“Hmm,” he said but offered no explanation.
“What did you mean when you said that it was worse than you thought?”
He shushed me and carried on looking at me as if I was an interesting, new specimen of some sort. Eventually, when he’d seen whatever it was he was looking for, he pulled off his glasses and sat down in the chair opposite me. He pulled his hat off to reveal a shiny bald head with a strange symbol tattooed on it.
“This thing you saw, the way that Iris described it to me, it sounds like something I hoped wasn’t real. There have been legends, of course, but this is the first time I’ve heard of it appearing to a person in real life. I thought they were just stories. I wish they were, but I can see it in your eyes.” He sighed and massaged his temples with his fingers. He looked like a doctor about to tell me I had an incurable disease. The way I was currently feeling, I wouldn’t be surprised if he did.
“What exactly are we talking about here? What can you see?”
The door opened, and Iris came in with a tray, drawing Mali’s attention to her. Frustration bubbled through me. It was pretty obvious that whatever legendary being was currently occupying my mind was not good, and, damn it, I wanted to know what it was.
“I’m sorry. The kitchen didn’t have nettle and beetlebrew. This is just plain tea.”
“Delicious!” replied Mali as he poured some into a cup. He continued pouring for the rest of us and took an age to put milk and sugar in his own cup. It was frustrating. I left my own tea and waited for him to speak again.
“There have been legends circulating for thousands of years,” he finally began, once his tea and biscuit had been devoured.
“What do these legends say?” I asked moving forward in my seat. I noticed Iris doing the same.
“There was once a man, an ordinary man called Jake. Legend has it that this man was an aide to a long forgotten king. The king was not kind to him and treated him badly for his own entertainment. With each passing year of being made to stand while he was whipped and tortured for the entertainment of the king’s guests, Jake’s anger grew until it completely consumed him. In the little spare time he had, he began to practice sorcery and witchcraft with the intention of overthrowing his master. The queen bore the king twin sons, but it wasn’t until the little boys turned five that the king began to suspect they weren’t his own children. Both the king and the queen were blond, you see, whereas the boys had hair as black as night. It was only when the king finally saw Jake with the two boys that he caught the resemblance. They all had violet eyes.
“Realizing that his servant, the one he’d used for cruel entertainment all these years now had the last laugh, he killed the queen and imprisoned Jake. The twins were forced to take over his job. Jake could hear the tiny boy’s screams all the way to the jail cell and the horrific laughing of those that found it funny.
“He practiced witchcraft morning, noon, and night until he felt powerful enough to go up against the king. He’d been in the cell for three years, and in that time, there had been others that shared his cell. One was a witch, who helped him learn even more. She knew she was soon to die, so she passed her magic over to him before she took her final breath. Now, he was powerful and confident. He performed a spell that opened the cell door and followed the screams up to the throne room. There, he found his two young sons, dressed in bright yellow and red costumes, being ordered to perform silly dances for the king. On the back of each son’s costume was a patch of bright green material with the word ‘Joker’ sewn on it. Jake saw the rips in the back of the fabric and the hundreds of welts caused by a whip on both his sons.
“On seeing the damage to his children he cast a spell on the king and everyone in the court, but not before the king’s guards had speared him and both the little boys. His last act before he died was to perform another spell on the boys to keep them alive. His magic, combined with the witch’s had mixed to form something so powerful that I doubt even he knew what he was doing. Everyone in that castle died except for those two boys, who were saved by their father’s bravery. His magic had passed to them. The problem was, they were too young to control their magic. They’d never had any before, and it went to their heads. With no one around to teach them, and with the anger they both harbored from years of torture, they grew up to be inhumane, unforgiving and cruel. They found their father’s spell books and continued training, just as their father had, eventually, becoming even more powerful than he.
“As the legend goes, they went their separate ways out into the world on their eighteenth birthday. By then, they could perform any spell ever invented and do a whole lot more besides. They used people for pleasure, ironically, just as the king had used them. They’d learned cruelty from him, but they were much more subtle than he was. They learned to blend in, to change their appearance at will.”
“Like a Spade, you mean?”
“No, not like a Spade at all. Spades can shift into animal form and, it’s rare, but some can also have two human forms. I’ve never met a spade that can change more than that. These two Jokers can emulate anyone. They can change their appearance to look like any human or animal. The only thing they cannot change is their violet eyes. If you ever meet anyone with violet eyes, be wary.”
“What do they want?” asked Iris.
“That my dear, I do not know.”
“It has something to do with the river. The Hearts were after its magical properties,” I said
“Believe me. The Jokers have no need of the magic in our water. They have greater powers of their own.” Mali picked up his teacup and glanced inside. He pointed something twig-like at it, and the cup began to refill with tea. It was then I realized he’d only asked Iris to fetch the tea so he could look at me without interruption. He drank his second cup down in one gulp.
“So why was one of them up there, then, if not to somehow get the water? Could the Queen of Hearts have somehow found one of them and asked for his help?” I asked.
“I doubt it. The Jokers won’t work for other people, not unless there is something in it themselves. Not even the Queen of Hearts would be able to persuade them, not unless she offered them something even they couldn’t get themselves.”
