Kiara Pride-Lander:
and the Goblet of Fire (Strikes Once Again)
By Kimberley Joan Amethyst
Chapter 1
The Mystery House
KIARA
Hello, my dear readers. It is I, Kiara Pride-Lander, with the fourth instalment of my story. What can I tell you about this year? Well, there's murder, mystery, romance, betrayal, one of my best friends falls in love and ends up in a relationship ... and I end up being unwillingly forced into a Tournament that I certainly did NOT want to be a part of, Sian falling out with her mother, and stuff about Zira ... but I am getting ahead of myself. There will be more on all of that later. For now, let me take you to Africa, KawaZulu Natal to be exact, and the Mystery House (and just so you know, I am not going to be part of this chapter, but not as much as you'd think, adding in my own thoughts as this chapter goes on. Until the next chapter, the narrative for the most part will be in third person, so enjoy).
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The people of KawaZulu, Natal, South Africa, still called it "the Mystery House", even though it had been many years since the Maliay family had mysteriously died there. It stood high on a hill, overlooking the village, some of its windows boarded, tiles missing from its roof, and roots from the ground were clinging over the face of the house. It was once a fine-looking manor, and easily the largest and grandest building for miles around, the Mystery House was now damp, derelict and unoccupied.
The residents of KawaZulu, Natal all agreed that the old house was "creepy". For you see, half a century ago, something strange and horrible had happened there, something the older inhabitants of the village still liked to discuss when topics for gossip were scarce. The story had been picked over so many times, and had been embroidered in so many places, that nobody there was quite sure what the truth was anymore. Every version of the tale, however, started in the same place; fifty years before, at daybreak on a fine summer's morning, when the Maliay House - as it was then called - had still been well-kept and impressive, a maid had entered the drawing room to find all three Maliays dead.
The maid ran screaming down the hill into the village, and roused as many people as she could.
"Lying there with their eyes wide open! Cold as ice! Still in their dinner things!"
The police were summoned, and the whole of KawaZulu, Natal had seethed with shocked curiosity and ill-disguised excitement. Nobody wasted their breath pretending to feel very sad about the Maliays, for they had been most unpopular. Elderly Mr and Mrs Maliay had been rich, snobbish and rude , and their grown-up daughter, Dizra, had been even more so. All the villagers cared about was the identity of their murderer - plainly, three apparently healthy people did not all drop dead of natural causes on the same night.
The village community centre did a roaring trade that night; the whole village had turned out to discuss the murders. They were rewarded for leaving their firesides when the Maliays' cook arrived dramatically in their midst, and announced to the suddenly silent pub that a woman by the name of Aisha Ancarra had been arrested.
"Aisha!" cried several people. "Never!"
Aisha Ancarra was the Maliays' gardener. She lived alone in a run-down cottage in the Mystery House grounds. Aisha had come back from working in a hospital during the war with a very stiff back and a great dislike of crowds and loud noises, and had been working for the Maliays ever since.
There was a rush to fetch food and water for the cook and hear more details.
Always thought she was odd," she told the eagerly listening villagers after a few other people had said their peices. "Unfriendly, like. I'm sure if I've offered her a drink of water once, I've offered it a hundred times. Never wanted to mix, she didn't."
"Ah, now," said a woman at the bar, "she had a hard war, Aisha did, she likes the quiet life. There's no reason to - "
"Who else had a key to the back door, then?" barked the cook. There's been a spare key hanging in the gardener's cottage far back as I can remember! Nobody forced the door last night! No broken windows! All Aisha had to do was creep up to the big house while we was all sleeping ..."
The villagers exchanged dark looks.
"I always thought she had a nasty look about her, right enough," grunted a man in the furthest part of the room.
"War turned her funny, if you ask me," said the manager.
"Told you I didn't want to get on the wrong side of Aisha, didn't I, Banz?" said an excited man in the corner.
"Horrible temper," said Banz, nodding fervently, "remember when I was a kid ..."
