Deep Amber (4 page)

“Off you go. Travel safely, be careful, and don't show
anyone
you meet those peculiar… whatever-they-ares. Good luck!”

As they rattled off, Dora heard a loud squeal and looked up to see Violet leaning dangerously far out over the battlements and waving her handkerchief.

“Goodbye, darlingest Jem!” she trilled. “Bring me back a present from the city! And try to be nice to Dora for me – she can't
help
being so clumsy and boring!”

Dora went red and stared at her feet, wishing
she could just turn Violet into a toad, right now. But she was so busy concentrating on
not
doing a spell, that she didn't notice Jem's raised eyebrows, or see him making a very rude gesture at Violet.

The first part of the journey was uneventful, if not exactly comfortable. Travelling in a rickety cart with twenty noisy sheep was like being stuck in the middle of a panicked crowd all shouting at once. At least, Dora thought, all the bleating meant she didn't have to talk to Jem, even if it was quite annoying having wet sheep noses pushed down her back, and having her hair constantly nibbled.

Jem, she noticed, was absorbed in the strange red book. He was bent over it in fierce concentration, fiddling endlessly with the buttons and impatiently flicking away his red hair as it fell into his eyes. He barely seemed to notice the sheep. He simply elbowed them out of the way whenever they stuck their curious sheep faces in between him and the book.

Dora watched him crossly. Not only was he an annoying, swaggering know-it-all, he also seemed to think he was in charge of the third
strange object, just because he had found it.
And
it looked like he was now firmly part of Violet's nasty little gang. She decided that she would try and have as little to do with him as possible on the journey, and she was definitely not going to give him any chance to be ‘nice' to her.

They got to Bridbury, a small market town on the edge of the forest, just before dark. In the bustle of finding a place to stay and organising food, there was little time for conversation. Dora began to hope that if she simply rolled herself up in her blanket and pretended she was asleep, she might be able to get through the first day without exchanging more than a dozen words in total. But she'd reckoned without Jem. He was dying to show off his discoveries about the shiny new object.

“It's a magic fortune-telling book,” he announced with a flourish as soon as the door to their room was shut. “I've worked out how to use it – look!”

He opened the book, and pressed a few buttons. The dark window lit up with stars and moving patterns which slowly became a picture of a castle with strange symbols scattered across it.
Jem's fingers flew over the buttons once more, and a number of recognisable characters started to flick across the screen.

“There!” said Jem, triumphantly, as the pictures stopped moving. A small, fierce-looking knight was standing in front of them, waving his sword.

“It's Sir Roderick,” said Jem, and Dora had to agree, it looked very like him.

“Now watch,” said Jem, and pressed a few more buttons. The figure marched up and down and round a few corners. Stars appeared, then gold coins. After a frenzied minute or two more of Jem's fingers and thumbs dancing over the buttons, the picture froze again and Sir Mortimer stood next to an enormous pile of gold.

“You see?” said Jem proudly. “It's a fortune-telling book. Sir Roderick is going to get a pile of gold. He's obviously going to win the Autumn Joust.”

Dora looked at the peculiar object, frowning. Something didn't seem quite right about this explanation. If the shiny book was from another world, like the other objects seemed to be, how could it tell them anything real about
their
world? But on the other hand, the figure did look rather
like Sir Roderick, and it
was
quite likely that he would win the Autumn Joust.

Curious, she moved closer, forgetting her vow to have as little to do with Jem as possible. She peered over Jem's shoulders at the pictures in the dark window.

“Does it show anyone else's fortune?” she asked.

Jem's fingers flickered across the buttons, and a new set of characters paraded across the little window. He stopped at an image of a stocky boy with a shock of red hair.

“That's me,” he said. “I found myself earlier. Now – watch this!”

The boy on the screen set off at a pace, with strange objects whizzing past him in a way that made Dora feel quite dizzy. When the picture finally stopped moving, the boy was flat on his back with stars floating above his head, and a fat knight with an axe was standing over him grinning.

Dora couldn't help giggling. Jem frowned.

“That didn't happen last time. Last time I got a pile of gold, just like Sir Mortimer. Rats! What's wrong with the stupid thing?”

“Maybe you're going to get a pile of gold, and then a fat knight is going to whack you over the head and steal it?” suggested Dora, with a bubble of laughter in her voice.

Jem snorted, and fiddled again, till he'd got a picture of a girl with dark hair in what looked very like the dress of an apprentice witch.

“Let's see what's in store for you, then,” he said. Dora watched the girl whizzing over the picture and held her breath. She was pretty sure the red book couldn't tell the future, but she still felt quite anxious that her small copy didn't end up knocked out by a fat knight.

When the picture finally settled, Dora couldn't help clapping her hands. The small witch was now dressed in shining gold and had a crown of flowers.

“I'm going to be queen of the May!” she whooped, and completely forgetting herself, punched Jem on the arm in delight. He raised one eyebrow, and she immediately felt covered in confusion. She looked at her feet.

“Is that what you want to be – queen of the May?” he said scornfully.

“Well, it's better than being hit on the head
by a fat knight,” said Dora, looking up crossly. “Why? What do
you
want? A pile of gold?”

Jem looked at her, as if deciding whether to bother to reply. After a moment, he threw himself down on the nearby bed with a sigh, and stared up at the ceiling with his hands behind his head.

“I want adventures,” he said, with a faraway look in his eyes. “I'm a commoner so I'm not allowed to be a knight. But all the squires are a bunch of stuck-up idiots who can't see past the end of their own noses. I'd make a much better knight than any of them. I want to travel the world, see dragons in the mountains, find treasure, rescue damsels. One day, I'm going to. You wait and see.”

