by Tim Flanagan
'There are various sections of the community held at different places around the island. There are two groups that permanently remain at the ports, Yarmouth and East Cowes and are responsible for bringing goods and people over from the mainland. Any other groups, like ours, stay in Osborne House but work in the surrounding areas. A hospital was set up inside this building. Another group was taken to investigate Barton Manor, a place just through the trees, to see if a community of farmers could be set up from there.'
'Have you seen any children?' asked Georgia.
'The children are kept separate from the adults, even from their own parents, not that many have them of course. They are kept in the Durbar Wing of the main house, sewing and mending clothes, as well as washing the plates and bowls.'
'And the management? Where does the American sleep?'
Russell looked up towards the ceiling. 'They stay two floors above us in what used to be the Queen's rooms. A lorry delivered some more supplies the other day, I was ordered to carry some of the boxes up to the American's room. Quite different to down here. Thick carpet and mahogany furniture as well as gold framed paintings and books piled high. They say he tried to sleep in Queen Victoria's bed, but it was too small, he's a tall man.'
'How many guards does he have around him?'
'Very few. There are three leaders that have rooms upstairs too. Everything is coordinated through them and they report to the American, but most business is done in the Council Room in the main wing of the house, that's where they will be taking their dinner.'
'I heard music coming from behind one of the doors off the long corridor we came down, is that where he is?'
Russell nodded. 'That's it. All very civilised in there.'
'Take half of the survivors to the Durbar Wing and make sure the children are safe, but stay with them. The rest of us need to face the American.'
The weapons and gardening equipment were divided out between the two groups then they silently crept up the steep staircase away from the basement and gathered in a large entrance hall that had a grand sweeping staircase winding around the room towards the floors above.
'Good luck,' whispered Russell to Tracker before taking about twenty survivors in the opposite direction along a narrow corridor that had portraits of Indians dressed in colourful clothing, watching their progress.
Tracker turned towards the corridor they had come along earlier and began walking along it, closely followed by Steven and Georgia. They paused at the corner where it swung right. If there was still a guard at the entrance he would have full view of the entire length of the corridor. Armed survivors running around without chains would be sure to create alarm.
Tracker peered round the wall. Sure enough, at the far end of the corridor was the guard who had let them in earlier.
'Wait here,' said Tracker. Before anyone could say anything, he had strolled round the corner, whistling casually to himself. As he walked down the corridor the guard looked up from the book he was reading. Recognising Tracker from earlier he didn’t see anything out of the ordinary and went back to his book.
'Evening,' said Tracker as he walked closer. 'What are you reading?'
The guard looked up. His gun was resting on top of a small table next to his chair, within easy reach.
'Moby Dick,' he replied. 'Nothing modern to read in this house. Always told myself I should read the classics but never got round to it. Now's as good a time as any, I suppose.'
'Here,' said Tracker, pulling a small chocolate bar from his jacket pocket and throwing it over to the guard.
'Where did you get this?' replied the guard, catching the bar with both hands. As soon as he reached for the chocolate Tracker took his gun from the table.
'Listen to me carefully,' instructed Tracker, pointing the gun at the guard. 'Pick up your book and walk down the corridor with me. You seem like a nice guy and I really don’t want to shoot you, so keep your mouth closed. Do you understand?'
The guard nodded. His eyes flicked back to the chocolate bar.
'Keep it,' said Tracker, realising that the chocolate was just as important to the guard as his own life.
Tracker escorted the guard back down the corridor then some of the survivors took him to the basement. Meanwhile Tracker moved over towards the door where he had heard music coming from earlier. The dark wood door had glass panels in the top half that allowed him a view of the corridor beyond. In the limited light the corridor looked dark and grey. On the left, half way along the corridor was a pair of double doors that were partly open, allowing a narrow crack of orange light to spread across the tiled floor. Occasionally the shaft of light was broken as the shadow of someone moving inside the room crossed in front of the light source.
'That’s the Council Room,' whispered one of the survivors at Tracker's elbow. 'The American will be in there.'
Tracker lifted his finger to his lips signalling for everyone to be quiet, then he pushed against the door.
It swung into the corridor.
Tracker held himself against the wall on the left side of the corridor, hidden within the shadows. He could hear the static crackle of the record player and a familiar Glen Miller tune coming from the room. One by one the survivors came through the door and into the corridor. Tracker could feel his heart thumping inside his chest. The last time they had met Coldred, they had been left at the mercy of the creatures. He didn’t want the same thing to happen again.
Some of the other survivors hid amongst the pillars that supported the staircase on the right side of the corridor. Tracker turned to watch as the last person in the group came through the door and dashed over to join the others.
The door swung behind him. The sprung hinge pulled the door back into its frame with a dull thud.
Everyone stood absolutely still, waiting to see if anyone had heard.
The muttering inside the Council Room immediately stopped. The crack of light coming from the gap between the doors was broken by a shadow.
One of the doors opened, throwing the orange glow from a flickering candle flame into the corridor. A guard stepped out and turned towards the door that had been the cause of the noise.
