What – what are you doing?’ Leo asked stupidly. The evidence was before his eyes, but he couldn’t take it in. His injured shoulder exploded in agony as Spoiler jerked him to his feet and pulled him away from the stream. They had almost reached the orchard when Mimi staggered out of the trees. She saw Leo, and her dazed face lit with relief.
‘Get away!’ Leo yelled. ‘He’s got the Key!’
Mimi’s face changed. Clumsily she tried to dodge as Spoiler reached for her, but she had no chance. Spoiler’s hand clamped on her upper arm, his fingers digging into her flesh so hard that she cried out in pain.
Spoiler strode into the orchard, hauling his prisoners with him as easily as if they were rag dolls. He was elated, breathing hard. His bloodshot eyes were glittering.
‘I knew you’d go straight for the Key as soon as things got bad enough,’ he crowed. ‘I was only afraid you’d get yourselves killed before you could lead me to it.’
‘You saw me get the Key out to make the rain in Flitter Wood!’ Mimi panted. ‘You saw me – through the hut window!’
Spoiler threw back his head and laughed. ‘Of course I did! But it only proved what I’d guessed already. I knew the Key hadn’t been destroyed. You all think I’m stupid, but I haven’t survived in this place so long by being stupid. I realised you still had the Key the minute I saw that boil on Misery Merk’s nose, and heard that you and the pig had been prisoners in the Tavern of No Return!’
Mimi gave a choked cry and he laughed again. ‘Couldn’t resist it, could you, you little spitfire?’ he jeered. ‘I thought it’d be you who’d go for the Key this time, too. But in the end it was old Leo who lost his head and did it. On his own! With a bad shoulder and a gammy leg. Without even looking behind him! What do you know about that?’
Leo couldn’t speak. The memory of the blind rage that had driven him so heedlessly to the Safe Place closed his throat.
‘Where are you taking us?’ Mimi asked dully.
‘Where do you think?’ Spoiler jeered. ‘She wants you two nearly as much as she wants the Key.’
‘You haven’t been working for the queen all along,’ Leo managed to say. ‘You couldn’t have been.’
‘Up till last night I was playing a lone hand,’ Spoiler told him grandly. ‘And even now I’m not working for anyone, thanks very much! While you thought I was asleep in that crummy bedroom I was talking to the fox through a hole in the wall, using him as a messenger to offer her majesty a partnership – same deal as before. And she jumped at it. After this, I’ll be set for life, and I deserve it. I’ve worked hard enough for it.’
‘I helped you escape from the dragon.’ Leo shook his head helplessly. ‘I saved you from the burning hut. I…’
‘And you expect me to be grateful?’ Spoiler sneered. ‘You helped me because you thought I was a pathetic, toothless tiger and it made you feel good to throw me some scraps. You’d have done the same for anyone. I don’t owe you a thing.’
The voice of the Tideseer whispered in Leo’s mind.
If faith is placed in debts repaid,
Faith will surely be betrayed…
‘I couldn’t believe my luck when it was you and those other buffoons who rescued me from that witch’s tower,’ Spoiler went on gleefully. ‘And after that I stuck to you like glue, because I wanted what I thought the girl had around her neck. It wasn’t till that ogre locked us up and nothing happened that I realised she must have stashed it away somewhere before you left. You fools nearly got me killed!’
He dragged them from the trees and stopped short, his eyes bulging.
The golden dragon was crouched at the bottom of the grassy slope. She had clearly just landed, for she was still folding her wings.
‘Greetings, Kin of Spark,’ she said soberly. ‘Greetings, Young Guardian. The crows are calling dread news to the wind. I came with a message for you, and just in time, perhaps. I see that the one who cannot be trusted has shown his true colours at last. ‘
She took a step towards Spoiler and bared her terrible fangs.
‘Let us pass, dragon,’ Spoiler spat, pulling Leo and Mimi so close to him that they could smell his hair oil and the rank sweat of his fear. ‘Touch me and your friends die with me!’ His fingers bit into Leo’s arm. ‘Tell her!’ he ordered.
