by S J Howland
Chapter Thirteen
It was noticeably cooler as they stepped out of the arch onto the hillside. The stars were brighter overhead and the huge green mound reared up before them, a darker shadow against the sky, with the steep stone staircase gleaming in the centre. Memories struck Xander again of when he had been here last, of the staircase lit up with many twinkling lanterns and filled with people, the sound of merry chatter filling the air. Now, the silence and the dark pressed down on him like a living thing and he looked anxiously at Suze. The animal was alert, her ears flicking back and forward, but she did not seem unduly concerned. Xander took a deep breath.
‘Okay,’ he said out loud and almost winced at how hollow his voice sounded.
He began to climb the stone steps and heard footsteps following behind him, the giant’s only a little heavier than everyone else as he tried to move quietly. The Pavilions gradually came into view as they mounted the top of the stairs. No longer glowing with its own light, the building was an enormous, dark silhouette against the clear, starry sky and the columns which had twisted so elegantly now loomed up forbiddingly. Despite the creepy air about the great, empty place Xander felt a sudden rush of intense relief. Now that he was here and could see the structure again, outlined so starkly against the night, he could quite clearly make out the platforms and pillars of the original images from the brownies’ painted memories. The structures had been carefully incorporated into the subsequent design of the building, but they were unmistakable enough to Xander that he turned, without hesitation, towards the Constellation Wall before the giant could point the way.
Their footsteps rang out once they had entered the Pavilion itself, echoing sharply between the stone walls, and Xander could feel his stomach clenching with the sudden tension. Evidently, he was not alone in his reaction as he heard Len’s breathing becoming shallower. Another nervous glance at Suze showed her watching him, her pale eyes gleaming. As their eyes met, Xander’s thoughts flashed back to the museum, when she had looked at him across a crowded atrium and somehow dared him to embark on this whole mad adventure. For a moment, Xander had the strong urge to tell Suze that all of this was her fault. Her jaw dropped, tongue lolling, and Xander had the oddest feeling that she was laughing at him. He gave himself an internal shake. This was definitely not the time to let his mind wander.
‘Here it is,’ came Alf’s rumbling voice. Ahead of them was a wide stretch of stone wall, blank and with no sign of the glittering constellations. Xander frowned, confused.
‘Where are all the stars?’ asked Ollie plaintively.
Alf shook his head. ‘I have never been here but for the Solstice when all the stone is alight. Perhaps the hobs –’
His rasping voice trailed off and they all turned to look at Hob, who glared back.
‘Oh, so now you don’t know how to do this either? Yet another great plan, human,’ he sneered contemptuously at Xander. ‘No, I don’t have any idea how to switch on your wall. You’re supposed to be the seed of the ancient blood, aren’t you? Use what you were given or else let us all go home.’ He gestured in annoyance to the orb on Xander’s wrist.
Xander lifted his arm and stared into the dark crystal orb on his wrist. Deep inside it he could see the flickers of light, like contained lightning, and there was a slight tingling sensation in his palm, where the starburst scar of his shadow-strike was still clear and pale on his skin. Following a deep instinct, he placed his hand flat against the wall and closed his eyes, visualising the pale sparkle of stars in the sky being mirrored on the wall. A gasp from behind him snapped his eyes open again and he stepped back. The wall was alight with constellations and, in the darkness of the Pavilions, it was even more spectacular than Xander remembered. He glanced sideways at the hob, who was staring at him with hooded eyes, and felt a shiver run down his back.
A moment later there was a rustle as Len pulled the notebook pages out of her bag and began flicking through the names and images of the constellations they had matched to the Twelve Families.
‘We need to find these as quickly as possible,’ she said, handing the pages around. The piece of paper looked ludicrously tiny in the giant’s enormous hand, as he carefully held it between the very tips of his thumb and forefinger. Hob had stepped away, his hands behind his back, when offered a page and Ollie rolled his eyes and grabbed it instead. There was a few moments’ silence as they all consulted their sheets of paper in the dim light, looking back and forth between the diagrams and the wall.
‘There’s one,’ said Reeve, pointing at a cluster of stars. ‘That’s Angove.’
