The Fall (The Last Druid Trilogy Book 1)

by Glen L. Hall

  But as she lay there, now wide awake, she couldn’t help but worry. What had those creatures been? Had they attacked the bookshop because Sam had been there, or was it because of her uncle? She’d watched his mood grow blacker this past year and the strange folk coming and going from the bookshop, their accents and clothes becoming more unfamiliar as spring turned to summer.

  One day a group of Forest Reivers had arrived. They were hard-faced and spoke little. Their dialects were hard to fathom anyway. She’d heard terrible rumours about the Reivers. They were thieves and murderers, or so the stories went.

  The Reivers’ visit had coincided with Brennus and Drust briefly appearing at the bookshop. Now she thought about it, it had also coincided with Sam’s supposed transfer to Cherwell.

  Now Sam was back, life had definitely taken a turn for the ludicrous. This wasn’t what she’d expected at all and she still didn’t really want to accept the day’s events. But no matter how hard she tried to reject them, she’d been shaken by the attack on the bookshop. Even though she hadn’t seen the creatures, she’d heard them and seen her uncle’s fear.

  Then there were the crows. She’d seen this behaviour once before, on her father’s farm – swooping towards the house and then turning just before the walled garden. She’d spent a week with Angus in Edinburgh too, and he’d told her about his close encounter with the crows.

  Now here she was contemplating helping Sam find a man who’d briefly visited him in Oxford with a strange message. It was clearly all connected to the mysterious Shadow. The thought of it hunting Sam was almost too much to think about. But the question that no one was asking was why was it hunting Sam? And why now?

  With all this going through her head, she couldn’t go back to sleep. She got up and stood looking out of the window. Thankfully, the road outside was quiet.

  How long she’d been staring at the open gate before she realised its significance, she didn’t know. Quickly, she took a step back from the window, butterflies fluttering through her stomach.

  Elmfield Road was still quiet, its pavements empty, its long avenue of trees unmoving. But something was wrong.

  Quickly she sprang up the stairs to the third floor and knocked on Sam’s door. There was no reply. Frightened now, she opened it.

  Sam was lying, still in his clothes, spread-eagled on top of his bed. It took a little shaking before he was sitting up, looking at Emily through groggy eyes, his hair sticking up in all directions.

  ‘What?’

  ‘One of the front gates is open.’

  Sam came wide awake. ‘What? I locked it and my mother always locks it too. If she has come back, she won’t have left it open. She’s got very security-conscious lately.’

  In an instant he was up and making his way to the front-facing dormer window. It was a long way down to the gates from the third floor, but he could see one of them standing open.

  He stood still, waiting for the dark chill that came when his silent stalker was near, but there was nothing but Emily’s breath catching the side of his face as she stood next to him. And yet … there it was, a faint chill that didn’t come from the air.

  ‘We should have heeded the letter.’ Emily’s voice cut the silence in two.

  Sam felt guilty.

  ‘I hope I haven’t brought trouble to my home.’

  He moved to the back window, which gave him a view of the long garden backing onto Elgy Green. All was quiet. Just a hint of light was coming back into the eastern sky. His bedside clock gave the time as 4 a.m.

  ‘I don’t think we should wait any longer,’ he said softly.

  ‘I think you’re right.’

  They quickly got their things together and packed small rucksacks. Sam wrote his mum a short note to say that he was staying with Emily in Warkworth and would be back in a couple of days.

  They made their way quietly through the dark house to the side door. Sam felt apprehensive as he opened it and looked to the left and right across his neighbours’ tree-filled gardens. Then he grabbed Emily’s wrist and pointed wordlessly with his other hand. The arched gate at the side of the house was also open.

  Which way should they go? Leaving Emily by the side door, Sam inched forward so he could get a better view of the front of the house. Panic was rising in him and he took a deep breath before peering round the corner.

  There was nothing other than his fear peering back.

  He edged back along the wall towards the arched gate, fear pricking him with every step. The warmth of the day had long vanished and a cold breeze met him as he came to the gateway and slipped through into the back garden.

