Back To The Divide (26 page)

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nearly disemboweled me in that tunnel back in Andria. Sheer luck, naturally."

"I'll have you know that was a very skillful piece of beak-work," squawked Ironclaw indignantly, settling back on the ground again and fluffing out his chest feathers.

Harshak took a couple of paces forward. "Didn't have the guts to finish me off though, did you? Turned tail and ran for it. Call yourself a brazzle?"

Ironclaw flapped his wings, beside himself with fury. "It wasn't like that, you mindless hairball!"

"Mindless hairballs aren't honored with a title like
the meanest of the mean,
they're not imaginative enough," declared Harshak. He was now close enough to try again, but he misjudged Ironclaw's speed and found himself hanging on to the brazzles tail as he lifted into the air again. As his jaws were now full of fur he couldn't use insults anymore, which was a drag. But Ironclaw could neither peck him nor scrape him off with his talons, so there would be no winners until he landed again.

Ironclaw was finding it difficult to steer without his tail to help him. His original plan had been to dash Harshak's brains out on a rocky promontory, but as he got within striking distance he realized he couldn't control his descent, so he had to overshoot and land right next to the fire-breather. Harshak was at him again in a flash, and Ironclaw only just managed to scramble to one side and evade the sinistrom's attack. Harshak wheeled around for another go, and this time Ironclaw side-stepped

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him very neatly, stuck out his leg, and brought him crashing down. Before Harshak could regain his footing Ironclaw had him pinned to the ground with his talons.

The fire-breather was looking increasingly nervous, and it let out an involuntary jet of smoke.

"I won't let him steal you," snarled Harshak to his charge, twisting this way and that and getting nowhere.

"We're not after your moth-eaten fire-breather," said Ironclaw. "Use your head. Why would a brazzle
need
a fire-breather?"

Harshak snapped at the dust for want of anything better to snap at.

"Oh, for goodness's sake," said Ironclaw, his foot tightening its hold.

Harshak twisted his head to face Ironclaw's. "Let me up, will you? I'm not going to attack anyone. I have no quarrel with
you,
not if you don't want the fire-breather, despite that little episode in the tunnel in Andria. I'm a professional killer; I can't be bothered with petty feuds."

Ironclaw thought about it for a moment -- but he wasn't going to be able to cross the Divide while he was in physical contact with Harshak, nor unless he wanted to take the sinistrom with him. He decided to risk it and released him.

"I can't say I rate Snakeweed much as a master," said Harshak, shaking the dust from his coat. "He has no idea how to treat a sinistrom of my seniority -- I'm Harshak, the

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vilest of the vile. But I've been molasses for the last five hundred years, so I have no idea what's been going on. Perhaps sinistroms don't have the status they used to."

Ironclaw, Felix, and Betony straddled the Divide, and Ironclaw started to recite the spell.

"Hold on," said Harshak. "What are you doing?"

Ironclaw gabbled the numbers as quickly as he could.

"What are you doing?" persisted Harshak. "That sounds like the Divide spell that Snakeweed used."

Ironclaw completed the incantation. There was that odd little jump sideways and then the darkness.

When Felix came to, Betony was lying on the ground beside him, her mouth half-open, her eyes shut, her white-blond hair spread out in a halo around her head. She looked angelic when she was asleep. When she was awake her face was far more impish. She opened her eyes and sat up immediately. "Are we here?" she asked. "Is this your world?"

"Yes," said Felix. "Only it's not the part I live in. This is Costa Rica, where I crossed over the Divide the first time." He glanced around, smiling, relieved to see that the butterflies were still colorful and fluttering and airborne, not white and motionless on the ground. "It's a year since I was last here, but I remember everything -- the trees, the flowers, the hummingbirds.... It's much hotter here than in England, which is where I come from."

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"Where did you hide your gold, Ironclaw?" asked Betony. "Down there," said the brazzle, nodding his head vaguely at the trees.

Felix made a face. The terrain wasn't ideal. "We need to get off the main path," he said. "If anyone sees us we're in big trouble."

