‘And all by itself,’ said Phineas. ‘That would be a feat. But no, I don’t think so. Look.’
The wisp had, indeed, pulled itself together, and begun to wander away. So listless, so seemingly aimless, was its progress that Ilsevel continued to suffer grave doubts as to its understanding. But then it stopped, mere inches from the rock wall, and brightened, gleaming like a cheery wisp-smile.
‘Thank you,’ said Phineas, and collected something pale that lay, pinned beneath a chunk of rock, upon a jagged outcropping. ‘It is a note,’ he said, and passed it to Ilsevel.
The note said only, He is fond of treasures. Ware the Thorn, Ilse.
‘If she means Gilligold, I know he is fond of treasures,’ said Ilsevel in exasperation. ‘Is that not precisely why we are here? And what can she mean by the Thorn?’
‘We will shortly find out,’ said Phineas. ‘I hope.’
Indeed, if the alternative was to spend the next century or two at the Door. Ilsevel folded the note, smothering her feelings of frustration as best she could, and tucked it inside her bodice.
‘These were with it,’ he said, and put something else clothish into her hands. It was a cotton bundle; the contents proved to be a wisp of dried grass, and a withered piece of dried fruit. ‘I do not at all understand what they are for,’ he complained.
The grass, dead though it was, had its beauties, for it was ethereally pale and shone silvery in the wisp-light. The fruit was a mouthful of apple, desiccated but edible. ‘Treasures,’ she said, somewhat enlightened, and wrapped them carefully back up in the cotton. This bundle, too, went into her bodice.
In answer to Phineas’s questioning look, she said only, ‘We will shortly discover their use. It is more pressing to come up with an answer to those three questions.’
‘I can answer them,’ said Phineas.
‘Can you indeed?’
‘Most certainly.’ He spoke stoutly, but his abundant confidence could not quite instil Ilsevel with very much to match it.
But her own mind being perfectly blank of possible answers, she was obliged to trust him. And it was not so very difficult to do so, after all, for had he not repeatedly proved that he possessed remarkable quickness of thought? Ilsevel had known few to match him.
So she said, ‘Let us go back, then,’ and they followed Phineas’s wisp back to the two trolls at the Door. Phineas carefully gathered up his wisp once they were back within the Door’s fulgent glow, and restored it to his pocket.
‘I am ready to answer,’ he told Nigmenog.
‘Excellent!’ said the troll, with the smile of a creature that knows himself within minutes of freedom. ‘Say on, then!’
‘The first question: how many snowberries grow in the sea? The answer is: as many as red herrings swim in the wood.’
Nigmenog’s smile faded a little, and he scratched his head. ‘I think it a fair answer, Golly, do not you?’
‘It is,’ growled Gollumpus.
Phineas, almost imperceptibly, relaxed a fraction. His hand found Ilsevel’s and clutched it tightly. ‘The second question,’ he continued, his voice gaining in strength. ‘How many stars are there in the sky? Why, as many as there are grains of sand in the sea.’
Nigmenog squinted at him. ‘You are sure of that, are you?’
‘I am,’ said Phineas. ‘You may count them to make certain, if you wish.’
Nigmenog cast a quick glance up into a sky littered with a vast number of stars. ‘Some other time, perhaps,’ he muttered.
Ilsevel, heartened, gave Phineas’s hand an approving squeeze.
‘And the third question?’ said Nigmenog. ‘Have you an answer for that, too, you clever young wretch?’
‘I have a great many answers to it,’ said Phineas, and Ilsevel heard in his voice that his mischievous grin was back. ‘What is the difference between a dragon? Why, a foxglove, because it never rains on Tuesdays.’
Nigmenog blinked. ‘Is that so?’
‘Yes. Or an apple, because a hat has no feet.’
Nigmenog grunted.
‘And a chicken, because a cat cannot fly.’
‘Is that all?’ said Nigmenog.
‘No! The difference between a dragon is a crayfish, because strawberries are red and blueberries are blue, and also—’
‘Aye,’ said Nigmenog wearily, holding up one large hand. ‘That’ll do, lad.’ He spoke with the defeated tone of a man resigning himself to an inevitable fate, and hope flared to life in Ilsevel’s breast. ‘You can pass,’ said Nigmenog.
