Deep Amber (9 page)

Simon passed Cat the book of runes and leaned back on his pillow. There was something he'd been wanting to say for ages, but he was afraid Cat would think it was ridiculous. The sword that had appeared was definitely their dad's – Mum had said so, and she should know. Besides, there was something about it that felt deeply right, like a puzzle piece that fitted exactly into a blank space. But the sword was also somehow mixed up with something that Simon was pretty sure was magic, not ‘electrical energy' or ‘radiation'. And all of it came back, in the end, to Dad.

Simon hadn't thought about his dad much, before now. He'd seen pictures of him, knew about
who he was, what he'd done, but he only had the faintest memories. Since the sword had arrived, though, Simon had experienced a strong sense of his dad's presence – the smell of him, the feel of him, the bristly chin when he'd picked Simon up to kiss him goodnight. Suddenly, Simon had found for the first time that he
missed
him, properly, as a person he'd known, but who wasn't there any more. And that had made Simon wonder – if there was magic in the world, and if his dad was connected to it, could it be possible that…

Simon propped himself up on his elbow.

“Cat,” he said, hesitantly. “Do you think… Could it be that… Could Dad be alive, somewhere? Could he… could he have sent the sword from this other side that Albert Jemmet was talking about?”

Cat looked up from tracing another rune, shocked. “Alive?” she said. “But – how could he be alive?”

She was right, thought Simon, it was a crazy idea, but he ploughed on anyway.

“Well, maybe he came from this other world, maybe he had to go there for some reason and couldn't come back… So he sent us his sword…”

Cat shook her head in disbelief. “Simon – that's just mad! You can't seriously believe Dad might be alive and in another world?”

Simon sighed. “Oh, I don't know – I guess not. But it just seemed… you know? Odd. The sword was his, and then it just appears…”

Cat gave him a sympathetic look, and reached over to gently pat him on the knee. “I wish Dad was alive, too, you know. But there was definitely nothing strange about him. He was a bit crazy, and into all that medieval stuff, but so are lots of people. Mum is! It doesn't mean they're from some… other world. And he definitely died. I remember it – the funeral and everything.”

Simon sighed. She was probably right. But then
someone
had to be responsible for all the odd things that had started happening.

“What about Great-Aunt Irene, then?” he said. “We found all this stuff in her house, after all. And she was a bit weird.”

“She was completely nuts,” said Cat. “But that doesn't mean she came from another world either. Besides, she'd lived in this house
for ever
. She must have been from here.”

“Oh!” said Simon, throwing himself back on
his pillow in frustration. “I don't know! Maybe they're
all
from another world. Great-Aunt Irene, Dad, Uncle Lou – the whole town!”

“Or maybe no one is,” said Cat, firmly. She threw him half a chocolate bar she'd dug out of her school bag. “Because there
aren't
any other worlds, and magic doesn't
exist
.”

Simon shrugged, and munched his chocolate slowly, watching Cat bend in concentration over the book of runes once again. They seemed to be getting nowhere.

“Maybe you're right,” he said. “Maybe it really is just some electrical fault and a few strange coincidences, and Albert Jemmet's just a bit mad… Hey, Cat?”

But Cat wasn't listening, because she'd suddenly worked out what the second combination of symbols meant.

“Ice!” she said. “It's ice. Water that's solidified! Oh, yes! I am
totally
a genius! And it's inside the symbol for earth… We can use some soil from the garden!”

The kitchen was full of smoke, and the smoke alarm was beeping fit to bust. Cat waved a magazine
in front of it while Simon wrenched open the back door, and after a few more seconds of ear-splitting beeps, the alarm subsided.

Cat had finally worked out the last lot of symbols, “It's the rune for fire inside air, and the other symbol says it has to be projected, so I think that means a fiery wind. We can use my hairdryer on the hot setting…”

They had decided to try and open the box immediately, and the kitchen table had seemed the safest place for experimenting.

Simon and Cat looked at the wooden box, lying in the centre of a baking tray on the kitchen table. It seemed untouched. The ceiling, meanwhile, had several sooty scorch marks.

“I said a splash,” said Cat. “Not half the bottle.”

Simon made an apologetic face. “I thought it had to be surrounded. I didn't realise the flames would go that high. Just as well Mum's not here.”

“Right,” said Cat, who was still wearing her dressing gown. “Ice inside earth next.”

Simon reached out for the plastic box full of ice cubes that they'd decanted from the freezer, and poured them on top of the box so that they covered it completely, then plonked a pile
of garden soil on top and patted it down.

“How long do you think we wait?” he said.

Cat glanced at the clock. “Let's give it five minutes, “she suggested. “It should cool it down enough to do whatever it's supposed to do.” She leaned close to the box. “I wonder if we'll hear a click or something.”

Simon looked sceptical. He was certain this was nothing to do with heating or cooling the lock. They were trying to do something much more complicated, something more sideways and possibly even magical.

After five minutes, they dug the box out of the ice and soil. It looked exactly the same, apart from a few muddy smears. Cat picked up her hair dryer and turning it to full blast on maximum heat, pointed it right at the box.

Simon wasn't sure what he had expected to happen. The lid to fly open, perhaps? Some startling change of colour, or sparks?

But the box stayed exactly the same. When Simon reached out to try the lid, it was just as firmly locked as it was to start with. He looked at Cat, who shrugged.

And then, at that precise moment, he heard
a querulous voice saying quite distinctly, “Oh do get on with it. You are quite hopeless!”

“Did you hear that?' he asked Cat, who had turned quite white.

“Yes,” she said, shakily. “It… it sounded like it was coming from the box.”

