by C. M. Lucas
It was frustrating. Michael’s skill had been apparent the moment the sword was placed in his hand, the reason behind Faust’s favouritism, no doubt. Tim was reasonable with a sword, though it had taken him a few sessions before he’d built any real confidence, and even Steph found she had a proclivity for archery.
But Anya... The moment she touched a sword at their first training session, she’d had another vision, much like the one she’d had about the riddle back at Erimus Hall.
In the vision, she was a sword maven, wielding a blade around as simply as second nature. She wasn’t at the camp though; she was somewhere else entirely. Ghoulish creatures were flying above her, circling a bloody battlefield whilst men were hacking each other to bits, left, right and centre. An arrow had pierced her shoulder, she felt so alive among the casualties it was as if she were invincible. She took down the enemy one after another, sometimes even two or three at a time, her movements bold and effortless. Not only was the blade an extension of herself physically, it was like a projection of her will, carrying out her every intention like a genie granting the wishes of its master.
She’d been right about the riddle, so she was sure this vision would come true. So sure that she entered the training field with an ego the size of the General himself.
The reality, however, was very different.
After trying her hand at every weapon in the armoury, she couldn’t find her way with anything, and with every bruise gained, a little more patience was lost.
‘Yeah, well...’ she hurled back at the General’s slur. ‘All the weapons and the training in this camp haven’t helped you any in the last eighteen years; you’re no closer to saving this place than I am, so back off!’
The General’s eyes darkened and, unsheathing his own blade, he slashed it in her direction, Anya only just parrying his attack in time.
‘HEY! You could have killed me!’ she shouted before throwing her weapon back down to the ground.
‘You’re going to have to rely on more than just that mark on your hand if you’re going to succeed in this mission. I have seen men; good men and great warriors lose their lives on the same quest! The King himself, with all the magic that runs through his veins cannot overpower the dark force that has ravaged our world of all its life. You? You are nothing! You have no power! You have no skill! You are tiny! A child, years shy of becoming a woman! Prophecy or no prophecy, you go out there and try to fight, the Darkness will swallow you up just like it did all our other women and children, and frankly it would be a blessing not having to endure your whining any longer.’
There are moments in life when a person’s words snatch all reason and control, and everything twists into a blur of rage. For Anya, this was one of those moments.
She drew in a deep breath, as if allowing dark forces to take hold of her, and, through her fists, she exhaled all her fury at the General. After it happened, she couldn’t remember exactly what she had done, but Steph recounted it later as she hid herself away during dinner.
‘You kind of just threw yourself at him, and I just thought you’d fall on your face again – ’
‘Thanks.’
‘Well, you do do that. A lot.’
‘Again,’ Anya said sarcastically. ‘Thanks, Steph.’
‘Anyway, you just threw yourself at him and he just went crashing down to the ground! Shattered both your swords in the process, like they were made of glass or something! Seriously, Anya, that guy is huge! It was like you’d bulldozed a mansion with your bare hands!’
Anya sighed. She felt rotten for losing it like that with General Faust, and the more Steph spoke about it, the smaller she felt.
Now, on top of everything, she had yet another thing she needed to fix, along with improving her appalling battle skills, and proving Lorcan’s innocence. That wasn’t to mention getting Harrion to stop avoiding her. He hadn’t spoken to her since the Potentilla, despite her calling at his hut a number of times.
Michael and Tim entered the hut just as Anya hid her face behind her hands.
‘We can still see you, you know,’ Michael said. She uncovered her face and found him offering her a bowl of stewed mushrooms and a piece of the rising’s flatbread.
Tim sat on the edge of the bed and looked at Anya sympathetically. ‘Feeling any better?’
‘I feel about as good as these mushrooms look,’ she answered, peering into the bowl. She shoved it back into Michael’s hands. She couldn’t face food right now, not even flatbread.
Michael slammed the bowl down on the bedside table. ‘Are you trying to make him hate you on purpose? You can’t still be that bad with a sword; we’ve been training for twelve sleeps now.’
