Blinking back her tears of disappointment, Lyla squeezed Swift's hand. `Never mind. Maybe someone still lives there. Maybe they'll know what to do about your foot.'
`Or they'll know where we can find an oracle to ask about the three moons' song,' said Lem, giant-stepping down the sand.
`I was thinking about that,' Celeste called out as she giant-stepped after him. `Why do we need an oracle? We know the High Enchanter stole Princess Elle and we know the High Enchanter rules Acirfa. So isn't it likely that that's where he took her?'
Lem sat down at the bottom and pulled off his boots to shake out the the sand. `If all we had to do was find Princess Elle then why would the three moons sing a song about five journeys to find a dragon, a merwoman, a poisoned tree and a swinging cage?'
`I thought dragons were extinct,' said Swift, sitting beside his brother.
`If the High Enchanter can magic up those smelly, blind creatures then he can magic up extinct dragons.'
`Or turn a King or Queen into a dragon. A dragon mocked could mean anything,' said Lyla, staring at a broken swan boat embedded in a sand-filled lake.
They circled a broken fountain and a dead rose garden and arrived at a chipped marble staircase leading to the palace's main entrance. They climbed the stairs and peeked through the splintered wood of a once mighty silver-plated door.
Beyond it was a dark entrance hall lit only by the golden-rimmed and silver-circled moons shining through an enormous hole in the palace roof.
Lyla pushed the door open. It grated against the marble doorstep, its rusted hinges squeaking loudly. From inside the palace there came a fluttering of bats and the scurrying of escaping rodents.
Celeste shuddered and patted her pocket to make sure Splash was safe and Swift gingerly lowered his injured foot to the marble doorstep. `When escaping I'd rather limp fast than hop slowly,' he told Chad.
They crept across the entrance space to a second larger hall, also lit up by the two moons, shining through another ragged hole in the roof. Decorated with dusty red and gold velvet wall hangings and festooned with cobweb curtains, the hall's vastness was so great that its corners and walls disappeared into deep purple shadows.
`Those shadows could hide anything,' breathed Chad into Swift's ear.
`Like those blind creatures,' agreed Swift. `Or a small army.'
`Or more rats,' whispered Celeste.
They tiptoed towards a lopsided dais on which stood five thrones covered in spider webs and bat droppings. A sudden slithering and fluttering sound stopped them in their tracks, making the hairs on the backs of their necks stand up. They backed towards each other, searching the darkness as more and more noises echoed eerily around them.
The creepy fluttering began to sound like whispering.
`Ghosts,' breathed Swift.
`Wind,' breathed Chad.
`Enemies,' shouted Lem.
Six giant shrieking bat-like figures surged out from behind the sagging dais flapping huge and tattered wings. Behind them floated two decapitated heads with hideous skull-faces.
Celeste screamed as one of the faces swayed towards her. Lem leapt in front of her swinging his long sword while Lyla protected Chad and Swift, giving them time to fit arrows to their bows.
`What be you doing here?' demanded a giant bat, dancing out of reach of Lyla's jabbing spear.
`What be you doing in the royal throne room?' shouted another, swooping around Lem and Chad.
`Who be you? What do you want here?' screamed a third.
`There be nothing to steal! It be all stolen long ago by General Tulga's Raiders!'
Lyla brandished her spear under the closest giant bat's nose. `Are you human or animal? Or are you becamed by the High Enchanter? Tell me before I spear you.'
`Or I shoot you,' shouted Swift, trying to sound as brave as his wild-haired sister.
`Or I slice off your head,' threatened Lem.
The giant bats retreated to whisper in a huddle.
Then one of the illuminated faces floated towards the children and they saw it was just an old woman with her face painted to resemble a skull. She was holding a lantern beneath her chin to make herself look more ghostly.
`We be the guardians of the great Royal Palace of M'dgassy. I be Emma Crowsclaw,' she said, then pointed to the other skull. `That be Bethy Bee. The others be men of the royal household. Who be you? Travellers or robbers?'
Lyla stepped forward. `We are travellers. We've come in search of medicine for my brother's poisoned foot and for somewhere to sleep.'
`And eat,' added Chad.
`Be you boys or girls?'
`Boys,' lied Lyla.
`Where be you coming from and where be you heading?'
`We've come along the vast sea in search of an oracle, fairy spinner, sand reader or witch,' said Lem.
`Folks like that be best avoided,' growled one of the bat men.
`Do you have any water?' interrupted Chad, who was very single-minded. `We've not eaten nor drunk for days.'
Again the guardians went into a huddle that ended with Emma Crowsclaw saying she and Bethy Bee would bring food, while three of the men fetched some bedding.
As the five were leaving the hall Lyla, without thinking, asked if it was possible for them to sleep in Queen Hail's nursery?
The six men and two women froze and the hall became so quiet that Swift could hear the scratching of mice nesting in the five thrones.
At last Emma Crowsclaw answered, `That part of the palace be long destroyed. But how would you, a stranger to M'dgassy, know anything of Queen Hail's nursery?'
Cursing herself for being so stupid Lyla searched for a believable explanation. `I saw it in a dream.'
`You be a dream-rider then,' said one of the bat men. `Dream-riders are thought of as witches in these parts and witches be burned.'
A second man nodded. `Aye. Best you not be a dream-rider, boy. Now come along Horris Beck, help me bring back the bedding. I've had enough of this dreary place and my own supper be beckoning.'
While the men fetched the bedding and the women went for food, Lem asked the other three where they all lived and how they managed to find enough to eat. The men were not forthcoming, mumbling about living here and there, fishing here and there, having a small garden somewhere and a milk cow somewhere else. `Barely enough to keep skin and bones alive,' said a younger, ginger-haired man.
`What about the Royals and their servants?'
This time the men were silent for so long that it seemed as if they would never answer, then the ginger-haired one spoke up in a bitter