Simon thought so too. But what was even stranger was that the voice had sounded extraordinarily like Great-Aunt Irene.

Chapter Nine

The Druid had been having a trying couple of days. He'd spent the morning of Dora and Jem's departure battling a fire at the mill which had turned out to be the work of a rather troublesome dragon, and required quite a quantity of magic to defeat it. It didn't help that he'd mislaid his sword somewhere, and had been forced to borrow Sir Roderick's, which didn't have anything like as good a balance. Then, when he'd finally returned to the castle, he had been greeted by the sight of all the squires' undergarments fluttering in the breeze from the top of the battlements. Somehow, Jem had managed to continue his feud with the castle squires without even being there. Sir Mortimer was furious, and the squires were demanding that Jem be banished
without trial. All of which took some time and energy to smooth over.

So it wasn't until the day after Dora and Jem had set out for the city that the Druid heard from Sir Mortimer about the third strange object.

“A third?
Another?
Are you sure?”

“Ah… erm… yes. Sorry. I did mean to tell you on the day, but what with one thing and another… It was a little red box – Jem found it. Was it important?”

The Druid sighed. “Well, yes. If there are three, it means it's almost certainly the amber at the bottom of it. Someone will need to get it under control.” He ran his hands through his hair. “I can't go,” he said at last. “I promised I wouldn't interfere.”

“Umm, very good,” said Sir Mortimer, trying to look as if he understood what the Druid was talking about. “Shall I – er – order the castle on high alert?”

“No – I don't think so,” said the Druid, looking more cheerful. “Dora and Jem will be at the city by now. Lord Ravenglass will deal with it – or the forest folk. Someone will sort it out.”

The city was a jumble of alleyways and broad streets, each full of inns and houses, carts and animal pens, hawkers and stalls selling everything you could imagine. Dora and Jem were dropped off just inside the city walls after a rattling cart ride from the edge of the forest. Neither of them had ever seen so many people in one place, even at the Summer Fair, which was busy enough for anyone as far as Dora was concerned. And there was a ripe, tangy smell everywhere of animals and market produce and rotting vegetables and cooking.

Dora was sure she was going to get robbed or lost as soon as she passed through the city gate, but most people seemed to just ignore her, and the palace was not exactly difficult to spot. It towered above the rest of the city, with glimpses of the white turrets visible from almost every street corner. But finding the streets that went in the direction of the palace and didn't end in tiny smelly courtyards or high walls around some noble's garden proved more tricky. Especially with Jem constantly shouting contradictory directions in her ear, trying to be heard over the rattle of carts on the cobblestones or the creak of market
stalls being dismantled or the squeal of pigs being driven off to new quarters.

Finally, however, they made it safely to the palace, just before the gates shut for the night. Now they would have to persuade the palace guards to let them in, and that, Dora thought, was not going to be easy.

The gate guards wore purple velvet tunics liberally festooned with gold braid, and they carried ceremonial spears that gleamed gold in the last of the sunshine and were about twice the height of Dora. The palace itself rose up behind them, with endless high white stone walls and the hint of turrets and battlements only partly visible from the narrow cobbled street they were in.

The chief guard, who had several extra bits of gold braid attached to his tunic, looked at them with disdain.

“Yes?” he said, in a not very encouraging voice.

“Umm… if you please, sir, we – I – have come to see Lord Ravenglass, with a message,” said Dora.

The guard looked her up and down and sniffed loudly.

“Letter of introduction?” he said, holding out his hand.

Dora fished out Jem's tiny pack from her pocket. She tipped out the small object that she was pretty sure was the letter of introduction, and held out her hand with it nestled in the middle of her palm.

The guard looked at her as if she were mad, and then bent over to peer at the object.

“That's not a letter of introduction, that's a speck of dust,” he said. “What good do you think that's going to do?”

Dora started to try and explain about the forest and the monster and the spell to turn things small – but the guard wasn't interested.

“No letter of introduction, no entrance to the palace. Now clear off and stop wasting my time.”

He went back to his position opposite the other guard, and they clanged their spears together across the entrance, their faces stern and unmoving.

“But we have to see Lord Ravenglass. There
must
be a way to get an appointment with him!” said Dora, desperately.

The chief guard looked down at her as if she were a slug about to eat his prize lettuce.

“Lord Ravenglass is a Courtier of the First Degree,” he said in an exasperated voice. “He can
only be approached by a Courtier of the Second Degree, and then only on Tuesdays between eleven and twelve. To petition a Courtier of the Second Degree, you need the favour of a Third Degree nobleman. You can apply to
them
for an appointment, via the Under-Secretary of the Steward's Office, by making an application in advance. Current waiting time is three weeks.” And he clashed his spear back across the palace entrance in a very final manner.

It was lucky that the money Sir Mortimer had given them was in Dora's pack and not Jem's. It meant that at least they had full-size coins to pay for a meal and a room for the night at one of the city's less grubby inns.

Dora had felt rather nervous asking for a room for the night, but the landlady had taken pity on the lost-looking girl with the dark plaits and worried frown, and had bundled Dora straight upstairs to a quiet room at the back of the inn. She and Jem were now sitting by a warm fire, finishing off the remains of food from their packs and trying to figure out what to do next. Their meeting with Caractacus had left both of
them with the feeling that there was something quite seriously odd going on, and that their message to the palace might be more urgent than either of them had thought.

“Do you think it's true?” said Jem, picking at a piece of chicken bone as long as his arm. “Other worlds, and the creatures of the dark and all that? Do you think these objects really do come from another world?”