Questors Read online

  PUFFIN BOOKS

  They were planned as the perfect team:

  Questor One – a warrior, with a hunter’s instincts

  Questor Two – a visionary, with the skills of an artist

  Questor Three – a strategist, able to reason out any material challenge

  So it was a shame that, in reality, the Questors turned out to be three scruffy children…

  Joan Lennon lives in the Kingdom of Fife in Scotland, on the River Tay. The kingdom is thought to be shaped like a dog’s head – if this is so, Joan lives just on the tip of the ear, which explains a lot. She has a husband, four tall sons, two short cats, and a miscellaneously sized group of piano pupils. Joan was born in Canada and this is her first book for Puffin.

  joanlennon.co.uk

  joanlennon.blogspot.com

  Books by Joan Lennon

  QUESTORS

  PUFFIN

  PUFFIN BOOKS

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3

  (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

  Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd)

  Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia

  (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd)

  Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi – 110 017, India

  Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand

  (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd)

  Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  puffinbooks.com

  First published 2007

  This edition published 2007

  1

  Copyright © Joan Lennon, 2007

  All rights reserved

  The moral right of the author has been asserted

  Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  ISBN: 978-0-14-132668-9

  To Jamie, Davey, Thomas and Callum – Lord Bullvador may say four’s not a mythic number, but he’s wrong.

  I would like to thank Lindsey Fraser and Kathryn Ross, without whom Questors would never have got much beyond a World and a half;

  and Yvonne Hooker, whose advice, even when I disagreed with it, was always backed up by thought, experience and fabulous lunches.

  Contents

  1. Gathering of Strangers

  2. ‘Desirable Queen Anne House’

  3. Relatively Strange…

  4. … and Relatively Stranger

  5. Emergency!

  6. Council of the Worlds

  7. Instant (sort of) Replay

  8. What the Council Didn’t See

  9. In the Kitchen

  10. Previously, in the Council Chamber

  11. Meanwhile, Back in the Kitchen

  Trentor

  12. It Begins

  13. The Tube

  14. The Train Now Standing at Platform Nine

  15. Nightmare Below Ground…

  16. … and Above

  17. Camping In

  18. Eavesdropped

  19. Master Erick’s Cure for Boredom

  20. Fred + Erick = ?

  21. ‘Till the Fat Lady Sings’

  22. Battle Hymn

  23. Morning

  24. Ten Years Ago, Day Before Yesterday

  25. Back, and Between

  Kir

  26. Night Manoeuvres

  27. Life in the Freezer

  28. Out of the Icebox and Into the…

  29. War on Kir

  30. Welcome Home

  31. Disjointed Conversations

  32. The Nature of Nowhere

  33. Strange Fish

  34. Journey Under the Ice

  35. The City

  36. History Lessons

  37. The Keeper…

  38. … and the Spaener

  39. In Dagrod’s Cave

  40. The Touch of the Crystal

  41. Dragon Assembly

  42. Putting It Back

  43. The Eye and the Claw

  Dalrodia

  44. Bryn Wakes Up

  45. Ivory

  46. The Research Department

  47. The Nature of Dreams

  48. Tagged

  49. Out into the Night

  50. The Deserted

  51. Stranger

  52. The Woman of the Mountain

  53. The Well of Light

  54. The Plateau

  55. Over…!

  56. Elsewhere

  57. The Desert

  The London House

  58. Returns

  59. Reversals

  60. Revelations

  61. Attic Conversations

  62. Some Months Later

  63. Now That Is a Surprise!

  In the kitchen of the London House, a comfortable, round woman with a face made to smile was stacking a dishwasher.

  Dishwashers with virtually infinite capacity are very, very expensive, but Mrs Macmahonney had never considered good equipment a waste. Her machine was a great deal bigger on the inside than on the outside, which was just the way she liked it. So it wasn’t the fact that she couldn’t get everything in that was forcing her face out of its smiley default expression.

  It was the way the washing powder was behaving.

  There were no breezes or cross-draughts in her kitchen, yet, as she tried to pour the powder from the package into the dispenser, it drifted and swirled, forming disturbing patterns in midair, and scattering messily on to the floor.

  Mrs Macmahonney frowned, went for a brush and pan, and bent to sweep the spillage up.

  Her frown deepened.

  The powder had come out of the package clean, and her floor was, of course, immaculate, but what lay in the dustpan was inexplicably discoloured and dirty-looking.

  ‘It’s getting worse,’ she muttered to herself in a troubled voice. She dumped the spoiled powder into the bin. ‘I could be wrong, of course.’

  As if…

  1

  Gathering of Strangers

  The girl in the back of the car looked shell-shocked. The Courier, a friendly older man, had given up trying to get her to chat, and most of the drive through the afternoon traffic had taken place in silence.

  It seemed Trentor children were all like that these days – tight, and scared of putting a foot wrong. Maybe it was always that way, though. Hard to remember.

