by D D Everest
He wanted to ask Gran why she had lied to him about his parents’ disappearance. But this didn’t seem the right moment. He was angry that she had deceived him. But he was fascinated by the new information she had managed to gather.
‘In all your travels did you ever find out what Grey actually saw in his vision?’ asked Archie.
‘No,’ said Gardenia. ‘That is the one thing that eluded me. But tomorrow I will take you to see his gravestone. Perhaps there will be a clue there.’
*
In a house on the other side of Oxford, a single candle was the only light in a downstairs room. The flickering flame illuminated a dead rat on the table. A boy sitting in the shadows picked it up and bit into it. The rat’s blood trickled down his chin like a red stream.
‘Swallow it!’ said his master. ‘Use the rat’s life power to extinguish the candle and command the darkness. If you can take the darkness from a rat’s blood, one day you will be able to take it from a dragon’s.’
The boy closed his eyes and swallowed. Concentrating very hard he uttered the words of the spell.
‘Blood of Ratus
Newly slain
Beast of darkness
Quench the Flame.’
The candle guttered and went out, plunging the room into total darkness.
‘Good,’ said the man. ‘You are almost ready!’
‘But where will we get dragon’s blood?’ asked the boy.
‘Leave that to me,’ said the man, relighting the candle. ‘There is more than one way to bleed a dragon.’
He opened his left hand to show the boy the firemark there.
20
The Memorial
The lychgate groaned open and Gardenia Greene stepped into the churchyard. The wind whispered in the tall trees that stood like sentries guarding the graves. Was it a welcome or a warning?
Archie swallowed hard. Gran beckoned him forward. He wanted to follow but his feet felt like they had turned to stone. It was just a country graveyard like many others in England, but something about this place unnerved him.
‘Come along, Archie,’ she called over her shoulder. ‘You won’t see anything from there.’
That was what Archie was rather hoping. It had seemed like a good idea when Gran had said they were going to visit Fabian Grey’s grave. The Greys – his mother’s side of the family – had been buried in the churchyard for hundreds of years. The village was named after them – Grey’s End.
Archie had thought it would be exciting to see the place. But now he was here he felt a strange reluctance.
Gardenia walked slowly on, glancing from side to side at the gravestones as if reacquainting herself with old friends. Archie took a deep breath and followed.
‘Generations of Greys are buried here,’ she pronounced solemnly when he caught up with her. ‘That’s your great-uncle Thaddeus Grey,’ she added, indicating a crumbling tombstone shaped like a horse.
‘Lost most of his money on the horses. And that’s Aldous Grey, over there. And his wife Gertrude is next to him.’
Archie peered at the gravestones. The names were chiselled in Gothic letters, discoloured with green moss. ‘In loving memory of Aldous Grey,’ it read. ‘1792 to 1863. And his loving wife Gertrude, 1795 to 1869.’
‘The Greenes are buried near Oxford,’ said Gardenia. ‘I often visit the churchyard. I never knew most of them when they were alive, of course. But we’re quite close now.’
Archie nodded, sympathetically. Then her words sank in. He glanced at his grandmother. There was no trace of humour on her face.
‘But how can you know them if they died before you were even born?’ he asked.
She saw his confused expression. ‘It’s the echo,’ she said, as if the word explained everything. ‘Magic doesn’t disappear immediately, Archie. It lingers. Our most precious memories, the ones we seek to leave behind for our loved ones, remain. Memories reverberate. When you throw a stone into a pond it makes the ripples on the surface, and the ripples continue long after the stone has gone. Memories are the same. You can feel a person’s echo very strongly in a place they once loved – or in a graveyard.’
She smiled. ‘Our most cherished memories linger like a dream. Or a nightmare,’ she added under her breath. ‘If someone lives an evil life then that remains behind for a time, too. But the good outlives the bad. Always remember that.’
She moved on down the line of graves until she reached the end of the row.
