by Holly Race
‘Yes.’ She stops and frowns at me for the first time. ‘They are not expecting you, Fern.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘It was your mother’s greatest wish that you become a knight, like her.’
‘Mum wanted …?’
‘I will do my best to honour her wish, but you must play your part also.’
‘How …?’ But Andraste doesn’t answer, merely holds up a hand to the guardians in the gatehouse. I watch the skies unseeingly, questions about Mum and the knights beating through my head like the wings of those angels. They remind me of one of my few friends back when I was at St Stephen’s. Lauren’s family was obsessively religious. They never let her invite me round because they were scared of what my eyes might signify. Lauren and I drifted apart. It’s hard to stay friends with someone whose parents think you need a dose of holy water and an exorcism.
A screech breaks through the air. The angel that was resting on the wall is no longer alone. Dozens of them perch there, every one watching us through cat-like eyes. Andraste throws an arm across my chest.
‘Were you remembering something?’ she asks me, her eyes not leaving the angels.
‘I was just thinking about an old friend.’
‘What about her?’
‘Just how the angels reminded me of her parents, and how they were scared of … Oh.’ Given what Andraste has just told me about inspyre, perhaps musing about people who think I’m possessed when in the presence of angels isn’t the best idea.
The angels take flight again. In paintings they are graceful creatures, but now these ones are all angles. One dives towards us, hands and clawed feet stretched in front of it like an eagle. I glimpse a set of horns pushing through the angel’s curled hair just before Andraste slashes at its chest with her sword. The angel reels away, but its inhuman cries enrage the others.
‘You will run now!’ Andraste pushes me roughly towards the drawbridge, which is slowly lowering. But there’s no way I’m leaving her to take them on all by herself. Inspyre vibrates around me, like it’s being charged by my panic. I can hear the angels’ wings now, hundreds of them beating like a giant heart. They drop as one. Andraste stands over me, protecting me as she always has. Her sword arcs, slicing through the belly of one. The angel’s furious scream is cut off as it disintegrates back into the air, like burning paper. Then the rest are upon her, diverted from me by her attack. I can’t see her any more, only a great, pulsing mass of feathers. As I try to prise the wings away I think dimly that a sword might be useful. Or any weapon, really, I’m not fussy.
Thud. A spear punches through three angels with a single swoop. As they burst back into the inspyre of which they were made, the sound of hooves on stone echoes around the square.
Four riders in medieval clothing gallop towards us. The leader has her horse’s reins looped over one arm, and she’s wielding another spear. She shouts a single word and her companions fan out. Another rider splits from the main group and signals to the leader with his own spear. Together they send their weapons into the melee, taking out a dozen angels as they power through. The riders catch each other’s spears perfectly and spin them round in one toss to ready them for the next throw. The angels wheel up into the air, gathering to face this new attack. A fourth rider emerges, galloping straight for Andraste and me.
Arms sweep me onto the moving horse. I find myself riding side-saddle in front of someone. The horse canters across the drawbridge. I have a brief view of a courtyard and, beyond it, lush gardens, then we are clattering up wide stone steps into the castle of Tintagel.
8
As the horse bounces to a halt, I slide off and wobble to the ground, my head thumping with adrenalin. Through dozens of hooves I spot Andraste running through the wide front doors. She and the other riders push them closed and lift a wooden beam into place to fortify them. The angels pummel the other side.
‘It’s okay,’ one of the riders tells me. ‘Nothing that means harm to us can get inside these walls without permission from the Head Thane. You’re safe.’
The woman whose spear had been our saviour high-fives her friend. ‘First time getting three in a throw, baby!’ she laughs.
The oddity of entering St Paul’s on horseback is completely overshadowed when I see its interior. I’m used to gilded paintings spread across the ceiling and an atmosphere of awe, where everyone walks toes first. In this world, St Paul’s is no longer a place of worship. It’s unmistakably a castle. Cloisters still run along the walls, but I am standing in an inner courtyard that is open to the elements. Everywhere I look men and women dressed in strange uniforms call to each other, or hurry with arms full of papers through tantalisingly open doors.
