Lem's green eyes glared at her unforgivingly. `But you were under for ages.'
`That's what I want to tell you. I can't …'
`Tell us back on shore,' interrupted Lyla, already swimming towards the beach. `Swift stood on something poisonous and he really needs our help.'
Chad was bandaging Swift's foot when Lyla flopped down beside them. He grinned at her. `He squealed like a wild pig when I squeezed out the poison.'
Swift punched his arm, `I did not! He nearly cut off my foot, Lyla!'
Lyla gave them both a hug as she stared along the beach searching for help. There was no one to see except Celeste and Lem running up the sand.
Celeste dropped down beside her. `Lyla, I'm sorry I didn't mean to frighten you. I didn't realise how long I was under.'
Lyla was still too angry to look at her. `We thought you were drowned.'
`But that's it. I can't be. I can stay underwater as long as I like. I think it's my magical gift.'
This time Lyla did look at her. `Don't be stupid! Cel! No one can stay under water as long as they like.'
`I can. Ask Lem.'
Lem nodded. `She swam all the way to shore without coming up.' Then he made a face at Celeste. `Not that it's much of a gift if we are nowhere near water.'
`It's as useful as talking to animals,' retorted Celeste, pushing him back onto the sand.
`Is there any food under the sea?' demanded Chad, who was equally unimpressed with the gift of swimming without breathing, unless it brought him something to eat.
Celeste shook her head. `No. Just lots of fish too quick for me to catch.'
`In that case Swift and I have the best gift. At least trees grow nuts and berries. Right Swift?'
`Right.'
`Enough!' said Lyla, pulling Swift to his feet with a yelp from the wounded boy. `We have to find someone who knows what to do about your foot.'
With Lyla and Lem helping Swift to hobble, Chad and Celeste carrying the bags, and Celeste still annoyed at Lem for belittling her gift, the trek along the beach seemed to last forever. By evening they were ready to drop where they stood and sleep where they fell.
`I can't go any further,' complained Swift.
`Me neither,' agreed Chad.
`Just a bit more,' cajoled Celeste. `Just as far as that jetty.' Then her eyes widened. `Lyla! How do I know it's a jetty?'
`Maybe you remember it from when you were little. Before we were put in the Forest. I think I remember it. It had a pavilion at the end with curtains and cushions and there was harp music and dancing.'
On reaching the jetty they discovered it to be a skeleton of poles and crooked pylons stuck into the sea bottom.
`Can we sleep here?' whined Swift.
Lyla shook her head and pointed to a stone path leading into the dunes. `There's nothing here. Maybe there is something on the other side of those dunes.'
The path ran between two massive sand hills. On reaching the gap the children discovered two enormous, wind-pocked statues facing each other, each holding back a sand dune. One statue was of a man, the other of a woman. Both wore crowns and were sitting on gigantic thrones balanced on the backs of enormous, thick maned lions, and both had stone tears running down their cheeks.
`Do you think they're our grandparents, Lyla?' whispered Swift, the pain in his foot forgotten as he stared up at the crying statues.
But Lyla wasn't looking at the statues. She was looking at a building on the other side of the dunes.
It was the palace of her dreams. Painted a burnished gold by the rays of the setting sun, with sparkling, stained glass windows and gold-tipped, silver towers and cupolas, it reminded her of an enormous treasure chest.
But, as the others joined her and the sun sank behind the dunes, the palace's golden walls, silver domes and blue-tiled cupolas disappeared, and in its place was a windowless ruin.
Blinking back her tears of disappointment, Lyla squeezed Swift's hand. `Never mind. Maybe someone still lives there. Maybe they'll know what to do about your foot.'
`Or they'll know where we can find an oracle to ask about the three moons' song,' said Lem, giant-stepping down the sand.
`I was thinking about that,' Celeste called out as she giant-stepped after him. `Why do we need an oracle? We know the High Enchanter stole Princess Elle and we know the High Enchanter rules Acirfa. So isn't it likely that that's where he took her?'
Lem sat down at the bottom and pulled off his boots to shake out the the sand. `If all we had to do was find Princess Elle then why would the three moons sing a song about five journeys to find a dragon, a merwoman, a poisoned tree and a swinging cage?'
