Deep Amber Read online

  C. J. Busby

  For Dad, the original Forest Agent

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Epilogue

  Chapter One

  It was Dora who discovered the first of the strange objects. She put her foot on it as she hurried down the turret stairs and slipped, and together she and the strange object bumped all the way down the steps to the bottom. She landed upside down right in front of Sir Roderick, who looked at her disapprovingly down his long nose.

  “Umm… Sorry!” stuttered Dora, hurriedly getting herself the right way up. She felt around for the object that had sent her flying and discovered the oddest pair of spectacles she had ever seen. They were made of some kind of soft, dark metal that was completely bendy, like someone had taken a pair of spectacles and melted them in a cauldron. But they weren’t at all hot, they were cool and slimy to the touch, and instead of straight arms that sat on your ears they had a band of the soft metal that went right round your head.

  Cautiously, she tried them on… and then whipped them straight off again. The eye part had sucked itself right onto her face, like a sea-creature clinging to a rock. It felt horrible. She decided she’d better take them to the Druid.

  The Druid was generally to be found down in the castle cellars, with his cauldrons, spells and potions. This meant Dora would have to cross the yard to get to him. As she reached the arched doorway out of the turret, Dora hesitated. The yard appeared to be empty. But as she slipped out, she heard a cackling burst of laughter and saw Violet Wetherby, the cook’s daughter, sweep into the yard towing her friends behind her like a gaggle of hens. When they saw Dora, they stopped, and nudged each other. Then they all sauntered over, spreading out so that she was forced to walk through the middle of the group.

  “Well, if it isn’t little Dora Puddlefoot,” said Violet in a mocking voice, one eyebrow raised. “Out in the sunshine for once, instead of hiding in a dark cellar. And how are you today, Dora? Broken anything lately? Fallen over your own feet again? You must be careful not to really hurt yourself, you know. We all love having you around. It’s so much fun…”

  The other girls laughed, and jostled Dora as she passed. She could feel their mocking glances burning into her back as she continued across the yard.

  Violet was eleven, the same age as Dora, but she acted older, flirting with all the squires, and queening it over her little troop of allies. When Dora had arrived six months ago as the new apprentice witch, Violet had taken an instant dislike to her, and when Violet took a dislike to anyone, so did all her gang.

  Dora thought – for the hundredth time – about putting a really horrible spell on Violet Wetherby. She could turn her golden hair into slugs, and make sure she smelled of rotten eggs for a week. But Dora knew she wouldn’t do it. She was too anxious about getting into trouble for misusing her magic and being sent back to her village in disgrace.

  As Dora clattered down the cellar stairs, the Druid was bent over, frowning at the mixture in his cauldron. Pushing his messy black hair out of his eyes, he looked up from his potion making. Normally, he was glad to see his timid young apprentice. She had considerably more magic than any of his previous students, and teaching her spells was an entertaining affair. Her magic was extremely powerful but just a little bit wonky – so her potions might turn their user blue, or make the cauldron explode. The Druid quite liked the unexpectedness of this. It made life more fun.

  Today, however, he was cooking up a very difficult spell for repelling dragons. He had reached a delicate stage, and the last thing he wanted at this moment was Dora’s sideways magic finding its way into the potion.

  “Out, out, out!” he bellowed as she slipped into the cellar. He flapped his hands at her. “I can’t have you ruin this – it’s in the final stages! Come back tomorrow! Or better still – next Tuesday!”

  Dora came to an abrupt halt, a little worry line appearing between her eyebrows, but she stood her ground. Carefully she held out the strange spectacles so the Druid could see them clearly.

  Immediately he stopped his flapping and stood very still, looking at the object in her hands. For a second he closed his eyes, and sighed deeply. Then he opened his eyes, came over to where she was standing at the bottom of the stairs, and reached out for the strange spectacles. He looked down at them, lying all floppy in his large brown hands.

  “Goggles,” he said.

  “What?” said Dora.

  “Swimming goggles. For going under water. Where did you find them?”

  “On the turret stairs,” said Dora. “Did you say water?”

  The Druid looked at her and smiled, but his clear brown eyes looked strangely sad. “Yes, water. They’re for seeing under the surface.”

  “Are they magic?” said Dora, but she already knew they didn’t feel in the least bit magical – just shiny and odd and a bit frightening.

  “No,” said the Druid. “Not magic. Here – I’ll show you.”

  He snapped the goggles onto Dora’s head, and she flinched as the slimy eye-pieces sucked onto her face. Then the Druid led her over to a large cauldron of water standing by the wall.

  “Hold your breath,” he ordered, and then pushed her face down into the cauldron.

  Dora gasped and choked and flailed her arms but as she emerged dripping from the water she realised that she had seen the bottom of the cauldron while she was under. Curious, she bobbed her head back down. The strange sucking spectacles created a bubble of air close to her eyes, so she could easily keep them open. She looked around at the salt-encrusted sides of the cauldron, and spotted a couple of little fish that had got in by accident when the cauldron was filled with moat water. She almost forgot that she wasn’t breathing, until the Druid yanked her out by one dark plait. She inhaled a whole lungful of air with a whoop and nearly fell over from the dizziness of it.

