Maze Running and other Magical Missions (9 page)

Frass sidled up to the Master. The faun was no longer sure of the Master’s invincibility, but he was still afraid of the Master’s anger. It was never safe delivering bad news. “Master?”

The minotaur looked up from the bone puzzle he was polishing. His right eye, hot and orange, stared at Frass. His left eye, cold and drooping, stared into blind space.

“Master, our watchers have reported.” Frass stepped back, nearer the walls of the maze, out of reach of the Master’s fist. “The first two quests failed. The scabbard wasn’t there, and Arthur’s enemies chased the girl and the faery away before they could work out where he is now. Then the white dragon dropped the gems on the way south.”

The Master’s fist crushed the fragile ivory box, but he didn’t lash out at Frass. However, the faun wasn’t safe yet, because that wasn’t the really bad news.

The Master prompted him. “So, there are still two tokens left?”

Frass nodded. “Let’s look on the bright side, sir, I agree. However, there’s been another development. The ancient one, she who takes the long view, has
become aware of your interest in the tokens.”

The Master growled. “Is she mobilising her forces?”

“They are already in play, Master.”

“Then you must defend my interests at the third quest, Frass. Given the nature of our opponents, take shields as well as blades. Take the uruisks too. They know the land up there. Don’t return with more bad news, faun, because if I’m forced back to the labyrinth in disgrace, I’ll drag you with me in several soggy little bits.”

When Rona shook Tangaroa awake, he stretched and looked at the sky. She’d let him sleep longer than he’d suggested, but even so, it was still a long time until sunrise.

Rona whispered, “Should we go up now?”

“No, Lavender and the elders were quite clear. We need a flower which starts to travel down the seven waterfalls as the sun is actually rising. We don’t have to be at the top waterfall until the sun is just below the horizon. You grab more sleep; I’ll keep watch.”

Tangaroa walked to the burn to wash his face in the stinging cold water, then looked around.

The dragon was asleep on the rock, curled up and looking like a rock himself.

Rona was lying on the heather, her sealskin cloak over her, but not wrapped so tight she would turn into a seal. Her eyelids were flickering, as if she was dreaming or thinking.

Tangaroa looked to the west at the line of trees. He couldn’t see anything in the shadows at the edge. He looked to the east. There would be a better view of the rocks from Nimbus’s perch, but Tangaroa didn’t want to disturb him. The dragon needed his sleep so he could fly them back.

Tangaroa kept glancing around, at the rocks, the trees, the heathery slopes, at the other burns coming down other mountains and joining the narrow river at the bottom of the glen.

The next time he looked at his companions, Rona’s eyes were open, staring at him.

She frowned, then stood up and moved to the burn side. They sat together, watching the white water crash to the bottom of the third waterfall.

“I can’t sleep,” she murmured. “I’m too worried about Yann.”

“Do you want to talk?” Tangaroa asked gently.

She shrugged. “I’ve known Yann all my life. My mother and his father are senior elders, so we’ve met at solstice gatherings and fabled beast councils since we were tiny. Yann had the best ideas for games when we were small and for adventures when we got bigger. He always looked after me, Lavender and Catesby. I don’t think we’d cope without him.”

“You won’t need to. He’ll be fine. There are three quest teams out and we’re probably the unlucky ones.”

Rona looked worried. “Why?”

Tangaroa laughed. “The others were doing their quests by moonlight. They’re probably back already with the scabbard and the gems. We’ll show up with
some damp flower mid-morning, and they’ll be having cups of tea and saying, where were you guys? We’ll get no glory for turning up last with the third token.”

She smiled. “I hope you’re right. I’m not in this for the glory. I just want to help Yann.”

“I know you’re not big on glory. I still don’t understand why you resigned as Sea Herald after winning last year.”

The selkie looked down at her feet, then pushed her toes into the water. “Oh! Cold!” She jerked her feet back out. “I don’t mind Arctic waters with my sealskin on, but that’s freezing on my human feet!” Rona waggled her toes. “When do we wake the dragon?”

“In half an hour, so we can do one more recce, then wait for a flower.”

“I’ve been wondering about that, Tangaroa. Are we hoping that a flower falls in at sunrise or can we drop one in ourselves?”

“Didn’t we get advice on that from Lavender?”

Rona shook her head. “We were too busy working out where and when to worry about what.”

“But Lavender told Helen we couldn’t take our own water to a footprint, because that would be cheating.” He saw Rona flinch, as if her toes had touched the water again. “So probably we can’t put our own flower in. Probably we have to hope a flower falls in as the sun is rising.”