But over at the dark and dingy police station, Aisha stubbornly repeated, over and over again, that she was innocent, and that the only person she had seen near the house on the day of the Maliays' deaths had been a teenage girl, a stranger, light-haired and pale. Nobody in the village had seen any such girl, and the police were quite sure Aisha had just invented her.
Then, just when things looked very serious for Aisha, the report on the Maliays' bodies came back and changed everything.
The police had never read a more odder report. A team of doctors had examined the bodies and had concluded that none of the Maliays had been poisoned, stabbed, shot, strangled, suffocated, or (as far as they knew) harmed at all. In fact, the report continued, in a tone of unmistakable bewilderment, the Maliays all appeared to be in perfect health - apart from the obvious fact that they were all dead. The doctors did note (as though determined to find something wrong with the bodies) that each of the Maliays had a look of terror upon his or her face - but as the frustrated police said, who ever heard of people being frightened to death?
As there was no proof that the Maliays had been murdered at all, the police were forced to let Aisha go. The Maliays were buried in the KawaZulu, Natal churchyard, and their graves remained objects of curiosity for a while. To everyone's surprise, Aisha Ancarra returned to her cottage in the grounds of the Maliay house.
"'S far as I'm concerned, she killed them, and I don't care what the police say," said Banz in the village community centre. "And if she had any decency, she'd leave here, knowing as how we knows she did it."
But Aisha did not leave. She stayed to tend the garden for the next family who lived in the Maliay house, and then the next - for neither family stayed too long. Perhaps it was because of Aisha that each new owner said there was a nasty feeling about the place, which, in the absence of inhabitants, started to fall into despair.
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The wealthy woman who owned the Mystery House these days neither lived there nor put it to any use; they said in the village that she kept it for "tax reasons", though nobody was very clear what these might be. The wealthy owner continued to pay Aisha to do the gardening, however Aisha was nearing her seventy-seventh birthday, was very deaf, her bad back stiffer than ever, but she could still be seen pottering around the flower beds in fine weather, even though the weeds were starting to creep up on her.
Weeds were not the only things Aisha had to contend with, either. Girls from the village made a habit of throwing stones through the windows of the Mystery House. They rode their bikes over the lawns Aisha tried so hard to keep smooth. Once or twice, they broke into the house for a dare. They knew that old Aisha was devoted to the house and the grounds, and it amused them to see her limping around the garden, brandishing her stick, back crooked and yelling croakily at them. Aisha, on her part, believed the girls tormented her because they, like their parents and grandparents, thought her a murderer. So, when Aisha woke one night in August, and saw something very odd up at the old house, she merely assumed that the girls had gone one step further in their attempts to ruin her.
It was Aisha's bad back that had woken her; it pained her worse than ever in her old age. She got up and walked downstairs into the kitchen, with the idea of re-filling her hot-water bottle to ease the stiffness in her back. Standing at the sink, filling the kettle, she looked up at the Mystery House and saw lights glimmering in the upper windows. Aisha knew at once what was going on. The girls had broken into the house again, and judging by the flickering quality of the light, they had started a fire.
Aisha had no telephone, and in any case, she had deeply mistrusted the police ever since they had taken her in for questioning about the Maliays' deaths. She put the kettle down at once, hurried back upstairs as fast as her bad back would allow her, and was soon back in her kitchen, fully dressed and removing a rusty old key from its hook by the door. She picked up her walking stick, which was propped against the wall, and set off into the night.
The front door of the Maliay house bore no sign of being forced, nor did any of the windows. Aisha walked archedly around the back of the house until she reached a door that was almost completely hidden by covered roots, took out the old key, put it into the lock and opened the door noiselessly.
She had let herself into the cavernous kitchen. Aisha had not entered it for many years; nevertheless, although it was very dark, she remembered where the door into the hall was, and she groped her way towards it, her nostrils full of the smell of decay, ears pricked for any sound of footsteps or voices from overhead. She reached the hall, which was a little lighter, owing to the large mullioned windows on either side of the front door, and started to climb the stairs, blessing the dust which lay upon the stone, because it muffled the sound of her feet and stick.
