Shadowmancer

by G. P. Taylor

  To Thomas and Kate it was clear that the mare they were riding wanted them off her back so she could run into the night and escape the creature that now stalked them in the darkness. Kate held tighter to Thomas’s waist and Thomas in turn gripped the reins, tugging on them as hard as he could, twisting the mare’s head back to his chest. But she pulled against him so strongly that the reins slipped in his hands cutting into his palms. She shied and tittupped about, shivering and snorting in fear.

  ‘What’s happening, Thomas?’ Kate asked quietly not wanting anyone to hear her disquiet.

  ‘They can feel something in the air,’ Thomas replied. ‘They’re frightened.’

  Jacob Crane turned in the saddle and spoke quietly. ‘Keep your eyes straight ahead. We’re being followed. There are five of them on our left and about seven on the right. I think they’re waiting to attack. If they know this place well enough they’ll wait until we go through the next glade before they strike.’ He reached out and took hold of the leather bridle of their mare. ‘I’ll hold on to her for a while. I don’t want you two running off just yet.’

  ‘What shall we do, Mr Crane?’ Thomas asked.

  ‘Have you got that old sword you took to Rueben’s?’

  ‘He gave me it back before we left.’

  ‘Then I suggest you make ready to use it. Protect the girl and watch your back. Strike hard and never give them a second chance. Remember, lad, it’s you or them.’

  ‘Who’s following us?’ Kate butted in.

  ‘Could be the Revenue men, the Dragoons, or something that Demurral has dreamt up for us. Whoever they are they know how to cross country without making much noise. They’ve been with us since we left the stone circle.’ Thomas and Kate sensed that Crane’s suggestion that it could be Revenue men or Dragoons was a clumsy attempt to encourage them; the horses would not have been so frightened.

  The wood began to thin out as it opened up to the moor. Outcrops of thick moss-covered rock jutted from the thick black soil. Wizened trees bent by the wind spread out their knotted lifeless branches over the thickening heather. The path from the wood dropped down into a small gully overlooked by a copse of trees. Behind the rocks that overlooked the ravine a tall, lone figure, stood motionless framed by the bright, full moon.

  Thomas saw it first and instinctively tugged the reins back. The mare pulled as hard as she could. Crane kept a firm hold of the bridle.

  ‘Don’t worry, I’ve seen him,’ he whispered.

  ‘Who is it?’ asked Thomas.

  ‘Well, it’s not the Revenue men or the Dragoons. They would never stand in such a place. It must be at least nine feet tall.’

  ‘What shall we do?’ Kate asked, the anxiety easily discerned in her voice.

  ‘Wait until I tell you, then ride like the wind. Don’t stop. If you get thrown off, get up and run. Martin will meet you at the tower. Stay with him, you can trust Martin, he’s a good man.’ There was strength in his voice and a reassuring tone of real concern for them.

  Neither Thomas nor Kate could reply. She held on to Thomas and squeezed his waist uncomfortably hard, wanting all this to stop. It was then that the figure on the ridge burst into bright orange flames that leapt high into the air. Fragments of straw and woven, burning willow billowed out from the blaze rising up in the thermal, then fell as flakes of smouldering embers.

  ‘It’s a Wiccaman. Someone wants to frighten us.’ Crane let out a gasp of surprise. ‘Quick, run,’ he shouted as the first bolt shot through the dark, past their heads, hitting a rock just feet away. The quarrel smashed into pieces, shattering like glass. Then another cut through the air from behind them, hitting a tree and splintering to dust. Then another and another. The air became filled with slivers of fiery glass wands that hurtled over their heads from all directions.

  ‘They’re trying to force us into the gully – it’s covering fire, they’re not trying to hit you.’ Crane let go of the mare’s bridle. ‘Go on, run for it, you devil,’ he screamed at the horse. The beast threw her head back and snorted excitedly, her ears flattened to her head, eyes rolling wildly. Her legs dug into the soft earth as she almost took off, nearly unseating Thomas and Kate with the force, and hurtled towards the gully, her hoofs hardly touching the ground.

  As the horse galloped on, the Wiccaman blazed on the ridge above them, sending beams of orange and red flickering light across the path. On the high moor it was like another world. The silver brightness of the moon, the light from the blazing willow-and-straw effigy, the dark shadows cast by trees and stones. Air and earth, fire and water, mixed a potion so powerful that it stalled reality.