‘Of course I’m not! And can we just drop it for tonight, please? We’ve got a riddle to solve, remember?’
‘I know. I’m just saying that no one will forget this in a hurry. Faust is furious with you, and everyone in the camp is talking about it. Goodness knows what King Theone thinks! Has he spoken with you yet?’ He gave her the look of a disappointed parent. She shook her head listlessly. ‘Did you know Feiron and Trace saw the whole thing from the armoury? Apparently, Feiron isn’t happy about the swords you broke either.’
Feiron was the smith who ran the armoury across from the training ground, and Trace was his apprentice. Feiron was a quiet man, the sort of unreadable that puts a person on edge. When his head wasn’t down in his work, his eyes would meticulously follow the Four as they trained, his stolid expression never giving away his thoughts. Anya’s reasoning for his pensive silence was that he enjoyed watching the weapons he’d made in action, though, in her case, it wasn’t an elegant sight to behold.
‘So, this riddle then...’ Tim began, changing the subject.
Anya reached into her pocket and pulled out the parchment. She kept it on her at all times, except for when she’d bathe and entrust it to Steph.
Anya read out the next part of the riddle in her clearest voice, glad for the distraction.
When through cast eyes on the peacock’s tale,
Where numbers take mystery and lift the veil.
The first of one and the start of Many,
Two hundred and three found in twenty,
Four is twinned with four in eight,
And six gives five before too late.
The next ingress the moonlight brings,
By Lunaris jewel in time with Kings
‘So we know the peacock’s tale is referring to the book,’ Tim began.
‘Well, we think it is. ’
‘At this point, Michael, it makes the only logical sense. For starters, there are no peacocks in this part of the world.’
‘If this is part of our world,’ Anya muttered.
Tim ignored this and continued his thesis. ‘And here’ – he pointed to the third and fourth line of the riddle – ‘With my silver ink found here in four, These words create a map to more – it’s basically saying with his first four books plus this riddle, you will find his other work. So, we need to use this book to solve this part of the riddle.’
Michael nodded slowly, first up and down, then side to side, as if he were shaking the bits of information in his brain and hoping they’d fall into their rightful places.
‘Then,’ Tim went on, ‘if you look at this here – the word ingress – that means a place to enter; an entryway.’
‘Like a gateway?’ Anya asked.
‘That’s another way of wording it, I suppose.’ Tim stood and slowly began pacing the room.
‘Wait!’ Steph’s voice took the others by surprise. ‘The next ingress the moonlight brings – so it’s saying the next gateway appears in the moonlight, the same way the sunlight at Burrow Mump brought us here?’
The boys stared at her, mouths agape, words escaping them.
‘I think you might be right, Steph.’ Anya did her best to hide the shock in her voice. ‘And I think it also means that there isn’t just one gateway, and maybe, not just one world either.’
&
nbsp; ‘That’s a little out there, Anya.’ This was Michael, offering the exact response Anya expected.
‘Well, actually,’ Tim said, stopping mid pace, ‘The question of one world or more aside, the word next does imply that another gateway has come before.’
Michael opened his mouth to argue but there was no way anyone could contest Tim’s point, so he did what he usually did when he was proven wrong; he crossed his arms and changed the subject. ‘So, what do you think all these numbers mean then? The first of one and the start of Many, Two hundred and three found in twenty – I mean it just sounds like a lot of mathematical nonsense!’
‘It looks like there are two parts to this,’ Anya said, scanning the riddle again. ‘The first, the part with all these numbers, will take us to the book, and these last two lines sound as if they will take us to another gateway to move on. If we don’t manage to work out where the book is, we need to at least work out how to get through the gate, otherwise we’ll never make it back home.’
Michael began taking notes on their riddle solving process. ‘Can’t we just go back to the forest where we came in? The gate will have to open eventually, surely?’
‘I’m not sure we can actually go back that way. Here,’ Tim said, taking the riddle parchment from Anya and continuing to pace as he read aloud. ‘But harken, beware, before you endure, once stepped forward, step back no more – I think he’s saying the gates are one way only.’