  “Good, aren’t they?’ he said with a twinkle in his eye, and then shoved her back up the stairs. “Off you go – you can let everyone try them out… I’ve got work to do.”

  The goggles were the wonder of the castle for a week. The squires fought each other for the right to use them, and even a few of the knights had a go. Jem the kitchen boy scorned them to start with – he said he could see under the water anyway – but being able to see without getting bits of moat-grit in your eyes or your eyelids gummed together with slime was counted quite a triumph by everyone else. And when one of the squires found a gold necklace nestling in the weeds at the bottom of the castle duck pond, even Jem admitted they were probably the most useful strange object that had ever appeared in the castle.

  But that was before they found the second one.

  This time it was Lady Alys who found it, in her bedchamber. She decided it must be an odd kind of bracelet, since it hung from a short chain. But it was rather bulky for a piece of jewellery, and not very attractive – shiny enough, but square and black and heavy.

  Dora was on the way to muck out the pigs when she saw Lady Alys’s new bracelet. Strictly speaking, it wasn’t her turn to do the pigs, but Lizzie, the blacksmith’s daughter and Dora’s only real friend in the castle, had agreed to swap pig duty for sewing. Sewing involved sitting in a turret room surrounded by Viol
et and her friends, and Dora had decided several weeks before that she preferred the company of the pigs.

  “It was just on the floor, by the fireside,” Lady Alys was explaining to the crowd around her. “I must have a secret admirer! Maybe Sir Bedwyr,” she added hopefully, as she twirled the strange bracelet round. Sir Bedwyr was extremely handsome and quite the best swordsman in the castle, but as yet he hadn’t declared his undying love to anyone.

  Lady Rosamund, who also fancied her chances with the castle’s most eligible knight, snorted.

  “Not very likely, since he’s been out hunting all day,” she said scornfully. “Dora! You’re good with magic. Come and have a look at this. Where’s it come from?”

  Dora came over cautiously. Lady Rosamund was blonde and blue-eyed and looked like a goddess, but she had a temper like a wildcat and although she seemed to like talking to Dora, Dora always felt a bit awkward around her.

  She took the strange object in her hands, and knew at once that it was from the same place as the peculiar goggles. It felt equally odd, out of place and completely devoid of any magic. It was like a small box, with odd shapes carved into the sides, and shiny circular buttons. Dora shook it, and tried pressing one of the buttons. There was a noise like a cart rattling over cobblestones and a squat black tower rose out of the front of the box. Everyone jumped, and Dora nearly dropped it.

  The short tower was shiny, and the end of it was oddly reflective, like looking into a dark pool of water. Dora held the box up, and peered into the end of the tower, and tried touching another button. The box made a sound like a pickaxe hitting a stone. Suddenly, on the other side of the box, a window seemed to click open. Dora turned the box round and looked at the window. Staring out from the other side in wonder was a tiny, frozen Dora, her mouth open in surprise.

  Once they’d worked out how to make the little frozen pictures appear in the box, the whole castle exploded with the joy of capturing each other’s noses, ears, feet and other bits in the box’s dark window.

  Lady Rosamund produced a perfect reflection of Lady Alys’s nostrils and managed to show it to almost every knight in the castle before Lady Alys wrestled her to the ground and forcibly removed the box from her wrist. And then Jem got hold of it, and that was that, because he was the fastest runner in the whole of the western borders. A succession of portraits of hairy warts, goggling eyes, cow’s bottoms and worse were flashed in front of eager audiences before being whipped away and replaced with something even more undignified.

  Lizzie joined Dora in the pigsty to report that Jem had even managed to get a picture of Sir Bedwyr in the privy.

  “He’s charging all the castle ladies a silver piece each to look at it,” she giggled. “Sir Bedwyr’s fuming!”

  Finally, Jem froze an image of Sir Roderick falling off his horse. It was the last straw. Sir Roderick and Sir Mortimer cornered the kitchen boy and boxed his ears, and Dora was given the strange box to take to the Druid.

  “Camera,” said the Druid, when Dora brought it to him.

  “I’m sorry?” said Dora, frowning.

  “It’s no good,” he said, looking worried. “Something is going to have to be done, before it all gets out of hand.” He stood for a moment, frowning. “I’m not going,” he muttered to himself. “I can’t… I promised. It will have to be Ravenglass, or the forest. They’ll have to deal with it.”

  Dora didn’t have any idea what he was talking about, but that was quite normal with the Druid. She waited, while he ran his hands through his messy dark hair, thinking hard, and then sat down on a nearby bench. He gestured to Dora to sit beside him.

  “Dora,” he said encouragingly. “How would you feel about taking a message to the palace?”

  Dora looked down at her feet. She didn’t know quite what to say. On the one hand, the journey to the city was a long one and the thought of having to deliver an important message to the royal palace made Dora feel so nervous she thought she might be sick. But on the other hand, the chance of getting away from the castle – and Violet’s gang – was very tempting.

  “Um… I think I could do that,” she said cautiously, looking up at the Druid. “What would the message be?”

