As a grey dawn filtered through the cave entrance, Anthony opened his eyes and stretched. It took him a few moments to recall where he was and to realize that this wasn’t part of some complicated dream. Beside him, Boff and Destiny both stirred, rubbing their eyes and massaging stiff joints in a disturbingly similar manner.
It was still early, not yet entirely light. Wordlessly, Boff handed each a biscuit and a mere two minutes later they were ready for the last leg of their hill climb.
The day was strange. The sun rose in a cloudless sky and yet, as it climbed it seemed to spread very little light or warmth. What would normally have been a perfect, golden autumn day was somehow just dull and still; the only sounds were those they made scrambling up the craggy hill.
Anthony was the first to reach the summit. He stood, motionless, waiting for the others to join him.
What they saw when they reached the top took their breath away. Below them stretched a wide valley, through which ran a clear stream. It sparkled even in the plain, dull light. The bottom of the hill gave way to a dense wood of proud, ancient trees laden with fruit every colour of the rainbow. Beyond the stream, lay a vast lush meadow, carpeted in creamy yellow buttermilk flowers that Anthony immediately recognized from his dream.
And in the meadow, graceful and sleek, grazed the magnificent Natorqua.
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
Destiny sat down hard, as though her legs simply couldn’t support her weight.
‘Oh!’ was all she could utter.
Anthony and Boff sat down beside her. For a while it was all they could do just to sit and gaze in awe and wonder at the scene before them.
At last, Destiny sighed. ‘They look so peaceful. Could Saddler have been wrong about them after all?’
‘Well, we can’t sit here all day,’ said Boff matter-of-factly. ‘We’ve come this far, it’s about time we took a closer look.’
They scrambled and slid down the hillside, their hopes raised by the sight of the Natorqua grazing peacefully below.
If it weren’t for the strange metallic murkiness of the light around them, it could well have seemed that all was right with the world.
At the bottom of the hill they found a rough stony path that led away, through the trees in the direction of the stream. Boff was looking rather hot and flustered, so Destiny relieved him of the one remaining backpack, which she flung lightly over one shoulder. They set off along the path, feeling much more positive now that they had nearly reached their goal.
The pathway meandered among the trees, sometimes allowing them a brief glimpse of the stream and sometimes almost seeming to curve back on itself so that they lost sight of the stream altogether. At one point, the stream was so close that Boff gave a whoop of joy and bounded off the path towards it. Anthony and Destiny watched aghast as he vanished totally from sight.
For what seemed like an age, they shouted his name until they were both hoarse, but of Boff there was no further sign. In grim silence, they set off once more, keeping strictly to the middle of the path; not daring to risk the slightest stumble that might cause them to set a foot on the ground beyond.
Without warning they stepped out of the trees and there was the stream, glinting and burbling no more than a stone’s throw away. The path ended where a small wooden bridge spanned the width of the stream.
‘We made it!’ said Anthony softly.
‘I wish I knew if Boff was all right! First Saddler and now him!’
I don’t like the look of that sky,’ said Anthony, ruefully eyeing several purple bruises on the horizon.
Destiny slid the rucksack off her shoulder and flung it on the ground. She sank wearily on to a nearby boulder.
‘What do we do now?’
Anthony squatted down beside her. He picked up a handful of stones from the path and weighed them absently in his hand.
Destiny gasped. ‘Nebiré!’ she said breathlessly. ‘The vision in the crystals – this was it, remember! She said we would know what to do!’
‘So she did – what did I do? Yes, I remember!’
Anthony scooped some of the stones from the path into a pile. He spread them out with a swift movement, watching as they settled, a couple rolling a little away from the main group and one or two trembling until they were finally still.
‘Well?’ asked Destiny.
‘I don’t know – it doesn’t seem to mean anything!’ Anthony peered worriedly at the stones again and shook his head. They both sat in silence for a few minutes, looking perplexedly at the pattern before them.