`I thought dragons were extinct,' said Swift, sitting beside his brother.
`If the High Enchanter can magic up those smelly, blind creatures then he can magic up extinct dragons.'
`Or turn a King or Queen into a dragon. A dragon mocked could mean anything,' said Lyla, staring at a broken swan boat embedded in a sand-filled lake.
They circled a broken fountain and a dead rose garden and arrived at a chipped marble staircase leading to the palace's main entrance. They climbed the stairs and peeked through the splintered wood of a once mighty silver-plated door.
Beyond it was a dark entrance hall lit only by the golden-rimmed and silver-circled moons shining through an enormous hole in the palace roof.
Lyla pushed the door open. It grated against the marble doorstep, its rusted hinges squeaking loudly. From inside the palace there came a fluttering of bats and the scurrying of escaping rodents.
Celeste shuddered and patted her pocket to make sure Splash was safe and Swift gingerly lowered his injured foot to the marble doorstep. `When escaping I'd rather limp fast than hop slowly,' he told Chad.
They crept across the entrance space to a second larger hall, also lit up by the two moons, shining through another ragged hole in the roof. Decorated with dusty red and gold velvet wall hangings and festooned with cobweb curtains, the hall's vastness was so great that its corners and walls disappeared into deep purple shadows.
`Those shadows could hide anything,' breathed Chad into Swift's ear.
`Like those blind creatures,' agreed Swift. `Or a small army.'
`Or more rats,' whispered Celeste.
They tiptoed towards a lopsided dais on which stood five thrones covered in spider webs and bat droppings. A sudden slithering and fluttering sound stopped them in their tracks, making the hairs on the backs of their necks stand up. They backed towards each other, searching the darkness as more and more noises echoed eerily around them.
The creepy fluttering began to sound like whispering.
`Ghosts,' breathed Swift.
`Wind,' breathed Chad.
`Enemies,' shouted Lem.
Six giant shrieking bat-like figures surged out from behind the sagging dais flapping huge and tattered wings. Behind them floated two decapitated heads with hideous skull-faces.
Celeste screamed as one of the faces swayed towards her. Lem leapt in front of her swinging his long sword while Lyla protected Chad and Swift, giving them time to fit arrows to their bows.
`What be you doing here?' demanded a giant bat, dancing out of reach of Lyla's jabbing spear.
`What be you doing in the royal throne room?' shouted another, swooping around Lem and Chad.
`Who be you? What do you want here?' screamed a third.
`There be nothing to steal! It be all stolen long ago by General Tulga's Raiders!'
Lyla brandished her spear under the closest giant bat's nose. `Are you human or animal? Or are you becamed by the High Enchanter? Tell me before I spear you.'
`Or I shoot you,' shouted Swift, trying to sound as brave as his wild-haired sister.
`Or I slice off your head,' threatened Lem.
The giant bats retreated to whisper in a huddle.
Then one of the illuminated faces floated towards the children and they saw it was just an old woman with her face painted to resemble a skull. She was holding a
lantern beneath her chin to make herself look more ghostly.
`We be the guardians of the great Royal Palace of M'dgassy. I be Emma Crowsclaw,' she said, then pointed to the other skull. `That be Bethy Bee. The others be men of the royal household. Who be you? Travellers or robbers?'
Lyla stepped forward. `We are travellers. We've come in search of medicine for my brother's poisoned foot and for somewhere to sleep.'
`And eat,' added Chad.
`Be you boys or girls?'
`Boys,' lied Lyla.
`Where be you coming from and where be you heading?'
`We've come along the vast sea in search of an oracle, fairy spinner, sand reader or witch,' said Lem.
`Folks like that be best avoided,' growled one of the bat men.
`Do you have any water?' interrupted Chad, who was very single-minded. `We've not eaten nor drunk for days.'
Again the guardians went into a huddle that ended with Emma Crowsclaw saying she and Bethy Bee would bring food, while three of the men fetched some bedding.
As the five were leaving the hall Lyla, without thinking, asked if it was possible for them to sleep in Queen Hail's nursery?
The six men and two women froze and the hall became so quiet that Swift could hear the scratching of mice nesting in the five thrones.
