Chapter Twenty-Two
Like a hot razor slicing into my mind, Baeroth started probing my thoughts. I tried to struggle backwards, too stunned even to scream, the pain from my arm forgotten.
I wished fervently to pass out. I prayed for it. Baeroth attacked my mind with single-minded force while I lay helpless on the floor. Over and over again his mind invaded my own until I stopped hoping for unconsciousness and started praying for death instead.
He rifled through my thoughts and memories like a highly efficient secretary flicking through a filing cabinet, grabbing hold of pictures, snatches of conversation, memories, and studying them before throwing them aside. He was searching for something.
My eyes were open, but I was blind to everything but the memories he was dredging up. I saw the view from my bedroom window flicker before my eyes as Baeroth pulled it from my mind. Chec and Mal laughing at a television programme. The turpentine smell of my dad’s studio. My mum’s car. I could feel his frustration mounting; these weren’t the memories he was looking for.
His attacks got quicker. I could feel a wet dribble underneath my nose and realised that a gusher was on its way. A damp feeling in my ears soon followed and I hoped that the leak I could feel from my eyes was just tears.
The knife slashed again, harder and more desperate this time, and in my shock he grabbed a fresh memory.
The colours were richer, deeper than in my other memories, the way it is in dreams sometimes. I was running greyhound-fast, along a sunny field, keeping close to the boundary hedge. My arms pistoned by my sides and the patter of my feet reverberated through my body and echoed the stronger footsteps beside me. Footsteps I knew as well as my own.
And demons. Hundreds of them. Out of reach, but not out of scent. Sulphur and dead meat threatened to overwhelm me and, still pinned to the floor, I could feel my limbs twitch with the desire to strike. A low snarl started to build in my throat.
The scene shifted. Another memory. And this time it was too strong to resist…
I am wandering along a woodland path. No destination in mind, just wandering with the vague sense that something good is about to happen.
I round a bend and there, sitting propped against a tree with his chin in his hands, is a boy. He is about my age, nine, and skinny. His black hair looks like his mum doesn’t bother with a hairbrush too often. Lucky him.
He looks up from where he’s sitting and smiles at me, and his smile makes me think he’s been waiting for me and that now I’m here the fun can start.
I blink in confusion. I know him. He’s...
The part of my mind that was still pinned down on the floor of Baeroth’s throne room was suddenly too astonished to move.
The boy jumps to his feet and starts walking over. Instinctively I take a step back. ‘I’m Oriel Saldana,’ he says, holding out his hand, like grown-ups do, for me to shake. ‘And you’re Roanne Harper. We’ve met before, except not in real life, because I live in a place called the Jeopardy and you live in the Sanctuary which are two different versions of the same world, but we’ve met here. It’s kind of a place you go to when you’re asleep. Except you always forget about our dreams once you wake up. It’s because you’re a Psion. A Psion’s someone who’s had Blessings from a god so that they can fight demons and they can do all sorts of things with their mind, like moving things and making things disappear and making people forget stuff. There’s already loads of things you can do and you’ll be able to do even more once you’re thirteen. And I’m a Guardian, which means I’m really fast and really strong. And one day you’re going to come to the Jeopardy and then we’ll be able to meet for real. Except that no one really believes you exist, like my parents and my sister think I’m just making you up. But that’s okay ‘cause I’m going to figure out a way of getting you out of the Sanctuary.’
He talks really fast, like he’s practised this speech for a school play or something. ‘So that’s basically it. It’s the same thing I say to you every night and it always takes you a few minutes to decide whether you believe me or not so I’ll just wait while you decide, and then we can go off and do cool stuff.’
I stare at him for a moment. He smiles back, bouncing up and down on his toes while he waits. I look around at the woodland and then back to the boy. Mum and Dad are always going on about Stranger Danger and Never Going Off With People, but when they say that I think they mean grown-ups, not boys who are the same age as me.
Oriel. Something does sound familiar about what he told me. And superhero powers, like in comics. I decide that I like this dream very much. ‘Okay,’ I shrug. ‘What do you want to do?’
