‘What?’ cried Eliza. ‘How can that help?’
‘Moonrise and sunset are the times when day and night are in perfect balance,’ I replied excitedly. ‘When the light of the setting sun hits their feathers, I’ve an idea their colours will show. The separation of colours is part of the alchemical process. It produces a breathtaking display that, if reflected into the peacocks’ eyes, will dazzle them and allow me chance to sneak past. Keep your eyes down, mind! We will be overwhelmed by the sight just as easily as the peacocks. Look! The sun is setting!’
I watched anxiously as the orange ball of the sun slid round the sky and sliced through a tear in the clouds.
‘Now!’ I cried as the shaft of light beamed upon the overlapping trains of the peacocks, setting them ablaze with an array of colours unlike any I had ever seen before. It took every shred of my will to keep my eyes to the ground and not succumb to admiring the spectacle.
Eliza held up the blade. The reflection of the colours in the peacocks’ tails flashed off its surface and bounced back towards them as I crept forward. Once again, they remained motionless as I set my foot upon the first step. My heart pounded with anticipation as I moved, step by step, closer to the gates.
‘Hurry, Tom,’ Eliza called. ‘The sun will be gone in a few more moments.’
I drew a breath and steeled myself for whatever might lie ahead. Ducking through the gap beneath the peacocks’ intertwined trains, I heaved open the gates then slammed them shut behind me.
Chapter 28
For a few moments I could do little more than stare at what awaited me behind the gates. The empty, featureless land on the other side of the wall was gone, replaced with an immense oak wood enclosed by a courtyard and cleverly concealed from beyond the wall, but by what magical means I couldn’t tell.
An eerie twilight lingered beneath the eaves as the trees took on the semblance of a woodland palace, with a high green ceiling held up by the endless columns of boughs that marched all the way up to the castle beyond. There, the towers and buttresses rose even above the height of the trees, the very tops of the battlements obscured by mist and cloud.
I glanced up where a patch of sky peeped through the canopy of the trees. It was the same sky I had always known, of that I felt sure, but it seemed that in passing through the door I had stepped into another time or place altogether. Everywhere felt very much more alive. The colours of everything, from the leaves on the trees to the earth beneath my feet, were the colours I knew but richer, as though I had previously viewed them through a dulling filter.
As I moved through the trees, the merry sound of pipes playing a jig could be heard some way off. Without even realising, I found myself moving towards the music along a winding path. As the sound grew louder, the trees thinned and stopped altogether before a grassy hillock upon which a crowd danced and sung. At first glance, the dancers appeared to be children on account of their small stature, but their limbs were sinewy and covered in tough, hide-like skin, and from their foreheads swelled two lumps like the stumps of horns. Around the edge of the hillock, badgers and deer, foxes and hares gathered to watch.
As I stepped from the cover of the trees onto the hillock, the music stopped instantly, and the dancers and spectators disappeared, leaving behind nothing but the gathering dusk.
‘Who is it that makes so bold as to disturb my entertainment?’ came a voice from somewhere away to my right. It was a pleasant voice, rich and jovial.
‘Pardon me,’ I replied, looking round to identify the speaker. ‘I didn’t mean to intrude. I am looking for Ambrose Ruddle.’
‘I am he,’ said the voice.
‘Will you step forth so that I might see you?’ I replied, squinting through the gloom to locate the speaker.
‘You are standing right beside me,’ the voice replied. It seemed to be coming from above the level of my head. I looked up, but there was nothing to be seen but a wren perched on a branch regarding me with its bright black eyes.
‘I fear I cannot see you, sir,’ I said.
‘You are looking at me,’ the wren replied.
I almost tripped over a tree root in astonishment as the bird alighted from the branch and swept towards me, but even as its feet touched the ground it vanished. In its place stood the most peculiar-looking man I had ever encountered. His face was exceptionally wrinkled, like a berry left out in the sun, and a deep russet-coloured beard covered almost its entirety. Upon his head he wore a tall felt hat with a motif of a sun embroidered upon its front. His dress only accentuated the eccentricity of his appearance; he wore a long dark blue coat with frogging across the chest and wide burgundy pantaloons that seemed to belong to another era entirely, but I noted his feet were bare and covered in greyish green scales like those of a snake.
