by John McNally
When he got no response, he fed the rope around Carla’s back and secured it. “Yes!” said Finn. “Get us out of here …”
The boy braced himself against the walls and hauled on the rope.
Back out on the rock face, Finn saw no sign of skidoos. The starlit sky was clouding over and sharp flecks of snow were whipping in on the wind.
He felt himself flip upside down as Carla was picked up and slung over the shoulder of the extraordinary boy, who did not pause as he picked a treacherous mountain-goat’s path down the slope without slipping or stopping. By the time they’d reached the valley floor, a blizzard was blowing. The boy dropped them on to a toboggan and jumped on behind them, steering them through the forest. After a few minutes, the ground began to rise again. The boy hopped off and pulled the sledge along until eventually they stopped before another rock face.
The snow was wild around them.
Finn saw the boy work away at something, pulling a rope that disappeared into the darkness above. It could only lead to one place – they must be beneath the ruins, beneath the castle in the air. As the rope began to run free in his hands, the boy jumped back and – WHUMP – a great basket dropped out of the darkness.
The boy tipped Carla unceremoniously over its side and leapt in after her. Again he hauled on ropes, and Finn felt the basket rock and sway as they began to rise. In a short time, the boy’s hauling became easier; a great falling counterweight passed them, then the rope was running through his hands as they rose relentlessly. Finn saw they were rushing up towards a perfect square of light, a trapdoor in the floor of heaven. Finn gasped as the basket thumped home into a blindingly torchlit timber wheelhouse.
As Finn’s eyes adjusted, he could see their saviour more clearly – a hunchback half-man clothed in rags. Again Carla was thrown over his shoulder and he set off on a mad rocking run, almost too fast for Finn to make sense of where they were. There was a long, narrow stone passage, lit by dim oil lamps, with many passages and doorways leading off. After a minute’s run, the boy veered off into a much broader passage, then shouldered through a large oak door, and they arrived in the peace and sanctuary of …
Books.
Candle-light.
Words.
Thousands of pages, rotting and reused, torn and shredded, lining the floors and jamming the gaps to keep out the cold. Fuelling tiny fires.
A library. Finn knew it was from the smell, the musty, trusty smell of books. But he had never seen a library as tragic or as strange as this. A huge high ceiling topped ranks of splintered shelves lining damp walls that seemed to run from earth to heaven, an illusion reinforced by the religious decoration on the smoke-blackened pillars and frescos, saints’ faces, red and gold and ruined. An ornate, crumbling wedding cake of a library transformed into a slum, its desks and furniture upturned and adapted, knocked and nailed into an encampment of shanty shacks, out of which devilish and dead-eyed children stared and shivered, dressed in grey sackcloth and buried like hamsters under the piles of yellowing pages. A dormitory of the damned. And at the far end, on a raised dais with a commanding view over the whole cavernous room, was a large desk on pillared legs, where sat, surrounded by bells and dangling tubes, a striking young man.
Their deformed saviour headed straight for him, letting Carla down off his back to offer her like a cabbage to a king.
“Draga … Primo?” said the boy.
Primo? thought Finn. He could see his face in shadow – handsome, sherry-skinned, dark eyes with a thousand-yard stare. He had seen the dangling tubes around him before, in old war films, speaking tubes used to communicate on ships and submarines.
“Ce facut?” asked the Primo, suspicious.
“Santiago find,” the boy explained in English.
He lifted Carla higher and the Primo reached out a hand. His fingers sought and gently traced the detail of Carla’s face as Finn looked again at the Primo’s black eyes … and at the same moment, Carla came round, shocked at the touch of the sculpted youth staring straight through her. She drew breath to scream—
“No! He’s blind, Carla!” shouted Finn, running to her ear.
Carla caught the scream, and flinched from the hand, turning away, only to see the mashed-up face of Santiago for the first time.
“ARRRRRRRRGGGH!”
“It’s OK, Carla! The freaky kid rescued us!” Finn insisted in her hair.
“Stop!” demanded the Primo, quelling her at once.