At that moment, a single ray of sun broke through the thick, purple-grey clouds and shone for a brief second on just one stone in the centre of the pattern. The stone shimmered for a fleeting moment with a pearly, rainbow-coloured luminescence. Then the ray was gone. Destiny looked at Anthony.
‘That stone must be the key,’ she said.
‘I think you’re right. Let’s hope we can work out how!’ agreed Anthony. He scooped the stone up and put it in his pocket.
‘Right, I think we’d better see what kind of reaction we get from the Natorqua!’ he said.
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
The Natorqua continued to graze contentedly, as Anthony and Destiny made their way across the rickety wooden bridge. The herd was widely dispersed over the meadow and most were at some distance from the children; even so, Destiny set the rucksack down carefully, afraid that any sudden movement might cause a panic amongst the herd.
In quiet undertones, they agreed that Anthony should try to approach the nearest Natorqua on his own. Destiny watched as he moved slowly and calmly through the calf-high flowers towards the nearest animal. When he was no more than a few yards away, the Natorqua raised its head and looked directly at him. Anthony lowered his gaze to show that he wasn’t posing a threat and continued his unhurried approach.
The Natorqua had dropped its head to continue grazing, but with Anthony’s very next step its head snapped up again, sharply.
Everything happened with unimaginable speed. Anthony’s mind was blasted with several things, all in one split second. His ears detected Destiny’s cry of warning at the very same fraction of an instant that the beautiful, serene creature before him snarled furiously, eyes flashing, and razor sharp canines bared in menace. In this same moment, Anthony’s mind was consumed by a scarlet furnace of hatred and rage that rooted him like a steel spike to the spot on which he stood.
He had no time to react.
The Natorqua reared, spun and charged.
The last thing Anthony heard was Destiny’s high-pitched scream, before the world began to revolve and then ceased to be.
‘Anthony? Anthony? Are you okay?’
The voice sounded familiar, but in his confused state, Anthony couldn’t quite place it. He opened his eyes cautiously, not entirely sure where he was or how he happened to be here.
Several faces were peering down at him, Destiny … and … and someone … He closed his eyes for a moment, willing the muzziness in his head to dissipate. Then his eyes sprang open again.
‘Boff? Squib? Prof?’
Boff’s triangle mouth grinned down at him and Destiny’s worried frown uncreased as she too broke into a relieved smile.
‘Thank goodness, I thought maybe you were … you know …’
‘No chance,’ Anthony groaned as he raised himself circumspectly into a sitting position. ‘You can’t get rid of me that easily! Where are we anyway? And where did you get to Boff?’
‘Well, it was a very strange thing!’ said Boff.
It would seem that as Boff had stepped off the path everything simply disappeared into a white fog. He had called frantically and tried to step back the way he had come, but whichever direction he turned in, the result was the same – pure, white nothing. Nor did his other senses help him in any way; there was nothing to see and equally nothing to hear, smell or feel. It was as though he had stepped into a complete void.
For a while he had sat cross-legged on the ground
, wondering if perhaps whatever it was might clear. He had absolutely no way of knowing how much time had passed, though it seemed as though it must be an age, when he heard a voice calling.
‘Boff! Hey, Boff! Are you all right? He’s not responding Squib … Speak to me, Boff! Where are the others? Where are Destiny and Anthony? Oh, Poor Boff, what on Emajen has happened to you?’
All these questions took Boff quite by surprise. The voice sounded familiar and it was very close, but he could still see nothing. Then it occurred to him abruptly; hadn’t the voice mentioned Squib? Confused and bewildered, he was just about to open his mouth and call out, when something gently touched his shoulder. Two things had then happened simultaneously: Boff jumped violently and the white fog disappeared.
There he was sitting on the forest floor no more than a stone’s throw from the path and standing in front of him, with concerned expressions on their faces, were the Prof and Squib.
‘What?’
Poor Boff just couldn’t fathom what was happening. The Prof knelt down in front of him.