And with that, he wrapped himself in his blanket and turned on his side, facing the wall. Dora slipped quietly into bed on the opposite side of the room, but they both lay awake for a while. Dora was thinking about Jem, and wondering whether he'd make a good knight if he ever had the chance. She decided he'd probably be terrible – he was far too disobedient.

Jem was thinking about the strange book, and Dora. She was like a mouse most of the time,
he thought, and quite prickly and unfriendly. But then just for a moment she had seemed like she might be quite fun, before she got all prickly again.

Jem shoved the box under his pillow. He felt a shiver of excitement at the thought that tomorrow they would be entering the Great Forest. He wondered if the fortune-telling box had any of the forest folk in it.

Chapter Four

Simon and Cat had argued all day over what to tell their mum about the sword. Simon had wanted to keep it secret. There was something about the strange, intricate engravings along the blade and the smooth, worn feel of the hilt that was familiar. It felt as if it had always belonged to him, and he didn't want anyone taking it away. But Cat still half thought it might be Mum's from work, and they would definitely have some explaining to do if it
was
hers and she found they'd hidden it.

In the end, they decided to just show it to her, and if it was clear it wasn't hers, they could say Simon had found it in the cellar. There was plenty of old junk down there, and it was all Great-Aunt Irene's, so there'd be no need for Mum to fuss
about who the sword belonged to if they'd found it there.

Florence Arnold got back from her conference late that evening, after being stuck in a traffic jam for hours, and required two cups of tea and a large slice of fruit cake before she had recovered enough to ask Simon and Cat how their day had been.

“Good,” said Cat. “But we had some weird people knock on the door saying there was a radiation leak or something in the area – and then someone called Albert Jemmet came round – he said you knew him?”

Florence nodded, a little distractedly. “Yes, he was your great-aunt's odd-job man. He seemed very nice when I met him, I said we'd let him know if we needed anything. Did he say there was anything wrong?”

“Umm, something about electricity, I think,” said Cat. “But it seems all right now. And then… Simon found this. Do you know what it is?”

As Simon brought the sword out and put it on the table, Florence was just picking up her third cup of tea. When she turned round and saw the shining blade in front of her, she went white and
dropped the cup on the floor. The she sat down rather suddenly at the table and put her hand out to touch the sword, as if not quite sure it was real.

“Where did you find this?” she said.

Simon looked at Cat triumphantly. “In the cellar, behind some old boxes,” he said.

“It's not yours, then, Mum?” Cat asked, as she picked up the dropped cup and mopped up the tea from the floor.

Florence shook her head, and pulled the sword towards her. She looked carefully at the engraved symbols, tracing the shapes with her fingers.

“Where do you think it came from?” said Simon after a few minutes.

She looked up at him with an odd expression, wary and a little sad, and took a deep breath.

“It was your dad's,” she said. “It's your dad's sword.”

Simon and Cat looked at each other. Simon felt a strange mix of queasiness and excitement inside, as if he'd just swooped down a roller coaster ride. He wondered if that was why the sword had felt so special, so familiar somehow. Had he seen it before, when he was very little? Had he seen his dad using it?

“I didn't know Dad had a sword!” said Cat, passing Florence another tea then sitting down at the table. She put her hand on the hilt and felt a trickle of sadness, thinking about her dad. “It's – isn't it old? It looks really old. And it feels weird.”

Florence nodded, and turned the sword over, showing them some of the markings.

“It's very unusual. I'd know it anywhere. It's how we met, actually. He turned up at an exhibition I was helping organise, on ancient weaponry. Paul Rogers was there, giving a talk on Saxon fighting techniques, and your dad stood up and told him he was talking a load of old rubbish, and no one fought like that with a broadsword. Then he got his own out of a big old rucksack and started waving it around to show him. Cleared the lecture hall in about three seconds – everyone thought he was mad…!”

She laughed at the memory, and then dabbed her eyes with the edge of her cardigan.

“Oh dear. It was all such a long time ago.

The sword's not an original – you can see that there's no pitting or anything, so it's not that old. But it's not exactly a replica either. It's been made using the same kind of techniques as the Saxons
used – fantastic craftsmanship. I never could get him to tell me where he got it, but he certainly knew how to use it.”

She took a sip of tea, thoughtfully, her mind clearly in the past.

Simon started thinking about his dad. He couldn't really remember him, just vague fuzzy memories, like being lifted up in the air, or the feel of a bristly face against his cheek. He knew he'd been a historian, but not the sort who spent his life locked up in library archives. Gwyn Arnold had been more interested in the practical side of life in the Dark Ages. He taught people how to use ancient hunting techniques, how to survive in a wild forest, how to make a fire, or shelters, or build castle defences. Until one day he'd died in a car crash, and since then there had just been Simon and Cat, and their mum.

Simon didn't really remember his dad's death, and even Cat, who was five at the time, only vaguely remembered the funeral. He wondered sometimes what life would be like if their dad was still around, but mostly he was just used to the way things were.

“It's funny…” Florence said, cradling her cup
of tea and looking at the sword with a faraway expression in her eyes. “All this time it was here in this house – and I thought he'd given it to Lou.”

“Uncle Lou?” said Cat, looking suddenly excited. “I remember Uncle Lou! But we haven't seen him for years! What happened to him?”

“Who's Uncle Lou?” Simon asked, although the name was vaguely familiar and comforting, like finding an old teddy bear you'd forgotten you once had.