He had reached the bottom; there was a short corridor ending in a heavily barred door. “Would you hold this, please.”
Handing Jake the lamp, Symmes tugged the rusty bolts. As he turned back, the lamplight flickered on the silver bracelet.
Symmes frowned. “Strange. That is not the same.”
“What?”
“As the one your father wore. They are not the same.”
Venn pushed through. “What are you talking about? They’re a pair. Identical.”
“I assure you, no. Dr. Wilde’s was definitely not in the form of…what is it, a snake? May I see?”
Reluctant, Jake unclipped the silver link and slid it off; he held it up and Symmes took out a pair of glasses, put them on and bent forward, examining it intently. “The snake biting its own tail. An ancient symbol of eternity—originating perhaps with the ancient Egyptians. And yet, I’m sure it is different.” He took the arm-ring and turned it in the spilling light of the oil lamp.
A silver flicker cascaded down the walls.
And instantly Jake saw the man’s hand flash out and felt a fierce shove that sent him flailing back against Venn. They crashed against the cellar door; it slammed open and they were tumbling inside, into a dark straw-scattered space of casks and cobwebs.
Venn was fast; he had rolled and scrambled up and thrown himself at the door, but already Symmes had it slammed shut in his face; even as Venn beat his fists against it, they heard the rusted bolts grate tight.
Venn roared, “Symmes! You can’t do this!”
The answer was mild and unapologetic. “I wish I could say I was sorry, Mr. Venn, but that would be a lie. You cannot possibly know how I have longed, these last months, to find another of these rings. How I have scoured the antique shops and flea markets of this city. And you have come in out of the night and put one into my hands!”
Venn closed his eyes. Jake, still kneeling in the straw, sank slowly down.
“I am not a criminal, however, not a thief. I simply intend to experiment—for a short while. Some days. Then I promise you, I will do all I can to help you return.”
“Symmes, listen to me.” Venn’s hiss was savagely restrained. “You’ll break it. You’ll wreck it. That is a device of such sophistication…For God’s sake, you have no idea.”
“Hassan will make sure you’re reasonably comfortable, given the circumstances. I’m so sorry, gentlemen. Perhaps you should both think of it just as a little delay.”
They heard his footsteps, in the soft slippers, go up the stairs.
The door at the top was noisily locked.
Venn turned, slid down with his back against the door, and stared at Jake.
They were both silent with despair.
There was nothing left to say.
The recoil from the shotgun sent Wharton slamming back; in the confined space of the stairwell the report sounded like an explosion. The wolf took the full force; it went straight through the beast’s chest and splintered the painted canvas forehead of a Venn of some distant century, thudding into the wood behind.
The wolf landed astride Wharton. It was completely unharmed.
He gave a great yell, as much of astonishment as of terror. The creature’s eyes were snow-shards, its teeth dripped saliva, and its growl was so close, he could smell the sickening hot stench of its breath.
He kept utterly still.
He could not even breathe, because if he did its teeth might snap, meet in his raw flesh. For a second of inhuman terror he did not even seem to be in his own body, as if he had shriveled up somewhere dark, far inside.
Something rattled, down the stairs.
The white wolf looked up, behind him, over him.
Another rattle. The world came back with a crash of noise. Rebecca was shouting, he smelled the acrid flare of flame.
The wolf put its head back and howled, a sound so loud, it made Wharton’s whole body quiver with shock.
Then it slid off him and turned, yelping and growling, twisting, and he saw a sudden rain of sparks was falling from somewhere above, onto the beast’s fur, on his hands, the stairs.
Wharton gasped and wriggled back. Before he could realize it, the wolf was gone, tumbling and yelping furiously down, and the darkness was back.
“Get up.” Rebecca’s voice hissed in his ear. “Quickly!”
She had him; she was heaving him up. He felt her stagger; then she had an arm around him and was half carrying, half dragging him away. He wanted to say Stop, I can walk, but for some reason his voice had dried up in his throat, and all that emerged was a croak.
