The Islands of Chaldea

  I wasn’t surprised that Mevenne was in on it. It all fitted. Ogo wasn’t surprised either. He was looking even grimmer. “I suppose she helped kidnap Alasdair because she wanted her son Donal to take over as High King of the Chaldeans after Farlane dies?”

  Waldo was suddenly on the other side of the great room. “Or before,” he said. “And sacrificing that other idiot son of theirs, Ivar, made his mother and father appear staunchly loyal to the cause of the Chaldeans. Above suspicion. I insisted on that in return for my making Donal High King. But of course the real ruler of all the Chaldeans will be me.” He fingered the gold bands around his neck. “I’ll have such fun.”

  From the look on his cruel-eyed face, I knew Waldo had it in mind to kill us now. “Forgive me, my dears,” he said. “I’ve some executions to attend to. Public ones.” He beckoned as if he were inviting us to come with him. But he wasn’t. A door-sized lump of the rocky wall rolled obediently towards him. He stepped through the hole it had left and closed it behind him.

  “Quick!” I shouted. But Ogo was already pounding up the steps we had come in by. He was back in a minute.

  “He’s closed the fish’s mouth,” he told me. “We can’t get out.”

  I sat down on the silly throne because my legs were shaking too much to stand up any more. We were trapped and had been left to die. Ogo said confidently, “Beck will find us, and your father; there’s a mass of magic between them all. They’ll come.” His face went the grimmest yet when I explained that they couldn’t free themselves or us. The huge power the calf was giving Waldo would easily swamp theirs. They would be executed without ever knowing what had happened to us.

  Ogo tried to undo the calf then, but none of the ties holding it would come apart, even when he hacked at them with his sword. The poor creature was trussed up in its own strength. Only Waldo could release it and he never would. “At least he hasn’t left us sitting in the dark,” I said, trying to look cheerful. “And I’m sure we’ll work something out.” It didn’t sound convincing. How could it? I hadn’t an idea in my head what to do.

  Ogo gave me a polite little smile so I knew he’d guessed I hadn’t. He came and sat next to me on the floor, being careful not to bend Green Greet’s four feathers in his sword belt, and said comfortingly, “I know you will.”

  I thought about Green Greet’s sort of signposts that had led us here. “Surely Green Greet didn’t bring us down here to be buried alive,” I said. “And why is there still light? Waldo wouldn’t do us any favours. Someone else must be making the light for us.”

  “What are you looking at?” Ogo’s question seemed to come from far off. I was watching the stream of power running across the ground from the shivering calf and through the rock where Waldo had left. If I looked at it really hard, with half-closed eyes, tiny shimmering fragments rose from it and broke into tinier flakes of light that floated in the dark and lit the room.

  “It’s the calf,” I said. “He’s giving us light. Even though he’s drained of power, he’s helping us.”

  Ogo jumped up excitedly. “Oh, now I see,” he said. “Waldo gave himself away when he said no guardian can use their power directly against another guardian. That means the other guardians can’t work against him to free the winged bull because Waldo is full of its guardian power, but they are doing everything they can to help you do it.”

  “Me!” I shrieked. “How can I …”

  “Oh, don’t start all that ‘I’m a talentless midget’ stuff.” He was really cross. “Think how pleased Plug Ugly was to see you when we turned up on the Land of Lone. And remember how the Lady said you were outstanding? And didn’t Waldo say just now that there was special magic in Skarr that he had to prevent having a go at the barrier? He meant you! It wasn’t Alasdair he took as that priceless hostage he was on about; it was your father, to stop you trying anything. Good thing you didn’t realise or we’d never have got here.” Ogo frowned. “What beats me is why Waldo dumped me on Skarr. Why didn’t he just kill me to get me out of his way for good?”

  “The bull,” I said dully. “He was protecting you, but now he can’t.”

  Ogo looked triumphant. “There you are you see. You already know far more about it than you thought you did.” He folded his arms and stood in front of me. “Get on with it,” he said firmly. “Free the bull before Waldo kills everyone. I’ll do whatever you want to help”

  I think I felt the stupidest I ever had. To fill in time I went and put my feet against the stream of power and watched it well up over my shoes like thick liquid or the finest silk ever made. I could hear it too. It made a faint thrumming sound like a swarm of honeybees or distant thunder. It reminded me of the hymn of the Wise Women: ‘I am the thunder of the bull that gores.’ And that led me on to think about other bits of the hymn.

