by S. K. Holder
Connor coughed soundlessly. ‘Where am I?’ he croaked.
‘Baruch. Safe within the Royal Halls,’ said the man. ‘The Undren guards found you collapsed on the cellar steps of the old Undren mill. They brought you here.’ He poured some water from the jug into a glass and offered it to Connor.
The man’s voice sounded familiar, but not his face. You couldn’t forget that sort of face - or those eyes. Connor gulped down the water offered him. It cleared the gritty feeling in his throat. The water was slightly sweet. It tickled the roof of his mouth on its way down. ‘I thought I came through a portal.’
The man gave a wide grin, his sapphire-coloured iris contracting. ‘Better for you that you hadn’t. Very few lead anywhere delightful.’ He reached across the bed and took the glass from him.
Connor sank back onto the pillow. He was not sure he cared for the man’s weird eyes or his over-generous smile. ‘Who are you?’
‘They call me the Maker.’
‘The Maker?’ Connor gave a long yawn and smacked his lips together. ‘The maker of what?’
‘This.’ The man made an arc in the air with his head and cane.
Connor's eyes traced the arc to the orb on the ceiling, mesmerised. He could have sworn it was getting bigger. ‘Let me guess, you’re going to help me get home to Odisiris. I bet you can take me there right now, except I don’t want to go. I’m going to look for my brother, and when I find him, we’re going to our real home in London. You can’t stop us.’
He yawned and sunk further into the pillow. His head felt like stone. His right hand felt heavier than his left. He tried to lift it and failed. He was as floppy as a pancake. He gazed at the jug of water and back at the man with the mismatched eyes. ‘What did you put in the water?’
‘A special brew to restore your Status Mark. It is the key to your abilities, your strength. You want to finish the game, don’t you?’
Connor wasn’t sure he cared about his abilities anymore. And this wasn’t a game. It was real. His eyelids fluttered shut. ‘I ran away.’ It made sense now. He ran away and then forgot that’s what he had done. Well, he had learned his lesson.
‘Your quest is almost complete,’ said the Authoritative Voice.
The strange man left the room, closing the door quietly behind him.
It wasn’t long before sleep and dreams overpowered Connor once more.
THIRTY-FIVE
There are one hundred and ten portals in Narrigh, but you will not find them on any map. Those who stumble upon these concealed gateways, harbour the notion that they will be spirited to a better place than the one they left behind. For those who enter, there is no turning back…
When Skelos came to the end of the tunnel he was presented with three doors. This was something he had never seen before. Unless I am hallucinating.
It was Elf magic. He was certain of it. The cedar wood, dome-shaped doors were set the same distance apart. They had no keyholes or doorknobs. He had a momentary vision of pushing one open and finding nothing on the other side but a fathomless drop. One of the doors was sure to lead to the land of Theria and he couldn’t abide the light-footed creatures with their flowers and glittery potions. A door with a drop seemed a more satisfactory option.
He could not deny that a few potions and magical items would have served him better than a Bolt-Shot whip and the Avu’lore. Hindsight was a gloriously, sickening thing. He could not open a magical door with the Avu’lore, nor could he do it with his mind. He had taken a handful of Barnabas’s keys. They were worthless without a lock to slot them in. He could do with the Old Rogue himself. He was sure to know how to deal with dilemmas such as these.
He put his ear up to the first door. There was no sound on the other side. He knocked. No answer. If these doors are portals, I should simply be able to walk through them.
‘Oh, what’s the use.’ He took out the Bolt-Shot whip. Oh, how beautiful you are. Diamonds and colourful gemstones were arranged in petals around the top of the barrel. Beneath the beguiling pattern, sat two thin gold bars on opposing sides. Skelos nudged one with his finger. It rose. He pushed it up as far as it would go, precisely ninety degrees. He did the same with the other bar. With both bars raised, the Bolt-Shot whip, resembled a fat, blunt sword. Novel. He let the Lashes fly upon the door. They didn’t leave so much as a mark. The Bolt-Shot went back into his belt. Sighing, he tried the next door along, this time pushing his weighty bulk against it. The door held fast. He went to the third and final door and shouted, ‘I command you to open.’ His own cries echoed back to him.
