The Cloven Land Trilogy

by Simon Kewin

  The mystery would have to wait. She dared not break their concentration. Somewhere inside the building was the man who'd come through for her, who was perhaps even now fleeing back to them.

  Beyond stood a vast fairy palace. Countless twinkling lights shone like the stars on a clear winter's night, dazzlingly beautiful. Gold and white sparks lit glowing halos in the air. It made no sense. She looked again. Now she saw the outlines of large, square buildings in the spaces between the lights. This was where she'd been held. The refinery. Strange how beautiful it looked in the dark.

  “Cait!”

  It was Danny, nearby, in the shadows beyond the witch's circle, trying to whisper and shout at the same time. She rose to her feet and ran toward him, between her mum and gran. She embraced him. A sharp pain across her shoulders made her gasp as he squeezed her.

  “What is it? Are you hurt?” He held her at arm's length, looking at her anxiously.

  “I'm fine,” said Cait. “Could do with a bath.”

  “But your neck. How did that happen?” He looked horrified.

  “It's OK, they didn't touch me.” She pulled her tee-shirt off her shoulder and tried to look down. A huge bruise, livid purple, spread across her shoulder beneath her bra-strap. It throbbed heavily, at its core the sharp pain she'd felt when they'd broken through the membrane and opened the pathway.

  “It was the magic,” she said. “When we opened the pathway so I could get out.”

  Danny was shaking his head, looking at her shoulder. “Your gran was right. That stuff is scary. You'll kill yourself with it if you're not careful.”

  “We had no choice. This is better than what would have happened to me. They were going to take me through to the other world, Danny. I was going to be some sort of gift for their king.”

  Danny hugged her again, more carefully this time. “You're safe now. I …”

  Surprising herself as much as him, Cait kissed him on the mouth, smothering the rest of his words. It was wonderful to be with him. To be free, outside, with friends. They kissed until they needed to breathe.

  “But what about you?” she asked him. “That thing threw you so hard against the wall.”

  “I was winded, that's all. No damage done. Apart from, you know, not looking very cool.”

  “You shouldn't have started going out with me, you know,” she said. “This is all too much. You should have stayed with Lil. At least no one would have tried to actually kill you then.”

  “Ah, so it's official then? We're going out?”

  She laughed. “Well, here we are, out together. I mean, it's maybe not a dream date or anything. But, well, yeah. I guess so.”

  “And you're a witch.”

  “Looks like it. Is that a problem?”

  “Oh, I think the goth look suits you. But does this mean you'll have to get a broomstick?”

  “Never seen Mum or Gran with one. Only a hoover. I guess modern witches don't use them. I don't think they'd be very comfortable to ride, somehow.”

  “Come on,” he said, smiling. “We have to get out of here. The getaway car is waiting with its motor running.” He put his arm around her waist and led her along a path beside the factory fence until they came to a road. As promised, a car was waiting: a large, powerful-looking executive car with its engine purring and its doors open.

  “We'll have to squeeze into the front-seat together,” said Danny.

  “OK. So, who's driving?”

  “Johnny Electric.”

  “Very funny.”

  She looked inside at the man in the driver's seat. The long-lost, presumed dead, ex-guitarist of Screaming Machinery grinned at her. “Hi Cait. So, you OK?”

  There was another moment when she wondered if this, all of this, really was a dream. This made no sense. It was too much to take in. Then came shouts from nearby: her mum calling to them to be ready.

  “Yeah,” said Cait. “Yeah, just … fine.”

  She climbed in next to Johnny, Danny squeezing in after her. In the wing-mirror she could see her mum, her gran and the young witch fleeing toward them, exhaustion and pain clear in their movements. The alarming man with the tattoos followed, knife still in his hand. At first she thought he was chasing them. But no, he was deliberately running slower so he didn't overtake the three women. He glanced backward repeatedly, alert for any dangers. Numerous cuts decorated his body. Blood flowed freely from a gash on one arm.