He grabs my hand and we take off running, so fast my breath starts to come in big gulping laughs. ‘There’s a waterfall a little way off. Last time we were here we went swimming.’
‘Last time?’
The memory faded and I surfaced back in the throne room, gasping like I’d just been pulled from the sea. Then Baeroth’s blade-like mind sliced through me again, tinged with glee. He dragged another memory to the surface and the throne room slid away.
I’m sitting cross-legged on my bed at home. My eyes are closed and my hands are entwined with someone else’s. A boy’s, no less.
Usually the fact that there’s a boy in my bedroom would have me. Freaking. Out. In fact, it’s a completely hypothetical problem, because the only boy who’s ever been in my room is Mal, and that was when we were kids. But somehow, this doesn’t feel weird at all.
‘Okay you can open your eyes now,’ he murmurs.
I open my eyes and blink, because there, turning lazily in the air between us, is a flower, it’s petals a translucent red.
I look over to the boy, the complete stranger who just randomly showed up in my room this evening. He looks almost as excited as I am. ‘We’ve been working on this for a couple of weeks. This is the first time it’s worked properly.’
The flower continues to twirl in the air. ‘And the reason I can do this is because of…gods? Like multiple gods?’
‘Kind of. The reason you can do the flower thing is because you’re a Psion. You’re Blessed, and the gods gave you your Blessings.’ I feel myself smiling as I consider this. Psions and Blessings and gods sound exotic and glamorous. ‘The problem is,’ Oriel goes on, ‘you have no control over your Blessings. You’ve never been trained. But we discovered a while ago that if I hold onto you, your control improves.’
‘So if we stopped holding hands, the flower would just disappear?’ Oriel nods, and I jerk my hands away from his. The flower stops twirling and suddenly shatters, sending shards of red petal flying over our heads. We both duck and the shards hit my bedroom wall, where they leave viscous-looking smears.
‘Or it might explode,’ Oriel says, crunching his nose up and squinting at the mess on my walls. I thank god that this is only a dream-bedroom, or my dad would pitch a fit.
I slump back on the red-spattered bed. ‘So what did you say this was called again?’
He laughs and leans back next to me, his arm brushing against mine. ‘It was a flower.’
I poke his leg with my foot. ‘No, the dreaming thing.’
‘Oh, that. It’s a sentient dream.’
‘Which we do every night.’
He nods.
‘And every morning I forget all about it.’
He nods again, his smile fading.
‘But why do we do it?’ Not that I’m complaining, because hello? There’s a boy in my bedroom.
‘No one knows.’ I tut loudly and he laughs again. I know I’ve only known this boy for, like, an hour, but I honestly think I could listen to him laugh for the rest of my life. ‘Well, they don’t,’ he says. ‘There are no records of this ever happening before, not the sentient dreams, not the being born in the Sanctuary with Blessings thing, nothing. It’s only been in the last couple of years that anyone’s actually believed me about you. Since we found the Window - the thing I told you about.’
‘Okay, but you
must have a theory.’
He sighs, defeated. ‘My theory - and I’m not saying it’s a correct theory - but my theory is that you have a Great Destiny awaiting you somewhere along the line in the Jeopardy, and that I’m like your gods-appointed spirit guide whose job it is to try and get you there.’
‘Spirit guide?’ I say, trying not to laugh. ‘Could you be more yoghurt-weavery?’ The laughs aren’t staying down and I start to giggle. ‘Do you make dream-catchers in your spare time?’
Oriel kind of looks half-cross, half-trying-not-to-laugh. ‘I knew you wouldn’t take this seriously.’
‘Do you listen to a lot of Enya? Do you eat tofu?’
‘Shut up.’ He picks up a cushion and whacks me on the head.
I pick the cushion up and throw it across the room and prop myself up on my elbow. ‘So how do I get to control these Blessing things?’ In his big introductory speech, Oriel told me about using Blessings to fight demons, but secretly I have visions of decorating my whole bedroom in beautiful spinning flowers.
‘I can help you with your control by holding onto you, like the thing we did with the flower, but to get proper training you’d need to come to the Jeopardy.’
‘But I thought that was impossible.’