Ironclaw led the way, pushing the undergrowth aside with his sheer bulk. Felix took a compass reading, just to be on the safe side -- getting lost would be disastrous. The canopy would make it almost impossible for a brazzle to take off, which would be the quickest way to get back to their starting point.

Suddenly Ironclaw stopped dead, his head on one side, and looked intently at the leaf litter on the ground. Felix followed his gaze. For a moment he saw nothing unusual -- then there was a slight movement, as though the forest floor were unzipping itself. A sinuous gray-brown shape with paler diamond markings slithered away.

"Oh, wow!" said Betony. "What an amazing creature," and she moved toward it.

"No!" yelled Felix. "It's poisonous!"

Ironclaw acted like lightning, seized the snake in his beak, and cracked it like a whip, breaking its neck. Then he swallowed it whole.

"Delicious," he pronounced.

"That was a fer-de-lance," said Felix, feeling a bit shaky. "It would have killed you."

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Betony looked astounded. "I didn't think you had shadow-beasts over here."

"It's not a shadow-beast," said Felix, and he explained about snakes and poison arrow frogs and tarantulas, and how it was best not to approach anything strange that she saw.

Betony was looking less entranced with Costa Rica by the minute, so Felix pointed out a hummingbird and an orchid and a column of leaf-cutter ants. She cheered up slightly, and when they came to a crystal-clear waterfall tumbling between mossy butterfly-speckled rocks she was back to her usual bouncy self.

"Not far now," said Ironclaw.

Just as he finished speaking, a loud bang rang out. "What's that?" asked Betony.

"The branch of a tree breaking off, probably," said Ironclaw.

"I think it might have been a shot," said Felix, but before he could explain they heard voices.

"Let's get a bit closer," said Ironclaw. It was amazing how silently he could move when he had to. Felix and Betony followed where he trod, and after a couple of minutes they found themselves at the edge of a glade, where they could watch unobserved from the undergrowth.

Snakeweed and Stonecrop were standing there with their hands raised above their heads. Two men were pointing rifles at them and arguing in Spanish. Next to them stood two mules, their panniers full of Ironclaw's crocks of gold.

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"If you're going to kill us, at least have the decency to tell us that in English," said Snakeweed, as cool as ever.

"How you know about El Dorado?" demanded one of the men. He had beady black eyes and a thick mustache.

"El Dorado?" Snakeweed raised a ginger eyebrow.

"Don't play the clever with me," said the man. "Jose, here, he kill you just like that." He snapped his fingers.

Jose's mouth smiled, but his eyes didn't.

"El Dorado," said the man with the mustache. "The ruined city, where the king he was painted with the gold dust. Your Walter Raleigh, he not find it. Nobody find it till now."

Behind the screen of foliage, Felix grinned. "El Dorado was meant to be in Brazil, not Costa Rica," he whispered.

Snakeweed glanced at Stonecrop. Then he gave a slight nod and bowed his head so that his hat fell off. His pointed ears poked up through the tangle of red hair like demonic identity tags, and he uttered what he hoped sounded like a devilish cackle.

Jose's mouth dropped open, and he just stared. The other man turned his head to see what had alarmed his companion, and his hesitation was just long enough for Stonecrop to draw his wand. An arc of purple light hit the rifle, which flew across the clearing and landed in a bush. Jose spun around, leveled his own rifle, and fired. The wand shattered with a sound like breaking glass. Snakeweed had drawn
his
wand by now, however, and he hit Jose's rifle a split second later. The weapon bit the dust, and Jose screamed and clutched his arm.

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"Freeze them," said Snakeweed, handing his personal organizer to Stonecrop. "Use the first bit of the Divide spell -- we're close enough to the ridge for it to work."

Stonecrop read it out.

"Very considerate of them to load all this on to pack animals," said Snakeweed, patting one of the mules on the rump. "We'll take them back with us." The creature laid back its ears and watched him suspiciously from white-rimmed eyes.