Up the stairs, back along the Long Gallery. “What…?” he gasped.
“Candles! All I had.”
They backed with reckless haste, but now Wharton could breathe; he gasped, “I can manage,” but Rebecca muttered, “It’s back,” in nervous dread, and he saw the ears, and then the long muzzle of the wolf rise threateningly over the top stair, saw its moon-silver slink along the floor of the Gallery.
He scrambled backward, raised the useless gun. “Get that door open, Rebecca! Ready? Now!”
She had it wide; he turned, flung himself in, and as they slammed the door Wharton had one nightmare glimpse of the beast leaping, before its savage impact made the boards of the door crack and splinter.
Rebecca had the wooden bar; Wharton grabbed it and they forced it across, safe into the solid iron bracket.
The door shuddered again.
They stood back, breathless. Wharton felt as if he had been scraped from some collapsed building.
Every inch of him ached.
“Are you hurt?” Maskelyne was running down the Monk’s Walk; he grabbed Rebecca. “Did it injure you?”
She shook her head.
Wharton was bent over, one hand on the wall. “I shot it. I shot the bloody thing! And yet…”
“No weapon will kill it except mine,” Maskelyne said.
Wharton gasped, “Well then, I’ll use it. Not you.”
“Shush.” Rebecca grabbed his arm. “Quiet. Listen.”
Footsteps.
Not the wolf’s, but the calm, measured tread of a man walking at his ease along the creaking boards of the Gallery, admiring perhaps the paintings, the glass cabinets of ancient books.
He came to the door of the Monk’s Walk, and stopped.
Silent, they waited, and they knew the Replicant was waiting too. Until it said, “I’m still here, Sarah. Master of all this house now. And you’re the ones trapped in there. How long, do you think, might it take me to starve you out?”
Wharton growled, “We have supplies.” It was a lie.
“Really?” A scrape, as if the Janus-image was drawing up a chair. Wharton imagined it sitting, propping its feet up on the locked door. “Then you had better eat them quickly. I wish you a very Merry Christmas. You have until exactly midnight to crawl out of your bolt-hole and hand the mirror over to me. If you don’t, on the stroke of twelve I will set fire to this ancient wooden house with all of you locked firmly inside it. And when the black mirror is the only thing left whole among the ruins and the ash, among the charred remains of your dreams, I will come and take it for myself.”
The time is out of joint; O cursed spite
That ever I was born to set it right.
21
I confess that my ruse pleased me exceedingly, and made me foolishly proud of myself. As I hurried to my study with the bracelet I chortled that a man like Venn, a man who had claimed to travel in time, could be tricked so easily.
I gave instructions to Hassan and secured the apartment. Then, with trembling fingers, I fastened the bracelet around my wrist. The metal was warm, and the eye of the snake seemed to shimmer and wink at me.
I was agitated with fear. But I switched on the apparatus.
Journal of John Harcourt Symmes
JAKE WAS COLD. Cold and hungry and tired.
He sat huddled up in a corner, his arms around his knees, trying not to shiver.
“Where’s your watch?” Venn muttered.
“Stolen. As soon as I got to this God-forsaken place.” Jake didn’t look up. “They got the bracelet too. If it hadn’t been for Moll, they’d still have it.” Quickly, he outlined the events in the ruined theater.
Venn listened without comment, his spare figure looking even leaner in the dark Victorian suit.
When Jake had finished, he said, “You did well. And now we’ve lost it again.”
In the bleak stillness they heard the rattle of cab wheels above them, the iron clang of horseshoes on the cobbles of the street. A tiny grid in the roof above Jake dripped rain.
“What about you?” he asked.
Venn shrugged. “I think I must have arrived here about an hour or more after you. All I remember is grabbing your sleeve and then nothing. But we’ve discovered something—that it’s possible for two people to journey together, and arrive at least close in time.”
“Were you in the alley?”
