16

"He knows we escaped," Corriwen said. "I can feel it."

The horse had carried them tirelessly for miles and miles, past desolate farmlands where no hands tilled the fields.

After the flight from the keep they travelled by day and kept watch at night. On the first night, they had decided to stick to the shadows as they moved and hide during the day, to escape those eyes in the sky, even though they had seen no roaks since the miraculous flight of white swans.

But the night was not safe either. The night belonged to whatever darkness Mandrake, or the Morrigan, had summoned under the barrow in the blasted lands of the salt plains.

They discovered that when they rounded a rocky crag where scrub junipers clung for life to the unyielding stone. Jack made them follow the stream among tumbled stones, where they found a cave, overhung by a brow of black stone. The sun was well down now, and the shadows gathering from the east while in the north the storm raged.

He made a fire while Corriwen fed and watered the horse and Kerry quickly plucked and cleaned chickens he'd found at a deserted farm. He wrapped them tight in leaves and rolled them into the hot fire stones and let them steam for a while. The birds may have been scrawny, but the smell of roasting fowl had them drooling and they ate like starvelings.

"What's the plan?" Kerry wanted to know.

"Finbar says the only thing we can do is to find the Redthorn sword," Corriwen said. "the Cullian sword. That's what Mandrake used to wake the Morrigan, and he plans to break the great holding curse completely. He has men and women digging a channel through the mountains and when his dam is filled up, he will flood the Salt barrens. The waters are backing up even now, the Bard says, and if he floods the Black Barrow, she will really be free."

"And what does she want?"

"In the old days," Corriwen explained, "she had great power. She ravaged the land and almost defeated men in Temair. Finbar said she would use gates to other worlds. I don't know what he meant."

"I do," Jack said. They both turned to look at his face in the light of the flickering fire. He opened his jerkin and unbuttoned his shirt. They saw the red hand against his skin, the five dots in an arc above them. Between the arc and the hand, the black heartstone on its silver chain threw the firelight back at them.

"The Major gave me this," he said. "He told me to keep it safe. It was my father's."

"I know," Kerry nodded. "You told me."

"It has something to do with the gates. He says it's a kind of key. You both have to know, because if anything happens to me, then, no matter what, you have to get it through the Homeward Gate."

Jack surprised himself by even considering the thought. If anything should happen to me.

Everything had changed, so fast.

"Finbar said it's the key to all worlds," he said. "This place. Ours. Maybe more. So it's important. And if my father used it, maybe he came somewhere like this. A journeyman, the Major said. Maybe he even came here. Finbar thought so."

"That's what Mandrake wants," Kerry said. "I heard the Scree talking when they carted us down. Said everything we have is to go to him…or else."

"That means she wants it," Corriwen broke in.

"You really think there are other places?" Kerry asked. "Like this?"

Jack shrugged.

"The Major knows, I'm sure. That's for later. First, we've got a job to do. Find this sword."

Corriwen shook her head. "You've done enough. But this is not your quest."

"It is now," Kerry said. Jack nodded.

"The Bard said if the Morrigan gets out, it's Temair first and us next. So it's our business too."

Kerry threw a gnawed bone onto the fire. "I always wanted to go on a quest. Never been on one before."

"Let's have a look at the travelogue," Jack said. "It hasn't been wrong yet."

He pulled out the Book of Ways and they huddled round the fire-glow, watching until the script appeared..

Rede of Reed, bale morass

Quaking path, whisper grass

Find the ways and hark the water

Ware the eel and trust the otter

Chase behind, snare before

Ever westward, find a shore .

"Marshland," Corriwen said in a small voice. "The South-edge Marshes. I have heard stories of Kelpie and the Rushen folk. I don't know what they are, but the marshes are cursed. Men don't go there."

"Good thing we're just boys then," Jack said, more lightly than he felt. "And a girl."

* * *

Mandrake's black rage was incandescent.

He knew before the messengers arrived that they had escaped. Her eyes in the sky had seen it all.

"Gone!" He felt his face contort as her influence spread through him like a cold, dark disease.

"Escaped!"

His vision blurred then cleared again as the images resolved in front of him.

He saw them in the dark, sliding down the rope and then fleeing on the great horse, beating off the pursuit, galloping for freedom. He saw the bank of white swans come whooping in from the east.

"The Bards! The Bards! Her anger shrieked in his mind. "They have dared defy me again."

The girl was gone, the last of the Redthorns.

"The Bards," Mandrake's face squeezed in on itself, cheeks hollowing, skin wrinkling, until he was a hunched and withered thing in the centre of the chamber. His arms reached out, fingers clawed, as if to choke the life out of something.