‘Are you okay, Boff?’
‘Yes, I think so. What happened to the fog?’
‘We didn’t see any fog, just you sitting on the ground looking lost. It seems that somebody or something is still playing mind games. So where are Destiny and Anthony?’
Boff had just started to explain when a shrill cry reached them from somewhere across the stream.
‘Destiny,’ yelled Boff.
Before he and the Prof had gained their feet, Squib was gone. With the speed of forked lightning, he disappeared in the direction of the scream, leaving the others to follow as swiftly as they could.
Anthony rubbed at his temples, trying to take in the full import of this story and aware of the dull ache that seemed to throb almost constantly behind his eyes.
‘So how did you come to be in the woods,’ he asked the Prof.
‘Ah, well, I can take no credit for that at all. Young Squib here saw these rather interesting storm clouds gathering and insisted that we follow in your footsteps to see if there was anything we could do to help. He’s a very intuitive soul; I more than trust his instincts.’ Here the Prof shook his head, ‘Sadly, from what Destiny says, we were too late to help Saddler!’
Anthony’s face clouded. ‘We don’t even know if he’s still alive.’
He looked around. They seemed to be in some kind of small wooden dwelling. He had been laid on a hard bed. There was a table and chairs, a rough fireplace and a wooden chest in one corner, but the place looked and felt as though it had been deserted for a long time. Anthony rubbed his head again.
‘You said you heard a cry! I don’t remember that – I don’t remember it at all. What happened?’
‘I can’t believe you don’t remember anything!’ Destiny was aghast.
‘I think, yes, we were standing over there in the meadow and I was walking to the Natorqua – but after that it’s all just a blank!’
Destiny shook her head and began to tell him what had happened; how everything had seemed calm and serene and fine until suddenly, without warning the Natorqua had turned into a raging demon.
‘I thought … I don’t know … that you would be crushed. It turned on you so fast!’ Destiny’s face turned a ghastly white as the memory of that moment came back to her with full force. Tears began to trickle down her cheeks as the shock of what had happened and what so easily might have happened finally hit home. She wiped them away furiously and continued, albeit with a slight wobble in her voice.
‘It launched itself at you – I can’t think of any other way to describe it! It looked like it wanted to pound you into the ground. But you didn’t move; you just seemed to be rooted to the spot. And I thought, I thought it would trample you or bite your head off or something and I yelled at you to move, but you didn’t and then – then there was Squib, tearing across the field.
‘He was so brave. He stood over you, right underneath those awful, thrashing hooves and then, I think he started throwing something …’
‘Stones,’ said Squib.
‘Yes, stones. He just kept hurling them and for whatever reason, it just seemed to wake the Natorqua up out of its rage and the next thing, the whole herd was thundering away across the meadow.’
Destiny ran out of puff. She looked helplessly at Anthony. From out of nowhere, a flash of raw, red anger suffused his mind, making him shudder. His forehead knitted into a frown as he desperately tried to remember. The throbbing ache had now spread around his whole head in a tight, oppressive band. It increased in intensity until he thought his head might split in two. Then it was gone and he was left with a quiet sense of certainty.
He turned to Destiny and the others and smiled at them wearily.
‘They’ll be back,’ he said.
‘What then?’ asked Boff.
‘Then Destiny and I have a job to do, but for now I think we need to try and get some rest. I’ve a feeling we’ve all got a tough time ahead of us!’
Surprisingly, cramped and uncomfortable as the arrangements were, they all slept, although it was impossible to know how long for since the sky had barely changed colour, apart from the fact that the purple bruises seemed to have merged and spread and slightly darkened.
Anthony had awoken feeling barely refreshed. Disturbing dreams had tortured his sleep, which faded quickly now, but left him feeling ill at ease and certain that the answers he needed were all there if only he could reach them.
Boff was determined to keep everyone’s spirits up. At least there was no need for them to starve. He set off with Squib to gather fruit from the trees and to fetch water from the stream.
