Dedication

  For Hannah-Grace Strover, with love

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter 1:The Cards

  Chapter 2:The Pokkle

  Chapter 3:The Naming

  Chapter 4:A Knock upon the Door

  Chapter 5:The Drop

  Chapter 6:Junior Sentinel

  Chapter 7:The Goat Path

  Chapter 8:The Hawke

  Chapter 9:I Spy

  Chapter 10:Hagos RavenStarr

  Chapter 11:Gone to Ground

  Chapter 12:Snake on the Rocks

  Chapter 13:Santa Pesca

  Chapter 14:Merry the Wherry

  Chapter 15:In the Roundhouse

  Chapter 16:The Gray Walker

  Chapter 17:Broom and Bucket

  Chapter 18:Francina

  Chapter 19:Hauntings

  Chapter 20:The Luma Twist

  Chapter 21:Lemons

  Chapter 22:Parrot’s Cage

  Chapter 23:Tracks

  Chapter 24:Twilight Terrors

  Chapter 25:Wraith Attack

  Chapter 26:Table Talk

  Chapter 27:Orphan Out

  Chapter 28:Hello and Goodbye

  Chapter 29:Dare

  Chapter 30:An Empty Pocket

  Chapter 31:Home Truths

  Chapter 32:Blue Bubble

  Chapter 33:On Lemon Dock

  Chapter 34:The Thirteen Titans

  Chapter 35:A Net of Xin

  Chapter 36:A Seeker of Truth

  Chapter 37:Zerra Dark

  Chapter 38:A Knit Octopus

  Chapter 39:Seekers and Finders

  Chapter 40:At the Oracle Chamber

  Chapter 41:Quarry

  Chapter 42:Alex RavenStarr

  About the Author

  Books by Angie Sage

  Back Ads

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Prologue

  IT IS FIVE MINUTES TO midnight. The last train from the fortress city of Rekadom is full to bursting with Enchanters, Sorcerers, Beguilers and their families, and yet still people are desperately trying to squeeze into its one ramshackle carriage.

  In the middle of the crush on the platform is the king’s Enchanter, Hagos RavenStarr. He is carrying his baby daughter, and with his wife, Pearl, he too is trying to board the train. They are almost there when a sudden shout rings out from a guard of the city gate: “Hagos RavenStarr! Pearl RavenStarr! Halt! By order of King Belamus the Great!”

  Silence falls. Hurriedly, Hagos takes out a small blue leather wallet. Desperate to keep its contents from the clutches of the king, he pushes the wallet deep into the pocket of his daughter’s little woolly jacket, telling her, “Poppa will come and find you, sweetheart. I promise.” Then he says to his wife, Pearl, “We must give her to someone on the train. It is for the best.”

  Pearl knows this is true. The previous night, which they spent freezing in a dark dungeon surrounded by rats, terrified their little girl, and Pearl was never going to let that happen to her again.

  As two guards grab hold of Hagos, he thrusts his daughter out of harm’s way. “Poppa!” She screams out the only word she knows. “Poppa!” But all she sees are her father’s hands pushing her away as her mother grabs her from behind and swings her around toward an open window of the carriage, where a woman with two little girls of her own is leaning out.

  With tears streaming down her face, Pearl pushes her daughter into the woman’s arms, crying out her own language from beyond the Blue Mountains, “Haah-lecks! Haah-lecks!” which means: “Take her! Take her!”

  The woman looks down in shock at the protesting bundle she has suddenly acquired. “No!” she yells. “No!” But Pearl is already being dragged away by the guards.

  The train whistle blows; clouds of soot-smelling steam envelop the carriage and cries of farewell ring in the air. As Hagos and Pearl are marched back through the iron gates of the city, the last train from Rekadom begins to move. Their daughter wails in despair and then bites the arm that holds her.

  It is not a good start.

  Ten years later . . .

  Chapter 1

  The Cards

  “MONSTER,” ALEX SAID, HER FINGERS fluttering like bird wings above a shimmering hexagon that lay on the dusty ground. Alex, skinny and small for her age, with dark sparkling eyes and a mass of thick black curls held back by a twist of green cloth, was crouching behind a low wall that ran around the edge of the busy marketplace in the cliff-top town of Luma. She was hidden from view behind a friendly seller of spices—a large woman wrapped in a bright yellow jacket and wide pink skirts, who was happy to warn Alex of any unwanted attention from the Sentinels in return for a free reading of her cards, which were always uncannily accurate.

