He barked a harsh laugh. ’So now. If I snap my fingers do gold coins tumble from them? If I point at a man does he fall dead?’ Before anyone could answer he had tried it, turning and jabbing his forefinger at one of the bulky men behind him.
The thug’s face went white. ‘Why me, chief?’
‘Scared, Mart?’
‘I just don’t like it, that’s all.’
‘More fool you .’ Thar swung back and stared at Rix contemptuously. ‘I’ve seen better props under a waggon wheel. You must be some showman to make anyone believe in this junky Rix nodded. ‘So I am. The greatest showman in Incarceron.’ He raised his hand. lnstantly, Thar’s scorn flicked off; he glanced down at his gloved fingers.
Then he howled in agony.
Attia jumped. The echo of the cry rang in the tunnel; the Winglord was yelping and clutching the glove. ‘Get it off me!
It’s burning me!’
‘How very unfortunate,’ Rix murmured.
Thar’s face was red with fury. ‘Kill him,’ he roared.
His men moved but Rix said, ‘Do that and you’ll never get it off.’ He folded his arms, his thin face unmoved. If it was a performance, Attia thought, it was masterly. Slowly, so no one noticed, she slipped over into the driver’s seat.
Thar was swearing, tearing desperately at the Glove.
‘Acid! It’s eating into my skin!’
‘If you will misuse the things of Sapphique, what can you expect?’ There was an edge in Rix’s voice that made Attia glance at him. The gap-toothed grin was gone; he had that hard look of obsession that had alarmed her before. Behind her the juggler, Quintus, made a nervous click with his tongue.
‘Kill the others then!’ Thar was gasping now.
‘No one will be hurt.’ Rix fixed the gang with a level stare.
‘You will allow us to pass, right out of the Dice hills, and then I take the spell off. Any treachery; and the anger of Sapphique will burn him for all eternity.’ Their eyes flickered at each other.
‘Do it,’ Thar howled.
It was a moment of danger. Attia knew that everything depended on the fear the Bandits had of their leader. If one of them ignored him or killed him or took command, Rix was finished. But they looked cowed, and uneasy. First one, then the rest, shuffled back.
Rix jerked his head.
‘Move,’ Quintus hissed.
Attia grabbed the reins.
‘Wait!’ Thar screamed. His gloved fingers twitched, as if electric sparks were jerking through them. ‘Stop it. Stop it doing that.’
‘I’m not making it do anything,’ Rix said, interested.
The black fingers clutched, convulsed. The halfman lurched forward, snatched a brush from the bucket of gilt paint hanging under the waggon. Gold drips splatted the tunnel floor.
‘What now?’ Quintus muttered.
Thar staggered to the wall. With a huge splashing movement, his gloved hand drew five shining letters on the curved metal.
ATTIA.
Everyone stared in astonishment. Rix looked at her. Then he swung to Thar. ‘What are you doing?’
‘I’m not doing it!’ The man was almost choking with terror and fury. ‘The filthy glove is alive!’
‘You can write?’
‘Of course I can’t write. I don’t know what it says!’ Attia was breathless with awe. She scrambled down from the waggon and ran to the wall. The letters dripped and ran, long spindly streaks of gold.
‘What?’ she gasped. ‘What next?’ With a jerk, as if it dragged him, Thar’s hand whipped the brush up and wrote.
THE STARS EXIST, ATTIA. FiNN SEES THEM.
‘Finn,’ she breathed.
SOON, SO WILL I. BEYOND SNOW AND STORM.
Something brushed her skin. She caught it; a small, soft object, it drifted down from the dark roof.
A blue feather.
And then they were falling all around, soft as laughter, a snow of tiny blue feathers, each identical, falling on the waggons and the warband and the road, a muffling, impossible storm, feathers hissing and crackling in the flames, snuffled away and trampled by the oxen, falling in eyes and on shoulders, on the canvas roofs, on the blades of axes, sticking in the clots of paint.
‘The Prison is doing this!’ Rix’s voice was a whisper of awe.
He caught her arm. ‘Quickly. Before—’ But it was too late.
With a roar the tempest came out of the dark and flattened him against her; she staggered, but he hauled her up. The wrath of Incarceron raged; a scream of hurricane that scoured the tunnel and smashed down the gates. The warband were scattered; as Rix dragged Attia away she saw how Thar crumpled, how the black glove shrivelled and split on his hand, dissolving to a network of holes, skeins of raw, bloody skin.
Then she was scrambling aboard; Rix yelled and whipped at the oxen and they were moving, rumbling on blindly through the blizzard. Attia covered her head with her arms as the feathers gusted at her, and above them she saw the thrown spheres of the jugglers light the eerie storm with green and red and purple.
It was hard going. The oxen were tough, but even they staggered with the force of the wind, putting their heads down and plodding on. Beside her, Attia heard a faint, windsnatched hysteria; glancing up she saw that Rix was laughing softly to himself, blue feathers snagged in his hair and clothes.
It was too hard to talk, but Attia managed a look back.
There was no sign of the Bandits. After twenty minutes the tunnel became lighter; the wagon came round a long bend and she saw light ahead, a jagged entrance through the feather—storm.
As they plodded towards it the storm died, as suddenly as it had come.
Slowly, Attia took her arms down and drew breath. At the tunnel entrance Rix said, ‘Anyone following?’ She tried to see. ‘No. Quintus and his brothers are at the back.’
‘Excellent. A few stunballs will stop pursuit.’ Her ears stung from the icy wind. Huddling her coat around her she picked feathers from her sleeves, spat out blue fluff. Then she said, appalled, ‘The Glove was destroyed!’ He shrugged. ‘What a pity.’ The deadpan words, the smug grin made her stare. Then she looked past him at the landscape.
It was a frozen world.
Below them the road ran down between great banks of ice, head high, and she could see that this whole Wing was an open tundra, abandoned and windswept, stretching far into the gloom of the Prison. There was a great moat blocking their way, with a bridge fortified with a portcullis of black metal worn thin by the abrasions of sleet. An entrance had been jaggedly cut through it; the ends of steel bars bent back.
Oily slush showed where traffic had passed, but to Attia the sudden cold seared like fear.
‘I’ve heard of this place she whispered. ‘This is the Ice Wing.’
‘How clever of you, sweetkin. So it is: As the oxen slipped and clattered down the slope she was silent. Then she said, ‘So it wasn’t the real Glove?’ Rix spat to one side. ‘Attia, if he’d opened any box or hidden compartment on this waggon he’d have found a glove. A small black glove. I never said it was Sapphique’s.
None of them are, in fact. Sapphique’s Glove is too close to my heart to be stolen.’
‘But . . . it burned him.’
‘Well, he was right about the acid. As for not being able to take it off, he was perfectly able to. But I made him believe he could not. That is magic, Attia. To take a man’s mind and twist it to believe the impossible.’ For a moment he concentrated on guiding the ox round a jutting girder. ‘Once he had let us go he would have believed the spell to be ended’ She watched him sideways. ‘And the writing?’ Rix’s eyes slid to hers. ‘I was going to ask you about that.’
‘Me?’
‘Even I can’t make an illiterate man write. The message was for you. Odd things have been happening, Attia, since we met you.’ She realized she was biting her nails. She wrapped her hands hastily in her sleeves. ‘It’s Finn. It must be Finn. He’s trying to speak to me. From Outside.’ Rix’s voice was quiet. ‘And you think the Glove will help?’