On the landing, Aisha turned right, and saw at once where the intruders were: at the very end of the passage a door stood ajar, and a flickering light shone through the gap, casting a long sliver of gold across the black floor. Aisha edged closer and closer, grasping her walking stick firmly. Several feet from the entrance, she was able to see a narrow slice of the room beyond.
The fire, she saw, had been lit in the grate. This surprised her. She stopped moving and listened intently, for a man's voice spoke within the room; it sounded timid and fearful.
"There is a little more in the bottle, my Lady, if you are still hungry."
"Later," said the second voice. This voice belonged to a woman - but it was strangely high-pitched and cold as a sudden blast of icy wind. Something about that voice made the sparse hairs on the back of Aisha's neck stand up. "Move me a little closer to the fire, Wormy."
There was a pause, during which Aisha turned her right ear towards the door, the better to hear. Then Aisha heard the sound of someone striking someone's skin which made her wince, a bottle smashing, the man's voice crying out in pain and a third voice, which was another woman's, but this woman's voice was hard and hard, and said sharply, "Do what our mistress says, you useless bit of dragon filth!" Aisha then heard the scraping noise of a heavy chair being dragged across the floor. Aisha caught a glimpse of a small man, his back to the door, pushing the chair into place. He wore a long red cloak, and there was a bald patch at the back of his head, during which time the third woman chuckled a harsh laugh. Then he disappeared from sight again.
"Where is Namzo?" said the cold voice.
"I think he set out to explore the house, my Lady," said the second woman, her voice softening slightly, with not a drop of fear in her voice.
"Make sure your husband milks a female snake before we leave here, Alice," said the first woman's voice. "I will need feeding in the night. The journey has tired me greatly."
"I will do as you ask, my Lady," said the second woman's voice.
Brow furrowed, Aisha inclined her head still closer to the door, listening very hard. There was a pause and then the man called Wormy spoke again.
"My Lady, may I ask how long we are going to stay here?"
"A week," said the cold voice. "Maybe more. This place is moderately comfortable, and the plan cannot proceed yet. It would be foolish to act before the Quidditch Friendly takes place."
Aisha inserted a gnarled finger into her ear and rotated it. Owing, no doubt, to a build-up of earwax, she heard the word "Quidditch", which was not a word at all (Muggles, they're quite naïve, aren't they?).
"The - the Quidditch Friendly, my Lady?" said Wormy (Aisha dug her finger still more vigorously into her ear). "Forgive me, but - I do not understand - why should we wait until the Friendly is over?"
"Because, idiot, at this very moment wizards are poring into Great Britain from all over the world, and every meddler from the Ministry of Magic will be on duty, on the watch for signs of unusual activity, checking and double-checking identities. They will be obsessed with security, lest the Muggles notice anything, so we wait."
Aisha stopped trying to clear her ear out. She had distinctly heard the words "Ministry of Magic", "wizards", and "Muggles". Plainly, each of these expressions meant something secret, and Aisha could think of only two sorts of people who would speak in code - spies and criminals (she at least got the criminal part right). Aisha tightened her hold on her walking stick once more, and listened more closely still.
"Your Ladyship is still determined, then?" Wormy said quietly.
"Certainly I am determined, Wormy." There was a note of menace in the cold voice now.
A slight pause followed - and then Wormy spoke, the words trembling from him in a rush, as though he was forcing himself to say this before he lost his nerve.
"It could be done without Kiara Pride-Lander, my Lady."
Another pause, more protracted, and then -
"Without Kiara Pride-Lander?" said the second voice softly. "I see ..."
"My Lady, I am certain that my husband does not say this out of concern for the girl!" said the second woman quickly. "The girl is nothing to us, nothing at all, isn't that right, Abster?" the second woman finished harshly.
