by Holly Race
The rush is incredible. I might be in a dream world but I feel more awake than ever before. The tremble in my arms isn’t fear any more – it’s excitement. I want to do that again. Feel the power of my thoughts flowing through my body and changing the things around me.
I turn my attention to my new weapons. The blade is a curved sword made of dull, mottled silver. The leather handle is inlaid with faded gold wire. It looks like something that should have been found at an ancient burial site. The bag contains just two marbles. Embedded in the centre of each one is a diamond. They remind me of the tiny stars on my necklace. Wait … they are the stars on my necklace. The silver chain that pulls the bag shut looks exactly like the chain that held the pendant. Which means … the curved sword is the shape of the crescent moon. A weapon indeed.
Tucking the bag into a pocket and hefting the scimitar, I wait for the illusion that I’m alone to fade. Another feeling is creeping in underneath the adrenalin. Disappointment. Fire is my worst fear, yes, but with hindsight that all seemed a bit … easy.
‘That’s a pretty sword,’ Jenny’s voice whispers in my ear. ‘How does it feel, knowing I’m going to kill you with it?’
I swing round. Jenny is grinning at me, and she’s not alone. I get the briefest glimpse of his face before I realise what he’s doing and duck. Something whizzes over my head and embeds into the altar. A serrated disc. It’s not just Jenny trying to kill me. Ollie is too. Thanks, subconscious. Always got my back.
I scramble to my feet. Behind Jenny, Ollie grips another serrated disc.
‘You might beat me at home, but you’re not going to here,’ I tell the visions, buoyed by the weight of the sword. Ollie’s mouthing a reply but I’m not listening. I am impenetrable to words and I am armed against their weapons. Bring. It. On. My first swipe knocks Jenny out of the way, and my second catches Ollie’s arm.
‘Bitch!’ he shouts, clutching the wound.
Yeah, have a taste of your own medicine.
He dodges my next attempt. The sword might have been created just for me, but I use it clumsily. My hands are used to drawing, not swinging a blade at someone’s chest.
‘Not a good fighter are you, witch?’ Jenny croons. ‘Anyone ever told you that you don’t belong here?’
She sways towards me. As she advances, her nails grow and grow, each one becoming a spike. I drive at her, trying to sense the natural movement of the scimitar, letting it guide my hand to the correct angles. She ducks and weaves, her claws pricking at me. We are in a dance, the three of us, pirouetting and bowing, promenading and pivoting from one partner to another until the movement of my scimitar takes over my body and I lose sight of who I’m fighting altogether. I am in the moment. I am graceful. I am –
Jenny’s claws rake across my jaw and I trip over, throwing my scimitar out of the way so I don’t fall on it. I try to scramble to my feet, but the scimitar has landed just out of reach. ‘It’s bedtime now.’ Jenny grins. She bares her teeth and leaps towards me. Without thinking, I roll over to retrieve the blade and thrust it upwards, into her stomach. There’s a second of resistance, then it sinks in like she’s made of jelly.
‘Witch,’ she spits, and crumbles into inspyre. The hiss of her last word hangs before me.
I can’t consider the fact that I have just murdered someone, even if they weren’t real. Not yet. Ollie is still here, clutching his wounded arm over the other side of the arena. I wonder what the actual Ollie feels watching this.
We circle each other, unreal Ollie and real Fern, testing each other’s resolve. His hand closes, almost imperceptibly, around the grip on his disc. I don’t wait for him to throw it. Running towards him, I lift my sword. I might not be an expert in wielding it, but if I keep slashing it in the right direction I’m bound to score a few points. Ollie blocks my first blow, then my second, my third.
‘Fern –’ he begins, but I’m not listening to his jibes. This isn’t home, where I can’t do anything to shut him up. I slash wildly, determined not to let him go on the offensive. I am rabid, and I love it. Being beyond fear is the purest freedom. But in the back of my mind I sense that something is wrong. He’s not even trying to attack me.
‘Why aren’t you fighting back?’ I shout.
I catch him on the leg this time. He gives a great roar and swipes his disc at me. Sharp pain across my chest. I press my hand against the spot and feel blood. There we are, now all’s right with the world.
