The spellfire had told Bartlemy little that he didn’t know, and beneath his customary placidity he was growing anxious. A further period of reflection had given him a new idea, the same idea which had occurred to Nathan. He was mildly irritated with himself for not thinking of it before. ‘The woodwose,’ he told Hoover, as he pulled on suitable boots. ‘Nathan’s retiring friend. If anyone saw anything, it would be him. No, you can’t come. You’ll make him nervous. I’ll go alone.’
He wandered through the trees for some time, well away from the path, moving very quietly for all his bulk. Few twigs snapped under his feet; the leaf-fall of a dozen winters scarcely crackled. Birds watched him, but piped no warning. On the border of the Darkwood he came to a hollow oak, struck by blight or lightning years before: nothing now remained but the outer husk of the trunk, colonized by insects and parasitic plants, deep in a thicket of nettles. Nathan had passed it twice in his searches, but he hadn’t stopped to look inside. Bartlemy glanced through a fissure in the bark, drew back a short way, and sat for a while on a bank nearby, patient and immobile, while the wood grew indifferent to his presence. When he got up, his movements were slow and altogether noiseless. He parted the nettles with hands that felt no sting, clearing a way into the secret heart of the tree. Through the fissure, he saw something like a bunch of bent twigs, half buried in leaf-shreds and wood-dust. It sat motionless, petrified, the elongated head in profile, returning his gaze with one whiteless eye. Remembering Nathan’s name for it, he said very softly: ‘Woody?’
If something already still could become even stiller, it did. Bartlemy thought the very beat of its heart froze. He said: ‘I’m Nathan’s friend, you know that. I’m your friend. We’ve lived side by side a long time without disturbing each other. I’ve always known you were here. I’ve always left you alone. I mean you well, little one. You have no need to fear me.’
The woodwose still didn’t answer, but he thought its heart began to beat again, a tiny fluttering drum somewhere beyond the edge of hearing.
‘I know you’re in trouble,’ Bartlemy said, keeping his voice very low, very gentle. ‘I can help you.’
The woodwose jumped like a grasshopper, hitting its skull against the inside of the tree, then shrank even further into the hollow, willing itself into invisibility against wood-grain and dust-shadow. But Bartlemy’s eyes were long trained to see things that didn’t want to be seen.
‘It’s all right,’ he went on. ‘I can protect you. Come to the house; stay in my garden for a while. Nobody enters there without my permission.’ Except a dwarfish thief – but he had taken precautions since then.
‘It will find me,’ Woody said at last, its voice less than the whisper of a whisper.
‘Not if you stay with me,’ Bartlemy said with quiet authority. ‘I have power: you can sense that. In my garden you will be safe.’
‘Nathan can’t help,’ Woody said. ‘He looked for me, but I was afraid … He can’t help. It would come after him.’
‘I’ll take care of Nathan,’ Bartlemy promised. ‘You were following the man in the wood, weren’t you? The man in grey. I expect Nathan asked you to watch, so you watched him. You saw what killed him. That’s why you’re afraid.’
‘Water,’ Woody said more softly than ever, as if he feared the breeze would overhear. ‘It looked human, but it was made of water. It drowned the man, with its fingers. It chased him off the road, and hit him on a tree, and drowned him.’
‘Did it see you?’
‘Saw me. I ran, but it came after. I hid, but it was searching. Then the other man called it. Nenufar.’
‘There was another man?’
Bartlemy walked briskly back to Thornyhill, letting Woody follow at his own pace. ‘Stay near the walls,’ he had told him, ‘in the herb garden. Nothing evil goes near my herb garden. I’ll see the dog doesn’t bother you.’ Woody had seemed comforted, as if telling what he had seen had freed him from a burden. Bartlemy entered the house without looking back; he knew better than to check on him. Another refugee, he thought with the flicker of a smile. One moves out, a new one moves in. Who next, I wonder?