A noise reverberated through the tunnel, which sounded like somewhere between a hum and a gurgle. Skelos jumped, his hand went to his belt. Is it the Silver Tails again? Are they back? He listened for their hisses. He looked back the way he had come. There was nothing – no one.
Skelos’s gaze drifted to the roof of the tunnel. Suspended above him was a smooth disc the size of a cartwheel. He almost snapped his neck in half trying to get a look at it. It was the same colour as the walls: muddy brown. It didn’t seem to be attached to anything. He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. If he weren’t in Narrigh, he would have sworn it was a miniature Upsilon spacecraft.
He plucked a flat stone from the ground and threw it at the disc. The disc quivered for about three seconds and then stopped.
He looked back at the doors. The door he had knocked on was open. The door itself had gone. It revealed another tunnel a straight one, very different from the one he had left behind. It was dry for a start and there appeared to be nothing sinister about it: no hidden nooks or crannies, no mist rising from the murk. The walls were even and intact. The ground was scattered with stones. Nevertheless, there was no signpost saying where the tunnel led.
The humming and gurgling noise sneaked up on him, followed by another sloshing sound. He looked down. The outer tunnel had started to fill up with water. I could die here in this tunnel and no one would ever know. He hurried through the open door. But I’d know.
He had not been walking more than five minutes when he saw clusters of multi-sized discs moving across the roof in ultra-slow motion. They were dark brown, the same colour as the tunnel itself, but their texture was smooth and almost glossy in appearance. If he closed his eyes a crack, the clusters looked like eggs, hundreds and thousands of alien eggs waiting to hatch and invade his body. He gave a nervous giggle. How absurd! I’m not in the Andromeda Galaxy now…or am I?
The ground felt like warm gooey cement. His eyes bulged in horror as he watched the discs float up from the tunnel floor and drift to the walls either side of him. The tunnel was breaking up.
He broke into a run. Adrenaline pumped inside him as he concentrated on what was ahead of him: bend after bend of the winding tunnel. One of the discs smacked the side of his head. He batted it away with his hand. Large brown spots flew in front of his eyes. He felt a thump on his back and another on his shoulder, and then one on his leg. He flung his arm out in front of his face and continued to run. A sharp pain seared through his hand. There is no way I’m going to make it out alive.
He never envisaged himself having a slow, painful death. He always thought it would be unexpected, swift, and at a time when he had attained glory, not when he was on the verge of discovering it. He peered over the top of his arm. Through squinted eyes, he saw the flat stones whizzing through the air. A black dot in the distance told him the tunnel was as never ending as the last one he had come through. If the ground kept breaking up and shifting, he was never going to get anywhere.
The faster he ran, the faster the discs moved. How had he not noticed it before? He stopped quite abruptly. The discs started to float away from him, drifting slowly back to the walls and the roof. Keeping his eyes on them, Skelos took a small step. The discs froze. He took another small step. They tilted in his direction. He took another. They stirred.
All he had to do was concentrate. His eyes were roaming all over the place. He tripped over his feet, kicking his left foot w
ith the heel of his right. A sharp stinging pain shot through his leg. He rubbed his ankle. It sprouted a lump. It was no bother, for soon the lump would be gone and the pain along with it. When he looked up, he saw the tunnel was widening. It was as if an invisible hand was stretching it open.
‘How long have I been walking?’ It felt like days. Realistically, it was probably no more than an hour. To his relief, the ground was beginning to dry up, but it soon became evident that the tunnel only appeared to be widening. The floor of the tunnel was narrowing. The walls grew further away from him, eventually falling away altogether.
Skelos halted. He looked down.