Steph returned to her usual confused expression.
‘Imagine we are on a board game,’ Tim explained to Steph. ‘Only there are no two-steps-back here. We have to go forward to reach the end, otherwise we won’t get home.’
‘So... we’re like pawns in a game of chess,’ Anya whispered.
Tim nodded grimly and for a few moments, none of them even breathed.
‘Can I have a look at that,’ Michael asked Tim, shifting his focus from notebook to parchment. Tim passed it over and Michael swayed softly on his hammock as he read the riddle to himself. ‘This bit here, about the jewel – by Lunaris jewel in time with Kings – we need to find out what a Lunaris Jewel is, and where we can find one.’
There was a knock at the door. ‘Pardon me,’ Barlem said with his usual bow. ‘But I brought Miss some fresh blankets.’ He placed them on her hammock and mumbled something about the tree-trunk bed.
‘Thank you, Barlem,’ Anya said, repaying his kindness with a smile.
‘Feiron said ‘e wants t’see you in the armoury, an ‘alf after risin’, no later.’
Anya swallowed a hard mass of anxiety and nodded. ‘Ok. Tell him I’ll be there.’
‘An’ King Theone is holdin’ a meetin’ with the all the generals – Faust, Ruven, Delaney and Frey – one after rising, in the Pavilion. Told me personally ‘e wants you there.’
‘Oh, it just gets better and better.’ Miserable, she sunk her face into her hands. ‘Tell him I’ll be there too.’
‘What about us?’ Steph inquired. ‘Does he want us three there too?’
‘Oh yes, Miss. It concerns all-a-you. Well, sleep well.’ Barlem bowed once again, then just as he was leaving the hut, he turned back. ‘I… I don’t mean t’listen in on your doings, Miss, but I couldn’t ‘elp ‘earin’ someone say sumin ‘bout the Lunaris jewel?’
Michael, Tim and Steph all looked to Anya but did not say a word.
Barlem had worked for the King since before the Darkness – maybe asking him some questions might be a good idea, seeing as they’d lost the grace of Google with the last bar of phone signal.
I don’t have to tell him everything, she thought. She was still adamant that their quest to save Scott’s wasn’t as important as her mission to restore Virtfirth. ‘Do you know what it is?’
‘O’course I do, I was there when ‘e gave it t‘er.’
‘Gave it to who?’
‘T’the Princess. Princess Abeytu. Back in the good days, King Theone ‘ad a sundial built in the castle grounds for little Harrion’s dedication day. Lovely day it were, ‘ad a party an’ everythin’. All the Kingdom were invited. Any ‘ow, the man that built the dial took a bit o’a shine to our Princess, ‘e did, an’ at the party, ‘e gave her a gift. A necklace, little spirally thing it were, an’ inside there was a little triangular blue stone, so pale it were almost white. ‘E said it was called a Lunaris Jewel.’
Excitement simmered in Anya’s bones. They were one step closer to finding home. ‘Do you know what happened to it – where it is now?
His smile turned to sorrow and he let out a sad little sigh. ‘The Princess were wearin’ it the day the Darkness came.’
It took a moment for the statement to register. Although they didn’t know how, they needed that jewel to get them home, and now, it was gone. Both the jewel and the Princess had been turned to ash over eighteen years ago on that fateful day in Silver Forest.
Home had never felt so far away. Still, there was one last straw to clutch.
‘The man who gave the jewel to the Princess, is he still around?’
‘Oh, I aint seen ‘im since the unveilin’. Anythin’ could o’ happened t‘im by now.’
‘Maybe he’d know where we can get another Lunaris jewel, if there are any others? I think we should try to find him, or at least find out what happened to him. Maybe he moved on to another kingdom before the Darkness came?’
‘I s’pose it’s possible,’ Barlem answered. ‘If ‘e’s still alive. Per’aps the Stragglers could ‘ave a look in the old records in the library, next time they go t’the Big City?’
‘That would be great! Do you remember his name?’
Barlem scratched his head and searched his memories before chuckling to himself.