‘This is what I brought you to see,’ she said, indicating the very last gravestone.
The other gravestones caught the sunlight shining through the trees. But this one was in shadow. The name of Fabian Grey was chiselled into the flat stone face. The moss had grown thick on its surface, obscuring what was written there.
‘But if his grave was here all along …’ said Archie.
Gardenia shook her head. ‘I don’t think it is a real grave, just a memorial erected by his family. Read the inscription.’
Archie read the words carved into the stone, speaking them aloud.
‘Lost but not forgotten
Precious are the memories of Fabian Grey.’
‘It doesn’t make sense,’ he said.
At that moment, something snapped inside him. Something had been gnawing away at him. He could bear it no longer.
‘Why did you let me think that my parents and sister were all killed in a ferry disaster?’ he demanded.
Gardenia froze as if she’d been shot. For a moment she didn’t move. When she turned to face him her face looked more lined than ever.
‘Let’s sit for a moment,’ she said, indicating an old wooden bench beneath a yew tree.
She sat down and patted the seat next to her. Archie wanted to be furious, to punish her for deceiving him for all these years, but now that she was there with him it was hard to stay angry. He sat down beside her.
She touched his hand. ‘I needed to give you some kind of a reason for why they’d disappeared. I couldn’t tell you the truth without explaining about magic, and I certainly didn’t want you to think they had abandoned you. A ferry did sink at about the same time so I linked the two things together.
‘You lied to me!’ said Archie.
‘It was a little lie that grew into a big lie,’ said Gardenia. ‘At first I told you they were lost at sea because I hoped they would come back. But as the years passed it seemed kinder to let you believe they’d drowned. I didn’t know what else to do.’
Archie nodded. He understood her reasons but he still felt betrayed. He turned away.
‘I’m sorry, Archie. I didn’t mean to hurt you.’
Archie’s eyes prickled with tears. He pulled his hand away.
‘One day perhaps you’ll understand,’ said Gardenia. She stood up wearily and started back towards the lychgate. Archie remained behind.
Dusk had fallen suddenly. The graveyard was full of shadows now. Archie could see her walking ahead, her bony shoulders hunched as she retraced the way they’d come.
He wiped his eyes with his sleeve and called after her. ‘Why did they leave me behind?’
But she was too far away to hear him. The gravestones seemed to swallow up his voice in their ancient rock. He started after her.
The lychgate was a pool of darkness. He’d just reached it when he heard something behind him and thought he saw something out of the corner of his eye. But when he turned to look, the churchyard was quiet and still.
Then, as he opened the gate, he felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. A bird landed on a gravestone beside him and cried out what sounded like a warning. Turning his head he saw a white face with two dark eye sockets appear from behind a gravestone. The cheeks were sunken and the skin so thin it was translucent. Archie recognised it – it was another one of the Pale Writers!
The Pale Writer reached out a wizened hand and Archie saw it had long, yellowed fingernails. He jumped back but the creature lunged at him, its nails biting into his wrist. He fel
t a sharp pain and looked down, expecting to see blood where it had torn his flesh. His skin was whole but he felt gripped by a paralysing dread. His entire being had turned rigid with fear.
Archie’s heart was pounding so fast that he thought it would burst. He felt like he was surrounded by unknown danger on all sides. The gravestones loomed menacingly. The Pale Writer gripped him with its other withered hand and the terrible dread seized him again.
Archie’s senses were working overtime. He could smell the creature’s rank breath, a sickly stench of decay. Archie couldn’t move, his body immobilised by fear. But somehow his mind was still alert. He remembered that the second Pale Writer was Dread. Bramble had said it would attack him when he was vulnerable.
The skull-like face moved closer. Archie felt its disgusting breath on his face and heard it hiss. It had spotted the Emerald Eye around his neck, and its clutching hand reached for the pendant. But as it tried to take his keepsafe, something glowed with an amber light. The hand recoiled as if it had been burned with acid.
