‘That’s a good idea. I’ve got to do something or else I’m going to go mad. He can’t have been meaning to stay out so long. Something must have happened to him.’
Daisy was right on both counts. Caz had meant to be back for supper, and something had happened that had never happened before. The rune casting was void. Worse, one of the rune staves had vanished.
The day had gone surprisingly well until sunset. He had turned the horses out in the paddock at dawn for a few hours grazing and brought them in midmorning, leaving their hay nets stuffed full and more wedges stacked on the straw in each of the loose boxes. He spent the remaining daylight hours with Kyri at Thunderslea, drinking copious jugfuls of the sparkling water from the spring to soothe the spasms that grew in intensity as sunset drew near. Despite their ferocity, that even the healing waters could not finally allay, he had waited until the last of the twilight was in the sky in the west and the tree stretched its great branches towards the rising moon before he cast the runes.
It would have been a good casting, the best he had achieved for two years. Nine of the staves had landed uppermost inside the inner circle scratched in the earth among the leaves. One of the two blank runes, symbolising the Runes of the Deathless yet to be won, had fallen exactly in the centre where the diagonal lines crossed. It was only when he was counting the runes back into the bag, that he realised the second of the blank staves was missing.
Breathing in wracking, laboured gasps and by now almost blind with agony, he crawled on his hands and knees around the roots of the great tree, feeling among the leaves for the lost rune. If he failed to find it, the staves themselves would be void and would have to be destroyed. The precious little wooden counters, that had cost him so much effort and blood to attain, would be consigned to the flames.
The cramping in his guts reached new levels of intensity as he searched through the fallen leaves, turning them over one by one, but there was no sign of the rune. His whole body was shaking. His lungs were vibrating against his ribs. Searing spasms wracked his stomach and bowels. He could feel his back contorting, his throat was on fire and the thirst was unbearable. The sweat was soaking his clothing, running into his boots and dripping from his hair. If he closed his eyes, even for a second, his head swam and everything began to disintegrate around him.
Terrified that he was going to disappear along with the missing stave, he willed himself to concentrate on keeping his eyes open and his mind clear to go beyond the fear and the pain.
‘Heartbiter!’
The old beggar woman’s voice shouted from somewhere high up in the tree. Caz raised his head. A face with glittering eyes was staring down at him through the branches – a face that was neither young nor old, neither obviously male nor definitely feminine. He knew he would never forget the eyes.
His voice was a cracked whisper. ‘How do you know my name?’
The face snaked around him on a long coiled neck. ‘How do you know your name?’ The mouth opened, screaming into his pain-amplified hearing, ‘Heartbiter! Heartbiter!’
His fingers touched the spear. He gripped the shaft, feeling the welcome heat of it welding the great weapon into his hand. Turning, he lunged at the gaping mouth. The face shattered. A myriad identical faces swarmed around him. A thousand voices shouted. ‘Heartbiter! Heartbiter!’
Hands dragged at his cloak. Fingers twisted themselves into his hair. Fists pounded his body… his head… his face.
The spear ignited. Frenzied, he fought back. ‘Stinking spooks!’
No pain. No fear. I am Heartbiter! The spooks killed Bryn. The spooks killed Bryn. The spooks killed Bryn!
The old tree shuddered. Fire scorched the ancient trunk. The lower boughs were burning. A forked and flickering serpent-tongue took Caz by the neck, throttling him and still he fought, thrusting the spear into the screaming faces, until a black mist swam before his eyes and he fell to his knees. But it was not to be his hour of defeat. Dark wings beat over him. A shining beak and razor talons tore at the evil tongue until its grip was released and the faces fell back, wailing.
He had forgotten the pain until the white-hot liquid agony of mind-shattering intensity coursed into his returning consciousness. He had forgotten everything except the need to kill, to maim and destroy. He leaned on the spear, taking great gasping breaths and coughing when the smoke, still lingering over the scorched earth and the blackened tree roots, caught at his throat. The filly stood over him, nuzzling around the raised, black wheals on his neck. The last whisper of the battle frenzy that had possessed him threw him onto her back. White moonlight filtering through black branches lit the silent forest paths as she carried him with all speed to the manor house, where John and Daisy were putting on their coats to go out and look for him.
