The Puzzle Ring (40 page)

Seven days later, it was finally Midsummer's Eve.

At the base of the steep green hill called Black Rock, Hannah and her friends made their farewells to Linnet, Morgana, Angus the toad and the water-horse. If all went well, they would be back in their own time before dawn.

Although it was late and the sun had set, the sky was still full of light. Edinburgh lay across the narrow gorge, crouched higgledy-piggledy within its stone walls, a city of spires and towers and slanted roofs and narrow crooked chimneys. Black Rock, better known in Hannah's time as Calton Hill, looked quite different without its crowning monuments and follies.

‘I wish that I could go with you, to help you and guard you!' Linnet said. ‘But you know I cannot. I must keep Lady Morgana safe, for if you fail to rescue Donovan she is the only child of true blood left. And I cannot exist in both times—it could wrench the whole world awry.'

‘Yeah, imagine young Linnet running into old Linnet,' Max said exuberantly. ‘What do you think would happen?'

Hannah had to swallow a lump in her throat before she could speak, for the idea of leaving Linnet behind filled her with misery and anxiety. ‘There are two theories, Mum says. The first is that the universe would have to split into a kind of parallel universe. The problem with that idea is that we could have billions and trillions of different universes, all of them with different Linnets in them, and that just seems impossible. The universe would have to split at every single little tiny decision that every single one of us made . . .'

Hannah suddenly realised that, in an attempt to keep her grief and fear at bay, she was lecturing her friends just as Roz always did to her. It gave her a swift, keen insight into her mother's heart. Wishing she had been kinder to her mother, Hannah continued in a gentler tone.

‘Mum says it's more likely that the universe would just protect itself, making sure that nothing happened that would change the future, or affect the past. So, if Linnet tried to travel back to the twenty-first century with us, something would happen to stop her. Which means something would happen to stop
us
too! And we don't want that.'

‘So I will stay here, in this time, and look after Angus and Lady Morgana,' Linnet said to Hannah. ‘I'll go back to Wintersloe Castle, and wait for you there.'

‘It'll be a long time,' Hannah said unhappily.

‘I know. I'm patient. I will look after the family and try to ease the burden of the curse as best I can.'

‘I'm so sorry, Linnet. I never meant for this to happen.'

Linnet smiled, her green eyes bright with tears. ‘I know. But those of fairy kind are long-lived anyway, you know that,
Hannah. And I swore an oath to my lady Eglantyne, as well as to you, and I should like to see the end of the story.'

‘What about me?' Morgana demanded, looking frightened.

Linnet drew her close. ‘I'll take care of you, my chick. You can't go back to our own world, you know that. It's too dangerous. Like it or not, you're in the human world now and you'll have to find some way to live here happily. You'll grow up and make a life for yourself, never you fear.'

‘So I'll never see my home again?' Morgana asked in a small voice.

‘I don't think so,' Linnet said. ‘But maybe, one day, if Hannah succeeds in reuniting the puzzle ring, your children might, or their children. All things are possible in all the worlds.'

The little girl drew herself up. Tears were winding down her white face, but she did not sob or scream as she might once have done. She took Hannah's hand in her own small, cold one, and said in a trembling voice, ‘Defeat Irata for me, Hannah, will you?'

‘Don't speak her name,' Linnet and Hannah said together.

Morgana nodded. ‘Defeat her. Cast her out of my land forever. Make sure she never comes back.'

‘I'll try,' Hannah said rather hopelessly. ‘But I'm only a girl myself, Morgana. How am I meant to do such a thing?'

‘You'll find a way,' the fairy princess answered. ‘I know you will!'

Scarlett was saying goodbye to the water-horse. ‘I wish you could come back with us. I'd love a horse like you! But you belong here, I know. Linnet will let you go just as soon as she's safely away from here. I hope you get back to your loch all right. Just don't try eating any more kids, okay?'

The water-horse shook his head and hurrumphed as if he understood what she was saying.

‘Come on, girls,' Max said. ‘We'd better get going.'

He stood leaning on Hannah's rowan walking-stick, his leg still bound with rags to two old sticks.

