Sagaria (13 page)

There was a circular hole in the ground, all right, and peering into it, Sagandran could see the brick walls extending down twelve or fifteen feet. It wasn’t too far for him to jump down if he had to, but he’d rather not risk a twisted ankle. Grandpa must have thought the same thing long ago, because a rope dangled into the well, its other end tied to a tree stump close by. Or maybe Grandpa just used the rope for climbing out again. It didn’t really matter.

Sagandran grinned suddenly, remembering how much he dreaded climbing the rope in his gym classes. Now he was actually looking forward to it, even though his hands still throbbed a little from the mishap in the gym. He glanced at the forbidding barricades the trees made around the clearing This place gave him the creeps, just a bit. Then he sat down on the edge of the well, his feet
hanging, and took the rope firmly in both hands. His heart rose into his throat as he shuffled his bottom forward on the stones around the opening until he was balanced precariously on it.

He held onto the rope even tighter.
Now or never
. He pressed with his feet against the side of the well to haul his rump the last inch or so, and then he was tumbling. His grip on the rope had been too close to the well’s edge, and his left hand was caught against the stone. With his full weight pulling the rope down on his flesh, he was in agony. For a second he panicked, imagining himself pinned here forever, then rationality took over. By kicking his feet against the bricks he was able to release the pressure on his trapped hand just long enough to pull it free, sliding it down the rope to join the other. In the pale glow, he could see a welt already reddening his flesh.

But there was no time to think about it, no time to allow himself to feel the pain. Bracing as much as he could against the sides of the well with his knees and back, and keeping his spectacles on his nose more by sheer effort of will than anything else, he lowered himself down the taut rope. At last, he was near enough to the foot of the old well to drop the last few feet.

He stood there gasping, with his back bent and his hands on his thighs. It was fine now to feel the pain from his squashed hand, and feel it he did. He clenched and unclenched his fist a few times, and the pain ebbed away a little.

The light was much stronger here, pouring out of a waist-high tunnel. It was just as Grandpa had described it last night – except for one thing. Lying in the mouth of the tunnel was the battered blue cap Grandpa often wore when he was rambling through the forest. Sagandran had seen it on the same hook his anorak was on last night. Grandpa had come this way today.

Sagandran breathed an enormous sigh of relief. However much he’d been telling himself that Grandpa must have gone to Sagaria for help, there had always been the lurking fear that perhaps Sagandran’s other notion had been right – that the old man had been captured by the Shadow Master’s thugs.

Then the fear returned.

Maybe that was what had happened. Indeed, the fact that Grandpa had left his cap where it had fallen would seem to indicate he’d not been traveling under his own volition when he’d passed this way. Was he being dragged, or had the Shadow Master taken over his mind so that he’d gone like a zombie wherever the Shadow Master wanted him to go? Or had Grandpa just been in a hurry?

Sagandran knelt down, so that he was looking into the tunnel. There was the bend, just a few yards away, as Melwin had described.

“Grandpa?” he whispered, then called louder.

There was no answer. Not that he’d really expected one. He crawled in. The tunnel must have been a really tight fit for Grandpa, because even Sagandran had to move carefully in order not to bump against the cold, moist sides too often. He wished that whoever had built it hadn’t put a kink in it. All the forces of darkness could be waiting around that corner and he wouldn’t be any the wiser until he got there.

All the more reason to get there as quickly as possible
, he told himself.
Better to know the truth than to drive myself nuts agonizing about dire possibilities
.

He rounded the bend as quickly as he could in his awkward, shuffling crawl.

Nobody there.

Told you so
, said a part of his mind.

No you didn’t
, said the other part truthfully.

“Oh, shut up,” breathed Sagandran to the dank air.