It was the Torchstone, still safe in his pocket! The Pale Writer was staring at its shrivelled hand, its skull-like features twisted with hate.
‘You recognise it, don’t you?’ Archie cried. ‘It’s the Flame of Pharos.’
The amber glow lit the darkness. The Pale Writer shrank from its light. Archie tried to remember what Bramble had told him. Fear feeds upon itself. Name your fear and you can break its grip and turn it on itself. And when he realised how simple it was, he felt Dread’s grip loosen.
‘You’re just fear!’ he cried. ‘That’s all you are. If I decide not to be afraid then you have no hold over me. Your power is broken!’
The Pale Writer looked at him with loathing in its black eyes. It raised its claw-like hands to strike again. But as it did, Archie held up the Torchstone. The Pale Writer hissed and backed away, covering its face.
‘You fear the Flame,’ Archie cried. ‘You can’t bear its light!’
The Pale Writer hissed again and lunged at him, knocking the Torchstone from his hand.
Archie tried to catch it, but it fell to the ground. He felt Dread’s shadow loom over him.
Archie heard the lychgate open. He heard a voice call out a banishing spell.
‘Flame of Pharos
Sacred light
Shade of darkness
Put to flight!’
‘Be gone, you creature of darkness. Leave the boy!’
Gardenia Greene stepped out of the gloom. With an angry hiss, the Pale Writer fled into the night.
‘Are you all right, Archie?’ Gardenia rushed over to him, picking him up.
‘Yes, I’m okay,’ he managed to murmur. ‘Has it gone?’
‘Yes, it fled when I arrived. The Pale Writers are cowards. They like to get their victims alone. It must have been lying in wait in the graveyard. The first one was watching the museum and followed you home. This one was waiting in ambush because it knew we would come here eventually.
‘We’re lucky it didn’t have time to summon the other two. One Pale Writer on its own is bad enough, but all three together – that would be a different story.’
She studied Archie. ‘You look like a wraith yourself, your face is so pale,’ she said. ‘Can you walk?’
Archie got to his feet. He felt dizzy and his head was pounding, but he managed to stand. His legs were weak and he felt a horrible gnawing empty feeling inside.
Gardenia held his face in her hands. ‘So far, you have faced the two lesser Pale Writers, Doubt and Dread. The third is Despair. It is their leader and is the most deadly. We need to find a way to protect you.’
‘I have the Emerald Eye,’ said Archie, clasping the magic pendant around his neck and trying to sound more assured than he felt. ‘It wards off dark magic.’
‘That is why Dee gave it to you as your keepsafe,’ said Gardenia. ‘But it’s not strong enough to protect you from them completely.’
‘The Pale Writer tried to snatch the Eye,’ said Archie. ‘The first one tried to take it, too.’
Gardenia shook her head gravely. ‘They would,’ she said. ‘They were darchemists once. They crave powerful magic and the Emerald Eye is too much for them to resist. They know that it is protecting you like an amulet. If they could separate you from it then you would be totally vulnerable to their magic. And make no mistake about it, Archie – they are utterly ruthless. Now, let’s get out of here,’ she said, striding back towards the lychgate.
Archie suddenly remembered the Torchstone. He searched for it among the gravestones, but he couldn’t see it anywhere. He could hear Gardenia calling.
‘Come along, Archie!’
‘I’m just coming,’ Archie called back, frantically feeling in the dark. He had to find the Torchstone! He should never have let it out of his sight. He tried a delving spell, but there was no magical energy. The Torchstone had gone. The Pale Writer must have somehow taken it, he thought.
This was a disaster! He’d promised Hawke that he would be a flame carrier and now he’d lost the Torchstone. What was he going to do?
‘Archie, come on!’ Gran’s voice sounded urgent. ‘We need to get away from here. Before they come back!’
The thought of the Pale Writers returning was enough to persuade him. Abandoning his search, he ran after her.