  Kate hung on to Thomas as tightly as she could, her cloak billowing out and flapping behind her in the wind. The horse galloped along the narrow path that suddenly dropped into a deep black gully where even the moon could not penetrate. Thomas just managed to hold on to the reins as the mare jumped blindly over fallen branches and tufts of bracken, thrashing wildly through the undergrowth as she lost the path in the darkness. Her legs became caught in the thick entanglement of dead bracken and gorse, and as she kicked out with her hind legs to free herself from the snare of decaying vegetation she threw Thomas and Kate to the ground.

  Thomas got to his feet and quickly drew the short sword from his belt and hacked at the bracken to free the horse’s legs. As he did so she jumped away from the last brambles that clung to her hide and galloped up the bank, leaving them alone in the gully.

  Thomas slumped to the ground next to Kate who had hidden herself in the long black cloak. It was as if the silence lasted for a lifetime. They were in almost complete darkness. Neither of them moved, neither of them spoke. Thomas was out of breath and out of his mind with worry. He had set out to help Raphah for the sake of revenge. It was not out of goodness, or to help someone in need. He now understood that all he really wanted to do was to get his own back on Demurral. Yet within him he felt that something had changed and was continuing to change, something unstoppable, like the growing of a mustard seed.

  He dug the tip of the sword into the ground. ‘We have to keep moving. If we stay here whoever was after us might catch us. I’ve had too much of being ambushed in the dark.’ He began to laugh, not knowing why he was laughing. He just felt it grow and grow, tightening his lips and shaking his belly. As he laughed, he began to laugh at himself laughing. It felt such a good thing to do. He could feel an overwhelming sensation of joy rising from the pit of his stomach. He tried to hold it back, to keep it in but the power of joy almost burst his side. Thomas sat back in the bracken. All he could see in his mind’s eye was the face of the King smiling at him. It was then that he knew that no matter what happened they had nothing to fear.

  In the midst of the laughter he tried to speak. ‘Kate, we will have to go.’

  ‘I’m glad you think that it’s so funny – chased till we’re half dead, thrown from a horse in a black wood and then it runs off. Very funny. What will you find to laugh at next?’ Kate was angry. It was her favourite emotion.

  ‘I don’t know why I’m laughing. I can’t help it. I know that everything will work out for good. That’s all that keeps coming into my mind. Everything works to the good for those who know the King … It was in the dream.’

  ‘Will this dream save our lives?’ she asked.

  ‘I think it will, Kate, I think it will.’ He paused, then continued to speak. ‘I’ve realized since I met Raphah and had the dream that we live in a world different from the one I thought. It’s as if I was blind and suddenly all the blindness has gone. I lived a life and I only thought about me, what I had, what I would do.’ The breeze rustled the bracken. ‘Now I know there is something more to life than me. I promised to help Raphah get something back from Demurral. I don’t know why it is important but I know it is. It’s something worth living for. For the first time in my life I’ve found something to believe in, something full of hope, something that’s true.’

  ‘But what will happen, Thomas? When I came with
you I never expected to see all these things, I just thought we would break into the Vicarage and that would be it.’ Kate stood up and threw off the cloak. ‘I never came along for Raphah and what he wants to steal back, I came along because …’ She stopped speaking and bowed her head.

  ‘Why did you, Kate?’ he asked.

  ‘It doesn’t matter now. I think I lost the reason when I pulled the trigger on the pistol and shot that thing.’

  Thomas looked at Kate. He could barely pick out her features in the darkness. He reached out and gently touched her cheek with his hand. He couldn’t see her smile.

  ‘We have to go, Kate. I don’t know if they’re behind us or where Crane has gone. Knowing him, he’ll have taken them on single-handed. We’ll follow the gully down and head for the Vicarage and see if Martin can really be trusted.’

  Kate took hold of his hand. ‘You go ahead, I have something to do. I’ll follow you.’

  ‘I’ll not leave you in the dark, I’ll wait for you along the path.’

  With that Thomas turned and walked off through the undergrowth and down the gully. Kate picked up the cloak from the ground and brushed off the dirt and waited patiently in the darkness.