At last Emma Crowsclaw answered, `That part of the palace be long destroyed. But how would you, a stranger to M'dgassy, know anything of Queen Hail's nursery?'
Cursing herself for being so stupid Lyla searched for a believable explanation. `I saw it in a dream.'
`You be a dream-rider then,' said one of the bat men. `Dream-riders are thought of as witches in these parts and witches be burned.'
A second man nodded. `Aye. Best you not be a dream-rider, boy. Now come along Horris Beck, help me bring back the bedding. I've had enough of this dreary place and my own supper be beckoning.'
While the men fetched the bedding and the women went for food, Lem asked the other three where they all lived and how they managed to find enough to eat. The men were not forthcoming, mumbling about living here and there, fishing here and there, having a small garden somewhere and a milk cow somewhere else. `Barely enough to keep skin and bones alive,' said a younger, ginger-haired man.
`What about the Royals and their servants?'
This time the men were silent for so long that it seemed as if they would never answer, then the ginger-haired one spoke up in a bitter voice. `The Royals disappeared a decade ago, all of them, adults, children and babies. They left us to the so-called mercy of the High Enchanter - Sender of Storms if you prefer that title - and his sadistic General Tulga.'
`Now, now, Migan Crowbeak,' chided the ginger-haired man. `Truth be, General Tulga's Raiders were attacking the Ifraa Peninsula long before our Royals disappeared.'
He turned to the children as he tried to explain. `Everywhere the Raiders went they burnt, looted and stole. Be that not so, Malcolm Leftfoot?
Malcolm Leftfoot nodded. `Aye. I lost a good wife of forty summers. Carried off with the riches of the palace she was.'
Lyla blinked at a memory from her dream palace as she recalled rows of guards lining this hall, and all the other corridors. She frowned. `Why didn't the palace guards stop them?'
`All murdered!' said Malcolm Leftfoot. `No one could stop the Raiders. No one knew from one day to the next what sort of monsters they be riding, what hairy beasts would come flying out of the sky, or what unearthly weapons they'd be carrying.'
He pointed to the hole in the throne room's roof. `That be made by General Tulga's Raiders throwing burning balls the size of my cart. Now I ask you, how could my pike and shovel combat that?'
`No one's could,' agreed Migan Crowbeak. `But it not be a fireball that shattered my farm. It be those no-eyed stinking Goch and their misshapen Gochmasters. What say you young Bertrum?'
`The Goch took my family and the girl I were about to wed,' answered the man called Bertrum. `And no oracle, fairy spinner or sand reader could tell me what happened to her. Not even old Edith, though I paid her with my last goat.'
`Did I hear someone mention Edith the oracle?' demanded Emma, placing a tray containing five bowls of spicy stew, at the children's feet. `I heard lately she still be living in Wartstoe Village. And that be a miracle as I thought her long burned.'
The children were so hungry that the stew was almost finished by the time the men returned with the bedding and the younger woman returned with a bowl of hot water. And they were more than half asleep by the time she'd bathed and bandaged Swift's foot and told him that it would be fine by morning.
Bidding them `fine sleeping' she and all the guardians of the palace, except Malcolm Leftfoot and his dog, departed.
Lem waited a few moments before leaning over to whisper to Celeste and Lyla. `Do you think one of us should stay awake?'
`There'll be no need for that,' said Malcolm Leftfoot, whose hearing was extraordinarily good for someone so old. `I'll be sitting up all night. It be my job.'
`In that case,' Lyla pulled her hood over her head and snuggled further under her blanket. `I bid you good watching, Master Leftfoot.'
Five minutes later she rolled over to Celeste and breathed into her ear. `I'll pretend to sleep for the first two hours, then it is your turn, then Lem's.'
4
Abel Penny the Toll Master
They woke next morning to Malcolm Leftfoots's dog barking just as Emma arrived with six bowls of porridge.
`Don't worry about Duffy,' Malcolm apologised, taking a bowl of porridge, `He be old and irritable like me.'
Lem rubbed the old dog's side. `It's because his bones ache from when he fell off the cliff.'
Malcolm stared bug-eyed at him. `Now how would you know about that?'
