Questors

by Joan Lennon

  Mrs Macmahonney seemed to be lost. She was wandering about in the upper corridors with none of her usual purposefulness, almost as if she’d forgotten what she was up there for.

  Alpine Cordell allowed himself a slight irritation at the sight of her. He really had no interest in adding extraneous crones to his list of responsibilities just now. He gave a dry, enquiring cough.

  Mrs Macmahonney jumped.

  ‘Oh! Oh, it’s you, Mr Cordell,’ she said. And then she just looked at him, blinking.

  He sighed.

  ‘Can I be of assistance?’

  ‘Well, now, I’m not sure,’ said Mrs Mac. ‘I have to tell you, I’m finding this backwash really very…’

  She staggered suddenly, as if she were about to faint. Cordell tried to back away, but he wasn’t quick enough. Mrs Mac’s hand shot out and grabbed his. Her touch was surprisingly hot.

  Then, just as suddenly, she was steady again.

  ‘I need a cup of tea,’ she announced abruptly, and walked away.

  Alpine Cordell watched her go… and then put her out of his mind.

  The Preceptor wanted him.

  Back in the kitchen, Mrs Mac took a number of storage jars down from a shelf. She removed their lids, shuffled them, put them back on in a different order and returned the jars to the shelf. Then, eyes closed, she paused…

  In the darkened kitchen there was silence, touched only lightly by the occasional low hum of an appliance motor switching on and then off again…

  The figure that glided into the room was as shadowy as it had been on the night in question, and as silent. Sight and hearing were still of no use in identifying it, but there was another sense that suddenly came into play.

  As the figure reached out its hand to place the paper on the table, a faint scent of vanilla drifted in the air.

  In another time, Mrs Mac, eyes still closed, murmured a single word.

  ‘Gotcha.’

  ‘Go. Now.’

  ‘To the Castle?’

  ‘Fool. To the City, of course. Get there before they arrive. Make sure the Path of the Crystal continues strong. A little xenophobia goes a long way, but it needs careful nurturing… I want the possibility of a hasty action, with unfortunate consequences, maximized. Chance is a fine thing.’

  32

  The Mature of Nowhere

  On Kir, at dawn on the second day, the truck had stopped. They’d jumped out, unloaded the gear, loaded the sledge and stood around briefly feeling awkward.

  The Steward had said, ‘Right. It’s over that ridge there. Be careful. Good luck.’

  Nick had said, ‘Oh. Um. Well…’ and then punched Bryn in the arm. He’d half waved at the other two and scrambled into the cab.

  Then they’d driven away, spraying snow and sliding sideways a little, leaving the three alone in…

  … the Middle of Nowhere.

  This was what the words had always meant.

  Cam started to walk and the others followed automatically.

  Then, only a few steps from the churned-up snow and the lingering stink of machine, Bryn stopped, the sledge rope slack in his hand. All at once, out of the blue, he found himself feeling… preternaturally alive. It was as if he could hear the crunch of every individual snow crystal under his boots; feel every little piece of freezing air as it came into his warm lungs and then out again in a cloud of steam; see the exact palette of colours that went into the dawn sky, the blacks and blues, the weird greens, the clear white of the sun as it rose out of a band of red and eclipsed the stars. Every detail, every texture – he’d seen how homesick Cam was at first for the desert, but now he was feeling it too. Though how could you feel homesick when you were at home?

  It was like sheer energy flooding straight in through his eyes.

  Madlen came up beside him. He gave her an enormous grin, waving a mitted hand enthusiastically at – well, everything, and she smiled back.

  ‘OΚ, I admit it. Wow!’ she said, and that was enough.

  ‘Come on, you two,’ Cam called back. ‘I’m seizing up!’

  Bryn grabbed the sledge rope and tromped off after it.

  ‘So what do we do now?’ asked Madlen, hugging her coat closer to herself against the cold air.

  They’d come up over the ridge at the foot of the valley, with the glacier looming at the far end. Bryn had explained to them what a glacier was, how at some point the ice had retreated and the valley had been left behind by its passage. But that wasn’t how it looked. It looked as if the great ragged wall of it were about to attack, topple over on to the frozen lake that was its prey.

  ‘Well?’ Madlen said.

