket — and promptly forgot all about it.
‘And now,’ said Jamie, sounding deteminedly cheerful, ‘who’s for a handful of scroggin and a look a the map?’
A little bit of magic
I watched Kenta haul out the bulging bag of scroggin and pass it round. Hannah had helped Nanny make it for us back at Quested Court. ‘You take it on long walks and adventures,’ she’d told me solemnly. ‘It’s called scroggin because those are the first letters of all the ingredients: sultanas, chocolate, raisins, orange peel — the candied kind — ginger (though you leave that out ’cos it’s yucky), glucose, imagination, and nuts. Glucose is another word for barley sugars.’
‘Imagination?’ I asked her, pretending to be puzzled. ‘How can you put imagination in a recipe? You can’t eat it, can you?’
‘Yes you can — Q says so! He says it’s the food of the soul: a little bit of this and a little bit of that, spiced up with magic. And when I make scroggin with Nanny, that means …’
Hundreds and thousands. Now, deep in a forest somewhere in Karazan, there they were: a rainbow-coloured drift in the bottom corner of the bag. Smiling, I helped myself to a double handful of the scroggin, making sure I got plenty of chocolate and not too many raisins. I was about to pop the first piece of chocolate into my mouth when I stopped and had a closer look at it. There, indented in the shiny brown surface, was a small, perfect fingerprint, lined with tiny multicoloured balls.
‘It shouldn’t be too hard to figure out where we are — more or less, at any rate,’ Jamie was saying with his mouth full, holding out one hand to Kenta for the map.
It had been Jamie who’d found it — or more accurately pinched it, though admittedly by mistake — last time we’d been in Arakesh. Like so many things in Karazan, it didn’t work quite the way you’d expect: it had started off almost completely black, areas only revealing themselves when we actually reached them. As Rich had pointed out, it was a limited amount of use only being able to see where you’d already been, instead of where you wanted to go … but that was Karazan for you, and a magical back-to-front map was a lot better than nothing.
Kenta rummaged inside her backpack, producing a parchment scroll, and we all shuffled closer as she fumbled for the edge to unroll it.
‘Hang on a minute, Kenta,’ said Jamie suddenly; ‘that’s the wrong one. It’s not the map, it’s the other parchment — the blank one.’
He was right. The parchment Kenta was unrolling was the one we’d found in the junk shop belonging to Hob’s Pa. Then, it had held the cryptic clues that led us to the Temple of Serpents and the five magical potions; but it had been wiped completely clean by our re-entry into our own world months before.
But Kenta already had it half-open … and it wasn’t blank now.
We gawked at it in silence.
For what seemed a long time no one spoke.
Kai and Hob, who’d lived in Karazan all their lives, had been matter-of-fact about magic; to them, it was as everyday and ordinary as watching TV is to us. But to the five of us it was strange and wonderful, and I for one still had trouble believing it was real.
I reached out a gentle finger and touched the parchment. There it was — the unmistakable electric tingle, as if the scroll was humming softly under its breath. For a second I wondered: had it been chance that made Kenta choose the wrong one … or had the parchment wanted to be chosen?
The writing was the same as before: thick, dark and old-fashioned, and hard to read — for me, at least. But as I stumbled my way through it, I realised that reading the words was the easy part. Understanding them was totally impossible.
For me, but not for the others.
‘So …’ said Kenta slowly, ‘we’re meant to find him. Us kids — the five of us.’
‘Huh?’ said Rich. ‘Where does it say that?’
‘We must be,’ said Gen, a dreamy look on her face; ‘or the poem wouldn’t have come to us.’
‘But it actually says so, Gen!’ Jamie was stumbling over his words with excitement. ‘Five in one and one in five: the five of us, together in one group!’
‘Realms beyond the Morningside …’ read Kenta, frowning.
‘Wasn’t Morningside on the map?’ said Jamie. ‘We’ll check in a sec, but I’m sure it was! It was the area to the right of the mountains — the east, where the sun comes up — beside the Cliffs of Stone.’
‘Then realms beyond the Morningside could mean … it could mean our world: the world beyond the magic portal in the Cliffs of Stone!’ Gen’s eyes were shining. ‘That confirms beyond a doubt it’s referring to us!’
‘So.’ Rich was scowling down at the poem as if it was a difficult sum. ‘How about the next bit? After two score years and ten. A score’s twenty, isn’t it? So that makes fifty, right? And so is ten times five — fifty! They add up to the same!’
‘And the he is …’ prompted Jamie.
‘Zephyr!’ squawked Rich.
‘Exactly! Well done, Richard — see, it’s not so hard after all.’
‘And it ties in with what Hob told us about Zephyr coming back from exile after fifty years,’ chipped in Kenta.
‘The next bit tells us where to find him …’ said Gen.
‘OK, let’s have a look,’ said Rich, with newfound confidence. ‘Yeah! How about that! It does tell us where to find him: in pools of darkness!’
