The Greenstone Grail

by Jan Siegel

  ‘I’m not sure.’

  ‘Well … where to start? I’m a third level practor. This means I have certain magical skills and I was originally licensed to use them for the authorities. But my grandfather was a first level practor, a mage of the Upper Chamber with knowledge of the Hidden Magics. He was eight thousand years old and died only recently, caught in the contamination. I believe his death was engineered by agents of the government. Before he died he realized he was out of favour – he disagreed with present policies – and he told me certain things. Are you following me?’

  ‘Things you’re not meant to know?’

  ‘Yes. He said the Sangreal and two other objects were made by the first Grandir for the performance of a Great Spell. The first Grandir could see into the future – or maybe he just took a guess, knowing human nature and how it works – anyway, he anticipated a time when our universe would be heading for destruction, and we would have to escape or die. So he took one of the Great Spells, and adapted it, making the cup, the sword, and the crown to be symbols which, when brought together with the proper ceremonies, become the lever to open the barrier between worlds. The cup is the feminine principle, the sword is the masculine, and the crown is the circle that binds.’

  ‘What is a Great Spell?’ Nathan asked.

  ‘They are the deepest of the Hidden Magics, the most potent. It is said there are only seven, in all the worlds. They must always have the three basic constituents: the masculine, the feminine, and the element of binding. They require an enormous amount of power, far more than any one man – any normal man – can wield, and the fallout can be catastrophic. According to my grandfather, secret records show that a Great Spell was performed several millennia ago which resulted in the deaths of all concerned except the then Grandir, causing an entire galaxy to implode and disappear into a black hole.’

  ‘What was it for?’ Nathan said. ‘What did they intend to achieve?’

  ‘We don’t know. Something … big. World-changing.’

  ‘And nobody noticed what –’

  ‘It was thousands of years ago. I wasn’t there. Look, the theory is that it was a Great Spell which produced the magical inversion that caused the contamination. It would have to be a Great Spell to turn magic to evil, to make it work against the practors – and if it was done wrong, or carelessly, then the spin-off might well have been the poisoning of magic everywhere. That’s how Great Spells work. They can go very wrong – end-of-the-world wrong. Clear?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Nathan. ‘Sort of. You mean, you wanted to steal the cup – and the other things – to do the spell yourself. But how could you, if you don’t know what it is, and you haven’t the power, and if it goes wrong, it’s the end of the world?’

  ‘It’s the end of the world anyway,’ Kwanji said. ‘There are powerful people in our movement, secret sympathizers – I don’t know their names, I don’t know their status, but they are working to learn the spell. We may even have people close to the Grandir: I can’t say. We don’t allow any one individual to know too much. My job was to obtain the symbols. I failed. But if you get me out of here … Maybe I should go to your world, find the Grail there and bring it back. If your power is all you claim, you can help me.’

  ‘I don’t claim anything,’ Nathan protested. ‘My power, as you call it, is erratic. I told you. But the cup isn’t in my world any more: someone sent it back here. I think it’s probably in the cave again.’

  Kwanji brightened again. ‘Then take me to it!’

  But Nathan was pursuing his own thoughts. ‘I don’t understand about the Grandir. If he knew the spell he’d do it, wouldn’t he? I’ve seen him up close, in my dreams – he’s ruthless, but he wants to save the people, to save the rest of this world. I’m sure of it. He has the power, and he’s got some kind of a plan, even if it isn’t ready yet …’

  ‘He’s afraid to act,’ she said dismissively. ‘Or maybe he’s just afraid to fail. He’s been around a long time, longer than anyone can remember: his powers may be weakening. No one knows. He tells his councillors little and everyone else nothing. He might have a plan, yes, but it’ll be a plan just for him, him and his bridesister, his precious Halmé. He might have kept the Grail in your world because he wanted to open the barrier from there, without using a Great Spell – to open it just enough for two people to slip through.’

  ‘If that was what he wanted, he’d have done it already,’ Nathan retorted with a confidence he couldn’t explain.

  ‘Have you seen her?’ Kwanji demanded, with an abrupt change of subject. ‘In your dreams – have you seen Halmé?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Is she –?’