  Bryn didn’t answer. Instead, he pulled the dragon detector out of his pocket.

  ‘Oh, great,’ scoffed Cam. ‘Kir technology. That we already know doesn’t work.’

  Bryn ignored it and flicked the switch.

  The whine the vibrating detector produced sounded thin and feeble in the hugeness of the landscape. Bryn held the box out in front of him and turned slowly through 360 degrees.

  ‘Down there,’ he said after a moment, indicating the lake far below them. Then he pocketed the detector once more.

  Cam and Madlen exchanged looks.

  ‘Dragons you can’t see, a ten in one slope and no road or path or handy lift. Of course. Where else would it be but down there,’ said Cam.

  ‘Will you push me or shall I push you?’ said Madlen. ‘When we reach the bottom we can easily continue the Quest as giant snowballs with broken legs…’

  ‘You first, sib.’

  ‘No, no, I insist, children first.’

  ‘Very funny,’ said Bryn. ‘Here, help me unload the sledge.’ He began throwing things energetically on to the snow. ‘We can use the snowball idea for the packs. Take out anything breakable…’

  It was Cam who thought of tying the packs up in the tent, making the bundle as round as possible. Then, with a whoop, they hurled it down the slope and watched with delight as it snowballed lakeward, spinning at last well out on to the frozen surface.

  ‘Now us!’ Bryn grinned manically at the others. ‘All aboard!’

  ‘O – Κ,’ said Madlen uncertainly, but Cam was well into the spirit of it now.

  ‘Can I sit up front? Can I?’ it shrilled.

  Bryn arranged them on the sledge, Cam in front, Madlen in the middle and himself and the remaining pack at the back.

  ‘Keep everything tucked in or you’ll slow us down. Maybe even tip us over,’ he warned as they settled on the very rim of the slope.

  ‘Ready. Steady. GO!’

  They pushed off with their hands, leaning forward eagerly, ready for the mad rush of the wind, the grip of gravity – but nothing happened. The heavily laden sledge just stuck there, wedged into the snow at a ridiculous angle.

  ‘Push!’ grunted Bryn, and they all three heaved and strained…

  With a groan of snow, the sledge suddenly shot free, hurtled with stomach-lurching speed down the sharp slope, trailing Questor screams as it went, and thundered out on to the ice.

  They zoomed past the bundle of packs, Bryn making a vain grab at them and nearly succeeding in capsizing them all. Madlen dragged him back on board the now wildly spinning sledge.

  At last, the sledge ran out of momentum. Giggling and gasping, the three Questors rolled off on to the ice and lay on their backs, letting the sky spin round high overhead.

  ‘That… was… fabulous!’ panted Cam, and Madlen turned on to her front and pounded her fists on the ice, squealing, ‘Fabulous!’

  ‘Look how far out we’ve come!’

  ‘And how far down! See how high the sides of the valley are!’

  ‘Bryn – I’m convinced – Kir is a terrific World.’

  ‘Even the ice is pretty – look at the patterns in it.’

  ‘What patterns?’ said Bryn, suddenly alert.

  These ones – like little lacy cracks… CRACKS?!’

  Madlen leapt up and tried to back away. The cracks fo
llowed her, audible now, sinister as whip-snaps. Instinctively, Cam grabbed hold of Madlen and clung to her.

  ‘NO!’ screamed Bryn. ‘Spread out! Spread OUT!’

  Too late – the ice broke. Madlen and Cam disappeared, shrieking. Bryn lunged for them, trying to catch their hands as they dropped out of sight.

  ‘Wait!’ he yelled like an idiot, and tripped.

  Momentum slid him inexorably forward and he vanished, head first, into the dark.

  33

  Strange Fish

  It was hard to breathe.

  So this is drowning, thought Bryn. I thought it would be… wetter!

  ‘OOOwwww,’ something groaned. ‘Get off me, you pillock!’

  Once he’d disentangled himself from Cam’s fur coat, Bryn found that his breathing eased considerably.

  ‘Right,’ he said. ‘We’re not drowning. We’re not in water. We’re in some kind of cave-in, under the ice but over the lake. OK. Is anybody hurt?’

  ‘YES!’ chorused Madlen and Cam.