‘Yes — but I doubt it means it literally,’ Gen objected. ‘Is he really likely to be at the bottom of a dark pool, underwater?’
‘Hopefully not — if he was, he’d be drowned, and that wouldn’t be much good to anyone,’ said Jamie with a grin.
‘Look,’ said Kenta. ‘It goes on to talk about a prize that’s hidden in the dragon’s eyes … could that also be Zephyr — the prize, I mean?’
‘You don’t think it could be a real dragon, do you?’ asked Jamie uneasily.
‘And empty sockets … what does it mean by that?’
I didn’t say anything, but I had a hunch that for once I might know the answer. An image came into my mind of a matted beard and a tangled mane of hair, of a face with shrunken pouches of skin where the eyes had once been … Meirion, the prophet
mage. But he was gone — who knew where?
‘Typical Karazan,’ grumbled Rich. ‘If the parchment wants to tell us something, why doesn’t it just do it?’
‘Lucky for you Kai’s not here, Richard — you’d be in for a lecture! But you’re right — it is pretty cryptic, even for Karazan,’ Jamie admitted.
‘And that last bit’s total gobbledegook, if you ask me,’ Rich said, discouraged.
‘Though words of the past could mean the things Kai and Hob told us — the legend and stuff,’ said Jamie.
‘There seem to be so many opposites and contradictions in that last verse,’ said Kenta. ‘Twain is one, wind and sun, night and day, child is man … it makes no sense at all.’
‘It’s a poem, remember,’ said Jamie knowledgeably. ‘Heaps of poems don’t seem to make sense at first. It’s because when you write one, you use a thing called poetic licence — that means you get to bend the rules a bit to make the rhythm and rhyme work out. Plus they’re always full of symbolism and metaphors and stuff. So when it says, for instance, turn night to day, it doesn’t mean it literally.’
‘What does it mean then?’ asked Rich.
‘Well, turn night to day could mean … let me think … ending the dark times of King Karazeel’s reign, and bringing back all the happiness and light you’d associate with good King Zane and Zephyr,’ Jamie explained. ‘Poetry’s like that. You just have to get used to it, and then it all makes sense.’
‘And one thing’s for certain,’ said Gen, suddenly sounding very grown-up: ‘it does make sense. Perfect sense — just like the other magical clues. It’s right here in front of us. All we need to do is figure it out.’
The Book of Days
‘So,’ said Rich, ‘d’you reckon we look for pools of darkness, or what?’
We were huddled round the map — the right one this time — trying to decide what to do next.
‘Speaking of darkness,’ Gen pointed out, ‘about half the map is still covered in black splodge. So the chances are that even if the pools of darkness exist, we won’t know where they are till we actually get there.’
‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘but there is one good thing about the splodge: it means we can pinpoint exactly where we are. This part of the map was covered up before, and it isn’t now. We’re pushing the splodge ahead of us as we move, so this —’ I pointed to a kind of blunt arrowhead in the blackness — ‘is where we must be.’
‘That explains why the forest seems so much bigger than I remembered,’ said Jamie. ‘Last time we headed north, where it’s narrower. But look: it stretches way further to the east … and for all we know, it could go on for ages.’
‘But where do we go from here? I can’t see any pools marked on the map — at least, not the bit we can see,’ said Kenta. ‘Though as Gen says, they could be anywhere — there’s just no way of telling.’
‘How about the other clues then? Empty sockets … dragon?’ hazarded Rich. ‘Can anyone see, like, Here be dragons or anything?
‘It wouldn’t mean real dragons, Richard,’ said Jamie. ‘Like I was saying, it’s probably symbolic — or a statue of a dragon of something. And anyhow, there’s no mention of dragons anywhere that I can see.’
But suddenly I noticed something — me! — and the words came tumbling out of my mouth before I had a chance to think. ‘Yeah, there is! Up there in the mountains! We went through them last time, on our way to Shakesh —’ I remembered a huddle of dark houses in swirling snow — ‘Dragon Pass, and Dragondale!’
I grinned triumphantly round at the others. But there was something in their faces … I felt my smile stiffen and fade. ‘What?’
‘It doesn’t say Dragon Pass, Adam,’ said Jamie awkwardly. ‘It says Draken Pass … and Drakendale.’
I felt my face flare. When would I learn to keep my big mouth shut — especially where reading and spelling were concerned?
‘I thought it said that too, Adam,’ Gen fibbed. ‘It’s so gloomy in here, it’s hard to tell —’
‘Hang on a minute, though!’ Rich interrupted, frowning down at the map. ‘What kind of a word is that? Draken … it sure sounds a lot like dragon to me. Maybe it’s — I dunno — the word for dragon in ancient Karazanese, or something. I don’t think you were wrong at all, Adam: I think you’ve hit the nail bang on the head.’