Rona frowned. “But the flower becomes the token when it’s washed by seven falls and new sunlight.
Perhaps it doesn’t matter how it gets into the burn.”

They looked at the diamond-sharp water running under their feet.

“The water is completely clear,” Tangaroa said. “No twigs, no leaves. And there’s no wind to knock any blossoms off into the water.”

Rona looked at the glow on the eastern horizon. “How long is the sunrise?”

Tangaroa looked at the low hills to the east and considered his answer carefully. “It’s the morning of the equinox, which is the shortest sunrise of the year. But we can count from when the sun’s rim first appears in that U-shaped glen, until the bottom of the sun moves off that rounded summit. I reckon just over five minutes.”

Rona said, “So let’s watch at the top waterfall for four minutes, and if no flowers come past, drop one in ourselves.”

Tangaroa thought about her suggestion. “So we hope it happens naturally, but if it doesn’t, at the last minute, we cheat?”

“Stop saying cheating!” she snapped. “It’s not cheating! It’s just helping the magic.”

He laughed, “Ok, you’re the boss! So it’s not cheating. Just as well, because Yann wouldn’t want to be saved by cheats.”

Rona didn’t answer, so they sat in silence as the world slowly grew brighter around them.

Tangaroa wasn’t sure if he had offended the selkie. Perhaps he should try to be nicer to her. “What shall we do to pass the time?” he asked. “Make up rhymes?
Ask each other riddles?”

“No,” Rona muttered, “I’m not that good at riddles.”

“Yes you are, you’re great at riddles.”

She shook her head. “Helen and Lavender are the riddle-masters in our team.”

“Nonsense, Rona. Don’t give them all the credit. You must have solved the Sea Herald riddle faster than anyone to win by such a margin.”

He smiled at her, still trying to cheer her up. Then he saw the shocked look on her face.

Rona stammered, “Oh, yes, that riddle.”

There was a moment’s silence while Tangaroa considered everything he knew about this selkie, her friends, and the contest he’d lost to her. Then he considered the conversation they’d just had, that look on her face and that shiver in her voice.

He stood up. “You did answer the riddle yourself, didn’t you?”

She didn’t speak.

“Rona Grey. You did answer that riddle yourself, didn’t you?”

He stepped closer to her. “Rona? Tell me the truth.”

Her head moved, in what might be a tiny shake.

“Did you cheat?”

She looked away.

He grabbed her shoulders and turned her round. She was trembling, but he just gripped harder. He tried to keep his voice down, so they didn’t wake the dragon, but he couldn’t keep the anger out of his words.

“Did you beat me by cheating? Did you win that contest and humiliate me in front of my tribe by
cheating
? Tell me the truth!”

She whispered very quietly, “Yes. I cheated. In the last task. Only the last one. I got help from Helen and the others to answer the riddle and defeat the guardian in the cave. I wasn’t even in the cave. Helen got the map, Yann knocked the eel down. I was sitting outside. I’m a coward, really.”

He opened his hands and let her go.

“Yann helped you cheat? Yann cheated?”

Tangaroa turned and scrambled up the side of the burn. If he stayed near this lying cheating treacherous selkie he might hurt her. So he should get as far away from her as he could.

She called after him, “But Tangaroa, you know why we did it! You know what disaster we were trying to prevent!”

“I know exactly why you did it,” he bellowed back. “You did it to win. You did it because I was the strongest contestant and the only way to beat me was to cheat. Anyway, I don’t care
why
you did it. I just know what happened when you did. After you won and I lost, I thought I was useless. Not as clever or fast or brave as some little seal-girl.

“And you know what’s almost funny? I let your tame centaur comfort me. I went inland to his moor, and became his friend, and let him tell me that I wasn’t useless, that I could win next time. And then what did I do? I cared about him
so much
that when I did have a chance to win the title which should already be mine,
I gave it all up, to help the very people who beat me by cheating last time.

“You humiliated me. You ruined my life. You
cheated
! And now you can get that damn token yourself!”

Tangaroa scrambled up the slope by the west side of the burn.

When he got to the top waterfall, he could see all seven falls: seven drops high enough to force the water to leap in a white frenzy, separated by gentler slopes where the water ran clear and slow.

The selkie was crouching by the third fall, sobbing into her hands. Tangaroa shook his head. She wasn’t a Sea Herald. She had never been a Sea Herald. Those tears proved what a nervous, useless, over-emotional, cowardly wimp she really was.

Nimbus was yawning and staring at the weeping selkie. Then the dragon glanced up the slope towards the blue loon, who turned and walked further up. He didn’t want to explain.

Tangaroa wasn’t sure what he should do now.