"T-t-that is t-true, yes," Wormy spoke squeakily. "It is merely that if we were to use another witch or wizard - any witch - the thing could be done more quickly! If you allowed me to leave you a short while - you know that I can disguise myself most effectively - I could be back in as little as two days with a suitable person - "
"I could use another witch," said the second voice softly, "that is true - "
"My Lady, it makes sense!" said Wormy, sounding thoroughly relieved now. "Laying hands on Kiara Pride-Lander would be so difficult, she is so well protected - "
"And so you volunteer to go and fetch me a substitute? I wonder ... perhaps, if the task of nursing me has become wearisome for you, Wormy? Could this suggestion of abandoning the plan be nothing more than an attempt to desert me?"
My Lady! I - I have no wish to leave you, none at all - "
"Do not lie to me!" hissed the cold voice. "I can always tell, Wormy! You are regretting that you ever returned to me. I revolt you. I see you flinch when you look at me, feel you shudder when you touch me ..."
"No! My devotion to your Ladyship - "
"Your devotion is nothing more than cowardice!" spat the cold voice. "You and your wife would not be here if you had nowhere else to go, remember that. Besides, how am I to survive without you when I need feeding every few hours?"
"B - but you would have Alice to help you with those - "
"Oh please, Abster!" spat the second woman. "You know as well as I do that I would follow you anywhere, you disgusting piece of flesh! And you know as well as I do that our mistress needs both of us to stay with her in order to keep her alive."
The cold voice chuckled softly. "Wormy, why can't you be more like your wife? At least she knows what loyalty means and where hers lies ..."
Wormy spoke again. "But you seem so much stronger, my Lady - "
"Liar," breathed the cold voice. "I am no stronger, and a few days alone would be enough to rob me of the little health I have regained under your clumsy hands, Wormy, and the more careful hands of your wife. Silence!"
Wormy, who had been spluttering incoherently, fell silent at once. For a few seconds, Aisha heard nothing but the fire crackling. Then the cold voice spoke once more, in a whisper that was almost a hiss.
"I have my reasons for using the girl, as I have already explained to the pair of you, and I will use no other. I have waited fourteen years. A few more months will make no difference. As for the protection surrounding the girl, I believe my plan will be effective. All that is needed is a little courage from you, Wormy - courage that I hope you will gain through you wife, unless you wish to feel the full extent of Lady Zira's wrath - "
"My Lady, I must speak!" said Wormy, panic in his voice now. "All through our journey I have gone over the plan in my head - my Lady, Bernard Jenkins' disappearance will not go unnoticed for long, and if we proceed, if I curse - "
"If?" whispered the cold voice. "If? If you and your wife follow the plan, Wormy, the Ministry need never know that anyone else has disappeared. You will do it quietly and without any fuss; I only wish that I could do it myself, but in my present condition ... come, Wormy, one more obstacle removed and our path to Kiara Pride-Lander is clear. I am not asking you to do it alone. By that time, my faithful servant will have returned to us - "
"I am a faithful servant," said Wormy, the merest trace of sullenness in his voice.
"Wormy, I need somebody with brains, somebody whose loyalty has never wavered, and you, unfortunately, fulfil neither requirements. Indeed, if I could I would send Alice to do the job, but I need another pair of eyes on you as well as Namzo's and my own."
"Thank you, my Lady," said the second woman, her voice relishing smugness with every word.
"B-but, my Lady, we found you," said Wormy, and there was a definite sulky edge to his voice now. "We were the ones who found you, a-and indeed, it was I who bought Bernard Jenkins to you."
"Wormy, the only reason you found me was because of your wife, and you know it," said the cold voice, sounding amused. "But about Bernard Jenkins ... that is true. A stroke of brilliance neither of us would have thought possible from you, Wormy - though, if truth be told, you were not aware how useful he would be when you caught him, didn't you?"
