The Black Amulet

by J. R. Wallis

  ‘Jones, that phone thing of yours – can it find a picture of a dinghy with oars on the Internet?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Jones.

  ‘What good is that going to do?’ asked Ruby. ‘We can’t row across the water using a picture.’

  ‘You’ll see.’

  As they walked the rest of the way, Jones scrolled through his phone and found a suitable image. Standing on the riverbank, Thomas Gabriel studied the picture and nodded and conjured white sparks over his hands. He cast the spell and there appeared on the water, with the river lapping gently at its sides, an exact physical duplicate of the boat on the phone screen.

  ‘Easy enough,’ he said to Ruby. ‘I created those duplicate bottles of ascan on the last island and this is just an advanced version of the spell. I’ve been learning all its variations on the journey.’

  ‘Oh, yeah?’

  ‘Be prepared,’ said Thomas Gabriel and smirked.

  He nodded approvingly at the phone. ‘I think I might be onto something here, using technology and magic too. I’m surprised no one has thought of bringing more technology into the Order.’ He grinned and went to inspect the boat.

  ‘That amulet is definitely coming off,’ Ruby whispered to Jones. ‘And not just because it’s dangerous . . . It’s turning him into a right—’

  An owl hooted as it took off from a nearby tree and sailed out over the field.

  Thomas Gabriel turned to look at her. ‘Did you say something?’

  Ruby pursed her lips and nodded. ‘I was just saying to Jones, I wonder where we should hide the amulet when we’re done. Drewman told us to put it somewhere no one’ll ever find it. I think I’d throw it in the river.’

  Thomas Gabriel’s smile turned sour at the edges. His fingers toyed with the amulet. He shot her a dirty look before turning back to the boat.

  There were two eyots in the middle of the river, end to end, both of them covered with dense trees, the canopy of spring leaves hiding the ground.

  ‘It’s the first one,’ said Ruby, consulting the map she’d brought from the van. They stood on the riverbank, watching out for anything suspicious, the newly created dinghy bobbing on the black surface of the water. A goods train rumbled past on the opposite bank, the long line of yellow wagons visible under the lights that hung their heads over the track.

  ‘Okay then, let’s go’ said Jones. ‘But keep your eyes open. It’s important to keep looking out for anything suspicious.’

  They paddled across to Appletree Eyot. It was a wider stretch of water than they had encountered before and the flow of the river was tougher to paddle against this time, trying to push them downstream.

  Ruby kept watch as the boys rowed. She sat in the prow, scanning the bank of the eyot for any movement and watching the surface of the water too. The moonlight was bright, but there were dark patches between the trees too deep to fathom. The gun in her hand was also looking. Ruby could feel how tense it was, ready to fire if she saw anything.

  They tied up the boat as before, stepped onto the eyot and picked their way through the trees. Thomas Gabriel cast the required spell for finding things hidden with magic and the horns appeared on his hands again, wiggling in the air. Suddenly, they stiffened and all pointed in the same direction, towards the dense undergrowth.

  The vegetation was thick and wet. Thomas Gabriel trampled it down with his boots, taking great strides and stamping down hard to force a path through. The others followed behind him. No one said a word. Their hearing prickled as they tried to listen for anything out of the ordinary.

  ‘There,’ said Thomas Gabriel, stopping at a point he decided must be about halfway up the eyot. He pointed at the bright hole ahead, easy enough to spot in the dark, and suspended in the air at roughly chest-height. The others saw it too and no one said anything as they listened before going on. Nothing but the sounds of distant traffic. A siren wailed right on the edge of their hearing and then was gone.

  Jones studied the ground and the trees around them. No marks. No suspicious bumps or humps in the earth. Thomas Gabriel moved forward and Jones didn’t stop him. He watched to see if the boy’s movement might alert any creatures. But nothing came bounding out at them. There were no bright eyes blinking in the dark. Not even an odd smell, except for the damp earth. So he walked on too. But he was wound tight inside, ready for anything.

  The éghþyrl was the same size as the others, but, as Ruby looked closer before cutting into it, she realized it looked different.