“I don’t know what’s going on, but we’re in the castle, I think they’re OK!” said Finn. He could feel her pulse thumping through her scalp.
“Romana? English? Deutsche? Française?” demanded the Primo.
“What’s happening?” Carla managed.
“Santiago found you. You should not be here,” said the Primo.
The deformed boy, Santiago, shuffled.
“What do you mean?” said Carla.
A bell rang on his desk. Then two bells. Distant orders began barking out of the speaking tubes.
“Hide her!”
FOUR
FEBRUARY 20 01:52 (GMT+3). Monastery of Mount St Demetrius of Thessaloniki
Carla felt no fear – she felt warm for the first time in months.
They’d been hurried out of the library as the main doors opened to three brutal-looking adults in black, AK47s slung across their backs, “Siguri” the ragged children called them, as they were smuggled down to a cell-like storeroom, where Carla had been urged to hide in a wooden chest.
They’d heard a fair amount of crashing and yelling, then nothing for a long time.
“Finn,” Carla whispered.
“Shh!” Finn said, listening hard in her hair – then “AHH!” as he found his legs being tasted by a pair of snout-headed lice the size of fat cats, their organs visible beneath their maggoty skin. “GETAAWAYAYYYY!” Finn grabbed the spike that never left his side, but before he could swing, the lice were off through Carla’s hair, roadrunner legs whirring like outboards.
“Are you OK?” said Carla.
“Bookworms,” said Finn.
“Worms in my head?!” she hissed.
“No, not ‘worms’ – that’s just what they’re called. They’re bugs that feed off mould – and me—”
Finn stopped. He could hear something.
Footsteps.
“Someone’s coming!”
The lid of the chest lifted and candle-light revealed a scrap of a girl with a thick Slav accent. “Come! Be quick!”
Moments later, Carla was running behind the girl back along the stone passage to the library.
Some of the shacks had been kicked down, and bedding and pathetic belongings lay around in a tangled mess, but the Siguri had gone. Some of the younger children were gathered around the Primo’s dais, anxious. Carla was rushed straight up.
“Santiago has been taken by the Siguri guards. You must save him,” said the Primo, urgent. “They know he has been out now. They are searching for s stranger.”
“For me?” said Carla.
“Santiago found an injured climber last year – they killed him. So now they think, if he finds another, he’ll hide them.”
“What have we walked into?” Finn asked above Carla’s left ear.
“Why would they kill an injured climber?” asked Carla.
“Because it is the Will of the Master,” said the Primo.
“Oh great. Oh, just perfect,” said Finn, his heart sinking. “Ask him if they’re Tyros.”
“Are you Tyros?” said Carla.
“We are the Carriers. We serve,” said the Primo. “The Tyros are in their dormitories.”
“Dormitories?” said Finn.
The scrap of a girl threw a sackcloth robe over Carla’s head, and Finn had to duck in case he got dragged out.
“The Abbot has called for more fire,” said the Primo. “Go with Olga. Santiago must live. He is one of us. You are a stranger.”
“But a Tyro dragged me here from China! A monster! I o
nly just escaped. I—”
“If Santiago is dying, you must give yourself up and save him,” ordered the Primo.
“Sacrifice myself?”
“If you do, you will become one of us,” explained the Primo solemnly. “We will try and save you too.”
“And if I refuse?” asked Carla.
“Then they will find your body at the foot of the cliff,” the Primo stated matter-of-factly.
Carla’s temper flared.
“You’re threatening to kill me?”
“I’m making you an offer – honour or death. I must protect the Carriers. If Santiago talks, he puts them all in danger,” the Primo stated.
The Carrier kids watched and waited. A curious bunch – all sizes, shapes, colours and ages, dressed in the same sackcloth as Carla.
“Keep him talking. Buy some time,” said Finn at her ear. “We need to weasel a way out of this.”
“I choose honour,” Carla answered.
“I said stall!” complained Finn.
“Santiago must live,” repeated the Primo. “Go!”
“Go!” answered Olga, and she pulled Carla in a skinny grip towards the exit.