  Out towards Elgy Green, the dark trees stood like watching giants. For a moment Sam felt paralysed with terror, unable to take another step.

  A sudden movement near the old oak tree caught his eye. At first he couldn’t pinpoint its position, but then he saw it again. Someone was climbing the steps of the tree house.

  Shivers tingling down the full length of his spine, Sam dropped low, using the mature herbaceous borders for cover as best he could. Straining both his neck and eyes in the darkness, he approached the giant oak.

  Cold danger was now encircling him and he couldn’t shake off the overwhelming feeling that he was being watched. Briefly he glanced back at the dark windows of the house, but there was no one there.

  He was now ten feet from the tree house. Was this crazy? Why wasn’t he running away? He paused, confused.

  ‘Sam – quickly,’ came a voice no more solid than his frozen breath.

  Sam rose to his full height, relief flooding through him. ‘Professor Whitehart! I’m so pleased to see you!’

  He ran up the wooden steps leading to the now crooked tree house. As he bent to enter it, he found Professor Whitehart crouched against the far wall of the single room, looking through the unglazed window over the wall towards Elgy Green.

  Before Sam could say a word, the professor turned to him and pressed a finger to his lips. ‘Quiet now.’

  ‘What happened at the bookshop?’ Sam whispered.

  The professor didn’t reply, but turned back to the window.

  ‘Professor, are the others okay?’

  Still the professor kept his face turned away from Sam. ‘You must be quiet or it will hear you,’ he breathed. ‘Where’s the girl?’

  Sam edged forward, trembling. How cold it was here.

  ‘Professor, we need to get back in the house now. We shouldn’t be outside. There’s something really bad nearby, I know it. What are you watching?’

  ‘Where’s the girl?’ The professor’s words now had a ring of urgency to them.

  Sam shrank back, shivers running down his spine, his stomach knotting into sickness. The professor turned to face him and instantly he felt the chill emanating from him. There was no deep cut on his forehead. And behind him, through the window, Sam saw a sea of silent shapes on the far side of the green, some standing, but most hunched over on all fours, dozens in number, waiting.

  ‘Who are you?’

  Sam didn’t know why he had said it, couldn’t remember even thinking the words, but they were out in the cold air.

  The professor replied with a terrifying mewl. In response, the chilling sea of shapes leaped forward, bent and dark. The trap was sprung. And the professor was laughing, with a deep guttural growl that contorted his face into a menacing mask.

  Sam was up and running, flinging himself down the wooden steps and falling onto the cold grass as something slammed against the brick wall with a sickening noise. It came again and the wall burst in a cloud of slivers of brick. Shrapnel swirled through the air and yet not one shard found its target. Sam lay on the lawn, a silent observer, as the dust settled around him. Through the breach in the wall, a dozen forms, hooded and faceless, watched him.

  Sam couldn’t breathe. His legs wouldn’t move. He was
crushed by an unknown hand, slaughtered in his own secret garden, in a place he loved. What was happening? Why hadn’t the neighbours heard the wall falling? Why wasn’t anyone coming to help him?

  And still the shapes on the other side of the shattered wall did not attack.

  ‘Sam!’ He heard Emily calling to him and turned his head. She was standing by the arched gate, looking out over the lawn.

  A hideous form stepped out of the tree house, no longer resembling the professor but feathered and twisted, its face beaked and grotesque, the creature that he had seen through the window of the bookshop. Sam felt it rising before him, chilling and dangerous, ancient and malicious, its strange darting features now fixed on Emily.

  Others now burst through the broken wall, surging forward through the rubble. Sam was overwhelmed by a kaleidoscope of black feathers, twisted faces and misshapen bodies. A thousand shrieks erupted around him in a tempest. He was lost in a maelstrom and then a slender hand rested on his shoulder and he thought for a moment there was a tall and beautiful angel standing beside him.

  ‘Sam, the Grim-were cannot stand against you here.’