  She bent in to look more closely and saw the hole was slightly misshapen. Instead of being a clean circle, it was bobbly around the edges as if something had nibbled it. She ran a finger round it and felt little nicks and dints on the inside. Confused, she bent down and looked through the hole like it was a telescope, shutting her other eye for a better view.

  ‘Oh,’ she said.

  Jones had felt the little strings in his heart tighten as soon as he’d seen the hole was a little bit misshapen. The unexpected was not usually a good sign. As Ruby peered through the hole, he’d heard a rustling sound and looked frantically about. But nothing had appeared. He guessed it might have been the leaves on the trees or a small animal scuttling through the undergrowth. And then he thought he heard a faint sound, like air coming out of a tyre.

  ‘Jones!’ said Ruby. ‘You should see this.’ She was dragging his arm, pulling him down to have a look through the hole, but he wouldn’t bend. He was listening out for the hissing noise. His fists clenched tighter when he heard it again, but a little louder this time. He shrugged off Ruby’s hand and heard her say something. Judging by the tone of her voice, it wasn’t a compliment. But he was too alert to the other sound to care about that.

  The hiss came again. Jones was sure he’d heard the same noise before when he’d been hunting the Badlands with Maitland. But what was it?

  Something caught the corner of his eye, a movement among the trees. He thought it was mist at first, but it moved like it was alive. With an intelligence. The blue tinge to it was mesmerizing.

  A lock clicked in his head. The answer came to him.

  ‘Wraith!’ he shouted. But it only came out as a whisper as he tottered backwards, fearful of the creature.

  Thomas Gabriel was dimly aware of Jones saying something. He was busy crouching down to look through the éghþyrl to find out what Ruby had seen. When he peered through, he saw not a small compartment, as he had expected, but a whole chamber, as deep as a cave. It was full of items, packed out like the storeroom he’d once stood in at Deschamps & Sons while his Master had argued with one of the store’s clerks about the order of Slap Dust he’d been expecting to collect that day.

  Thomas Gabriel whirled his eye round the hole, looking this way and that for the last golden box. But he couldn’t see it.

  ‘Wraith!’ Jones’s voice pierced his thinking. Even before he whirled round, Thomas Gabriel had realized a few important facts at the same time. The þurhfarennesse had become home to a Wraith. Such creatures were attracted to magical items and no doubt the þurhfarennesse had proved too appealing for it to resist. Somehow it had got in and made the place its own.

  By the time Thomas Gabriel had removed his eye from the hole, and stood up, Jones and Ruby were already backing away. It distracted him for a moment and then he looked beyond them as something else flickered at the edge of his field of vision. A long finger of mist, unfurling into a point like the tip of a spear, was only about half a metre away from him. It caught him on the shoulder before he could twist to dodge it and the tip disappeared through the fabric of his coat and his clothes. He felt it puncture his skin. It was like being speared by an icicle.

  The dull pain rang like a low-sounding bell for a brief moment and then Thomas Gabriel felt nothing, his shoulder numbed by whatever had impaled him. The cold seemed to be in his head too. For, as he raised his hands and tried to conjure up a spell, there was no spark in his brain. It seemed that all the words that he needed were being sucked out of him
before he could say anything.

  The Wraith materialized out of the block of mist in front of him and he saw its hand plunged into his shoulder. He wanted to move but he couldn’t. The Wraith reached for the amulet with its other hand, the misty fingers like tendrils wrapping round it. The creature’s head was dipped in concentration. Even though its face was a blur of mist, the dark red eyes the only defining feature, Thomas Gabriel could tell it was fascinated by the amulet and anger surged through him as it touched the object. The red eyes seemed to shine brighter. The mist that made up the Wraith’s body became darker for some reason.

  Thomas Gabriel shouted to tell it to stop, but all that came out was a low grunt. The Wraith picked at the amulet, lifting it part way off his wrist, and Thomas Gabriel heard an angry drumming in his ears. It blotted out everything, all the fear and pain. He was jealous of the Wraith wanting the amulet as much as him. Unless he stopped it, he knew the creature would take it and keep it with all the other magical items it had hoarded in its home, inside the þurhfarennesse.