‘You might be right. Dragon … draken. Here be drakens …’ said Gen, trying it out.
‘There’s just one problem,’ Rich said grimly. ‘To get there, we have to cross the River Ravven again. And I don’t think any of us is keen to do that.’
I felt a hollow surge of dread, and looking round at the others, I could see they felt the same. Once had been more than enough.
‘There’s always Rainbow Bridge.’
‘But there’s no guarantee it’ll be sunny. And if it isn’t …’
No rainbow. I remembered the bridge dissolving under my feet last time we’d crossed it, vanishing with the disappearing sun …
‘Is there no other way?’ I didn’t realise I’d spoken aloud till Kenta answered me.
‘There is — I mean, there might be. There is in the game, anyhow.’ Rich gave me a half-grin and a wink; Kenta fancied herself world expert on Quest of the Dark Citadel. ‘I’ve told you how long I spent trying to cross the river. Well, when I finally did, it wasn’t actually the river at all. It was way over on the coast, where it joins the sea … I suppose you’d call it an estuary, or a delta, or something.’
‘And were there …’
‘No.’ Kenta gave Gen a sympathetic little smile. ‘No spiders — not even one.’
‘How did you get across?’ Rich asked. ‘Did you swim?’
‘There was a little wooden boat.’ Kenta shrugged. ‘I just hopped in and rowed across.’
She made it sound so easy. ‘How far away is it, d’you think?’ I could hear the hope in Jamie’s voice.
‘Well … it’s a lot quicker walking across a computer screen than doing it in real life.’ She glanced down at the map. ‘But we’ve already gone quite a long way east … I’d say we’d be there by this evening, or tomorrow morning at the latest.’
‘And the best part is that they won’t expect us to go this way,’ said Rich with satisfaction. ‘Plus, a boat ride across an estuary will take care of anything that’s left of our scent.’ He looked round at us. ‘All agreed? Come on then — what are we waiting for?’
But we didn’t reach the coast by evening. When at last we emerged from the forest dusk had already fallen; the first stars were pinpricks in the evening sky, and the only sign of the sea was the faintest whiff of salt on the wind. A lonely moon hung pale on the horizon.
Far away to our left a vast lake mirrored the light of the moon like a silver bowl. A many-turreted castle rose from the water, floating on its surface like something out of one of Gen’s fairy tales. ‘The Dark Citadel,’ said Kenta softly, ‘and the lake is Stillwater. We still have a long way to go.’
Even Rich was too dog-tired to tease her. ‘How do we know old Zephyr isn’t holed up in there?’ he mumbled.
‘Hard to see how it fits with the clues,’ said Jamie.
‘Could the lake be a Pool of Darkness, d’you think?’ asked Gen, without much hope. But it didn’t look dark to me, and none of us could summon the energy to answer her.
‘I say we stop here.’ The second the words were out of my mouth I saw relief flood the others’ faces. ‘We’ve done enough for one day, and there’s no point trying to run on empty. How does … let’s see …’ I was digging through my pack, ‘Creamy Potato Cheddar Soup sound — or Alpine Mashed Potato and Country Chicken with Gravy?’
‘Or maybe both,’ suggested Jamie, with the first real smile I’d seen for hours.
Night wrapped round our little campsite like a soft cloak. The fire had burned down to glowing embers, and the dark shapes of the others were motionless in their sleeping bags. The day had taken its toll on all of us, and as soon as the last plate of steaming stew
had been scraped clean all anyone could think of was sleep. When Rich reluctantly mumbled something about ‘first watch’ there’d been a deafening silence — but unlike the others I didn’t feel at all tired. Physically, yes — I was stiff and sore from my fall down the stone steps, and my legs felt like lead after the frantic dash through the forest and the hours of walking — but my mind was in overdrive.
I felt for my ring, meaning to thread it onto its bootlace and hang it back round my neck. Took it out and held it for a moment, watching the way it seemed to draw silvery light from the moon and the distant water. And suddenly I ached to play my penny whistle. I could hear the exact sequence of notes in my mind, crystal clear as the ripples of moonlight on water. But I didn’t want to wake the others.
Restlessly I stood and strode over to my pack. I could work out the fingering, at least … I reached into my bag, my fingers feeling for the smoothness of metal; but instead they met the soft texture of leather. I drew out the little book — the Book of Days — and walked slowly back to my log. Still hearing the song of my flute in my head, I absently opened the cover again, half-wondering what could be so precious about an empty book that it should be kept so secret …
Then the moonlight fell on the dark page, and the music in my mind stopped as abruptly as a radio being snapped off.
There was writing where there had been only emptiness before. A graceful flowing cursive script, written in glowing mother-of-pearl that shone out from the parchment like starlight. Hardly daring to breathe in case it disappeared, I managed to decipher the first few words:
I am Princess Zaronel of Antarion. I write in moonlight, words to be read on some moonlit night far hence, by whom I do not know …
Words of the past