He shook his head. ‘If you’re born in the Jeopardy, you can never cross over to the Sanctuary, but if you’re Sanctuary-born you can go anywhere. Portals open up sometimes, but usually they’re spotted and a Psion is dispatched to seal it up before anything from the Sanctuary can wander in. We’ve found a portal and we’ve managed to keep it a secret so far. It’s perfect - big enough for a human to fit through, and it’s not too far away, in Exeter.’
A wave of nerves hit me as I contemplate going across to this mad, demony place he told me about. ‘Um, okay. I’ve got my Easter holidays coming up. I can probably come to the Jeopardy then.’
He laughs ruefully. ‘Ro, I’ve been telling you about this portal every night for over a month now. Every morning you wake up and forget everything about it.’
I swallow. ‘Okay, well, I’ll try really hard to remember this time.’ He doesn’t say anything and I realise that I probably say this every day. ‘So how am I going to get to the Jeopardy, then?’
Oriel stands up and starts pacing around the room, but my room is pretty small so he comes and sits back down on the bed, taking my hand. ‘I don’t know. Yet.’ He scans my face, weighing up whether he should tell me. ‘The thing is, not having control over your Blessings, it’s not healthy. You could end up...ill... if you don’t manage to gain control of them soon.’
‘Then I need to get this training right now!’ I yelp.
‘I’ll figure something out,’ he nods. ‘I promise.’
The scene melts and blends, sliding into a new view.
We’re in the clearing again. Oriel is kneeling in front of me, a look of pure desperation on his face. He’s clutching my hands. My eyes are hot and achy. I’m fighting to keep the tears in.
‘It will all be fine, I swear.’ He smiles like it’s all so simple. He’s not the one who’s just been arrested.
‘But you told me I never remember what happens in my dreams.’ My voice is coming out weak and pathetic, but I can’t seem to change it.
‘You don’t need to remember everything, just what I told you. What did I tell you?’
My thoughts seem like they’re scrambling round in my head. ‘His name will be Adam Miller. But it will really be you. He’ll offer me the chance to rescue a kidnapped child. I have to say yes. And I mustn’t use my…Blessings to change the shoplifting charges.’
He nods and squeezes my hands. ‘The charges against you are the only leverage I have to convince you to come here. You need this training. And we need to rescue my brother. It will go against every instinct you have, but you have to remember to just go with it.’
I nod, trying to be brave. ‘I’ll remember.’
I felt Baeroth’s intrusive presence shift bleeding the memory seamlessly into the next.
We’re lying propped on our elbows in a clearing in the forest and Oriel is showing me his new sword. He just got it today because it’s his birthday. He’s thirteen. I’ve got another eight weeks until I’m thirteen and I bet I’m not going to get a sword.
‘…it’s a storm-forged bastard sword. That means the artificers used a lightning storm to create it. Here, lick your finger and touch it.’
I do as he says and feel the crackling vibration of electricity flowing through the blade. ‘Wow.’
‘I know,’ he says, his eyes shining. ‘We had this whole presentation ceremony and Neve and I had to pose for this portrait for like hours. So lame.’ He rolls his eyes and looks embarrassed, but I can tell he’s really pleased. ‘So, um, we have this tradition thing,’ he says, shifting his elbows. ‘We’re supposed to name our swords when we get them. You know, something profound and relevant.’ He looks up at me shyly. ‘What do you think I should call her?’
I think for a minute. ‘She’s storm-forged?’ Oriel nods. ‘How about Tempest?’
The memories are speeding up now, coming faster and faster, one after the other.
We’re twelve, and Oriel is hopping across a log over a stream, showing off because his balance is better than mine. I’m inching across with my arms out to my sides and he comes back to help me.
We’re thirteen and lying side by side next to a river, a paperback book open in front of us and I’m teaching him how to read English.
We’re six and sitting in the high branches of a tree and I’m telling him about the farm we lived on in France.
We’re sixteen and he’s holding my hand, helping me experiment with gusts of wind, directing air currents so precisely that they lift us up off the floor. It feels like flying.
