03 Sky Knight (17 page)

The once–busy village was now a ghostly place, where danger seemed to lurk in the shadows, and the spirits of happier times clung on desperately in the hope that one day the people might return. It was a vain hope, and one Meadow did not buy into.

No–one would ever return here.

His final search completed, he went to the garrison building, where Sky’s father had been locked up. The old man was standing at the window, looking out at the distant line of troops that would soon descend on the village, tearing apart any last memories of the home they had all once known.

‘Time to go,’ Meadow said, unlocking the prison cell.

‘I should stay here,’ Sky’s father said.

‘Perhaps you should, but I’m not going to leave you. There’s only one horse left in the stable, so I hope you don’t mind sharing.’

Sky’s father gripped the bars in the window. ‘I don’t share well,’ he said.

‘Come on, get out.’

There was an awkward silence, as Sky’s father continued to watch Crow’s hordes. Then he turned, and Meadow could see the old man had been crying. ‘I only wanted to protect her. If I don’t keep her safe, who else will?’

Private Meadow stepped aside to allow the prisoner out of the cell. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘But I do know your daughter is no helpless girl.’

‘You think she can look after herself?’

‘Why not? She’s been looking after you for years.’

***

Sky weaved between the ugly spires of black rock, completely lost, and not even certain now whether she was moving away from or towards the beach. Not far behind her, she could hear Tidal shouting, calling out her name, telling her there was nowhere to run. There was no way off this island and he would find her sooner or later.

She picked up the pace, plunging on into narrow corridors of stone; through gulfs, ravines, and rock pools; desperate to get as much distance between her and Tidal as possible.

If Tidal was chasing her then it meant he had overpowered Nimbus, but she couldn’t bring herself to think what that meant just yet. All she could think about was running.

On and on, snagging her clothes on sharp rock formations, cutting her hands and her knees every time she slipped. The stony spines were getting sharper and more tightly packed, and it was becoming increasingly difficult to navigate them. On several occasions she was forced to climb, and at those times she was able to see Tidal gaining on her as he flitted between the stones at an alarming speed.

Heart hammering wildly, her breath coming in short, hard gasps, she pushed herself even harder. She was not going to get caught by Tidal. If she was going to die, then better she plunged to her death over a cliff, or drowned in a rock pool.

Mud here: Thick and stinking, sucking at her feet and slowing her down, bringing her almost to a stop. Each step taking an age; sapping her strength. Losing her balance, the mud grabbing at her arms, determined to drag her down. Using her last strength to clamber free, pulling herself over the rocks, weeping with the effort. Had to keep going.

Had to keep going.

She crawled from the mud and collapsed, completely drained of energy. How much longer could she keep this up? How much longer could she run?

‘Sky?’ Tidal shouted, and his voice was surprisingly close. He must have known every part of the island. He would know all the short cuts and hidey–holes. He would be able to get ahead of her, set an ambush. ‘Sky, where are you?’

Gritting her teeth, she got to her feet. Every bit of her ached, but she pressed on, using the rocks for support when she felt like she was going to fall again. Always moving, always looking for a way to escape.

Then suddenly she was out of the rocks, and in a heavily forested region of the island. Unusual birdsong filled the air, and the sunlight cut through gaps in the trees. At any other time she would have thought this was a truly beautiful place, but not today.

She went into the gloom beneath the trees, her footsteps masked by a thick mulch of fallen leaves and other rotted vegetation. Small creatures, unaccustomed to seeing human visitors, scurried into hiding as she ran, and she wished she could do the same.

She wished...

Wished!

She felt for the pouch around her waist, dreading that the star had been lost in the struggle with Tidal, or sucked into the mud pit, or caught up in the rocks.

Her hand closed around the star, and her fear subsided. If she could stay ahead of Tidal until the sun set, then she would be able to escape on the pegasus. She just had to find somewhere to lay low until then. Surely there had to be somewhere.

She was no longer running. She was staggering. Her legs burning from the strain, her lungs heaving to get more oxygen. She couldn’t hear him any more, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t there. He could have been within grabbing distance, hunkered in a bush or halfway up a tree, waiting for just the right moment to leap out and finish what he had started on the beach.