"He is gone with it!" He hissed in her voice, eyes like holes to the bottom of the world. Suddenly he shuddered under the violence of her wrath and felt himself flung bodily across the floor.

"No!" he squawked, terrified. He hit the wall with a thud and fell hard, hurting from chin to knee, tumbled back and was snatched from the floor and hurled in a tangle across the wide bed.

"No!" Inside, he could feel the Morrigan's anger explode. He hauled himself to his feet, blood trickling from his nose. Something inside him had burst, but all he felt was her wrath.

"We will raise all dark things," her voice was now completely dominant. "We summon the beasts and the shadows. We call from the depths. We will have them. We will destroy them all."

Her voice shrieked through his ragged throat.

"We will bring the nightmare!"

Suddenly she was gone from his mind. Mandrake flopped to the floor, unable to move for a long time.

But he had no regrets. Even while her rage was unbelievable, he welcomed her foul presence. He suckled on it as it devoured him.

Some time later, Mandrake opened his eyes, and managed to get to his feet. He stood there breathing deeply, letting his thoughts fester for a little while.

Then he strode to the door, flung it open and started down the spiral stone stairway, ready and determined to kill something. Anything.

* * *

Jack woke, instantly alert. Corriwen was huddled close to the glowing embers. Kerry snored lightly beside her, both hands clenched on the handle of the fine sword.

The hairs on the back of Jack's neck were crawling. Far to the north, the storm was a flickering glow that was visible beyond the cave-mouth.

The heartstone gave a slow beat against the skin of his chest and a sense of impending danger riddled through him.

He got to his haunches, eyes wide, ears straining. The stone beat steadily. At the cave-mouth, the great horse whickered and fidgeted.

Jack moved silently to the cave entrance. The horse blocked most of it and he had to squeeze past its tail. In the night, yellow eyes blinked. The horse stamped. Kerry grunted, rolled over.

"What's up?" he asked groggily.

A shape came loping in and the horse reared. It kicked out and a shaggy, snarling creature dropped to the ground, ribs caved in.

"Wolves," Jack said. "Out there." He unhitched the horse and drew it back inside the cave. Its head scraped the roof, but it backed in far enough. The grey shapes ran across their vision, snarling and yapping, but none dared face its stamping hooves. Jack and Kerry hunkered by the fire.

"Something else," Jack said. He cocked his head, straining to hear.

"Yeah," Kerry agreed. "And not those mutts out there, either."

Just at that point, they both looked at the embers. They glowed deep red, but every now and again, they would swell to orange then back to red again, as if bellows were softly pumping them.

Jack looked into the darkness at the back of the cave.

"You hear something?"

Kerry held his breath, listened a while, then nodded. "Like breathing?"

Jack couldn't hear it, but he could feel an odd whuffling in the air, like a small guttering flame, just below his hearing threshold. He too held his breath and concentrated. The odd sensation was stronger, and there was something else, a tiny squeak, too high to be really heard.

They sat in wary silence, all senses alert as the feeling of threat expanded in the darkness.

"I hear whispers," Kerry said. "There's something in here."

Jack reached for his bow. Kerry raised his sword.

"Should we wake Corriwen…? He began to ask, and just as he words were out of his mouth, the darkness at the back of the cave began to move and the high pitched whispering was suddenly a metallic shriek that they could feel between their ears, like fingernails on glass.

"Bats!" Jack jumped back.

They came pouring from the recess at the back of the cave, exploding into the firelight. A swarm of them, so many that the beat of their wings fanned the embers into flame. Corriwen startled awake.

There were hundreds of them, filling the air with frantic flutter, the sound of so many wings a roar in the confines of the cave. Kerry waved his sword as they circled round his head. He felt something sharp and barbed scrape across the back of his hand followed by a trickle of blood.

The great horse whinnied and flicked its tail and then, in seconds, it was festooned in tiny bats hooked onto its hide and mane, and grabbing at its ears.

Then the horde was on them. One flapped into Jack's face and he felt a scratch on his cheek, teeth or claws, he couldn't tell. Instinctively he snatched it away with his free hand, beating the air with the bow, knowing an arrow would be useless against so many tiny targets.

He crushed the bat in his hand and was about to throw it off when he saw its face and realised it was like no bat he had ever seen before. The face, in contrast to the grey, leathery body, was white as a skull, and worse, it looked just like a skull. It had a tiny, wizened human face and jet eyes and a wide mouth with a row of tiny, glassy teeth. The sight of a human-like face on such a creature was such a shock that Jack dropped it as if it burned.