  The amulet seemed to be interested in the Wraith too. The two snakes’ heads looked at the creature. Thomas Gabriel dimly remembered what Drewman had said, that he had found the amulet among Wraiths and had presumed they had made it.

  Before the amulet was removed from his wrist, Thomas Gabriel’s anger sharpened his brain enough for him to cast a spell which was full of rage. He didn’t want to lose the amulet to anyone or anything. From his hand flew a great barrage of white sparks that hit the Wraith so hard the creature was knocked backwards with a scream. Thomas Gabriel was hurled the other way and, although his eyes closed instinctively and he curled into a ball to protect himself, he knew the amulet had been taken from him, dragged from his wrist by the Wraith. He knew it from the stab of pain in his heart.

  And then he hit something hard behind him and crumpled to the ground.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Ruby opened her eyes. The dark sky above her swirled until she focused on a bright star and everything slowed to a stop. Blinking seemed to make her brain spark and the first thought she had was that she was alive.

  She began to shiver because she realized she was cold too, lying in the wet undergrowth. Her hands crept about like spiders, testing out the ground. She had no idea where the gun was.

  When she heard a train rattling past on the tracks on the other side of the river, she remembered where she was and why. More importantly, she remembered the Wraith. Sitting up quickly made her head hurt and she thought she was going to be sick. But she wasn’t. Her jaw was throbbing. She remembered landing hard. When she realized there was no sign of the Wraith, a big screw inside her loosened and she began thinking through what had happened.

  She had seen Thomas Gabriel cast a spell. Something so big, and so booming, it would only have been possible with the Black Amulet. He’d flown backwards into her with such force that her legs had been chopped away, and they’d both taken out Jones who had been standing beside her. All three of them had gone crashing to the ground like skittles, Thomas Gabriel tumbling on into the dark with the force of the spell.

  Jones was lying cradled in the undergrowth.

  ‘Jones?’ she whispered. But there was no reply. ‘Jones!’ The boy groaned. His hands moved to his head and rubbed it and Ruby’s heart lifted.

  She had no idea how long they’d been out. Seconds maybe? Perhaps minutes? Trying to work it out was impossible, like trying to lick your elbow.

  There was no sign of Thomas Gabriel. Ruby stood up to look around.

  ‘Thomas Gabriel?’

  Nothing. Not even a groan. She shuffled through the undergrowth towards the place she’d last seen the Wraith, looking about for any sign of the boy.

  When she saw what was left of the Wraith lying in the grass, she knew it must be dead. The misty body that Ruby had seen attack Thomas Gabriel was split into lumpy parts like snowmelt. The dark face had been sheared into two pieces, each half containing a red eye.

  As Ruby stepped forward to see more, she saw the glint of a green gemstone. The amulet was lying among the remains of the Wraith. She remembered now that the creature had been trying to remove it from Thomas Gabriel’s wrist and then the boy had unleashed his spell and sent them all flying.

  Ruby crouched down, wary of picking the amulet up at first. But the longer it lay there, the more confident she became and finally she reached out a hand. She still held it away from her, though, as if expecting it to bite.

  A thought came to mind and then Ruby was walking, stumbling through the thick undergrowth, before picking up pace until she was going as fast as she could. When she reached the bank, she hurled the amulet as far as she could into the river. It landed with a small splash and vanished, the current smoothing out the ripples on the surface of the water in a matter of moments.

  ‘Hey!’ came a distant voice. ‘Where are you? What’s going on? Why am I up here?’

  Ruby followed the voice and found the gun in a large, thick bush where it was lodged in the prickly branches.

  ‘What happened?’ it asked. ‘What’s been going on?’ And Ruby told it everything as she went back to find the others.

  By the time she returned, Jones was bent over Thomas Gabriel, who was lying virtually hidden in a patch of long grass, trying to rouse him. The unconscious boy choked and spluttered and opened his eyes. He sat up quickly and Ruby noticed that one nostril was heavily clotted with blood as if a berry had been squashed into it. He wiped his nose on his coat sleeve and left a long red smear, then took a few juddering breaths.

