The Crystal Heart (20 page)

I had heard the sound of those bells only once before, and that is a memory from nightmares and my deepest childhood. The bells had pealed just so, when I was taken as a child. I could see nothing, for I had been wrapped in something thick and dark – bundled in someone's arms – someone I never saw, for I'd been snatched from behind. But I could hear, and the wild, warning, mourning carillon of the bells was the last thing I remembered of my home.

So strong was the memory that it froze me for a moment, and it was Kasper who brought me back to the present, calling my name. ‘Izolda, it's surely too dangerous to go out this way now, the watchtower will be looking out for fugitives,' he said. ‘Is there any other way we can get to the Outlands?'

‘There isn't …' I began, then stopped for I remembered something. Very rarely, Outlander skulkers and other intruders tried to get into the City of Night through a long tunnel system. It was this tunnel system that had
been used to slip my father's armies undetected out of Night. They travelled up through several levels till they reached a deep sea cave that opened directly onto a remote harbour in the world above. It was there that my father's fleet of black ships, built in secret in a far-off country, waited to take the army to Krainos.

The terms of my father's defeat meant that the tunnels had to be abandoned, and now the passage was infested with cave goblins who lie in wait for anyone foolhardy enough to try their luck. They were culled at various intervals by the Marshals, but a population was always allowed to stay there for they performed a useful task, deterring intruders and potential invaders alike. Yes, that passage was only for the truly desperate, but it was also our only hope.

Kasper shook his head when I told him so. ‘No, I cannot place you in such danger. It is me they want to punish, not you. I will give myself up, and you can –'

‘No!' I cried. ‘Whatever happens, I am with you. Whatever the cost. Whatever the danger. We will never be parted again. If you die, I die with you. But I would rather live, if it's all one to you.'

Kasper laughed. ‘Then I suppose, my dearest stubborn mule, we must try this way of yours, for I too would much rather live with you till the end of our days,' he said, with that sideways glance that made my whole body tingle with warmth. ‘We must just make sure that those days don't end too soon, at the end of a goblin's claws.'

‘You can be sure we will try,' I said, taking his hand.

We ran, slipping in and out of shadows, headed towards the harbour. It wasn't far, and when we reached
it, we were folded into the midst of a great crowd of people milling around the harbourmaster's office. I was more nervous than I had been, for the sound of the bells was very loud here, making my heart race like the wind. I made sure to keep my hood well over my face.

But Kasper was calm as a rock, and his hand on mine steadied me so that I was able to take my bearings and direct us towards the place where I once saw my father's armies gather. I could almost see them now. There was my father standing tall, splendid in his full battle uniform, surrounded by the black-clad Marshals. There he was bowing before the statue of Our Lady of the Rock, carried on the shoulders of four brawny men. There was the Archbishop intoning the sacred hymn of protection in war, and the crowds cheering, the banners flying, the trumpets sounding. I could see myself there, a wide-eyed child of eight, standing on that platform near the harbourmaster's office.

‘We're going to have to steal a boat,' I said to Kasper, and he nodded. The crowds were still milling around the office. I could hear announcements of my ‘kidnap' and loud voices raised against Krainos. The boats – small, light things that worked the fish and eel traps in the harbour and plied the streams between here and the Outlands – bobbed about on their moorings. We sneaked onto the pier, down a ladder and onto the closest boat. Kasper took up the oars, and we were only a short distance away from land when someone spied us and called out a warning.

As Kasper redoubled his efforts, the speed of the boat created an eddy of air and my hood fell back, revealing my hair. The crowd roared, and a dozen men jumped into the water and took to the boats. They were gaining on us,
and I could not find where the beginning of the passage might be.

Kasper rowed fast, his face set with effort and dripping with sweat. He rowed so fast the boat seemed to take off like a bird across water. But he could not row as fast as
feyin
fishermen. The distance between us was shortening by the instant; I could see the fishermen's faces clearly, contorted with wild fury, and I knew that if they caught up to us, Kasper would not even live to face my father's wrath.

‘Over there!' Kasper shouted.

I peered in the direction he was looking. At first it seemed only to be one of the many fish traps that dotted the harbour. But then I saw it was not a trap, not a whirlpool or eddy, either. It was a spot where the water was deathly still, a small spot hidden from sight again and again by the rise and fall of the gentle waves of the harbour. In the split second we reached it, so did the first of the fishermen. He reached out an oar to pull our boat back, but Kasper pushed it away. All at once both boats rent apart, with a scream of wood like living things, and we all three were flung into the water. Borne in by his own speed, the fisherman was the first to go down, sucked in like a mouse down a snake's throat. Kasper managed to grab my hand and held onto it with an iron grip as we were whooshed down through the underwater passage.

Spluttering, we surfaced into some sort of pool, in complete darkness. We could not see each other, but we held onto each other's hands. We were alive, and had evaded our pursuers. Or had we?

‘Shh,' Kasper whispered in my ear. I tensed, hearing the stealthy sound of a splash, and then another, not far away. The fisherman – or was it something far worse, there in the dark? I thought of how it is said that cave goblins are cowards on their own, attacking only the helpless and small, and only if they can do so without posing any danger to themselves; but how, in packs, they will go for much bigger game, closing in on their prey with whistles of …

My scalp crinkled with cold. A whistle, then another and another! The air was filled with whistling – horrid, thin, high, gleeful. Then a terrible scream rang out, and was cut off almost at once. The goblins had found the fisherman.