We’re fifteen and we’ve spent all night practising combat moves. Something that we do regularly, so I’m told. Punch, swipe, kick, block. I can tell he’s reining it in so as not to hurt me, but even so I am doing well. My lessons with Mad Carole have been paying off.
Until Oriel decides he’s had enough of playing fair. He aims a punch and as I go to block him he grabs my wrist, pulling me towards him with a laugh, before collapsing us both to the floor. As we fall I shriek and he twists so that I land on top of him, and then he turns so that he’s on top of me, pinning my arms to the floor. ‘I win,’ he breathes with another half-laugh.
I can’t answer; my heart is pounding too fast. All I can do is stare at him, still hovering above me, framed by the sky. And breathe. I can still breathe. Just.
All traces of his smirk have disappeared and neither of us quite know what to do, because larking about throwing punches and wrestling is fun, but in this one instant everything has changed and I can tell that this has never happened before.
Baeroth pulled back, laughing gleefully. He turned to one of the minions holding my legs. ‘She’s got no resistance at all,’ he sneered. ‘It’s like torturing a civilian.’ He rocked back on his heels and shrugged. ‘At least now I know where you got the knife from.’
He turned back to me, stroking his fingers along my temples and I felt the hot knife of his mind approach me again. Like a switch flicking, my mind rebelled and I caught Baeroth’s razor-sharp blade just as it was about to slice again, holding it firm. This final violation had let me tap into an unknown reserve of strength and the sudden bolt of rage made it easy to hold him at bay.
With one final, crippling effort I pushed back against Baeroth with all the strength I could muster. My mind flailed, only thinking to get my attacker far, far away. I hit an invisible wall and broke through with minimal effort; it was like biting into an apple only to find its insides swarming with maggots.
I pulled back quickly in shock and opened my eyes. The room tilted worryingly as a wave of nausea washed over me. Baeroth’s mottle-bruised hands were clutching at his face, thin rivulets of blood dripping over his fingers. I shut my eyes again and laughed to myself. It felt like glass shards jangling
round my head.
Forcing myself to open my eyes, I looked at Baeroth again. Slumped on the floor, he looked smaller. ‘Take her away,’ he shrieked. There was a general clucking from the minions who had flocked to his aid. ‘I don’t care where! Sling her in the dungeon with the mongrel; just get her away from me!’
Two minions, distinguishable from each other only because one had blue eyes and the other had two big, weepy sores on his nose, broke away from the crowd and grabbed my arms. Another bolt of pain shot through my broken wrist, but I was riding too high on victory and adrenalin to care. As they dragged me away on my backside, Baeroth shouted after me. ‘This isn’t over. You will cooperate with me eventually.’
‘Will I fuck,’ I croaked and even had the presence of mind to flip him the finger before I disappeared through the doorway.
As I retreated from sight I saw the man who had winked at me. He stared until I rounded the corner, looking as if he wanted to run after me.
The guards hauled me backwards along the corridor, my boots dragging along the floor that turned from stone to wood and then down winding stairs to damp packed earth. I tried to get to my feet a couple of times, but they jerked my arms so that I fell down again.
I flipped through a few moves in my mind that would enable me to get away, but where would I go? There was literally nowhere to escape to.
Eventually I was dumped unceremoniously onto the floor while my guards fumbled a studded wooden door open. Still woozy from my mental smackdown with Baeroth, I shook my head to clear it. It didn’t work, and all I succeeded in doing was agitating the swarm of angry bees buzzing around behind my eyes.
I cradled my wrist with the other arm and looked up at them. ‘Oh, hey,’ I slurred. My mouth felt thick and novocaine-numb. Weepy Sores glanced down at me in the same way you’d look at something nasty on the pavement. ‘Any chance you could do me a favour? Could you tell your boss from me that he’s a dick and that we are going to completely fucking destroy him?’
Weepy Sores’ expression didn’t change. Blue Eyes had finally got the door to the cell open and he picked me up by the neck. Like, literally by the scruff of the neck. Then with a movement like a rattlesnake, his free hand lashed out and belted me across the cheek. I stumbled back into the cell while stars exploded across my vision and the door slammed behind me.
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