He fell over the step onto the mat when they opened the back door. Heaving himself to his feet and gasping, ‘Get back! You can’t help me!’ he staggered into the kitchen and bent over the table, putting both hands into the hot soup and scooping it into his mouth. Daisy cried out in horror when she saw him under the light. His face was swollen and black with bruising. The livid marks on his neck were cracked open and bleeding. His clothes were caked with sweat and mud. He stank.
‘What’s happened to you, boy?’ demanded John.
Caz picked up the heavy saucepan. He put it to his mouth and tried to drink the soup, but his hands shook and he dropped the pan. His stomach churned and he began to vomit. The plate of bread crashed and broke on the floor.
Daisy screamed. ‘What can we do? Tell us what to do!’
‘Let us help you!’ shouted John. ‘You’ve got to let us help you!’
Caz held them off with the spear. ‘You can’t help me!’ he panted. ‘Get back! Leave me! Go! Get out!’
They backed away. Daisy was sobbing hysterically. He lurched after them and slammed the door. ‘Go!’
John shouted though the keyhole. ‘The supper’s upstairs! Get upstairs and eat! We’ll see you in the morning! Eat, boy! You must eat!’
Blind instinct sent Caz crawling to the foot of the winding stairway. He heaved himself onto the first step, and then the second, and then the third, dragging the spear behind him. He collapsed, fainting, on the fourth step and had begun to slide backwards when he felt strong arms lifting him. Someone carried him, running lightly up the stairs to the room with the round window under the eaves and threw him on the bed.
‘Thanks Al,’ he whispered gratefully.
A well-remembered voice rasped above him. ‘We meet again, my friend, on the threshold of the Shadowed World.’
‘Haldor Vídarsson?’
‘You are pursued but you have done well. You are worthy. Your name is sung in the Hall.’
Caz tried to sit up but strong fingers took him by the neck, pulling his head backwards and forcing open his mouth. He saw luminous eyes. A shining black beak began cramming food down his throat. He swallowed convulsively and screamed for more… gorging and screaming until the hunger was satiated and the pain had drifted somewhere outside of his body where it didn’t matter any more. He stretched and sighed, and tumbled into the warm dark of dreamless oblivion.
CHAPTER 31
Neither Daisy nor John slept very much that night. Daisy got up at three-thirty to make them both a cup of hot chocolate and John lit the fire in their bedroom, something unheard of unless one of them was ill, which was thankfully rare. They lay side by side in the bed they had slept in together for nearly fifty years… looking at the flames… not saying a lot… until the alarm went off at six o’clock and it was time to get ready to go to work.
Alan was giving the horses their morning feed when they drove into the stable yard just after seven. Kyri looked out over her door and whickered to them. Daisy presented her daily offering of a carrot sliced lengthways just as Bryn, her mother, had always liked it. The look in the filly’s blue-black eyes was encouraging and Daisy took comfort from her presence. The dead weight of premonition lifted from her heart on what she
had feared would turn out to be the worst possible day of her life.
‘Have you seen the boy this morning, Al?’ asked John.
Alan looked tired. ‘No, not a sign of him. I was up the woods most of the night and never came across him. The filly was in her box when I got back so I thought he must have gone home.’ He noticed Daisy’s eyes were red. ‘What’s going on?’
‘You’d best come into the house and we’ll tell you,’ said John.
The vomit had dried on the kitchen floor. John picked up the bread and the shattered pieces of china. Daisy raked the fire in the range and put the kettle on to boil while John told Alan what had happened the previous evening.
‘So where is he now?’ asked Alan.
‘He could be anywhere.’
‘We’ll have a look upstairs first.’