For a moment he stared confused at the rows of faces looking back at him. He then noticed the guns and pick axes in the hands of hostile but scared survivors. One of the survivors on the opposite side of the corridor to Tracker raised his spade up ready to strike the guard who, in an instant, dropped the candle grabbed his gun and shot the man in the chest.
The noise from the shot ricocheted off the walls making Tracker's ears temporarily ring and prevented him from hearing the metallic sound of the spade skidding across the tiled floor towards his feet. As the guard leapt back to the double doors he turned the muzzle of his gun towards another survivor. Tracker squeezed his finger, firing a single shot that split the wood of the door at the same time as opening up a hole in the guard's chest. He fell backwards against the door frame then slid lifelessly to the ground. Whilst they were trapped and unprotected inside the corridor, Tracker knew they were vulnerable.
To his left he saw a door. Quickly he twisted the handle and looked into a small room that had a glass door on the opposite side that led out to the garden they had been in the night before.
The corridor was erupting into chaos. Survivors were trying to shelter behind anything they could find. Inside the Council Room desperate voices shouted from within. An antique bookshelf came crashing down across the double door entrance to the Council Room. More shots began to erupt in bursts of smoke and flashes of light from behind the book shelf and into the corridor.
Tracker dashed through the door he had opened and entered the room.
‘If we can get outside we can enter the Council Room from behind,' shouted Tracker to Steven. 'Their focus will be on the corridor.’
In three strides they had crossed the room and were standing at the external door. In the rapidly darkening sky the black silhouettes of the creatures swarmed together in clouds. It
was almost like they could feel the tension unfolding in the house below them. When the time was right they would swoop down and feed off the remains.
Tracker tried the handle of the door, it was firmly locked. He looked around the room. There was a wooden desk with a studded green leather top to one side of the room with a sturdy looking chair tucked beneath. Tracker hung the strap of his gun over his shoulder and dragged the heavy chair towards the window.
‘Wait,’ said Steven, realising what Tracker had in mind. ‘If we smash the window the creatures will be able to get inside the house.’
‘Two more of the survivors are down,’ shouted Georgia as she stepped into the room with a look of panic on her face. ‘There’s nowhere for them to find cover in the corridor. We're too vulnerable.’
‘Georgia, we’re going round the outside. As soon as we're gone barricade the external door immediately. We have to delay the creatures getting inside.’
‘Once we’ve got this situation under control we will find the antibiotics. I just hope there’s enough to go around.’
Tracker and Steven lifted the chair up from both sides and launched it towards the external door. There was an explosion of glass that cascaded onto the paved area outside. They quickly stepped through the gap in the door and into the garden they had been in the previous night. They edged along the cream stone wall, past a room that had two windows overlooking the garden, towards a series of steps that led up to the double doors of the Council Room. In the darkness they could see the crackle of orange as shot after shot burst from the room towards the corridor.
Tracker peered through the nearest pane of glass. He could see four people crouched down behind the bookshelf taking it in turns raising their guns above the furniture to fire at the survivors in the corridor. When two of them weren’t shooting, they were loading more bullets into their weapons. Although he recognised one person as Wanda, the leader they had met at the Bank of England, he couldn’t see the formidable figure of Coldred anywhere.
Steven looked up into the sky, the creatures were venturing nearer to them, and swooping down to see what they could feast on. A black leathery shape descended towards the shattered remains of the door behind them. It began to crawl through the gap only to explode into a helpless mass of flesh and liquid that drained onto the patio. Steven knew that had been the handiwork of Georgia and her shotgun.
Meanwhile, Tracker had crept up to the patio doors as stealthily and silently as a cat. He grasped the handle of one of the doors, but it wouldn’t turn.
The constant gunfire erupting from inside the Council Room would surely have claimed more of the survivor's life's by now.
Tracker and Steven needed to act quickly.
32. Completing the Family
The castle Max and Joe approached appeared to have curved edges on every surface. Clinging to the sand coloured blocks of the walls was red ivy mixed with pale blue flowers that wound round and embraced the building. The battlements around the top of the castle were unmanned, but they could see the top of a low pitched wooden roof that stretched from the perimeter walls to the centre of the round castle before sweeping gracefully upwards, like the roof of a circus tent. In the centre was a narrow metal pole that pointed towards the sky and at the very top a flag fluttered gently.
An empty moat surrounded the thick stone base of the castle walls and seemed to cut in beneath the castle slightly so that the roots of the ivy and grass hung limply in the air above the redundant trench. Max and Joe peered down at the dry cracked base of the moat. It had been some time since water had filled the trench, but in Avalon, such defences for a castle were not needed.
The path they had been following took them directly to a fantastically ornate bridge. The sides towered high above them, as if they had been designed to shield giants. Each side was made up of intricately woven metal strands that twisted and turned, just like the ivy on the wall. Delicate metal leaves burst from the strands as if they were alive. Huge statues of knights lined the way like immovable guards to the castle. The nearer the two boys got to the entrance of the castle the more immersed in the bridge they became. Ahead of them, the statues of the knights had their swords, spears, and pikes drawn and held aloft, forming a grand ceremonial arch that the boys would have to walk beneath if they wanted to enter the castle.