  He caught sight of the dead Wraith and grinned up at them. And then Ruby saw him look down at his wrist – bare and pale without the amulet. Ruby swallowed hard and shuffled her feet, flattening down the grass with the soles of her boots. She had no idea what she was going to say, or even if she was going to say anything at all.

  Thomas Gabriel scrambled to his feet and hobbled to where the Wraith was lying in lumps. He kicked through them, breaking them up into smaller pieces, and they rose and fell like tiny clouds of fog.

  ‘It’s gone, Thomas Gabriel,’ said Ruby. The boy looked at her, eyes popping at first before he frowned and screwed them deep down into his head.

  ‘What do you mean, gone?’

  ‘It’s not there.’ Ruby cleared her throat. ‘I mean, it was, and then I threw it into the river after I found it.’

  Thomas Gabriel stared for a moment, opening and closing his mouth silently like a fish, and then he strode towards her. He was shouting something, but she wasn’t listening. At least she was trying not to. She could see his tongue waggling at her like some strange pink flower.

  ‘I hate you!’ he shouted. ‘Hate you!’

  And then he collapsed to his knees and began to cry, clutching at his stomach as if in pain. Ruby crouched down, a hand squeezing his shoulder.

  ‘It’s for the best, Thomas Gabriel. The amulet was evil. It was hurting you, turning you into someone else, wasn’t it, Jones?’ As Jones nodded, Thomas Gabriel looked up at them.

  ‘I suppose . . . I suppose I should be thanking you,’ he managed to warble through the snorts and the tears. ‘Not shouting at you. The amulet wasn’t doing me any good at all, was it?’ He took a big sniff. ‘I can see everything differently now it’s gone. The amulet was always whispering to me, telling me to do things. It was in my head, all the time. I couldn’t say no to it. I would never have let you take it. I would’ve kept it. But I can only say that now it’s gone.’

  He wiped his nose and sniffed again. ‘I think you might have saved my life, Ruby. But it still hurts in my bones not to have the amulet now.’ He curled himself into a ball and sobbed.

  ‘It was evil,’ whispered Ruby, trying to console him.

  ‘You’re better off without it,’ agreed Jones. ‘It might not feel like it but you are.’

  ‘Thomas Gabriel, you can still be a Badlander and go on to do great things,’ said Ruby. She pointed at the éghþyrl which was still shining. ‘Let’
s get that last golden box and go back to Drewman, shall we? We’re going to do it: we’re going to get our Commencements fixed and start being who we want to be.’

  They worked quickly on the éghþyrl with Ruby cutting open the air around the hole as before with the Vampire’s tooth. She created a much bigger opening this time, a hatch big enough for someone to crawl through.

  Jones and Thomas Gabriel snuck into the extended þurhfarennesse to look for the golden box among all the other objects the Wraith had brought there. Ruby kept urging them to hurry up, as she held open the hatch, wary that the night was starting to dwindle now and it would soon be dawn.

  Thomas Gabriel found the golden box hidden behind a collection of urns, stacked one inside the other. After holding it up for Jones to see, they clambered back out through the hole and Ruby let down the hatch. It took the boys a moment to readjust to the dark after the bright white interior of the þurhfarennesse. The cool air on their hands and faces gave them goosebumps. Ruby was already very cold, and she kept her hands stuck in her armpits as they walked smartly back to the dinghy, saying she was ready to get back to the van.

  As the daylight started to strengthen, Ruby put the last golden box down on the table in the van beside the others. She allowed herself a little smile. They’d done it.

  ‘There’s no time to drive to Givens’s house,’ said Thomas Gabriel. He pulled out the invitation to the High Council meeting and put it next to the boxes. It was still ticking.

  ‘Today’s the day,’ he said. ‘The meeting’s at two. I need Drewman to fix my commencement before then. Anyway, do you know where Givens’s house actually is? I don’t. That satnav of yours can’t tell us, can it, Jones?’

  ‘No,’ said Jones.

  ‘Okay, we use Slap Dust, then, to get there,’ said Ruby, but she felt her insides sag. ‘How are we going to get in to see Drewman?’ she asked. ‘We’ve got the key I made. But do we make another fæcce? Is there even time for that?’