‘What now?’ asked Alf, turning to Xander.
‘Maybe I touch it?’ said Xander, uncertainly. He felt less comfortable with their previous methods of trial and error in front of the three adults, not to mention Hob’s unfriendly glower.
‘We’re all of us in the dark here, Xander,’ Reeve said, seeming to understand Xander’s hesitation. ‘Just do your best, we can’t ask any more.’
Relieved, Xander smiled and then stepped forward, reaching up to touch the star pattern that Reeve had identified. His orb began to glow by itself before his fingers even touched the wall, and the stars he had selected blazed into a brighter light as he brushed the stone. Xander let out a sigh of relief and everyone began hunting earnestly for the patterns on their papers, feeling encouraged that they appeared to be on the right track.
‘Ingram.’
‘Lisle.’
‘Ferrars.’
The finds rang out one after the other and, as Xander touched each one, the intensity of the selected stars brightened. Finally, Ollie found the twisted constellation that belonged to the Melville family, right off to one side.
‘Typical. Always difficult, that family,’ he said with a wry grin.
Xander had to stand on his tip-toes to reach that pattern, but he managed to just brush the edge. As soon as he had touched it, every star illuminated on the wall blinked and then went out; the wall was once again dark and featureless. Despite a growing certainty that this was not what was supposed to happen, Xander pressed his hands against the wall and pushed. Nothing happened, the cold stone was as obdurate as ever, and he felt despair rise like a smothering cloud. He smacked both hands against the cold stone in futile frustration.
‘This doesn’t make sense,’ he said, turning to Ollie and Len. ‘It was working, I’m sure of it. What went wrong?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Ollie, slowly. ‘We found the marks of the kin, like it said, and all of the patterns fit. We checked that.’
Reeve gathered up all of the pages of the notebook and examined them intently, comparing the Family sigils with the constellations. ‘They seem right,’ he said finally. ‘Is there a step missing here? Maybe there’s some information that we don’t have.’
He glanced over at Alf and the hob, his expression questioning. Alf slowly shook his head, a ponderous frown lowering his brow even further.
‘Our legends tell us that we built this wall but we have only fragments. If ever we knew anything more, that knowledge is lost,’ he said in a downcast rumble, as if he felt he was letting everyone down.
Hob just folded his arms and half-turned away, his contempt for the process quite clear. It was evident that no help would come from his quarter.
‘Shall we try again?’ asked Ollie, hopefully. ‘Maybe Xander accidentally touched one of the wrong patterns?’
‘No, he didn’t,’ said Reeve, before Xander could object. ‘I was checking.’
‘Look, clearly this is the right track,’ said Rafe, in his reasonable, calm voice. ‘We got this far but maybe there was a mistake earlier. Are you sure that you copied the Family sigils correctly?’
Xander made an impatient movement, but it was Ollie who answered.
‘We traced them really carefully and double-checked. We couldn’t have –’
‘Of course!’ Len’s voice cut straight through the discussion, high pitched and getting faster and faster in her ex
citement. ‘It’s so obvious I can’t believe that I didn’t realise it before. It was right there in front of me. So obv –’
‘Len!’ Xander had to almost shout to get her attention. ‘What’s obvious?’
Len turned to him, her eyes sparkling in the faint light.
‘Do you remember when Primilla Prissy-pants gave me that detention, and made me write out all of those tedious old records of the Twelve Families and their boring histories?’ she demanded.
‘Yeah, I remember,’ said Xander, feeling confused about where she was going with this.
‘She dug out the oldest, dustiest, most mind-numbing records she could find, tracing the Families back in time. In those records however, I learnt that sometimes there isn’t a direct male heir and the Family would continue through the female line.’
‘Okay’ said Ollie blankly. ‘How does this help us?’
Reeve and Rafe looked at each other, smiling as comprehension dawned.
‘Of course,’ said Reeve quietly.
Len heaved a sigh of vindication. She turned back to Ollie and Xander.
‘There have always been the Twelve Families and their history traces back to the beginning but they aren’t the exact same Twelve as today. The Raynotts and the Hacketts aren’t the original families. They replaced the,’ she stopped and frowned a moment before continuing, ‘the Helthons and the Walkers. They were the originals.’
