Hexwood by Diana Wynne Jones

Author:Diana Wynne Jones [Jones, Diana Wynne]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
Published: 2012-01-14T12:19:37+00:00

—4———

Ann went past the yellow pretzel bag in the hollow tree. She was beginning to suspect it marked the boundary of the Bannus field. She kept a careful lookout to see just when after that the wood changed. But her attention was caught and distracted by a blue flickering among the trees.

Mordion working magic again, she thought, and broke into a run in order not to miss it. Across the river she went, leaping from stone to stone below the familiar waterfall. She seemed to have done this a hundred times; probably she had. And the cunning Bannus had caused her to miss noticing just where its field started yet again. Oh, well. The blue light continued to flicker enticingly on the cliff above. Ann went charging up the path and round the house—which looked weather-beaten and sagging these days—to skid to a gasping halt in the empty space beside the fire pit. Only Yam was there, sitting very upright and disapproving on a stone.

“Mordion is at his hocus-pocus again,” Yam said. “He is the most obstinate human alive. He does not attend to my arguments at all. He is making his third attempt to wrap a part of the theta-field round Hume.”

“Not again!” Ann panted.

“Yes. Again,” Yam intoned. “He has given up his herbs, which are harmless, though he calls them inadequate, and his chanting, which the Bannus tends to answer in the wrong fashion, and he is now working with mind power alone.” As Yam spoke, the blue flashing was gaining in intensity, dazzling off Yam’s silver skin, and giving them both sudden black shadows that leaped across the earthy space, leaped and vanished. The pine tree above the house stood out like a tree in a thunderstorm, alternately a dark mass and then visible in every dark green needle. “He has studied for five years now,” Yam said. “I believe he is now working at full strength.”

An exceptionally vivid flash made Ann quite sure Yam was right. She dithered in a mixture of curiosity and alarm. “This could hurt Hume,” she said. It was partly an excuse to see what was happening. “I’d better go and make sure he’s all right.”

She set off for the rocks above the house at a run.

Yam’s silver hand closed on her wrist. Ann could not believe a robot could be so strong. She swung round in a circle with her own impetus and ended up facing Yam, in another flash so dazzling that it dimmed Yam’s rosy eyes. “Stay here with me,” Yam said. “It is getting—”

There was an enormous dull explosion.

“—dangerous,” Yam said. He let go of Ann and left at racing speed. Even Mordion, running up the path to kill that rabbit, had not moved so fast. Yam went as a silver blur. Ann stared after him, feeling the explosion jarring in her every bone and sure that her eardrums were ruptured. All she could hear was silence. Even the sound of the river had stopped.

But she had barely realized there was silence when there was a monstrous clapping and crashing.

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