‘You okay?’ the boy who pulled me onto his horse asks, dismounting rather more elegantly than I did. He has messy brown hair and a cheeky grin. ‘Woah,’ he says, looking at me properly for the first time. ‘Cool eyes.’
No one has ever described my eyes as ‘cool’ before. Freaky, yes. Crazy, tick. I don’t know how to handle this compliment, but it seems as though I don’t have to, because he is immediately approached by a man in a green uniform. ‘I’m supposed to be informed about aventures visiting, Rafe,’ I hear him chastise, before Andraste takes my hand and drags me onwards.
‘What’s an aventure?’ I ask Andraste, looking back at Rafe as he argues with the man in the green uniform.
‘It is someone from your world who has come to Annwn through a portal – someone who is not dreaming but conscious here. Come.’ The man in the green uniform spots us hurrying away and gives chase.
‘Where are we going?’ I ask her.
‘To the person we must persuade,’ she replies.
‘Excuse me!’ The man in the green uniform trails behind us. ‘Excuse me, please. You need to –’
Andraste whirls around and fixes the man with a steely gaze. He wilts before her. ‘Apologies, my lady, I did not realise –’
But we don’t wait to hear him finish. Andraste ushers me onwards.
People watch us as we pass from the courtyard through an enormous archway that leads beneath the main dome. The floor here is no longer old flagstones but polished marble laid in intricate patterns. A prickling down the back of my neck warns me that I’m being watched. Instinctively, I look up. High above us, a gallery lines the inner walls of the dome. Looking down upon me is a bear of a man. His hands rest wide upon the ledge, as heavy and steady as the roots of a tree. He is tall, I can see that much even from here, and bearded. I get a sense that he is surveying his domain, and having clocked two intruders is calculating what to do next. We pass beneath a lower ceiling, and I lose sight of him, whoever he is.
We skirt what looks like a large antechamber, pass down another corridor, and then Andraste is knocking on an old wooden door at the very back of the castle. There is no response. Andraste knocks again.
‘Were you looking for me, my lady?’ a deep voice intones behind us.
It’s the same man I saw on the gallery just seconds ago. I’m not sure how he got down here so quickly, but he doesn’t look like the kind of person who answers questions like that. Close up, he’s even taller than I’d thought.
Andraste tugs me forward. ‘This is Fern King. She should be a thane,’ she tells him. Clearly being a ‘lady’ or a ‘Fay’ in Annwn doesn’t mean you get taught the niceties of small talk.
The man holds out a hand to me. ‘Lord Allenby. Shall we go in?’
He steps between us and opens the door.
The room beyond is so stunning that I almost forget why we’re here. Huge windows range around a semi-circular wall. It must be sunset outside because the light streaming through them coats everything with a tired warmth. The wall behind me is covered from floor to ceiling with bookcases. A leather-topped desk takes pride of place in the centre of the room and a globe sits in a wooden case to one side. It’s simple, but everything here – from the wooden cornicing to the crystal whisky glasses on a side table – have bee
n crafted with patience and passion.
Lord Allenby gestures to a couple of chairs in front of his desk. I sit. Andraste doesn’t.
‘Why don’t we begin with you telling me how you come to be sitting here even though you’re not a thane,’ Lord Allenby starts, his gaze impassive.
I don’t know what a thane is, but I sense that this is my opportunity to play my part, as Andraste put it. I put on my best Bosco College well-raised student voice. That always seems to go down well.
‘I’m sorry for turning up like this, but my mother was a knight, and I’d like to be one too, please.’
‘I see,’ Lord Allenby says. ‘And who was your mother?’
‘Una King.’
His whole body tenses.
‘The only Una I ever knew was Una Gorlois.’
‘Yes! That was her name before she married my dad.’
Lord Allenby sighs, a big bear’s breath, and rakes a hand through his hair.
