It was as if Hal’s announcement had charged the quiet, sun-dappled clearing with electricity. Excitement crackled in the air, and the tired faces around the fire came alive.
A great, swooping surge of nervous energy swept through Leo then receded, leaving him feeling vaguely dizzy. He sat motionless, stunned by the speed with which things had changed. Conker had jumped up and was banging Hal on the back. Freda’s neck feathers were spiked. Tye’s eyes were gleaming. Mimi’s hands were clasped so tightly that her knuckles were white. Bertha was triumphant.
And Hal himself seemed a different man. It was as if his uncertainty had been a heavy old coat that had been weighing him down. Now that it had been thrown off he looked taller, and his shoulders were straighter. His face had relaxed, and the lines around his eyes and mouth looked more like lines of determination than marks of strain. Now he looked like a leader. Like a hero, Leo thought – the true hero he is.
Rapidly Hal began to outline the plan that he, Tye and the seven witches and wizards had made during their meeting.
Wurzle’s prediction that the smoke would shrink back towards the castle at night, so that the queen could renew her energy, had proved to be correct. The owls patrolling the queen’s border had brought word that the smoke had begun to recede just after sunset. By midnight they were reporting that it shrouded only the hill on which the castle stood, and all of the queen’s creatures, including the dragon, were sleeping within its cloud. The crows who took over the patrol just before dawn had said that the smoke only began to spill back towards the border as the sun rose.
The Seven were sure that this pattern would be repeated. The attack on the castle, therefore, would be made in the hours between midnight and dawn.
‘The queen did leave her castle last night, to collect the wind and the tide,’ Bertha pointed out nervously. ‘The smoke might have only pulled back because of that.’
Hal shook his head. ‘The owls saw her go. As she left the castle the smoke shrank further, exposing the hill almost to the moat. It spread again after she returned to her tower, but still only as far as the bottom of the hill. Our one great advantage is that the queen can’t extend her power beyond certain bounds, and it exhausts her to take it to the limit.’
‘The Great Potion would change all that,’ Conker muttered.
‘Which is why we are acting now, before the Great Potion can be made,’ Hal said grimly. ‘This is what we’re going to do…’
Stripped of its detail, the plan was daring and straightforward. Cloaked in darkness, the Seven would travel to a meeting place close to the queen’s border, arriving on the stroke of midnight. The witnesses, travelling in twos and threes so as not to attract attention, would follow them. The Seven and their witnesses would move to the border and form a line directly opposite the castle. The rolled-up web would be placed in position at the witches’ and wizards’ feet by messenger mice, so it would remain untouched by human hands.
At Hal’s signal, the raising of the web would begin. As the web unrolled, the shutting spells would be cast, drenching the web’s delicate fibres with defence magic. The process would take hours to complete, and the last minutes would be the most dangerous, for once the spell-soaked web was fully raised, the wizards and witnesses would have to walk behind it, driving it towards the castle hill. Until the fragile canopy had safely dropped over the smoke that drifted above the castle’s highest tower, and its edges had sealed themselves to the earth at the hill’s base, the shutting spell would not be complete.
Gradually Hal’s listeners became very still, and Leo felt a grim tingle of satisfaction as he saw Mimi’s eyes darken and her lips press together. There, you see? he told her silently. It’s not so easy, is it? Not when you come right down to the nitty-gritty – to people actually taking terrible risks to carry out your idea. Now you see why Hal took his time before committing himself. Why he was right to take his time.
But Hal himself did not show a flicker of doubt or hesitation. It was as if, having decided to go ahead, he had put his fears behind him like a load of useless clutter that would only hinder him.
‘The concentration required will be tremendous,’ he said calmly, when he had finished outlining the plan. ‘The timing must be exact. And, of course, the danger is immense. The queen’s creatures may be asleep, but we can’t be sure that she will be.’
‘If she looks out and sees the web closing in there’ll be trouble,’ muttered Conker. ‘And, oh my heart and lungs, it’s only a week after full moon! There’ll still be plenty of light.’
‘Wurzle and the others all said the task could only be accomplished at night if there was at least some moonlight,’ Tye told him. ‘They have to be able to see where to place the web.’
‘The witnesses, Hal,’ Mimi asked abruptly. ‘Who will they be?’