  ‘She’s beautiful. Yes.’ Halmé the legend, the unseen face of Helen. He saw a trace of something like awe in Kwanji’s expression, foreign to her nature – until she banished it.

  ‘They say her father kept her hidden for a hundred years, for fear that her beauty would drive men mad,’ she said. ‘Anyone who set eyes on her was immediately executed.’

  ‘Really?’ Nathan was startled. ‘That’s ridiculous. I mean – overreaction! She’s beautiful, but – she’s still a woman. Like you. An ordinary woman.’

  ‘Maybe it was just a rumour,’ Kwanji said, and the hint of a smile softened her mouth. ‘Still, you are indeed a child – an alien. You don’t understand what beauty means.’

  ‘It doesn’t mean killing,’ Nathan said positively.

  Kwanji gave a complicated shiver, as though throwing off some clinging foulness. ‘We’ve talked enough,’ she declared. ‘It’s time to go. You must dream now. Dream me out of here – dream me to the Sangreal.’

  ‘I am dreaming,’ Nathan said. He took her hands, and this time it was his clasp which was tight. He tried to recapture the urgency he felt when he rescued Eric, the surge of his inner will, but there was only a faltering, and the certainty of failure. He closed his eyes, picturing the desert beyond the cave, concentrating on Kwanji’s handclasp, on her need – reaching for the uprush of the dark. For a long minute he thought nothing was happening – and then it had already happened, the world had turned, he could no longer feel the floor of the Pit beneath him. He opened his eyes again, even as her fingers slipped through his, and he saw the desert night stretching in every direction, and the pre-dawn pallor spilling slowly along the horizon. A dozen thoughts flashed through his mind at once – the giant lizard-monster, the distance to the cave, the sundeath that was coming inexorably with the advent of day. She had no mask, no protective clothing, only the inadequate garment of her imprisonment. He tried to shout: No! No! – he tried to hold on to her. But the darkness was too strong for him. He was sucked away, out of that world, out of consciousness, into a gulf of sleep …

  When he awoke, it was morning. Morning in this world. The thread of sky between the curtains was grey. Thought was already there in his waking mind, jerking him upright, filling him with a terrible awareness. He’d dumped her there – out in the desert, with the monster and the sundeath. She had no chance. She might dodge the monster, but not the sun. The cave had been far away. She would die – because of him. ‘I must get back,’ he said out loud. ‘I must.’ But no one answered, and sleep was far away. He was back in his own world at the whim of an erratic fate, and there was nothing he could do about it. In his frustration he tore down the Mark of Agares where it was pinned on the wall. Then he went into the bathroom and scrubbed furiously at the rune on his arm, until it was almost obliterated. Perhaps without the Mark to hold him he would be able to get back – but when he lay down again and closed his eyes there was only the beat of his heart, and the shapes of vanished light on the back of his eyelids.

  Inspector Pobjoy stared in bewilderment at the autopsy results. ‘This isn’t possible,’ he said to the assistant pathologist, who had been ordered to convey the bad news. ‘It has to be murder. Think of the blow to his head. It has to be …’

  ‘Not necessarily.’ The pathologist tried to look deprecating, and only succ
eeded in looking smug. ‘There were plenty of low branches in the wood. He pushes one away from him, it springs back, catches him on the side of the skull – there may have been blood traces, though it’d be hard to find anything after the storm – the branch knocks him out. His face is pressed into the leaf-mould – nose and mouth fill with mud – he asphyxiates.’

  ‘It says he drowned.’

  ‘It was raining.’

  ‘No one drowns in the rain! Do you take me for an idiot?’

  ‘Look, there was water in his lungs. The rain may have caused a small flood; at ground level, it wouldn’t need to be much. If his face was covered for long enough …’

  Pobjoy made an impatient gesture.

  ‘You can’t argue with the facts,’ said the pathologist. Smugly.