Beside him Kerry spun the sword in fast loops, scattering them from the air, papery wings torn and flapping, but still they came, from the black hole in the cave wall. Corriwen was up and her knives a-blur. The creatures clawed at her red hair, trying for her eyes. The horse was blanketed in them, dark wings scuttling over its flanks, little pale faces trying to bite through the hide. Corriwen squealed when one of them bit her ear. She whirled, blades flickering this way and that. Jack snatched two bats from the air and crushed their tiny chests with his thumbs, sickened at the thought of killing something that, however obscenely, resembled a human.

"Too many," he shouted, dragging another from his collar, too close to his neck. They were all over his jerkin, hooking and clawing.

"Outside," Kerry said, whirling his sword.

But there were wolves outside, howling for blood. The horse panicked, reared, and was gone, thundering down the hill and into the night.

"To hell with this!" Jack snarled. There were too many bats, far too many to fight. He crouched, flicking them away, while he groped for the rucksack. Eyes closed against the thorn-sharp claws, he found the midge repellent spray. Too late in the year to use at home, but just right now…if it worked.

He flicked off the cap and jumped towards the fire. Flames wavered upwards in the rushing air. Without a pause, Jack depressed the aerosol trigger, aiming the nozzle straight at the heat.

The spray hissed out.

A white flare erupted. The dark of the cave turned abruptly bright.

Jack kept his finger tight on the nozzle. The bats shrieked, so high and loud it felt like needles in their ears. A horde of them flickering past the fire were incinerated instantly, wings bursting into puffs of flame. He followed them, burning them out of the air.

The bats wheeled away, fluttering madly, wingbeats stirring the embers to a roar of heat, and almost as one creature, one shuddering grey monstrosity, they swarmed away from the fiery torch and out into the night.

Jack stamped two of them, yelling with a sudden savage joy when the dark flock blasted out of the cave and left them breathless, scratched and bitten, but not seriously hurt.

"Where did they come from?" Kerry was sweating from the exercise and the sudden heat. His face was smeared with soot.

Jack drew a burning twig from the fire and searched along the narrowing walls at the back of the cave until he found a small hole, right on the ground, like a rabbit burrow. He held the flame over it and peered down into a black emptiness. He kicked a stone and heard it smack against the narrow sides, echoing as it went down and down and down until the sound simply faded to silence. He dropped the burning stick and watched it flare through the air, falling straight down until it was just a tiny dot in the distance.

"Goes down for miles," he said.

Kerry dabbed some water on the cuts across Corriwen's hand and cheek. Jack drew a large flat boulder across the floor and jammed it over the hole, and then both of them spread out the sheet of polythene they had planned to use as a groundsheet and hung it over the mouth of the cave, pinning it with stones into cracks and crevices.

Corriwen touched the clear surface, eyebrows raised in curiosity. She'd never seen a simple polythene sheet before. As soon as the barrier was up, the heat began to build in the little cave, but at least now, there was no way back in for the bat horde.

"We can find the horse in the morning," Corriwen said. "If it's still alive."

"Maybe we should travel in daylight," Jack suggested, "even if those crows can see us."

Corriwen shrugged. "Night or day, she'll send things after us. I don't know what these things were, but they come from the deep dark. We are on the edge of Mid-Temair, I think. Few travel here. Who knows what lives here, and what bends to her will? Everything is strange."

"You're telling me," Kerry said.

Corriwen looked at him. "Yes," she said seriously. "I am telling you."

Jack burst into laughter, a sudden release of tension after the battle, and then all three of them were doubled up, laughing uncontrollably, not knowing what they were laughing at, but unable to stop.

* * *

They slept fitfully until morning when they shared the last of the meat off the chicken bones, both boys homesick for a cup of hot tea.

As soon as dawn lightened the sky, Jack felt the hairs on his nape prickle again and he stiffened. A high pitched screaming came from beyond the polythene barrier, while through the transparent screen they could see shapes banging against the flimsy sheet like grey hailstones. It went on for an ear-splitting half an hour as the day brightened and the first rays of the sun peered over the distant moorland and then it suddenly stopped.

After a while they risked peering out.

All around the cave-mouth, thousands of the grotesque bat-sprites lay in crumbling mounds. A few that remained in the air fluttered down to the ground, trailing thin smoke. The three of them watched in amazement as the little white faces gaped in agony and tiny eyes melted into black liquid that dripped and sizzled into the earth. In the space of a few moments, the flying things were like little heaps of rotted leaves, subsiding under their own weight, until a morning breeze scattered them like dust.

