Back To The Divide (21 page)

other clothes washed and pressed. Then they snuggled down in comfy feather beds and fell asleep immediately.

The next morning they all met up by the carpet rack. Nimby looked like new again and was regaling the other rugs with stories of his exploits in the desert.

"You've got more fiber than any carpet I've ever met," Hearthmat was saying. "Fancy actually going to
look
for Leona."

"Morning, Nimby," said Betony. "This is Ironclaw, and this is Thornbeak."

"Told you we were going to meet up with some brazzles, didn't I?" hissed Nimby, and the other rugs whispered among themselves and sounded overawed.

"Does this mean we don't have to carry you anymore?" Ironclaw asked Felix. "That'll be nice."

"Oh, good," said Nimby. "I was worried you wouldn't want me once you'd got your transportation back."

Ironclaw looked offended at the word
transportation,
but before he could protest Thornbeak said, "Right. I've made a few inquiries, and I know the location of five different rocks Leona uses. We'll start with the one by the diagram; if she's not there, we'll try the others. It may take some time, so I've packed a bag with some food and drink."

"What sort of food and drink?" asked Betony suspiciously.

"Raw meat and water," said Thornbeak.

"But ..."

Thornbeak laughed, her bright yellow eyes twinkling with merriment. "Plus some gobblerfish patties, a crusty nut

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loaf, a punnet of thunderberries, and a gourd of rainbow-juice."

Nimby unrolled himself, and Betony, Felix, and Jahim climbed aboard. They flew back down the passageway, keeping to the speed limit, and once outside they went straight to the diagram. Leona wasn't there -- nor had the twenty-seven been crossed out and turned into twenty-eight.

"The next one is a little way along the mountain trail," said Thornbeak, so they took off again and found the loaf-shaped boulder with no difficulty. Leona wasn't there, either. The trail got a little more difficult after that, with twists and turns and narrow stretches between rocks with overhangs where the brazzles had to walk rather than fly. Nimby was also too wide for the path, so he rolled himself up and Thornbeak carried him under one wing.

Although they'd started out cautiously, they became more blasé as time went on and there was no sign of the riddle-paw. They had lunch, and by the time they reached the fourth rock, Ironclaw was teaching them a raptorial song that involved some wing-flapping during the chorus. Betony and Felix were using their arms and trying to get the right sort of squawk to go with it when they rounded a boulder -- and there she was.

Leona was as big as a brazzle but much more scary. She unsheathed her claws immediately, with a click that sounded like a switchblade opening. Jahim stopped dead, and the others bumped into him.

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[Image: Leona.]

Although Felix knew that Leona wasn't an Egyptian sort of sphinx -- he'd bought a little statue of her, after all -- he still felt his eyes widen in surprise. Half amberly and half lioness, with a few extras ... and extremely beautiful. She had jet-black hair, bound back in a Grecian style, and sloe-black eyes. Her skin was a flawless ivory, and she had high cheekbones and an aristocratic nose. The extras were rather noticeable canines, a dragon's tail, and a pair of rudimentary wings. The wings reminded Felix of those of an archaeopteryx -- they didn't look powerful enough to give her the sort of flight the brazzles were capable of, but she could probably glide downhill and use the occasional thermal to gain a little height and extend her range.

She studied them all from her vantage point on a rock, and then she said, "I don't think you're going to give me much trrrouble, if the song you've been singing is anything to go by." Her voice was low and menacing, like the distant

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rumble of a sleeping volcano. There was a hint of a purr to it now and again and an occasional suggestion of cat.
Big
cat.

Jahim gulped and grabbed Nimby from Thornbeak. Nimby unrolled himself with unprecedented speed, and Jahim scrambled on to him.

"Jahim's only come along for the ride," said Felix, determined not to be intimidated or to show any weakness. It wasn't as though he was ill any longer -- he was a force to be reckoned with these days, although sometimes he had to remind himself of this. He stood a little straighter and looked Leona in the eye. "The rest of us want to ask you a couple of questions," he said.