  Several minutes later a solitary Varrigal appeared from the wood at the top of the ravine. It scanned the darkness with bright red eyes that saw night as day, and blackness as the brightest sun. Deep in the ravine between two trees it saw a crouched, cloaked figure kneeling as if at prayer. The Varrigal pulled back the bowstring and placed the silvery glass quarrel on to the firing plate. With bloodless precision it raised the solid, black metal crossbow and took aim. In one breathless action it squeezed the firing lever and the bolt shot through the darkness.

  There was a solid thud. The bolt embedded itself in the back of its target. The Varrigal wheezed with satisfaction and, cutting its way through the bracken, stepped down the bank towards its victim. In the mud, beneath two holly trees the wrinkled cloak covered a lifeless form. The Varrigal raised its sword and with one blow slashed through the woven fabric embedding itself in the trunk of its prey. From the torn fabric spilled out dry grass and crumpled bracken. Kate had gone, having left her cloak draped over the remains of a willow log and stuffed with dry grass and bracken.

  The Miracle

  IT was two hours before dawn and already news of the night before was sweeping through the workers’ cottages and around the alum works like a fire out of control.

  The story of the miracle was repeated over and over again from man to woman, house to house. It was talked about in the brewer’s yard and by the fermenting pits. Men stood and passed on the rumour that the dumb boy could hear and speak. Mrs Landas couldn’t stop telling everyone she met about the wonder that had happened, parading the boy around like a trophy, proudly telling all that this fine lad was her son. She had washed away the white lead powder and the beauty spot from her face, combed her hair, and in the growing dawn looked like a new woman. There was no gin with breakfast, and no pipe. She had even tried to rub the brown stains from her teeth. For Mrs Landas, the new day was indeed the start of a new life, a life that she wanted to share with her son.

  ‘Call me stupid,’ she said in her gravelly voice to the young girl in the doorway of the cottage next to the workhouse, ‘but I do believe I feel ten years younger.’ She wheezed as she spoke, her chest making sounds like the strains of some failing harmonica. ‘Since the black lad made my John better I just can’t stop smiling. You ought to meet him, he’s a proper gentleman, a little angel. What he says makes you feel clean inside.’

  She looked up from the doorway of the cottage to the Vicarage high above the mine. Dark purple storm clouds like high mountains gathered in the fading moonlight filling the sky. The incandescent light from the horizon lit the front of the Vicarage. Each of the many panes of glass reflected the red and orange glow. It appeared to stand defiant against the forthcoming storm, the tall tower reaching, Babel-like, towards heaven.

  Mrs Landas dried her hands on her apron and spoke to the girl. ‘I don’t know what Demurral wants with the lad; I only hope he doesn’t do him harm. Too many children have gone up there and never come back.’ She looked at the gathering storm. ‘I don’t believe the tale that they’ve all been sent to sea or to London to work. Demurral’s done something with ’em. I pray I’ll see the lad again.’

  She stepped inside the cottage and closed the door behind her against the rain that had started to fall from the black sky.

  *

  Raphah and the three men hid from the rain beneath the branches of a large yew tree that overlooked the door to the tower. Consitt leant uncomfortably against its trunk.

  ‘You don’t, you don’t have to go in, lad,’ he said. ‘You can run off and find your friends if you want.’ He looked at the other two men. ‘We’ve been talking … After what happened last night we’re not too sure that we’re doing the right thing. We don’t want to give you over to the Vicar. We want you to go and go now. You can get a boat from Whitby – take you anywhere in the world. It’d take you away from here.’

  The other two nodded in agreement.

  ‘I’m not running and I won’t be leaving unless I take with me what I have come for. It is worth more than gold.’ He pointed to the door of the tower. ‘Whatever happens in there I know that Riathamus will be with me. Anyway, I have to go in. It’s beyond my control.’

  With that, Raphah left the shelter of the yew tree and walked out into the storm. The rain fell as hailstones from the purple sky. He ran to the door alone, took hold of the hefty brass ring handle and twisted it to the right. He felt the bolt jump from the saddle and the oak door clunked open.

