“We could try yelling,” Robin offered. “There’s gardeners around. Hoy! Help! Mayday!” He had to pause to gulp in air and energy, and to get himself in front of the next incursion of the hedge on Edwin’s space. It didn’t shy away this time. With a scratch of gravel beneath his shoes, Edwin jogged further into the maze; there was only one direction available to them, at this point.
“Maybe Mrs. Sutton will sense it anyway,” Edwin said. “You’re not a magician. The maze has no reason to hurt you. And if you’re in serious danger, it might come up against her family’s blood-pledge with the land.” He met Robin’s eyes, skittish, then glanced away. “I felt it, at Penhallick. When you were in the lake. And I’ve barely anything to feel with.”
“Doesn’t mean she’ll do anything about it,” said Robin. His instincts, when it came to Flora Sutton, were all confused. He knew her as a liar. He’d felt the edges of her ruthlessness, at odds with her faded appearance. But ruthlessness in service to a truth, to a cause, was not necessarily the same as cruelty.
There was a rustle from the direction they’d come. Robin turned back to look at where the entrance had been, and realised with an unsettling lurch that the maze seemed to stretch a lot farther than the few yards they’d moved from where the entrance had boiled closed. The path curved away and around, far enough that it was draped in shadow.
A cold wave of familiarity washed Robin’s bones. This was the vision he’d had. This sky, this maze.
And this particular sense of something moving, just out of the corner of his eye, with an awful, unseen, predatory intent that took hold of every hair in the nape of Robin’s neck and flicked it upright.
“I think we should—” said Edwin, strained, just as Robin said, “Um,” and they moved, scurrying backwards, to the end of their current green corridor and round the sharp bend of the corner. It helped a little to be out of that particular sight line. Not a lot. Robin’s neck continued to prickle.
“Can you do anything? Blast a hole?” he asked Edwin. “At least we know we’re only a single hedge’s thickness away from the outside, at this point.”
“I can . . .” Edwin’s dubious expression grew a tinge of horror as he patted his pocket. “I—I had it in my hands,” he said. “When he knocked me down the first time.”
“Do you need the string?” Robin demanded. “I know it helps. Do you need it?”
“I haven’t—” Edwin started, white-faced, then made a choking sound as dust flew up in fountains around him. This time the plants erupted from the ground itself: the same thorny vine-like growths, like grasping fingers seeking the light. In the time it took Robin to register the sight of them, they were already up to Edwin’s waist.
Robin lunged between the nearest two and grabbed Edwin’s arm, gripped tight, and ran.
When the maze’s paths branched off he chose the one that looked least forbidding, or at least the one where he could see the most ground ahead. Only once did they find themselves faced with a blunt dead end, and by that time Edwin had found his reflexes. He pulled them up sharp, yanked at Robin’s sleeve, and got them moving back the other way.
They raced around three more corners. Now the maze looked closer to normal. The space between the hedges was a normal distance. Robin’s instincts were still muttering that they were being chased, but at least it was a mutter rather than a shout.
Edwin was out of breath. Robin didn’t realise he was eyeing the man incredulously until Edwin shot him a poisonous, defensive look in return.
“We can’t all be athletes. And—the bloody warding.” Edwin dragged a tired hand across his forehead. He still looked faintly bilious, and now a sheen of sweat had been added to the picture.
“The warding on the estate stopped working on you as soon as we crossed the tree line. Why is this one still at it?”
“At a guess, it’s an emanation, not a boundary. From the centre, I think.” The centre, where they were heading.
Where we’re being driven, a corner of Robin’s mind provided.
“I suppose in the absence of other options, I can empty my guts onto one of the bloody plants.” Edwin turned a look of sickly hatred onto the greenery.
“Holly,” said Robin, realising.
“What?”
“It’s not yew anymore. It’s holly.”
“Superb,” said Edwin, dry. “Now if—”
“Watch out!” Robin lunged, but Edwin still cried out in pain and alarm as the wall of dark, waxy leaves bulged, bubbled out like hot porridge—and burst, with a flurry of edges and thorns. Edwin had flung his arms up to protect himself; when Robin groped through the dust and splinters in the air and managed to grip one of them, he could feel the ragged edges of shredded cotton, and prayed that the flesh beneath had weathered it better.
“Edwin?”
“Still among the living.” The words were rough with pain. “Run.”
And they did. The bulges of holly were forming on either side, catching Robin in the range of the splintery explosions as often as they caught Edwin. Robin risked a look over his shoulder only once, saw hints of movement among the gathering shadows, and gave that up as a terrifying mistake. The corridors were shorter, the corners tighter. They must have been nearing the centre.
“Another dead end,” panted Edwin. “Turn around.”
Robin turned. His breath rasped hot in his throat. The constant stop-and-start of it all, not to mention the fact that his body was tensed against damage, was draining his strength as no rugby match or regatta ever had.
He turned again. And again, circling on the spot, until he was facing the same way he’d started. There was no path anymore. Just the holly hedge, rising up on all four sides. “Well, running’s stopped working,” he said. “Time for magic.”
“I can’t—”
“You have to do something, because my best left hook isn’t going to do much against a sodding bush. What would you do? If you had your string?”
“Fire,” said Edwin promptly.
“Fire—God, I’m a congenital idiot.” Robin dug in his pocket and pulled out his lighter. “Can you do anything with this?”
At least Edwin no longer looked on the verge of tears or a shaking fit. He’d solidified, somehow. Robin remembered Lord Hawthorn’s words: Courcey here just loves a good puzzle. Edwin jerked himself away from a fresh grasping branch, which left deep pink scratches across the side of his neck, and gazed with narrowed eyes at the holly. “I don’t think it will be enough,” he said reluctantly. “Even if I managed a magnification, it takes a hell of a lot of power—a lot of heat—to get green wood going.”
“What if it was drier?”
“Drier?”
Robin gestured impatiently and kicked another tendril away from Edwin’s ankle. “After I fell in the lake, you—”
“Oh.” Edwin looked down at his hands. “Yes. All right. Stand close behind me.”
So Robin did, one hand holding his lighter at the ready. All around them the hedge crept inwards and upwards, tiny rustling sounds layering themselves into something almost animalistic. A growl of thorns. Edwin was shaking.
“You can do this,” Robin said. “I know you can.”
“You don’t know anything,” Edwin whispered, but it sounded like thank you.
He lifted his hands haltingly, palms together, then drew them apart. He cradled slowly, freezing whenever Robin moved; Robin managed to get his own trousers partially shredded, diverting the holly that was trying to wrap itself around Edwin’s legs, swallowing down the urge to scream at Edwin to work faster. Another minute and there’d be no space left for them to be standing in at all. But Edwin kept going, and soon there was a soft yellow glow between his palms.
“It’s working!” said Robin.
“It’s worked,” said Edwin.
He raised his glowing hands to his mouth, took a breath, and blew.
The drying spell that had swept over Robin in the boat had been a warm, pleasant breeze. This was obviously something more. The plant reared backwards at an angle. The hot wind gusting from Edwin’s lips swept, and swept, and kept sweeping—and the dark green turned the middling brown of dry, dead things in a patch a yard wide.