  An alarm blared from the refinery. More lights flickered on, as bright as daylight. Engines roared to life behind the fence, motor-bikes and cars. There were shouts too, then gun-shots and more shouting.

  “Better strap yourselves in,” said Johnny.

  The young witch hurled herself into the back of the car to be followed, more slowly, by her gran and then her mother. The warrior came last. He only had one foot in the car when Johnny hit the accelerator. The car leaped forward, engine screaming, tyres scrabbling for grip. They surged away from the refinery, picking up speed. The warrior was still not in properly, one leg flailing in the air. Finally he got himself onboard, hauled in by the others. They slammed the doors shut. The man was in a heap at his mum's feet, panting heavily. The car engine growled as Johnny climbed rapidly through the gears.

  “So,” said her gran after a few moments. “I don't suppose anyone brought a flask of tea with them did they?”

  They sped down the M56 toward Manchester, Johnny keeping to the outside lane as they touched 100 miles per hour. Behind them three cars and at least six motorcycles veered in pursuit. In the sky, a helicopter tracked them.

  “Why the hurry?” asked Cait. “We can't outrun them. They can just wait till we run out of petrol or something.”

  “We need to get back to Manchester, love,” said her mum, her eyes barely open. She was physically exhausted. All three of them were. The effort they'd put into forming the pathway must have been enormous. Her gran was already asleep. The young witch, introduced to her as Fer, slumped against the car door, one hand on her forehead as if she had a migraine. Silver jewellery in her eyebrow was visible beneath her clutched fingers.

  Cait reached back to squeeze her mum's hand. Hopefully there would be time later to talk to her, to all of them, properly. There was much to be said. For now, it was enough to be away from that place. Through the car's rear window she could see their pursuers, lights blazing, easily keeping pace with them. They weren't free yet. Would they ever be? Could they ever hope to fight these people?

  She glanced at the man sitting in the rear foot well. He said nothing, cleaning the wound on his upper arm with antiseptic from a first-aid kit her gran had given him. Who was he? And, come to that, who was Fer? They must be related; they looked alike. But how could that be? There was so much she didn't understand.

  “Why Manchester?” she said, more to Danny and Johnny. “What's going to happen there?”

  “We're going to another portal.” The voice came not from any of the people in the car but from the dashboard.

  “You … have a talking car as well?” she asked.

  “Nah, it's a creature from the other world,” said Danny. “It's speaking to us through the phone there.” A mobile was docked into a cradle in the car's fascia.

  “What sort of creature? An undain?”

  “Certainly not!” said the voice from the phone. “I am an archaeon. And it is thanks to me you were able to escape from that place.”

  Danny rolled his eyes but said nothing.

  The screen of the mobile showed a colourful line-drawing, like something from an illuminated manuscript. It was a creature, a small dragon perhaps. It was beautiful, if pixellated, the colours shifting as it moved. It walked around the screen, occasionally turning its head toward them.

  “Then, thank you,” said Cait, feeling a little foolish. “Um, what exactly did you do?”

  “I switched off the Spirit collectors in the refinery, of course. Did you think your magic started working because you'd miraculously become all-powerful, little witch?
Then I deactivated the alarms and sent confusing images around their security systems. Actually, that was all very easy. Breaking into their systems was the hard part. I had to tunnel through three different firewalls. A password had me stumped for a while but I was able to dictionary-attack it by roping in several million zombies.”

  “Zombies?” said Cait.

  “It means computers,” said Danny. “Computers on the net it was able to control through some back-door exploit.”

  “They have computers in the other world?”

  “No,” said Danny. “As far as I can gather, it lived inside books there but discovered the internet when it got here.”

  “It's a bookwyrm,” said Johnny. “Kind of like a small dragon thing but not really in the same world as us. It spends its whole life feeding on the words, the ideas, in books.”

  “It uploaded itself,” said Danny. “It seems very pleased with it all. It keeps going on about all the new stuff it's finding out. Says it's replicated itself and sent copies into computers the whole world over.”

