Gathering Storm Read online

  Gathering Storm

  Born in Hertfordshire, England, on 29 May 1952, Louise Cooper describes herself as ‘a typical scatterbrained Gemini’. She spent most of her school years writing stories when she should have been concentrating on lessons, and her first fantasy novel, The Book of Paradox, was published in 1973, when she was just twenty years old. Since then she has published more than sixty books for adults and children.

  Louise now lives in Cornwall with her husband, Cas Sandall. When she isn’t writing, she enjoys singing (and playing various instruments), cooking, gardening, ‘messing about on the beach’ and – just to make sure she keeps busy – is also treasurer of her local Royal National Lifeboat Institution branch.

  Visit Louise at her own web site at www.louisecooper.com

  In the same series

  1. Sea Horses

  2. Sea Horses: The Talisman

  Gathering Storm

  Louise Cooper

  PUFFIN

  PUFFIN BOOKS

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Penguin Group (USA), Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

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  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  www.penguin.com

  First published 2004

  4

  Copyright © Louise Cooper, 2004

  All rights reserved

  The moral right of the author has been asserted

  Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  ISBN: 978-0-14-193959-9

  With grateful thanks to Pol Hodge, who turned Tamzin’s summoning spell from English to Cornish – and a special hello to Chloe Melwynn!

  ‘There is a legend,’ said Nan quietly, ‘about two spirits that once haunted this coast. They were known as the Blue Horse and the Grey Horse, and they came from the sea. The Blue Horse brought fair weather, and protected the sailors and fishermen. But the Grey Horse was cruel. He brought storms and treacherous tides, and took delight in wrecking ships and drowning the men on board.

  ‘At last, the two spirits fought a terrible battle. There were gales and huge, raging tides, and the people of the coast were terrified that the Grey Horse would win and destroy them all. But one fisherman’s family was not afraid. They joined forces with the Blue Horse and between them they overcame the Grey Horse and defeated him.

  ‘When the battle was over and the people were safe, an old, wise woman of the fisherman’s family carved a little stone statue. The evil power of the Grey Horse was imprisoned in the statue, and the family pledged to keep it for always.’ Nan turned a piercing gaze on Tamzin. ‘They were our ancestors. And the legend says that if the statue should ever be broken, the dark spirit will be released again.’

  Silence fell. Then, in a quavering voice, Tamzin whispered, ‘And I broke it…’

  When Tamzin Weston woke up in the middle of the night, she was instantly aware of two strange things. First, her room seemed to be shaking very slightly; the mattress underneath her quivering, ornaments rattling on the shelves and dressing table. And second, downstairs she could hear her nan’s fluffy black cat, Baggins, howling.

  ‘Baggins?’ Tamzin sat upright, feeling for the switch of her bedside lamp.

  The light came on and she scrambled out of bed. But as she tried to stand up the room seemed to lurch, like the deck of a ship in a rough sea. Tamzin staggered and almost fell over. She could hear a low rumbling sound, though it was very faint. Thunder? she thought. But thunder didn’t make everything shake like a jelly.

  Then along the passage a door banged, and a familiar voice called out, ‘Tamzin, are you all right?’

  Tamzin stumbled to the door and opened it, to see Nan, in her dressing gown, on the landing. ‘Nan!’ she cried. ‘What’s happening?’

  ‘I’m not sure.’ Nan’s black hair was loose and curling around her shoulders. ‘But whatever it is, it’s terrifying poor Baggins. I’d better go and rescue him.’

  She started down the stairs. The shaking seemed to have stopped now, but Tamzin was afraid that at any moment it might start again and send Nan tumbling head over heels to the bottom. She waited, holding her breath, until she heard the click of the downstairs door latch. A second later Baggins came streaking up the stairs, ears flattened on his head and his tail fluffed out like a bottlebrush. He shot into Tamzin’s room and dived under the bed.

  ‘Poor old thing!’ Nan came in and crouched down to peer under the bed. ‘Come on, Baggins. Come on, puss; it’s all right. There’s nothing to be scared of.’