He could see the source of the creamy light ahead. A little stone door, standing ajar. It seemed to beckon him. Grunting from the exertion, he crawled the last few yards until he could see, beyond the open door, the liquid-like mirror. Grandpa had been right about how the shining, glowing surface seemed to hold every color there had ever been, all shifting and blending and separating again. Above the doorway was the notice that Grandpa had told him about:

The writing was faded and curiously wrought, as if there hadn’t been enough ink left in the pen, so that whoever had put the words there was forced to scratch them more than write them. The sign was hanging a little askew; perhaps Grandpa had been in such a hurry as he’d passed that he’d knocked it with his shoulder.

Hurry.

If Grandpa had been in a hurry, then Sagandran should be likewise. He looked down, ready to plunge forward into the sheet of light and saw the Royal Seal of Spectram – the golden medallion Grandpa had shown him last night – lying on the ground. The chain was broken, the two sundered ends scattered apart like the thin limbs of a daddy-long-legs.

Not a good sign. Grandpa might not have bothered about picking up his cap if he’d been in a rush, but Sagandran didn’t think that the old man would have willingly left the medallion behind. He’d been so proud of it. More than that, it had been a token from Mirabella, and Sagandran had seen how the old man’s face shone every time he mentioned the queen’s name.

With some difficulty, Sagandran scooped up the seal and stuffed it in his pocket. It shouldn’t be left here. Melwin would be desperate to have it back. One more reason to catch up with his grandfather as quickly as he could, perhaps to rescue the old man from vile captors.

There was a soft creak close by and Sagandran let out a little yip of fright. Unless his eyes were deceiving him, the stone door was just a little less ajar than it had been a moment ago.

Another creak.

If he hung around here any longer, the door would slam in his face!

Head down, hardly daring to look at the glittering, pulsing curtain in front of him, he forced himself to move toward it, pausing just a moment when he felt its coolness on the top of his scalp, then pressing forward again.

Then he was being swallowed up by the unknown.

No sooner had Sagandran been sucked into the portal than the stone door slammed behind him with a resounding bang. There was barely time for the shadow that had been following him to leap through the narrowing gap. It hurried toward the dimming light of the portal …

CHAPTER 5

A D
IMINUTIVE
A
CQUAINTANCE

agandran found himself rocketing through a tube of blue light, just as Grandpa had described. He also discovered his mind being pervaded by the sense of optimistic calm that the old man had mentioned. After spending a few moments looking around him in awe at the strangeness of it all, he fished the Royal Seal of Spectram from his anorak pocket and scrutinized the map of the tunnels. It was perfectly clear to him which route led to Spectram, and that he was being taken on a different route.

Soon he was enjoying the exhilarating plunge down through the clouds into brightly-lit sky. He descended precipitously toward a patchwork of fields and streams before the column of light he was in slowed smoothly to hover a few hundred feet above the ground. The pillar of light seemed to be searching for the precise spot where it should set him down. His feet touched ground softly in the middle of a small clearing in the forest.

His first emotion was disappointment. He could just as well have been in the middle of a forest back on Earth – the Earthworld. There was nothing obvious to tell him that he’d been transported into a different reality. Then he realized there was. Intertwining among the blades of grass in the clearing were countless small flowers. They were roughly the same shape as buttercups, but they came in all sorts of pastel shades, from a muted orange through pink and pale green and blue. Some of them even had the fine gold color of true buttercups. The sun offered another clue that he was … somewhere else. Darkness had filled the skies when he’d clambered down into the well, but no more than twenty minutes later, the sun rode high in the sky, close to the zenith. Some of the leaves on the nearby trees seemed peculiarly shaped, and one of the trunks had bright purple bark, unlike those of any trees that Sagandran had seen before.

Everything seemed so real – too real, in fact. His surroundings were more real than reality, and that made them paradoxically feel unreal at the same time.