  “Cool,” said Cait.

  “Best to humour it,” said Danny.

  “It's just a good job they hadn't activated the old steam-powered engine,” continued the archaeon. “Even I would have had no control over that. Fortunately, we were able to free you in time.”

  “And this portal we're driving to. It goes to this other world?” asked Cait.

  “No, no. It is only a Lesser Portal,” said the voice from the mobile. “It leads elsewhere within this world, not through to another. It is transient, too. It opens for only three seconds. That is why we have to hurry. We have to be there in thirty-two minutes, twenty-six seconds. I doubt Genera will even know it exists. It's the sort of thing only an archaeon would know. If we enter the portal at precisely the right moment, we'll go through and it will close behind us. Then it won't open again for another one thousand, four hundred and forty-four minutes. So it will give us, give you that is, some time to escape.”

  “This is all assuming we get there in time,” said Danny. “If there are traffic-jams or something, or we have an accident because of the insane speed we're going, we'll miss the portal and be trapped.”

  “No worries,” said Johnny, once again cutting into the middle-lane to flash past a BMW. “It's all under control.”

  “There are no traffic jams ahead,” said the archaeon. “I have, of course, checked. And I've calculated your journey precisely. If you maintain a steady one hundred and one miles per hour on this motorway, then take the M66 clockwise and the M602 for the city centre, you will be on time. Almost certainly.”

  The neon lights along the motorway stretched before them like a tunnel in the night. Up ahead, the sky was beginning to brighten. A clock on the dashboard told her it was just gone five o'clock in the morning. Cait let herself relax a little. The drone of the engine calmed her. For a brief time she was safe, inside a bubble between the horrors she'd escaped and whatever lay ahead. The thing to do was to make the most of it, take pleasure in the moment. She rested her head on Danny's shoulder.

  Johnny tapped out a rhythm on the steering-wheel as he drove, humming some song. He glanced across at her and grinned. So, he must have been in the other world, too? How had that happened?

  “I was really into Screaming Machinery for those first two albums,” she said. “I mean, the stuff without you on is good, too. But your guitar made all the difference.”

  “So there are new albums now?”

  “Two more. And a live one.”

  “Who plays guitar?”

  “They take turns. Singh and Sarah. To be honest, they've gone a bit electro. A bit, you know, sonic landscapes.”

  “No!”

  “They still rock though.”

  Johnny thought about that for a few moments, staring fixedly ahead at the road as he steered with one hand. He chuckled to himself. “So, what did you hear about my disappearance?” he asked. “Big mystery, yeah?”

  “Yeah. There were loads of stories going around. You'd jumped off a bridge, you'd gone crazy, you'd changed your identity. People reported seeing you all over the place, on a beach in India, backpacking in the Amazon. Some said you'd been abducted by aliens, crazy stuff like that.”

  “What did you think?”

  “You disappeared on Glastonbury Tor, a few hours after performing on the Pyramid Stage. They found your guitar but nothing else. There was no note or clue. The other members of the band insisted they knew nothing about it. So I guess I thought … I hoped … you'd gone off-planet for a bit. I mean, not literally. Just got out of the spotlight, gone into hiding.”

  “Actually, that's not far from the truth. Although it was weirder than that. And, at least at first, it wasn't intentional.”

  “So what happened?”

  “Well, OK, I'll tell you the story. Haven't been able to tell anyone else these past couple of years. After the show, I went up the Tor like you said. Took my guitar and walked there. It took a few hours, but it was a warm summer night and I wasn't tired. The moon was this smudge of yellow in a hazy sky, I remember. It seemed like it was, you know, lighting my way. The sounds of the festival died away behind me. I wasn't too sure of the way but I was pretty sure I'd get there if I followed the road.

  “I wanted to clear my head, yeah? The gig had gone really well, like you say. The band were on top form. We'd rehearsed hard. But I felt like I'd played enough for a bit. Everything had become so intense. Sometimes, it wasn't much fun any more. The cycle of touring and recording, you know? You live out of a van and, if you get lucky - as we did - you get to live out of a tour-bus instead.”