‘Dragon, don’t try to hurt him,’ Leo heard himself croak. ‘He’s carrying dangerous magic – the most powerful magic there is. He can’t use it, but it could kill us all if it’s damaged. ‘
It is said that if the Key is destroyed, Rondo will be undone…
The dragon hesitated. She turned her head to look at Mimi, who nodded wordlessly.
Spoiler’s chest swelled. ‘Right, then,’ he gloated. ‘Now we understand each other.’ Gripping his captives tightly, he skirted the golden beast and made for the hill.
‘You can’t help us!’ Leo heard Mimi say as she passed by the dragon’s head. ‘Go back to your lair and be safe! Please!’
The dragon hissed a reply but Leo was on Spoiler’s other side, and couldn’t hear the words. He managed to glance back over his shoulder as Spoiler hustled him on. The dragon hadn’t moved. She was staring after them, her eyes hard as flat stones.
‘Oh, why doesn’t she go?’ groaned Mimi.
‘What did she say to you?’ Leo asked.
Mimi wiped her brimming eyes with the back of her hand. ‘She gave me a message, but it didn’t make any sense. I must have heard her wrong. It sounded like, “Tell Young Guardian that Saffron’s answer is India”. What can that possibly mean? Who’s Saffron?’
Leo shook his head. The words made no sense to him either.
Spoiler wasn’t listening. His whole attention was on the castle. He put his head down and ploughed up the hill, cursing his limping, stumbling prisoners. He was half-carrying them both by the time he reached the top and began forging through the smoke, kicking his way through the creatures milling in his path.
The Blue Queen was waiting on the drawbridge. As Spoiler panted up to her with Mimi and Leo, she smiled. Her sharpened face creased into a thousand lines, her bones showed white under her skin, and her eyes glowed deep in their shadowed sockets. For the first time, Leo could see her resemblance to the Tideseer.
‘So, George,’ she said sweetly, ‘did you enjoy the performance? I see it had the desired effect.’
‘Yes,’ said Spoiler. ‘The boy fell for it hook, line and sinker.’
The queen sighed. ‘It was a great strain, but you were right. It was the only way to make them reveal the Key – if indeed they had it.’ She touched her withered cheek and frowned. ‘The demonstration cost me dearly. I would have been most… displeased… if you had been deceiving me.’
‘I told Sly to tell you I’d seen the Key with my own eyes!’ Spoiler said aggressively. ‘I told him I’d get it if you put on a good show. I told him I was sure they were going to try something last night. I even told him where to find the dragon’s heart!’
‘Only when it suited you to do so!’ the queen snapped. ‘And if you had not stolen the heart from me in the first place –’ She caught her voice rising, controlled herself with an effort, and forced a smile. ‘But we must not bicker. All that is behind us now. You have done very well, George. And now, if I may…’
‘Be my guest,’ Spoiler grinned, and bowed.
The queen bent forward and plucked the ogre’s mirror from Leo’s belt. Staring fixedly at her haggard reflection, she stretched out her free hand and touched the pendant hanging around Spoiler’s neck. The sour lines, furrows and shadows faded from her face. Her skin firmed and cleared. Her eyes widened and brightened. When she lowered the mirror, she was as dazzlingly beautiful as she had ever been. Smiling in triumph, her fingers still resting on the pendant, she turned and looked down at the golden dragon still crouched at the bottom of the hill. The dragon stiffened. Her glittering scales clouded. Her golden eyes filmed. And in an instant she was nothing but a giant statue gleaming dully in the sunlight.
Mimi cried out and twisted helplessly in Spoiler’s grip. The queen nodded with satisfaction, turned her head again and stared at the willow trees surrounding Hal’s hut by the river. The willows burst into flames. The river began to boil.
‘Ah, how good that feels,’ she sighed, throwing down the mirror and smoothing her hair. ‘How I have missed that effortless power! Even the Great Potion would have been a poor substitute. Still, it would have pleased me to make it. What a pity I could not!’
She glanced at Leo and her smile broadened at the expression on his face.
