They lay in the back of the cart and waited. Lily
was still unconscious and neither of the witches knew any useful healing spells.
Hardacre had had some medicines in his bag but it was too late for that
now. Celia used the time to interrogate
Hardacre about what was going on. This took a while, but Hardacre was very good
at recalling the important details of an assignment and so after an hour or so
Celia knew exactly what had happened and what dangers were anticipated.
Hardacre only allowed himself to ask any questions of Celia once his reporting
was complete.
‘How did you find me?’ asked
Hardacre, ‘I was in my hyperbag’
‘It was very tricky’ admitted Celia,
‘usually it is easy to find the unique spell trace of another witch, as you
know, as long as they have used magic reasonably recently. That means you can
be hard to find quite regularly, by the way…’
‘Go on, please’ said Hardacre, rather
wearily, wishing that they’d all eventually realised that he was a valet
primarily and a witch only very secondarily.
Celia continued, with a rather eager
tone in her voice. Hardacre could tell that, however much she might deny it if
asked directly, that she was rather proud of herself.
‘Well, I knew that if Kathleen
blinked then she was likely to land up somewhere dangerous and I didn’t want to
repeat the same mistake’
‘Quite true…’
‘And in order to follow her I had to
wait for the trace echo…’
Hardacre knew very well that a spell
once cast left a trace, and that if you were following someone who had blinked
away you had to wait for the echo trace, which was the imprint of the spell
ending at the destination point. This was how he was able to follow Boo when
she teleported.
‘…so, I gambled on the fact that the
original trace that Kathleen locked into would be the correct destination, and
that some innate problem with Kathleen’s trace-smelling then pulled her towards
water. So – I looked for the very first quarter-echo that came back and refused
to follow any other signal…’
‘Ingenious…’ murmured Hardacre, entirely
genuinely. He sometimes found Celia a bit irritating, but he was very willing
to acknowledge that she was an exceptionally talented witch.
‘…and there were a whole pile of
messy signals afterwards, I was amazed; maybe that was partly the kelemeia,
but, really, I think Kathleen needs to be told gently but firmly not to use her
blink spell at all…’
‘You’re absolutely right, madam; I have
mentioned the problem to Mr Ismay on several occasions’
‘So that’s a useful trick to know, if
anyone ever had to follow her again…’ said Celia, now running out of steam,
‘although I’m sure we already know about it, in fact. I was just a bit pleased
to have figured it out without any help’
‘Well, I didn’t know that – I can’t
remember Mr Ismay mentioning it either, councillor’
Hardacre knew that the only other
person among the Hybitor who might possibly have the skill to filter out one
trace (out of many that had been generated at a single point) was his master,
and, putting loyalty aside, he wasn’t convinced that he’d manage it at a
moment’s notice, suddenly awoken, and dressed only in his nightshirt.
‘It’s not all that much use
generally, I’d say. Anyway, I’d forgotten that the nearest big bit of water
might be miles and miles away…’
Celia sighed. Most of her high
spirits had now almost completely evaporated as she considered the predicament
that they were in.
‘Why did your bag get disrupted?’ she
asked, focusing her mind on more pressing matters.
‘That was Princess Lily, I believe’
‘What?’
‘She hid in the bag and that seems to
have attracted the blue worms from the Outer Void’
‘But why would she attract blue worms?
Not, presumably, due to her blue royal blood…’
Hardacre made a small noise, which
could charitably have been interpreted as a tiny laugh.
‘No, I sense that the blue worms
aren’t very discriminating about which mind that they latch on to’
‘So, were they attracted simply by
the presence of a mind in the bag?’
‘Yes – that seems to be the case. The
membrane between the bag and the Outer Void seems to have been very thin, and
that may well be due to my mediocre spellcraft…’
Celia groaned dismissively.
‘…but, anyway, I think that Kratos
has stirred up activity in the blue world, probably through opening up more
tears in the fabric, and that the mind parasites have been attracted to the
edges of that world, because they can readily sense sapient beings close by’
‘That does sound a lot like his sort
of thing, I must admit: so clever and so cruel’
‘Undoubtedly, madam, it does. And now
I have no bag and so no mail paper. I think we need to contact Mr Ismay as soon
as possible’
‘Well, we will when we can – but it’s far too
risky to try and chalk a pentangle anywhere here, in the middle of an army, and
with Kratos so near. He’d pick up a Hybitor communication in an instant’
‘So, what do you think we should do?’
