Lily and the Prisoner of Magic (16 page)

‘That’s the patrol going by,’ Henrietta whispered in Lily’s ear. ‘We should go as soon as they round the corner of the wall.’

Lily watched as the detachment of black-uniformed men marched past, disappearing around the corner of the palace wall just beyond the archway. Then she stole out from behind the base of the statue they’d been lurking behind, beckoning the others after her. They were all wrapped in dark cloaks left over from a dancing-skeleton comedy act that had been part of the show years ago. Maria never threw anything away. They hurried into the shadowy arch, and Princess Jane stroked her fingers over the marble carvings.

‘You can tell it’s magical!’ Lily murmured. ‘It ought to be pitch-black in here, there’s hardly any moon! And instead the marble’s glowing, like that carved mantel at Fell Hall. Where’s the figure; can you see it?’

Rose lifted Gus up next to the princess and Lily saw that he was glowing too, his white fur shining softly like a lamp.

‘Useful,’ Henrietta muttered enviously, and Lily stroked her ears.

‘Here!’ The princess patted the hand of a tall woman, carved into the victory scene on the wall. She was supposed to be some sort of emblem of the royal bloodline, Lily guessed. She had a crown on, and a particularly foolish, smug sort of expression on her white stone face.

Lily traced a finger over the Greek key pattern – it had been added later than the rest of the carving, she could tell, for the lines of the pattern were still fresh and crisp. It made sense that it would have been added when the key spell was set. She watched curiously as Princess Jane slipped her own pale fingers in between the stone ones and squeezed, very gently.

There was a buzzing, creaking sound, like some long-unused machinery shifting into gear, and the princess gasped.

‘Is it not working? Are you all right?’ Rose asked anxiously.

‘I think it is… But slowly. It doesn’t know me, the spell, after so long… Be ready to take the key, someone – I can’t move.’ Jane had both her hands wrapped around the stone fingers now, and the carved face wasn’t foolish any more. The eyes were sharp and suspicious, and Lily was sure that the woman’s mouth hadn’t been open before, or her teeth so pointed.

Then all at once the expression died out of the stone features, as though the spell had given up. With a dull click the other hand slid out of the carved wall, and in it was a heavy golden key, glittering with a cold, unpleasant magic.

‘It won’t hurt you if I take it?’ Lily asked, looking worriedly at the princess’s pained face.

She shook her head. ‘No. It finishes the spell. Quickly, Lily, please!’

Lily seized the key, expecting it to burn her skin, or bite her, but it was just a key. ‘Are you all right?’ she asked the princess, who was leaning wearily against the wall. ‘What did it do?’

‘It was trying to see who I was,’ she explained. ‘I couldn’t tell it – not clearly enough. After all those years at Fell Hall, you see, where they made me think I was mad, and not a princess at all.’ She shook herself and stood up straight, tucking her hair neatly inside the hood of her cloak again. ‘Quick, Lily. The lock is on her belt, look, that carved clasp.’

Lily nodded, seeing the keyhole now, the dark shape gaping. She pushed the key in, and turned it easily. Then, with a sucking gasp of stale air, a door swung open, the woman’s figure disappearing into the darkness.

‘Go quietly,’ the princess murmured. ‘There may be guards, but they should only have spells like the ones used at Fell Hall. No magic of their own. There’s a staircase just inside the door; don’t fall.’

Lily had expected Archgate to be dark and gloomy – it was a prison, after all. And it was underground. But once they stepped inside the door, she saw that white light was spilling up the staircase, glowing on the stone treads. They were hardly worn at all, and the place was silent. Lily shivered, thinking of the prisoners, abandoned and alone at the bottom of the stairs.

‘How many prisoners are there?’ she asked. She hadn’t even thought about it before – they had only been thinking of their father. ‘Are we going to let them all out?’

‘There were only ever one or two,’ Princess Jane murmured, treading carefully down the stone steps. ‘Though more now, perhaps. I suppose it depends who they are.’

‘Are there any spells?’ Georgie asked nervously, as they reached the last step. ‘Can you feel any?’