  The Druid turned the camera over in his hands, and seemed to hesitate for a moment. He sighed.

  “These objects come from another world,” he said. “One I happen to know rather well, in fact. Now, it’s not that unusual to get one coming through every now and again. But more than one thing at the same time, from the same world, is… rather odd. Possibly dangerous.”

  “They’re from another world?” said Dora. How could there be another world? Other worlds were just things that you got in the old stories, from the time when the heroes had lived. They didn’t really exist. And yet – when she thought of the goggles, and the strange camera box with its buttons and bright shiny blackness, she realised that they were like nothing she’d ever come across before – not to mention being completely empty of magic.

  “Yes,” said the Druid, handing her the camera and stretching out his long legs. “Another world. A whole other place, quite different from ours. Hardly anyone knows about the other worlds these days, but there are lots of them. Some have magic, some have plumbing.” His voice sounded wistful.

  Dora had no idea what plumbing was, but it sounded alarming.

  “We need to send a message to the palace,” the Druid continued, “and whoever takes it will have to go through the Great Forest – it’s the quickest way. It could also be important that the forest folk are told about this as well. So I need a magic user. I can’t really spare anyone else, and besides, you did find the goggles. Do you think you could manage it?”

  “Through the forest?” Dora said, in a slightly shaky voice. “But it’s…”

  “Dangerous, deep and thoroughly enchanted,” said the Druid. “I know. But it’s not as bad as people make out, you know. The forest folk like to keep its reputation fearsome – it keeps the idiots out. But it’ll be easy for a powerful magic user like you, Dora. They’ll like you.”

  Dora couldn’t help feeling pleased by the praise – and although going through the Great Forest and possibly meeting one of the magical forest folk was a scary prospect, it was also undoubtedly an adventure. Besides, the thought of Violet’s face when she heard that Dora was to go to the palace was too satisfying to resist.

  “Um… all right,” she said, trying to make her voice sound confident. “I’ll go.”

  The Druid looked down at her with a grin and patted her on the shoulder.

  “Good, I was hoping you would. You have just the right sort of magic for dealing with the forest. But we’ll have to send a companion with you – you are a bit young to go on your own.”

  He looked thoughtful.

  “I’d send Sir Bedwyr, but he’s heading off on a quest tomorrow,” he mused. “Most of the other knights are busy with the Summer Fair preparations. And you need someone with a bit of cunning, really.”

  He pondered for a moment, and then clicked his fingers.

  “I know! We’ll send Jem with you!”

  He brightened at the thought of getting rid of Jem for a week. But Dora looked horrified.

  “No! Not Jem… Please! I can manage on my own, honestly!”

  “Sorry,” said the Druid happily. “Out of the question. Jem’s as sharp as a needle, and handy with a sword as well. He’ll make sure you get there safe and sound. Go and tell him to pack at once!”

  Chapter Two

  No one was particularly bothered when the swimming goggles went missing – things had a habit of disappearing in Great-Aunt Irene’s rambling old house. Simon, his mum and his big sister Catrin had only moved there a few months ago, when Great-Aunt Irene died, but already they were used to things getting lost and then reappearing a few days later.

  But when the camera disappeared it was different. Cat had been banking on being able to take her camera to photography club, and maybe have half a very slim chance of meeting someon
e she actually liked at the horrible school she’d been dragged to when they moved. So she was madder than a nest of hornets when she found her camera had gone.

  “I left it here! In my bedroom! Only last night!” she stormed at Simon. “It can’t just have gone! You must have moved it!”

  Simon shrugged and raised one eyebrow, which just made her crosser than ever, and it wasn’t long before she was slapping and he was kicking and their mum was shouting at them both.

  “For goodness sake! It’s just a camera! It’ll turn up. It’s probably under the bed,” she said, exasperated.

  But it wasn’t under the bed, and it didn’t turn up, and Cat was convinced Simon had lost it somewhere. In retaliation, she administered a few swift and secretive kicks in Simon’s direction when their mum wasn’t looking.

  Simon was used to rough justice from his older sister, and ignored her. But it was hard for either of them to ignore what happened next.

  Disappearing objects was one thing, but appearing objects was quite another. Especially when what appeared was a large and elaborately engraved sword.

  Simon found it in the middle of the stairs when he came down for breakfast the next morning. He nearly tripped over it, but stopped just in time. He was a bit bleary-eyed from a late night and strange dreams, so he had to blink a few times before he was sure it was real. But there it was – a long shining sword, lying on the stair-carpet. He crouched down and reached out to pick the sword up. It was heavy, and there was something about it that made his hands tingle – something like electricity, or the feeling you get when someone traces a feather down your arm.

  He sat for a moment, just holding it, then continued down the stairs and put the sword carefully on the kitchen table next to his old red DS before getting himself a bowl of cornflakes.

  “What the…? Where did you get that?” said Cat, who was sitting at the kitchen table, dressed in a sloppy jumper and pyjama bottoms, and on her second round of toast. It was Sunday, and Mum was out for the day. She’d left early for a conference on ancient Saxon grave goods and wouldn’t be back till late, so they had the house to themselves. “Is it something Mum left behind?”