Hardacre and the chickens fell into the
bag. The blue light inside was
unbearably bright and he realised almost immediately what had happened. The blue worms were now surrounding Lily,
wrapping her up as if in bed of cobalt seaweed. More worms were squeezing out
of the wall, struggling to find a place to connect to her spinal cord. Two
things were clear – Lily was in mortal danger, and the bag was at the point of
failing. All around him the hens continued to career and complain.
Hardacre knelt in front of Lily and took her
hand. She showed no sign of life. He squeezed the hand more tightly, and she
flinched in her dark slumber. Hardacre knew that he had to get her out of there
as fast as he could. He pulled her hand sharply to try to awaken her but she
was completely gone, her face pale and skin cold. Then he attempted to pull her
up, but she was too heavy and the worms did not want to let her go.
The bag was deteriorating fast – bits
of the Outer Void and bits of the normal world were increasingly visible; the
outer void below them and the real world above. Hardacre thrust his hands up
through a hole above him into the cart. Below the worms were bursting up
through massing blue clouds and into the bag. Everything was ragged and torn.
Lily began to drift down towards the
clouds. With his free hand Hardacre reached out to her.
‘Hold on, Princess’ he whispered, and
Lily, although apparently completely oblivious, reached out and held on to his
arm. There was no pull of gravity from either world, just some insidious
pressure exerted by the blue space and by the worms. His hand had grasped empty
air in the normal world, but that was enough. If Lily had not been attached to
him then it would have been any easy task to pull himself up into the cart, but
as it was they would go nowhere unless the worms could be dispersed or if he
could find something more solid to hold on to. His hand scrambled around on the
floor of the cart, but there was nothing there but more straw and
feathers.
He knew that he would have to try
some magic although he had no idea what effect it would have when cast between
these two worlds. It seemed, though, that he had no choice. He breathed in,
preparing to speak the trigger words.
A hand grasped his and pulled. The
grasp wasn’t very firm but that didn’t matter – the pull of the real world was
always going to be stronger. There was a
brief moment of balance and then there was enough of Hardacre’s arm thrust out
into the normal world for him to be able to pull his head up, then a mixture of
muscle and gravity did the rest. Now
only his hand was stuck inside the bag, with Lily clinging reflexively on to
it.
He stood up and pulled with all his
strength. Up came Lily out of the dissolving bag, and up came the worms as
well, writhing in the new world. Dragged
along with them, too, came several bemused chickens.
The tall woman who had helped
Hardacre out of the bag took one look at the worms and pointed a finger at them. ‘Awel’ she whispered. A breeze squeezed out from her finger and
fanned out over Lily and her attached parasites. As the wind blew through the
Outer Void creatures withered away, each particle of air destroying a small
fabric of their being. After a few
seconds all that was left was Lily and a few scraps of the broken bag. Hardacre turned to his rescuer.
‘Miss Franklyn!’ exclaimed Hardacre,
in surprise and gratitude.
‘Mr Hardacre!’ said Celia, almost
equally surprised. There was a short pause as she got her breath back.
‘You know I’ve never had a use for
that spell before…’
Hardacre was too stunned to respond,
so he just nodded politely. Then he remembered Lily. He knelt down before her and
took her hand – she was frozen but her hand held his very softly.
‘What is going on?’ asked Celia, ‘are
we being invaded from the Outer Void? Who is that?’
Hardacre looked up at her. She was
still in her nightdress.
‘I think you’ll find that those are
fairly minor questions, madam, when you hear the full story’
‘Really?’ said Celia, smiling despite
the circumstances.
‘Yes’ said Hardacre, ‘Kratos was the
one who was interfering with the Outer Void, and he’s here’
***
Lily was fast asleep and seemed quite content
but neither of the witches dared to wake her: who knew what damage the blue
worms had done. Celia studied her for a while but came to no conclusions. The
light was poor under the tarpaulin, but she definitely didn’t recognise the
teenage girl.
‘Who is she?’
Hardacre considered this question
carefully.
‘I’m judging that if I tell you that
you might decide that it would have been better not to know, madam’
‘What? Are you sure that you are
quite well, Mr Hardacre?’
‘I’m sure that I have suffered in
some way from my extra-dimensional experience, but I can’t think that that has
made any difference to my response to your last question, madam, if that is
what you mean…’
Celia nodded encouragingly, just
about managing to supress her irritation. She tried to speak as calmly as
possible.
‘Well, Mr Hardacre, you will have to
tell me at some point, and it might just be useful for me to know sooner rather
than later’
Hardacre gave her look that still
implied that she’d be better off not knowing, but he knew that he’d have to
yield. His voice, however, was very flat.
‘She’s Princess Lily of Amansk;
Praefectus Arnon’s daughter’
‘What…?’ Celia began, but then
realised that maybe Hardacre had been right – this did appear to be a
complication too far. She decided, therefore, for the time being, to try
another tack. It seemed that things had got altogether too odd.
‘But why was there an Outer Void rift
here, in a chicken cart, of all places?’
‘The princess was hiding in my hyper-bag…’
Celia proceeded cautiously, not
wanting to misunderstand anything or offend anyone.
‘Oh right – that was a rather foolish
thing to do wasn’t it?’
‘Utterly, madam – and it wasn’t my idea at all. It’s clear that something, perhaps whatever
Kratos has been doing, has weakened the barriers between the worlds. The Outer
Void creatures that lurk around the folded spaces are now being attracted to
any thin folded membrane beyond which they can sense a mind, apparently…’
Celia shuddered. She thought immediately of Owen, struggling
with a bulging rent in space-time; she hoped fervently that he was alright.
Then she snapped back to the fearfulness of her own predicament.
‘So, you said that Enemy Kratos is
near. Are you sure?’
‘Yes – he tried to kill me. Only the
presence of Boo saved us: she absorbed the energy of a massive fire bolt ’
Celia smiled grimly.
‘I’ve always said that it was a
healthy thing to have a pet’
Hardacre attempted an answering smile,
but it was so thin as to be essentially invisible.
‘Of course, Madam’
Celia ignored this.
‘Is Kratos with this army, then?’ she
asked
‘With the Crimson Flame Knights, yes.
He is acting as an advisor to the grandmaster during his attack on Tlaxaca’
Celia frowned.
‘I thought that the CRS were allied
with the Tlaxacans?’ she said, ‘So why would he do that?’
‘I have no idea, madam, but I suggest
that we might be well advised to try to find out’
‘Well, yes, of course’ said Celia hesitantly,
‘but first I need to find Katy…’
Hardacre looked so surprised that the
creases deepened visibly on his forehead. This was another worrying turn of
events.
‘Dr Mannings?’ he said carefully, ‘did
you think that she had blinked here?’
Celia nodded, rather reluctantly.
‘I was following her trace, but it seems like
she didn’t!’
Hardacre’s face slipped from surprise
to deep concern.
‘Oh dear’ he said, ‘I thought she was
advised by everyone not to…’
‘She has kelemeia’ explained Celia,
interrupting him, ‘she’s doesn’t really know what she’s doing…’
Hardacre paused for a second to try
to make sense of everything that he had just heard.
‘So; to sum up, madam’ he said very
slowly, ‘we are approaching Tlaxaca, we are among bloodthirsty knights, we face
one deadly foe, we have a catatonic princess, and… we’re looking for a mad
witch’
Celia nodded glumly. ‘Put like that
it does seem a bit daunting,’ she said, ‘so I think we’d better work out some
sort of plan’
No comments:
Post a Comment