‘When you get the hag-stone back, remember it has healing powers too,' Linnet said to Hannah. ‘You must heal Max before you go back to your own time, else he will be lame all his life.'

‘But what do I do?'

‘The magic of the hag-stone is wild magic, remember, and so is held as deep within your blood and bone as it is within star and stone. If you trust yourself, you will know what to do.'

‘But . . .' Hannah began, but then grew silent, thinking.

Linnet nodded and kissed her brow. ‘Keep safe, my lamb. I will wait and watch for you.'

‘Goodbye!' Scarlett cried, beginning to climb Black Rock. ‘Wish us luck!'

‘Goodbye!' Max called. ‘Thank you!'

There was time for one last loving embrace with Linnet, then Hannah began the steep climb up to the cave, where the doorway to the Otherworld lay hidden.

The three friends crept quietly into the narrow cave halfway up the hill. Although they wore fern-seed paste on their brows, they did not want to make any noise that might attract attention. It was pitch-black inside the caves, and so they carried candles impaled upon rough wooden holders.

At last Hannah led the way into a much greater chamber. There was a tall, smooth wall, running beyond the reach of
the candles' faint light. This, Linnet had told them, was the gateway to the Otherworld. Rather tremulously, Hannah and her friends blew out their candles and waited in the heavy darkness until they could no longer smell any trace of smoke.

Then, holding hands, Hannah, Max and Scarlett began to sing. ‘Open the door in the green hill, open the door and let us in.' Their voices sounded unearthly as they echoed through the caverns.

After a long moment they heard a grating noise and then a vertical crack of light appeared down the length of the wall. Slowly the crack widened as two immense stone doors were dragged open by two hulking giants, with heads as large as boulders upon thick, crooked torsos. Their long arms hung right down to their knees, for their bowed legs were much shorter than their bodies, with huge, flat feet that turned out like a duck's.

With pounding heart and trembling legs, Hannah hurried invisibly past the giants and through the doorway, Max and Scarlett at her heels. The huge guards scratched their heads, peering out into the darkness. After a while they shrugged their immense shoulders, drew the doors shut again, and went to refresh themselves from tankards as large as buckets.

Hannah and Max and Scarlett tiptoed away down a long stone corridor, hands pressed over their hearts as if that would stop them beating so loudly. The ceiling of the corridor was vaulted like a cathedral's, with stone gargoyles every few paces. These gargoyles, however, were alive, with bright impish eyes and chattering mouths. One of the gargoyles, with a broad flat nose and horns like a goat, snuffled the air and remarked, ‘Can you smell that? Fee-fie-fo-fum, I smell the blood of a human.'

‘It's that new jester of the queen's,' another remarked, with a fat face and ears like a cow. ‘Ooof, but that boy stinks! I wish the queen would stop cluttering up the place with mortals.'

‘She likes to think she's queen of both worlds,' another said. ‘I've never known such a one for galloping out into the mortal world.'

‘No one left here to terrorise,' said the next in the line. ‘They're all too browbeaten.'

Tiptoeing past, Hannah did not breathe freely until she and her friends had left the gargoyles far behind them.

The corridor led into a vast and gorgeous palace made of pale stone, every inch of which was carved and gilded. Tapestries and embroidered cloths hung on the walls, and flower petals were scattered over the flagstones. The air was warm and smelt deliciously of roses and apricots. Every room had a wall of tall arched windows that looked over boundless gardens and orchards to a dazzle of sea.

‘We need to find the doorway that leads to Fairknowe,' Hannah said. ‘This place is so huge! Can you remember Morgana's directions?'

It took them about forty minutes, walking slowly for the sake of Max's aching leg, to find the little low door Morgana had described to them. It was made of grey rock, and had two stone gargoyles perched on pillars on either side. One was happy and held a branch of flowering blackthorn. The other was doleful, and held a branch of sloe berries.

‘This is it!' Hannah said, exultant.

A clamour approached them along the corridor—the sound of voices and cruel laughter and a wild sort of music. Then the stone door was slammed open. Irata strode through,
dressed all in green with flowers twined in her hair, with a procession of fairies and bogey-beasts streaming along behind her. She looked furious.

