As he walked jauntily down the track that meandered through fields of newly planted vines and tiny fruit trees, Merrin saw a small stone farmhouse. It was not far away, half hidden in a dip. He broke into a jog. A few minutes later he was walking into an overgrown yard surrounded by ramshackle sheds, deserted except for a few bedraggled chickens pecking at the dirt. Before him was the long, low farmhouse, the front door half open. Merrin walked up to the door and the smell of baking bread hit him like a sledgehammer.
Merrin’s stomach did something that felt like a double somersault—he had to have that bread. Taking care not to move the front door, which looked like it might have a nasty creak, he crept inside. He found himself in a long, dark room lit only by the glow of a fire from a stove at the far end. Merrin stopped and looked around. No one was there; he was sure of that. The baker of the bread obviously had other things to do, and while he or she was doing them Merrin would seize his chance.
Like a cat, Merrin padded silently across the earthen floor, past a large pile of hay and a stack of wooden boxes.
But—unlike a cat—he stepped on a chicken. With a great squawk the old blind hen rose into the air flapping her wings.
“Shh!” hissed Merrin desperately. “Shh, you stupid bird.” The old hen took no notice and careened off, crashing into a carefully stacked pile of poles ready for bean planting. The poles collapsed with the loudest clatter Merrin had ever heard, and footsteps came running.
A large, motherly looking woman appeared, silhouetted in a doorway across the room. Merrin ducked behind the stack of boxes. “Henny!” cried the woman, running a few feet away from Merrin. She tripped over the hen in the gloom and hurriedly scooped her up. “You silly chook. Come now, time for your breakfast, my sweetheart.”
Time for my
breakfast, you mean, thought Merrin, annoyed that a moth-eaten old hen should get picked up, offered breakfast and called sweetheart, while he skulked hungrily in the shadows. He was pretty sure that if the woman had tripped over him instead of the chicken, the result would not have been the same. He held his breath as the woman walked right past him with the hen. His dark gray eyes followed her progress until she had disappeared out the front door and into the sunlight.
Then, like a streak of black lightning, Merrin shot over to the stove, yanked his sleeves down over his hands, wrenched open the oven door and pulled out a great round loaf of bread.
“A…aah…aaaah!” Merrin gasped under his breath, hopping from foot to foot as the damp heat from the piping-hot bread quickly found its way through his sleeves. Juggling the loaf like a great hot potato, Merrin shot out of the nearest door, ran around the back of the farmhouse and found himself in the yard. His way was barred by a mass of chickens, which were being fed by the woman whose bread Merrin was still juggling. At the sound of the clucking and fussing among her hens, the woman looked up.
“Hey!” she shouted.
Merrin stopped, unsure what to do. Should he turn and run back into the farm, risking an encounter with the woman’s husband or some burly farmhand? Or should he go straight ahead and get out onto the open road?
“That’s my bread,” said the woman, advancing toward him.
Merrin looked down at the loaf as if surprised to see it. Then he made a decision and ran—straight for the chickens.
With much clucking and squawking the chickens scattered. Feathers flew as Merrin plowed through the flock, delivering a few well-aimed kicks as he fled.
In seconds he was out on the road and running fast. He glanced back once and saw the woman standing in the middle of the road shaking her fist at him. He knew he was safe. She was not coming after him.
What Merrin did not see, partly because it was daylight and Things do not show up well in bright light—but mainly because he was not expecting to see it—was the Thing. It flowed along the hedgerows some distance behind him, like a stream of dirty water.
Another thing that Merrin did not see as he jogged along, hugging the now pleasantly hot bread, was a brown rat sitting in the grass by the side of the road. But the rat saw Merrin well enough. Stanley, ex–Message Rat, ex–Secret Service Rat, had no intention of getting anywhere near Merrin, particularly near his right boot. But Stanley’s old Secret Service habits died hard and he was curious to know where Merrin was going. The boy was, in Stanley’s opinion, trouble.
Stanley had just spent a couple of weeks with Humphrey, his old Message Rat Service boss, who had fled the Castle some six months ago after the RatStranglers had formed. Although Humphrey was enjoying his retirement in an apple loft on a small cider farm and had no intention of returning, he had tried to persuade Stanley to start up the Message Rat Service again. Stanley had promised to think about it.
