Spellbinder (30 page)

“What?” he said, barely able to keep his eyes open.

“We’re . . . we’re nearly there,” she said, managing a smile.

He nodded wearily. Belladonna looked at Elsie, her eyes wide with fear, but Elsie tried not to look at her and walked a little way ahead, as if trying to see how far they had to go.

“Why don’t we stay here for the night?” she said. “We’ll make much better time in the daylight.”

Belladonna nodded. It was obvious that Steve wasn’t going to go very far and maybe a rest was all he needed. Maybe the exhaustion was just a side effect of the magic.

“I’ll see if I can find anything dry,” said Elsie, “for a fire.”

She wandered off as Steve sank gratefully to the ground.

“You really don’t look well,” said Belladonna.

“Funny that,” said Steve, his eyes sparkling for a moment, “because I feel positively chipper.”

Belladonna smiled and started to clear away some of the rotting grass.

“Nice work with the arrows, by the way,” said Steve.

“Thanks.”

“Mind you, if you really were the Spellbinder, you probably could’ve come up with something really spectacular.”

Belladonna glanced up. Steve was grinning and almost looked like himself, but the moment was brief. Soon he was lying back, sweat running down his pallid face and the black goo seeping from his wound.

“What did he say?” he mumbled.

“Who?” Belladonna tried not to sound as afraid as she felt.

“Your grandfather. What did he say that made you believe it was him?”

“My name. When I was little, I couldn’t say my name. He knew what I called myself.”

“What was that?”

“Jelly Bun,” said Belladonna.

Steve smiled. “Now there’s some ammunition.”

Belladonna smiled back, but even as she did, his eyes closed as if the sheer effort of keeping them open was too much.

“I’m really tired,” he mumbled. “I’m just going to sleep for a bit.”

Elsie returned with an armful of twigs and sticks. The flickering light only made Steve look worse. After about an hour of fitful sleep, he woke up, and Belladonna broke out the last of the ham sandwiches, but he shook his head.

“I’m thirsty.” His voice was barely a whisper.

She nodded and fished about in her bag for the last can of Tizer. She helped him drink it and waited while he drifted off to sleep again. As she moved back to her
seat near the fire, she caught Elsie’s expression as she watched.

“You know!” she whispered. “Tell me! What’s wrong with him?”

Elsie tried to ignore her, but Belladonna’s eyes bore into her soul.

“I think he might be poisoned,” she said. “I think . . . there’s a possibility . . .”

“What?” Belladonna’s voice was flat. She knew what was coming, but for some reason she needed to hear Elsie say it.

“He could be dying.”

“No, that can’t be!” Her voice caught in her throat. “It’s just a scratch!”

“Look,” whispered Elsie, “there’s no point arguing, I’m just telling you what I know. Slackett said the Night Ravens’ beaks and claws are poisonous. If they get you, you’re dead. But I thought he meant for us, not for you. Not for the Living.”

“But that doesn’t make any sense,” said Belladonna. “Everyone here is already dead. What’s the point of a poison that does that?”

“Not dead like dead in your world,” explained Elsie, “dead as in
dead
. Wiped out. Erased from the nine worlds. Gone.”

Belladonna stared at her, but saw nothing. She heard nothing. She couldn’t feel the cool of the breeze or the heat from the fire. She glanced at Steve and her
mouth felt dry. Could it really happen as quickly as that? One minute everything is fine and the next . . .

“Maybe he’s wrong,” she said, turning back to Elsie and trying to sound confident. “Slackett didn’t look like the sharpest pencil in the box to me. Besides, when did he tell you all this? I thought you didn’t like Ashe?”

“I don’t,” said Elsie, “and neither does Slackett.”

“Then why doesn’t he do something?”

“I don’t know. I think he’s waiting.”

“For what?”

“To see what Ashe is really up to. But he’s only one person. . . . What can one person do?”