We go to work.
The air is a whirl of sharp metal and heavy breath. I lose all sense of thought, of right or wrong, of strategy. I allow my scimitar to lead me through the fight. I’m winning, there’s no doubt about that, and actually that’s bothering me. I know what the real Ollie is capable of, so why is my imagination making this version pull his punches? And why is nightmare Ollie so hampered by his wounds?
When Ollie trips backwards over the altar that brought me here, I know I cannot show mercy. I’ve got him. I should bring the scimitar down. Now. Do it now.
We stare at each other. He with his disc half-heartedly raised in protection, his chest heaving with effort and pain. Me, sword gripped but not raised. The truth comes to me like a light through fog.
‘You’re real.’
‘Well done, genius.’
Questions flash through my head. A tantalising possibility. I could kill him now. Dad would never know it was me; he would just find Ollie cold in his bed. The image holds for a second, then bursts. I step back, suddenly exhausted.
‘Must be nice,’ Ollie says, ‘to feel righteous about killing someone.’
‘At least I had a reason. What did you have except feeling embarrassed by me?’
As Ollie scrambles to his feet, his clothes covered in muck and blood, sound from outside the arena soaks back into the stone circle. Shouting. Frantic conversations. Then I see them: Merlin, Lord Allenby, the other squires.
‘I thought it was my Tournament,’ I say stupidly as Merlin and Lord Allenby approach. ‘What is he even doing here?’
‘That’s a good question,’ Lord Allenby says, striding over. ‘Your brother managed to force his way in.’
‘Making sure the nightmares finished the job?’ I ask Ollie.
He shrugs. ‘Something like that.’
Merlin prods my stomach and then Ollie’s. ‘Yes, of course,’ Merlin mutters. ‘They’re hatched from the same egg.’
‘Excuse me?’ I say.
‘Twins. It follows that they would need to face the Tournament together. I’ve seen it once before. In that case they fought alongside each other but you two,’ he fixes Ollie and I with sharp eyes, ‘you are each other’s test. Yes. I see it now. It makes perfect sense.’
‘It does?’ says Ollie, looking as repulsed as I feel at the thought of us sharing anything.
‘It really doesn’t,’ I add.
‘You fear the same thing,’ Merlin says, ‘and you fear each other. But one fear you must defeat together, and the other you must conquer. You passed both tests.’
Before I can begin to process Merlin’s riddle, Lord Allenby steps forward. ‘However it came about I think we have our answer, don’t you, my lord?’
‘Yes. Yes, I think you do.’
‘Your weapons have spoken,’ Lord Allenby says. ‘A scimitar and a pair of chakrams. You will both be joining the knights.’
I want to jump up and down, to squeal improperly and, for the first time in my life, I quite like the idea of hugging someone. I look across at Andraste but she and the rest of the Fay are still deep in their trances. I have to settle with sharing a look with Ollie. Lord Allenby shakes our hands and directs us out of the circle. I follow Ollie to Emory. The other squires are clapping. Ramesh shouts, ‘Brilliant, Ollie! Well done, Fern!’ and I have to resist rolling my eyes. What a sweet, utterly desperate boy.
Emory grasps my hand and offers a guarded smile. ‘Glad to have you,’ she says. ‘I’ve never worked with twins before. That was some fight. Brotherly love, eh?’
‘What?’ Emory looks confused. ‘Kill you? From where I was standing, it looked a lot like your brother was trying to save you.’
13
I don’t have time to consider Emory’s words, nor do I want to. She’s wrong about Ollie. He’s duped all of them into thinking he has honour, the same way he’s pulled the wool over Dad’s eyes. I push the niggling thought that she might be right to the back of my head. Right now there’s a whole new world to learn about, and I need to focus on that.