  The voice was the one he had heard before the gates of Magdalen, a voice not of words, but of light shot through with silk, a commanding voice urging him to use the light that was flowing all around him.

  He was thrown backwards by the force of a blast. The twisted shape heading for Emily was now a blurred human form, now a giant winged one. A murder of crows took off into the air, several bursting into flames as lightning flashed across the sky. Thunder boomed out and burning crows were falling all around Sam, turning to empty air as they hit the ground.

  As he got to his feet, the sky was lit by a thousand burning lights. Then nothing remained other than the after-images that left him blinking in the now quiet night.

  THE ROAD TO WARKWORTH

  ‘They’ve gone.’ Drust entered the reading room, a dark look on his face. ‘They’ve left a note saying they’re going to Warkworth.’

  ‘And you are happy for him to disappear with Emily?’

  Jarl was sweeping the remaining pieces of glass into a small pile. The sun was streaming in through the broken windows, a stark reminder of what they had faced last night.

  ‘Brennus, is this what you want – the boy defenceless and travelling with my niece? She’s in my care, you know. You should have stayed with him at the house last night. Coming back here was a mistake.’

  ‘I have a sense of what travels with him. If it can’t keep him safe then nothing can.’ Brennus seemed untroubled. He was sitting at the table, bent over a map of Northumberland.

  Jarl looked at him, unsure. ‘They may well seek out my son.’

  ‘I’m sure they will.’

  With a grunt of disapproval, Jarl resumed his sweeping.

  ‘What were these creatures, Brennus?’ he asked after a while, looking at the little black piles of dust amongst the shards of glass.

  ‘Crow-men,’ Drust answered for him as he stepped through the carnage and came to a stop at the now-shredded tapestry. ‘They knew what they were doing taking out the Way-curves.’

  He shook his head, wondering if things could get any worse. It had taken less than a week for them to lose their grip on events and the situation was growing more perilous by the day.

  ‘I’ve seen some strange things in my time,’ he sighed, ‘but nothing like this. We need to go after them.’

  ‘No.’ Brennus shook his head and for the first time that morning looked up from his map.

  ‘The crow-men have no use of the Way-curves. They were sent here as a distraction. They have joined the hunt, for they too will be wondering about the Shadow. I have to say I’m surprised to see them so far south, for they dwell in the Underland beneath the borders.’

  ‘So the Underland really is awake,’ said Jarl.

  ‘These are strange days,’ Brennus sighed. ‘And it weighs heavily enough upon me that I have placed you in the middle of this.’

  He turned so he could see both Drust and Jarl.

  ‘The crow-men didn’t come here to kill us,’ he said firmly. ‘If they had, we would have been sorely tested against such numbers. Their curiosity has been aroused, that’s all.’

  He turned back to his map.

  ‘Our enemies will be watching us. We have to do the unexpected. I told you that earlier. What I didn’t say was that I left Sam here last night so Oscar could speak with him.’

  Jarl stopped his sweeping and Drust’s cards went still.

  ‘Brother, the Way-curves are not safe – you could have brought the Shadow to him!’

  Brennus raised his eyes and looked steadily at his brother. ‘I think Sam is being helped – I am sure of this.’

  ‘What are you saying – that you don’t trust us to keep him safe? That the safer route is to abandon him?’

  Drust’s words were meant to sting, but still Brennus did not lower his eyes.

  ‘I think Sam will find his own way. We were touched by the Shadow, you and I, and who knows what effect that will have? Tell me you don’t still feel its touch and I won’t believe you, for I feel it still. It isn’t a question of trusting each other, it’s a question of not trusting myself.’

  Jarl felt himself gripping the handle of the sweeping brush. ‘But if we don’t follow Emily and Sam, who will protect them? Would you leave it to Eagan?’

  ‘We are up against an enemy that is relentless and grows in strength and intent,’ Brennus said calmly. ‘It is only a Shadow in this world, but I believe it is a reflection of an enemy that we know only too well. The Fall is dying. So if we stay and hide, then all hope will be lost. And from what I saw in Magdalen, we cannot stop and fight. So we must seek counsel at the Dead Water. What else would you have me do?’