‘Ambrose Ruddle,’ he said, taking my hand and leading me up onto the hillock. ‘I rarely go about in human form now. Immortal I may be, but the body still wearies with age, and several of my experiments in my younger days have had permanent unintended effects.’ He glanced down at his feet as he spoke. ‘I assume the very fact that you stand before me means you are a friend and a magician, for no others would succeed in passing my guards. You are most welcome, but please tell me your purpose here.’
‘I am an apprentice magician, sir,’ I replied. ‘My name is Tom Wild. I’ve been sent by George Prye of the Guild of Gatekeepers.’
‘George! Why, it seems only yesterday that I saw him upon this very hill, but it must be many long years in the world outside these walls. When you are immortal, time seems to pass so slowly. Come, the meat is at the board and the night is yet young. Will you join me? I would be obliged to hear what cause George has to send another in his stead. It is most unlike him.’
‘I will, sir, but my companion, Eliza, is waiting for me outside,’ I replied.
‘Well now, that will never do. We cannot leave a young lady waiting on the doorstep.’ He clapped his hands, and a moment later Eliza stood beside me, a look of bewilderment upon her face as she looked from me to Ambrose.
‘Now, what news of England?’ he asked as he led us through the wood towards the castle. ‘I belong to a merrier world of knights and mummers, but I fear the England I knew has long since vanished.’
As we walked, I spoke of the war and the King’s troubles, and Eliza described London and the sprawling city it had become. Ambrose listened intently, savouring every detail we could tell.
Evening had come, and the warm glow of candle flames began to appear one by one in scooped-out hollows of the trees, lighting our path. At last we reached the castle, and Ambrose stopped before an immense pair of doors. Immediately, they swung open without sign or gesture, revealing a vast hall decked with flags and banners of every colour imaginable. Along the centre of the hall, a banquet table laid with candles and the most exquisite foods awaited us, and a dozen black ravens, the bald-headed one among them, perched upon the backs of the chairs, their heads turned towards Ambrose as though awaiting instructions.
In the corner of the hall, a sleeping dragon lay with its barbed tail coiled around the legs of a large furnace from which pipes and bellows emerged on all sides. Smoke curled from its nostrils as it breathed, propelling a wheel fashioned like the sails of a windmill.
‘Come in and be seated,’ said Ambrose, taking his position at the head of the table. ‘Set aside your cares, for now is the time for feasting and merry-making. My ravens will serve you as well as any human.’
‘Sir, what of the dragon?’ I asked, hesitating in the doorway. ‘Is it safe?’
‘That is Lilith,’ said Ambrose. ‘She will not harm you. She is not a dragon but a wyvern: a smaller, less powerful cousin of the dragon and an indispensable part of the heating system, as you can see,’ he added with a chuckle.
He dipped his hands in an ewer of water upon the table and held them above the wisps of smoke drifting from the sleeping wyvern’s nostrils. As they floated past his hands, the drops of water were transformed into dozens of
tiny gems as clear as glass.
‘How the…?’ gasped Eliza
‘For you, young lady,’ said Ambrose with a bow as he presented them to her.
Chapter 29
It was an odd experience indeed to feel the flap of the ravens’ wings as they flew up and down the table, carrying platters and dishes in their beaks with just a word or gesture of command from Ambrose. As we feasted on spiced meats and candied fruits, he laughed and jested with the vigour of one in the first flush of youth. In between mouthfuls of food and raspberry lemonade, he spoke of the many magical things he had seen in his long life, of the giant sleeping beneath the castle until the day magic returns to this world, and of the wild folk I had watched dancing upon the hillock. If magicians and their subtleties were ever a worthy subject for study, Ambrose would most certainly have been an anomaly, his jocularity seemingly at odds with the discipline required for the study of magic, yet possessed of wisdom beyond the measure of even William Devere.