‘Only my own,’ Rose said thoughtfully. ‘No, don’t step down!’ She caught Lily’s shoulder, yanking her back so that she sat down on the stone step with a thud.

‘Oh!’ Lily gasped as a huge black dog seemed to leap at her out of the white brightness of the stone passage. It had a lot of teeth, and cold green eyes, and it had come awfully close before it snapped its jaws on nothing and disappeared. ‘Was – was that one of yours?’

Rose helped her up. ‘Yes. I was rather proud of that one. The guards would never see it, of course. They carry protection against all the spells, embedded into their keys.’ She sighed. ‘And they were embedded into the prisoners’ chains, as well. Stay behind me – I do know where the spells are, but it was a long time ago. I didn’t remember that one being so close to the steps. They do shift, over time. And grow…’

Lily could feel Henrietta pressing close against her boots – the spell dog had been extremely large. Lily picked her up, feeling the little dog’s heart racing against her fingers. They went on in a line after Rose, creeping down the eerie passageway, now lined with heavy, locked doors.

‘How do we know which cell is Father’s?’ Georgie whispered. ‘Are there prisoners behind all these doors?’

Rose stretched out her fingers, beckoning strangely, and on the polished metal door they were passing a figure shimmered and grew. An old woman, much older than Rose herself, with wild, angry eyes. She was staring at them, grinding her teeth.

‘Not your father,’ Rose muttered. ‘And I don’t think we should let her out.’

‘How did you do that?’ Lily asked curiously. ‘I made pictures like that, back at home – that’s how I got Henrietta. But I had to draw them.’

‘Magic often starts in pictures,’ Rose told her, staring ahead. ‘My own magic began that way, back at the orphanage. Anything shiny… Stop!’

They halted behind her, clutching anxiously at each other and trying to see what it was that Rose could see ahead of them.

‘These other cells are empty. But there’s something ahead of us, round this corner. Something new. A spell that I had nothing to do with, though it does have something familiar about it.’ She frowned. ‘They must have wanted an extra layer of protection…’

They rounded the corner of the passage cautiously, piling up behind Rose and peering past her.

‘That’s a dolls’ house!’ Georgie said, laughing with relief. Then she swallowed nervously. ‘That isn’t good, is it? It isn’t there for people to play with. I just always wanted a dolls’ house like that, it’s beautiful.’ She looked up at Rose anxiously. ‘What have they made it into?’

But Rose wasn’t listening to her. She had caught the princess’s hand, and they were staring at the dolls’ house like two little girls.

‘Is that what I think it is?’ Rose asked huskily.

Jane nodded. ‘I suppose there weren’t any children in the palace any more. Mama always hated waste!’ She let out a strange sobbing laugh.

‘Was it
yours
?’ Lily asked curiously.

Princess Jane glanced back at her. ‘Yes… Although I stopped playing with it and my little sister Charlotte took it over.’

‘Why wouldn’t you want to play with it?’ Georgie sighed. ‘It’s perfect.’

Lily nodded. She had never seen a toy like it. It was like a little palace, with its classical front. She guessed it must have at least twenty rooms. Every window had curtains, and on either side of the door were pretty little miniature bay trees.

‘I was imprisoned in it.’ Jane stepped a little closer. ‘I was kidnapped by two magicians – that was how Rose and I met; she was guarding me from another attack. When they struck again, no one had any idea how they’d taken me out of the palace. But it turned out they hadn’t at all. They turned me into a doll and shut me away in my own dolls’ house. After that, I couldn’t seem to want to play with it in the same way…’

‘Be careful,’ Rose murmured. ‘Don’t touch it, it’s bespelled.’

‘Have they done the same thing to the prisoners?’ Lily asked, gazing at the pretty white house in disgust. ‘Are they dolls, shut up in there?’

‘I don’t know…’ Rose said thoughtfully. ‘I suspect not, though. They’d be easy to look after, but one couldn’t speak to them – they’d be useless for information. And you said your father had sent letters, didn’t you?’

‘Yes!’ Lily agreed, in relief. ‘You’re right, he can’t be inside it. But what
is
it for, then?’