Finn climbed through Carla’s hair, still complaining as they left the library and hurried up a main passageway that curved up through the building, its flagstone floor polished smooth by centuries of footsteps.
“We need to get out of here,” said Finn.
“And leave him to die?” said Carla.
Olga scurried through some doors ahead of them and suddenly they were in cavernous kitchens, dead at this hour, but with a great black iron furnace at its heart. Olga opened the furnace door to reveal a nest of large stones, white hot, like dragon’s eggs. She lined up a pair of iron buckets and with some huge tongs grabbed and dumped a glowing stone into each one – donk, donk. Then she handed Carla a thick glove and indicated towards a bucket.
“Go!” Olga urged and picked up her own shimmering load.
Carla followed suit and Olga led them out of the kitchen and into the black heart of the complex—
The Forum.
Carla stopped dead at the sight. For Finn with his gamer head on, it was like a new map revealing itself.
Lit by flaming torches, it was a courtyard hollowed out of a hotchpotch of buildings, a core three storeys deep. A single round opening in the centre of the roof let in curls of snow and huge filthy banners proclaimed the words Honour, Obedience and Master. Doors and entranceways, some ancient, some more recent concrete, peppered the four sides of the courtyard, and a rising irregular spiral of stairways and open walkways connected them all together. It was like something out of a painting by Escher.
“Freaky …” said Finn.
“Go!” Olga scolded and led the way, little legs rushing up the mad spiral. Carla set off after her and tried to keep up. The hot bucket swung and she could feel her gloved hand starting to burn.
Halfway up the spiral was the entrance to a great concrete space hidden beneath the ancient monastery roofs, hundreds of bunks in serried ranks, full of sleeping teenagers.
“Tyros …” said Finn at Carla’s ear. “This is some kind of hive. We need to make a phone call, now.”
“Olga! Where is there a phone?” Carla called and mimed a handset. “A telephone?”
Olga just looked perplexed. “Go!” she said, and they were off again, climbing past another dozen entranceways.
“Tell her!” yelled Finn. “We have to find a phone or a computer, or … the collar! That thing on Yo-yo, whatever it was. Have you still got it?”
Carla grabbed her pocket. Nothing. Had she taken it off Yo-yo? She could barely remember.
“I must have lost it somewhere on the mountain.”
“ARRRGGHHHH!” – the sound of screams was coming from the top floor. Olga hurried them through an arch guarded by Siguri, then on through a huge door into a church of crumbling beauty … and the screams of Santiago.
“AARRRRGGHHHHHH …”
He lay stretched out on a rack in the centre, the heart of the High Chapel, face down, his arms being pulled up behind his humped back by the Siguri chief, a thickset Turk. The screams echoed off the painted saints and gilded icons. Looking down on him was the Abbot, the leader of the monastery and the Siguri, a man in Roman robes, with a face so badly burnt it resembled the surface of a planet.
Half a dozen Siguri and a severe female secretary looked on.
The secretary flicked her head at Olga and Carla, indicating an iron stove.
“WHERE is the STRANGER?” raged the Siguri chief.
Carla wobbled the last few steps to the stove, but almost dropped her bucket as she became aware of a strange sound.
It was a sound Finn knew only too well.
Schlup-schlup-schlup – dinner time.
“Yo-yo!” said Finn, hardly believing it. “I think Yo-yo’s here.”
He could feel Carla’s heartbeat spike through the scalp beneath his feet.
“Oh no, if he gets a sniff of me …” said Finn, becoming suddenly worried.
“It is all quite simple,” the Abbot said, wearily looking down at Santiago. “You like it out in the woods. It’s where we found you. It’s where you belong.”
“Yes, Padre …”
“We know there was a trespasser, a stranger. We spotted him. We found his dog.”
He gestured to the far corner of the chapel. There, unmistakably, was Yo-yo’s rear end, his head buried in a pan of stew which he was transferring to his stomach in great wild gulps.
“It was very clever of you to find them.”
“No, Padre …”
“Yes. You left your toboggan out. Did you bring the stranger in? Did you hide him?”