  Ogo says I stood and thought for minutes on end. My mind was jumping from one bit of the hymn to another: ‘I am the salmon leaping the fall … I am the note of the bird … Verily the cunning of the cat is in me … The fire is in me that gives the dragon wings and this I will use when the purpose merits.’

  I knelt beside the calf and lifted the strands of seaweed from its soaking back. “Golden One,” I said, “Lord of the East, let’s reclaim your magic. I am not a guardian, but, somewhere in me, I have the power. Help me if you can.”

  At first, it didn’t work at all and I almost allowed myself to believe that it never would. Ogo kept saying, “Keep going. Keep going. What are you doing?” It was impossibly difficult to concentrate and to explain at the same time that I was trying to reverse the flow of the power and draw it back from Waldo and into the calf. It sounded a little too fanciful to be likely as well. I went on hauling in my mind’s eye, but the power just stretched like good dough or else it ran away through my fingers.

  Instead of explaining, I asked, “Did you know you were the king’s son and heir to the throne of Logra?”

  “To begin with, yes. But after a while I decided it was a story I’d made up to comfort myself for everyone calling me the Ogre from Logra. I still wished it was true though. One of the castle children told me that the castle well was a wishing well and that if you wished at full moon …”

  “Bless you, Ogo,” I interrupted. “That’s the way to do it!”

  “My pleasure. Do what?”

  I made a great winch in my mind – the sort that holds the rope that lowers and raises the bucket in a well – and I put it into the stream of power. It wrapped greedily around the winch just as Waldo would. I caught it, twisted it around to secure it, then turned a handle, as if I were drawing a pail of well-water. It resisted but I went on turning. It felt as heavy as a bucket of stones, but I turned and turned until sweat poured off me.

  I heard Ogo whisper my name. He was pointing at the calf. He had stopped shivering and the tangle of dark magic holding him down was shrivelling up like burning wool. Suddenly, he struggled on to his front, gathered his hooves underneath him and, with a pushing effort, stood up on shaky legs. I went on turning the power faster and harder and a small sprocket of golden curls appeared on the calf’s forehead, then two nubbins of ebony black horns pushed up between his ears. He swung his head slowly to look at me with such a passion for living that it made me smile, and I worked harder. The small wings straightened and their colour deepened to cerulean – not feathers, not scales, but somehow both. I turned and turned my mind’s eye handle, and the calf grew.

  He had grown to twice the size when the power snapped to an end. The handle was whipped from my hand as it unwound back into the calf, whirling faster and faster, and he grew and grew.

  Ogo pulled me to my feet and clapped me on the back. I couldn’t stop smiling, I was so pleased. We were almost dancing with our success when I noticed the water spreading across the floor towards us from the steps we’d come down. As we looked, it began to pour in. The fountain must have been blocked off when Waldo closed the fish’s mouth. The water had nowhere else to go except down the steps and in here. It
was rushing in now. We would be drowned.

  I was so angry that all our work and effort would come to nothing that I felt a power in me that nearly burst my ribs. I rushed at the wall where Waldo had gone and yelled at it to move aside. And it did. I was so astonished that I sat down on the ground with a splash and Ogo had to shout at me to go. I thought he was coming with me but, when I turned back for him in the gap in the wall, he was still standing by the bull, who had grown level with his chest by now.

  He called, “I’m staying here with Logra’s guardian. We’ll look after each other.” The water was already over his shoes, but he grinned and waved me on. “Besides, it’s not exactly our sort of door you’ve made, Aileen.”

  I could hardly bear to leave them behind. If it hadn’t been for my anger driving me on, I might not have. I saw what he meant about the door I’d made though, when I went through the gap and walked smack into earth. It was cold but kind, and it yielded as I pulled myself up through it. It was like climbing a crumbly ladder. Then my head hit a ceiling. My anger moved it apart with a crash. I realised it was a floor, not a ceiling, when I stepped up into a dark bedchamber with nothing much there but a four-poster bed. A thin, mild-looking man, wrapped in shawls, was propped up in it on pillows, trying to read by the light of a miserable lamp. He stared at me in surprise.

