“What do I tell it now?” asked Ardent nervously.
“I’ll do it,” said Anya. She took a deep breath to collect her thoughts, after being badly rattled from the sight of the bone ship. The Duke was so close …
“Oh Great and Magnificent Carpet Pathidwanimithochozkal,” she said. “Please fly us a little more slowly and very safely and … and not too high off the ground to a safe concealed landing place this side of the inn with the sign of the moon on the Yarrow River near New Yarrow, thank you very much.”
Nothing happened. The carpet didn’t move.
“You said the c-c-carpet’s name wrong,” said Ardent.
“What?” shrieked Anya. She thought about what she’d said. Instantly the carpet’s name became all mixed up in her head. And there was a noise outside—was it footsteps? Was the Duke walking towards them right now, while she was helplessly trussed up inside a carpet?
“You say it, then!”
Ardent barked once happily, and repeated Anya’s instructions, word for word, except he got the carpet’s name right. He really did have an excellent memory when he put his mind to it.
In response, the carpet took off.
If it was going slower than before, Anya didn’t notice. As the rug reared back and shot vertically into the air, she screamed, Smoothie screamed, and Shrub screamed. Even Denholm, who had been uncharacteristically silent, joined in with a rapid series of croaks that were probably the equivalent of a scream.
The vertical flight didn’t last very long, a much shorter time than on the previous flight. The carpet leveled out, and though the airstream coming through was still cold, it was weaker than it had been before. But even though this was more comfortable, it worried Anya. What if the Duke had seen them and was giving chase in his flying ship? With the carpet going slower, he might be able to catch them.
Pressed tight in the embrace of wool, she had no way of knowing what was happening. There was also the possibility that the distances on the handkerchief map might be wrong, or she’d calculated the combined distances incorrectly and the carpet would stop flying somewhere short of their destination.
Death at the Duke’s hand, or death by falling.
Anya shut her eyes and tried to think of nice things. But try as she might, she kept seeing the Duke standing in his ghastly ship of bone. Gotfried had been right all along. The white study must have had hidden doors, and behind them Rikard had been stripping birds of their feathers, collecting their bones, building his horrible craft with sorcery …
Ardent said something. Anya shuffled her head around to get her ear pointed at him.
“What was that?”
“Inn … something—mumble—food,” said Ardent.
“You had three breakfasts!” shouted Anya.
“Just … something … keep … going,” retorted Ardent.
“Lots of fish in the river,” said Smoothie. Her higher-pitched voice was easier to hear, and her head was closer to Anya’s than Ardent’s. “Hard to catch with this misshapen body, though.”
“It won’t be too long before I can change you back!” shouted Anya encouragingly. She didn’t add, “I hope.” Now that she had been reminded of the Duke’s powers and his sheer horribleness, she felt rather less confident about her plan to steal the remaining ingredients from the League of Right-Minded Sorcerers.
The carpet pitched downwards and everyone screamed again, except for Ardent, who barked with apparent enjoyment. It was the bark he used for chasing rabbits. He barked again as the carpet leveled out, then again, this time with surprise, as the carpet splashed down into water.
Cool water gushed in both ends of the rolled-up carpet. Anya flailed her arms, trying to get the heavy material off herself so she could get out. She pushed her face hard against the woolen fabric, desperate to keep her nose and mouth out of the water, to get one last breath before she was submerged.
The carpet unrolled. Anya lurched upwards, ready to swim for some distant surface, and found herself suddenly standing in only six inches of water. The carpet had landed in the broad shallows of a pebbly beach, on a bend in the river. The deeper, fast-running water of the Yarrow was a good thirty feet away.
Smoothie put her head in the water, held it there for several seconds, then came up smiling and shook herself, sending droplets of water over everyone. Not that it mattered, because they were already completely sodden.
Ardent picked up Denholm’s cage and carried it ashore, shaking himself as he went. Shrub went after him, grumbling under his breath. Anya checked her possessions, picked up her precious bottle of witches’ tears, and followed them.
The beach was quite secluded. Following the tight bend in the river for about fifty yards, it was twenty yards wide and sheltered on the land side by high riverbanks, showing the erosion of spring floods. A tangle of willows grew along the banks. Though stunted, they provided excellent cover. The questers could be seen by anyone on the river, but only if they came around the bend, and they would hear the splash of oars or the flap of a sail in time to hide among the willows. It was a very good landing spot.
“We’d better get the carpet in,” said Anya. She carefully surveyed the river, but there were only some diving birds in sight. No boats, and no ravens. She looked up as well, and was relieved to see nothing but clear blue sky with a few long wisps of cloud, and the sun beginning its descent towards the west. “Where do you think the inn is?”
“Not sure,” said Shrub. He peered around. One eye looked right and one looked left, then they swiveled back together again. “I remember willows along the bank, but they started farther upstream. It could be just around the bend.”
Ardent was listening, his ears pricked.
“I c-c-can hear something from that direction,” he said. “When the wind c-c-omes, it c-c-arries the sound. Every now and then, a kind of tock sound, wood hitting wood.”