‘You remarkable boy!’ Ilsevel crowed. ‘My Phineas, I could kiss you.’
Phineas flushed, but Ilsevel was not given time either to act upon this statement or to retract it, for Gollumpus said, ‘Wait,’ and her heart sank again. ‘Can we not keep one of them?’
‘Why, no,’ said Nigmenog, but he looked appraisingly at Phineas and Ilsevel in turn. ‘We did have an agreement, Golly.’
‘But they need not both pass,’ said Gollumpus, far too reasonably for Ilsevel’s liking. ‘Let one of them take my place, and the other may go.’
‘Why cannot one of them take my place?’ said Nigmenog, drawing himself up. ‘It is I who has done all the work! I made up all the questions, Golly!’
‘I have been here longer,’ said Gollumpus.
‘That is a lie! It has been far longer for me!’
The Door, meanwhile, had decided the issue independently of either Nigmenog or Gollumpus, for the light around it grew as it slowly creaked open. ‘Come on,’ said Ilsevel, and tugged Phineas after her as she darted nimbly through the Door. They ran, at least until they had got beyond the circle of luminous light, and the sounds of the trolls’ disagreement began to fade behind them.
Ilsevel found herself laughing. ‘Oh, my Phineas, where did you learn to do that?’ she gasped.
Phineas blinked at her. ‘What?’
‘Such perfect answers! And yet, they made no sense whatsoever to me.’
‘They are not meant to,’ he said. ‘Nobody could make sense of such questions, not even the asker. So the answer to them all, really, is ‘I don’t know, and neither do you,’ but it would be sadly flat to say so in so many words, would it not?’
‘Except the snowberries,’ said Ilsevel. ‘I am perfectly certain that the answer to that question is: none.’
‘Are you?’ countered Phineas. ‘Have you been into the sea to check?’
‘No,’ Ilsevel had to concede.
‘So the answer is, I don’t know, but probably none, or in other words exactly as many as fish you might expect to find swimming about in Sherwood Forest.’
‘You,’ said Ilsevel, ‘are quite wasted on bread, my Phineas.’
‘Bread is good,’ he answered earnestly. ‘People thrive upon bread. It is a useful thing to do.’
‘It is. But it is a fitter profession for someone else.’
‘Someone like who?’
Ilsevel shrugged. ‘Someone less dazzling.’
That silenced him. After a few moments, when he did not speak, Ilsevel said: ‘Well then, where to? Shall your wisp help us again?’
Phineas retrieved it from his pocket and set it afloat once more, whereupon it obligingly brightened. ‘To Gilligold, good wisp,’ he said hopefully. ‘And speedily, if you please.’
‘But carefully,’ Ilsevel added. ‘For I am not comfortable about this mysterious Thorn we are constantly being told of.’
‘Carefully,’ agreed Phineas.
The wisp sailed happily away, and Ilsevel and Phineas fell into step behind it.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Beyond the wall, the darkness proved not nearly so fathomless as it had been outside the Door. It seemed somehow that the silver stars shone more brightly here, bathing the heather and the harebell in a soft, pale light more than sufficient to navigate by. Lights, also, danced among the shadowed trees, fairy-lights to Phineas’s eyes. A path lay spread before their feet, quartz flagstones embedded into the grass; scented hedges rambl
ed along either side, and from within those verdant bushes glittered the ethereal shapes of flowers, glinting with their own soft-shaded lights. Never before had Phineas witnessed such unearthly beauty. He walked along at Lady Silver’s side with his hands deep in the pockets of his coat, eyes everywhere as he delightedly devoured every glimpse of colour and light.
Some of his happy feelings faded a little when Ilsevel abruptly snapped, ‘Stop staring.’
He swallowed. ‘I am sorry.’
She relented enough to say: ‘Such beauty is deceptive, do you not see? Dangerously dulcet. Do not forget that we have twice been warned.’
The Thorn. Phineas had indeed forgotten, lulled by the perfumed air, the starry flowers, the gentle lights of the night garden. He made himself take in the glory with but half an eye, alert for signs of approach. But there came none. The night was still; barely a creature stirred, only an occasional bird heard winging its way into the night from somewhere overhead.