Stanley watched Merrin stop at a crossroads. The boy stared at the sign-stones for a few seconds and then jauntily set off in the direction of the Castle. The rat watched Merrin stride down the road. With people like that heading for the Castle, he thought, a Message Rat Service might well be needed. He made a pact with himself: he would follow Merrin and if the boy did indeed go to the Castle, Stanley would take Humphrey’s advice.
And so it was that two very different creatures followed Merrin as he made his way along the winding tracks that led through the Farmlands. Buoyed by his newfound freedom, Merrin made fast progress, and as night began to fall he saw the Castle in the distance. Weary now, he trudged past the last farm before the river. He looked longingly at the lit candles in the farmhouse windows and at a family sitting down to supper, but he kept going, following the track through a small wood. One sharp bend later Merrin suddenly found himself out of the trees and on the riverbank. Amazed, he threw himself down on the grass and stared. He had never seen anything like it in his life.
On the other side of the wide, slow river, a great wall of lights reared up into the night sky, casting their sparkling reflections in the dark waters of the river. Behind the lights the shadowy bulk of the Castle could be seen. Merrin knew there were thousands of people inside, each one belonging to one of the lights, all living their lives and going about their business without a thought for a boy sitting on the opposite bank. Suddenly Merrin felt very small and alone.
Merrin stared at the lights, resisting the urge to count them—he was much given to counting things—and soon his eyes began to pick out more details and make sense of the shapes behind them. He saw the high walls of The Ramblings, which seemed to stretch along the river for miles. And, in the silence of the riverbank, he heard the sound of chatter and laughter drifting across the water. He saw the deserted pontoons of the old docks and the outlines of a few rotting ships.
And then as he looked, eyes wide as an owl’s, Merrin picked out a ladder of lights that flickered purple and gold and reached impossibly high into the sky. At the top of the ladder was a golden pyramid, glowing with an eerie purple light and illuminating the underside of a bank of low-lying clouds.
A shiver ran through Merrin. He knew what that was—the Wizard Tower, a place where he had once spent an unhappy few months with his old master, DomDaniel. It was also, he thought with a sudden rush of anger, where that so-called Septimus Heap boy was right now, no doubt sitting by a warm fire, having supper and talking Wizard stuff and being listened to, as if what he said mattered. But not, thought Merrin, for very much longer. He ran his forefinger over the cold surface of the Two-Faced Ring that was wrapped—still a little too tightly—around his left thumb, and smiled.
Abruptly, Merrin jumped up from the damp grass and set off at top speed along the track. He knew that he would have to wait until dawn when the drawbridge was lowered to get into the Castle, and he needed somewhere to spend the night.
The track took him away from the riverbank and through some muddy fields bounded by high hedges. As he emerged from the last field Merrin saw the lights of the Grateful Turbot Tavern appear. In his pocket his hand closed around the bag of Simon’s secret stash of money that he had taken. Time, he thought, to spend some of my hard-earned cash.
Stanley watched Merrin push open the door to the tavern and walk into the warm, welcoming glow. There was no doubt about it; Merrin was headed for the Castle. The Grateful Turbot had a well-deserved reputation for being haunted. No one would choose to stay there unless they were waiting for the Castle drawbridge to be lowered the next morning.
As the rat scuttled off, the Thing
loped up to the tavern door. But it did not venture inside. It sank into a dark corner of the front porch and huddled up on one of the benches that ran along the side with its sack of bones to keep it company through the night. The Thing did not exactly wear a look of contentment on its haggard face, but it was not displeased. If anyone had ever thought to ask a Thing
what its idea of a fun night out would be—which strangely enough no one ever had—sitting outside a haunted tavern with a bag of Necromancer’s bones for company would probably have been at the top of the list.
5
THE GRATEFUL TURBOT
M errin did not know how
old he was. He was in fact nearing his thirteenth birthday, but the guarded expression in his eyes made him look much older. Recently he had grown tall, and with the confidence of his new independence, plus the knowledge that he had enough money for many days to come, he strode into the Grateful Turbot Tavern. Making his voice as gruff as possible, he ordered supper and asked for a room for the night.