“What on Vanatus could they not get for themselves if they are as powerful as you say they are?”
“I don’t know, but I think we need to find out.”
He picked up the water that Iris had brought me and that I hadn’t touched and began to stir it with his finger. As it swirled, it began to turn bright purple. Without any warning, he picked up the glass and threw the water at my face.
“What the...?” I stood up and put my hands up to wipe the water from my face, but then I realized I wasn’t wet at all. The water had somehow missed my head completely, even though he’d thrown it directly at me. It was now in a puddle on the floor both in front of me and behind me.
“Just as I suspected.”
“What just happened?” I asked, wondering why I wasn’t wet.
“There is a force in you. When Iris told me you were having visions of this man looking at you from inside you own head, I suspected as much. When you saw him up on that mountain, he planted something in your head.”
“Planted? What? He didn’t come near me.”
“He didn’t need to. It was a spell he planted. I’m guessing he can see everything you can see. He already knows that we are on to him.”
“Can we get this spell out of my head?” I asked feeling uncomfortable, wondering if some thousand-year-old dude was using my eyes to look through right now.
“I think so. He is a long way away from us. I can’t feel his aura very strongly. Because of that, luck is on our side. I believe I’m powerful enough to close your mind from him permanently. I’m afraid it will hurt, but that is a small price to pay for having your mind back, wouldn’t you say?”
“Erm.” I didn’t particularly like the sound of it, but I didn’t like walking around with an evil old guy in my head either.
“Perhaps we should retire to your room for this. You are going to want to lie down after the procedure.”
“Ok. I’m afraid it’ll take me a while to get up the stairs. I’m just getting used to my crutches.”
“My dear boy, forget the crutches.” He pulled his twig (which turned out to be a magic wand) out of his bag once again and pointed it at my legs. He said something that sounded like whizzebee and the shakiness disappeared. My legs no longer felt like those of a newborn foal. I tossed the crutches to one side to make sure. Yes, my legs were fine.
“How did you...?”
“Nevermind about that. Fixing your legs was the easy part. It’s going to get a whole lot more difficult from here on in.”
***
I was quite disconcerted to find Iris stuffing bed sheets under the crack of my bedroom door once I’d lain on the bed as instructed by Mali. He, himself, was busy pulling a variety of what looked like torture instruments from his bag and laying them on my bedside cabinet. I tried to keep my eyes away from the strange metallic objects, but the thought of exactly what he was going to do with them was a difficult thing to ignore.
“So,” I said to Mali, in an effort to keep my mind off what he was doing, “once we pull this joker character from my mind, then what?”
“What do you mean?” he paused with a particularly large sharp object in his hand. It made me wince just to look at it.
“Well, will he just disappear from wherever it was that he came from?”
“It’s difficult to tell what he’ll do, but as he is still possessing your mind, I think we can assume he’s not finished with whatever he set out to do. We need to find out what that is before we can hope to do anything about it. If the legends are true, which it certainly looks like they are, then The Joker will be a slippery character. We’ll never really know what he looks like because he is a master of disguise, slipping into other people’s lives undetected. The man you saw was quite possibly his normal form, but I’m willing to bet, he won’t let us see him like that again.” He pulled out a strange-looking eye mask from the bag and placed it on the nightstand with the rest of the objects. “Ah, finished. Are you ready?”
Not really! “Can I just ask why Iris is stuffing all my bedsheets around the door?”
“It’s to dampen the sounds of your screams from the rest of the castle. Now, if you’ll lie back, close your eyes, and relax…there’s a good boy.”
Quite how I was supposed to relax after what he’d just said was beyond me, but I put my head on the one pillow that Iris hadn’t stripped from my bed and closed my eyes. As soon as I did, he was there. Those violet eyes were in my brain. I could feel him searching my thoughts. He could tell that I knew who he was. I could feel a strange, disconcerting sense of not panic, as such, but a realization that he had to grip onto me even harder. I was his link to this castle, and he knew he was going to lose it. Tendrils of his conscious wrapped themselves in the deepest part of my brain, and as Mali put the eye mask over my eyes, I knew this wasn’t going to be pleasant.
Mali began to chant quietly. It was a language I’d never heard before, but the rhythmic sing-song quality of his voice put me at ease. Whatever it was that had me was holding on tighter now, and I could feel it. It was like someone had picked up my brain between his hands and was digging his fingers in tighter and tighter, giving me the worst headache I’d ever experienced. The pressure got worse and worse until my brain couldn’t be squeezed any more. I clamped my teeth together in an effort to stop my screams, but then the pain was gone entirely. I let out the breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding. For the briefest of seconds, everything felt normal, but then, like a train suddenly backing up in the opposite direction, everything reversed. The squeezing pressure that had been there turned into a pulling sensation. I was vaguely aware of Mali’s chants getting louder as my brain felt like it was being torn into a thousand tiny pieces. Someone, I guess Iris, grabbed my hand in an effort to comfort me, but no amount of handholding could stop the piercing agony that was going on in my head. Those tendrils that had woven their way through my mind were now being ripped from the darkest recesses, and with each rip, a scorching hot pain followed. It was an agony beyond anything I thought I could endure, and throughout it, I could see those violet eyes holding on to me, gripping for all they were worth.