Then Ilsevel stopped.
‘What?’ whispered Phineas, fully alert in an instant, and braced for trouble.
Ilsevel pointed.
A rose lay in the path.
It was no ordinary rose, either, for it was snow-white and glimmered with a light like the stars. It looked familiar.
Ilsevel thought so too, for she made a hasty check of the sash in which she had been carrying their gathered flowers from the Seasons’ Hollows. The gathered knot she had made around their collected stems was empty; the flowers were all gone.
‘Who took them?’ she hissed in a low voice. ‘Did you see anyone, Phineas?’
‘Not a soul.’ He stooped to pick up the rose, but Ilsevel’s hand darted out and fastened, vice-like, around his wrist. ‘Wait.’
He paused.
‘Seek the rose, ware the thorn. Is this some kind of trap?’
Phineas quietly withdrew his wrist from her grip, and straightened. ‘Let us leave it there for now, then.’
Ilsevel’s agreement to this plan was signalled in her moving forward, stepping carefully over the beautiful rose in the path.
The other rose, the sunlit one, lay a little farther ahead — and there was something else there. A soft light shone in the ground, and when Phineas approached he saw what appeared to be a pane of crystal-clear quartz set into the grass. Behind it, a lyre was imprisoned. Carved from a moon-pale wood, it was an instrument of breath-taking grace and delicacy; its strings rippled like water, and glittered in an impossible array of colours.
‘That is my sister’s,’ Ilsevel gasped, coming up beside him. ‘She used to play ancient airs upon it, after the Summer feasts.’
‘Then an important question is answered,’ said Phineas calmly. ‘Gilligold indeed has some of your sister’s lost treasures.’
‘Yes, but…’ Ilsevel knelt in the dew-damp grass and touched the quartz, then rapped upon it. ‘But how may they be released?’
‘We will find a way, I promise.’
Ilsevel looked up at him, uncertain, but she nodded after a moment and rose to her feet. ‘I wonder what more there are?’ she said, more briskly, and set off anew.
They covered some distance upon the path over the next half-hour, as it wound its way slowly up to the very top of the peak. At intervals they found more of Ilsevel’s stolen flowers, together with the jug of ice-wine Mr. Dapper had given them, all strewn temptingly in their way. They also discovered more of the quartz-bound caches, containing: an ethereal gown of whisper-thin golden silk, wreathed in misted ribbons; an armband of clear jewels, glittering with captured starlight; a bejewelled hair comb, from which a velvety orchid-blossom grew; the lost shoe-roses, with their star-dusted butterflies; a pearlescent pocket-watch, clear waters swirling beneath its glassy face, its hands telling the time in many places at once; and a shabby little doll in the shape of a cat, its hide stitched from much-worn purple velvet.
‘All her things,’ choked Ilsevel, and for the first time since Phineas had met her, her composure hung in tatters. He heard tears behind the words, and it cost her a visible effort to restore herself to her usual serenity.
Phineas made bold enough to take her hand, as she had earlier taken his. ‘We will soon restore them to her,’ he said gently.
‘We must, Phineas,’ she said, her old fierceness creeping back into her voice. ‘We must. It is wrong that they should be here! What is this place? By what right are Her Majesty’s personal wonders held prisoner here? Gilligold shall answer for this!’
Phineas preferred her anger to her tears, for while the former brought with it a useful energy, the latter could only break the heart. So he encouraged this happier flow of thoughts, though his mind turned busily upon the problem even as he comforted her. What was this place, indeed? Who made of it a shrine to a lost queen? And how, indeed, were they to retrieve even one of Anthelaena’s possessions?
‘I believe we must spring the trap,’ he said softly.
Ilsevel’s head came up, and she directed at him a swift, keen look. ‘What are you thinking, my Phineas?’
‘That we might wander here for hours without learning anything of use, and we are not so well-supplied with time as all that. If the Thorn lies waiting for us, very well: let us announce ourselves.’
‘Your wisp,’ she said.
He had forgotten. ‘What of it?’
‘Can it lead us to Gilligold?’