Hal glanced at her and half-smiled. ‘I’m not going to attempt to leave you and Leo out, if that’s what you mean,’ he said. ‘Tye has convinced me that the team should stay together.’
‘Well, naturally!’ Conker growled, as Leo and Mimi threw Tye grateful glances. ‘We’ll be supporting Wurzle, I suppose?’
Hal nodded. ‘Plum will use members of the town defence committee. I’m providing witnesses for Zillah, No-Name, and the Thorn Witch. Bing and Pandora have insisted on bringing their own.’
‘They would!’ jeered Freda.
Hal stretched wearily. ‘The one thing I regret is that we can’t go to the border earlier, to see the situation there for ourselves, in daylight. But it can’t be helped. We can’t risk raising the queen’s suspicions. Now, I suggest we all try to get a few hours’ sleep. We’ll be quite safe. The tigers are still on guard, and crows have taken over the Flitters’ treetop patrol, so we’ll have plenty of warning if danger approaches from the sky. I’ll leave orders for us to be woken at sunset.’
Leaving Spoiler in sole possession of the hut, everyone found a place to sleep among the ferns. As Leo kicked off his boots and lay down gratefully, he heard a distant growl. He found this comforting, then almost laughed to think he could be reassured by the knowledge that tigers were prowling unseen not far away.
He was slipping deliciously into sleep when a terrified squeal jerked him awake. He sat up, his heart beating wildly. Nearby, Mimi had sprung to her feet, blinking and tousled.
Tye emerged from the bushes on the other side of the clearing. Seeing Mimi and Leo staring at her, she glided over to them. ‘There is nothing to worry about,’ she murmured. ‘Bertha had a bad dream, that is all.’
‘Sly the fox again?’ Leo asked.
Tye nodded. ‘She insists she heard a fern snap, opened her eyes and saw him peering at her from the undergrowth.’
‘Maybe she did,’ said Mimi. ‘No one’s seen Sly since he ran away from the farm. He has to be hiding somewhere.’
‘I doubt he would choose this place,’ Tye said. ‘Flitter Wood has never been a healthy place for foxes, and it is less so now than ever before.’
As if to confirm this, there was another low growl from the shadows of the wood, and twigs cracked beneath heavy, stealthy paws.
With a sigh, Leo lay back. His heart had stopped racing, but the shock of being startled just as he was falling asleep had left him feeling jumpy and restless.
Mimi obviously felt the same. ‘Tye, could you tell us the Tideseer legend now?’ she begged. ‘I really want to hear it.’
Tye gave a tiny shrug. ‘Very well,’ she said quietly. ‘I will tell you the tale as it was told to me, long ago in Old Forest.’
In a single, fluid movement she sank cross-legged onto the ground and folded her hands. With a little shock, Leo saw that for once she was not wearing her thin leather gloves. The palms of her hands were dark, bare skin, but the backs were covered with the same velvety gold and black striped fur as her face. The nails were dark and glossy, like beetle wings.
The gloves were tucked into Tye’s belt. Perhaps she had taken them off to sleep, just before Bertha cried out. The fact that she hadn’t replaced them seemed to Leo a sign of trust and friendship, and he felt warm and deeply honoured.
‘The legend goes,’ Tye began, ‘that at the very beginning of this world, when only the Terlamaines trod the earth, and the Ancient One dreamed alone above the clouds, the Artist made the wild coast, and two female beings of great beauty to share it.’
She glanced at her companions and, apparently reassured that they were listening attentively, went on.
‘One sister wore the colour of the sand and the other wore the colour of the sea, but otherwise they were as alike to look upon as two peas in a pod. The sister who wore the colour of the sea found this displeasing. She was jealous, and could not bear her beauty to be matched by the beauty of another. So one day, when the tide was high, she invited her rival to see the view from the top of the headland called Cruelcliff, and pushed her over the edge, into the boiling sea.
‘But the sister who fell from Cruelcliff did not drown. The sea saw her beauty and her terror, and to save her life it changed her. It fused her legs into a tail, and webbed her hands, and opened gills in her smooth white neck. Her white-gold hair turned green as seaweed, and her blood chilled till it was like cool water in her veins. She swam away from the rocks and felt more freedom than she had ever felt on land, and as she swam the sea whispered to her with many voices, telling her many things.