On our first night, we are given a whirlwind tour of the castle. We pass the long line of harker desks in the cloisters where Rachel is now stationed, and move out into the gardens where apothecaries tend to herbs. Up on the terraces that surround the dome, we meet more harkers who stand sentinel, watching over Annwn and relaying nightmare activity to their colleagues on the floors below. Then we plummet down to the lower levels. The basement of the castle is divided into two halves, separated by a small courtyard where reeves tend to the under-workings of the huge portal that took us to Stonehenge. On one side are the dungeons and on the other side are the archives, where a hidden door in the wood panelling opens to reveal endless rows of bookcases. ‘We keep everything here,’ our reeve guide tells us. ‘A true history of the thanes from their conception to the present day.’
After the tour, we are sent to the garderobe to get our uniforms. From the outside, looking at what seems to be a humble wooden door squeezed into a dingy corner of the south wing, you’d be forgiven for thinking that ‘garderobe’ is entirely too grand a word for whatever lies beyond. The wonderful thing about Annwn, though, is that the usual rules of physics don’t apply, for the garderobe is the lushest walk-in wardrobe you could imagine. It may be windowless but the triple-height ceilings stop it from feeling claustrophobic. Every wall is covered in shelves and railings, each one laden with rich fabrics that beg to be stroked. The red silks of the harkers; black velvet for the veneurs; fine white linen for the apothecaries; and soft, green wool for the reeves. From the vaulted ceilings hang helmets of every kind and shape, jangling like wind chimes.
A harried-looking reeve passes me a bundle of clothes and directs me to the changing rooms. I sequester one in a corner and pull the curtains together. The material is mirrored on the inside, and although the mirror follows the curve of the fabric, my reflection isn’t distorted. One wall offers shelves of accessories like pouches and headscarves. A chaise longue sits against the other wall.
Avoiding the mirror, I take off my regular clothes and lay out my knight’s uniform on the chaise longue.
A pair of leather leggings go on first. Luckily they’re not the uncomfortably tight kind, but soft, worn leather that’s like a cross between favourite jeans and silky tights. They’re followed by a long-sleeved chainmail top so light I barely feel its weight. It’s padded with a thin layer of fleece that, apparently, is spun from Annwn’s snow fields and is designed to regulate my temperature. Thick boots go over the leggings, the low heels supposed to help with riding. The cotton, royal-blue tunic of the knights, with its embroidered emblem of a sword lifted against a circular background, finishes off the outfit.
I stare at myself. For the first time in my life, I like what I see. The belt that holds my scimitar and the marble-filled pouch sits heavily on my hips. I’m a straight-up-and-down sort of girl, but the belt gives me the illusion of a waist. A leather strap binds my hair in a low bun to keep it away from my face, a practical move I’d never have considered in real life, where I use my hair as a cloak to hide my eyes and burn scar. In Ithr, all my clothes have been chosen based on comfort, affordability and whether they will offer a quick disguise if I want to fade into the background. Clothes that make you look good as well as feel good are for other people. Not here, though. In Annwn, I might not be pretty, but I am striking. Here I look confident, strident. And because I look it, I almost feel it too.
A warrior woman indeed, I think, remembering what Andraste said. I ache to show her what I look like, to see her smile proudly. Andraste is the one person I will allow as a friend, but the night she brought me to Annwn she implied that I wouldn’t be seeing much of her. Suddenly, I feel very lonely.
As I leave the safety of my changing room, Ollie emerges from his. The uniform makes him look older than his fifteen years. He doesn’t spot me at first, so I have a moment to wonder at his sombre expression before he sees me and erases all emotion.
‘That almost makes you look like a human,’ he remarks.
‘Ditto,’ I say.
The uniforms give us the right to enter the knights’ chamber: a long, narrow space at the back of the castle’s central hall. There are no windows here, but a single, huge skylight drops sunbeams and moonlight into the centre of the room. Cushioned pews and high-backed armchairs line the walls beneath paintings of former knights. We’re each assigned a locker where we can stash our belongings. They’re not lined up against a wall like the lockers in a gym or school, though. These lockers are found in unlikely places. Ollie is given a hidden compartment inside a grand writing bureau. I get a candle-lit alcove that appears when I press my hand against the left side of the fireplace.
I wonder which was Mum’s, I think, watching the other new knights open their own lockers with glee. Did Mum take all of this in her stride, like I’m trying to do? Or did she squeal with excitement like Ramesh?