‘Well, we’d better try to stop Kratos
and his blue monstrosities before he does any more damage, don’t you think – on
our own if necessary’
‘Of course – but first we have to
find him’
‘And we have to find Katy…’
‘Dr Mannings... of course’
‘In the meantime, however, I think
that we have to wait and see where we arrive…’
***
It was a long and boring journey,
interspersed with periods when they were quite certain that they would be
discovered. Fortunately the drivers simply threw the chicken food under the
tarpaulin without looking in. Among the scraps were some half-rotten fruit and
vegetables, and from this they were able to gain some sustenance. On each of
the six nights of the journey, too, Celia and Hardacre had taken turns to try
to raid food from the convoy. In this way they managed to survive until the
army stopped outside Huatalacan. By then Lily was also awake and able to move. Her
memory only came back slowly, and mercifully she remembered nothing about the
blue worms. By the time they came to Huatalacan she most almost completely
well.
Once the army had stopped it was quite easy
to escape from the cart, particularly with the help of some decoy magic. Celia
set up a series of noises of voices and footfalls in the opposite direction to
the way that they were going, and they were able to sneak out through the
provisions caravans at the rear of the army and then into woodland by the side
of the road. They then struggled up one of the largish extinct volcanic plugs
surrounding the city so that they could look back and work out what the army
was doing. They were hungry and very tired.
The hill was exposed and cold, but it
gave a good vantage point to see what was going on. They were only a mile or
two from the centre of the army and they could see all of the comings and goings
quite clearly. In fact, all they saw was the knights milling around as they
assumed their battle formations and then a few scouts being sent on into the
city. They could see no opposing army, however, although they could not observe
anything much beyond Whitecloak’s old city.
Then there was just one lone figure
that they saw ride off very fast across the plain and then up the side of
another volcanic hill. They couldn’t see him clearly, and they assumed anyway
that he was just another scout. They settled down to watch the battle, with no
way of knowing from so far off where Kratos was.
Nothing happened for several hours.
Celia and Hardacre took it in turns to look after Lily and to watch the army.
Then something changed. Celia was standing on a rock looking down at the rows
of horsemen.
‘Magic’ murmured Celia, ‘I’m sure
that I can smell magic’
Hardacre stood up from where he had
been sitting, talking to Lily. He sniffed the air, even though there was really
no smelling involved.
‘Very strong magic, wild magic – I
smell it too’ he said, with a tremor in his voice.
Lily stood up and breathed in the air. She
looked puzzled, but also frightened.
‘What is it?’ she asked
‘Kratos’ whispered Hardacre, ‘he is
very near’
The two witches stood in front of
each other and grasped each other’s hands instinctively.
‘chyfnertha’
they said, as one, pooling their power and along with it their ability to
pinpoint where the magic was coming from. They both closed their eyes, and
then, a moment later, they turned to the hill to their left. The man who had
ridden there a little earlier was now standing up. It was quite hard to see
what he was doing as he was a long way off. However, no-one could miss what was
in front of him – a blue hole in the world, a hole that was expanding as they
watched it.
Celia let go of Hardacre’s hands and peered
up intently at the blue hole.
‘We have to stop him!’ she shouted,
‘but I don’t know how we can’.
Hardacre was about respond to her,
although he had no obvious plan, when a massive shudder rocked the earth. Celia
stopped to steady herself and then looked down into the plain. Below her the
army was under attack. The reason that they had seen no forces opposing the Crimson
Flame knights was because there were no forces above ground to be seen. Red
Cloak’s army came from below the earth, erupting in their thousands through the
rock and stone, like swimmers emerging from a sea of fire. And as they emerged,
roughly hewn red giants of magma and steam, they burnt everything in their
path. They were of humanoid shape, but they were of some flesh-rock hybrid that
no-one there had ever seen before.
For a moment the knights were in
disarray and they wavered; their horses were terrified and many men were lost
as they toppled off their mounts into the walking furnaces. But then there were trumpets and the army retreated
in good order to a line up in front of the enemy. These were hardened troops
and they were not easily cowed. They waited to see just what these monsters
could do and they soon saw that the larva giants were cooling rapidly and their
fire was fading. Those that had turned
grey had slowed to a crawl and were easy to cut down. Tentatively, but
steadily, the knights moved forwards. The battle had begun.
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