Phineas did not trouble to answer, merely taking the wisp from his pocket and casting it up anew. There it hung like a tiny, giggling moon, and Phineas felt insensibly heartened by its presence. ‘Wisp, take us to Gilligold?’ he asked.
But the wisp, so helpful before, did not seem able to assist him now. It bobbed and flowed in circles, spiralling far up into the sky before coming down again in a flourish of starlight. If it were not for the absolute lack of results its antics produced, Phineas might have said that it looked triumphant.
‘You celebrate too early,’ he told it. ‘You have not yet taken us to Gilligold.’
The wisp flashed, then darkened. He had irritated it.
Ilsevel was looking about, as though she might see Gilligold at any moment. But nobody was to be seen save for themselves; and when Ilsevel called Gilligold’s name, no one answered.
With a sigh, Phineas reclaimed his wisp.
‘The trap it is, then,’ said Ilsevel ruefully, and straightened her shoulders. She began to stoop, but it was Phineas’s turn to halt her in the attempt.
‘Let me,’ he said.
‘Why?’
He smiled, as best he could. ‘The world will not miss a baker’s boy so very much as it will miss My Lady Silver.’
‘Maudlin words, my Phineas! Surely nothing so terrible as all that is like to come of it?’
‘I hope not,’ he said. ‘But if only one of us is to survive, it must be you, for who else is to take these things away from here, and revive your sister? It is not a task I can perform.’
‘It is not a task I can perform either, without you.’
He hid the warmth at heart that these words prompted, and set aside the confusion also. ‘Then you had better look after me,’ he said with an attempt at a grin. ‘If I am dead in five minutes I’ll be vexed with you.’
Ilsevel levelled a finger at him. ‘Stop joking, start doing,’ she commanded, but a smile lurked in her eyes.
Phineas nodded — and hesitated. What was he to expect, indeed?
Well, boy. You put on these shoes yourself; best walk in them.
He bent, and collected the delicate object that lay near his feet: one of the velvet queen parasols.
Nothing very much happened; he was certainly not attacked. It was only that, when he straightened, he discovered himself to be somewhere else — and there was no sign of Ilsevel.
He was underground, as though he had noiselessly dropped into the earth. The darkness there was alleviated only by a dim lantern hanging from the packed mud of the ceiling. This lantern, an ethereal, silvery thing, swung slightly back and forth, though
no breeze existed to set it into motion. The chamber was barely as wide as Phineas was tall, and contained nothing else.
‘Hello?’ he called uncertainly.
No answer came.
Light glittered, making him blink. The air grew colder, and dank.
Then, at last, a voice spoke. It rumbled through the earth beneath his feet, and shivered up the walls. ‘Why are you here, Phineas Drake?’
Phineas carefully stored the delicate mushroom in a pocket of his long coat. ‘I am here to help Ilsevel,’ he said, as calmly as he could.
‘My Lady Silver,’ said the voice, and laughed. ‘Princess of Aylfenhame. Enchantress. She is far older than you, Phineas Drake, far wiser, and infinitely more powerful. And you are here to… help.’
Phineas swallowed. ‘I…’ he began, and his words dried up. ‘I… she — she is not familiar with England, the way I am. She asked for my aid.’
‘You are not in England anymore. This is her world. Our world.’
And Phineas had no place whatsoever within it. He understood the implication clearly enough, and could find no way of refuting it. What was he doing out here?
The riddles. He had answered those; Ilsevel had praised him for it.
He said this.
‘True,’ conceded the voice. ‘That was a worthy service. But do you really think she could not have managed without you?’
Of course she could. She was a princess of Aylfenhame. She would have found her way through, with or without Phineas. ‘But,’ he said, rallying, ‘why then does she keep me with her?’
‘Perhaps,’ whispered the voice, ‘she finds you… amusing.’
Perhaps she did. That look in her eyes sometimes, when she looked at Phineas — he took it for a smile of approval, but did it not seem more likely that it was a smile of amusement? Tinged, on occasion, with derision, and that was fair as well, for he was only Phineas Drake.
‘Are you the Thorn?’ said Phineas softly.
‘I am sometimes called so.’
Mr Drake and My Lady Silver Page 23