Then he glimpsed Dirk and Sholto on the fringes of the crowd. Sholto was gripping Dirk’s shoulder for support. Dirk was holding something loosely in his good hand. It looked like a skimmer hook.
I am dreaming, Rye thought dazedly. He blinked, and when he looked again the crowd had shifted and his brothers were no longer in sight.
Rye, Jett is still coming!
Rye turned his eyes back to the pipeline. Jett was on his stomach, creeping up the steep slope like a caterpillar crawling up a branch. He looked up, saw Rye watching him, and grinned, showing his bloody gums and broken teeth.
‘Go back, Jett,’ Rye heard himself call. He glanced at Farr, but Farr was still rigid, staring straight ahead, apparently seeing nothing, hearing nothing.
Jett paused, clinging to the pipe, the wind whipping his tangled hair. Sweat was streaming down his face, making runnels in the dirt and dried blood.
‘Back?’ he snarled. ‘Oh, no, Keelin! I have worked too hard for this, planned too long, suffered too much. I am going to kill the enemy of Weld!’
He began climbing again.
‘He is mad,’ Sonia hissed. ‘He knows he cannot touch us!’
‘He may not know he cannot touch Farr,’ Rye muttered back. ‘Or he may not want to believe it.’
But I have to make him believe it, he thought. If he tries to attack us, he will surely overbalance and fall to his death. And Jett is a man of Weld. He is a Wall worker, like Dirk, Joliffe and Crell. He is someone’s brother, someone’s son.
‘You felt our power in the watchtower, Jett!’ he roared. ‘You cannot kill Farr while we protect him.’ As he spoke, he suddenly realised that he could not see Jett as clearly as he had before. He glanced up. The sky was orange, streaked with grey clouds. The sun was going down.
‘The light is going!’ he shouted. ‘Go back, Jett, before you fall!’
‘I will not fall.’ Again Jett looked up and grinned. ‘And you cannot make me fear sunset either, so do not try! I know as well as you do that there will be no skimmers abroad tonight. Tonight they were to be sent through the pipeline, and all that has been stopped. Ha! How Farr must be cursing you for losing your nerve and trying to escape!’
He had almost reached the head of the serpent, now. The only sounds were his labouring breaths, the scraping of his boots on the pipe, and the moaning of the wind. The shouts and cries from below had ceased. When Rye glanced down all he could see was a mass of upturned, spellbound faces.
‘We must get away from here, Rye,’ he heard Sonia say urgently. ‘We must take Farr into the Fell Zone, where Jett cannot follow.’
It was the last thing Rye wanted. If Farr woke from his strange trance and found himself in the forbidden forest, he would be certain that his captors were enemies. So would Janna, Petronelle, the three councillors and every other soul in Fell End except Dirk and Sholto.
‘So, it ends at last, Chieftain Farr!’
Jett’s voice was suddenly much louder. Rye’s heart gave a great thud and his head jerked up. More quickly than he had thought possible, Jett had finished his climb. Jett had hauled himself onto the flat section of pipe and was crouching there, panting, right in front of them.
The man was glaring at Farr, his eyes glittering, and at that moment Rye saw that Sonia had been right. Jett had lost touch with reality. His mind was fixed on one, simple idea—the idea that had obsessed him for so long. Kill Farr.
‘Why do you stare like a dolt, Farr?’ Jett sneered. ‘Have these traitors bewitched you? Or is it that you are shocked, great Farr, at being way up here, trussed up like a duck ready for the pot? Why, the cord is not even tied! You could kick it away easily, if you had the courage to move!’
The cord! For the first time, Rye noticed that Sonia’s cord belt was still tangled around Farr’s ankles.
See if you can distract Jett while I get the cord! he called to Sonia in his mind. I will try to throw it around him — take him by surprise—and pull him close without the danger of a struggle. Then he can share the power of the feather and will be safe, whatever happens.
Rye, you are dreaming! The cord will never hold him. He is mad, and he is very strong. We must leave him and flee into the Fell Zone. Now!
Sonia’s voice had an edge to it that Rye could not quite understand. It seemed almost like fear, yet why should Sonia be fearful?
If we fly he will leap after us, Sonia. He will fall! He will die!
The answer came instantly.
Then that will be his choice. We must go. We are not safe here. I feel it!
And now Rye could feel it too—or perhaps Sonia was at last letting fear flow from her mind into his.
Yet still he hesitated, while Jett jeered and Farr stared. He turned his head to look at the darkening trees of the Fell Zone. And so it was that he saw, rising above the distant treetops, a vast cloud of ragged, flapping wings hideously silhouetted against the grey sky.
‘But—’ Stupidly Rye looked down at the pipeline. It was the same as ever. Nothing about it had changed. The clear tubing still hung slack beneath it, coiling beside the barrier fence.
Jett screamed. It was a shrill, cracked sound, as if something within him had broken.
‘No!’ he shrieked, staring wildly at the swelling stain in the sky. ‘The skimmers were to come through the pipeline tonight, from the coast into Weld. That was the plan—I worked it all out! That must have been the plan! Farr is the enemy of Weld! I have always known it was Farr! It must be Farr!’
‘Plainly it is not,’ Rye said through stiff lips. ‘The skimmers are coming out of the Fell Zone, Jett! The nest is there. For Farr, the Fellan are the enemy. He has been planning to attack the Fellan, not the people of Weld. Almost certainly, he has no idea there is a city inside the Fell Zone peak.’
He wondered to hear his voice sounding so calm, so level. His mind was a seething confusion of shock, horror and a sudden, sour understanding of how ruthlessly he had been deceived and betrayed.
If skimmers roosted in the Fell Zone shade, it was because the guardians of the forest had permitted it. And that could mean only one thing: Farr was not in league with the Master, but the Fellan were.
Words Rye had read in the book now lying soaked and ruined inside his shirt flashed into his mind.
Of course the Fellan had resented the carving away of their forest home, little by little! Of course they had come to hate the impudent newcomers who had put fields and houses where trees had been before. And the city built by the Sorcerer Dann in the very centre of what remained must have been—must still be—an irritation beyond bearing. To the Fellan, Weld must seem like an ugly sore in the heart of their shrunken domain. But the hollow mountaintop had become human territory as surely as the coast had, and they could not touch it.
Rye looked down at the red bundle hanging from his belt. As he thought of the shining disc, the sign of the treaty that had at last been made, more lines from the book swam before his eyes.
How the Fellan must have regretted that treaty as time went on! But they were bound to it. So they had found a way around it.