“No. A dilapidated garden behind a public house. A dog was barking—I was disorientated, dizzy, but I managed to scramble out. I turned a few corners and walked straight into a scene from Dickens. It was the Tottenham Court Road, I think, but with stalls, and a fish market…I just stared.”
“Where did you get the clothes?”
Venn looked uneasy. “Well, obviously I had to go native. There was a…shall we say, very drunk gentleman trying to find a closed cab. I whistled one up and helped him into it. When I got down a few streets later I was wearing his clothes. I did leave him mine. In a neat pile.”
Jake couldn’t help a grin.
Venn met his eyes. For a moment they were both laughing.
Then, abruptly, dismay rolled back. Venn said, “Symmes could be doing anything up there.”
Jake glanced at him. His godfather’s face was suddenly taut with anxiety; he stood and paced and kicked in convulsive rage at the door. “A pompous, smug fool, and we let him do this to us. He could wreck everything—he could just vanish like David and leave us stuck here. We have to get out, Jake!”
“Don’t waste your energy.” Jake uncurled and stood. “That door is solid.”
Venn looked upward. The damp bricks of the roof oozed lime-white secretions; mold blossomed in green velvet clumps. “The pavement can’t be far above us. If we had some sort of lever, some tools…”
“We don’t.”
Venn swung around, his patience snapped. “Can’t you say anything useful? If you hadn’t had the stupid idea of entering the mirror, neither of us would be here.”
“I didn’t want you to come. You could have stayed.”
“Are you mad? David would never have forgiven me if…”
“Don’t talk about him as if he’s dead!” Jake’s frustration ripped out too. “You don’t care about Dad! All you care about is your guilt. Ending the way it makes you feel. Maybe you don’t even care about Leah!”
It was said before he knew he’d said it, and even in his cold fury he was appalled at himself. Venn stared stricken, disbelieving. For half a second the very darkness of the cellar seemed fractured, as if a stone had been thrown that had cracked the black glass of the world.
Then, in a whisper, the roof said, “Jake! Can you hear me? It’s me. Moll. Jake, where are you?”
He rushed to the corner where the grating was, stupidly grateful. “We’re here. How did you know?”
“Oh you really ’ave got no idea,” her voice said, acid. He could almost see the pitying shake of her small tangled head. “Did you think I’d just scarper with the dosh? No chance! I waited outside just to see if you’d come out. I didn’t trust that cove Symmes. Too smarmy. Too cocksure.”
“Well, you were right. He’s got the bracelet and we’re locked in down here. Can you get us out, Moll?”
She laughed. “Watch and learn, Jake. Remember?”
“Listen, don’t get yourself hurt.” But she was already gone.
He turned.
Venn was leaning against the wall, watching him. As if Moll had not even spoken, he said, “Do you really believe that? That my selfishness could be so gross? Is that what you think of me, Jake?”
Jake frowned. “I didn’t…”
“You must have really hated me. Far off, in your comfortable school in Switzerland.”
“You had your obsession. I had mine. I thought you’d killed him.” He looked away. “I had to blame someone. You were there. You were responsible. There was no one else.”
Venn nodded, slowly. He said, “I see now that I failed you. I never really thought about you. I just wanted you out of the way, because I couldn’t have interruptions. But you’re wrong about Leah. Yes, it will ease my shame and guilt—and believe me, Jake, they are terrible. But I’ll move hell and heaven to get her back, no matter who tries to stop me, or who gets hurt. Because Leah is a part of me. She’s my soul, Jake. They say the Venns have no souls, that they are half Shee, without remorse, ruthless. I was like that. Leah changed me. I’ll force the whole world and time and fate to do it, but I’ll get her back.”
His hubris was breathtaking. But for a moment Jake almost believed a man could do that.
Then, with a small scrape and rattle, the door was unlocked.
They spun around.
Moll stood there, hugely proud, hands on hips. “Can’t I leave you alone for a second, you poor sods?”
Jake grabbed her and swung her up. “You’re a wonder! What—”
A crash interrupted him. A vast, echoing crash, high in the house.
Venn leaped for the door. “The mirror!”