Leona raised her eyebrows.
"You
want to ask
me
questions? I think you'll find it's the other way around." She flicked her armored tail back and forth. It grazed the rock upon which she was lying and struck sparks.

"We need two spells," said Felix, undeterred. "And we've heard that you're a sorceress of the first order. How many riddles do you want us to solve before you'll answer these two queries for us?"

"Depends on what they are," said Leona thoughtfully, retracting and then extending her claws again. "I'm intrigued, I have to admit it. No one's ever trrried to bargain with
me
before -- I have to admire your nerve. Which spells do you need?"

"The king and queen of Andria are being held captive

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somewhere," said Betony, "and we know a mythical being is needed to rescue them."

"Well, you've got the most difficult ingrrredient," said Leona, glancing at Felix.

"We don't know where they
are,
though," said Betony.

"A royalty location spell," purred Leona. "Yes, I can do that. And the other one?"

"Someone turned my parents to marble," said Felix. "It happened in my world -- another dimension. It's a chain-reaction hex -- anything that touches the statues turns to marble itself. I'm a human being, as I think you've realized, and my name is Felix."

"And very appetizing you look, too," said Leona. Her eyes sparkled for a moment, and she licked her lips.

"My world hasn't discovered magic," Felix went on, his voice steady and his gaze unflinching. He wasn't going to let Leona get the better of him, even though he was scared stiff. Her claws looked as unforgiving as flint arrowheads. "For it to leak out like that in my world would be a complete disaster."

Leona shook her head. "Sorry. I can't give you anything specific without a sample of the marble."

"I've got one," said Felix, undoing his backpack. He brought out the snail and placed it on the rock in front of Leona.

"What an extrrraordinary crrreature," Leona said, peering closely at it and sniffing it thoroughly. Then she said, "It's clear you're telling the trrruth, human child. Very well.

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There
is
a countercharm that would work. The prrrice for both spells is the solution to three riddles." She stretched herself out like a cat, sleek and well groomed, her muscles rippling under her skin. Then she returned to her sitting position and smiled. "I can't believe I just said that; it's dirt-cheap by any standards."

"Give us the first one, then," said Ironclaw, fairly bristling with anticipation.

Leona laughed, although in some ways it sounded more like the yowl of a midnight alley cat. It made the hairs on the back of Felix's neck stand on end. "Very confident, aren't you, brrrazzle?" she said. "All right. What is the minimum number of weights you need to weigh every number up to thirteen on a pair of balancing scales? Assuming each weight is a whole number?"

Felix looked at Ironclaw. "It's four, isn't it? One, two, four, and eight?"

Ironclaw shook his head. "Three. One, three, and nine."

Betony's brows drew together. "How do you get two, then?"

"You put the Three in the empty dish. Then you put the One in the other dish, which holds the object being weighed. Three from one is two -- you need to use subtraction as well as addition. The answer's three, Leona."

The riddle-paw looked surprised. "Not just an empty eggshell, are you?"

"I don't think you know very much about brazzles," said Ironclaw.

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"I thought they were all historians."

"Only the females," said Thornbeak. "The males are mathematicians."

"Let's try a psychological riddle, then," purred Leona. "Thrrree sorcerers have an argument, to be settled with heavy-duty wands at dawn, firing in rotation until only one is left alive. We'll call them Useless, Average, and Excellent. Useless knows he can only ignite his target one time out of three. Average always manages two out of three, and Excellent sends his target up in smoke every single time. Useless is allowed first strrrike. What should he do?"

"Hit a tree," said Ironclaw. "Next."

Leona looked even more surprised.

"Why?"
said Jahim from his vantage point on the carpet, a little above their heads.

"Because if he gets lucky and sends Average up in flames, Excellent will get him next shot. If he manages to hit Excellent, Average has a one-in-two chance of getting him. But Useless only has a one-in-three chance of hitting Excellent. Far better to let the other two battle it out and leave Useless with first strike when there's only one adversary left."