  Bryn sighed. ‘No, really,’ he said. ‘I mean, any broken bones, internal bleeding, concussion, stuff like that?’

  ‘Well, if you put it like that… no,’ admitted Cam grudgingly

  ‘How about all-over third-degree bruising?’ asked Madlen, but Bryn only grunted at her.

  ‘People OK. Check. Now, equipment… We’ve still got one pack. That’s lucky. So that means we still have –’ and he rummaged through the bag – ‘emergency rations, water, med kit, one sleeping bag, my gear, and the detector – I wonder if it’s broken?’

  He flicked one of the switches and the device immediately began to vibrate wildly. The significance of this hit him just as he switched it off again… and part of the wall began to move.

  ‘Gggg… nnnnngggg,’ he gurgled.

  ‘What kind of fish are you?!’ If walls have gender, this one sounded female.

  The wall came closer, gradually acquiring shape. As it – she – passed under the hole in the roof, Bryn saw an angular, long-snouted face; enormous eyes; a neck covered with skin like a gigantic toad’s; muscular shoulders; clawed feet that gouged tracks in the diamond-hard ice floor…

  There are some fears that make you run like the wind, and others that make you instinctively curl in on yourself, close your eyes, cover up your ears. And then there is the kind of fear that makes movement of any sort impossible. Bryn found himself frozen with fright of this order: unable to hide, unable even to look away as the dragon came on, closer and closer, until –

  – she stopped.

  ‘Must be the light,’ she muttered, and at once something peculiar happened to those huge eyes. They blinked, and between one instant and the next, the colour and strength of light in the surroundings changed. The dragon’s eyes turned orange, and the ice walls glowed with an orange shade as well. Another blink, and eyes and ambient light switched to a rosy colour.

  She’s lighting the ice – with her eyes! thought Bryn numbly.

  Blink, glaring white, blink, a feathery grey.

  The dragon shook her head and, with a final blink, lit the space in a quite pleasant magnolia.

  ‘It’s not the light,’ she announced. ‘You really are incredibly ugly.’

  It was an indication of just how terrified they were that not one of them, not even for an instant, felt offended.

  ‘Er, sorry,’ said Madlen.

  The dragon waved a claw. ‘Probably not your fault. I have to say, though, I’ve been fishing out this way loads of times and never come across anything quite like… what are you?’

  ‘I’m not from round –’

  ‘We’re on a Qu –’

  ‘He’s a –’

  The dragon clicked her claws together like a finger-snap and said, ‘Got it! You’re humans, aren’t you! I’ve heard about you – didn’t we do you in Beginner Zoology? – but how did you end up in here?!’

  Bryn looked up at the hole in the roof and back at the dragon.

  ‘Er, sorry,’ he said.

  ‘What?’ said the dragon. ‘Oh, that. Not a problem.’

  She reared suddenly up on to her haunches, causing the three to scrabble back nervously. And then she began to breathe, steadily, at the gap in the roof. Her head swayed back and forth, and side to side, and her breath came out in trails of translucent cloud, like twin vapour trails. The hole in the ceiling started to blur.

  She’s weaving! thought Bryn. She’s weaving with air! Warm wet air, it must be, from inside her, and then, see, it freezes when it’s outside… Amazing!

  Within moments, the dragon had finished her repair. She gave her snout a vigorous rub with one foot and looked at them.

  Without being conscious of it, Bryn had been forgetting to be afraid, but suddenly, now, a new fear clutched at him.

  ‘But… how do we get out?’ he said.

  ‘Do you want to get out?’ she said, sounding surprised. ‘You just got here!’

  ‘And here is…?’ ventured Cam.

  The dragon stared at it.

  ‘You really are lost, aren’t you! This is the Lake – I thought everybody knew that.’

  ‘We know that – only we call it the Lake of Perpetual Ice,’ said Bryn stiffly.

  The dragon snickered. ‘Sorry but that’s a pretty dumb name, you have to admit! I mean, it’s like calling it Lake Lake, isn’t it, really.’

  There was a bemused pause. Then Cam said, ‘Uh, we don’t follow you.’

  The dragon shifted about, starting to look as self-conscious as anything that size could. ‘Well… lakes are made of ice. What else could they be made of?’