They found Caz lying unconscious on the bed beside the spear. The cloak had been arranged to cover him. There were signs of a struggle in the room. Saucepans and bits of food were scattered over the floor and on the table. The tray was upside down on the mat beside the bed. The round window was wide open and a long, black wing feather had been dropped on the ledge. The runes, inked in bold black on sunset-coloured sheets of orange, turquoise blue, clear red and amethyst paper, glowed around the walls. The atmosphere was potent with the aftermath of visitation.
Growling deep in his throat, with the hair stood up in a ridge along his back, Blue sniffed warily at Caz’s left hand. It was curled into a tight fist and hanging down over the side of the bed.
‘What’s happened?’ asked Daisy fearfully. ‘What’s the matter with Blue? Why’s he taking on like that at young Caz?’
Alan signed to the dog to lie down and picked up the wing feather, examining it under the light and sniffing at it. He felt Caz’s forehead and pulled back the cloak to look at his neck. As he had expected, all the dreadful bruising and swelling he had been told about was gone. His skin was pale and clear. The pulse was strong but very slow. He leant over him. ‘Caz, wake up! Come on now! It’s time to get up!’ There was no response. Alan tried shaking him. ‘Hey, Caz! Wake up!’
Daisy started to cry. ‘I can’t bear to see him like this. Why won’t he respond?’
‘What can we do? Shall we call the doctor?’ asked John.
‘There’s no need for that yet,’ Alan replied. ‘We’ll keep an eye on him ourselves. I reckon he’ll be out of it before long.’
‘And if he isn’t?’
‘We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.’ He prised a small wooden rune counter out of Caz’s left hand. It was blank on both sides. ‘I don’t doubt this has something to do with whatever went on last night.’
‘What shall I tell his mother?’ moaned Daisy. ‘She’s going to be working in the office this morning. All that new furniture’s being delivered today.’
Alan looked from one to the other. ‘It’s a question of loyalty, apart from anything else. This time we’re all of us best telling her we haven’t seen him and that he hasn’t been here.’
‘We’ll have no choice but to call the doctor if he hasn’t come round by sundown,’ said John.
Daisy choked. ‘Please don’t let it come to that.’
Her husband put an arm around her shaking shoulders. ‘We’ll get it sorted out, don’t you fret now, old Dark-eyes. It won’t help having you getting yourself into a bad state as well.’
‘But look at him!’ she cried. ‘Look at his clothes! He’s filthy dirty! We can’t leave him like this!’
‘We won’t,’ said Alan. ‘Go downstairs, Dais, and get the kitchen sorted and the breakfast on the go before anyone else gets in and catches us out. John, you give me a hand to get him cleaned up.’
‘I’ll fetch up some water and clean towels,’ said John. ‘And then we’d better all go and have a quiet word with the Master.’
The telephone was ringing before Daisy reached the bottom of the stairs. She went to the office to take the call, terrified that it would be Maddie on the end of the line.
‘Meane Manor House,’ she said quietly.
Maddie didn’t recognise the small and uncertain voice. ‘Is that you, Daisy? Are you all right?’
Daisy pulled herself together. ‘Oh, I just had a bit of headache in the night. I’m a bit shaky this morning, that’s all.’
‘I’m sorry. I hope it gets better soon.’
‘I expect it will. When are you coming in?’
‘I’ll be up as soon as I’ve done the bus run. Have you seen Caz this morning? He’s not here and he’s going to be late again. We’re going to have the school truancy officers around here before long. I just know it.’
‘He’s not been in this morning,’ said Daisy carefully. ‘He’s usually long gone by now but I’ll scoot him along double quick if I see him.’
‘Thanks. I just hope he turns up before we have to leave.’
‘I’m sure he will.’
Daisy walked back to the kitchen, folding her hands together tightly to make them stop shaking. She filled a bucket with hot water and found the scrubbing brush, then started to clean the floor.
CHAPTER 32
Caz passed slowly from deep unconsciousness into restful sleep. Just before he woke up, he began to dream. He was floating on an ocean of air moving and whispering like the eddying of the sea. His arms were gigantic wings, gleaming black and iridescent blue as he spread them out under the sun. Swooping and tumbling, he went soaring up into the dizzying heights over great mountains of cloud, revelling in the glorious freedom of the open skies.