"You're good, brrrazzle, I'll give you that," said Leona. "It will almost be a pity to devour you. So now you can try the puzzle that
no one
has been able to solve." She stood up and scratched five symbols on to the rock face. Then she started to draw the diagram that was the key.

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"Don't bother," said Ironclaw. "The answer's twenty-seven won for tea."

Leona looked very angry for a moment. Her tail flicked back and forth, sending up showers of sparks, and her claws gouged long white grooves in the rock.

Felix took a pace back. The riddle-paw was a sorceress of the first order; she was capable of anything. He could almost feel her hot breath on his neck, her teeth digging into his shoulder, stripping away the flesh. Even Thornbeak had moved away slightly, although Ironclaw was standing his ground. He was quite clearly too pleased with himself to contemplate being plucked and consumed.

Suddenly Leona laughed. Her tail stopped twitching and she said, "Well,
set me a stiff one,
I shouldn't get upset. If I'd eaten you, brrrazzle, the world would have lost a great problem solver."

Ironclaw had a quick preen. "You're pretty hot stuff yourself, Leona. We ought to thrash out a few equations together sometime."

"I might take you up on that," said the riddle-paw. "I adore puzzles, but no one around here is interested, so I got ... well, annoyed. Ate a few people. Magical theory, now, that fascinates me. I know things that would make your feathers curl...."

"Please may we have the spells now?" interrupted Felix.

"Of course," said Leona. "The marble spell is mainly a

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recitation. But it does need one other element." She wrote down the spell in Felix's notebook.

"What other element?" asked Felix, his heart sinking.

"A sprrrinkling of water from a prrrediction pool."

"Like the one the brittlehorns use?"

"Prrrecisely."

Thank goodness for that, thought Felix. We can stop off at the brittlehorns' valley. He turned to Betony, smiling with relief. Her face was expressionless. She noticed him watching her and turned away. Felix felt confused. Surely she ought to be as pleased as he was? Then the penny dropped. "Leona," he said, "would the countercharm work on Betony's parents? They were turned to stone when a bone-setting spell went wrong."

"No," said Leona.

"That's it? Just
no?"

"I think you heard me correctly," replied Leona, swishing her tail and looking annoyed. "The countercharm is very specific. I can undo a spell cast prrroperly but not one that was just cast by someone completely incccompetent!"

"You ought to memorize that marble incantation," said Ironclaw hurriedly, before Felix could irritate Leona any further.

Felix sighed. "I really don't have the same sort of memory as you, Ironclaw. I can't remember abstractions. I need pictures."

"How strange," said Ironclaw. "You need a mnemonic, then. There's a mnemonic for my favorite trifle."

"How come we've got on to cooking?" asked Nimby.

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"We haven't," said Leona, and Felix remembered that trifles were weird numbers like pi.

Ironclaw looked up at the sky and recited, "Yes, I know I think admirably of myself. Cocky -- but right! Problems? Ironclaw's supreme."

"How does that work?" asked Felix. "The initial letters don't make sense."

"It's nothing to do with initials," said Ironclaw. "Each word has the right number of letters in it."

"Oh, I see," said Felix.
"Yes
-- that's three letters.
I --
that's one.
Know
-- that's four. Three point one four ... wow."

"That mnemonic takes it to thirteen places, which is really all that's needed for most magic."

"Oh, do shut up," said Betony, getting impatient. "What about the royalty location spell?"

Leona smiled. "I need a brazzle feather."

Both Ironclaw and Thornbeak plucked feathers from their breasts immediately. Leona was about to take Ironclaw's feather when she changed her mind and selected Thornbeak's instead. Ironclaw looked put out.

"I need a clean one," said Leona. She placed it on the ground so that it curved upward and was able to swivel. Then she closed her eyes and recited,
"Show the way, shaft of brazzle, seek the crown's be jeweled dazzle."

The feather stayed exactly where it was, motionless.