Anthony and Destiny stood gazing out of the window. Sure enough, as Anthony had predicted, the Natorqua had returned. They looked as placid and serene as ever. Destiny could barely believe she had really witnessed such savage fury the day before.
Boff and Squib returned, laden with goodies. By some incredible fluke (and Boff swore blind he had no idea how it could have possibly happened) the tea appeared to have been missed when it came to emptying out unnecessary items from the rucksack. Despite their sombre mood, Destiny awarded Boff a warm smile.
‘You’re a star,’ she said.
While Destiny unearthed some rather dusty mugs and a teapot from the crate near the hearth, Anthony and the Prof managed to get a small fire going. For just a short space of time they all sat and enjoyed the sweet, refreshing taste of the crisp fruit and sipped gratefully at their hot mugs of tea.
Then Destiny sat back and looked at Anthony. He was leaning on the table, staring into space. It was the only time she thought she had ever seen him at a loss for what to do. He felt her gaze and looked up, giving her a wan smile.
‘If only I could remember what happened! Tell me again.’
Destiny repeated the story, but Anthony just shook his head.
‘I know it’s there in my head – I had all those weird dreams to prove it, but it’s all just out of reach!’
Suddenly, Destiny sat bolt upright. ‘What about the stone!’ Nebiré was right about the vision and she was positive we would know what to do!’
Slowly, Anthony reached into his pocket. He closed his hand around the stone, which felt curiously warm, almost hot to the touch. It pulsed beneath his fingers like a heartbeat and all at once he was back in the meadow, this time surrounded by the Natorqua. They circled him menacingly, lips curled, eyes rolling wildly.
He felt their fury. It suffocated him, stealing his breath. A scarlet mist obscured his vision and his cheeks were wet with tears. He tried to wipe the tears away, but when he looked down his hand dripped scarlet blood and still the tears continued to flow. He began to choke, his breath coming in ragged gasps.
The Natorqua had stopped circling and now stood facing him, sapping his energy with their rage and anger like voracious vampires. The scarlet mist in front of his eyes began to darken to purple and then black.
He sank to his knees.
‘Destiny,’ he gasped. ‘I can’t …’
There was a searing flash that rent the sky from top to bottom. The Natorqua screamed. Rearing and thrashing they turned as one and thundered past Anthony, their fury transforming in an instant into mindless fear.
Only one remained. Lit by a lightning flash, it shone with a pearly luminescence – all the colours of the rainbow. It stared beseechingly at Anthony, eyes rolling with terror. Then it too was gone.
Anthony was left alone, but not for long.
Another searing flash lacerated the firmament, ripping a vast, black fissure through the very fabric of the sky. As he watched helplessly, the immense gash bulged like a vile, septic pustule waiting to erupt.
With a final heave, the colossal wound ruptured and a horde of foul, demonic creatures spewed forth from its festering depths.
Anthony gasped for breath, his lungs burning. He could hear voices screaming at him above the din. Without warning, his vision cleared and he lay, slumped across the table in the wooden cabin drenched with sweat. Boff was shaking him and Destiny was pleading with him from the window.
‘Anthony, please, please wake up. We’re too late. They’re coming. It’s too late!’
Trying desperately to shake off his vision, Anthony struggled to his feet and staggered to the window. He had no doubts as to what he would see there. The sky was now almost entirely a dark purple; the ground a heaving mass of black shapes, like a carpet of angry ants swarming over the meadow.
Streaks of forked lightning continued to ravish the sky, throwing stark flashes of brilliance onto the scene below.
Anthony dragged Destiny away from the window. He held her by the shoulders at arm’s length.
‘Look at me,’ he yelled, barely able to hear himself. ‘It’s not too late. I know what we have to do!’
Destiny shook her head uncomprehendingly. ‘What can we possibly do?’ she mouthed, gesturing helplessly at the scene outside the window.
‘We have to find the Alpha-female,’ Anthony yelled.
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