Lem was trying to think of something to say other than he understood dog talk, when Lyla answered for him. `I dreamt it and told him.'
Malcolm slurped at his porridge then growled at her. `Did I not warn you about being a dream-rider, boy?'
Lyla nodded and threw Lem a warning look.
They were almost through their second bowls of porridge when Malcolm asked Lyla what her name was.
She couldn't very well say Lyla, it not being a boy's name, so she named herself after the thing she'd just been looking at. `Spear. My name is Spear.'
Malcolm then pointed at Celeste. `And this one with the yellow hair in 100 braids.'
Catching sight of Splash wound around Celeste's wrist, Lyla told him Celeste's name was `Splash.'
He pointed at the boys. `And them three?'
Lyla was thinking about what to call them when Lem answered for her. `My name is Wolf. The one with the four brown braids is named Tree. And the one with the white curls is...'
`Arrow,' said Swift. `Because I'm good with the bow.'
Malcolm eyed each of them one at a time. `Strange names and strange clothing.' Then, nodding at Lyla, he added, `And your face be familiar. I must have seen you before.'
Lyla put down her empty porridge bowl. `I doubt it, Master Leftfoot, as we live far from here.'
`And where be that?'
`It's called the Forest.' Before he could ask any more questions, she asked him how they could reach Wartstoe Village and how long it would take.
`If you have a brain between you, you'll not be goin' there,' he grunted.
Lem leant closer to Duffy and let the old dog lick the last of his porridge from his finger. `Has Duffy been to Wartstoe Village?'
`Aye. When we went to see Edith to ask where the Raiders had taken my wife. And fair scared out of our wits we both were.'
Celeste put down her bowl. `Did she tell you where to find your wife?'
`All the old fraud said was that my Elsie could sing like a bird and lay an egg if she had a mind to. What rubbish be that? Still, I paid her a brace of rabbits. I wanted no curses put on me, nor old Duffy eaten alive by her snarling curs or her spirit dogs.'
Celeste stroked Splash gently, a thing she did when she
was nervous. Who wouldn't be nervous about someone who owned spirit dogs? `Are there no other oracles we could visit?'
The old man shook his shaggy head. `None. They be all burned as witches.'
Lem shrugged. `Then we'll have to go to Wartstoe Village.'
`That be so,' said Malcolm, clicking his fingers for Duffy to come to heel.
`But Edith will do naught for naught. She'll want a brace of rabbits as payment. And you'll need another two for the bridge toll. And on your way back you could bring us two. We be fair tired of fish. Now you had best get a move on if you want to be in Wartstoe Village by tomorrow.'
They picked up their weapons and bags and followed him into the entrance hall where the other seven guardians were waiting to say goodbye. Or, more likely, make sure they left!
With the morning sun shining through its ruined roof, the entrance hall wasn't as frightening as it had been the night before. When Lyla peered up through the hole in the ceiling, she saw the peeling remnants of the M'dgassy royal family portraits, painted on the walls of the second floor. And there was a portrait of three dark-haired, black-eyed princesses standing with their arms around each other.
Malcolm opened the palace's doors.
`Thank you for your hospitality,' said Lyla, averting her face so that none of the guardians would notice how closely she might resemble one of the princesses. Celeste certainly did, and Lyla was thrilled to have gazed, even for a moment, on the faces of her mother and aunts. Even if she hadn't known which was which.
`Thank you for mending my foot, Miss Bethy Bee. It feels much better,' said Swift, bowing to the younger woman.
`And for the stew and porridge, Mistress Emma,' said Chad, bowing to the old woman.
Blushing red, the old woman handed Chad a cloth-wrapped parcel. `It be a piece of fish each. You'll be needing it as you won't reach Wartstoe Village this day.'
`Nor tomorrow morning,' said Bethy Bee, handing Swift a handkerchief full of plums. Then, while wagging her finger at him to emphasise her words, she warned him: not to cross the toll bridge if they had no payment; not to travel through Snake Tree Woods at night; and to take care when climbing the cliff track to Wartstoe Village because it be used by fierce bandits and Huntsmen who would skin them alive if they caught them.
Legend of the Three Moons Page 3