  Poor kid, he thought, checking her white face in his rear-view mirror. Looks like she doesn’t know what’s hit her.

  He was right.

  Madlen didn’t see the London streets, the grey buildings, the hurrying people with their careful clothes and their serious faces. She just sat there, twisting a regulation school handkerchief round and round in her hands, staring at nothing.

  Should be in Physics, she thought, but it didn’t seem real. Nothing had seemed real, not since she’d been called in to Miss Brack’s office first thing this morni
ng.

  Only this morning!

  In her mind she could hear Miss Brack’s whiny, nasal voice going on and on…

  ‘… Swithin Street School for Girls has been consistently producing successful Echelon candidates for a very long time indeed – and we are not an establishment that is used to having to deal with irregularities or… or… surprises!’

  ‘I don’t understand, Miss.’

  ‘Madlen, you are to be removed from school.’

  There was a pause. Madlen remembered feeling… nothing. Numb.

  ‘I have exams next week, Miss,’ she’d said, as if that were the answer to it all.

  ‘I know that!’ Miss Brack had snapped. ‘But it doesn’t change the fact that I have in my hand a letter which states that you are to leave, because your mother requires you. Right here –’ and she stabbed at the paper with her finger – ‘Her mother wants her.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Miss Brack. There’s been a mistake. I don’t have a mother.’

  A part of Madlen’s mind had noticed even at the time how calm she sounded, how controlled, and had approved.

  Miss Brack, on the other hand, was becoming more aggrieved by the moment.

  ‘… most irregular and, and, disappointing. A car will be coming this afternoon to take you to the London House. The authority is not in question. See for yourself – here is the letter.’

  Madlen remembered holding out her hand and trying to focus on the words. Only one sentence was clear to her, and it leapt off the page and into her brain.

  ‘Her mother wants her.’

  She didn’t remember leaving the office.

  Bryn found the young man who collected him good company, friendly, happy to make conversation, but completely uninformative. Every attempt to pump him was cheerfully sidestepped, no hard feelings on either side.

  Once it was clear he wasn’t going to find out anything about what in the Three Worlds was happening, Bryn settled back to enjoy the novelty of being out of the Castle, out of the mountains, out of the snow – and out from under the Steward’s heavy fist. He rubbed his arm where the old man had caught up with him earlier, and grimaced a little. He’d been scared sick when Dane and co. cornered him and Nick in that dead-end corridor, but they’d scattered fast when the Steward appeared. Nick certainly hadn’t waited around – he’d probably been the other side of the Castle before Bryn had even finished saying ‘I didn’t do it, whatever it was!’

  And now – all this! He shook his head, amazed. The things he’d seen – if only he could get half of it down on paper! Bryn kept his drawing things on him all the time – there was no place else safe enough to hide them at the Castle. His fingers itched to get at them now, but he wasn’t stupid. The Courier man could too easily see him in the rear-view mirror. He’d just have to remember it all and then, first chance he got to be by himself…

  Cam shivered.

  ‘Turn the heating up, please.’

  A clear, light voice, pitched to be heard, expecting compliance.

  Nobody says no much to you, do they, kiddo! The Courier smiled to herself tolerantly and bumped up the heat. Still, no wonder you’re cold, in those clothes.

  Dalrodian clothing followed a strict but subtle pattern. Everyone wore the same loose, long tunic and trousers – it was the most sensible way of dressing in the heat while keeping as much of the body protected from the effects of the sun as possible. It also allowed one Dalrodian to know at a glance exactly where in the social hierarchy any other Dalrodian might stand. They simply had to look at the material the other’s clothes were made of. A finely graded progression distinguished a labourer’s coarse cotton from the various grades of linen for administrators, and so on, up to the high-caste Holder’s fine, flowing silk.

  Cam wasn’t thinking about any of that. I’m not going to cry. I’m not going to hit anyone. Keep breathing. Back straight. Do what Ivory would do. Ivory. Ivory.

  A mantra helps sometimes.

  As each of the cars pulled into Grenadier Square, they stretched, briefly, and then snapped back into shape, like cars in a cartoon. The Couriers checked their passengers’ reactions. Temporal-spatial displacement can have unexpected side effects. But the three children only looked mildly confused. The odd feeling was just one more weird thing in a weird day, and over before they’d really noticed. The Couriers were relieved – they were saved from having to explain how their charges had each started out in their own World and ended up… someplace else.

  The three cars pulled up to the front steps of an elegant three-storey house. It was, apparently, one of a row, but actually it was utterly and entirely one of a kind. As Madlen, Cam and Bryn climbed out of their cars on to the pavement, however, they barely glanced at it. They were too busy noticing the strangeness of each other. You could practically see their noses working and their hackles rising, like dogs meeting, or maybe young wolves.

  This was a mistake.

