Emily Rodda - The Third Door

He quailed as the Fellan turned on him, contempt in their green eyes. Their voices hissed in his mind.

You insult us, Rye of Weld! Lies and empty threats are for humans, not for the Fellan. The sorcerer Malverlain will never return to claim Dorne. Never, while we live!

‘But—but he has invaded!’ Rye stammered. ‘Beyond the silver Door. I saw—we saw—’

The green eyes flashed. To his amazement, Rye saw in them what looked like shock and fear. The air of the clearing seemed to blur. Then the Fellan were gone.

Rye could not think. His mind felt numb. Sonia was struggling to stand upright and Farr was striding towards him, but he could not move. Screams of terror had begun rising from below. Farr’s face seemed to swirl before him in a mist. The chieftain’s lips were moving, but it seemed to take a long time before the words came to Rye’s ears.

‘Take me out of here, I tell you!’ Farr barked, seizing his arm and shaking it. ‘I must see—I must know …’

Rye looked down at his hand. He was still clutching the red feather. He remembered floating above the treetops as the sun rose, only minutes ago. He remembered what he had seen. Instantly his mind recoiled, taking refuge in numbness once more.

Rye! Do as he says!

Sonia’s silent cry filtered through the muffling wall that seemed to have enclosed Rye’s mind. He forced himself to respond.

‘Only if you agree to have your hands tied,’ he said to Farr, his voice sounding to his own ears like the voice of a stranger. ‘You are not to be trusted.’

Without a word, Farr held out his hands, wrists together.

Rye glanced at Sonia. She hesitated for an instant, then pulled the piece of cord from her waist and looped it around the man’s wrists. He stiffened and his eyes went blank.

‘Stop pretending, Farr!’ Rye snapped. ‘That trick will not work a second time.’

‘He is not pretending,’ Sonia said quietly. ‘Do you not see, Rye? It is the cord.’

As Rye swung round to her, she shrugged. ‘I found it long ago, hidden away in an old cupboard in the Keep tower,’ she murmured. ‘I—liked it, though I did not know why, and I have kept it by me ever since. I—I think now that it is made of Fellan hair. It does not affect me, but for people with no Fellan blood, like Farr, it must be different. It—it stills them.’

Rye shook his head in disbelief. If only they had known the cord’s power before!

‘Like the powers in the bag,’ Sonia said, touching her pocket where the damaged bag lay hidden. ‘We had to work them out one by one. And we still do not know what the ninth power is, or what the honey sweet can—’

She froze as the terrible sounds from below suddenly grew louder. Quickly Rye slipped his arm through Farr’s, pulled the hood over his head and raised the feather. He felt Sonia’s magic rush into his fingertips. And the next instant he was opening his eyes on a nightmare.

At first he almost believed he was back in the Diggings. The ground was flooded in weird yellow light. Grey cloud blanketed the sky. Whips cracked and flames leaped. Groans and screams filled the air. Great carts pulled by teams of grunting hogs laboured over seared earth. Everywhere there were helmeted figures dressed in grey.

But as the smoke swirled, clearing in patches only to close in again, Rye came to his senses. Of course this was not the Diggings. It was the Fell Zone, burning.

He, Sonia and Farr were standing behind a scorched tree, halfway up the burned black track that the troops with flamers had already created in their march uphill. It was smoke that was muffling the sky. The figures were not grey guards but Farr’s troops, their protective suits heavily filmed with ash. The carts were not laden with broken rocks, but piled high with barrels. And the screams were not the cries of tormented slaves but the terrible sounds of soldiers dying hideously beneath the teeth and claws of enraged Fell dragons that sprang hissing from the trees.

Rye turned his face away. He could not look. ‘Untie the cord, Sonia!’ he shouted, his voice breaking. ‘Free Farr, so he can call his troops back!’

‘He will not call them back,’ Sonia said, barely moving her lips. ‘He knows they can win.’

And when Rye made himself look again at the terrible scene, he saw that it was so. Farr’s troops were dying, but Fell dragons were dying too, as soldiers sprang to defend their fallen comrades. Savage as the giant lizards were, they could not stand forever against swords, arrows, spears and flame.

Tails lashing in fury, the beasts lunged at their attackers, killing and maiming wherever they could. But the soldiers were too many. Their weapons were too strong. Their rage made them fearless.

His throat aching, his eyes stinging, Rye saw lizard after lizard crash to the scorched ground, its jaws still dripping with the blood of its last victim. With every creature’s death a great wave of Fellan pain burst into his mind, crashing against the bitter tide of triumph streaming from the soldiers who had avenged their friends.

And as Farr had predicted the attack did not falter, for every soldier who fell was instantly replaced by another. Shoulder to shoulder, their helmeted heads bent against the wind, the troops with flame weapons were moving doggedly upward, setting fire to everything in their path. Behind them, on the broad black strip that now climbed from the broken barrier like a ragged, smoking road, the dead and injured were being lifted onto stretchers and carried away. The carts trundled on, veering left and right to avoid the scorched trees and the bodies of the slaughtered dragons, the hogs squealing and showing the whites of their eyes at the scent of blood.

Yet no figure with flashing green eyes and hair like flame flew to stop the army’s advance with a flick of a hand. No soldier fell by magic or froze as if bewitched. The ground fire burned unchecked, rising higher and higher up the hill. The carts rolled on without hindrance. And slowly Rye understood that this was because the Fellan were nowhere near. The Fellan had retreated, as if repelled by some force they could not fight.

The carts.

Rye turned to Sonia as her message came to him. She nodded slightly, her eyes dull.

A great gust of wind howled around them, almost lifting them off their feet. The Fellan could not approach the track, perhaps, but they had the wind at their command, and the wind was fearful. It was screaming like a live thing, raging through the treetops, filling the air with choking smoke and ash, sending flaming twigs and embers flying back towards Fell End. The Fellan were turning Farr’s own weapon against him.

And suddenly, despite what she had said, Sonia was fumbling with the cord looped around Farr’s wrists and pulling it away.

‘Stop the attack!’ she cried to Farr, who blinked at her, dazed, as if he had just woken from a deep sleep. ‘Do you not see what is happening? Fell End will burn! Everyone will die! Your wife! Your people! Rye’s—’ Her voice broke off in a choking sob.

Rye’s brothers …

Dirk. Sholto. Stiffly Rye turned his head, looked down at the town. People with scarves tied over their mouths and noses packed the riverbank. They were passing water-filled buckets from hand to hand, quenching flying sparks and embers as they fell, drenching the ground, the dock, the houses, in preparation for what might come.

‘Fell End will survive,’ Farr muttered, though Rye could feel his fear. ‘The first stage is almost complete. Any moment now …’

And as he spoke, a vast crashing and clattering began. The leading carts had stopped and begun shedding their loads. Soldiers were pushing the barrels over the sides. The barrels were thudding onto the blackened ground, bursting open so that their contents spilled and scattered.