  The only answer was a kind of ‘wowrrr’ noise and Baggins didn’t emerge. Nan straightened. ‘Well, whatever it was, it seems to have stopped now.’

  She spoke too soon. As she said the word ‘now’, a new and more powerful vibration juddered through the house. Tamzin squealed in fright, Nan lost her balance and reeled against the bed. The ornaments rattled crazily, almost dancing on their shelves. And suddenly one of the pictures on the wall broke loose and fell to the floor with a terrific crash.

  Then, shockingly, everything was still and silent.

  Wide-eyed, Tamzin and Nan stared at each other. Nan was breathing deeply, and Tamzin’s heart pounded under her ribs like a hammer. Neither of them said a word. Then Tamzin turned and looked at the fallen picture, which lay face up on the floor.

  It was one of Nan’s own paintings, and it showed a white horse galloping out of a moonlit blue-and-silver sea. Under the moon, the horse’s coat was tinged blue. The picture was very special to Tamzin. And it was the only one that had fallen.

  ‘Oh, Nan…’ Tamzin’s voice was a thin, frightened whisper. ‘Why that one, and none of the others?’ She hurried to lift the painting up. ‘The frame’s broken!’

  Nan came to look. ‘The picture itself isn’t damaged.’ She studied Tamzin’s face. ‘Love, I know what you’re thinking. But whenever something happens, it doesn’t always mean the Grey Horse is behind it.’ She smiled kindly. ‘There is such a thing as coincidence, you know.’

  Tamzin nodded and tried to smile back.

  ‘Look,’ Nan added, pointing. ‘Here’s Baggins coming out. Everything must be all right now: animals always know.’

  Baggins emerged from under the bed and gazed up at them. His tail was back to normal and he looked a little bit sheepish.

  ‘What was it, Nan?’ Tamzin asked.

  ‘I don’t know for certain,’ said Nan, ‘but I think it might have been an earth tremor. It’s like a mini-earthquake; we do get them here in Britain, more often than most people realize. Mostly, though, they’re so small that no one notices.’ She put her arm round Tamzin’s shoulders and gave her a reassuring squeeze. ‘Anyway, it’s over. Look at Baggins; he’s curling up on your bed. He’ll go back to sleep now – and so
should we.’

  ‘Can he stay in my room tonight?’ Tamzin asked.

  Strictly speaking, cats on beds were against the rules, but Nan smiled. ‘Of course he can, just this once. Will you be all right now?’

  Tamzin hesitated, looking at the picture. ‘I think so,’ she said at last.

  Nan understood. ‘I’ll mend the frame first thing in the morning,’ she promised. ‘Go on; back to bed. Leave your light on, if you want to.’

  She kissed Tamzin and went out, and Tamzin climbed back under her duvet. Baggins closed his eyes, made a happy noise and stretched his front paws out to claim more than his fair share of the bed, but she didn’t mind. She stroked him and he started to purr. It was comforting. It made her feel a lot better. She didn’t need the light on.

  She switched the lamp off, and settled down to go to sleep.

  At breakfast time the local radio news was bubbling with the story of the strange shaking in the night. Nan had been right; it was an earth tremor, centred, the newsreader said, some way out to sea off the Isles of Scilly. Most of Cornwall had felt it, but it had been strongest along the north coast, where Nan lived.

  ‘I wonder if it’s done any damage,’ Nan said, as they ate toast.

  ‘Damage?’ Tamzin looked up quickly.

  ‘Along the beaches. We sometimes get rockfalls in the big winter storms, that bring down pieces of the cliffs.’ She looked out of the kitchen window. ‘It’s a nice day, and the tide will be low by lunchtime. I might walk to our beach and see if anything’s happened.’ Then a smile spread across her face. ‘An earth tremor, eh? That’ll be something to tell your mum and dad when they phone tonight, won’t it!’