‘But you did make it!’ Leo said blankly. ‘We saw –’
The queen laughed. ‘No, Leo,’ she cooed. ‘You saw a powerful burst of energy created by dragon’s heart alone. It was a great risk to take, but it was worth it. By taking George’s advice and using more power than I needed to smash the attack, I tricked you into running for the Key without thought or care.’ She was watching Leo avidly, revelling in his horror and confusion.
‘But – but why didn’t you make the Great Potion?’ Leo stammered, trying to take it in. ‘You had all the ingredients.’
‘No, I did not,’ the queen snapped, her smile vanishing. ‘The dragon’s heart came to me too late. From the moment I collected the dreams of the Ancient One they began fading, and yesterday at sunset the last of them turned to ash.’
She shot a venomous look at Spoiler. ‘As my friend George well knew,’ she added, ‘since I myself had told him often enough that the dreams of the Ancient One would survive seven sunsets at the most if they ever came into my hands.’
Leo’s last illusion died as he remembered Spoiler’s shrieks on the flying rug, his frantic counting on his fingers. Spoiler hadn’t been counting off the seven strengths, like Conker. Having at last remembered everything the queen had told him about the Great Potion, he had been trying to calculate how many sunsets had passed since she gained the Strix dreams, how many sunsets remained before the dreams would turn to ash.
‘George waited until he was quite sure the dream grains were dead before sending Sly to outline his scheme and tell me where to find the dragon’s heart,’ the queen went on. ‘He wished to offer me the use of the Key on his own terms, but if I had completed the Great Potion, all his plans would have come to nothing. If I were seven times more powerful, he would hardly have been in a position to bargain. George is not as great a fool as he looks.’
Spoiler tried to look outraged, but a smirk tweaked the corners of his mouth.
‘You, however, Leo, are far more of a fool than you look,’ the queen said spitefully. ‘The demonstration I gave you almost crippled me, and its dramatic effects – the transformations, for example – would not have lasted for more than an hour or two. How does it feel to know you betrayed the Key to me, and delivered Rondo into my hands, for nothing?’
‘Leo, the Tideseer’s prophecy!’ Mimi wailed. ‘She tried to tell us…’
Leo nodded. The first lines of the Tideseer’s verse, the lines they had so wrongly taken to mean that they should hurry on with the barrier plan, were burning in his mind.
With evil, truth cannot abide
But dies like weed left by the tide.
If treasured plans are long delayed,
Their chances of success will fade…
‘What is this?’ the queen snapped, her face darkening. She darted a look at Spoiler, who shrugged and looked uneasy.
‘We saw your sister, Blue Queen,’ Mimi said defiantly. ‘She tried to tell us that the Ancient One’s memories would fade in the presence of evil like yours. She tried to tell us that all we had to do was delay you, to stop the Great Potion being made.’
‘Shut your mouth!’ hissed the queen, and suddenly there was a flicker of fear in her eyes. ‘That odious sea creature is no sister of mine ! Do not speak of her!’
She rounded on Spoiler. ‘Why did you not inform me of this meeting? What else have you kept from me? What else did that loathsome, dragon-loving crone tell them?’
‘Nothing important,’ Spoiler said sulkily. ‘Don’t worry about it. She can only answer the questions you ask, can’t she? And they only asked her about dragon’s heart, and the Great Potion. She went out to sea after that. They didn’t get a second chance.’
Mimi drew a quick breath. Her eyes widened, and two bright spots of colour appeared on her tear-stained cheeks. ‘We did!’ she exclaimed. ‘Leo! The question! By the stream!’
Leo stared at her blankly.
‘The question you asked by the stream when we were putting away the Key!’ Mimi gabbled, the words tumbling over one another in her haste to get them out. ‘It was carried down to the sea and the Tideseer heard it! She sent the answer, Leo – sent the dragon with the answer!’
‘What is she talking about?’ the Blue Queen shrieked at Spoiler. ‘Did the golden beast speak to her?’
‘Oh, it hissed something or other as she passed it,’ Spoiler mumbled. ‘I didn’t pay attention.’
