‘No!’ Rye said shortly. ‘Farr is the elected heir of that ancient chieftain who persuaded the Fellan to make their vow. The disc is his affair.’
‘It is no more his affair than it is ours!’ Sonia snapped. ‘What is this obsession with Farr, Rye? He is nothing to you! You are a citizen of Weld!’
‘You are a fine one to talk of that!’ Rye muttered, backing out of the alcove with the gold casket in his hands. But as he and Sonia picked their way out of the maze of passages, following the trail of blue pebbles she had dropped during her lonely wanderings in search of him, he began to feel more and more uncomfortable.
In truth, his escape through the wooden Door, his time at Fell End, his days and nights spent as Keelin in the chieftain’s lodge, had changed him even more than his other two journeys beyond the Wall had done. In truth, there was a part of him that no longer felt like a citizen of Weld, the home of his childhood, but like a citizen of Dorne. And in truth, Farr seemed more deserving of his loyalty than the Warden of Weld had ever done.
In silence, he and Sonia crawled from the underground into the waning light of evening. With a jolt of panic Rye looked at the sky, then remembered there was no need to fear. The skimmers did not come to the city. They were only a problem inland.
The sea breezes tossed Sonia’s hair into wild tangles. Rocks loomed around them, some solid, some hollow as chimneys and chattering with the clinks that had gnawed out their centres. Rye took a great breath of salty air and was filled with an overwhelming sense of relief.
‘I would never have escaped that place without you, Sonia,’ he said. ‘Thank you.’
‘I am sure you would do the same for me,’ Sonia answered stiffly. Then she glanced at him sideways and her lips tweaked into a rueful smile. ‘I know you would do the same for me,’ she added. ‘So what choice did I have?’
She glanced at the little casket clutched in his hand and with a sigh pulled the red scarf from her neck.
‘Here,’ she said, giving the scarf to Rye. ‘Use this to carry that wretched thing. It would be best to keep it hidden for now.’
The scarf was a peace offering, Rye knew. He took it gratefully, knotted both the casket and the book from his pocket into it, and tied the small bundle firmly to his belt.
As they clambered down to the road below, they saw that people were still working in the ruins of the museum. Carryl’s precious exhibits were being thrown onto the rubbish carts along with everything else.
‘Rye, put on the hood,’ Sonia whispered, shrinking back. ‘It would be better if they did not see me.’
Rye wanted to tell her that the workers would not trouble her once they knew she was a friend of his, but decided not to risk another argument over something so small. He pulled the hood of concealment over his head and took her arm.
‘We should pack up for the night, Nils,’ he heard one worker say to another. ‘It’s pointless going on.’
‘It was always pointless,’ his companion growled. ‘We were never going to find that Keelin. He’s one of them, all right—set the explosion, then spirited himself away.’
Rye froze where he stood.
‘Zak said Keelin saved him and old Carryl’s grandson,’ the first man muttered.
Nils made a disgusted sound. ‘The boy was so shocked he wouldn’t know what happened. Probably mixed this up with that false rescue at Fell End.’
The first man frowned. ‘The scar-faced guard said he saw a raggedy girl hanging round just before the blast went off. Other people saw her too, afterwards. Green eyes, they said.’
The two men looked at each other meaningfully.
‘They were in it together, you mark my words,’ Nils growled. ‘Filthy spies! And old Carryl dead! The end of an era! Still, one good thing’s come out of it. Farr’s had enough. He’s given the order at last. The army’s on the move. And he rode out himself this morning, they say, as soon as he knew his lady was out of danger. By now, he’ll be in Riverside.’
13 - The Barge
Invisible beneath the hood, Rye and Sonia slipped through the darkening city. The main roads were thronged with people and crowded with heavily loaded carts. There was a hum of excitement in the air. Sellers of food and drink were doing a roaring trade, and fiddlers, pipers and accordion players were making music on every corner.
The windows of the chieftain’s lodge were dark. The building looked deserted, but hundreds of people had gathered outside it all the same, many waving small flags striped in red and yellow.
‘You would think it was a festival instead of a war,’ Sonia whispered.
Rye nodded grimly. He was watching two daring children knocking on the door of the lodge. They had been playing this game for some time, but the door had remained firmly closed.
Plainly the scraps of gossip he had overheard were true. After the explosion at the museum, Farr was taking no risks. His lodge was an obvious target, so it had been locked and abandoned. Janna, Zak and Petronelle had been sent to a secret place of shelter. Guards, councillors and servants had gone with Farr or returned to their family homes.
It had been a relief to find out that Janna had recovered enough to be moved. But now she was out of Rye’s reach. So were Petronelle and Zak. There was no one else he could trust to believe in him, to help him reach Farr quickly and easily.
‘We will have to make our own way to Farr as best we can,’ he said to Sonia, as they turned down a side street to avoid the crowd. ‘How far away is Riverside? The barge stopped there, but my memory of that time is very hazy.’
Sonia stopped by a closed shop and with the tip of her finger drew in the dust filming the window.
‘Say this is the river,’ Sonia said, pointing to the wavy line she had drawn. ‘Here is the sea, where we are, at the beginning of the line, and here are Fell End and the Fell Zone at the end. Riverside is roughly halfway between the two—here.’ She pressed her finger to the spot marked ‘R’ in her sketch.
‘But why would Farr’s army mass there, such a long way upriver?’ Rye exclaimed.
‘Why not?’ Sonia shrugged. ‘We do not know where the Harbour is from here, Rye, and we have no idea what Farr’s plan of attack is, either. The famous pipeline passes Riverside—I saw it with my own eyes as I came here. It follows the river all the way to the sea like a great silver snake on stilts.’
Rye frowned in puzzlement. If the pipeline was to supply drinking water for troops, why did it run to the city? It did not make sense.
He shook his head, trying to clear it. The shadows were closing in again. His memories were still very patchy. The most frustrating gap of all was the blank space just before the beast attacked Zak at Fell End. Rye knew that for some reason those moments were important, but he simply could not recall them.
‘You will find Farr in Riverside, Rye, I am sure,’ he heard Sonia say lightly. ‘And Sholto and Dirk too, perhaps. You told me that the Fell End wounded were left there.’
Rye’s head throbbed. Sonia’s voice had been too casual. She wanted to find Dirk and Sholto far more urgently than she was admitting.
Sholto in particular, no doubt, Rye thought. But he said nothing, and in silence moved on with Sonia to the outskirts of the city and the place where the river met the sea.
Hours later, Rye was huddled in a sheltered corner of a loaded barge, weak as a baby goat and seething with frustration. His hopes of starting for Riverside without delay had come to nothing. By the time he and Sonia had reached the river docks they had both known that he, at least, could go no further without rest. The powers of the ring and the feather could not help him. He simply did not have the strength to run, fly or even walk. He did not have the strength to do anything but creep into this dim hiding place with Sonia and wait for the barge to carry them upriver.