“Santiago no bring dog!” he answered.
“No. We found the dog,” the Abbot reassured him. “In the woods. But you were in the woods too.”
“Pine cones. For the fire …”
“You were gathering aromatic fuel? In a snowstorm?”
Santiago wriggled an approximate nod, ashamed to be lying.
At the stove, Olga used some tongs to drop off their hot stones, taking her time as Carla watched Santiago on the rack. Finn could almost feel the morality rising through Carla’s scalp, but counselled – “Don’t do anything. We have to figure something out.”
“Who was it, do you think, that the lookout and the searchers saw then?” the Abbot asked Santiago, letting the question hang. Santiago could not help but fill the silence.
“An … angel, Padre?”
“An angel?” said the Abbot. “With a dog?”
Santiago shook in disagreement. “NO DOG, Padre – dog run away! Crazy dog!”
“Could it be a stray?” the Abbot asked the Siguri chief.
“No, sir. A stray would have starved by the time it got up here. This dog has been regularly beaten; its master must be the stanger.”
Olga started to lead Carla back out.
The Abbot waved, the rack wheel turned, and Santiago cried out again in excruciating pain.
“Arrrrrrrrrrgggghhh!”
The cry stopped Carla in her tracks – at the very moment Finn’s scent finally rang a big bell in Yo-yo’s tiny brain – YAP!
Yo-yo whipped round. There! There was the good girl! There was the Finn smell!
YAP YAP YAP! YAP!
The Siguri chief, the Abbot, even Santiago, turned to look.
“It has the scent of its master!” said the chief.
Yo-yo was straining at the rope that held him, pointing only one way: at Carla, halted before the great door, ready to turn and declare herself.
“Let the dog go!” ordered the Abbot.
“No, Yo-yo! PLAY DEAD!” Finn yelled uselessly from Carla’s hair.
The Siguri holding Yo-yo released him and he sprang towards Carla like an accusing finger, all skew-whiff as the stew sloshed about the wire rack of his body, until … BANG!
The doors behind Carla burst open and in came the severed head of Bapt
iste, ravaged by bears and dangling from a Siguri gauntlet.
HOWWWLLL! – Yo-yo cowered back in fear.
CLANG! – Carla dropped her empty bucket in shock.
“Stupido!” cried the secretary, and slapped her so hard Finn had to cling on as she fell.
The Abbot was shaken. “Bring it closer!”
Baptiste’s head was marched up and dangled before him.
There was one lidless eye, the other was missing, as was the top quarter of his skull. A wafer edge of white bone stood proud of the blood and brain on what was left of his brow. His skin was ghostly, ghastly pale, and his black mouth gaped open. A section of collarbone dangled from ligaments at his neck. Here was the master. Here was the stranger.
The Abbot recognised him at once. “Oh, my dear boy …”
FIVE
Santiago was released and led back through the labyrinth, held between Carla and Olga like a broken bird, eyes tight shut, muttering some mad, grateful, polyglot incantation (“Fo me ca Maria – fo me ca Primo – fo me ca Jesu – fo me ca Master – fo me ca Dei”) while Yo-yo strained at the end of a rope just ahead, anxious to put as much distance as possible between himself and the severed head.
They arrived back in the library to exclamations in a dozen tongues. Carriers crowded round. Excited, Yo-yo began to yap, then – just like it would in the playground – a handbell broke up the scene – Ding-a-ling!
“Quiet! Do you want the Siguri back?” demanded the Primo.
Santiago limped over to him.
“What did you tell them?” the Primo asked.
Santiago recounted what had happened in a breathless, dramatic babble.
At the end of it, the Primo asked, astonished, “Baptiste?”
“His head – just his head,” Carla confirmed. “He dragged me here from Shanghai. When I got away from him, the bears got him.”
Santiago grunted confirmation. There was murmuring among the Carriers.
“They know him … They’re impressed,” Finn said at her ear. “Make the most of it!”
“I did what you asked,” Carla told the Primo. “I brought Santiago back. Now I must make contact with the outside. I must call for help.”