  Tamzin’s parents were in Canada, where Dad was working for a year. His work involved travelling a great deal, so Tamzin had been sent to live with Nan while they were away. It was hard to believe that five months had already passed since she came here. She had expected the time to drag horribly. But though she missed her parents, life in Cornwall had turned out to be anything but boring. She and Nan had become close friends; and Tamzin had made other friends, too – in particular a boy a year or so older than her, whose name was Joel Richards. Joel lived a short way up the valley from Nan’s house, and his parents owned and ran a riding stable. Horses were Tamzin’s great passion, but in her city home she had never had the chance to learn to ride. Now, that had all changed. At weekends and in the school holidays she helped at the stables in exchange for riding lessons, and Joel said now that she was almost as good as he was. That wasn’t true, of course, for Joel had started riding almost as soon as he could walk. But her dearest dream had come true.

  Yet with the dream had also come a nightmare…

  The painting with the broken frame was in Nan’s studio now, waiting to be mended, and the thought of it sent an unpleasant shiver down Tamzin’s spine. Broken. It brought back the memory of the little stone statue of a grey horse, centuries old, that had been passed down through the family and kept safe… until she had defied Nan’s warning and taken it from its shelf when no one was about. Even after five months Tamzin had a clear and awful memory of how the statue had seemed to writhe and twist in her hands, before it fell from her grasp and shattered in pieces on the floor.

  Tamzin’s dismay at breaking the statue had turned to horror when Nan finally told her why she should never have touched it. There was a legend, Nan said, of two spirits: the Blue Horse, bringer of calm seas and fair weather, and the Grey Horse, who hated humankind and blighted the land with storms and gales. When the Grey Horse threatened to wreak disaster on the coast and the people who lived here, Nan’s own ancestors had called on the spirit of the Blue Horse to save them. The two powers battled; with the help of his human friends the Blue Horse was victorious, and the Grey Horse’s spirit was imprisoned in a stone statue, and entrusted to the family to keep safe for always. Now, the statue was broken, and the evil power of the Grey Horse had been set free again. It wanted revenge – revenge on the family who had trapped it for so long. And Tamzin was its target.

  Tamzin had desperately wanted to believe that the legend could not be true. But twice now she had faced the Grey Horse, and it had nearly succeeded in killing her. It had not given up. It would never give up. Unless it could be captured and imprisoned once more, she would be in danger.

  Her hand went to a silver chain bracelet around her wrist, and she fingered a strangely shaped pendant that hung from it. The pendant was formed from two pieces of glass, of different shades of blue. Tamzin had found one piece after her first terrifying encounter with the Grey Horse, the other after her second… and some mysterious magic had caused them to fuse together, to form a delicate, curving shape. The pendant was her talisman, for she was sure it was a gift from the Blue Horse; a sign that the benevolent spirit was trying to reach out and help her. But the link was so fragile. The Grey Horse’s power was growing, and still she had not found a way to make contact with the Blue Horse.

  And now there had been an earth tremor…

  Nan started to clear the breakfast dishes, and the clatter brought Tamzin down to earth. With a great effort she pushed her thoughts away. Nan had been right last night; there was such a thing as coincidence. She had to hold on to that, believe in it, and think about other things. Such as the fact that the weather was lovely and the Easter holidays were just beginning, which meant three whole weeks of riding stretching ahead of her like a happy dream.

  Nan saw her change of mood and smiled. ‘I can see you’re itching to get along to the stables,’ she said, ‘and on a day like this I don’t blame you. I’ll let you off the washing up – go on, go and get ready.’

  ‘Brilliant!’ Tamzin jumped to her feet and gave Nan a hug. ‘Thanks, Nan! I’ll see you later!’

  Though it was still only March, the weather was warm enough for a lot of the riding stable horses to have been turned out in the field. Barney, the Richardses’ woolly dog, barked joyfully when he saw Tamzin approaching, and the horses too came crowding to the field gate to greet her, hoping for titbits. Tamzin took chunks of apple and carrot from her bulging jacket pockets and shared them around. She knew each horse by name now, and greeted them: ‘Hello, Sally-Ann, Dandy, Rosie – oh, Pippin, you greedyguts; stop pushing in!’ But all the while she was looking for one pony in particular. Moonlight was pure white with just a hint of dapple grey on his quarters and legs. He was Tamzin’s favourite – and far more than that, he was a very special friend. For twice now, when the Grey Horse had threatened her life, Moonlight had come to her rescue…

  But Moonlight wasn’t in the field this morning. At last Tamzin left the gate and walked to the stable yard with Barney trotting at her heels.

