Waywalkers: Number 1 in Series

by Catherine Webb

  There was a large metal door. Sam knocked calmly, and waited, a blacker outline against the gloom. What little light caught his eyes made them glow, like a cat’s.

  There were footsteps, and the door opened.

  ‘Good evening,’ said Sam – and lashed out with one foot at a spirit, who crumpled forwards. Sam whirled through the door, bringing his sword in one movement across the spirit’s throat. Two other spirits, who’d been playing poker with tarot cards, erupted to their feet, each reaching for a gun. A couple of human wizards had been snoring quietly on a pair of old mattresses. A pipe was dripping. Against one wall a bank of washing machines chugged round and round, opposite a row of neglected sinks.

  ‘I know spirits are loyal to each other,’ said Sam quietly, ‘though you do not call it loyalty, for fear it makes you sound too mortal. I know too that most spirits are essentially good. I know you won’t want to see your friend die.’

  The spirits exchanged doubtful looks.

  ‘I too am loyal to my own,’ Sam continued. ‘And this is the arrangement. You give me my friends, and I won’t cut your friend’s throat.’

  ‘Two for one?’ snapped one spirit.

  On the prompting of instant dislike, Sam raised his free hand in a blur. His dagger flew across the room and paused, hanging in the air, spinning gently near the spirit’s heart.

  ‘No. Two for two and we’ll call it quits.’

  The spirits didn’t move.

  Sam sighed loudly. ‘Gentlemen, I’ve had a bad week. A sister killed, mortal allies poisoned, friends kidnapped – these things do not make me happy. I’m sure that under normal circumstances we could talk this over like rational, civilised immortals. But these are not normal circumstances. Now, you give me two people, I give you two people. The balance of accounts is even.’

  The humans by now were rising to their feet, all gaping mouth and confusion. Sam gave them a humourless smile.

  ‘Glad you’re up. Get my friends, else I’ll blast the lot of you.’

  Still no one moved.

  ‘For Time’s sake don’t provoke the Devil himself!’ roared Sam. Anger at last broke through his self-control, and made his black eyes flash with fire. The echoes bounced around them, dwindling to fill the darkness with angry whispers. The Devil himself? To defeat a monster you must become it first, know thine enemy. To beat a ruthless man the winner must be ruthless too, the Devil himself?

  The third spirit moved, rushing towards the inner door and dropping the keys in his fumbling haste to open it. Sam’s outflung hand stayed motionless, keeping the dagger point spinning in mid-air, ready to strike the second spirit at a moment’s notice. The third spirit disappeared into the darkness of the room. There was the sound of voices, of movement.

  A few moments later and he emerged again, covering Peter and Whisperer with a pistol. Sam’s two comrades were a mess, grimy and tired. He could see their shields in tatters from too many interrogations.

  ‘Lucifer,’ murmured Whisperer disbelievingly.

  ‘Oh, come on. You think a bullet in the back would distract me from seeking out your company again?’ asked Sam lightly.

  He turned to the others. ‘All right,’ he said, ‘here’s what we do. Whisperer and Peter leave now. So do I, taking any threats with me. No one gets hurt, no one panics, no one tries any last-minute heroics. Are we agreed?’ There was a flurry of nods.

  Sam indicated the door. ‘Go,’ he murmured. Whisperer and Peter ran, Sam backing out behind them with his sword still drawn. His free hand twitched, and in response the dagger returned to his fingers. He retreated further until he could feel the cold outside air on the back of his neck. Then, taking a deep breath, he let go of his dagger, which returned to hang in the air across the spirit’s throat. Withdrawing his sword, he backed out of the door, eyes slitted in concentration at keeping the dagger where it was. Inside the room no one moved, no one breathed.

  Sam backed up the stairs, feeling each step beneath his feet. He kept his eyes fixed on the hovering blade, one hand flung out towards it at all times to steady it. Halfway up the stairs he clenched his fingers. Narrowly avoiding the spirit’s neck, the dagger flew into his hand. Sam turned and ran, taking the steps two at a time and willing the door behind him to slam shut.