‘The murdering sister saw what had happened, and was filled with fear. Not because she regretted what she had done, but because her victim still lived, and might one day come back to accuse her.
‘She picked up a killing stone and watched on the headland from one full moon till the next, still and rigid as one of the rocks on which she sat. But her sister did not return, and at last she put down the stone and went away.’
‘And she became the Blue Queen,’ Mimi burst out impulsively, as Tye paused for breath. ‘So she wasn’t always a queen! And the Tideseer wasn’t always – what she is now, either. I mean, the Artist didn’t paint them that way.’
‘The creations of the Artist’s brush were living things, not puppets,’ Tye said rather brusquely. ‘They had the ability to grow and change, and their feet were not fixed on one path or another. Do you want to hear the rest?’
‘Yes, please,’ Leo said quickly, glancing at Mimi to warn her not to interrupt again. ‘What did the Blue – the wicked twin – do then?’
‘Time passed, and she almost forgot that she had ever had a sister,’ Tye went on, her voice falling once again into the lilting rhythms of the story. ‘By sorcery she had remained as beautiful as she had ever been, and as the world grew beneath the Artist’s brush there was still no woman in Rondo to match her. But then, when she was in a different place, and was on the point of gaining the love of a king and the crown and castle she had always desired, she began to hear rumours of a being called the Tideseer who haunted Cruelcliff at low tide. This being, she heard, half-fish, half-human, was full of knowledge, and answered the questions of all seekers after truth.
‘Filled with dread, she went back to the place where she had first drawn breath. And there, in a shadowed sea cave filled with the sound of water, she found her sister waiting for her.’
Tye paused. Mimi made a small, breathless sound. Leo felt a cold tingling in his spine. ‘Go on, Tye!’ he urged.
Tye continued, staring into space as if the scene she was describing was hanging in the empty air in front of her like one of the Ancient One’s dreams.
‘The sisters no longer looked alike. The Tideseer’s face showed the marks left by the passing of the years. She was thin as bone, and pale as the belly of a fish. Her eyes had altered so she could no longer see on land. The glittering tail that swept her so effortlessly through the ocean had changed back to weak and slender land legs with the ebbing of the tide. But the murdering sister quailed, for she could see that the Tideseer knew her, and knew besides every cruel and wicked thing she had done since last they met, from the smallest to the greatest.
‘ “Do not dare betray me, or I will destroy you!” she cried, though she could feel the Tideseer’s power, and was well aware that she did not yet have the strength to carry out her threat.
‘The Tideseer’s smile was as cold as the thin sea blood that trickled through her veins. “It is not my business to betray you, any more than it is the business of the tide to knock down castles of sand built on the shore,” she answered. “It may happen, or then again it may not. The tide does not ebb and flow as it pleases, but must follow the patterns laid down for it. So I may collect knowledge, but I can give it only to those who ask for it. The right question must be asked of me before I can do you harm.”
‘ “No doubt you await that question eagerly!” the murdering sister spat in rage. “But it will never come. I will see to it that this place remains dangerous and desolate, the haunt of ogres, shunned by all but fishermen and fools. And you will grow older and uglier by the day.”
‘ “So will you, my sister,” the Tideseer replied. “In the eyes of truth, at least.”
‘The tide, by this time, was rising. The waves began to beat on the rocks of Cruelcliff, and the cave began to flood. The wicked sister was forced to escape to land or be drowned, and the Tideseer, her tail and sight renewed, swam back out to the welcoming sea.
‘Ever since that day, the sisters have lived like two sides of the same coin, aware of one another but never again meeting face to face. And it is said that when the voices of the sea tell her it is time, the Tideseer still comes to her cave in the Cruelcliff rocks, and waits for the seeker after truth who will ask her the one question she most desires to hear.’
Tye’s voice died away. And as the spell of the story was broken, Leo suddenly understood what was at the root of the sick feeling that clutched at him whenever the Tideseer came into his mind. It was the memory of the shadow that had crossed her face as each question was put to her.
We asked the wrong questions, he thought, stricken. The Tideseer was hoping we would ask her something else. We had our chance – a chance in a million. And we asked the wrong questions!
But what question had the Tideseer been hoping for? What?