Gus prowled along the front of the toy house, sniffing delicately, his whiskers shooting out little glittering sparks. ‘It feels to me like just another sort of key spell,’ he reported. ‘There must be some simple answer to it – it blocks the whole passageway, so the guards must be able to deal with it easily enough.’

‘There is a keyhole in the front door,’ Georgie suggested doubtfully. ‘Perhaps there’s a key?’

Rose frowned. ‘If it’s one of the key spells that they carry around with them, then we’re stuck. We’ll have to break the lock, which is probably going to be difficult.’

‘And incredibly dangerous,’ Gus agreed chattily. ‘Likely to be fatal, in fact.’

Lily crouched in front of the house, frowning. ‘But you helped to create those key spells. You said you’d put an – an antidote to that horrible dog in them. Would it be difficult to add another spell?’

‘Yes. But not impossible. I do see what you mean, though. They’d have been more likely to make something new.’ Rose stared vaguely around the walls of the passage. ‘Something here.’

‘Something like this.’ Gus darted suddenly under the low table the house was sitting on, and came out purring smugly, with a small, dusty brown thing dangling from his mouth. He seemed to have suddenly grown a fat brown moustache, Lily thought, confused, and then she giggled. A mouse-tache…

‘For heaven’s sake,’ Henrietta growled. ‘Cats! Is now really the time?’

‘Shut up.’ Gus’s snarl came out muffled by mouse. ‘Look at it! It’th got a collar!’

Henrietta blinked irritably and sidled forward. ‘It has,’ she admitted. ‘With a key on it. That’s a very fat mouse.’

‘It’th tame.’ Gus spat it out, pinning it with one meaty paw. ‘Trained to come for food, I should think.’

‘But that’s not even a spell.’ Lily felt rather disappointed. She had wanted something cleverer.

‘You think it’s too simple?’ Rose asked her, looking thoughtfully at the house.

Lily looked at her boots and shrugged. ‘I’m probably just being silly.’

‘You’ve come a long way with that sort of instinct, though…’ Rose told her, leaning closer to peer in at the windows. ‘Perhaps you’re right. But the guards obviously do unlock the door – that mouse is so plump, it must be fed every day. We just need to take the collar off it to use the key. Oh, let it up, Gus.’ She took the fat mouse into her hands, staring down at it, and it stared back at her, trembling. ‘The poor little thing might never have seen a cat. Oh.’ She put the mouse down, rather quickly, on the doorstep of the dolls’ house.

‘What is it?’ Gus asked her sharply.

‘That isn’t a mouse.’

The cat glared at her. ‘It most certainly is. I should know.’

‘It’s a mouse on the outside, that’s all.’

‘What is it inside, then?’ Lily asked, studying the soft grey-brown fur and the dark, bead-like eyes.

‘Something very unpleasant that’s been borrowed from somewhere else. Using a spell that no one should teach you until you’re much, much older.’ Rose sighed. ‘Of course, look. Two mice.’

An equally fat mouse had strolled out from under the table, with a matching collar. But this mouse was white. It would be impossible to mistake one for the other if you knew the secret.

‘Well done, Lily.’ Rose reached out a hand to the white mouse, and carefully unhooked the tiny brass key from its red leather collar. As she reached down to the door of the dolls’ house, the brown mouse leaped away from the doorstep, and Lily saw its eyes glittering with a most unmouselike malice. Rose was right – it was no mouse at all.

As the key slid into the lock the whole house seemed to hinge in two, and Lily gasped as it swirled up and around them, the enchanted rooms spinning around their heads, the dolls seeming to lean out and gape at their visitors.

And then it was closed again, quiet and neat and smug-looking – and it was behind them.

‘
O
h…’ Lily murmured, drawn forward by a strange tugging inside her, something she’d never felt before. She turned back to seize Georgie’s hand, and noticed Henrietta trotting eagerly down the passage. ‘Can you feel it too?’

The black pug glanced up at her. ‘Yes. He’s here.’

‘Waiting for us!’ Georgie was smiling, looking happier than Lily had seen her in weeks. ‘I know it! We’re coming!’ she called, starting to run.

‘Georgie, wait!’ Lily grabbed her cloak. ‘Be careful; we don’t know what else is here. There could be more spells.’