"I-I thought he might be useful, my Lady - "
"Liar," said the cold voice again, the cruel amusement more pronounced than ever. "However, I don't deny that his information was invaluable. Without it, I could never have formed our plan, and for that, you will have your reward, Wormy - as will you, Alice. Wormy, I will allow you to perform an essential task for me, one that many of my followers would give their right hands to perform ..."
"R-really, my Lady? What - ?" Wormy sounded terrified again.
"Ah, Wormy, you don't want me to spoil the surprise, now, do you? Your part will come at the very end ... but I promise you, you will have the honour of being just as useful as Bernard Jenkins."
"You ... you ..." Wormy's voice sounded suddenly hoarse, as though his mouth had gone very dry. "You ... are going ... to kill me, too?"
"If she doesn't, then someday I will," said the second woman slowly, with cold, hard menace in her voice.
The cold voice seemed to ignore this, but said to Wormy silkily, "Wormy, Wormy, why would I kill you? I killed Bernard because I had to. He was fit for nothing after my questioning, quite useless. In any case, awkward questions would have been asked if he had gone back to the Ministry with news that he had seen you on his travels. Wizards who are supposed to be dead would not do well to run into Ministry of Magic wizards at wayside inns ..."
Wormy muttered something so quietly that Aisha couldn't hear it, but it made the two women laugh - both laughs were as mirthless and cold as the voice of the first woman.
"We could have modified his memory? But Memory Charms can be broken by a very powerful witch or wizard, as I proved when I questioned him. It would be an insult to his memory to not use the information extracted from him, Wormy."
Out in the corridor, Aisha suddenly became aware that the hand gripping her walking stick was slippery with sweat. The woman with the cold voice had killed a man. She was talking about it without any kind of remorse - with amusement. She was dangerous - a madwoman. And she was planning more murders - this girl, Kiara Pride-Lander (me, in other words), was in danger -
Aisha knew what she must do. Now, if ever, was the time to call the police. She would creep out of the house and head straight for the telephone box in the village (not to speak against her, but if she had any sense at all, she would have done that in the first place) ... but the cold voice was speaking again, and Aisha remained where she was, frozen to the spot, listening with all her might.
"One more curse ... my faithful servant at Dragon Mort ... and Kiara Pride-Lander is as good as mine, Wormy. It is decided. There will be no more arguments. Be quiet, both of you ... I think I hear Namzo ..."
And the first woman's voice changed. She started making noises such as Aisha had never heard before; she was hissing and spitting without drawing breath. Aisha thought she must be having some sort of fit or seizure.
And then Aisha heard movement behind her in the dark passageway. She turned to look behind her, and found herself paralysed with fright.
Something was slithering towards her along the dark corridor, and as it drew nearer to the sliver of firelight, she realised with a thrill of horror that it was a gigantic snake, at least twelve feet long. Horrified, transfixed, Aisha stared at it as its undulating body cut a wide, curving track through the thick dust on the floor, coming closer and closer - what was she to do? The only means of escape was into the room where two women and a man sat plotting murder, yet if she stayed where she was the snake would surely kill her -
But before she had made her decision, the snake was level with her, and then, incredibly, miraculously, it was passing; it was following the spitting, hissing noises made by the cold voice beyond the door, and in seconds, the tip of its diamond-patterned tail had vanished through the gap.
There was sweat on Aisha's forehead now, and the hand on her walking stick was trembling. Inside the room, the cold voice was continuing to hiss, and Aisha was visited by a strange idea, an impulsive idea ... This woman could talk to snakes.
Aisha didn't understand what was going on. She wanted more than anything to be back in bed with her hot-water bottle. The problem was that her legs didn't seem to want to move. As she stood there, shaking, and trying to master herself, the cold voice switched abruptly to English again.
"Alice. Wormy. Namzo has some rather interesting news," it said.
"Indeed, my Lady?" said Wormy's wife.
"Indeed, yes," said the cold voice. "According to Namzo, there is an old woman standing right outside this room, listening to every word we say."