‘But how was I meant to know that Lord Montgomery has ridden to war?' a dwarf was saying piteously, wringing his hands. ‘He was there when last I looked, I swear, your Majesty.'

‘I'll see you swinging by your heels above a pit of snakes,' Irata snapped. ‘How am I meant to win his love when he's a hundred miles away?'

‘We can try again at the autumn equinox, your Majesty,' the dwarf suggested.

‘I don't want him in autumn, I want him now!' she snapped. ‘I'll teach him to prefer my whey-faced cousin Eglantyne to me!'

She strode on, snapping her fingers at some guards, who seized the dwarf and dragged him away in the opposite direction. The rest of the procession surged after the queen. Hannah had to stifle a little gasp when she saw her father and Donovan, with ropes around their necks, being tugged along at the rear by the Red Cap. The goblin looked around sharply and flared his broad nostrils, but there was such a stench and a noise in the corridor that he could not sense the three invisible watchers in the shadows, and so he stumped on, his captives stumbling along behind him.

A guard pulled the stone door closed. Hannah quickly ran forward and, taking her eating knife from her belt, drove it into the crack between the two doors so that it did not properly close. The guard did not notice. He was too busy exchanging banter with the gargoyles.

Hannah ran back to the others. ‘Let's find somewhere you can sit and rest, Max,' she whispered.

He was looking white and tired after the long walk. ‘Okay. But don't be long.'

‘We'll be as quick as we can.'

They settled him in a little antechamber with a bed made from their plaids, some food and a leather bottle of water—boiled and cooled. Hannah left her guitar and her walking-stick with him, but took her long dagger. Scarlett left her tambourine too. Then the two girls crept back out into the corridor and went in search of the Unseelie Court.

A cacophony of music, singing and roaring could be heard in the distance and the girls followed the sound, down broad marble steps and through immense, empty hallways. Hannah was so afraid she felt quite sick.

They reached a banqueting room, crowded with goblins and fairies and bogey-beasts of all size and description. They were gnawing on bones and tossing them to the floor, dancing on tables, sending fine crystal crashing everywhere, and swinging on the chandeliers. Harassed-looking fairies hurried everywhere, sweeping up glass and chewed bones, mopping up spilt wine, and bringing in great jugs and platters that were seized upon with roars of approval. Irata herself was seated on a tall, wooden throne at the head of the room, with four small elflike boys to serve her wine and sweetmeats, fan her with peacock feathers, massage her scaly feet and buff her long, silver-painted nails.

The throne's headrest had been carved into the semblance of a horned and bearded face, and it had lions paws for feet and eagles wings for armrests. The wooden face moaned and wailed incessantly, its features screwed into an expression of
anguish. Irata lashed it with a silver-tipped switch, snarling, ‘Sing, why don't you! Sing! I'm the rightful queen. Stop your caterwauling.'

The throne winced and tried to sing, but only a miserable ululation came out of its contorted mouth. Irata lashed it again, shrieking ‘Sing!'

Sitting at a tiny child's table nearby was Hannah's father, Robert. His chair was so ridiculously small, his knees were up near his ears. He was still dressed in his jester's motley, with long asses' ears and belled toes. Although she was relieved to have found him so easily, Hannah was very worried to see no sign of Donovan.

Hannah signalled to Scarlett to keep close behind her, and crept along the walls until she was crouched behind her father. He was looking down into a tiny two-handed silver cup—like a baby's christening cup—with an expression of such misery and despair that Hannah's heart went out to him. She forgot the humiliation of his costume, and her angry misery over his absence from her life, and longed to throw her arms about his neck. She dared not do anything that might draw the eyes of the Unseelie Court upon them, however, and so she leant over his shoulder and breathed upon the round silver saucer on the table. Her breath misted the bright silver, and she drew in the condensation her father's symbol, the two Rs looking backwards and forwards like the two-headed god, Janus.

His eyes widened, and his hands trembled so much he had to put down his cup. ‘Is someone there?' he whispered, looking around him slowly so as not to draw any attention. ‘Who are you?'

Hannah breathed on the saucer again and swiftly wrote
her name, in her special way, with the two Ns facing back to front, much like her father's own symbol.