‘There is magic to be found yet in the world,’ he declared. ‘True, a vast quantity disappeared with the Banishment, but magic is like a flower in winter: it will retreat into the cold earth and the wild places just waiting for something to awaken it, like the spring thaw. It is latent in animals that may still be found in this world. Perhaps you spotted the smiling sea canaries in the cove yonder? They sing with the mermaids and can calm a stormy sea with the sound of their voice. There is plenty of magic to be found yet if you know where to look. But come now, I have spoken enough. Tell me what is afoot with George.’
‘’Tis grim news, I fear.’ I said. ‘He is being held prisoner by the Keeper of the Guild, William Devere.’
‘And how did that come to be?’ asked Ambrose.
I proceeded with the tale of how Eliza and I had found George and learned of the dragonskin, and of his instructions to deliver it up to the King. Ambrose listened without saying a word until the tale was told.
‘Well, that is an eye-opener and no mistake,’ he said. ‘I have often wondered when that old dragonskin would start causing trouble. It were better that George destroyed it than keep it hidden. I warned him so when he first brought it here. I am over nine hundred years old, and I have lamented the magic that was lost from this world, but high magic is an immensely powerful force, greater than most people can comprehend. ‘Tis not a thing that should be passed around lightly.’ He paused and looked at me and Eliza closely. ‘Nevertheless, George knows his own business best. I have not seen the outside of these walls in nigh-on six hundred years. Maybe the world is ready for high magic once again.’
He rose from his seat and made his way to an elaborately carved chest that spanned almost the entire width of the wall. From inside he lifted a parcel of white linen and set it upon the table before us.
‘Behold, the dragonskin,’ he said.
I felt a fluttering sensation in the pit of my stomach as he unfolded the linen to reveal the precious treasure we had come so far to find. It was smaller than I expected, just a slither of skin no bigger than the palm of my hand, and it had a translucent quality much like parchment. In truth, it looked quite ordinary until Ambrose held it up to the candlelight, and then I saw the intricate pattern of the scales shimmering in many hues of gold and bronze. My breath caught in my throat, and I gasped.
‘It is beautiful,’ I thought aloud.
‘That it is,’ replied Ambrose. ‘Keep it safe. Its size belies its power.’
He rested the dragonskin upon the palm of his hand and held it out for me or Eliza to take. We looked at one another, both seemingly reluctant to become its guardian.
‘I daren't touch a thing so precious,’ said Eliza.
‘Very well. I will take it,’ I said, lifting it from Ambrose’s outstretched palm and wrapping it back in its linen cover. As I tucked it into the breast pocket of my jerkin, I laughed suddenly and quite unexpectedly as though a long-suppressed surge of emotion had suddenly been released.
‘What is it?’ asked Eliza.
‘I was just thinking how absurd it is that I was swept up into the world of magic quite by accident, yet here I am holding the most precious and powerful object in the world in the breast pocket of my jerkin while the head of the greatest order of magicians in Europe hunts for it.’
Ambrose shook his head sagely. ‘Nay, ‘twas no accident that you became embroiled with the Guild of Gatekeepers and the dragonskin. There are no accidents where magic is concerned. There is some purpose to your involvement with both, though what that purpose is may not be apparent yet.’
‘Perhaps, but still I’m mighty afraid,’ I replied. ‘I’m no magician, whatever Emerson’s hopes for me may have been. Eliza was born into the Guild, but I am the son of a poor fisherman and smuggler. I’m quite out of my depth, that much is plain.’
Ambrose smiled. ‘You see things as one with crooked eyes,’ he said. ‘William Devere is a master manipulator, but you are the chink in his armour. True, you are not schooled in magic, but it is for that reason that you are not under his sway and saw through his deceits.’
‘Ambrose is right, Tom. We’d never have found George if it wasn't for you,’ said Eliza.
‘Aye, and mark this!’ said Ambrose. ‘Magic may be learned, but you possess that most elusive thing that cannot be taught, a thing that Devere cannot corrupt and magic cannot create: an honest heart. By my reckoning, that counts for more than all the knowledge of the Alexandrian library.’
I blushed and looked down at my feet, a little overawed by Ambrose’s fervent belief in me. ‘I just hope for the King’s and George’s sakes that your faith in me isn't misplaced,’ I replied.