Have I really been transported into an otherworld,
he thought,
or am I asleep
in bed dreaming this?
He pinched himself, just as people did in stories, and he could certainly feel his fingers and the flesh they were tweaking, but he could be dreaming that as well, so really, it proved nothing.
I have to assume that this is real,
he decided.
Grandpa needs rescuing. If I rescue him and it turns out to be a dream, well, I’ll have had a great dream. But if this is real and I don’t rescue him
…

He didn’t like to continue the thought.

The first thing I’ve got to do is find a way out of this forest.

There was a gap in the fence the trees made around him, and he walked toward it. The grass was spongy under his feet and gave a little spring to his stride, as if he were light-hearted. Oddly enough, the bounce had the effect of cheering him up a little, of making him more optimistic. So what if he was lost in a world he knew next to nothing about? So what if the people who’d kidnaped Grandpa possessed magical powers far beyond anything he could conceive? He was Sagandran, and when Sagandran set his mind to it, he could do anything!

A small, ill-defined trail led into the forest. His optimism ebbing as quickly as it had arrived, he eyed the path warily. This must be the way everyone who’d been deposited here by Sagaria’s bizarre transportation system took, so presumably it was safe enough, yet it had the look of a corridor into the unknown – and the unknown could be dangerous. Beneath the high, thick, leaf-covered branches, the light was dim and the sounds of hidden forest animals moving around in the undergrowth and the lower branches made him uneasy. It was a sound he loved at home, but here it reminded him that he didn’t know anything about those animals. To judge by the rustlings, the creatures were small, but a black widow spider is very small indeed and that doesn’t make it any less lethal. Those animals could be squirrels with a mouthful of vicious fangs, waiting for him to walk below them so they could drop on his head and savage his face. The birds he could hear chirping in the higher branches could be ferocious predators ready to plummet down and pluck out his eyes for their next meal. And—

Oh, stop being so silly, Sagandran,
he said to himself, and he began walking quickly along the track.

The way was covered in a mulch of old brown leaves. Once he got the hang of it, he was able to squish and squelch along quite quickly. No monsters leapt out at him from the gloom between the trees, and the only creature of any kind he saw was an animal resembling a green, long-tailed chipmunk. It sat in front of him as he approached it and yattered away at him vexedly, before deciding he was too big to pick a fight with. It dashed aside at the last moment, leaving him chuckling.

Pleasant though it was here, the hours passed and he didn’t seem to be getting anywhere fast. The path twisted and turned a lot and each time he rounded a
corner, he half-expected to see some sign that he might be nearing the edge of the forest. Instead he was presented with the same vista, and however much he peered between the ranks of the tree trunks, there was no sunlight visible beyond them. He was pretty sure the forest hadn’t seemed this big when he was hovering above it, but at the time his attention had been on so many things that he hadn’t been looking. Perhaps the glade where he’d been set down was close to the edge of the trees and the path was leading him in exactly the wrong direction? Or perhaps the path was just taking him around in circles?

That was an alarming notion, and it stopped him in his tracks. He twisted his mouth one way then the other as he mulled over the thought. Well, if the path was just spiraling around and leading him nowhere useful, there wasn’t much he could do about it. Striking off among the trees didn’t seem like a good idea either; he had no idea which might be the best direction. Better to stick to the path. Paths always led somewhere in the end, didn’t they?

Leaning against a tree, he scrabbled some bread out of his bulging pocket. Thank goodness he’d thought to bring it. Walking along, he’d not noticed how hungry he was getting. While he munched, he saw a small pair of shiny brown eyes watching him from a heap of dead leaves. Another green chipmunk, or maybe the one he’d seen earlier had followed him in hopes of a tidbit.

“Hello there,” he said, but the eyes didn’t move at all.

He made a bread pellet and tossed it toward the pile of leaves, but the animal was too shy to come out to eat.

Sagandran shrugged. He usually enjoyed being on his own, but he was beginning to feel lonely in this unfamiliar forest. Even a green chipmunk would have given him a little company. Oh, well, it couldn’t be helped. The little creature would doubtless be grateful to its benefactor as it feasted on the bread ball after he was gone.