But he had other things on his mind. Nenufar. It was a French word for a water lily, but in the language of magic it meant a sea-flower, venomous and many-tentacled, beautiful and lethal. No doubt one of many names for the elusive water-spirit, the name used by the man who had summoned it, who controlled it, who told it to kill. A deadly partnership in quest of the Grimthorn Grail … Woody hadn’t recognized the man, of course. But Bartlemy thought he could recognize him, and he wasn’t happy about it.
In the kitchen, Hoover greeted his master with an imperative bark.
‘What is it?’ Bartlemy asked.
The dog trotted into the drawing room, and barked again at the flashing light on the answering machine. Bartlemy played back Annie’s message and tried to call her, but there was no reply. ‘She may be on her way here,’ he reflected. ‘No matter. The important thing is to do what we can for Nathan. Now. Annie can take care of herself.’
The sun had moved round, and the shadow of the cliff lengthened across the sand. Nathan stood close to the rock-face, nerving himself for a final, desperate dash, trying to decide which way to run. Kwanji had got past the Grokkul, so it must be possible; he should have asked her how she did it, which path she chose, but it was too late now. He thought of holding the Grail out in front of him, in the hope that the magic might afford some kind of protection; in stories, objects of power would do something – well – powerful under such circumstances. That was what they were for. But when he looked at the cup in daylight it appeared somehow reduced by the glare, drained of its greenish hue, the coiling pattern almost worn away, the few gems which adorned it dull as pebbles. He wanted to picture it glowing with a holy radiance which would burn anyone who touched it, or lightning flashing from the bowl which would scorch the Grokkul to a cinder. But it looked too ordinary, too cup-like, and he suspected that even if it were capable of such things, he would need to know the spell words first. He recalled the one he had heard the Grandir use, in the chamber of crystals: ‘Fia!’ – but nothing happened. He tucked the cup back inside his suit, and returned to checking out the terrain.
There came a moment when, gazing upwards, he thought he saw spots dancing before his eyes, perhaps because of the sun-dazzle. But the spots didn’t vanish, they grew and darkened, descending lazily on the thermals, becoming winged shapes with arrow-tipped tails, and pointed muzzles. Wild xaurians. Their leader was white; the others were black, or piebald. One of them dived suddenly, snatching up some small creature which was scurrying across the sand. They helped Kwanji once before, Nathan said to himself. Maybe they had helped her again. Maybe they’ll help me. He felt a sudden, impossible surge of hope, and forgetful of the slumbering monster he waved and called to them, though he knew they understood no tongue. But they continued to wheel and turn, scanning the ground for prey, ignoring him. Presently two of them swooped down simultaneously, landing on the twin boulders which marked the arch of the Grokkul’s spine. They began snapping at each other, tails lashing, obviously fighting over whatever they had managed to catch. The sand below them twitched and slid – Nathan cried out in warning – the monster’s head detached itself from the desert floor and swung round. The remaining xaurians dived all at once, darting in and out, slashing at the impenetrable hide with toothed beak and taloned wing. For a few seconds Nathan watched, riveted; then he recollected himself, and began to run. The ground shook with the pounding of the Grokkul’s tail and the shifting of its huge feet, but all its attention was on the xaurians. He sprinted down the slope and plunged into an old watercourse, using the meagre cover to pause and look back.
His escape was still unobserved. The Grokkul’s blue tongue flicked out, uncoiling like a whiplash, but the mob knew their enemy well; they were too quick for it. Nathan wanted to stay, cheering them on, though he knew they could do the monster no real harm; but he had to move on. He doubted that he would get very far, the distance to Arkatron was too great, and he was without food or water. Still, no desert was utterly deserted, according to all the nature programmes he had ever seen: cacti retained moisture, and there might be insects he could eat, if he grew hungry enough to try. And surely Halmé would send someone to look for him, if he didn’t return. He followed the dry watercourse, gauging his direction by the sun, thinking that once darkness fell the multiple moonrise should keep him more or less on track.