The thought encouraged her to keep moving, and she stumbled on; not sure where she was going, but knowing that she had to get there soon.

And then she found it: A small cleft in the earth. It was the entrance to some underground place that was big enough for her to wriggle into, but far too small for Tidal to follow.

She was half inside when he appeared out of the trees, his hair a tangled mess, his eyes staring and wild. He looked nothing at all like the boy she used to go fishing with.

‘Sky,’ he bellowed. ‘Get out of there, it’s dangerous under the island.’

He was too late, though; for even as he came close, she squeezed the rest of her body into the gap, falling and tumbling a short distance before landing in a cold pool where horrible things slithered, and where she was glad it was too dark to see what those things might be.

‘Sky!’ Tidal roared, clawing at the entrance to make it wider.

She turned her back on him and began crawling blindly, heading deeper into the tunnel. The only sound was the slosh of the water as she squirmed through, and her own terrified breathing.

How long she crawled, she didn’t know; but it seemed like an eternity in the dark: so long that she started to believe the tunnel might have no end at all, and she would be doomed to crawl around like a worm until she died of starvation.

‘Don’t panic,’ she muttered to herself, and then again, ‘Don’t panic.’ It became a mantra. ‘Don’t panic. Don’t panic. Don’t panic.’ And as if the earth itself had heard her and taken pity, the tunnel opened into a massive natural vault, partly illuminated by sunlight streaming through from fissures in the roof.

She was on a narrow ledge, above a pool of stagnant water. There were several tunnels leading off from this main chamber, and it looked like those tunnels had once been filled with water, because all of the surfaces were polished and smooth.

If water had got in, that meant at least one of the tunnels might lead back out again.

Carefully, she swung off the ledge and lowered herself into the pool. The water was peculiarly black, and terribly cold, and as she moved through it her skin felt like it was crawling with bugs.

When she was halfway across, there was a plopping sound, as a pebble fell into the water. Instantly, the pool came alive in a wriggling mass of disgusting, snake–like creatures. They slithered around her legs, nipping at her with little teeth.

Trembling with horror and revulsion, she waded to the bank, and pulled herself clear, grappling with the creatures that were latched on to her legs and throwing them back into the squirming mass of loathsome bodies.

‘Baby sea serpents,’ she gasped, pressing her back to the wall.

For several more minutes the babies twitched and convulsed in a pulsing, scaly mass; but slowly the activity lessened, and eventually the pool was still and dark as before, its horrible secret hidden well beneath the surface.

‘This is the worst day ever,’ Sky muttered, getting to her feet and edging around to the nearest exit.

The tunnel was perfectly round and gloomy, and there was not the faintest hint of any breeze. If there was no breeze, maybe there was no way out either.

She moved on.

The next tunnel was a peculiar pinky–red colour, with ridges along the walls. The floor was submerged in about a foot of water, and there was a definite breeze: a warm, pungent air that was not particularly inviting, but was suggestive of an exit somewhere up ahead.

Reluctantly, she drew nearer. She didn’t want to go in there. The breeze smelled bad and there were spiky rocks all around the entrance that reminded her of teeth; but she knew there was no other way. She had to get out of this cavern somehow.

‘No, Sky. Wait!’ Tidal shouted, appearing on the ledge where she had been only moments before. ‘Get away from there.’

Sky was about to flee into the tunnel, but the entrance snapped shut, and she found herself looking directly into the baleful eyes of a gigantic, adult sea serpent. He had inched his body down the real tunnel, and then opened his mouth to completely fill the entrance. What Sky had thought were stones that looked like teeth, really were teeth. What she had thought was a breeze was the monster’s disgusting breath.

She had almost walked right down a leviathan’s throat.

‘Hello, Sky,’ the sea serpent said.

She staggered back, losing her balance and almost falling into the pool behind her.

‘No,’ Tidal said. ‘Leave her alone.’

The leviathan swivelled his gaze towards Tidal. ‘Do you still feel something for this silly girl?’ he hissed. ‘Would it grieve you so much if I was to eat her?’