  At the top of the stairs he turned, expecting to see the door burst back open at any second, hear the crack of gunfire. But Peter was standing there, face contorted with effort as he held his hands palm out, keeping the door in place by willpower.

  Sam tossed the car keys to Whisperer and pointed. ‘Throw out the sleeping guy.’

  At Peter’s side Sam raised his own hands to double the magic against the door. Seeing Whisperer bodily heave the unconscious spirit out of the car, the bouncer started from his place in the night club doorway. ‘Hey!’

  There was a roar from the car engine, and Sam grabbed Peter’s arm. ‘Come on!’ As the spell was dropped, the spirits and the two wizards exploded outwards from the basement. Sam and Peter thrust past the bouncer as if he wasn’t there and barrelled into the car. The doors hadn’t even closed before Whisperer was accelerating away.

  In the car a breathless silence followed. ‘Well,’ Sam mumbled finally. ‘I’m glad to see you too.’

  ‘Uriel did most of the questioning,’ Whisperer said.

  They’d pulled into a squalid service station where plastic-looking hamburgers were the only food available. Sam picked out the gherkin from his and tried not to think about how the burger itself had been made.

  ‘She wanted to know about you, mostly. How much you knew, how much you’d told us.’

  ‘Were you hurt? When you explained that I’d told you nothing?’

  Peter shook his head. ‘They could sense whether we were telling the truth.’ He added, ‘They were very interested in the Light. When you released it, were you just trying to stun the target? Could you control whose thoughts you heard? Did you hear thoughts within the radius the Light had covered, or could you hear everything at once?

  ‘You were wise,’ he went on. ‘You kept everyone, including us, in the dark. There’s only one person who can answer all these questions, and that’s you.’

  ‘And Time,’ muttered Sam. ‘Why don’t they go and interrogate Time!’ he spat with sudden vehemence.

  The spirits said nothing, watching him. Sam went back to munching on his hamburger, slurped up a disgusting powdery milkshake from a paper cup, and wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. Finally he said, ‘I’m sorry for… what has happened. I’ll make amends, somehow.’

  ‘There was one more thing,’ Whisperer said. ‘Uriel asked us what we knew of the keys. To the Pandora spirits. We denied all knowledge of them. Uriel grew angry, said that three were found, and all that remained was to find the fourth key. She wanted to know if you had it.’

  Sam was staring at vacancy, remembering. ‘I was once told, by a particularly clever man, albeit one who looked like a guinea pig, that the Pandora spirits were imprisoned because Time feared them above all the rest. Greed, Hate and Suspicion. Yet such spirits as Corruption, Envy and Jealousy freely walk the Ways. Time feared the Pandora spirits because he knew they could set son against father, father against son. And because Cronus wanted that to happen. Because Cronus, imprisoned by the fourth key, wanted Time’s children to turn against their maker, and fight Cronus’s battle for him. So the keys were scattered, and Time forbade anyone to free the Pandora spirits.

  ‘But it is the way of men to desire all they cannot have. To want to break the rules… Oh, Light!’ He put his head in his hands and sighed.

  The spirits were silent, watching him. ‘Look,’ he said. ‘I know where I’m going next, I know what I’m going to do. Lose yourselves in the Way of Fey. If you encounter any of the Moondance, tell them to lose themselves too. Freya discovered what was going on, and they know I’m close behind Freya’s footsteps.’ Which is why they’re trying to kill me.

  Peter and Whisperer didn’t argue but drove with him stra
ight from the service station to the nearest Fey Portal. At their departure they said not one word, but slipped into the Feywalk with all the reserve of kings, not thanking him for rescuing them, nor cursing him for endangering them. Such was the gift of spirits – they only felt what they intended, and proudly resolved otherwise to feel nothing.