21
Bed Rest and Buns
At Loretta’s insistence, Archie spent the next two days in bed. He needed to build up his strength again, she said. He tried to appeal to his grandmother, but she stood firmly behind Loretta.
‘Archie, you can’t expect to face the Pale Writers without being affected. I don’t think you can take many more of their attacks. Every time they touch you a little part of your spirit is extinguished. You need time to recover.’
Archie reluctantly conceded. In truth, he knew they were right. His second brush with a Pale Writer had left him very weak. More worryingly, the unpleasant hollow feeling he’d felt after the first attack was back, and much worse. It was as if the vile creature had taken some of the very essence he was made from.
He felt thinner and less substantial somehow, despite Loretta’s best efforts to feed him up with marmalade omelettes and her own special recipe for cherry buns. It didn’t help that Loretta had substituted curry for cherry in her recipe so the buns were filled with curry powder. But it was more than Loretta’s cooking that had left a bad taste in his mouth. He couldn’t shake off the feeling that he was more vulnerable than before.
He brooded over what Gran had told him. The Pale Writers had once been magic writers. They had surrendered their souls to the Dark Flame when they summoned it from Pandemonium. Given half a chance they would steal Archie’s soul, too, and make him a servant of the Dark Flame. It wasn’t a very comforting thought.
*
On the second day after the attack, Archie had some welcome visitors. Rupert was back in Oxford for a few days and dropped in at 32 Houndstooth Road with Arabella.
The Alchemists’ Club crowded into the boys’ bedroom where Archie was sitting up in bed with a pile of pillows plumped up behind him.
‘You do look a bit pale, Arch,’ said Rupert. ‘Sorry, bad choice of words!’
‘Thanks!’ said Archie.
‘How are you feeling?’ asked Arabella.
‘Much better,’ said Archie. ‘In fact, I feel well enough to hold a meeting of the Alchemists’ Club. Even if Rupert thinks I don’t look it,’ he added, managing a smile.
‘We’re all here, so why not?’ said Thistle.
The others agreed. They took it in turns to repeat the pledge.
Archie, Bramble and Thistle filled in the other two on what Gardenia had discovered on her travels.
‘I have some news, too,’ declared Arabella when they had finished. ‘Last night there was a Greader meeting at my parents’ house, and I overheard them talking about The Opus Magus. The rumour among the Greaders is that Grey did hide it somewhere, but that it may not be a book. It may be in som
e other form.’
‘Like what?’ asked Bramble.
‘I couldn’t hear everything they were saying, but it sounded like a place to store memories. And they think they know how to find it.’
‘We have to find it before they do,’ said Archie. ‘What else has been going on while I’ve been stuck in here?’
‘Brown has officially taken over from Hawke in Lost Books,’ said Thistle. ‘So when you go back to the museum, you’ll be reporting to him.’
Archie pinched his lip thoughtfully. ‘What’s he like?’
‘He was all right with me when I worked in the mythical menagerie,’ Rupert said. ‘But I always got the impression that he was a bit bored with the Natural Magic Department, and wanted to do something else. Now he’s got his chance.’
‘He’s under a lot of pressure, though,’ said Arabella. ‘Graves says that it was the strain of trying to find out what Grey had to do to fulfil the prophecy that pushed Hawke over the edge. Now Brown is in the hot seat.’
‘What’s he doing about it?’ asked Archie.
‘Not much so far,’ said Bramble. ‘He seems to spend all his time going through Hawke’s things. It’s as if he’s looking for something.’
‘Grey’s account of what he saw in his vision,’ said Archie. ‘That was what was driving Hawke so hard. He was convinced that Grey must have written it down.’
‘Well, whatever it is, Brown has torn Hawke’s office apart trying to find it. When I took a book in the other day, the place was completely trashed. He’s even thrown out Hawke’s favourite sofa.’
‘I loved that sofa!’ said Rupert.
‘So did Hawke,’ said Archie, angrily.
*
After the others had left, Bramble stayed behind.