At least the ground was still intact. He was standing on a bridge, a ruby-coloured, and rocky from-here-to-eternity bridge. He caught his breath. Not bad. No fire and brimstone. No six-tailed beasts. No soul-sucking spirits, just rocks, sharp spear-pointed rocks about a hundred feet or so below him. He looked behind him. The tunnel he had come through had disappeared. All that remained of it were thousands, upon thousands of muddy-brown discs.
He stretched out his arms and inspected the sheer drop either side of him. The bridge was narrow. I shall edge along it as if it were a tightrope. With a slight hobble, he proceeded to walk the ‘tightrope’. He willed three things to happen: for the bridge to miraculously widen, for the drop to shrink by eighty-eight feet and finally for his insides to stop flapping. His arms were throbbing. His head ached from trying to concentrate on taking painstakingly small steps. The harder he concentrated, the more convinced he became that he was going to fall. Not even a Citizen could survive a drop that far. There were limitations to a Citizens ability to self-heal. He would need to be conscious at the time of impact in order for his body to mend itself.
He came to a gap in the bridge. It was no more than eight feet. Easy. He leapt over it, landing softly on the other side. He walked another thirty paces and came to another gap. This one was about ten feet. Skelos leaped across. He landed on the other side, inches from the drop. His landing was still smooth, his confidence unbroken. He saw more breaks in the bridge ahead of him, and at the end of them, a tunnel. He bounded across each gap, each one bigger than the last. They seemed to spring out of nowhere like the Silver Tails in the Crocksford Arms. It was as if the bridge was testing him. After successfully jumping eight gaps, Skelos came upon one long, yawning gap. In the distance, he could see the mouth of a tunnel. He would have to take a run up to make this one. A fast run and a leap. A fast run would-
He glanced over his shoulder. He could see the muddy brown discs floating back and forth. He imagined that the moment he started to run the rest of the bridge would also start to break up. He shrugged the thoughts out of his mind and slowly walked backwards, his ample calves still burning from all the running he had done previously. He got underway, quickly picking up speed. Brown and ruby discs darted from right and left. Fistfuls of rock zoomed away from the bridge and plummeted into the gorge. His heart gave a jolt. The ground broke up beneath him and he felt himself falling fast. He lunged forward desperate to feel the ground underneath him. To his despair, he didn’t feel anything. My death came swift and unexpected after all, but without the glory.
THIRTY-SIX
Connor snapped awake, recalling the loss of memory, the stabbing, throbbing, burning headaches; the voice he sometimes heard inside his head too harsh to be his own, the Authoritative Voice, belonging to the person who had invaded his mind. The one who called himself The Maker.
He had no idea how long he been asleep only that he felt different. He padded across the room and opened the wardrobe door. He caught his reflection in the long oval mirror hanging from the inside of it. He penetrated the depths of the dark brooding eyes staring back at him. He poked at the bones sticking out of his chest. He pressed his fingers gently to his neck and brought them over his face. He then stared at the palm of his right hand. The Mark was there, the italic I for indigo, First Status Citizen. And he no longer feared it.
The pain in his head had gone. His strength had returned and he found his thoughts, his memories, were less jumbled in his head as they had once been.
Inside the world of Narrigh, he was a Citizen.
In the wardrobe, Connor found a long-sleeved black tunic, overlaid with plates of polished steel and a pair of padded black trousers with steel shin plates. His old clothes gone, he put the new ones on. They were a good fit. The fabric clung to him like a second skin. The steel plates concealed his gaunt frame. After he had dressed, he crossed the room to the bell-shaped window and drew back the drapes. Light poured in through the lattice panes. He threw one of the windows open and looked out.
There was a building opposite made from white stone, its high windows edged in gold leaf. He couldn’t see the top of it. It soared into the sky.
He saw a white gravelled courtyard below, doused in sunlight. In the centre of the courtyard was a marble fountain, spilling water into a bowl shaped like a flower. Dotted around the fountain were stone benches. They were also people milling around the courtyard, richly dressed in velvet, silk, and wool.