‘I said leave her alone,’ Tidal shouted, leaping from the ledge into the heart of the black pool. Instantly, the baby serpents sprang into action, slithering all over him as he stalked towards Sky and the leviathan. By the time he reached the bank, he was almost completely concealed beneath a writhing mass of slender bodies, and he looked more like a squelching sea monster than a human being.

With her heart almost bursting out of her ribcage, Sky retreated to the nearest tunnel and ducked inside. Tidal watched her leave, his expression totally unreadable as the baby leviathans began to drop off him and wriggle back into the water.

‘If you want me to find that coral for you, you will leave Sky alone,’ he said.

‘Why?’ the Ocean King asked.

Tidal cracked his knuckles grimly. ‘Because I want to deal with her myself.’

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Captain Obsidian, Lord Citrine, and the Crystal Shine palace guards, stood in the beer cellar beneath the watchtower. By the light from several flaming torches, a single ghost was showing them all the suits of armour and other belongings that had been left here to rot over the many hundreds of years since the tower had been abandoned.

‘What happened?’ Lord Citrine asked, as he examined a suit of armour over which a thick layer of dust had settled. ‘Why do you want us to see this?’

‘It’s their belongings,’ Obsidian said, retrieving a small dagger from among the debris.

‘The captain is right,’ the ghost wheezed. ‘This is where we were brought. All of us save for Captain Spectre, who was handled in a most unsavoury manner, and was insulted by not being allowed to die with his men.’

‘Who did this?’ Citrine asked.

‘For the longest time, we did not know. But we know now. It was the creature they call Crow.’

Obsidian nodded understandingly. ‘He took your bodies. For his army. That’s why you’re still here.’

The ghost lowered his eyes, and his thin, frail voice became nothing more than the moan of the wind around the eaves of a haunted house. ‘We were killed, and our bodies were brought here. Then Crow used some kind of many–limbed creature, a wicked monstrosity of his own creation, to reanimate us. Our spirits have been trapped ever since, under the ground, unable to rest in everlasting peace until such time as we can be made whole again.’

‘And you want us to help get your bodies back?’ Obsidian asked.

‘In a way.’

‘I’m afraid that’s not possible. We don’t have an army to fight Crow. We have barely more than a dozen trained soldiers. What you’re asking is impossible.’

The ghost moved close to Obsidian, so that the captain could feel the faint memory of human breath upon his face, and could see into the spirit’s determined eyes. ‘We can sense them. Our bodies. They are coming here, for you. For your people.’

‘The soldiers in the wood?’

‘Our bodies should have disintegrated years ago, but Crow’s magic keeps them intact. This night, you will be fighting us.’

‘So what do you expect us to do?’

‘We expect you to let them in. By opening the trapdoor, you have allowed us to roam throughout the ruins, but we are still unable to travel into the world beyond. We need you to let the soldiers get close enough for us to take back our bodies.’

‘Sounds dangerous,’ one of the palace guards muttered, but the ghost glared at him, so he decided to keep his mouth shut for the rest of the conversation.

‘We cannot do anything while the soldiers are outside,’ the ghost went on. ‘But once they are in the ruins, we will be able to take back what is ours. We will finally be at peace.’

‘You’re asking us to risk the lives of our entire village,’ Obsidian added.

‘If we have control, we should be able to make our bodies reject the foul things that are animating them.’

‘Should?’

‘We’ve never actually seen it happen.’

‘It’s too risky,’ Citrine said. ‘I won’t do it.’

‘Won’t do it?’ The ghost turned on Citrine, advancing so quickly that the lord retreated a few paces and almost knocked over a suit of armour. ‘You seek to hide your people down here with us, and expect to do so for no charge?’

‘Calm down,’ Obsidian said. ‘There’s no need for unpleasantness. You just have to realise that what you are asking us to do, letting the enemy walk in here unopposed, could kill us all.’

‘And you have to realise that if you do not help us, your people will have nowhere to hide.’

Obsidian looked to Lord Citrine for an answer. Citrine’s shoulders slumped, and he gave the appearance of a once–great man who had been beaten into a smaller form. When he spoke, there was no fight left in his tone. ‘We are at your mercy. But this decision will be Obsidian’s. By the time Crow arrives, I will be heading into the mountains with my bodyguard. It is Obsidian who will have to face the consequences of this decision, so the decision is his alone.’