Belladonna stared at her. It was heartening to know that they weren’t the only ones who knew that Ashe was behind the disappearance of the ghosts, but she really would have preferred a more substantial ally than Slackett. And Elsie was right, what could he do? All she’d actually seen him do was sweep the floor in Ashe’s laboratory. Although he did give her Steve’s stick.

She felt confused; on the one hand she wanted Slackett to be on their side and to have a plan to save the ghosts, but that would mean that he had probably told Elsie the truth when he said the Night Ravens were poisonous. In her heart she knew that he was an ally, but she couldn’t help but cling to the desperate hope that perhaps he wasn’t. She looked at Steve and felt the tears burning in her eyes.

“I can’t leave him here,” she said. “I can’t go home and . . . I can’t tell his Mum and Dad . . . There must be something! What about . . . what’s it called? A—”

“An antidote?”

Belladonna nodded frantically.

“I don’t know,” said Elsie. “I just don’t know.”

Belladonna looked up at the starless sky. How could this be happening? How could she have let it happen? He had wanted to go home. It had been her idea to stay. And now . . .

She took off her jacket and laid it gently over him. His eyes flickered open.

“Something’s wrong,” he said.

“I know,” she said.

He tried to sit up, but she easily pushed him back down. He raised his right hand and touched the suppurating scratch on his cheek.

“It was the Night Ravens, wasn’t it?”

“Yes. Their claws and beaks are poison, apparently.”

“Information that would have been helpful a while ago,” he grinned, and for a moment Belladonna saw a flicker of the Steve who had given Elsie such a hard time.

“It’ll be alright,” she lied. “You just need to rest.”

“I know,” he whispered.

“Belladonna! Belladonna! Wake up!”

Belladonna opened her eyes and sat up, alarmed.
She couldn’t believe she’d fallen asleep. She had meant to stay awake, just in case Steve felt better or wanted something to eat or . . .

“He’s gone,” said Elsie, fighting back tears. “I couldn’t do anything! It was so quick! I couldn’t do anything!”

“Dead?” cried Belladonna, jumping to her feet. “He can’t! He—”

“No,” said Elsie, “gone.”

Belladonna spun around. Elsie was right. There was no sign of Steve. Where he had been lying there was nothing but her old jacket with the fake-fur collar.

“But how . . .”

“I’d been out to get more sticks,” sobbed Elsie, “for the fire . . . you know. And when I got back . . . he was sinking! It was . . . like a . . . like a . . .”

Elsie’s face crumpled as she gave in to her fear and guilt. Belladonna walked over to her jacket. There was something not quite right about it. She reached down to pick it up and then gasped.

“Elsie! Look!”

Elsie ran over as Belladonna held up the jacket by one sleeve.

“I know!” she said. “It swallowed him! The earth . . . it just . . .”

Fully half of the jacket was buried in the ground, the earth set hard around it as if it had been there, half buried, for years.

Belladonna hesitated for only a moment and then
started frantically digging. Elsie watched, then suddenly seemed to snap out of her distress and remember that she was a no-nonsense Edwardian girl and blubbing was for babies. She threw herself at the patch of ground and joined Belladonna in heaving handfuls of earth away. They quickly released the jacket, but that was all—there was no sign of Steve. After a few more minutes of fruitless excavation, Belladonna stood up, brushed herself off, and slipped the jacket back on.

“Come on,” she said grimly, blinking back the tears. “Let’s find the House of Mists.”

“But . . .” started Elsie.

“He’s gone. And so is the amulet. Ashe has what he wanted and we have to try to stop him. That’s all we can do.”

B
ELLADONNA AND ELSIE
trudged on across the plain in silence. Every so often Belladonna could feel Elsie sneaking a peek at her. She knew she expected her to cry, and maybe she would. But later.

“Elsie . . .”

“Yes?”

“You said the Night Ravens were supposed to watch. Does that . . . I mean, does that mean that Steve was right about the Hound as well?”