  ‘Water!’ exclaimed Madlen. At last they were getting to things she knew. ‘ Lakes are made of water. Fresh water.’

  The dragon shook her head. ‘No, lakes are made of ice – it’s the ocean underneath that’s made of water. Salt water. You know, where the fish live?’ No response. ‘You could hardly expect fish to live in ice, now, could you?’

  There was another long pause, as the three humans tried to take on what she had just said.

  ‘An ocean?’ Bryn pointed at the ice floor. ‘Down there!?’

  But the dragon had lost interest. ‘Look, I need to go now. I took longer fishing than usual – it just gets harder and harder these years to fill your stomach, doesn’t it.’

  ‘Wh-where are you going?’ squeaked Cam.

  The City. Where else?’

  The City of Ice?!’

  The dragon snorted. ‘You’re doing it again – what else would you make a city out of?! You really don’t know much, do you!’

  Bryn was about to answer but Madlen interrupted.

  ‘Can we come too?’

  For a moment, the dragon didn’t answer. She seemed to be thinking. The Questors braced themselves uneasily for questions they weren’t sure about answering. But then, ‘No,’ she said at last. ‘I can’t think of any rule why not. Let’s go!’

  She headed off down the tunnel, and after a moment the Questors scrambled after her.

  ‘My name’s Dagrod,’ she said. ‘What’s yours?’

  ‘Bryn,’ said Bryn. ‘And that’s Madlen and that’s Cam.’

  ‘Weird na– um, pleased to meet you.’

  34

  Journey Under the Ice

  At first, the strangeness of travelling through the ice along dragon-size tunnels with an invisible ocean beneath their feet was enough to keep the Questors open-mouthed and silent. It was also more than a little unnerving, the way they were moving in a kind of bubble of light that centred around Dagrod – the ice was dark and frightening only a few metres before and behind her.

  ‘It’s amazing, how you do that,’ said Cam at last. ‘Beautiful’

  ‘Do what?’ said Dagrod.

  ‘Make the light.’

  The dragon shrugged. ‘I guess so. Can’t you do it?’

  Cam shook its head. ‘No. Not at all. Dragons are very… talented.’

  Dagrod preened a little.

  ‘That’s nice
. What else can I do that you can’t, would you say?’

  ‘Oh, tons of things, I’d say,’ Cam cooed. Flattery! said the Ivory voice in its head, and Cam was happy to comply. It knew from knee-high this was a technique that rarely fails.

  Madlen thought it was disgusting.

  ‘Dagrod,’ she interrupted, ‘why is it your breath doesn’t show now?’

  It was a mistake.

  ‘I beg your pardon!’ the dragon squawked to a halt. She sounded totally offended.

  ‘She means the way it was before,’ Cam put in quickly ‘You know, when you mended the roof? It’s not doing that any more.’

  The dragon snorted.

  ‘Well, of course not,’ she jeered. ‘What do you think – I only have one pair of nostrils or something?! Sheesh!’

  Then, suddenly, she brought her head right round to peer at them. Bryn fought the urge to put his hands up in front of his face.

  ‘Oh.’ The dragon’s voice was much quieter now. ‘I didn’t realize. I’m… very sorry. I had no idea humans were defor… made like that.’ She reared up. In a solemn voice, she said, ‘I, Dagrod Nanrodstochter, do sincerely apologize, and assure you that no offence has been intended.’

  She grinned anxiously. The teeth this revealed were white, pointy and large, and provoked an immediate response from the humans.

  ‘Apology accepted!’

  ‘That’s all right!’

  ‘We don’t mind!’

  Their eager chorus seemed to reassure the dragon, and she relaxed back into her usual slump. This brought her snout down to standing-human-eye level again, and they were able to see that she did indeed have more than one pair of nostrils. She had three pairs, in fact.

  ‘That’s actually very interesting,’ said Madlen, who didn’t know when to leave well enough alone. ‘You’re breathing with the front pair just now, aren’t you?’

  Dagrod nodded.

  ‘So does that mean you have three pair of lungs as well?’

  ‘Oh, don’t be daft. Three sets of lungs?!’ snorted Bryn.

  ‘Well, what about cows?’ Madlen turned to argue. ‘They have three stomachs, or is it four? And so do wallabies. We did that –’