  “Excuse me,” I panted. It was all I could think of saying as he peered at me in the half-light. I must have looked a fine sight with my wet frock covered in earth, and my hair wild and muddy.

  “That’s the way my brother Waldo usually arrives,” he said. “But you’re definitely not him. Who are you?”

  “Oh! You’re the king?” I gasped.

  “I was king,” he answered me gently. “But I’m too ill now.”

  “No you’re not,” I snapped. Perhaps I really was getting like Aunt Beck. “You just think you are. Let’s have a proper look at you.” I ran over to the windows and pushed back the shutters, one after the other.

  “Please don’t!” he cried. “Waldo says the light will kill me.”

  “He’s lying,” I retorted and threw back the last shutter. The king blinked a little in the light that flooded in. “See,” I panted. “Sunlight! And you’re still as lively as a flea. But look at the state of you! You’re weighed down with sick magic.” I rushed at the four-poster bed’s canopy and I clawed at it. It was laden with spells that were hanging over him in brown, lumpy strings, like dirty, badly spun wool.

  “What a very vigorous person you are,” he said as it crashed down around his bed.

  “Sorry,” I said. “It only came over me today – the vigour, I mean – and I’m not sure of my own strength yet.”

  He smiled a little. “It seems substantial.”

  I could only hope it was going to be substantial enough. “Get up, Your Majesty,” I commanded, and he stood up on his bed in a wobbly sort of way. “Jump over the canopy.”

  “Jump?” he asked, with a doubtful look at it over the edge of his bed.

  “Oh! Come on,” I said encouragingly and took him by the elbow. I shouldn’t have done that. He leapt nimbly enough over the vile magic, but it rose up and hit my right arm in a hissing burn that made my flesh smoke. Even without the bull’s power, Waldo was a wizard to reckon with. I spoke Rees’s quenching spell and the burning went out in a stinging steam. My anger doubled.

  The king was offering me one of his shawls to bandage my arm, but there was no time. “Where do public executions get done?” I asked urgently.

  “They don’t any more, but they used to take place in the entrance courtyard.”

  I raced to the door then hesitated, picturing Ogo up to his middle in water by now. His father seemed so sad and broken that I took a risk and raised his hopes. “Hugo’s here,” I told him. His face lit up and I ran.

  I could tell I was running in huge zigzags, which made me feel a bit dizzy and rather daft too, until I realised there was sense to it. I was avoiding the crowds of people thronging down the staircases to watch the executions in the courtyard. So I was still in time.

  It was a horrible sight when I got there. They were all lined up with their hands tied behind them: Aunt Beck, Ivar and Prince Alasdair, Rees, Ogo’s nurse, Lucella, and all the rest. Poor Finn was crying for the loss of Green Greet, who was nowhere to be seen. My father and Riannan were both gagged. I supposed it was in case they sang an enchantment on the black-hooded executioner. He was standing, with his axe, on a dais in the centre of the courtyard, next to the execution block. Two soldiers were just putting some wooden steps in place for the prisoners to mount. Ranks of yet more soldiers stood around them.

  At the far end, there was a higher dais where Waldo was sitting with several prosperous-looking men and their gaudy wives. The rich, grain-hoarding merchants, I imagined. Directly beneath them was a flock of wizards in their purple robes and, in front of them, the empty-headed ministers sitting on chairs. I could see them properly now, thanks to my vigour, as the king called it, and I realised that there was magic, like matted wool, on top of their heads, squashing the wits out of them.

  I hid behind a fat pillar in the palace doorway and wondered what to do. There was so little time. The gates were already closing on the last of the raggedy crowds of spectators, spilling in to stand where they could for the best view. “Death to the spies,” some of them were chanting. Waldo’s expression was the single thing that gave me hope: he looked uneasy. The sucking feeling coming from him was still strong but unchannelled. I ducked as it moved fast towards me and went sluggishly over my head. Waldo must have realised that he’d lost his hold on the winged bull and the sucking was searching around for another source of power.

