by Garth Nix
‘Go!’ Ripton coughed, gesturing with his thumb at the dumbwaiter.
‘What about … ridge?’
‘Leave him!’
‘You go!’
Ripton shook his head, but when Nick crawled across to Lackridge, Ripton climbed into the dumbwaiter. The professor was a dead weight, too heavy for Nick to move without standing up. As he tried again, an unopened bottle exploded behind him, showering the back of his neck with hot glass. The smoke was getting thicker with every second, and the heat more intense.
‘Get up!’ Nick coughed. ‘You’ll die here!’
Lackridge didn’t move.
Flames licked at Nick’s back and he smelled burning hair. He could do nothing more for the professor. He had only reduced his own chances of survival. Cradling his arms around his head, Nick dived into the dumbwaiter.
He had hoped for clean air there, but it was no better. The elevator shaft was acting as a chimney, sucking up the smoke. Nick felt his throat and lungs closing up and his arms and legs growing weaker. He thrust himself through the hatch, climbed onto the roof of the dumbwaiter, and felt about for the hatch cover, slapping it down in the hope that this might stop some of the smoke. Then, coughing and spitting, he found the first missing bricks and began to climb.
He could hear Ripton somewhere up above him, coughing and swearing. But Nick wasn’t listening for Ripton. All his senses were attuned to what might be happening lower down. Would the creature come through the fire and swarm up the shaft?
The smoke did begin to thin a little as Nick climbed, but it was still thick enough for him to smash his head into Ripton’s boots after he had climbed up about forty feet. The sudden shout it provoked confirmed that Ripton had been thinking about where the creature was as well.
‘Sorry!’ Nick gasped. ‘I don’t think it’s following us.’
‘There’s a door here. I’m standing on the edge of it, but I can’t slide the bloody thing—Got it!’
Light spilled into the shaft as smoke wafted out of it. Hard white gaslight. Ripton stepped through, then turned to help Nick pull himself up and over.
They were in a long whitewashed room lined from floor to ceiling with shelves and shelves of packaged food of all varieties. Tins and boxes and packets and sacks and bottles and puncheons and jars.
There was a door at the other end. It was open, and a white-clad cook’s assistant was staring at them openmouthed.
‘Fire!’ shouted Nick, waving his arms to clear the smoke that was billowing out fast from behind him. He started to walk forward, continuing to half shout, his voice raspy and dulled by smoke. ‘Fire in the cellars! Everyone needs to get out, to the … Which field is closest, with hay?’
‘The home meadow,’ croaked Ripton. He cleared his throat and tried again. ‘The home meadow.’
‘Tell the staff to evacuate the house and assemble on the home meadow,’ Nick ordered in his most commanding manner. ‘I will tell the guests.’
‘Yes, sir!’ stammered the cook’s assistant. There was still a lot of smoke coming out, even though Ripton had managed to close the door to the dumbwaiter. ‘Cook will be angry!’
‘Hurry up!’ said Nick. He strode past the assistant and along a short corridor, to find himself in the main kitchen, where half-a-dozen immaculately white-clad men were engaged in an orderly but complex dance around a number of counters and stove tops, directed by the rapid snap of commands from a small, thin man with the tallest and whitest hat.
‘Fire!’ roared Nick. ‘Get out to the home meadow! Fire!’
He repeated this as he strode through the kitchen and out the swinging doors immediately after a waiter who showed the excellence of his training by hardly looking behind him for more than a second.
As Nick had thought, the dinner guests were making so much noise of their own that they would never have heard any kind of commotion deep in the earth under their feet. Even when he burst out of the servants’ corridor and jumped onto an empty chair that was probably his near the head of the table, only five or six of the forty guests looked around.
Then Ripton fired two rapid shots into the ceiling.
‘Ladies and gentlemen, I do beg your pardon!’ shouted Nick. ‘There is a fire in the house! Please get up at once and follow Mr. Ripton here to the home meadow!’