‘What? What’s funny?’
‘Well, Miss,’ he said, his laughter reduced to a smile. ‘I do remember it ‘cause I always thought it were funny ‘ow ‘is name di’nt match the job ‘e done. You see, t’build a sundial, that’s the work of a stone mason, but his name...’ He let out another little laugh. ‘‘Is name weren’t Mason at all. It was Weaver.
SHE TRACED A trail of footsteps that weaved through the famished tree line. Ahead, light poured from the heart of the forest and she knew she had to reach it and discover the secrets it held.
Her feet were naked yet impervious to the detritus bed they walked upon, it was as if they didn’t touch the ground at all, merely the air above it. She knew she was still in Virtfirth, but it was different somehow. There were small creatures scuttling up trees and tiny red hummingbirds hovering in the mist, their whistling wings giving voice to the usually silent forest.
As she drew closer to the light, it dimmed, and she feared it would go out before she had chance to find it. Then, just as it had died down to less than a single ember, she found him.
Lying on a bed – his bed – in the middle of the forest was Iain, surrounded by books. Hundreds and hundreds of books stacked and arranged on branches of trees that had contorted themselves to act as shelves. His eyes were closed, his breathing shallow, and his skin was so pale and ghostly, he was nothing more than a warm breath in a frozen world.
She wanted to sit beside him, to hold his hand and let him know she was there. But she was stuck, and the more she tried to move the more tied she felt.
The buzz of the hummingbirds grew so loud it was deafening. It felt like they were closing in around her, yet they were nowhere to be seen. She began to panic, desperately turning on the spot trying to find where the noise was coming from.
The threat was definite now, and much less a buzz than a whir of metal. A figure stepped out of the darkness, holding a device ready to destroy everything around her – a chainsaw.
The blades spun with the same twisted excitement the figure had in his face and, with a second look, Anya realised who had joined them.
Wielding the chainsaw was Chronicles’ red haired, rat nosed manager, James George, and his intent was clear. Without any acknowledgement of their presence, or compassion for Iain’s conditio
n, James began hacking at the trees, the books crashing to the ground.
Anya opened her mouth to cry out, but… nothing.
She tried screaming louder, but no sound escaped her lips.
Then Iain spoke, his whisper surprisingly loud against the sound of the chainsaw. ‘Save it, Anya. Save Scott’s.’
Icy tears rolled down her cheeks as she struggled against her invisible shackles, until another voice called to her.
‘ANYA!’ It screamed, frantic and familiar, over and over again. ‘ANYA! ANYA! ANYA!’
All she could do was keep trying to break free. She demanded movement and sound from her brain, doing everything in her power to conjure it. Then the darkness began to swallow the images around her as her cries flew from her lungs and into the void.
‘ANYA!’
Her eyes shot open and there were her friends gathered around her, concern and fear in their faces. Beads of sweat trickled down her forehead, and her throat was raw from screaming.
‘Are you ok? What happened?’ Michael asked, clutching her trembling hand.
‘I’m fine,’ she said, sitting up and slowing her breathing. She pressed her free hand to her chest. ‘It was nothing, just a bad dream. I’m fine.’
‘You weren’t dreaming of Faust killing you, were you?’ Steph asked, offering her a goblet of water.
‘No.’ She took a sip of water and smiled, despite her stomach sinking. Remembering that General Faust was mad at her, and the reason why wasn’t much better than the nightmare itself. ‘It was strange. I was here in the forest, but it was like I was in Iain’s library back home, on the day that he died. And then James George was there, and he had a chainsaw, and...’ Her voice cracked. It was harder to deal with now she was speaking it aloud.
‘Maybe everything’s just playing on your mind? Maybe you’re worried that in the time we’ve been here, James might have already got his hands on Scott’s?’
She didn’t want to admit it, but Steph was right. Anya had tried to push the idea away when it entered her conscious thoughts but the more she ignored it, the more it seemed to poke at her, taunting. The threat loomed over the Four every time they spoke about Scott’s, but no one had dared mention it, until now.