“About it being Ashe’s eyes?” Elsie kicked at a slime-covered stone in her path. “I suppose. I didn’t know about the Hound, though. Slackett only mentioned the Ravens. Why?”

“If he can’t see us through their eyes any more, he’ll know we killed them. And that we’re still on our way to the House of Mists.”

Belladonna saw Elsie shoot a quick glance in her direction, as if she expected her resolve to falter, but
she had just wanted to be sure. If Ashe knew where they were going, he was probably on his way too. They just had to make sure that they got to the Conclave of Shadow first.

After a few hours, Belladonna began to feel her steely determination wane. It seemed that they would never get there, that surely they must have come the wrong way.

“There it is!” cried Elsie. “Look! The forest!”

“Are you sure those are trees?” said Belladonna dubiously.

They certainly didn’t look much like trees. The trunks were twisted and black and their roots rose above the ground in stark arches as if they were struggling to break their connection with the earth. Above them the thin branches strained upward, wrenching the trees away from the ground. Anywhere seemed preferable to staying in their native earth, even the inevitable death and decay.

“Yes!” said Elsie. “We’re nearly there!”

Within an hour, they were on the edge of the forest, though it turned out to be more of a small wood. They made their way carefully, picking their way over gnarled branches and through slimy black undergrowth. Every so often they’d hear the unmistakable sound of something skittering through the trees, but they never saw anything.

Then, suddenly, they were through, standing on a small rise above open ground. They peered through
the hovering mist that shrouded the ground and saw it. A garden.

Not just any garden, though. This was a vast formal landscape of trees, shrubs, and flower beds, all connected with a complicated interlocking latticework of paths. Vaulting arbors shaded narrow footpaths, and lanes of artfully trimmed topiary shapes drew the eye forward to elegant fountains and long, narrow reflecting pools. Near the center was a small pavilion with tall windows and welcoming glass doors, on either side of which were lollipop-shaped orange trees in huge terra-cotta pots.

Of course, all the plants were dead, but that only added to the architectural qualities of the garden. Instead of being a knot of greenery and color, the garden was a symphony of black, brown, and gray. Each plant, bush, and tree had decayed in its own way, some leaving only skeletal remains while others still boasted full heads of crisp foliage. The effect was one of pared-down beauty, like an old lady who still has the fantastic bones that made her admired in youth.

Belladonna led the way silently through the black trees and onto the garden path. They walked along the gray gravel lane, gazing at the plants around them. White marble stones marked the edges of the well-turned flower beds where gray shrubs rustled in the light breeze and the glistening, composty remains of flowers slowly sank back into the earth. The gurgle of the fountains was the only sound, but far from being
crystalline and sparkling, the water was green with algae and smelled of fever ponds. Inside the pavilion, a table was laid for tea, but the cakes and scones had crumbled to dust and mold was growing up the sides of the teacups and out of the spout of the pot.

They made their way on slowly, down narrow paths and up wider boulevards. Once, Elsie tried touching a topiary lion, but the black leaves crumbled away as if her hand were poison. And still there was more: latticework arbors, covered in dismal tendrils and long-dead spiderwebs; the stark beauty of the bushes and flowers; and the brittle grace of well-pruned cypress.

“That’s it!” said Elsie suddenly, as they emerged from yet another rose-trellised bower. “It’s the House of Mists!”

Belladonna joined her and looked out across a brown sunken lawn to a sweeping marble stair that led up to a balustraded terrace. The terrace surrounded what was obviously the back of the kind of house Belladonna had only seen on school trips or period dramas on TV.

It was massive and stately, built of a white stone that gleamed in the late-afternoon light. Tall windows gazed across the garden like unseeing eyes, and massive urns decorated the pediments. They walked toward it across the sunken garden and past a stand of trees, which turned out to be concealing yet more of the imposing building. Two wings stretched out from the central structure, each apparently housing a long
gallery on the second floor, where the windows were even taller and more unblinkingly impressive.