The sun rose and spread a welcome light over the rough country, though the far northern sky still glowered under a vast storm, and they set out again, heading westwards with the dawn at their backs. Three miles from the cave, they found the horse in a thicket of thorns where it had obviously sheltered from the flying nightmares. Its ears and nose were bloody, but it was not badly hurt. Corriwen tempted it out with a piece of hard bread and she gentled it against a tree-stump that they used to clamber up on its back. Kerry had filled his water-bottle by the stream and they drank briefly before Corriwen heeled the great mount and they were off and flying.

But in less than half an hour, they were fugitives again.

Kerry spotted them first after they entered hilly country and rode slowly down a twisting ravine and stopped for a break. Kerry had just gathered a load of firewood when he saw the movement on the brow of a hill. At first he thought they were grey stones left by some old glacier.

He carried the firewood to where Jack and Corriwen sat in shadow, deliberately not looking up at the hill.

"Behind me," he said casually. "Look slowly."

Jack peered through the armful of sticks and saw them, a wave of Scree, making their way fast down the slope. They must have muzzled the hounds, because they came silently.

Corriwen unhitched the horse and they clambered on, keeping the rock between themselves and pursuit for as long as possible, before she dug in and they all held tight as the horse found its stride, thundering down the ravine, hoofbeats echoing all round.

The Scree let loose their hounds as the fugitives raced on, rounding a tight bend to face three narrow culverts where the stone had been worn by ancient waters.

"Which way?" Corriwen twisted round to Jack who clutched at her belt.

He closed his eyes. This deep in the ravine, he couldn't see the sun, but he didn't need the sun.

"Right." He pointed over her shoulder. "That way."

With just a slight pressure on the reins, and without letting the horse lose its pace, she turned its head and they clattered into the narrow entrance. Here the land was broken like sun-baked clay, a labyrinth of passages between sheer cliffs of hard sandstone. The ravines twisted and turned on each other, some of them so narrow and deep they hid the sky.

Huge buzzards soared overhead on broad wings and Jack could sense things on the rock walls, watching them as they galloped past. He didn't care to wonder what they were. He just wanted to keep going.

Behind them, the hounds howled, high and hungry. They sped on, wondering if they could outpace the dogs.

The Scree had split up, and in this confused tangle of fissures, they could run headlong into more at any time. Jack had an arrow nocked to the bow-string and he flicked Corriwen's cape aside to give him easy access to her knives.

They galloped, desperate to put some distance between them and get into flat land, when a loud growling sound rolled behind them, Jack and Kerry swivelled, expecting some monstrous hound to be snapping at their heels, but for once there was no sign of pursuit.

The growl got louder, became a rumble. Kerry swivelled again.

"Jeez!"

Jack jerked round and saw the monster rushing towards them, all grey and brown and roaring so loud now the canyon walls reverberated and the ground vibrated under the horse's hooves.

"Flash flood," he cried. And it was right behind them.

"We have to get higher."

"Which way?"

He guessed. They had been, even with the pursuit, heading pretty much in a westerly direction. They came to another fork and he told Corriwen to go left. The horse didn't pause. Behind them all they could hear was the roaring of the flood-rolled debris, no sound of Scree or hounds. With luck, Jack thought, they'd have been caught in it.

"We better get a move on!" Kerry's voice was high and urgent.

Miraculously, the horse seemed to find fresh impetus under Corriwen's hand. The rock walls blurred past them.

Already they could feel spray on the backs of their necks. Jack closed his eyes slid his hand inside his shirt to grasp the black heartstone.

It pulsed under his fingers.

When he opened his eyes again, they were on a slope and the track winding upwards was easily wide enough to take the horse.

Jack pointed, but Corriwen had seen it. She pulled on the reins and the horse swerved, found solid footing and they were rising.

A split second later, the flood swept past them in a tumbling mass of rock and tree-trunks. They kept going until they were high enough to be safe and then they paused to watch. Inside that maelstrom they could see the tumbling grey bodies of Scree troopers. A great hound pawed at the water until a knotty pine rolled over and spiked it under.

But for the horse and its speed, Jack knew that could have been any of them. All of them. They had escaped by inches.

Corriwen turned the horse, continued uphill until they crested the ridge and followed a long slope down. They were still shaking from the excitement. They kept going for miles and miles, letting the mount canter at ease.

After a while the land bottomed out with not a hill in sight as far as the eye could see.

A veil of fog stretched from horizon to horizon, north and south. In the distance it looked solid, but when they got close it was thin and gauzy.

"I think this is it," Jack said when Corriwen stopped to let the horse drink thirstily from a dark pool. Jack plucked some lily leaves from the water and fed it. He sniffed at the air. It was damp and heavy and stagnant.

"Smells like we've found the marsh."