  Different clothes, different customs, different Worlds – it wasn’t much really, whereas the strangeness of the place they were about to enter was off the top of another scale altogether.

  2

  ‘Desirable Queen Anne House’

  If the London House were ever to go on sale, it might be described in the estate agent’s literature like this:

  The literature would probably not go on to say:

  3

  Relatively Strange…

  ‘This way.’

  That’s all the Couriers had said. Then they’d left.

  So now there were three people from three different Worlds – Trentor, Kir, Dalrodia – sitting by themselves in a room in a tall old London house, as the light outside began to fade and the afternoon drew to a close.

  Three people, sitting in an empty room, suddenly deciding it was silly not to talk.

  ‘My mother sent for me,’ Madlen began. (She was, after all, the oldest.)

  ‘Mine too!’ said Bryn.

  ‘She says she’s my mother,’ muttered Cam. ‘Like I don’t already have one!’

  There was an awkward pause.

  ‘Er, my name’s Madlen,’ Madlen said. ‘Madlen Worthing’

  ‘I’m Bryn,’ said Bryn.

  ‘Cam Holder,’ said Cam. ‘Pleased to meet you.’

  The other two paused, aware of something odd about Cam but not knowing exactly what it was.

  ‘You’re from Dalrodia, aren’t you?’ said Madlen. That would explain a lot. Everybody knew Dalrodians were very strange, and mostly crazy from all the sun.

  ‘Yes,’ said Cam. Then, since there was a certain respect missing from their faces, ‘My mother’s Ivory, the Lady Holder. I’m Holder.’ The others really didn’t seem to know how to react. But, of course, the girl was obviously from Trentor, and the boy, with all that heavy clothing, must be Kirian. Not Worlds known for their great understanding of… anything much.

  The three sat in silence for a while longer, Bryn chewing on a hangnail.

  ‘It was news to me,’ he said suddenly, so loudly that the other two jumped. ‘A complete surprise. About my mother, I mean.’

  ‘That’s… strange,’ said Madlen, frowning. ‘Mine was a surprise too. I was sure I didn’t even have a mother – I mean, I thought she died years ago, when I was a baby, but she can’t have… well, obviously –’

  ‘I’ve had a mother for years!’ interrupted Cam, ‘and I don’t care what this other woman says. I very nearly didn’t come.’

  Bryn snorted.

  ‘Like you had a choice,’ he said scornfully.

  Madlen’s frown deepened.

  ‘That’s very weird,’ she said. ‘Don’t you think? I mean, all of us here, being sent for by mothers we never heard of and don’t know at all?’

  ‘And don’t want to,’ muttered Cam.

  ‘It’s not very likely, though, is it?’ persisted Madlen, but Bryn’s mind wasn’t on mysteries any more.

  ‘I’m hungry,’ he said.

  ‘Me too,’ said Cam.

  ‘So,
let’s go find some food,’ said Bryn.

  Madlen looked horrified.

  ‘We can’t do that!’ she said. ‘We can’t just go wandering off!’

  The others stared at her. It made her nervous.

  ‘At my school we learn to do as we’re told,’ she said in a voice that sounded snooty even to her. ‘We’re supposed to wait here.’

  ‘Says who?’ said Bryn.

  ‘Says…’ began Madlen, but then she realized nobody had actually told them to do anything. ‘Well, but, it was, um, implied…’

  ‘This room is giving me the creeps,’ said Cam, jumping up. ‘I’m leaving’

  The two headed for the door.

  ‘But –’ began Madlen. The sound of running footsteps out in the hall interrupted her. ‘Well, we’ll just ask them,’ she finished gratefully. She pushed past the others and opened the door.

  ‘Excuse me?’ she called into the hallway.

  No one answered. There was no one there.

  ‘You’re too slow,’ grunted Bryn. He didn’t like to admit that the House was beginning to make him jumpy too. Getting cross was more manly. ‘Come on.’

  The hallway was large and square, with a beautiful double staircase, and a number of massive oak doors, all shut. Madlen tidily closed their door behind them, which meant the three did not see a suite of furniture flick suddenly into view, lit fire in the fireplace and all. They did not hear the irritated grumble of the elderly gentleman sitting beside the fire.

  ‘Well?!’ he spluttered. ‘Well?!’

  At which point, the gentleman, the fire and the furniture as suddenly disappeared again.

  ‘We just keep opening doors till we hit the kitchen,’ said Bryn, ‘or till we find somebody to tell us where it is – if that’s all right with you.’ He made a face at Madlen.

  She blushed. ‘All right, all right, don’t get snotty,’ she muttered. ‘Just be quiet.’

  It wasn’t easy. The hall was like a big echo chamber, with its height and its marble floor and nothing to deaden sound.

  Then they heard voices. It was nothing distinct, just a muffled murmuring, like a class of children before the teacher arrives, but it definitely came from the room opposite.