Tables are scattered around the room, each one decorated with a different map and covered in figurines. Rafe, the rider who helped me to safety a few nights ago, shows us how they can be used to plot battle formations. Some show large open spaces, some busy mazes of streets or complicated multi-storey buildings. Ramesh spends a lot of time entertaining the other squires by flinging the figurines around the tables. At first, Ollie keeps his distance, like me, but then Ramesh asks him to help with a fabricated battle move and before long the two of them are chatting like long-lost brothers. Ramesh and some of the other squires try the same tactics on me, but I am made of stronger stuff and shake my head politely when invited to join in. What they’re doing isn’t learning, it’s bonding, and I’ve got no interest in doing that.
But we don’t have long to relax. That same night, a reeve slips into the room and hangs a blank tapestry on the right of the chamber door. We gather round as he presses his hand against the fabric. From that spot, like dye running through veins, threaded words form.
‘This will be your training schedule for the next few months,’ the reeve tells us, ‘until you graduate on Ostara and begin your first proper patrols.’
‘What’s Ostara when it’s at home?’ Ollie asks.
‘Spring equinox. Near the end of March.’
‘But that’s months away!’ Ramesh complains.
‘You think you can just go out there and take on a nightmare with no training, be my guest.’ The reeve shrugs. ‘Won’t be my funeral.’
After he’s left, the grumbling continues.
‘I spend enough time keeping to a schedule at school without having to deal with it at night too,’ Ramesh says.
A red-headed girl I recognise from the Tournament traces the embroidery. ‘Look at this though,’ she says in a broad West Country accent. ‘Don’t tell me that’s not way more interesting than school lessons.’
‘Nothing called a lesson is ever going to be interesting, Phoebe,’ Ollie says, raising agreement from his friends. Phoebe shrugs and suddenly I place her. In her Tournament she garnered smirks when she went into the arena clutching an old toy. Those smirks were wiped off when the toy turned into a real lion. I hear a low growl and turn to see her lion accepting a tummy scratch from Emory at the other end of the chamber. I catch Phoebe’s eye and she smiles at me, but I turn away, stifling my own. I’d promised myself that I wouldn’t make friends here. That can’t change just because some of them seem nicer than I’d anticipated
.
And Phoebe’s right about the lessons. Each night is divided into two; one part is more traditional, where we sit with the trainees from other lores and learn about things like law, history and psychology, chivalry, mythology and symbology. We learn about the ways the thanes of Tintagel coordinate with the thanes that operate across the rest of the country, in castles scattered as far afield as the Scottish Isles and the furthest reaches of Ireland’s west coast. The teachers – semi-retired thanes, all of them – show us the different types of nightmare and the ways dreamers’ minds work when they invent them. They take us up to Tintagel’s highest dome and point out the packs of nightmares – the giants that dwell amongst the skyscrapers of Canary Wharf and the lions who roam Trafalgar Square, a prowling, roaring embodiment of the statues that sit there in Ithr. They teach us how a trickster nightmare can use a dreamer’s anxiety to take the form of a loved one whose skin flakes away to reveal a demon beneath.
The other type of lessons are practical, and only for those of us training to become knights. These are lessons in strategy, weapons, acrobatics and flying, for God’s sake. I learn how to wield my scimitar properly, although my fire-dampening marbles remain in my locker in the knights’ chamber; given they’re single use, the teachers thought it best to save the remaining two for when I graduate.
But nearly every lesson in these early weeks comes back to one thing: inspyre. The building block of Annwn.
‘The main thing you need to know about inspyre,’ our teacher, a moustache-bearing man called Mr Blake tells us as he leads us out into the grounds of Tintagel one night, ‘is that it doesn’t give a shit about you.’
There’s some shocked laughter amongst the group.
‘You heard me,’ Mr Blake continues. ‘Inspyre cares about the people who make it – that’s dreamers. You and me, we’re conscious here so we can use inspyre to change ourselves in a limited way.’ He makes himself shrink to the size of a pumpkin by way of demonstration, ‘But we can’t use it to alter dreams or nightmares. That’s something only dreamers can do.’