With some hesitation the boys walked beneath the metal swords, into the shadow they created and beneath the thick stone outer wall of the castle and into a dark circular room. To the side of the room a furnace crackled and spat as fire heated the coals and wood, making the room glow orange and creating dancing shadows around the walls. In the centre was a tall plinth with a large marble sphere balanced weightlessly on the top, whilst at the base a pool of water had collected. The stone floor of the castle sloped into the water, seeming to become progressively deeper towards the plinth. Scattered across the surface of the water were fresh lotus flowers that seemed to be suspended in mid air, the water flawlessly reflecting the orange glow from the light above making it appear transparent.
Apart from the two of them, they appeared to be alone.
Above them they could see the underneath of the wooden roof, its brown beams lined up perfectly towards the centre of the room before bending up to a point directly above the plinth.
Max turned towards the water. He thought he had heard the gentle sound of water being disturbed. The sea of lotus flowers began to part as a figure of a woman slowly emerged from the water, rising as she walked up the sloped floor towards them. Her slender body was clothed in a green dress that clung to her. Her skin shone white whilst her black hair hung perfectly straight over her shoulders, framing her face and the wide eyes that watched the boys.
She walked barefoot towards them.
‘Welcome to my home.’ She spoke softly, but the sound seemed to carry and echo around the circular room. ‘Only the paths of a few ever find their way to my castle. And, very rarely are they the paths of living souls.’
‘We were told to come here by Sir Edgar Gorlois, one of King Arthur’s knights, to return one of the twelve swords of power to you,’ said Max, holding out Ethera for her to take.
But the lady did not reach out for the sword.
‘You may have seen Sir Edgar and his brothers guarding the bridge you just passed over,’ she paused as Joe and Max simultaneously looked back towards the entrance, surprised that they had not recognised their friend. ‘All of the knights that carried a sword have honoured you by lining the way.’
She gracefully moved around the room, picked up a jug from a small table and poured the contents into the water around the plinth. She then turned her back on the pool of water and walked towards the table. As she did so, the water began to part once more, as it had done when she had first emerged, but this time, eleven metal crosses pushed through the surface. Within seconds, the boys realised that they were not crosses at all, but the handles of eleven swords standing upright. The blades slid easily out of the water, hardly disturbing the surface. As they lifted higher out of the water, they could see that each sword was embedded within a ring of roughly cut stone. Once they stopped moving they became aware of a rough grating sound that seemed to be coming from somewhere near the sphere on top of the plinth. Slowly a large gold bladed sword slid out of the sphere, its tip pointing upwards towards the centre of the ceiling.
‘My name is Nimue, Priestess of Avalon. I forged these swords many, many years ago, but it was the Elixir of Life that gave them their magical powers. Over the years all of the other swords have returned to me. All except for Ethera.’
‘Take it,’ replied Max, unsure what was about to happen. ‘Please.’
‘No. You are the swords current owner; you must be the one to complete the family.’
‘What do you mean?’ asked Joe.
‘Ethera is the remaining female sword. All of the twelve swords are female, and all are paired to the greatest male sword that I have ever forged - Excalibur, the legendary sword of King Arthur. As
the last surviving owner of one of the swords, when the family is complete you will have complete control over all of the swords, including Excalibur. But, that power is only temporary. Once they are united, the magic of the swords will begin to be absorbed back into the Elixir of Life, they were only given to the guardians of the mortal world as a gift that would eventually need to be returned.’
Max had already seen the empty stone that was waiting to take Ethera. As soon as he placed the sword inside the stone, he would have control over all thirteen swords. Doubts flashed through his mind - how could he get the swords to act like Ethera had under Edgar’s control when they had been in the forest clearing? He recalled the words that Edgar had once spoken, if the sword doesn’t suit the user then it is nothing more than a flat piece of metal. This made Max feel even more uncertain.
He wasn’t the true owner of the sword. He had just picked it up when Edgar had fallen and brought it into Avalon. He could feel the handle of the sword within his grip. Suddenly it felt hot, almost too hot to hold. The future of the planet lay on his shoulders, and it was almost too much of a responsibility to bear. But, what alternative did he have?
‘You can end this,’ said Joe, trying to reassure his friend. ‘And then we can go home.’
Max nodded.
He stepped forward and stood behind the vacant stone. He gripped the hilt of the sword tightly with both hands, rested it in the slot then pushed it down as hard as he could. Half expecting there to be a flash of lightening or something dramatic, Max was surprised when all he felt was a tingling wave of electricity riding through his arms. But the sensation grew and grew until it almost felt unbearable. He wanted to let go of the sword, but it was as if his hands were glued to it. A white light began to emerge beside each of the other swords that slowly transformed into the ghostly shape of a knight, the spirit of each sword bearer returning to join him. Max became aware of a white glow beside him too and the familiar, yet ghostly, figure of Edgar looking younger and healthier.