  Pobjoy looked as if he could, and would, argue with any facts they wished to provide. He dismissed the pathologist before another body was added to the roster and sat studying the autopsy report and brooding savagely. He had two people who had (allegedly) drowned, one under circumstances that were merely suspicious, while the other in ones that were definitely bizarre. Surely it was impossible to drown in a wood? Could the corpse have been moved after death? Improbable, according to the report. Of course, when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth. God, he hated Sherlock Holmes. A man who had oozed smugness – a cokehead – a conspiracy theorist with paranoid tendencies. The trouble was, this whole case reeked of Sherlock Holmesness. A quiet village, a stolen chalice, two bodies who had – against all the odds – died naturally. And a dwarf. No doubt there was some fiendish super-criminal behind it all, with uncanny powers of disguise and a penchant for drowning his victims even if there was no water to hand …

  He jerked his mind back to reality and tried to focus on more credible options.

  ‘I seem to have missed all the excitement,’ said Michael. ‘Rianna and I spent the weekend near Oxford – an old friend of mine was having a barbecue. It rained there, too. Funny thing: you can have the best summer for a decade and if you organize a barbecue it’ll always rain.’

  ‘Your alibi?’ asked Rowena. She had dropped in to talk things over with Annie and found Michael there, ostensibly on the same errand.

  ‘I don’t want an alibi,’ Michael said with a faint grimace. ‘I wanted to be where the action was.’

  ‘Too much action,’ said Rowena. ‘One dead body and a major theft. Police are bloody useless. Trying to tell me I imagined things! There’s enough going on now without anyone throwing in imagination. Didn’t see the thief too clearly – dark in there when the lights went out – but he was short, quick, and hairy. Really short – like four feet. Not a performing animal, no chance. Moved like a person. Had to be a dwarf.’

  ‘Why should a dwarf steal the Grimthorn Grail?’ Annie said. She was talking on autopilot, her thoughts elsewhere. Rianna Sardou was in London (or at least, something that looked like Rianna Sardou might be in London). Michael hadn’t renewed his dinner invitation, but he was here.

  ‘Don’t know,’ said Rowena. ‘Whole thing’s a complete mystery. Tell you this much, though: I’m going to get it back. Got my ear to the ground already. Anyone tries to fence it, I’ll know. Got a lot of contacts in the trade.’

  ‘Surely it would be impossible to sell?’ Michael said. ‘It’s main value must be as a historic artefact. That would mean a very specific market.’

  Rowena made a gloomy noise, possibly affirmation. ‘Eric’s got some strange ideas about it,’ she remarked. ‘Alternative realities and all that. Explains a few things, but … Good man, though. Trustworthy. Wherever he’s from.’ She flicked Annie a sharp look, but her hostess missed it. ‘Anyway,’ she concluded, ‘I’ll be off now. Got calls to make. If you think of anything –’

  ‘I’ll be in touch,’ Annie assured her.

  She was left with Michael.

  ‘Actually,’ he said, ‘I didn’t really come to talk about all that. I know it’s a bit of a thrill – the kids must have had a ball, chasing the thief, and getting covered in mud, and stumbling over a body – not such a great experience, that last one. I hope they weren’t upset.’

  ‘Nathan’s okay,’ Annie said.

  ‘It’s not as though they knew him, thank God – where was I? Oh – hedging. I came to talk about something else.’

  Annie looked a question.

  ‘Rianna. I tried to ask her what happened, the other afternoon, but she denied even seeing you. And her clothes – the clothes she was wearing when I left – they were on the bedroom floor, and they were wet. She’s acting very odd lately – I can’t put my finger on it – but she’s not herself. Last weekend, my friends asked if she’d been ill. It’s as if she’s had some sort of a personality change. There are illnesses that take you like that, brain tumours, that kind of thing. I suggested she might see a doctor but she flared up. Annie, I don’t know what to do. It isn’t the best marriage in the world, but if she’s ill I must stick by her.’

  ‘Yes,’ Annie said, since something was clearly expected of her.

  ‘Of course, it could be purely mental – schizophrenia, for instance. It can develop later in life, though it usually starts in adolescence. If she’s evolving a dual personality …’

  You could say so, Annie thought.

  ‘Oh bugger,’ Michael said, his mouth wry. ‘I’m making a mess of this. Look, I wanted to say … Whatever happens with Rianna, I want to see you. I was still hoping we could do dinner … this week? I’m sorry: this all sounds so irrational. I’m saying in the same breath that I’m worried about my wife and I want to be with you. You must think me such a cad.’