  Alone now, Sam drove through empty roads and emptier countryside, following his senses to a Hell Portal. Three of them, playing with fire. Surely they wouldn’t be so unbelievably stupid as to try and actually free the Pandora spirits…

  He thought about the three of them. The clever, passionate Saviour, the romantic who’d never had any real name. Yes, Jehovah would want to leave his mark. Sam could imagine him greedily claiming the spirit of Suspicion as his servant, playing it against his enemies as part of those subtle games he revelled in.

  Odin had been someone he’d quite respected. Father of Valhalla, head of his house, the clever, silent one who just about kept his loutish brothers out of trouble. It had been slippery Loki, and the death of Balder, that had started the decline of Valhalla, a failure that to Odin spelled shame. But who could have thought him desperate enough to stray this far from the path of Time? On the other hand, as father of his house Odin’s dedication had always been shadowed by something darker. In a word, obsession.

  And Seth. Quiet. Ambitious, without a doubt. The one whom everybody suspected of being a plotter with Loki, but who’d never been caught out. Was he trying to control Hate?

  He pulled the car up on a muddy path. It led to an expanse of pasture, in which a pair of well-fed, if dirty, horses were grazing. He walked round the edge of the field, close to a tall hedge. After about fifty yards he came across a gap and pushed his way through. Inside the hedge was a small hollow. The remnants of a fire had blackened a circle of dead leaves. A child had nailed a sign in Cyrillic declaring ‘secret den’ in scrawled paint on to a wooden post. Ropes and supports had been erected around the hollow to keep it safe for the children to play in.

  Sam smiled despite himself. If the parents had known what kind of secret place their children were playing in, they would never have gone to the trouble.

  Stepping round the burnt-out remnants of the fire, he raised a hand and felt the Portal stir at his touch. Sam didn’t go through it, but sent his mind scouting ahead into the mists, rushing through the shadows in quest of something he knew would be there. He found what he sought, winding his will around it and bringing it towards him, though it struggled in his grasp and tried to dive back into the mist.

  Reluctantly the creature was pulled out of the Portal and into the real world, where it cowered at Sam’s feet, shivering. Sam waved a hand, and the Portal collapsed again.

  The creature before him was strange. Delicate wings grew from its back, but its face was twisted with hate, its clothes ragged and its eyes narrowed with passionate loathing for its captor. Its nails were shaped to a needle point, ready to gouge out its victims’ eyes, and its teeth were small and sharp for tearing through meat. It was a Wayspirit, a twisted shadow of its Feywalker cousins. Where spirits like Whisperer and Adamarus had forsaken feeling of their own free will, the creature before Sam could feel nothing but the hatred of the Way, and its voice was the loudest and sweetest one that called to unwary travellers, luring them to their doom. It despised Earth, Heaven and Hell alike, and mewed piteously to have been so forcefully dragged from its abode between worlds.

  ‘Look,’ said Sam, as kindly as he could, though his gut twisted to think of all the beguiling whispers the spirit had thrown his way, ‘do what I tell you and this’ll all be over quickly. Find me Seth. Tell him to meet me alone on neutral ground. The traditional place.’

  The spirit didn’t move.

  ‘Now, please.’

  It snarled its hate but rose to its feet nonetheless, knowing itself tagged for death unless it obeyed, and dived towards the place where the Portal had been. There was a flash of white fire and it was gone. Wayspirits could move faster through the Ways than any other race. It was what made them so valuable to anyone who knew how to summon them.

  Sam opened the Portal again, wondering with how much more anger those claws could tear at him now that he’d intruded on the spirit’s privacy. Drawing himself up, he told the part of him fretting at such things that he was a Prince of Heaven and not scared of any mere shadow.

  If he’d fully believed himself, he wouldn’t have laughed to hear his own voice. But laugh he did.

  Prince of Heaven, my foot. Prince of the unwanted lands, maybe.

  But still a prince. And not scared of shadows.