A young woman in a flowing embroidered gown waved to him. He jerked away from the window, ducking behind the drapes, wishing he had left them closed. He turned to see his grubby boots sticking out from under the bed. His tattered bag was right next to them. He was relieved to see them. The soles of the boots were crumbling. There was a dent in one and a big hole in the other. They were caked in dirt and smelt rotten, but he put them on all the same.
He took up his bag. It was heavy and made jingling, clanging sounds. When he put the bag on the bed, it started to move. Connor jumped up from the bed and sped across the room. The ugly creature he had seen in the Old Getty mill poked its head out, wrinkling its nose up and sniffing the bed. It must have crawled inside his bag when he lay unconscious on the mill steps.
‘Shoo.’ He flapped his hand. He glanced around the room, looking for something he could throw or poke it with. ‘Shoo. Go away!’
The creature spread its wings a little. Connor walked around the bed, keeping his eyes on it the whole time. He opened the door. The creature was still partly inside his bag. If he could tip it out gently, grab the bag and run. He leaned forward and tugged at the bottom of the bag. Instead of leaving it, the creature started to shuffle deeper inside.
He took a ragged breath. There was nothing for him to be afraid of, not really. He was a Citizen, a warrior, not Connor the Coward. He sat on the edge of the bed and tried once more to coax the creature out. It padded towards him and licked his hand with a long sticky tongue. It tickled. He succeeded in pulling the bag away from the creature. He then set the creature on his lap. It squawked like a baby bird. ‘You’re not scary at all, are you?’
He eagerly tipped the bag’s contents onto the bed. He saw the Shard. He slipped it inside his boot for safe-keeping. And there was his Worral Stone, which he dropped into his trouser pocket. He counted three slow-burners and twenty-one gold coins. There was also an apple, a slice of cheese, half a loaf of bread wrapped in paper, strips of dried meat, a folded parchment and a full flask. The Maker must have put them, Connor concluded, or one of the servants. A place as grand as this was bound to have servants.
He unfolded the parchment and found it was a detailed map of Narrigh showing all eight regions. A smaller piece of paper fell from within the folds of the map. It was crumpled and covered in black smudge marks. He straightened the paper out. It was a short handwritten message:
Connor,
I heard you were here. I asked one of the guards to get this message to you. Come to the dungeons. Ask for Thurden. Hurry.
Yate
Connor heard shouting from the courtyard below. He raced to the window. The young woman who had waved at him had gone. A pair of armoured guards raced into the building and out of sight, another four disappeared into the building opposite. One bellowed, ‘Get them to the wall!’
Something terrible was going on down there. Something Connor didn’t want to
be a part of. But he had to go. The Sentinel needed his help, and he didn’t want to give up the search for his brother. He could always come back later. He returned to the bed, gathered up all his provisions and returned them to his bag. The ugly, winged creature sat on the bed dolefully watching him. ‘Okay, you can come too, but don’t blame me if you get squashed.’ He opened the flap of the bag and the creature crawled inside.
He strapped the bag across his chest and stole out of the door.
He padded along a carpeted corridor. Its walls were decorated with blue and silver floral motifs. Two enormous black crystal chandeliers, pinned to gold leaf medallions, hung from the ceiling.
He stalked past an infinite number of closed doors until he came to a flight of stairs leading off from the landing. At the bottom of the stairs was a set of black lacquered doors.
Connor took a deep breath. He shot down the stairs and pushed the doors open. He hadn’t run away. Someone had kidnapped him. Was it The Maker? Was it the Spy? Was it the Silver Rider with the cold green eyes? He didn’t know who and he didn’t know why, but he was going to find out.
THIRTY-SEVEN
Skelos had no idea of the amount of pain one might experience if they plummeted hundreds of feet onto the rocky ground. Perhaps there is no pain and the end comes swiftly.
Skelos didn’t feel any pain. He didn’t even feel himself land. One minute he was falling, the next he was sitting. Where? He vigorously rubbed his eyes to recapture his focus. He was sitting on a bed of withered leaves, peering out of a cage. A small, frail-looking boy stood on the other side. His hair was the same colour as the rust-coloured walls surrounding him.