  ‘No,’ said Annie. She was feeling very short of words.

  ‘If she is going mad, maybe I could lock her in the attic, go all dark and brooding, and you and I could … Sorry. Sorry. I sound flip and shallow. It’s just that I’m upset. I always act flip when I’m upset. About dinner –’

  And at that moment – of course – the shop door opened.

  This time, it was Inspector Pobjoy, with Belinda Hale in his wake and an official expression on his face. Annie’s pang of irritation evaporated into nebulous anxiety.

  ‘Where’s your son?’ Pobjoy asked without preamble, paying no attention to Michael.

  ‘He went into the woods – walking. He’s not much of a one for computer games and things – fortunately. He likes to get out. The other kids haven’t broken up yet, so …’

  ‘Why do you want to know?’ Michael demanded. He had got to his feet, and his attitude was a shade protective, with a hint of challenge.

  ‘I’m afraid that’s my business,’ said the inspector. ‘I’d like a word with you alone, Mrs Ward.’

  ‘I’m staying,’ Michael said flatly. And to Annie: ‘I don’t like the look of this. You may need some advice. I can fix you up with a lawyer if necessary.’

  ‘Are you going to arrest me?’ Annie said, baffled and almost laughing.

  ‘No, Mrs Ward. Just a few questions.’

  ‘Sit down,’ she said, looking round at a shortage of chairs. ‘I mean – question away.’

  Chairless, the inspector proceeded. ‘Your son and his friends helped in the search for Mrs Thorn’s missing injunction, didn’t they? The one you found?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I expect they were very keen. It was a bit of an adventure, right? They got involved.’

  ‘Er … yes.’

  ‘They’re good kids,’ Michael said sharply. ‘No criminal tendencies. Especially Nat.’

  ‘I daresay they were fairly partisan,’ Pobjoy pursued in a fairly relaxed manner. ‘They knew Mrs Thorn – they supported her. They wanted her to have the cup – of course they did. It was a family heirloom: the Luck of the Thorns. They must have found it all rather romantic. When they heard the Grail was being brought to Thornyhill, naturally they wanted to see it. They hid outside the house to spy on the meeting.’

  ‘What are you su
ggesting?’ Michael snapped. Annie laid a hand on his arm, restraining him, though he had hardly moved. She too was standing, staring at the policeman. Her face was very pale.

  Pobjoy continued remorselessly. ‘The cup was stolen, according to witnesses, by a mystery dwarf. I don’t believe in mystery dwarfs. I think it was just a short person. Maybe a child.’

  ‘Nat’s tall for his age,’ Michael said instantly.

  ‘Taller than me,’ Annie said softly. Horrible doubts were fomenting at the back of her brain.

  ‘The girl isn’t,’ Pobjoy rejoined. ‘She’s on the small side – five foot or less. She could have worn a mask. Something left over from Halloween, or a fancy-dress party. It’s the kind of thing a kid would have. The lights went out, and she seized her opportunity. Got the cup, and they ran off into the woods. Then they hid it somewhere, intending to come back and claim they’d chased the real thief.’

  ‘Bollocks,’ Michael said. ‘Utter bollocks from start to finish.’

  ‘I don’t suppose they thought it was wrong,’ Pobjoy went on, ignoring him. ‘They thought the cup was Mrs Thorn’s by right, and they were stealing it for her. They probably plan to give it to her as soon as the fuss has died down. I expect they see themselves as heroes, rescuing the cup from the bad guys.’

  ‘Nathan’s not that naïve.’ Annie spoke at last, conscious of a growing certainty. ‘Anyway, he would never, ever let Hazel take the risk. He’s not bossy, but he’s the leader among his friends, the dominant one. He wouldn’t allow anyone, least of all Hazel, to take the dangerous role. He just wouldn’t. Even if his morals got twisted up the way you suggest, he’d always insist on doing the risky part himself. And he’s much too tall for a dwarf.’

  ‘I hate to spoil a good idea,’ Michael added sarcastically, ‘but so’s Hazel. Rowena Thorn was in here earlier. She said specifically that the thief couldn’t have been more than four feet tall.’