‘I’m sorry you lost her so young. When I heard that she’d died I thought of you and your brother.’
I’m about to say thank you, which I guess is the standard reply when someone gives you their condolences fifteen years too late, when something he said clicks.
‘What do you mean, when you heard about her dying? I thought you might know how …’
‘Your mother retired from the knights shortly after you were born.’
I sink.
‘So you don’t know how she died?’ I ask. ‘Is that why you want to join us? To find out what happened to your mother?’
Andraste, standing behind me, squeezes my shoulder. I know what she’s trying to say. Don’t blow this. The trouble is, I don’t think that telling the truth is going to get me what I want, because I do want to find out what happened to her, but now, having walked through this world, I want so much more. Eventually, I settle for something akin to the truth. ‘I want to follow in her footsteps.’
Lord Allenby stares at me in that steady, unnerving way. Then he beckons for me to follow him. He leads me back to that exquisite marble floor under the dome. Four stone columns, one at each corner, reach up to support the roof. From a distance, it looks as though millions of ants are marching across them in neat lines. As I get closer I see that they’re not ants, but names – countless names, each with a year next to them, winding their way up and up and up.
‘That,’ he says, nodding towards the moving words, ‘is a list of our dead. A few centuries ago they were just your standard engravings, but when we ran out of room the Fay had to make them move so they’d all fit in.’
I stare at the roster. A roll call of ghosts, their names set next to the year they died.
‘Fern,’ Lord Allenby says, ‘do you know what we do here?’
‘You fight nightmares.’
‘We protect people from the worst parts of their imaginations – the parts that could kill them. Sometimes that means fighting nightmares, yes. But it’s not just knights who work here, Miss King. The knights are just one part of a larger organisation called the thanes. Hundreds of us protecting dreamers in this world.’
I look around at the purpose and bustle of Tintagel. I imagine Mum walking through the cloisters, imagine her standing where I am standing now. The risk of being added to that roster of names seems like a fair price to pay to get to explore Annwn. To find out more about Mum.
‘I’d still like to join,’ I tell Lord Allenby, but he just shakes his head.
‘It doesn’t work like that.’ He says, ‘This isn’t the kind of job you walk into because your parents did it. No one here would allow that. We save the lives of people who will never know they needed to be saved. We are chosen for specific traits. Bravery and loyalty and strength of imagination, which I’m sure you have. But the most important quality is that you’re willing to die for anyone. Anyone. Do you understand me?’
I nod, my throat dry.
‘Can you tell me, hand on heart, Fern, that if your worst enemy was in danger, that you’d risk your life for them?’
I think about Jenny, but then Ollie comes to mind. I know deep down that I wouldn’t save my brother if he was in trouble. I would watch, I think; I would watch as he died. My truest enemy is probably inside these very walls. But I can’t let Lord Allenby know that.
‘I can be that person, though,’ I tell him. ‘If I could just –’
‘There’s a reason you weren’t chosen, Fern.’
He signals to a couple of people in tunics – one green with a golden quill embroidered upon it, one black with a silver hawk emblem.
‘Was my brother chosen?’ I say, unable to keep the bitterness from my voice, ‘Ollie King? Is he here?’
Lord Allenby catches the eye of the man in the green tunic, who nods awkwardly. I can’t help but laugh. So Ollie’s deemed to have loyalty and bravery, but I’m not? What an absolute joke.
‘Someone’s going to come and help you forget, now,’ Lord Allenby says. ‘You’re going to wake up and all of this will be gone. You won’t have heard of the knights, and you’ll think your mother, God rest her soul, died naturally.’
Forget? I don’t want to forget. I can sense Andraste beside me, trembling with energy. But this isn’t her fight. It’s mine. Even if he is right, I can’t let go of this dream, not so soon after catching it.
‘Please,’ I say, ‘let me prove myself to you. I can be just as good as any of them.’
‘No, Fern,’ he says, kindly but with finality, signalling to the man in the black tunic. ‘Take her to the morrigans,’ he tells him.