“Goodbye, then,” he said, and set off once more.  

At last, there was some sign of change. He couldn’t be sure at first, but it was soon obvious that the path was widening. He was making progress. The track wasn’t just going around in circles, even if he still didn’t know where it was leading.  

After another half-hour of trudging, the pathway split in two. In the center of the fork, there was a wooden sign with a big arrow pointing to the right. Beneath the arrow someone had crudely burned the words:  

It didn’t occur to Sagandran to wonder why he could read the sign. Grandpa had told him that Queen Mirabella and the others seemed to speak in English, so
it seemed only natural to Sagandran that the Sagarians should write in English as well.

“Bolster,” he said. “An odd name, but I’m in an odd world.” He snapped his fingers, listening to the sharp sound being blunted by the foliage around him. “Let’s hope this Bolster person is friendly and will point me in the right direction.”

He took a couple of paces in the direction of the arrow.

“I wouldn’t go there if I were you,” said a small high voice from behind him.

Sagandran spun on his heel. There was nobody there.

He eventually thought to glance down and saw an animal sitting by the trail that looked like a very large brown mouse. It was not a rat – though it was certainly the right sort of size for a smallish rat, but a great big chubby mouse. It was dressed in a red shirt and a pair of blue trousers held up by suspenders. It was the owner of those brown eyes that had been watching him from the shelter of the leaves a while back.

The creature saw he was staring and made nervous little movements as if it were trying to stop itself from bolting.

“Was it you who spoke to me?” said Sagandran incredulously.

“Yes, monster.”

“I’m not a monster.”

“You look like one to me,” observed the creature. “You’re a hundred squiddlekins tall, if not more, and you don’t have any whiskers. That’s a monster by anybody’s standards.”

“Not by mine,” said Sagandran, relaxing.

“That’s because you’re a monster,” said the creature with an air of I-told-you-so finality.

Sagandran sighed. If he wasn’t careful this was going to turn into one of those
Alice in Wonderland
conversations that didn’t lead to anywhere except frustration. Except that he was in a wonderland, so perhaps such a conversation would be only appropriate, but he’d rather avoid it if he could.

“And you have bottle bottoms over your eyes,” the little creature said.

“These?” said Sagandran, removing his spectacles and holding them out. “These are my …”

Then his voice trailed off. He really
was
in an otherworld. For the first time that he could remember, he could see much better without his spectacles. Puzzled, but not concerned, he stuffed them away in a pocket of his anorak.

“Are you Bolster?” he said.

The mouse gave a humorless snort of laughter. “Most certainly not. If I were
Bolster, you’d probably be Bolster’s supper by now.”

It took Sagandran a moment to work this out.

“Ah. Bolster’s a monster as well, is he?”

“Of course. He’s a worg.” The mouse clearly thought everyone in the world must know what a worg was. Sagandran remembered Grandpa Melwin mentioning worgs. He shuddered.

“Then who are you?” he said.

“My name is Flip.” The big mouse brushed one of its forepaws against its shirt in a gesture of false modesty. “You may have heard of me. I’m the widely renowned Adventurer Extraordinaire.”

“No, I haven’t.”

The mouse’s shoulders slumped. “That’s the trouble with this place. Nobody knows who I am. I was hoping you’d be the first.”

“I’m sorry.”

Flip took a step or two backward off the path and Sagandran followed, stretching out his hand in what he hoped looked like a demonstration of friendship.

“Stop!” yelled the little creature.

Sagandran froze. “Wh–what?”

“That was a perfectly good fence,” Flip scolded. “Now look at it.”

Sagandran did. His right foot was firmly planted amid the wreckage of a neat little picket fence.

“Oh, I’m sorry. Again. I didn’t see it there. I’ve broken only
part
of it.”

“Part of a fence is no better than no fence at all when it comes to keeping wild beasts at bay,” worried Flip.