Sarah ran through the Wood. Even in her invisibility its power snagged at her. In the corners of her eyes were fragments of places that could not be here; the edge of a plowed field, the tilted plane of a city street. When she looked at them, they were gone. She was in a kaleidoscope, a place of pieces, a broken universe, all in random order; she felt terrified that some great upheaval would rearrange everything in seconds. This was like that old story of the girl who had gone through the looking glass into a world where cats grinned and eggs talked. But going through the looking glass was the one thing she hadn’t managed to do.
Breathless, she stopped. As she bent over, gasping in air, she wondered why the Shee weren’t following her, even trying to find her. Surely their curiosity would be intense.
Around her the Wood waited, silent.
And then, very faint and far away, she heard it; the sound that she had most dreaded. Even before she cried out in shock and clasped her hands tight to her ears, she knew it was too late, that in that sharp, brilliant instant the damage had been done.
The music was piercingly sweet. A single note, high and enchanting.
She screamed, “No!” and ran, hands crammed against her ears. If she stopped, if she listened, she was finished. It would haunt her forever. She crashed through bushes and brambles, ducking under two leaning oaks, and suddenly there was no ground but only water, and she fell forward, headlong, into it.
Bubbling, airless dark.
She came up with a scream, coughing, weeds plastered to her face. Between its strands she saw Gideon. He was standing on the bank, watching.
“Help me!” she screeched. Then she sank again, and there was no bottom. Long ribbons of weed tangled her; water slopped into her nose, down her throat; her cry was a gurgle of terror.
“Gideon!”
He stood on the brink. “I can’t! If I touch water…!”
“Help me!”
“I can’t…Summer says…”
“You’re not Shee. You’re human!”
She grabbed a branch; it snapped. Crowflowers snagged her clothes, daisies and nettles, long loosestrife, like dead men’s fingers. She fought desperately to stay up, to swim, but they had never taught her that in the Lab, and every movement dragged her down to gulp and choke, and in the pain of no breath she saw herself in a nightmare mirror, lying dead in the flowers.
A hand.
It was close and
tough. It grabbed her hair and hauled. She moaned, but the hand had her now, around shoulders, around waist.
Her foot stumbled on soil, then they were out, bursting into air, crawling up the bank, grabbing the hanging willow boughs to pull themselves up. Icy air burst into her lungs. Painfully she coughed and choked and vomited out water and weed.
When she could speak she said, “You…did it.”
He sat, dragging his hands back through his streaming hair. Some of the green lichen had washed from his pale skin; he looked different. Less lost. Grabbing her arm, making her turn, he said, “That’s you and Jake. You both owe me a life now. The Shee never keep their word. So show me that humans are different. Get me away from her, Sarah.”
The intensity that broke through his usual languid carelessness made her nod, silent.
He dragged her up. “Come on. Before you freeze.”
Between one step and another they raced into winter, a bitterly cold white-out of horizontal snow that stung her eyes to water. The roar of the blizzard was ferocious. Sarah and Gideon stumbled through shoulder-high dead bracken and the crashed trunks of ancient elms, snow whitening their hair, their lips; the whole world a wall of snow coming straight at them, and as Sarah leaped aside into the path, her ankle twisted; she fell sideways with a screech, hands down in the frozen drift.
Something gave a harsh cry, just above her.
A huge starling sat on a branch, huddled against the blizzard. Its small beady eyes, tilted in curiosity, watched her.
Gideon stopped. “They’re here. You go on,” he yelled, his lips close to her ear. “Don’t forget me.”
She scrambled up and hobbled, shivering. Where was the Abbey? The wind was so ice sharp through her wet clothes, it was hard to catch her breath. In seconds she was alone, not sure if she was even heading the right way. Maybe the Shee were enticing her back even now, toward that jagged place where the corners of worlds intruded.
She staggered out of the trees into the knee-deep snow of the drive.
And gasped.
Wintercombe Abbey was an arctic ruin in a wasteland.
The Obsidian Mirror Page 20