The selkie and the centaur had lied to him and cheated him, so no rules of honour compelled him to save Yann or comfort Rona.

He should leave the dragon and selkie here, walk to the coast, swim back to the Western Isles, congratulate whoever had won the Sea Herald contest and get on with what was left of his life.

But he had come here for a healing token and he still wanted to collect it. Then shove it under Yann’s nose and say, “See what I did for you, when you did nothing for me.”

Tangaroa was walking up a shallower slope now, towards the sheltered area Rona had described. The banks of the burn were peaty here, rather than rocky. He reached the stunted trees and scowled at a patch of low plants with tiny blossoms. He wouldn’t be picking any more flowers for that selkie.

He sat down by the burn. He’d keep out of Rona’s way, keep her out of the way of his anger, until the sun was up. Then he’d get the token all by himself and fly back to Cauldhame Moor in righteous triumph.

He sighed. One small success with a flower wasn’t going to make him feel better.

He leant over the burn to get a drink. He dipped his hands in the water, and felt something scratch his wrist.

Biting back a yelp of pain, he pulled his hand out. His wrist was bleeding.

He looked down into the water and saw a line of gold. There was a net stretched across the width of the burn. A net woven from golden wire.

It was letting water through, but stopping everything else: leaves, a feather, gravel.

Someone had placed this net to trap any flowers floating down the burn. That’s why the water had been so clear when he was chatting to Rona.

Tangaroa pulled at the net, but it didn’t move. He ran his hands carefully along it and discovered it was
anchored by two wooden posts, hidden deep in the peaty sides of the burn.

He tried to slice through the net with his gutting knife, but even his sharp blade couldn’t cut the fine shining wire. So he used his blue tattooed hands to dig at the sides of the burn, sending clods of mud and grit into the water, until he freed the posts and dragged the net out.

He wrapped the wire round the posts, then leapt down the hillside to the third waterfall.

Rona looked up, wiping her eyes.

He threw the posts and wire on the ground by her toes. “Your recce last night was worse than useless, seal-girl! Look what I found, blocking the burn just below the flowers. A net! Trapping anything going downstream.”

“I didn’t miss that!” she protested. “I ran my hand through the water all the way down. I can’t have missed that. It must have been put there overnight.”

“Nonsense,” he said. “That’s impossible. One of us was on guard all night. Unless you dozed off on your watch?”

She started to protest again. He spoke over her. “Don’t bother! I’m not going to believe anything you say anyway.” He turned his back on her. “Nimbus, it’s just you and me now. This selkie is no longer a trusted member of our team.”

Rona barged back into his eyeline. “Are you still trying to get the token? I thought you’d stormed off home.”

“Your geography is no better than your riddling
or your reconnaissance! If I was going home to the Minch, I’d go downstream to the sea, not upstream to the summits. Foolish seal! And yes, I am going to collect the token, because I need that cheating centaur to wake up again so I can tell him exactly what I think of him and exactly what he can do with his friendship.”

He stepped round her to talk to the dragon, but she pushed in front of him again. “Hold on, blue loon. Your tactics aren’t any better today than they were last year. Stop and think. Whenever that net was set, it means someone is trying to prevent us collecting the token. That someone might still be here. Don’t you think we should prepare to defend the token?”

She was right, but he was hardly going to say so.

“
You
are not doing anything, girl. You just sit there blowing your nose and wiping your eyes. But of course Nimbus and I will check for threats.”

He looked at the sky. The stars in the east had faded in the pale glow of the sun under the horizon. They didn’t have long. “Nimbus, can you please see if there are any surprises lurking in the rocks or the trees? I’ll meet you at the top waterfall in two minutes.”

As the dragon took off, Tangaroa noticed Rona fiddling with the posts and the wire.

“Leave that alone, selkie. It might be useful.”

She ignored him, and pulled a wire at the top. The net started to unravel. “The net-maker used a knot I know, so I can undo the wire, wind it round a pebble to give it some bulk, twist a point at the end for a blade and use one post as a handle. Then we’ll have another
spear, which I can use while you use your trident. One of us should watch any flower going down and…”

Tangaroa interrupted. “Stop trying to boss me about. I’m not listening to you.”

“Don’t be daft. You said yourself I have more experience of quests than you do, even if I didn’t always follow the rules. Do you want me to turn this lovely sharp wire and this nice straight stick into a weapon, or don’t you?”

“Do that. But only that.” The blue loon was completely wrong-footed. He had thought Rona was a champion, then discovered she was a cheat. Then he was sure she was a wimp, but now she was taking charge. He couldn’t keep up.

