Oh, great!” moaned Bodkin, in an agony of agitation. “Now EVERYBODY’S here! We’re never going to get Wish away at this rate!”
It appeared that Bodkin was right.
Down in the chamber below, the dark frozen shape of the Kingwitch was twitching, rocking, twitching, rocking, as if it were going to unfreeze any second.
But the humans up above were too concerned with their own problems to worry about him.
The words were hardly out of Queen Sychorax’s mouth than one of the Magic-hunters threw a net woven entirely out of iron wires around Encanzo. Encanzo’s Magic blazed out uselessly as the net tightened around him, and the Witchsmeller stepped forward and placed iron manacles around his arms.
As soon as the iron touched Encanzo, Xar was released from the spell that held him, and he dropped heavily to the ground.
It all happened so quickly, no one had time to blink.
“Do not move! We have captured your leader, and one move, one attempt at a spell, and we will kill him!” cried the Witchsmeller.
“Ambushed!” swore the Drood Commander, cursing under his breath. “I knew that boy would lead us all into a trap! He should be locked underground forever, and we should throw away the key!”
All around the circle the Magic things crouched low, growling, the sprites burned bright with alarm and fear, the Rogrebreaths and giants grumbled deep in their great chests, but they dared not attack when their leader was immobilized and at the Warriors’ mercy.
Queen Sychorax’s Warriors trooped into the broken castle. The moonlight glistened off their iron helmets, their bristling weaponry, their Magic-catching equipment. Some were riding horses, others giant gray wolves.
“Forest destroyers!” hissed the Wizards.
“Wicked Magic-users! Followers of Witches!” shouted the Warriors.
“Well-poisoners!”
“Child-stealers!”
Encanzo was incandescent with annoyance to find himself overpowered and in chains so easily, and his expression became even more furious when he clapped eyes on Queen Sychorax. She was looking more beautiful and splendid than ever, in the manner of a particularly spectacular polar ice cap.
But her eyes were bleaker than midwinter frost.
And great thunderclouds steamed off Encanzo’s head, dark with electric fury.
So the atmosphere was… How can I describe it?
Tense.
Imagine the foreboding crackle in the air and the spine-jingling fizz in the ground below you if you just so happened to be standing on the edge of a volcano about to erupt, and then multiply that feeling by about twenty, and you will have an impression of what it might have been like on that ill-starred moonlit night when Queen Sychorax met King Encanzo on the heights of Castle Death.