Chapter 30
The moon was up, and the candles in the trees still burned as Ambrose led us back through the wood. The night air was pleasantly refreshing after the warmth of the castle. In the distance, the sound of pipes could be heard once again.
‘I am sorry indeed that you cannot stay longer. It has been many a long year since I have had a visit from the world without,’ said Ambrose when we reached the castle gates. ‘Nonetheless, this is where I must bid you farewell. Pay no mind to the mermaids if they call to you. I will send a fair wind to fill your sails.’
With that, the gates swung open, and he was gone. As we made our way back to the stairway leading down to the cove, I noted the dark shape of a bird silhouetted against the sky following us along the perimeter of the walls. As we reached the cliffs it turned back to the castle and disappeared quietly into the night.
In the cove below, the ship’s sails shimmered faintly in the moonlight, and the murmur of the waves filled the air. We reached the end of the stairway and dragged the raft down to the shore. I glanced over to the rocks that bounded the cove on either side. Somewhere amongst them, I thought I caught a faint sound like the snort of an animal.
‘What was that?’ whispered Eliza.
‘I don’t know, but I heard it too,’ I replied.
The ship loomed before us, the rope ladder still hanging where we had left it. The little raft bobbed gently upon the waves as we launched it into the black water and took up the paddles. Across the cove, the splash of something in the water echoed along the cliffs as an invisible mass of speed and power tore towards us, knocking me sideways into the sea. A sound like the whinnying of a horse rent the air.
‘The Shadow Horse!’ cried Eliza, scrambling back to the shore. ‘Get the dragonskin out of sight!’
I staggered to my feet only to be knocked down once more as the horse reared up at me, its powerful hoofs pounding me with blows as I reached for the raft.
'Tom, run!' Eliza yelled from somewhere behind me as something came whistling through the air. The horse whinnied and let out a pained cry as a large flat pebble hit its flank then landed in the water with a splash. It halted its attack for a moment- just long enough for me to launch myself at the raft as the tide carried it out of the cove.
‘Eliza, hurry!’ I cried.
She stood knee-deep in the s
ea, the Shadow Horse between us as it strode through the water towards me as easily as if it walked in a meadow.
‘I can't swim,’ Eliza yelled.
I looked frantically back to the ship. It was tantalisingly close, but the Shadow Horse would easily take me down before I reached it. It snorted and shook the salt water from its mane, closing the gap between us with every second that passed. It was visible now, flames of white blazing from its flaring nostrils.
‘I’ll come back for you,’ I yelled back to Eliza as I took up the paddle and dug it into the water, propelling myself towards the ship. Immediately, the horse broke into a gallop, ploughing through the waves after me. I could feel the spray on the back of my neck as it drew nearer with every stride. The ship was closer now, and the rope ladder swayed gently in the breeze. I leapt from the raft and launched myself onto it, but even as I did so a rumbling noise sounded beneath the water, and the ship trembled. I whirled round to see the sea transformed into a seething whirlpool from which a monstrous squid emerged, its writhing limbs groping towards the horse. On the shore, Eliza was stranded.
The monster drew its hulking body up out of the water and hurled itself at the horse as it whinnied furiously, dismayed at the arrival of an unexpected foe. The squid thrashed, sending the whale bones that littered the cove flying in all directions. I looked on in dismay as an enormous rib bone close to the shore was thrust forward, piercing the fore sail.
‘Eliza! Climb up the whale bone!’ I yelled.
‘I can't,’ Eliza cried back from the beach.
‘You have to. Hurry!’
The horse reared up, dropping its mighty hooves onto the squid’s great beak and gnashing at its tentacles. Eliza hesitated.
‘Do it!’ I yelled.
She drew a breath and clung to the whale rib, pulling herself slowly along its length as the two beasts fought. The horse leapt through the waves, blows from its hooves raining down upon the squid, but the sea monster was larger and far more powerful. With one swipe of its mighty tentacles, it delivered the final blow, sending the horse tumbling into the sea as it sank back into the whirlpool and disappeared.
A Skin of a Dragon (The Guild of Gatekeepers Book 1) Page 11