  Jarl was silent.

  Brennus turned to his brother. ‘We need to be sure that the Shadow follows us to the Dead Water. You know you can draw it to you – no one can use the flow as you can. But you know what that means. You know what I’m asking of you.’

  He stopped suddenly, unable to go on.

  Drust looked at him for a long moment, then gave a half-smile and nodded.

  ‘Drust,’ Jarl’s voice was strained, ‘from what you tell me of this enemy, it is beyond our skill and understanding. If you face it by yourself, there will be no going back. You will be sacrificing yourself!’

  Hearing the blunt words, Brennus seemed to change his mind. ‘Yes, it’s true,’ he muttered. ‘Are you sure that you don’t want to reconsider? You are my brother and I fear for you.’

  ‘Then you should turn your fear into strength and make sure that my sacrifice is not in vain.’ Drust smiled again, but his expression was serious. He flicked his cards from hand to hand.

  Brennus stared at him and just for the briefest second seemed to plead with him, but Drust turned away.

  ‘There are others who will be sacrificed before this is over,’ he said, looking down at the cards flashing from hand to hand, ‘others who will be hunted down until they have no breath left and nowhere to hide. I do not intend to be one of them. I have felt it already and the end will be quick. Come, let us travel with the sun at our backs and make for the Dead Water.’

  * * * * * *

  When the day finally broke, it revealed the extent of the fallen wall and the bricks lying in a wide arc across Elgy Green. Sam and Emily took a taxi from the red-bricked Elmfield Road down Grandstand Road, with its long corridor of yew trees clasping their branches to create a shady arch. As they passed the giant town moor, with its grazing cattle, and Cow Hill stretching out in the distance, for a second Sam remembered the days he’d spent sledging down its steep slope without a care in the world. The days walking across the hill with his mum now seemed on the edge of his memory, pushed aside by the torrid flow of the last few days. Oscar, the Shadow pursuing him through
Oxford, the attack on the bookshop, the attack on the house…He could feel danger rising on all sides as the taxi sped through the early morning streets, heading for the station.

  There were just so many unanswered questions. Where had his mother been during the night? What had been happening at the bookshop? Where had the neighbours been? How could you not hear a wall bursting asunder?

  There had been so many other things lately that seemed surreal. How could you communicate with the past? And what part did he and Emily have to play in what was happening? He looked sideways at her pale face and remembered the chill words of the imposter Whitehart. The Shadow might have been searching for him, but the feathered men had come for her.

  Emily, too, was puzzling over the events of the night. What had she really seen? There had been movement along the fallen wall, indefinable figures, haunting voices, and Sam lying on the grass with just a hint of someone standing beside him, a flicker of light before the thunderstorm broke.

  In front of the imposing architecture of Newcastle station, they hoisted their rucksacks onto their backs before entering the almost empty concourse. It was a quiet Sunday morning and few people were catching the first train to Alnmouth.

  They sat waiting side by side. They had said almost nothing to each other since leaving Gosforth, but their thoughts flowed strangely together, a single question keeping them silent and pensive. Were they doing the right thing?

  They were both relieved when the train pulled in on time. They sat across from each other in an empty carriage and gave each other a half-hearted smile as the train jerked slowly north in the early morning sun.

  * * * * * *

  It wasn’t long before they’d left the bricks and mortar of Newcastle behind and were entering the deep green world of the Northumberland borderland. The train gathered momentum as it looped around the medieval market town of Morpeth and headed deeper into an alluring landscape full of hidden villages. Before long, the green shimmer of the North Sea was away to the east and the long beaches of Druridge Bay dropped unseen over the arched horizon.

  Sam and Emily watched the familiar places pass by in a blur. They had travelled this route many times. But this time the train juddered after crossing the river Coquet and seemed to turn sharply to the east, towards Warkworth. Emily looked up in surprise as it juddered a second time and the smell of its brakes wafted through the carriage before it came to a long slow stop.