‘So that’s why it didn’t work?’ Ollie burst out, having finally caught on. ‘We had two of the original sigils wrong, so we picked the wrong star patterns.’
‘Yep,’ said Len. ‘Exactly.’
Xander felt his hopes begin to rise again, but –
‘We still don’t know the kin marks of the original Families, their sigils. We’ll have to go home and research them before we can get any further. We can’t go on now.’ Again, he felt that strange pull of urgency, the sense that it would be too late.
‘In the hands of a lesser detention detainee that might be the case,’ said Len airily, a smug smile pulling at her lips. ‘I, however, can remember pretty much anything I have written down, given a minute or two.’
She shut her eyes and frowned in concentration as they all waited, then waved her hand imperatively.
‘Paper and a pen,’ she demanded.
Ollie shoved some notepaper towards her while Reeve fished a stubby piece of pencil out of his pocket. Len knelt down on the ground, while Ollie held his glowstone close so she could see the paper. Quickly, she drew two sigils, one above the other, and then handed the page up to Xander. Everyone crowded in to look except Hob, who still stood to one side. His air of disinterest was somewhat undermined by the quick glances he kept snatching at the paper.
‘Are you sure these are accurate?’ asked Reeve.
Len gave him an outraged look. ‘Absolutely,’ she said.
‘They will be,’ said Ollie, with a quick grin. ‘This is why Len drives the instructors at the Academy insane – she remembers everything she’s seen, even when she looks like she’s not paying attention.’
‘Really?’ Reeve said, looking interested.
‘Len, you’re amazing,’ said Xander.
‘I know,’ she replied nonchalantly, but Xander could see the genuine smile and her faint blush.
‘We’ll start again,’ said Xander. ‘Ollie, you help me with the ones we did before, minus the wrong sigils, while the rest of you look for the star patterns which match the new kin marks. I’ll light the wall back up so you can see.’
Strangely now, despite his earlier doubts, Xander had no fear that he could not activate the wall again. Confidently, he placed his hand against it and, with a quick flare of his orb, the stars glimmered once again within the stone. Now there was a real sense of purpose as he and Ollie worked to re-light the constellations matching each of the original correct sigils, while he could hear the faint murmur of discussion and disagreement from the group behind him, their heads bent closely together. Alf leaned over the top of them, his deep granite voice breaking in every now and again.
When the first ten constellations were glowing again, Xander turned around.
‘How are you doing?’ he asked. ‘We need to hit the final two.’
‘This one is the Helthon mark,’ said Reeve, pointing down to the left while all the others nodded in agreement. Xander hurried over and activated the pattern.
‘And the last one?’ he asked.
They all looked at one another. ‘We can’t really agree on that,’ said Len reluctantly.
Rafe pointed to two very similar patterns. ‘It could be either of those, but neither one seems to fit perfectly.’
Xander’s heart sank as he looked between the two choices. There was an abrupt shuffle and Hob pushed forward.
‘No wonder I had to come along,’ he said nastily. ‘With both hands and a map, you couldn’t find your own –’
He cut off under Rafe’s disapproving gaze, glancing sidelong at the younger members of the group. ‘Bah,’ he muttered and then pointed down at the bottom of the wall. ‘There is your pattern.’
Xander leant down to see, and recognised immediately that the hobgoblin was correct. The match to the Walker kin mark was barely above floor level, but quite clear. His hand reached out, hesitated for just a second, and then touched the stone. All of the stars blinked and, for one desperate moment, Xander thought they had failed again. This time however, the stars in the chosen constellations did not fade away but grew brighter and more intense. The other stars dimmed until they disappeared, as the wall itself grew darker while becoming transparent. In just a moment, Xander was standing in front of a huge vista, deep and cold without measure, the patterns now transformed into constellations of blazing stars hanging in empty space. He took an uncertain step backwards.
‘Unbelievable,’ murmured Reeve.
‘Now what?’ said Ollie, his eyes wide and awestruck. ‘How in Haven are we supposed to get past that?’
And suddenly, Xander knew. He took a deep breath.