  Resolved in this way, he went in search of the neutral ground with the one thought that gave him strength. Things are falling in place.

  EIGHTEEN

  Falling in Place

  S

  am emerged from the Way of Earth in total darkness. His ears were overwhelmed by the rushing of water and his nose by the stench of algae. When he moved, his feet slipped on wet marble, and nearly went out beneath him. His cat-like vision quickly grew adjusted to the dark, and picked out an underground river that roared through a cave of white marble carved out to immaculate proportions by some long-dead dwarvern architect.

  The Hell Portal had its own sculpted porch, in which carvings of fire and ice entwined each other in an intricate dance. Moving away from it, he picked his way along the slippery marble path towards the one faint source of light. It came from a small doorway, a faint white flicker of magical firelight that never died down. He paused in the entrance and took out the silver crown, putting it on with reverence for another crowned prince resting inside for all eternity. That done, he drew his sword and advanced.

  The cave was huge. Somehow it was dry despite the rushing river outside and the unnaturally still lake at its centre. In the middle of this lake a golden coffin rested, on a platform of diamond that floated as though no more substantial than a feather. The walls were crystal and gave off infinite reflections of the cave’s white magic light, banishing every shadow. From the roof a strange complex of crystals and mirrors was suspended, gently spinning. Where a stray beam of light was caught, it was reflected into the depths of the largest crystal and emerged rainbow-like at the other end, casting all the colours of the spectrum on to Balder’s final resting place.

  Sam bowed stiffly to the grave, the traditional mark of respect, and padded quietly round the edge of the lake, eyes never leaving the golden coffin. He felt that if he spoke, the whole shrine would crack and crumble, and he kept his silver sword drawn as much to convince himself as the guardian spirits here that he was a prince of equal measure to this sleeping Son of Light. No one would shed blood in this place. It was the ultimate sanctuary.

  He didn’t have to wait long. Playing his fingers along the cool crystal wall of the cave, he jumped when a soft voice said in the door, ‘Well, look who wants to talk. How’s the back?’

  Seth, dressed with his usual vanity, stood in the doorway. He had a long, curved scimitar at his hip, and wore long black and gold robes that had been fashionable for about ten minutes during the late sixties, but now survived only in the wardrobe of eccentrics.

  Uncomfortably Sam took in his laughing dark eyes, which somehow wore intelligence as a taint. Sam’s own white face was steely. He sheathed his sword. ‘I know what you’re doing.’

  ‘That’s nice for you.’

  ‘I know you’re trying to take over Hell.’

  ‘Only bits of it. I won’t be there long.’

  Sam’s face grew warm and he felt his stomach tighten. He bit back on the words that rose with his bile. ‘You killed Freya.’

  ‘Not personally.’

  ‘Then Jehovah did it, or Odin.’

  ‘She was in our way. So are you.’

  ‘You mean to free them? The Pandora spirits? All of them? Cronus?’ Even now, Sam could hardly believe his own words.

  ‘Yep. Given the chance, of course.’ Seth sighed, as if bored. ‘You know, I only came out of curi
osity.’ He stared thoughtfully at Sam. ‘And to assess the enemy.’

  ‘Why am I your enemy?’

  ‘It’s not who you are, Lucifer, it’s what you are. The Bearer of Light. You’re Father’s tool, destined to die in his service. You’ve no choice. Not since we’ve been actively defying Father, and Father sent Freya to investigate us —’

  ‘Did he?’

  ‘Most probably, but I must admit’ – giving a sudden, sickly smile – ‘she bungled that thoroughly enough. The only reason I’m here, though, is to see exactly what Father will throw at us next. Let’s face it, it’s going to be you.’ He cocked his head on one side. ‘Why did you want us to meet? Why do you want to see me?’

  ‘Perhaps it’s because… I respected you once. I wanted to see what was left of that. I hoped we could stop this thing now.’

  ‘My dear boy, you’re several centuries too late. But then, you always were behind the times.’