  Slowly, he climbed the stone stairs to the top of the candlelit staircase, thinking about each step that he took. At the top he stood before another oak door and could hear the muffled voices of Demurral and Beadle as they talked inside. He paused for a second and raised his hand to knock; he wanted to show them he was not afraid, that no matter what they did it would not turn him to bitterness or anger. Raphah knew that he was in great danger. But this was a quest he had to complete. Behind the door was the answer to all the questions he had asked himself. He had travelled many miles across land and sea to this place and to these people. This was the promise he had sworn to his father Abraham on the steps of the Temple. He would not return empty-handed.

  Raphah felt his pulse begin to surge through his veins. It was excitement tinged with fear. Beads of sweat broke out on his forehead and mingled with the rain that had twisted its way through his thick black, oiled locks. He wondered how he should enter the room. What would he see? What would happen?

  With great hesitation he took hold of the handle of the door and quickly pushed it open. Plumes of thick incense billowed through the doorway. Raphah looked into the darkened chamber as he breathed in the acrid fragrance of stale myrrh that had within it the smell of decay. It stung his eyes, making him recoil. In the gloom he could make out the figure of Demurral standing by the altar table. He was dressed in a long, white robe, around his waist a thick, black, knotted cord. His hair was tied back into a ponytail that made his features look sharper than ever. By the altar was the acacia pole complete with stone hand. In the middle of the altar was the Keruvim, its pearl eyes sparkling in the light from the altar candles. Set against the wall were three high-backed wooden chairs with golden cords draped over the armrests.

  Beadle was scurrying about the room holding a golden bowl filled with freshly cut herbs. In his hand was a small, golden sickle. They both stopped and stared at Raphah as he stood in the swirls of smoke lit by the flickering candlelight.

  ‘I believe you want to see me?’ he asked, trying not to allow his voice to falter. Demurral looked completely astonished at the sight of Raphah in the doorway. He searched the gloom behind him for sight of his men. His eyes flashed to Beadle who dropped the golden sickle on the floor.

  ‘Where are …?’ Demurral started to say.

  ‘Your men are ou
tside in the shelter of the yew tree planning what they are to do with the rest of their lives. They are leaving today. I have set them free. Their debt to you is paid in full, Demurral.’ Raphah could feel strength welling up inside him, his fear quickly ebbing away.

  ‘What gives you the right to set people free? They owed you nothing, they owed me everything.’ His voice oozed with anger and spittle. ‘Cowards the lot of them. When I’ve finished with you I’ll drag them back by the hair of their frightened little heads. Get him, Beadle. Bring him here.’ Beadle hesitated, unsure what to do. He looked at Raphah and then to Demurral. ‘Don’t just stand there, you cretin. Get him!’ Demurral shouted.

  ‘Stay where you are, Beadle. You don’t have to listen to his orders any more. You too can be a free man. What power do you think he has over you?’ Raphah stepped into the chamber and walked towards the altar.

  ‘Don’t listen to him, Beadle; he’s trying to trick you.’

  ‘What do you know, Demurral? You hear but you don’t understand. You see but are blind. You are so concerned with yourself that you are hardened to the needs of the people you enslave. I come here as a free man, not a slave, and I will leave with the Keruvim; give it to me now.’

  Demurral and Beadle looked at each other and began to laugh. The oak door suddenly slammed shut and Raphah was engulfed in the choking smoke of the swirling incense.

  ‘You are brave, but stupid. Didn’t you think I would know who you really were? Gebra Nebura told me that the Keruvim couldn’t stand to be apart. It took me a long time to realize that one would be made of gold and the other would be flesh and blood. Doesn’t God have a strange sense of humour?’

  He picked up the golden Keruvim from the altar. ‘To think this is my life’s work. All I have ever dreamt about I now hold.’ He paused and stared at Raphah. ‘You are the Keruvim that I have been waiting for. Together you will give me the power to control the elements. The sea and the sky will be at my command. I can bring drought to one country and flood to another. I can cause a fleet of ships to be swallowed by the sea. Just think what power like that is worth. I’ll be the richest man in the world. Kings and princes will bow before me. The power of the Keruvim will be sold to the highest bidder.’ Demurral almost squawked with excitement. ‘Do you know what gives me the greatest pleasure? Your God will just have to sit back on his throne, watch it happen and weep.’