Silence met this announcement for perhaps half a second; then Nick was assaulted with questions, comments, and laughter. It was such a babble that he could hardly make out any one coherent stream of words; but clearly half the guests thought this was some game of Dorrance’s; a quarter of them wanted to go and get their jewels, favorite coats, or lapdogs; and the last quarter intended to keep eating and drinking whether the house burned down around them or not.
‘This isn’t a joke!’ Nick screamed, his voice barely penetrating the hubbub. ‘If you don’t go now, you’ll be dead in fifteen minutes! Men have already died!’
Perhaps ten of the guests heard him. Six of them pushed their chairs back and stood. Their movement caused a momentary lull, and Nick tried again.
‘I’m Nicholas Sayre,’ he said, pointing at his burnt hair and blackened dress shirt, and his bloodied cuffs. ‘The Chief Minister’s nephew. I am not playing games for Dorrance. Look at me, will you! Get out now or you will die here!’
He jumped down as merry pandemonium turned into panic, and almost knocked down the butler, who had been standing by to either assist or restrain him; Nick couldn’t be sure which.
‘You’re D13, right?’ he asked the imposing figure. ‘There’s been an accident downstairs. There is a fire, but there’s an … animal … loose. Like a tiger, but much stronger, fiercer. No door can hold it. We need to get everyone out on the home meadow, and get them building a ring of hay. Make it about fifty yards in diameter, and we’ll gather in the middle and set it alight to keep the animal out. You understand?’
‘I believe I do, sir,’ said the butler, with a low bow and a slight glance at Ripton, who nodded. The butler then turned to look at the footmen, who stood impassively against the wall as guests ran past them, some of them screaming, some giggling, but most fearful and silent. He tuned his voice to a penetrating pitch and said, ‘James, Erik, Lancel, Benjamin! You will lead the guests to the home meadow. Lukas, Ned, Luther, Zekall! You will alert Mrs Krane, Mr Rowntree, Mr Gowing, and Miss Grayne, to have all their staff immediately go to the home meadow. You will accompany them. Patrick, go and ring the dinner gong for the next three minutes without stopping, then run to the home meadow.’
‘Good!’ snapped Nick. ‘Don’t let anyone stay behind, and if you can take any bottles of paraffin or white spirits out to the meadow, do so! Ripton, lead the way to the library.’
‘No, sir,’ said Ripton. ‘My job’s to get you out of here. Come on!’
‘We can bar the doors! What the—’
Nick felt himself suddenly restrained by a bear hug around his arms and chest. He tried to throw himself forward but couldn’t move whoever had picked him up. He kicked back but was held off the ground, his feet uselessly pounding the air.
‘Sorry, sir,’ said Ripton, edging well back so he couldn’t be kicked. ‘Orders. Take him out to the meadow, Llew.’
Nick snapped his head back, hoping to strike his captor’s nose, but whoever held him was not only extremely big and strong but also a practiced wrestler. Nick craned around and saw he was in the grip of a very tall and broad footman, one he had noticed when he had first arrived, polishing a suit of armour in the entrance hall that, though man-size, came up only to his shoulder.
‘Nay, you shan’t escape my clutch, Master,’ said Llew, striding out of the dining room like a determined child with a doll. ‘Won the belt at Applethwick Fair seven times for the wrestling, I have. You get comfortable and rest. It baint far to the home meadow.’
Nick pretended to relax as they joined the column of people going through the main doors and out across the graveled drive and lawn. It was still quite light, and a harvest moon was rising,
big and kind and golden. Many of the people slowed down as the sudden hysteria of Nick’s warning ebbed. It was a beautiful night, and the home meadow looked rustic and inviting, with the haycocks still standing, the work of spreading the hay into a defensive ring not yet begun, though the butler was already directing servants to the task.
Halfway across the lawn, Nick suddenly arched his back and tried to twist sideways and out of Llew’s grip, but to no avail. The big man just laughed.
The lawn and the meadow were separated by a fence in a ditch, or ha-ha, so as not to spoil the view. Most of the guests and staff were crossing this on a narrow mathematical bridge that supposedly featured no nails or screws, but Llew simply climbed down. They were halfway up the other side when there was a sudden, awful screech behind them, a shrill howl that came from no human throat or any animal the Ancelstierrans had ever heard.