The path descended into a hollow, where the long-lost river must have attempted to carve itself a shallow valley; his view was cut off by banks of rock. Cooling shade covered him. Then, rounding a bend, he found his way blocked. The white xaurian stood there, wings folded, head a-tilt, watching him with one red eye. A probing ray of sunlight touched its body, glittering off scales too fine to see. Nathan stopped. ‘Thank you for your help,’ he said. Annie had always emphasized the importance of courtesy, and he hoped the meaning, if not the words, might be understood.
The xaurian didn’t move.
He considered simply walking past it, or retracing his steps a little way and climbing out of the hollow, but somehow that seemed offensive. Besides, it was clearly intelligent; he wouldn’t be able to evade it, if it was determined to find him. He took a pace nearer. It was smaller than a domesticated xaurian, but still many times bigger than a boy, and it looked in some way sharper, faster and warier than its cousins. More dragonish. Its head swivelled so it could study him with the other eye, suddenly reminding him of Woody. He walked right up to it, and laid a hand on its neck. The shoulders lowered; the wings dipped. ‘Okay,’ he said, more to himself than the reptile. ‘Here we go.’ He swung his leg across its back, just in front of the wing-joints where the saddle would have been on an ordinary mount, and heaved himself astride. There was nothing to hold on to, no pommel, no reins, and he supposed rather wildly that he would have to trust to balance or grip the neck. And then he felt the ground shudder, and the coughing roar of the Grokkul was growing louder, nearer –
He clung on with all his limbs as the xaurian reared, beating its wings into a gale, rising almost vertically out of the hollow. The Grokkul’s wide skull loomed directly ahead, rushing towards them like an airship, then splitting into a gargantuan maw overcrowded with several kinds of teeth. The tongue was unleashed; a band of muscle a foot thick, its pitted surface gleaming with mucus that clung like glue. The breath from a jaw clogged with the fragments of old meals made Nathan retch. But the xaurian swerved – he clamped his arms around its body, slipping sideways – the tongue whooshed past, barely missing him – a dollop of spittle landed on his suit. And then they were away, soaring skywards. Far behind, the other xaurians screamed in triumph, and the Grokkul roared, and the thumping of its tail churned the desert into a sandstorm.
It was a while before Nathan dared to slacken his hold, and try to sit up. Not only was the creature bareback, leaner and more lithe than his former mount, but it was unaccustomed to being ridden, and angled its flight to the right or the left with no regard for his safety. Eventually, he was able to get his legs firmly tucked round its belly under the wing-joints and he felt confident enough to straighten up, but ready to drop forward onto its neck at the first serious jolt. He had been too busy staying on to note their direction, but when he saw the position of the two moons – Astrond had not yet risen – he judged they were going more or less the right way. Presumably the xaurian knew the route. Every so often he thought he might start to enjoy himself, as he had on the flight out, but then the reptile would tilt to one side or the other and he would be hanging on for dear life again. It was like trying to ride a roller-coaster with no security bar and a seat like a greased log. And all the while at the back of his mind there was the thought that Raymor was dead, and Kwanji was dead – and they had died because of him. He didn’t really know why he had been chosen to live, or what crooked fate would have made such a choice.
Astrond had just put in an appearance when he saw the dunes giving way to abandoned fields, and the city lights showed as a glow beyond the horizon, staining the sky. Soon the suburbs were spreading below them, a sprawling maze picked out in arches and trails of glitter-points, like a luminous game of join-the-dots. Then the buildings grew taller, and rank upon rank of windows wound past them, and skimmers dodged and dived, eyelights yawing across their path; but the xaurian never blinked. Ahead the towers climbed higher and higher, until they reached the central point where a single spire out-topped them all, crowned with its own stars. Nathan knew that was where he had to go, and the xaurian responded to his nudging feet and urging voice. They circled the tower while he looked for the right landing platform, opting for a small one on the roof of a secondary turret which he decided was familiar. ‘There,’ he said, leaning forward to indicate the place. The xaurian plunged – he almost slipped over its head – and pulled up abruptly on the narrow eyrie. Nathan rolled off.
There was no sign of the gauntleted assistant who had brought food, so he said: ‘Wait. I’ll get you something,’ trusting it would understand. Then he activated the internal communicator in his hood with a code word and called Halmé.