He climbed to the west side of the top waterfall, and scanned the hillside. He couldn’t see anything hiding in the heather and the only thing in the sky was the dragon hovering above the rocks, then swooping over to the forest.

Rona yelled up, “Tangaroa? Did you look for tracks where the net was laid?”

He hadn’t, but he wasn’t going to admit that. He didn’t answer.

She yelled again, “You didn’t, did you? Is there time to look now?”

He glanced at the horizon. “No. I need to be watching for a flower now.”

Nimbus landed heavily behind him and said, “I didn’t see anything unexpected at the rocks. The forest edge looked clear and the fence is still standing.”

Rona appeared on the east bank of the burn, with a
short golden spear in her left hand and blood running down her right wrist.

Tangaroa shook his head. “Couldn’t you wait for our enemies to appear and injure you themselves? That’s a new way of cheating: cheating them of their fight.”

She held up her hands. There were cuts all over her fingers and palms. “The wire was sharp,” she said simply and turned to face east.

He remembered the sudden pain of his single wire cut and almost apologised. But he couldn’t get the words out.

Then the sun came up, one dazzling edge over the horizon. They all looked at the burn.

The water was clear. No more swirling earth from Tangaroa’s digging. No flowers either.

“We wait,” said Tangaroa. “We wait and see if the mountain gives us a flower.”

The water ran clear and clean.

“I could go up to the trees and stamp around a bit. That might dislodge something,” Nimbus said impatiently, after the first minute.

“No! That would be cheating!” Tangaroa and Rona spoke at the same time, in the same tone of voice. But they didn’t look at each other.

Another minute passed silently, with the blue loon and the selkie staring at the water, and the dragon standing sentry, watching the brightening world around them.

The air was still and the water was clear. There were no knotted heather stalks flowing past, no white stars or blue trumpets.

The only flower Tangaroa could see was the purple foxglove pinned to the neck of Rona’s dress.

The sun was almost halfway over the horizon. Tangaroa sighed and looked up at the dragon. “Anything we should know, sentry?”

“Nothing. All quiet. All still.”

“That’s the problem,” said Rona. “Everything is still. That’s why nothing is coming down the water. This mountain isn’t going to give us anything.”

“It gave us that foxglove,” said Tangaroa.

“You probably stole it.”

“No, it offered itself to me. It was blowing in a breeze that didn’t exist outside the trees. It almost leapt out at me. It felt right to take it. It even felt right to give it to you, you cheat and liar.”

“Do you want it back?” She pulled it off her dress and held it out to him, over the burn. “Do you want it? Or should I drop it in?”

They both stared at the clear water. At the purple flower. And at the sun, hot and bright over the eastern hills. Almost free of the horizon.

Tangaroa shook his head. “If we put it in ourselves, it’s probably cheating. It might not have any healing magic.”

“But there isn’t another flower coming past. A nonexistent token can’t save Yann. A token we’ve given a helping hand
might
save him.”

“No. I think it’s wrong. I think we should wait and see what the mountain gives us.”

He looked to the east, but he wasn’t seeing the sun, he was seeing Yann, pale and silent. Tangaroa was
angry with the centaur, but he was also scared that he might never see Yann again, might never wrestle or argue or train or laugh with him again.

He looked back at Rona, at the flower rolling between her slim fingers. “Do you want to drop it in? Do you think it will work?”

She shrugged.

“Come on, selkie. You’re the world expert on cheating. Do you think you could get away with it?”

“Getting away with it is not the point of cheating, Tangaroa.”

“You didn’t like getting caught out this morning though, did you?”

She turned away.

He looked east, then at the water upstream. “We have less than a minute and I don’t see any flowers coming down the burn.” He turned to Rona. “So, cheat expert, do you want to cheat again?”

She snapped at him, “Oh no. I’m not going to decide this. I’m not a trusted member of the team.”

“You are more experienced at this sort of thing.”

“Then it’s time you got experience with difficult choices, Tangaroa. You decide.”

“What?”

Rona spoke clearly. “You cut the flower, you gave the flower to me. So you decide. You decide if we should break the rules, if we should cheat, to save someone we both care about. If you want this flower in that water, Tangaroa, then
you
tell me to drop it in. You tell me to cheat.”

He looked at the sun rising over the hills, at the
water falling down the mountain.

Seven waterfalls. Would that be enough to wash this flower clean of a false start? Did it matter? It was the only chance Yann had.

“I get the point,” he muttered. “Sometimes you have to do the wrong thing to do the right thing. I get it.”

“Tell me.”

“Drop it in, Rona.”

She let the purple flower fall and it tumbled through the still air into the moving water.