  A boy, tall with spikily cropped brown hair and an intent expression, was kneeling beside Alex. He was watching the hexagon with a look of wonder—he had never seen anything like it before. “What do you mean, monster?” he asked, feeling a little cheated.

  Alex shrugged as she snapped her fingers and the shimmer died away to reveal not one hexagon but seven tiny ones just big enough to sit in her palm. They lay in the dust, wafer-thin tiles of magical mother-of-pearl, each shimmering with a different color that wandered across its surface like oil on water. Alex scooped up the seven hexagons and tidied them efficiently into a slim stack in her hand. “I saw something huge—a monster, I guess—in a cave, with people. I suppose it was going to eat them or something.”

  “Eat them?” The boy looked horrified.

  Alex shrugged. “Why else would a monster have people in its cave?”

  The boy relaxed. “So you didn’t actually see the monster eating the people?”

  Alex shook her head. “No, I didn’t. I must go now. I’m going to be late.”

  The boy put out his hand to stop her. “Can you try it again? Please. Just one more time?” he asked, trying to pay Alex another silver penny.

  Alex pushed the coin away. “It won’t be any different,” she told him. “It never is.”

  “Please,” the boy said. “It’s important. Please.”

  Alex sighed. “Okay, but you have to concentrate. Think of your question and nothing else.”

  “I will. I promise.” The boy put his hands on either side of his head and pressed hard, as if he were keeping his thoughts from escaping.

  Working quickly, Alex placed six hexagons in a circle so that they touched. And then, into the empty space in the middle she carefully placed the last one, which the boy noticed had a swirly number 7 moving inside it. Once again she waved her fluttering fingers and the boy watched, enthralled, as the edges seemed to dissolve and become one big shimmering hexagon with a rainbow of colors washing across its surface. Now Alex began to make swirling movements with her index finger and the multitude of colors spiraled around, following the tip of her finger. In the center of the whirlpool, a dark spot appeared and grew steadily bigger, like a widening pupil in an iris of many colors. Alex stopped her stirring and looked into the darkness, her hands braced firmly on the dusty ground to stop the sensation of being about to fall into a deep pit that always came over her.

  The boy, hands still clamped to the sides of his head, watched her intently, holding his breath with concentration. “What is it?” he asked.

  “It’s the same. A kind of . . . monster.”

  “What kind?” the boy asked. He leaned over and looked at the cards, wanting to see for himself. But he saw nothing but a spiral of gently moving colors with a dark spot in the middle. Disappointment overcame him. “It’s a trick,” he said, annoyed. “Somehow you make a lot of colors move and you pretend to see things in them.”

  “Well, if that’s what you think, you can get lost,” Alex told him. “I don’t show my cards to people who don’t trust me.”

  The boy did not move. He stayed kneeling, staring into the swirling colors. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean that. Please tell me what you saw.”

  Alex sighed. She could understand the boy’s concerns. She would feel the same if she’d asked someone what her brother was doing right now and all they would say was “monster.” It would be scary and, she guessed, a little annoying too. She glanced over the wall into the market, checking for the telltale orange coat of a Sentinel. It was the end of the afternoon and the market was winding down, which meant there were fewer people to provide cover. Concentrating hard, Alex stared into the black pit once again. “The monster feels very cold. It does not move. Its joints hurt. Its heart is stilled.”

  “Oh.” The boy sounded disappointed. “Is that how it will always be? Can you see if it will always be cold? If its joints will always hurt? Will its heart always be still? Can you tell me? Please?”

  Alex didn’t like using the cards to see the future, but she was intrigued by the boy’s persistence. Placing her hands on either side of the shimmering hexagon to steady herself, she gazed deep into the darkness in the center of the swirling colors until her head swam with dizziness. “Fire. It is eating fire. Its heart is beating. I can feel it.” She sat back onto her heels, feeling as though the world was spinning around her. “That’s it,” she said. “I’m not looking anymore.”