Aisha didn't have a chance to hide herself. There were footsteps, and then the door of the room was flung wide open.
A short, balding man with greying hair, a pointed nose and small, watery eyes and a recent red mark on his cheek from where his wife had recently struck him stood before Aisha, a mixture of fear and alarm on his face.
"Well, let the woman inside, Abster," Abster's wife spoke softly. "Where are your manners, after all?"
"Listen to your wife, Wormy," said the cold voice. "Let's not be impolite to our guest."
The cold voice came from the ancient armchair before the fire, but Aisha couldn't see the speaker. She could, however, see Wormy's wife, who stood leaning against the wall. She was taller than her husband, had short hair pulled up, strict, observing eyes and a thing mouth that was curled up slightly at the sight of Aisha and didn't take her eyes off of her. The snake, meanwhile, was curled up on the rotting hearthrug, like some horrible travesty of a pet dog.
Wormy beckoned me into the room. Thought still deeply shaken, Aisha took a firmer grip upon her walking stick and, back as straight as she could get it, walked slowly over the threshold.
The fire was the only source of light in the room; it was casting long, spidery shadows upon the walls. As she stared at the back of the armchair, the woman sitting in it seemed to be even smaller than her servant, for Aisha couldn't even see the back of her head.
"You heard everything, Muggle?" said the cold voice.
"What's that you're calling me?" said Aisha defiantly, for now she was inside the room, she knew that now was the time for some sort of action, she felt braver; she had learnt that from things passed to her from the men that had served in the war.
"I am calling you a Muggle," said the voice coolly. "It means you are not a witch."
"I don't know what you mean by witch," said Aisha, her voice growing steadier. "All I know is I've heard enough to interest the police tonight, I have. You've done murder and you're planning more! And I'll tell you this," she added on sudden inspiration, "my husband knows I'm up here, and if I don't come back - "
"You have no husband," said the cold voice very quietly. "Nobody knows you're here. You told nobody that you were coming. Do not lie to Lady Zira, Muggle, for she knows ... she always knows ..."
"Is that right?" said Aisha roughly. "Lady, is it? Well, I don't think much of your manners, my Lady. Turn around and face me like a woman, why don't you?"
"But I am not a woman, Muggle," said the cold voice, barely audible now over the crackling of the flames. "I am much, much more than a woman. However ... why not? I will face you ... Wormy, come turn my chair around."
Wormy gave a whimper as his wife's lips curled further upward into a truly wicked smile.
"You heard me, Wormy."
Slowly, with his face screwed up, as though he would rather have done anything but approach his mistress and the hearthrug where the snake was, the small man walked forwards and began to turn the chair. The snake lifted its ugly, triangular head and hissed slightly as the legs of the chair snagged on the rug. Wormy's wife's head leaned forward excitedly as this happened.
And then the chair was facing Aisha and she saw what was sitting in it. Her walking stick fell to the floor with a clatter. She opened her mouth and let out a scream. She was screaming so loudly that she never heard the words the thing in the chair spoke as it raised its wand. There was a flash of green light, a rushing sound, and Aisha Ancarra crumpled. She was dead before she hit the floor.
And that was when, seven-thousand-and-eighty-nine miles away, that I, Kiara Pride-Lander, woke with a start.
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Hello, readers. K.J.A. here with the fourth book at last, I know. I'm sorry this has been far too long, but I really needed a break. I'm back now, and I'm going to be posting chapters whenever I've finished a chapter for the fifth book, so I'm not going to tell you when to expect your updates. Some chapters will be split, so if anyone knows how to put headings in the chapter navigation thing, let me know soon, that'll be a great help to me. I don't know much about Africa to be honest, so please forgive me if some of this sounds inaccurate, but I'm only doing this as a plot device, so don't judge me too harshly. I hope you enjoy this book, and that's all I have to say to you until the next chapter. Thanks for reading as always. Oh, and you can follow me on Twitter: /siandawson155 if you want to follow me and ask me any questions.