‘Leo, that’s who Saffron is!’ Mimi cried. ‘Don’t you see? The name was part of the message! The dragon said, “Saffron says the answer is –” ‘
With a cry of rage, the queen touched the pendant. Mimi’s voice broke off. She threw up her hands, her face a mask of shock. Then suddenly Mimi wasn’t there any more and a small, fluffy, mustard-coloured dog stood in her place, yapping and growling.
Spoiler hooted with laughter.
The queen laughed with him, though she was breathing hard, as if she had been running. She flicked her fingers and the next moment the little dog was muzzled, and chained to the drawbridge. ‘There,’ she said, her voice trembling slightly. ‘That will stop your tongue, Mimi Langlander! Perhaps you thought you were safe from me. But I have use of the Key now, and your protective spells are undone. Now Mutt has a twin, Leo, do you see? As like as two peas in a pod, are they not?’
There was a roaring in Leo’s ears. He no longer felt the pain in his shoulder as he struggled against Spoiler’s iron grip. ‘Change her back, witch!’ he heard himself yelling. ‘Change her back! What are you scared of? Your sister? The sister you tried to murder? The sister who knows everything about you?’
The moment the words left his lips, he regretted them. But it was too late. The queen’s lips drew back from her teeth in a snarl of fury. Her eyes flashed and she raised a quivering hand. Leo waited for the end he knew must come, cursing himself for enraging her when he should have been keeping quiet, acting scared and thinking, thinking…
‘No!’ Spoiler yelled. ‘Stop!’
Leo’s heart gave a tiny flutter of hope as the queen hesitated. If Spoiler felt he owed Leo something after all, and had decided to protect him, there was still a chance! The Tideseer’s message…
He cast his mind back to that moment by the stream and tried to remember exactly what he’d said. First he had stated a fact – the farmhouse was the meeting place for the Seven and their witnesses. Then, without realising what he was doing, he had asked a question.
I wonder what the Tideseer would have told us, if we’d asked the question she’s been waiting for?
And, according to Mimi, the reply was: Saffron says the answer is India. It still doesn’t make sense, Leo thought desperately. What’s India got to do with anything? Mimi must have heard wrongly, like she said.
Then he remembered Mimi’s face just before the queen had transformed her, cutting off whatever she had been going to say. Mimi had been excited! She had seemed to think…
He suddenly realised that Spoiler was speaking again, and as he focused on the words he wondered bitterly when he was going to stop believing the best of people – when he was going to learn!
‘… those boots he’s wearing are worth money,’ Spoiler was saying. ‘They’re mine by rights, and I don’t want them burned to a crisp. Wait till I get them off him.’
He bent and pulled the furry boots from Leo’s feet. He kicked off his tight shoes and pushed his feet into the boots with a satisfied smile.
‘You never change, George,’ the queen said dryly. ‘It is reassuring. But I am glad you stopped me. The girl may have been a danger, but the boy clearly knows nothing. Why put him out of his misery quickly? It will be far more amusing to keep him alive and in his senses – for a time at least. I will enjoy seeing him watch all his friends brought low, knowing that it is by his doing.’
Casually she waved her hand around the hill top. The last of the smoke floated back into the castle. The golden cage vanished, leaving Hal and the others huddled together on the grass. Witches and wizards crawled where white goats had bleated before. The milling crowd of toads, squirrels and swans disappeared as all the witnesses were returned to their normal forms.
Leo saw Wizard Wurzle staggering to his feet. He saw Jim on his hands and knees, shaking his head, trying to clear it, and Simon sitting up, clasping Moult to his chest. Hal, Tye, Conker, Freda and Bertha were staring at the queen, at Spoiler, at Leo and the little dog chained to the drawbridge, their faces blank with shock.
‘Run!’ Leo shouted. ‘Get away! Hal, get everyone away! Spoiler’s got the Key!’
‘Would you care for a little entertainment, George?’ the queen purred, and as Spoiler shrugged she touched the pendant once more and looked behind her.