‘Let me go!’ Nick ordered. He couldn’t see what was happening, save that the people in front had suddenly started running, many of them off in random directions, not to what he hoped would be safety. If they could get the hay spread quickly enough and get it alight …
‘Too late to go back now, sir,’ said Ripton. ‘Let him go, Llew! Run!’
Nick looked over his shoulder for a second as they ran the last hundred yards to the centre of the meadow. Smoke was pouring out of one wing of the house, forming a thick, puffy worm that reached up to the sky, black and horrid, with red light flickering at its base. But that was not what held his attention.
The creature was standing on the steps of the house, its head bent over a human victim it held carelessly under one arm. Even from a distance, Nick knew it was drinking blood.
There were people running behind Nick, but not many; and while they might have been dawdling seconds before, they were sprinting now. For a moment Nick hoped that everyone had gotten out of the house. Then he saw movement behind the creature. A man casually walked outside to stand next to it. The creature turned to him, and Nick felt the grip of horror as he expected to see it snatch the person up. But it didn’t. The creature returned to its current victim, and the man stood by its side.
‘Dorrance,’ said Ripton. He drew his revolver, rested the barrel on his left forearm, and aimed for a moment, before holstering the weapon again. ‘Too far. I’ll wait till the bastard’s closer.’
‘Don’t worry about Dorrance for the moment,’ said Nick. He looked around. The guests were all clustered together in the centre of the notional fifty-yard diameter circle, and only the servants were spreading hay, under the direction of the butler. Nick shook his head and walked over to the guests. They surged toward him in turn, once again all speaking at the same time.
‘I demand to know—’
‘What is going on?’
‘Is that … that animal really—’
‘Clearly this is not properly—’
‘This is an outrage! Who is respons—’
‘Shut up!’ roared Nick. ‘Shut up! That animal is from the Old Kingdom! It will kill all of us if we don’t keep it out with fire, which is why everybody needs to start spreading hay in a ring! Hurry!’
Without waiting to see their response, Nick ran to the nearest haycock and tore off a huge armful of hay and ran to add it to the circle. When he looked up, some of the guests were helping the servants, but most were still bickering and complaining.
He looked across at the house. The creature was no longer on the steps. There was a body sprawled there, but Dorrance had vanished as well.
‘Start pouring the paraffin!’ shouted Nick. ‘Get more hay on the ring! It’s coming!’
The butler and some of the footmen began to run around the circle, spraying white petroleum spirit out of four-gallon tins.
‘Anyone with matches or a cigarette lighter, stand by the ring!’ yelled Nick. He couldn’t see the creature, but his forehead was beginning to throb, and when he pulled his dagger out an inch, the Charter Marks were starting to glow.
Two people suddenly jumped the hay and ran across the meadow, heading for the drive and the front gate. A young man and woman, the woman throwing aside her shoes as she ran. She was the one who had come to his door, Nick saw. Tesrya, as she had called herself.
‘Come back!’ shouted Nick. ‘Come back—’
His voice fell away as a tall, strange shape emerged from the sunken ditch of the ha-ha, its shadow slinking ahead. Its arms looked impossibly long in the twilight, and its legs had three joints, not two. It began to lope slowly after the running couple, and for a brief instant Nick thought perhaps they might have a chance.
Then the creature lowered its head. Its legs stretched; the lope became a run and then a blurring sprint that caught it up with the man and woman in a matter of seconds. It knocked them down with its clubbed hands as it overshot them, turning to come back slowly as they flopped about on the ground like fresh-caught fish.
Tesrya was screaming, but the screams stopped abruptly as the creature bent over her.
Nick looked away and saw a patch of tall yellow flowers near his feet. Corn daisies, fooled into opening by the bright moonlight.
… wrapped in three chains. One of silver, one of lead, and one made from braided daisies …
‘Ripton!’
‘Yes, sir!’
Nick jumped as Ripton answered from slightly behind him and to his left.
‘Get anyone who can make flower chains braiding these daisies, and those poppies over there too. The maids might know how.’