  The boy was smiling broadly. “Thank you, thank you! That’s the best news ever. Jay—that’s my brother—he’ll be so happy.”

  People were strange, Alex thought. Why a monster that sometime in the future would eat fire and come a
live would be better than a dead monster was a mystery to her. A sudden hiss from the spice seller brought her back to reality. “Hush, child, hush! Sentinel.”

  Alex swept up her cards and slipped them into their neat little five-sided wallet, which she tucked hurriedly into the broad green sash wrapped around her waist.

  The boy seemed not to notice. “That monster you saw in the future,” he was saying, “was it—”

  “Shush!” Alex told the boy. “Listen, if you want monsters, there’s one here right now. Behind you.”

  The boy went to turn around and Alex grabbed his arm. “Don’t look around, you idiot. There’s a Sentinel over there. Did you see the tall woman in the orange coat? She’s checking us out. Prophecy is illegal, you know.”

  The boy’s eyes widened in fear.

  “You’d better go,” Alex said.

  “No,” the boy said. “I’m not leaving you to get into trouble because I kept asking you questions. And it will look suspicious if I just run off, won’t it?”

  “Okay. So we’ll just chat. Like we’re friends.”

  The boy nodded and swallowed hard. “So, um. Do you. Um. Do you come here often?”

  Alex laughed. “Like we’re friends, dummy. I’ll do it. You just listen.” She raised her voice, “And so I’ve got to be back by sunset, okay? I promised to look after Louie this evening.”

  “Who’s Louie?” asked the boy.

  “Look, if we’re friends, you ought to know that. He’s my little brother. Well, sort of.”

  “Sort of?” asked the boy.

  “Foster brother. He’s cute. Oh, sheesh, she’s coming this way. Hey, what’s your name? They test you sometimes. I’m Alex.”

  “Benn.”

  Alex relaxed and smiled. “It looks like you brought us luck, Benn. She’s turned around. Started arguing about the sausages over there.”

  Benn breathed out a long, low whistle. “Scary . . . ,” he said.

  “Only if we got caught,” Alex said briskly. “And we didn’t.” And then, with a quick “Thanks!” to the spice seller, she picked up her backpack and slung it over her shoulder.

  “Hey!” Benn called out as Alex moved away. “Wait!” But Alex, blending easily into the shadows in her short indigo jacket and faded black pants, was gone.

  Benn stared at the warren of alleyways that led off from the marketplace, wondering which one Alex had taken and how she could vanish so quickly. He sighed. He felt unsettled, as though everything was suddenly upside down. Not because of what she had seen, but because he wanted to be Alex’s real friend, not a pretend friend just to escape the Sentinel. But Alex was gone, and because he was a market trader from outside the town, he must leave before the gates were closed at sundown.

  Benn’s hand closed around his day’s takings—a fortune of forty-nine silver pennies (one had gone to Alex, but he considered it very well spent) for a cartload of lemons. It made the early morning trudge up the steep track with an unwilling donkey worth every step. He climbed over the wall and spent another silver penny on a packet of hot pepper flakes from the spice seller as a thank-you for keeping them safe. “Tread careful,” she told him as she gratefully pocketed the little coin after he had refused the change. “Them Sentinels see more than you think.”

  Her warning spooked Benn. He hadn’t realized what a dangerous place Luma could be. He thought of Alex and it struck him how brave she was—or foolish perhaps, he wasn’t sure—to be taking such risks with her cards.

  Benn hurried back to his cart and a morose donkey named Howard. He patted Howard’s nose, gave him a handful of oats and jumped up onto the driver’s seat. The oats and the prospect of going home raised Howard’s spirits considerably and the donkey trotted happily across the rapidly emptying marketplace, past a noisy band of musicians who were setting up a line of drums on a platform and headed toward the Sentinel gatehouse, which was the only way in and out of Luma. As they drew near, Benn could not help but glance up at its tower to check if there was a glint of a spyglass watching him, but the little slit of a window looked empty. With his eyes on the thick metal gates that would slam shut as soon as the night bell sounded, Benn waited in the gatehouse shadows to show his trader’s pass and be allowed out. His heart was beating fast now. Maybe they could tell he’d bought a prophecy. Maybe he’d never get out of this hot and dusty town. Ever.