"All done," said Stonecrop, handing back the organizer.

The two humans stood side by side among the flowers, their eyes shut, completely motionless. Felix thought they looked as though they were drinking in the beauty of the place: listening to the birdsong, smelling the vegetation, feeling the sun on their faces through the tracery of leaves. It was only after a while that you realized there was something slightly wrong about them -- they weren't breathing.

"Let's go, then," said Snakeweed, and the party headed off along a little trail that would take them back up to the Divide.

"What shall we do now?" hissed Betony.

"Follow them and take them by surprise," said Ironclaw.

This was easier said than done, however, as Ironclaw was far too big to remain unnoticed unless they kept a fair distance from their quarry. When the path forked, it was several minutes before they realized they'd taken the wrong turn. They had to retrace their steps, and, hurry as they might, they knew they were now much farther in the rear than they'd have liked.

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***

14

***

"Well,
multiply my age by an imaginary number"
said Granitelegs, landing in a cloud of dust on Tromm Fell and finding himself faced by Harshak. "Who in the name of algebra are
you?"
He'd had rather too many fermented fertle-juices at Pewtermane's homecoming party and had decided to nip back to the peak and see if Ironclaw's dirt-board was free for a quick calculation or two.

"I am Harshak, the ghastliest of the ghastly."

"Oh," said Granitelegs, unimpressed.

"I have been given the menial task of guarding this arthritic vehicle. However, as you have wings of your own I doubt that you will have much use for it."

"Never used to see shinistroms around here," said Granitelegs. "Now you're all over the place. Apparently there was one in the brittlehorn valley earlier today, one that had been sheparated from his pebble, if you can believe such

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a thing. I thought shinistroms just withered away and died if that happened."

Harshak stiffened. "What do you mean, separated from his pebble?"

"It got losht when he crossed from one dimension to another," Granitelegs said. "He doesn't have a master anymore."

"Is that so?" said Harshak thoughtfully, his brows knitting together until the black spots ran into one another, giving him temporary eyebrows. Then he gave that peculiarly manic sinistrom laugh and said, "My pebble's in Snakeweed's pocket. And Snakeweed is in another world. Therefore I, Harshak, the most callous of the callous, am a free agent, too."

"Grimspite dishcovered he had a conscience, apparently," said Granitelegs. "He became a much nicer shadow-beast as a result."

Harshak got to his feet. "That was
his
choice," he said.
"My
choice is somewhat different. I am now at liberty to kill at will, to maim, to torture, to spread terror wherever I go." He glanced contemptuously at the fire-breather. "No more second-rate missions for me. I shall fulfill my true potential -- become the worst scourge this world has ever known. It's been a few centuries since I had some real fun." He snapped at the fire-breather's hind leg, which opened up in a great gash.

The huge beast woke with a start, bellowed with pain, and coughed up a jet of flame.

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"You're free to go," said Harshak.

The fire-breather pulled itself to its feet, limped to an overhang, and launched itself into the air. It circled once, gaining a bit of height, then flew low over Harshak and relieved itself with a satisfied grunt. Red-hot clinker showered over the sinistrom, who yelped with pain and rolled in the dust to stop his coat from catching alight. As the fire-breather winged its way off toward Tiratattle, Granitelegs could hear it laughing.

Rutherford Tripp met Emily Parsons in a discreet little cafe close to where they both worked. He had never seen her without a lab coat on before, but there wasn't really all that much difference. She was wearing a white silk shirt and a cream linen skirt, and she looked as no-nonsense as ever. Despite the fact that Rutherford had been to the cafe many times before and the checked tablecloths and plastic daffodils were familiar eyesores, he felt on edge. He couldn't help glancing around from time to time, to see if anyone was watching them.

"Oh, for goodness's sake, Rutherford," said Emily. "You're looking more like an international terrorist with every passing minute."

"You made me nervous with all your talk of the CIA and the KGB."

Emily placed a tiny transparent plastic box containing the marble wasp on the table. Then she added another one, containing