The Opal Quest Read Online Free PDF Page B

the flame up to look into shadowy crevices, behind pinnacles and along ledges.
    â€˜Oh, this is hopeless,’ she muttered and slumped against a cluster of pinnacles. She was too tired to concentrate on her flame and it dwindled to almost nothing. But as it dimmed another light began to fill the cavern.
    Tia peered round the spikes of rock and saw a glowing ball of light drift into view, followed by the bear. Yordis had come back much sooner than Tia had expected!
    She drew back a little but could still see the bear as it shambled to a stop in front of a sheer drop of crystal and shook itself. It shivered and blurred and Yordis appeared in its place. She unlatched the collar, reached high up and slid aside a panel of polished crystal. No wonder Tia hadn’t noticed the hiding place: it was impossible to see in the sheet of crystal.
    Yordis put the collar carefully into a space behindthe panel and slid it closed. Then she sighed and began to stretch and shake her limbs as if she had to get used to her human form again.
    While Yordis was stretching, Tia tiptoed back to the tunnel entrance, pressing herself against the wall and slinking silently through the shadows. Just as she slipped inside to safety Yordis followed, the glowing ball lighting her way.
    Tia ran as fast as she dared, burst into Yordis’s library and closed the door quietly. She tiptoed to the central chamber door and was about to open it when someone knocked from the outside.
    â€˜Lady Yordis,’ a voice said. It was Katinka! Tia was trapped between the High Witch and her maid!
    She heard the door in the library bang shut, and Katinka knocked on the door again. She looked around wildly for a way out, and remembered the fireplace in Yordis’s bedroom. It was wide; she could climb up inside it – if it wasn’t yet lit.
    She ran to it and saw with relief that it was swept and laid ready but not lit. She scrambled up the chimney. The rough bricks in the flu provided plenty of hand-holes and higher up there were some metal rungs to climb.
    By the time Yordis returned to the bedroom Tia was out of sight. She heard Katinka knocking againand the bed creak as the High Witch threw herself onto it. ‘Enter!’ Yordis called.
    There were the sounds of the door opening and closing and Katinka’s voice saying, ‘I’ve come to attend to the fire, Lady Yordis.’
    Tia yelped in shock. She tried to stifle the sound with her hand and it came out as, ‘Eeek!’
    â€˜There are mice in the chimney again!’ Yordis said. ‘Get that fire going, girl, and drive them away before I have to do it myself!’
    Tia hastily scrabbled higher up the rungs. They passed a square hole, the entrance to a vent that she thought went in the direction of her room. She crawled inside it. There was no light so she snapped the tiny flame onto her finger again. The vent stretched away in front of her, narrow and thick with soot. She worked her way down it, levering herself along on her knees and one elbow so that she could hold out her flame with the other hand. It was hot in the tight passageway and a smell of smoke made her cough. She grimly crawled on.
    A waft of air and a faint gleam of light told her she was near a flue. Surely it led to her room? She made the flame die away and crawled on as fast as she could. There was the flue! She eased herself into it and dropped into the cold hearth in her room.
    Coughing and spluttering, she banged at her clothes. Soot puffed up in clouds. She scrubbed at her hair and more soot wafted out. How she was going to explain herself to Katinka?

    Tia found Katinka in the kitchen. ‘What have you been doing?’ the maid exclaimed.
    â€˜I heard something in the chimney,’ Tia said, ‘and when I poked my head up to have a look, a load of soot fell on me.’
    Katinka found the grey boys’ clothes again and gave them to Tia. ‘Have a good wash, change into these and bring me