A small part of me was aware that Mali hadn’t used a single one of his torture instruments on me, although the pain was enough as it was without them. I could hear a ripping sound, every time a tendril of the spell was pulled from where it had gripped, and each one was followed by a whoosh. These noises were deafening, but I knew that they were in my head, and only I could hear them.
When the pain had built to a crescendo and the noise was so loud that I couldn’t think of anything else, there was an almighty whoosh and everything left me. It was almost as if Mali had reached into my brain and pulled The Joker out. And then there was nothing, no violet eyes, no screaming, no pain, just a light sensation in my head and the gentle sound of someone sobbing. I couldn’t tell if it was me or Iris.
25th January
I had never felt so comfortable in my whole life, my mind was wonderfully quiet, peaceful and above all, for the first time in weeks, devoid of dreams or hallucinations. I opened my eyes to find Iris asleep at the foot of my bed. It was still dark outside, so it must have been quite early, but I nudged her with my toe anyway.
“Hmm.”
“Iris, what happened? Where’s Mali?”
“Mali’s sleeping in my old room. Did it work?”
She inched her way up the bed and felt my brow. For the first time in weeks, it didn’t feel as though it was dripping with sweat.
“I think so. I feel great.”
“Yes, but can you see him?” She looked at me. Her face may have been in shadow, but the concern in her eyes was unmistakable.
“No. He’s gone. Whatever Mali did, it worked.”
“Great!” she hugged me tightly. I’d just put my arms around her to hug her back when there was a loud scream. At first, I thought it was from somewhere in the castle, but when I heard it again, I realized it was coming from outside. We both jumped off the bed and ran to the window. Dawn was just beginning to break, and the early morning sun was tingeing the sky with a hazy orange glow. My bedroom window was situated at the side of the castle, and, as such, was apart from the outer castle wall. There was not a lot to see. The scream came again, but this time it sounded different, as though it belonged to someone else. They were both coming from outside the castle grounds. The small dirt track that led to the nearby village was just over the wall as well as one of The Club Kingdom’s many rivers.
“I can’t see anything, can you?” asked Iris, craning her head so far out of the window that I was afraid she might fall out.
“No. The screams are coming from outside the castle grounds. We should see what’s going on.”
I pulled a dressing gown on, even though I’d fallen asleep in the same clothes I’d been wearing yesterday and bolted through my bedroom door only to find that the gas lights were all lit. My mother and father along with Sage and Sequoia and a number of castle servants all stood by the front door, waiting for Tree to open it. He was fumbling with a huge keyring, full of hundreds of keys while the screams outside continued.
“Hurry up, my good man. Someone is in trouble,” my father said to Tree. I noticed he was still in his pajamas as were my brothers. I guess the screamer or screamers must have woken them too.
“Sorry, sir!” Tree finally found the key he was looking for and inserted it into the lock. The door opened, and we all piled out into the cold, January air.
“Your Majesty!” A guard I recognized as the one from the front gate came running toward us. “I think you need to see this.” He beckoned us over to him, and together we followed him through the main gate of the castle walls and out into the big public square. It was empty, not entirely surprising at this time of the morning, but I could see a sm
all gathering of people to the right-hand side of the castle walls. The same side where my bedroom window was situated.
The screaming had stopped, but there was an excited babble amongst the people. When we got closer, it became very apparent what the screaming was about. The river was blood red.
“Mali needs to see this,” murmured Iris and ran back into the castle.
“Sire!” one of the villagers saw us arrive. About half a dozen people stood around talking excitedly. One woman was crying and being comforted by a young man. These people were the early morning traders. No doubt, on their way to the local market to set up their wares for the day when they came upon the river of blood. No wonder someone had been screaming. The pink glow of the sky only made it appear more horrible. I looked both up and down the river, and it was red as far as the eye could see in both directions. A deep, thick, whirling torrent of blood. “We found the river like this. Last night when I made my way home from work, it was perfectly normal and now... Whatever could have done such a thing?”
“I don’t know,” huffed my father. He began to root around in the pockets of his robes, no doubt searching for his pipe, but came up empty. “Any ideas, Heather? Sage? Anyone?”
“I’ve never seen anything like this before,” replied Sage.
“Do you think someone could have been murdered and thrown in further upstream?” asked the villager, shrugging his shoulders.
“I would think that if you murdered the entire Club population and threw them in, there still wouldn’t be this much blood.” My mother pursed her lips, whether at the stupidity of the man or the strangeness of the situation, I couldn’t tell.
“That’s not blood,” a voice from behind me said. We all turned to see Mali with a very out of breath Iris behind him.
“Who the devil is this?” barked my father, taking in Mali’s strange clothing.
“Please listen to him, Father,” said Iris. If Mali say’s what’s turning the river red isn’t blood, then it isn’t.”
Five of Clubs (War and Suits Book 4) Page 3