‘What?’
‘I know what it sounds like, but there’s a chance that thing can be restrained with chains made from flowers.’
‘But …’
‘The Old Kingdom. Magic. Just make the chains!’
‘I knows the braiding of flowers,’ Llew said, bending down to gently pick a daisy in his huge hand. ‘As does my kin here, my nieces Ellyn and Alys, who are chambermaids and will have needle and thread in their apron pockets.’
‘Get to it then, please,’ said Nick. He looked across at where the young couple had fallen. The creature had been there only seconds ago, but now it was gone. ‘Damn! Anyone see where it went?’
‘No,’ snapped Ripton. He spun around on the spot as he tried to scan the whole area outside the defensive circle.
‘Light the hay! Light the hay! Quickly!’
Ripton struggled with his matches, striking them on his heel, but others were quicker. Guests with platinum and gold cigarette lighters flicked them open and on and held them to the hay; kitchen staff struck long, heavy-headed matches and threw them; and one old buffer wound and released a clockwork cigar fire starter, an affectation that had finally come into its own.
Accelerated by paraffin, brandy, and table polish, the ring of hay burst into flames. But not everywhere. While the fire leapt high and smoke coiled toward the moon over most of the ring, one segment about ten feet long remained stubbornly dark, dank, and unlit. The meadow was sunken there, and wet, and the paraffin had not been spread evenly, pooling in a hole.
‘There it is!’
The creature came out of the shadow of the oaks near the drive. Its strangely jointed legs propelled it across the meadow in a sprint that would have let it run down a leopard. It moved impossibly, horribly fast, coming around the outside of the ring. Nick and Ripton started to run too, even though they knew they had no chance of beating the creature.
It would be at the gap in seconds. Only one person was close enough to do anything—a kitchen maid running with a lit taper clutched in her right hand, her left holding up her apron.
The creature was far faster, but it had farther to go. It accelerated again, becoming a blur of movement.
Everyone within the ring watched the race, all of them desperately hoping that the fire would simply spread of its own accord, all of them wishing that this fatal hole in their shield of fire would not depend upon a young woman, an easily extinguished taper, and an apron that was too long for its wearer.
Six feet from the edge
of the hay, the apron slipped just enough for the girl to trip over the hem. She staggered, tried to recover her balance, and fell, the taper dropping from her hand.
Though she must have been shocked and bruised by the fall, the maid did not lie there. Even as the creature bunched its muscles for the last dash to the gap, the young woman picked up the still-burning taper and threw it the last few feet into the center of the dark section.
It caught instantly, fed by a pool of paraffin that had collected in the dip in the ground. Blue fire flashed over the hay, and flames licked up toward the yellow moon.
The creature shrieked in frustration, its hooked heels throwing up great clods of grass and soil as it checked its headlong rush. For a moment it looked as if it might try to jump the fire, but instead it turned and loped back to the ha-ha, disappearing out of sight.
Nick and Ripton stopped and bent over double, resting their hands on their knees, panting as they tried to recover from their desperate sprint.
‘It doesn’t like fire,’ Ripton coughed out after a minute. ‘But we haven’t got enough hay to keep this circle going for more than an hour or so. What happens then?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Nick. He was acutely aware of his ignorance. None of this would be happening if the creature hadn’t drunk his blood. His blood, pumping furiously around his body that very second but a mystery to him. He knew nothing about its peculiar properties. He didn’t even know what it could do, or why it had been so strong that the creature needed to dilute it with the blood of others.
‘Can you do any of that Old Kingdom magic the Scouts talk about?’
‘No,’ said Nick. ‘I … I’m rather useless, I’m afraid. I’ve been planning to go to the Old Kingdom … to learn about, well, a lot of things. But I haven’t managed to get there yet.’
‘So we’re pretty well stuffed,’ said Ripton. ‘When the fire burns down, that thing will just waltz in here and kill us all.’
‘We might get help,’ said Nick.
Ripton snorted. ‘Not the help we need. I told you. Bullets don’t hurt it. I doubt even an artillery shell would do anything, if a gunner could hit something moving that fast.’