‘Faith,’ he said quietly and, before he could talk himself out of it, he stepped out into space.
For a second, he was blinded by the flare of starlight, but he felt the slight, familiar prickle of a ward and a moment later he was standing in a stone corridor, dimly lit by the glow from his orb. Turning around, he saw the hazy figures of his companions on the other side of the star-speckled barrier; their voices were faint but it looked like absolute bedlam was breaking out. Rafe was dragging Ollie back from the barrier, while Len and Reeve shouted Xander’s name and Alf loomed worriedly behind them. Even the hobgoblin looked shocked.
‘It’s okay,’ yelled Xander, as loudly as he could. ‘I’m fine. I can still see you all.’
There was a sudden, shocking silence on the other side of the barrier.
‘Xander?’ called Reeve. ‘Where are you?’
‘I’m right here,’ said Xander. ‘It’s just an illusion, a ward. You can walk right through it.’
‘You can walk right through it,’ muttered the hob. ‘Doesn’t mean that we can.’
His voice cut off as, without any hesitation, Len stepped forward. From this side, Xander could see the flare of starlight, illuminating the barrier and making it ripple, before Len walked through into the corridor. She glanced back over her shoulder, with a quick smile of wonder, before taking two steps towards Xander and thumping him hard, on the arm.
‘Ow,’ Xander yelped. ‘What was that for?’
‘For scaring us like that, you idiot,’ Len snapped.
The barrier flickered and rippled again as the rest of the group followed Len’s example, the hobgoblin bringing up the rear muttering furiously. Xander was rubbing his arm ruefully and Rafe’s eyes followed the motion.
‘I see that Len has already expressed our feelings over the recklessness of that action,’ he said evenly, ‘so we’ll leave it there.’
‘Thanks,’ grumbled Xander. Len had a very good arm when she was annoyed.
Reeve and Ollie both held up glowstones, and Alf was looking around with awed wonder on his rough-hewn face.
‘This is our work,’ he said, gesturing at the precise joinery of the soaring stone walls and arched ceiling up above them. He moved over to gaze at a beautifully carved niche in the wall, surrounded with decorative stone work. ‘Such care, even on the smallest details. We cannot carve stone like lace any more. We have fallen so far.’ Wistfully, he stroked the intricate carvings, oblivious to the spider webs which covered every surface and hung down in festoons from the high ceilings.
Ollie wrinkled his nose. ‘It smells pretty bad in here though,’ he said. ‘Hopefully that ward will let in some fresh air now.’
Hob snorted. ‘We are far from fresh air,’ he growled. ‘That ward does not just conceal. It has carried us deep underground. We’ll probably all suffocate down here, but doubtless that’s just another well-considered part of your grand plan.’
‘How can we be deep underground?’ demanded Len, with a sceptical expression. ‘We can see straight out there to the Pavilions.’
Hob glared at her.
‘Did humans develop a profound connection to the deep earth while we hobs weren’t looking?’ he asked sarcastically. ‘The ward and your eyes deceive you – we are a long way below the Pavilions now.’
With a quick frown, Rafe examined the passageway, shining his light as far as it would reach. ‘Given the dust on the floor, no-one has been here for many years, maybe centuries. We need to be careful – there may be some damage along the way.’
‘No,’ rumbled Alf. ‘Our work has stood undisturbed for millennia in other places. Not a stone will have moved from its allotted place.’
‘Hmm,’ said Rafe, noncommittally. ‘Even so, let’s walk carefully. Better safe than sorry, eh?’
As they moved forward along the corridor, it grew more dank and musty smelling, and Xander could see the swirling dust that they had disturbed with their footsteps. The corridor continued on, with no openings or doors along its straight length, although it sloped subtly downwards. It was almost a shock when it terminated in a large door, big enough for Alf to pass through with room to spare. There was no obvious handle or control but when Xander touched it with his fingertips, his orb flared with warm light and it began to slide slowly and ponderously to the side, with a grating noise which reverberated in the enclosed space. It didn’t open all of the way, wedging itself with a groan, but the gap was wide enough to admit everyone, even the giant who squeezed through with a grunt.