  Well, you’re not having mine, I thought fiercely. I’ve only just found it and I need every grain of it.

  Waldo was looking downright alarmed now and clearly wanted to get the killing done with. He raised his hand and the soldiers began dragging Ivar towards the steps up to the executioner.

  I need an army, I thought in despair. Nothing but an army could stop this now. I need an army. The thought thundered in my head and I heard my voice boom, “I need an army!” Everyone looked around for the culprit; some even spotted my pillar and started towards me. A great rap on the courtyard gates stopped them in their tracks, and the gates were flung open from the outside. Bless me! I thought. I may not be able to move people like Aunt Beck can, but I can move stone.

  In marched my army – all the statues from the Royal Avenue. Clumping and crunching, they heaved into the yard: kings, wizards, queens and gods. There was even the sort that were just noble heads on plinths, who came hopping in on the stumps of their columns. They all laid about Waldo’s men, whamming and whacking with stone arms and sceptres and wands and thunderbolts. Soldiers were going down like skittles and the squalling crowd was running this way and that to keep out of my army’s reach. The silly ministers crouched behind their chairs and got thwacked sensible. The purple wizards, who were frantically trying to construct an iron curtain between my army and themselves, kept being walloped off-course. I saw Waldo use his waning power to wrap himself in stone so that he looked like one of the statues.

  We would have won, but then something appeared in the air. At first, it bounced and wove about like the end of a leather pipe when water is gushing through it and the water flows first one way then switches away to spout in another direction. Then it steadied and widened and became a hole in the air that was big enough for Mevenne to step out of on to Waldo’s dais. Donal followed, gorgeous in gold bangles, and then his father, King Kenig.

  “Mother!” Ivar screamed. “Help me.” And Mevenne, swirling in her dark aura, laughed and stretched out her hand. Statues began to splinter and crack and fall. They groaned as they came apart. Mevenne even mistook Waldo for one of them. He emerged squatly from a cloud of his own rubble, looking bruised and furious. Some of the people were cheering as she smashed my army to pieces.

  Then Donal pointed at Ivar and said something t
o Mevenne, who nodded. Poor Ivar was completely stunned – Aunt Beck had kept it from him that his mother had tried to kill him once already, but it was plain that’s what she intended to do now – and he was terrified of her. Even so, he was the bravest I’ve ever seen him. As Mevenne stretched out her hand towards him, he turned to Riannan and tried to smile.

  “No!” I cried. “Don’t kill him.”

  The yard filled with blood-red – blood-red coils of scales and talons and flame. Sheets of flame shot across the space and folded Mevenne in blindingly white heat, and she sort of evaporated. Kenig and Donal too. A single gold bangle rolled, like a little hoop, along the charred dais where they’d been standing.

  I saw Waldo seize a piece of the flame. Don’t let him, Blodred, I thought, because I knew the flame was her. Don’t let him use your power against you. But Waldo didn’t have time. The crowd was screaming and running. The executioner was thrown from the platform. The yard was criss-crossed with cracks. I saw Aunt Beck move the entire line of prisoners away from the centre. I had time to think, Oh! That’s how she does it, before chunks of stone and paving were hurled into the air and a truly glorious golden bull rose out of the ground on blue wings. Ogo was riding on his back – every bit a prince. He said later he didn’t know how his skull wasn’t cracked. The ground closed smoothly under them and Ogo leapt off and rushed to free the prisoners.

  Waldo tried to run. He was like a floppy sponge, running on the spot, flailing the air as Green Greet came screeching and flapping in front of his face to stop him. The bull lowered its head and charged. I saw it roll Waldo up in the bellowing rage of its horns, and Waldo was over and done with.

  The air above the courtyard was filled now with the bull’s gold and blue, and with the red of Blodred and the green of Green Greet. I looked and looked, but I couldn’t see Plug-Ugly and my heart nearly stopped with fear for him. Then I felt his fur against the back of my hand, and the cool of his nose that came, like a goodbye, before he was up there too: the grey stripes and splotches of the Beast of the North.