Griffin of Darkwood (16 page)

“They’re huge!” said Emma.

“They’re beautiful,” breathed Thom.

Will stood in front of the first tapestry. He took out his scrap of material and held it up, comparing the writing. The letters were exactly the same. “Look at this!” he cried. “I was right. There is one more tapestry! And this is a piece from it.”

Questions tumbled about in Will's head. Had Morgan Moonstone woven it? What did it say? Where was it? And how had he ended up with a piece?

Boom!
There was a loud rumble deep inside the castle and the sound of crashing rock.

Boom!

“What’s happening?” yelled Thom.

Boom!

Emma screamed. “It’s an earthquake!”

“We gotta get back,” cried Will. “Come on!”

“Hooo-whooo-hooo,”
howled Peaches as they fled through the door onto the stairs. On the third step from the bottom, Will tripped. He shone the torch on his feet. Chunks of stone were scattered across the rest of the stairs.

Thom and Emma crowded behind him.

“The roof’s caving in!” said Emma.

They climbed over the stones and hurried along the tunnel, stumbling over broken bricks and more stones. Was the whole castle going to collapse?

When they got to the tower stairs, Will, his heart pounding, stared in horror. A mass of rubble filled the staircase. There was no way they could go up.

“We’re going to be buried alive!” cried Thom. “I knew we shouldn’t have come. I knew it!”

“No we aren’t,” said Will. “We’ll find a way out of here.” He turned around and shone the torch up the other tunnel. “We’ll go this way. It’s gotta go somewhere.”

Sweat slickened Will’s neck and a feeling of dread slipped over him. He had got his friends into this mess. If they didn’t turn up sooner or later, would Favian guess that they had gone back into the secret passage? How would he ever find them?

They followed the turns and twists of the passage, tripping over fallen bricks.

The walls changed from brick to rough stone. The passage grew narrower and narrower and the ceiling lowered until they had to bend over. They were close to the end, Will guessed, but what would they find?

Then he cried out, “I see daylight! And I can hear something. I think it’s the wind!”

He stopped with a jolt of shock. They had come to a small rocky ledge, somewhere just below the guard’s walk, where Mr. Cherry had threatened him that first day. There was a long sheer drop down the castle wall and then down the rugged face of the cliff to the black river far below.

“Hey! Look out!” said Will, as Thom and Emma bumped up against him. “Don’t let Peaches push me!”

The ledge was slick with water and very slippery.

Ke-ke-ke-ke!
A sparrowhawk was riding the wind, a limp brown body dangling from its beak. It swooped in close to the castle wall, and Will put his arms up to protect himself.
Ke-ke-ke
it shrieked, fighting the wind with powerful flaps of its wings.

“RUFF! RUFF!”
barked Peaches.

“Get back!” cried Thom, grabbing Will’s arm. “You’ll be blown right off!”

“Wait a sec,” said Will. “And hang on to Peaches!” He lay on his stomach and inched forward. He peered over the ledge. “There’s steps! Hundreds of them,” he shouted so he could be heard over the screaming wind. “Cut into the wall. They look like they go right down to the river.”

“No way,” moaned Thom. “There’s no way I’m going! We’ll fall and be killed! We’ll drown!”

Will felt dizzy. “We’d need a boat anyway,” he said. He slid back until he was inside the passage with the others.

“Now what?” said Emma, gripping Peaches’ collar.

“We’ll go back,” said Will. “We’ll just have to try to move those rocks.”

On the way back, no one spoke.

“I’m going to turn the torch off, just for a little while, to save the batteries,” said Will. But the darkness was so awful that Thom gave a cry and even Emma gasped, so he hastily flicked the light back on.

“Peaches is gone!” said Emma suddenly. “He was right behind me but he’s gone now!”

“Why did you let go of his collar?” said Thom. “Peaches! Peaches! Come on back, boy.”

“Peaches!” yelled Will. “Peaches, where are you?”

And then the dog seemed to pop right out of the wall by their feet.

“Hey! Where did you come from?” asked Emma. “Shine your light down here, Will.”

Will shone the beam of light on the wall, revealing a small opening, close to the ground. He crouched down. “It’s a tunnel,” he said. “We must have walked right past it before!”

“Peaches found it,” said Emma. “Good boy, Peaches! Good boy!”

“We’re not going in there, are we?” said Thom.

“We have to,” said Will. “Come on!”

They crawled in on their hands and knees, Will leading the way. The tunnel was cut out of the rock and had a hard-packed dirt floor with jagged walls that scraped their arms. Icy water dripped down on them.

The tunnel seemed to go on forever. And then Will felt cool air on his face and he smelled a rich earthy scent.

“We’re at the end!” he shouted.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

In the Forest

Will squeezed under an overhanging ledge
of rock and stood up. Emma and Thom crawled out beside him.

Tall skinny trees with black trunks surrounded them. Straggly grey moss dangled in long wispy strands from the branches. Vines swarmed like snakes over fallen logs and rotten stumps.

“This is the forest!” said Thom. “We’re not supposed to be in here!”

“The curse!” said Emma.

“Hoo-whoo-hooo,”
howled Peaches.

An opening in the dark trees looked like a trail. They started walking, scrambling over logs and ducking under low-hanging branches. Dead wood snapped under their feet and vines grabbed at their clothes. The only living creature they passed was a fat white spider in a silver cobweb, suspended like lace between two trees.

Emma bent down beside a cluster of scarlet toadstools.

“Don’t touch those!” said Will. “They’re probably poisonous!”

“I wasn’t going to,” said Emma.

The trail was getting harder to find. Will pushed branches out of his face.

“Will, slow down,” said Emma. “We have to wait for Thom.”