  Now it was his turn to show his pass, and he held it out, his hand trembling. The Sentinel, an elderly man in an orange coat with dark blue flashes on the sleeves, nodded him through without a second glance, and Benn and Howard were free. Howard set off at a jaunty trot down the Luma Twist—the steep and winding track that would take them to the foot of the cliff from which they would set off home to their farm in the heart of Lemon Valley far below. As Howard skittered almost joyfully around the hairpin bends, the clop of his hooves beating a jaunty rhythm, Benn thought about Alex and her strange cards. Those cards were for real. And so was Alex.

  Chapter 2

  The Pokkle

  THE SILVER-TIPPED POINTED ROOFS OF the Luma houses were glowing in the last rays of the evening sun, and the alleyways that wound between them like lazy snakes were already in darkness. But Alex knew every twist and turn and she scooted fast around the winding bends, racing through the spicy smells of the evening meals being cooked and the sounds of children being called home. High above from the little crow’s nests perched on the pinnacles of the higher rooftops came the mournful notes of flute players as they piped the sun below the horizon. The excitement of the marketplace and the boy with the fire-eating monster in his future began to evaporate as Alex ran home to reality and, very probably, to trouble. Her foster mother and her two foster sisters were going out that evening and she had promised not to be late. But she already was.

  Every lamppost in Luma had a different carving to help people find their way through the tangle of alleyways, and at last Alex reached the one with the carved lizard curled around it. Here she turned off and headed down a long, echoing footpath sandwiched between two high walls, which led to a door at the far end, lit by a blob of light glowing through its circular window. As she scooted up to the door—proudly adorned with a door knocker in the shape of a fairy—it opened before her and Mirram D’Arbo, her foster mother, greeted her impatiently. “You’re late.”

  Alex stopped to catch her breath and take in the confusion of color shining before her. Her foster mother was dressed in flowing blue and green silks that were bound with glimmering silver cords, crisscrossed in exactly the same way as the cheap sausages (cat meat, so they said) were tied at the market. Emerging at the top of the cat-meat sausage was a small, irritable face crowned with a pile of dark hair, which was held in place by a headband covered in sequins.

  The vision brought a wide smile to Alex’s face, which Mirram took as approval. “Sorry,” Alex said breathlessly. “But I got everything on your list. Even the honey-soaked raisins.” And before Mirram could reply, Alex headed past her, off into the dimness of the house.

  Suddenly, from right above Alex’s head came a harsh squawk: “Wretched girl! Late, always late!”

  Alex glared up at the rafters that ran across the lofty room. The pokkle had the run of the house, but it lived mainly downstairs, roosting on a variety of platforms that Mirram had haphazardly hammered to the beams of the ceiling. A scuffle above told Alex that the pokkle was indeed up there. Alex loathed the creature. Believed to be a mix of gecko and parrot, pokkles were a popular pet in Luma, and this particular one was Mirram’s pride and joy. The size of a small cat, it resembled a large, multicolored lizard covered in feathers. It had a feathered crest upon its head, one of the finest in the town according to Mirram, and stubby little wings. Like all pokkles, it had the ability to change color at will, but it was not, like most pokkles, silent. Mirram’s pokkle had the parrot’s gift of speech and mimicry along with an uncanny ability to repeat words just spoken. Alex knew perfectly well who had first said “Wretched girl! Late, always late!”

  Mirram walked over to the narrow stairs that led up to the next floor. “Zerra! Francina!” she yelled up to her two daughters. “Time to go!”

  Alex heard the sound of her foster sisters’ feet flip-flopping quickly down the stairs and politely came out of the kitchen to say goodbye. The sisters shimmered brightly in their own silk tunics, one of red and one of yellow tied in the same crisscross fashion as their mother’s. Francina’s thin, straight hair was covered in glitter, and Zerra’s unruly dark curls were threaded with blue ribbons. With jeweled sandals on their feet and matching pink sparkly headbands, they reminded Alex of the brilliantly colored birds that circled above the rooftops on the early morning thermals and greeted the sunrise with their raucous cawing.