This also I knew of goblin packs: Once they have made a kill, they devour it at once – bones, blood, flesh, hair and all. We had a little time before they would come looking for us. They would first enjoy their kill. But come after us they would, and we would be their next meal unless we could somehow outpace them. Without a word, we swam away as far as we could from the sound of crunching and swallowing and whistling, feeling for the edge of the pool. Finding it, we scrambled onto a rocky shelf. Still holding hands, we carefully felt our way forward into the clammy, evil-smelling darkness. If only we could see … if only we knew what was before us … we'd have a chance.

The crystal!
It was still at my throat. I fumbled with my free hand and pulled it out. To my relief, it was glowing – a very faint light glow, just enough to show the blur of Kasper's face.

‘Perhaps with my half, too …' Kasper whispered, and drew out his crystal shard.

Separately, the two halves gave twin pools of faint light. It was not quite enough to see more than what was very close up, and it wasn't easy to hold. But joined together, maybe …

I threaded Kasper's half onto the silken string, next to mine. As soon as the two halves touched, the light grew so that we could see about two or three steps ahead. I hoped this, too, would make the goblins a good deal more wary, not so much for the light as the nature of the crystal itself.

We started down the canal tunnel. It was wide enough for us to walk abreast, but the floor was slippery with slime and pitted with treacherous holes that we had to pick our way along. I tried to remember everything I'd heard about the old tunnel system, built centuries ago to provide a secret way to the remote Outlands of Night. Somewhere ahead of us, the network of tunnels would split in two. One way, the longest and most perilous, would eventually take us up into the sea cave and thence into an isolated part of the Krainos coastline. The other, shorter, less dangerous path would bring us up somewhere in the wilds of my own country.

‘From there,' I said to Kasper, ‘we might be able to get a guide to take us into the upper world; but my father's troops might be there already, watching for us. If we choose the other way, not only do we run a greater risk of encountering the cave goblins, but we have to swim up through the sea cave to reach the upper world. I have no idea how deep it really is. And even if we make it to the
surface, there'll be soldiers from your country guarding that spot. Last time, your government was taken by surprise by my father's armies; they'll not be caught again the same way.'

‘No, they won't,' Kasper said dryly. ‘I did not see any military activity in the harbour.'

I am perplexed by this statement. ‘Of course not. You know that under the terms of the defeat, my father had to undertake never to –'

‘I know the terms.' Kasper's voice took on an undertone that troubled me.

‘If you mean that my father prepares for war once more,' I said, ‘then you are quite wrong. He is many things, but a fool he is not. He would never risk his realm in such a way again.'

‘The Marshals –' Kasper began.

‘Have returned to what they always were before the war – defenders of the realm, that is all. There is no war being plotted here. Whoever says different, lies. In the Lady's name, Kasper, surely you cannot believe such a thing!'

His eyes met mine. ‘I do not, my love. I think I knew from the start that I'd been told a lie, but it did not matter to me.'

‘What didn't matter, Kasper?' I cried, my throat clenching.

‘It was not the reason I agreed to do what he wanted,' he said steadily. I was about to ask what he meant when a dry, fast clicking sound echoed from somewhere in the darkness of the tunnels behind us. A sound like the rapid skittering of claws on stone, followed by a thin high whistle.
Goblins!

We took to our heels as fast as we could, but I couldn't keep up with Kasper's long strides. In my thin shoes, I kept slipping and sliding, unable to gain a proper footing. Seeing my difficulties, Kasper stopped. ‘Jump on my back, Izolda, we'll go a lot faster that way.'

‘But I'll weigh you down …'

‘No, you're light as a feather,' he said, scooping me up and depositing me on his back in one smooth movement. ‘Slip the crystal around my neck so I can see better. And hang on!'

Even with the burden on his back, Kasper was much faster than I could ever have been. But he was straining with the effort. I could hear the breath rasping in his throat and felt the rapid pumping of his heart. The sound of the goblins' claws had faded a little into the distance, but had not gone away altogether. They were still on the hunt, and they wouldn't tire easily. And that was only the one pack. Who knew how many others there would be?

Presently, we came to the junction. There was no way to tell for certain which was the right path, but we decided on the left-hand passage, which looked broader and easier to navigate. But before we left, Kasper ripped off a piece of his sleeve and dropped it just inside the entrance to the tunnel on the right – a ruse to fool the pursuing pack.

At first, the passage was as we had thought. But around the second bend, the tunnel narrowed, the ceiling grew so low that I had to get off Kasper's back. We were now running along bent almost double, and a little later, we were practically crawling through a narrow space that felt perilously like a stone coffin. The air was close and the slimy walls hemmed us in, and I would be close to panic
if it weren't for the fact that I could no longer hear the goblins' footsteps, even faintly.

I don't know how long we crawled in the semi-darkness, but it felt like an eternity. I kept expecting to hear the sound of a goblin whistle, but nothing happened and we emerged unscathed into a small round cave whose ceiling was high enough for us to stand upright once more, even if Kasper's head almost touched it, and we halted a moment to take a breath.

He put an arm around me. ‘Are you all right?'

‘I – I think so. Where do you think we are?'

‘Heading to the Outlands, I'd say. We're not going up as we should be if we were to reach the sea cave, and those tight spaces we just went through are surely not meant for armies. What do you think?'

‘I think the same and I –'

‘What's that pile of sticks doing over there?' Kasper interrupted. I looked in the direction he was pointing and stiffened. In the corner was what looked like a pile of grey sticks, arranged neatly. Only they were not sticks.