Another great bird with luminous, blue-black eyes flew at his side. The raven plunged downwards in a breathtaking dive, calling him to follow. Together they skimmed the tops of gigantic trees in a great forest without end, until he spied the glittering of sunshine on water between the branches. Swooping low over the shining surface of a wide lake, he saw that he had no reflection in the water.
How will I eat if I have no substance? he wondered.
He opened his eyes and lay looking at the late afternoon sunlight slanting across the sloping ceiling over his head. He realised he was naked. The bed covers had been tucked tightly all around him and a little leather bag left on the bedside table. He opened it and poured the runes out over the coverlet, counting them and turning them over. The thin bark was still green around the pale wooden counters, cut from a single shoot high up on the great oak tree on a midsummer morning more than two years before. The runes, burned into the mummified flesh of the tree, were stained black with old blood. There were thirty-two of them. The missing rune had been returned. He gathered them up, passing them from hand to hand, marvelling at the feeling of them being complete.
He poured them back into the bag and ran a hand through his hair. It felt lank and sticky, and he had day-old stubble on his chin. He jumped out of bed and found a t-shirt and underwear in a drawer. His old work jeans were laid over the back of the chair where he had left them. The leather trousers and tunic he had worn the day before were missing. The cloak was clean and hanging on a coat hanger behind the door with the black leather belt and scabbard.
Daisy must have washed it while I was asleep. So where’s my other stuff? I hope she didn’t wash that too.
He dressed and ran barefoot down the turret stairs.
Daisy lay back in the old cook’s chair with her feet on a stool and a wet flannel over her aching eyes. The kitchen was warm. The fire door was open on the range and the usual, formidable array of saucepans was bubbling reassuringly at the back of the hob.
As my good mother slept the last sweet afternoons of her life, she remembered. And now I‘m sitting here doing the same, after a day worse than anything I can remember in years. All that acting brave and normal through lunch and admiring the new office, and all the time my old ticker pounding in my chest like a drum fit to wake the dead.
She had slipped upstairs to lie down on her parents’ old bed in the housekeeper’s flat during the afternoon, hoping that a proper rest would h
elp but it hadn’t done any good. The tears kept trickling and filling her ears every few minutes, so that she had to sit up and wipe them away with her handkerchief before they stained the pillow. When the handkerchief was soaked through, she went downstairs for another one. By then it wasn’t worth thinking about resting when there was so much still to be done for when young Caz finally got up.
She whipped the flannel off her face the minute she heard the familiar step on the stairs, dropping it out of sight on the floor when he came into the kitchen.
‘Are you feeling all right?’ she asked.
He went straight to the biscuit box. ‘Yes.’ He looked surprised. ‘Why shouldn’t I be?’
‘But you’ve been asleep all day.’
He grinned. ‘I must have had a tough night. What’s for supper?’
She frowned. ‘Don’t you remember anything about getting back here last night?’
‘Not much. I thought I lost something up at Thunderslea but I found it when I woke up.’ He went to the sink and lathered a handful of soap into his scalp. The hot water running through his hair was bliss. ‘Ah, that’s better.’
Daisy threw him a towel. ‘Here, use this!’ she said sharply. ‘Don’t you be shaking your head around like a puppy dog dripping in my kitchen!’
He laughed and ate the rest of the biscuits out of the box. ‘I need a shave.’
‘Well, that’s something I can’t help you with. Will you be needing your coffee? Or is it getting a bit too near day’s end for that?’
‘I’d rather eat.’
She got up to fetch the cake tin. ‘Have a sort through that while you’re waiting.’ The expression in her brown eyes was sceptical, boring into him over her glasses. ‘Are you sure you’re all right? Don’t you think you’d be better taking things easy for a couple of days?’
He tapped a finger playfully on the end of her nose. ‘And miss the gig tomorrow night? Jas’d kill me!
Second Night Page 14