Will looked back. Thom and Peaches were lagging behind. Thom groaned and sank down on a log. He hung his head and stared at the ground and Peaches licked his hand.

Will and Emma hurried back. Thom lifted his head. His white face shone with sweat. “I’m sorry. I…I can’t go on. There’s…there’s something terrible happening here.”

“We gotta keep going,” said Will.

Thom groaned again and staggered to his feet. He stumbled behind the others like an old man.

Will glimpsed a pale green light through the trees. “There’s something up ahead. I’m not sure what it is.”

He squeezed between the black trunks of two trees and stepped into a clearing. In the middle was a thick wooden pole with a long rusty chain dangling from the top.

“This is it,” said Thom. “This is where it’s coming from. Something suffered here. It’s choking me. I can’t breathe.”

“Something was chained up here,” said Emma.

“It must have paced around and around,” said Will, looking at the deep rut that circled the pole.

“It looks like the chain’s been broken,” said Emma. “What kind of creature could break a thick chain like that?”

“I can’t stay here,’ whispered Thom. “Please.”

Suddenly Will saw a movement out of the corner of his eye, an enormous shadow shifting behind the dark trees. The hackles on Peaches’ back rose, and a low growl rumbled in his throat.

“What is it?” cried Emma.

Will’s heart pounded in his ears. Something was watching them. “Over there!” he shouted.

They all stared into the trees.

“Let’s –” Emma started to say but her words turned into a scream. Two huge wings swept through the air, smashing branches, almost knocking them down with a blast of wind. A long tawny tail lashed back and forth.

“Look out!” yelled Emma.

Will stared into a pair of blazing eyes. A tremendous shriek filled the forest. His legs went weak and his throat dry. He fell backwards, shielding his face with his hands. There was a sudden throbbing in his pocket. Will reached in and pulled out the piece of tapestry. The letters glowed as if
they were made out of molten gold.

He held the piece of tapestry high above him. There was a tremendous gust of wind and everything swirled around
him. The last thing he heard was Thom screaming.

Chapter Thirty

Where is Thom?

Will snapped open his eyes.
He was standing beside Emma and Peaches, his fingers gripping the tapestry scrap, his knuckles white. The stone creature stared down at them from the archway on the castle.

“What happened?” said Emma shakily.

Will struggled to make sense of everything. “My piece of tapestry…it saved us…it brought us here.”

“A griffin!” said Emma. “I saw it!”

Will sucked in his breath. So it wasn’t just him! Emma had seen it too. It was a griffin! He looked around in a panic. Wind and rain lashed at their faces. Where was Thom?

“Thom!” shouted Will. “Thom, where are you?”

“Thom!” yelled Emma. “Thom!”

The storm raged around them. The wind snatched Thom’s name and tossed it back in their faces. Will barely understood what had happened. The scrap of tapestry had transported them out of that terrible forest and away from the griffin. They were safe, but had Thom been left behind?

Lightning flashed and thunder cracked. The freezing rain plastered Emma’s and Will’s clothes to their backs. Peaches whined and pushed himself between Emma’s legs.

Emma slipped her hand into Will’s.

They hollered for Thom until their voices were hoarse. It was hopeless. They could barely hear themselves over the screaming wind.

Crack.
The huge oak tree near the castle smashed to the ground.

“We need help!” said Emma.

Their hands broke apart and they raced down Black Penny Road.
It can’t be later than noon
, Will thought,
but it’s as dark as night
. Water streamed in rivers through the cobblestones. Shutters were fastened tight and most of the shops were closed. Candlelight flickered in a few windows.

“The power must be out,” said Emma.

They ran all the way to the Fairweather’s flat. John Fairweather was reading by candlelight.

“The earthquake,” he said. “I’ve been so worried about you. There’s damage in the village.”

His face turned ashen as Will and Emma poured out their story. “My son!” he said. He picked up the phone, exclaiming, “Thank God it still works!”

A search party assembled quickly. Men and women in rain slickers and boots gathered in the flat. Favian came and Emma’s father, Peter Storm, with a bag of dry clothes. For the first time, John seemed to see the cold dripping children and the sodden dog. “You’ll catch your death, both of you. Put on these clothes. And I’ll get an old towel for Peaches.”

Will changed into a pair of Lukas’s jeans and a warm sweatshirt. He took the piece of tapestry out of his jacket pocket. It had saved their lives.

Favian came over. “I want to hear everything,” he said quietly. “But first we must find Thom.”

Within minutes, the searchers had left. The flat was cold and empty without Thom. They settled in to wait. It was the longest afternoon Will could ever remember. John sat at the window and stared out at the glistening wet street. Will and Emma huddled on the floor, talking quietly, with Peaches curled up beside them.

The clock ticked from four to five to six o’clock. At seven o’clock, they had bowls of cornflakes. The rain rattled the windows and the wind shrieked eerily between the loose shutters. John’s eyes probed the blackness for a sign that the searchers were returning.

Just after eight, a line of lights flickered in the dark street. John gave a small cry and Emma and Will ran to the window. “They wouldn’t come back without him,” John said. Hope and fear flashed across his face.

The door opened and the heavy-set man who owned the bakery carried Thom inside the flat. The boy lay still in his arms, his face like wax and his eyes closed.

“Thom –” John choked.

“He’s cold and exhausted,” said Emma’s father, who had followed them in. “We found him in the forest. Favian has gone for the doctor, and he’ll be here straightaway.”

He looked at Emma and Will. “I’m taking you and Peaches back to the house. Will, you’ll stay the night with us. Star will want to keep an eye on you. We’ll let your aunt know.”

Will was too tired to argue. The men had carried Thom into his bedroom, their low voices murmuring. On the way down the stairs, a man rushed up past them, carrying a black doctor’s bag.