  He smiled as he drove. “It sounds lame, I know. It's not like doing a real job or anything. But still, I wanted to think about what I was doing, where I was going. So I sat up there for a long time, looking out over the world, just me and Mr. Shankly. My guitar. As the sky lightened in the east it was beautiful, strands of mist drifting across the fields, glowing as if the light itself had paused to rest. There was this stillness, breathless expectation. And I began to strum this tune. Playing has always helped me think. It's like walking, yeah?”

  “Yeah,” said Cait.

  “OK, so after a while I find this tune. Or it finds me. But it's good, really good. It comes from nowhere, no effort, like all the best stuff does. I get into it more and more, forgetting why I'm up there, who I am even. I can't really do it full justice on the guitar; it needs orchestras. But still, I'm caught up in it. It shifts and moves, never repeating the same theme but clearly the same music. Like, variations I guess. I'm chasing it with my fingers, reaching for it.

  “What happens next I'm not too clear about. I recall feeling like I'm inside it, like I'm riding it. I know I lost consciousness at some point 'cos there's a blank there in my mind. There was also, I distinctly remember, a clear moment of choice. I hadn't lost control; I could tell what was happening. But I accepted it, welcomed it.”

  “What? What did you accept?”

  “I let the music take me. Leave everything behind. When I woke up I was in this other world. In Andar. I didn't have a clue where I was or what was happening. And it felt bloody great. It felt like … being reborn.”

  “Can you remember the tune?” asked Danny.

  “I couldn't capture it again. I think maybe I could only do it on Mr. Shankly, because that was the guitar I grew up with, learned to play on. If there's one thing I've missed from this world, it's my guitar. Strange huh? Oh, but I did hear the music again, though. Just recently.”

  “Where?”

  “In Andar. Place called the Witch's Isle. They have this song they sing without ever stopping. And what I'd played was clearly a theme, a riff, from that: the Song of Andar.”

  “You were at a Half Portal,” said the archaeon. “Possibly where there was once a Greater Portal that had sealed up. There are places where the worlds are close without touching. It is well documented. The music you played resonated with that of the other world and it brou
ght you together, took you there.”

  “Ah, OK,” said Johnny. “Thought it must be something like that.”

  “If you'd asked I would have explained it all to you,” said the archaeon.

  They were on the M66 now, the ring road. They flashed underneath the bridge where she and Danny had been shot at. There was no sign of the pile-up. Had anyone died here amid the carnage? It already seemed such a long time ago, although it was only a day and a bit. She was lost in thought, going over and over everything that had happened to her, trying to make sense of it all. Was the undain somewhere nearby, pursuing them in one of the cars? Was Nox? More than anything, she decided, she wanted to close her eyes and sleep.

  “The end of the motorway is one mile away,” she heard the archaeon say. “Now you must follow the route I'm displaying on the SatNav very carefully.”

  “Sure,” said Johnny, grinning. “Got it.”

  They neared the end of the M602: the short, straight motorway that arrowed into the heart of Manchester. Where were they going to go from here? Their speed was suddenly alarming as buildings and vehicles gathered around them. Traffic-lights ahead showed an array of greens and reds, making it unclear whether they should stop or not.

  “Ah, excellent, the Police are setting up roadblocks,” said the voice from the dashboard. “Yes … closing off roads to channel us and laying stingers to burst the tyres.”

  “That's a good thing?” asked Cait.

  “It's an expected thing. It follows their agreed protocol. My plan depends upon them doing so.”

  Cait glanced into the rear of the car. Everyone was awake, peering anxiously ahead as the car slowed into the denser traffic of the city. Through the rear window she could see their pursuers, flashing blue lights among them. Her mum smiled reassurance at her.

  “Not long now 'till we escape, love,” she said. Cait smiled back, trying not to look worried.