‘No,’ Andraste says fiercely. She grabs my arm to stop the man from taking me away. ‘She must take the Tournament.’
I cleave myself to her.
‘My lady,’ Lord Allenby says, ‘you know that’s not how it works.’
He turns away and the man in the black tunic steps forward, but Andraste doesn’t loosen her grip on me. ‘I have this also,’ she says, with the air of someone playing their trump card. She produces a crumpled envelope. There is a messy wax seal, which has been broken, and the letters LA are written in a spiky script that I recognise immediately.
Lord Allenby freezes as his eyes rake over what’s written inside. I crane my head to read it, and when I see the words, my heart stands still.
Lionel – I am calling in your debt. Make sure my little girl takes the Tournament. Una.
‘You left me no choice,’ Andraste says.
Lord Allenby nods heavily. ‘Well. There it is,’ he says. ‘All right. Miss King, you can take the Tournament tomorrow night. We’ll see whether you do have a place here. I should warn you that it’s dangerous. You need to understand that, before you’re pushed into something you don’t know much about. And if you do pass it, you might not be placed with the knights. Be ready for that too.’
He turns away, but then looks back. ‘Oh and Miss King?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘You’ll need to bring something precious with you tomorrow. Not expensive. Something that’s dear to you.’
‘Okay, sir. And … thank you.’
Emotions roll through me. My little girl. Mum. Mum wanted me to be a knight, and she called in some sort of debt to make sure I had the chance. Warmth builds in my stomach and rises through my chest. Is this what it feels like to be loved unconditionally? To have someone totally on your side?
Someone escorts me to a side room that clinks and clanks with copper equipment. There, a woman in a green tunic takes my mirror portal and holds it steady with a vice. She examines it closely, then adjusts some dials. Five nozzles whir into action, turning to point directly at my mirror. As she works, she talks.
‘Every authorised portal has a specific entry and exit point from Annwn. The London thanes, for example, always arrive on the platform just outside Tintagel, and you’d need to get back to that platform to leave Annwn.’
‘So I can’t just open the mirror and go back to the real … I mean, Ithr?’
‘’Fraid not. It helps us
to regulate and record aventures coming in and out of Annwn.’
‘Aventures. They’re people like me and you, right? Who aren’t dreaming.’
‘That’s right. Of course, you can get illegal portals that let you go back to Ithr without an exit point, but they’re tricky things to get hold of. Very tricky.’
She finally settles back in her seat. ‘It looks to me as though your mirror here has been a portal for a while.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘This mirror has had two entry points over the years. See?’
She pushes a button and one of the nozzles erupts into life, seemingly galvanising the inspyre around us to stab into the mirror. The mirror begins to glow, then it puts forth a faint image. I strain to see it: the sign for the Underground near Tower Hill, where I arrived what must be just a few hours ago, if this place marks time in hours. Then the image changes, and I see the same lush gardens I glimpsed when I was carried up the steps into Tintagel.
‘These are the places your portal has been connected to. This second image is the portal here – I’d say this mirror used to belong to a knight.’
‘It did,’ I tell her. ‘It belonged to my mother.’
‘Well …’ The woman smiles. ‘You’d better do her proud.’ She pushes another button. This time all five nozzles leap into action, pointing five beams of inspyre at the mirror until it becomes too bright to look at. A high-pitched whine grows, and I realise it’s the mirror itself, screaming under the pressure.
‘Won’t it break?!’ I yell over the noise, but the woman is too engrossed in her work to answer; adjusting the nozzles minutely until the pressure on the mirror seems to ease. At last she looks up. ‘There. I’ve just changed its entry point. Next time you come, you’ll arrive in Tintagel’s grounds!’
Once my mirror has grown cool enough to touch again, Andraste leads me outside. We walk in silence through the castle’s gardens. When we stop beside the circular platform that will apparently allow me to wake up back in my room, I finally ask her the questions that have been playing on my mind.