  ‘Hi!’ A dark head appeared at one of the loose-box doors, and Joel waved to her. ‘I’m mucking out.’ He pulled a face. ‘I could do with some help!’

  ‘OK.’ Tamzin grinned. Mucking out was messy and smelly, as its name suggested, but she didn’t mind. ‘Where’s Moonlight?’ she asked.

  ‘In his box. He’s booked for a customer this morning, so you’ll have to ride another pony when we go out.’

  ‘Oh. Well, I’ll go and say hello to him, then I’ll give you a hand.’

  Moonlight must have heard her voice, for the next moment he was whickering at the door of his box, tossing his head up and down and eager to nuzzle Tamzin’s face and hands as she hurried to him. She gave him two apples she had saved for him and he crunched them happily then blew on her fingers for more.

  ‘It’s all gone.’ She rubbed him between the ears, where his forelock flopped over his eyes. ‘We can’t go out together this morning, Moonlight. I’m sorry. But maybe tomorrow.’

  ‘Come on, Tam!’ Joel called. ‘Or I’ll be finished before you’ve even started!’

  She gave Moonlight a final pat and went to join him.

  As they mucked out, Tamzin and Joel talked about the earth tremor. The Richardses had all felt it, too; Barney had gone crazy, Joel said, and the horses had been so
frightened that the family had had to go out to the stables in the dark to calm them. Luckily, though, no damage had been done, though it had been frightening while it lasted.

  ‘Nan says tremors happen quite often,’ Tamzin told him.

  ‘Mmm.’ Joel’s face clouded. ‘I don’t know. I’ve never felt one before. And I can’t help wondering…’

  ‘What?’ she prompted when he didn’t finish.

  ‘Ohh… Nothing.’ His expression cleared. ‘Come on. Let’s forget about it, and get on with the work. The sooner we finish, the sooner we can go riding!’

  An hour later, they left the stables and rode down the valley path to the beach. Joel was on piebald Dandy, while Tamzin rode a pretty little mare called Lark, who was dark brown with a white star and four white socks. The sun was bright and warm, and the sea, between the ‘V’ of the cliffs to either side, was a brilliant sapphire blue.

  They guided the ponies carefully down the boulder-strewn slope that led from the car park on to firm golden sand. The tide was going out, and it was possible to get round the headland.

  ‘If we go round to the left, we can have a gallop,’ Joel said.

  ‘Lovely!’ Tamzin pressed her heels to Lark’s sides and the ponies broke into a trot. As they rounded the jutting headland, the huge expanse of the beach stretched out before them. Wet sand shone at the sea’s edge, and the crests of the big breakers glittered in the sunlight. At first they thought the beach was deserted, but then Joel pointed to a lone figure walking near the rocks at the foot of the cliffs.

  ‘Isn’t that your nan?’ he asked.

  Tamzin shaded her eyes. ‘Oh, yes – she said she was going to come down, to see if there have been any rockfalls. Let’s go and meet her.’

  The ponies were eager to gallop, but Joel and Tamzin restrained them to a canter as they rode towards Nan. Nan saw them and waved, then pointed at the cliffs.

  ‘Wow!’ Joel said, as he saw what she was indicating. ‘There’s been a rockfall, all right! Look at that!’

  There were caves in the cliffs, and the next one along was the largest of all. It had an entrance like a gaping mouth. Or rather, it used to have. Now, the mouth was completely blocked by a pile of enormous, jagged-edged boulders, piled one on top of another and spreading on to the sand. Above the cave was a great new V-shaped scar that ran down from the clifftop, showing where the chunks of rock had broken away.