He was still afraid of interception but she came, and alone. On her orders a man with a food bucket appeared, but he wouldn’t go near the xaurian, who hissed at him, mouth open, flexing its wings. Nathan took the bucket himself, offering it to his companion, feeling secretly rather proud that the reptile gave him special treatment, though he was aware he had done nothing to earn it. When it had eaten, it flew off, arrowing between buildings, the lights strobing its flanks so that it flashed white and black, white and black, until it was lost to view.
‘What happened?’ asked Halmé. ‘How did you tame it?’
‘I didn’t,’ Nathan said. ‘It just decided to help.’ Like dolphins in stories. Like god-beasts in legends. If the stories and legends are true.
She didn’t ask any more questions till they got back to her chambers. He took off the protective suit, keeping hold of the cup, waiting for her to ask about Raymor, but all she said was: ‘You must be hungry.’
She went out and returned with a tray of food, food that looked pretty and tasted bland and artificial, as if the flavour had been injected afterwards. There was fruit without zest, and fish that had clearly never seen the sea, with a green speckled sauce with an echo of parsley, and a deep yellow sauce that had nothing to do with butter. Nathan ate politely, since it was expected of him, and Halmé watched every mouthful, her expression brimming with concern, touching him from time to time as if to be sure he was real. He had put the Grail on the table, but although she glanced at it all her attention was for him.
‘You know Raymor died,’ he said at last, unable to go on eating. ‘The Grokkul took him.’
‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘Doesn’t matter? He gave his life – he died for me. You said you’d known him since childhood –’
‘Please … don’t be angry with me, don’t be disappointed in me. I can’t bear that. Ray feared death, but he also wanted it. We all do. It has been like this for so long, not living, not dying, just waiting, waiting for an end that doesn’t come. Like the last second of life, stretched out to endure for an eternity. When you feel that way, death is welcome – if you have the courage. I know Ray must’ve died bravely.’
‘Yes,’ said Nathan. ‘He was very brave.’
‘Then his death meant something. He was fortunate. It is a long time since life meant anything to me.’
He told her everything then, even about Kwanji Ley, though it felt a little like betrayal. But surely he couldn’t betray someone who had died.
‘She was mad,’ Halmé said, and he thought she looked regretful. ‘The neo-salvationists could not perform a Great Spell. They haven’t the knowledge, or the power. They would break the pattern, and the world would end, swallowed in fire, and it would all be over.’
‘I thought you wanted it over,’ Nathan said.
‘Oh yes,’ she said, ‘but I fear the death I want. I am not as brave as Ray. Or you. You are young in years, younger than the youngest thing that lives on our planet, yet you have ventured into an unknown world to save your friend, and you found the Grail, and defied the Grokkul, and won a wild xaurian to be your steed. If legends were true, you would be a hero.’ She had echoed his thought, and something about that disturbed him. ‘In legends, there were angels who appeared as children, beings of light and love. Angels and heroes. But I was taught that all legends are lies. I think we should be wary of them. I want to believe, but I dare not.’ She smiled her magical smile, filling her face with sudden light. ‘Still, for tonight, you are a hero to me. My special hero.’
She is just a woman, he thought, but she’s beautiful. In her face, the legends do come true.
He said: ‘I want to go home now. The Grail will be safe in my world. That’s where it’s meant to be – till the time comes. But I can’t get back.’ He pushed up his sleeve, where the Mark of Agares had been scrubbed off his arm. ‘I can’t find the way.’
‘You said … you were dreaming.’
‘Not any more. I’m here, really here. I slept in the cave, and woke. The place in my mind is shut.’ Now the immediate danger was over, panic was sneaking back, paralysing thought. ‘I don’t know what to do.’
‘We will find the way,’ Halmé said.
In the empty bookshop, Annie’s phone was ringing for the third time that morning. No one answered; Annie didn’t have a machine, she rarely needed one. At the other end, Pobjoy hung up, gazing moodily at his desk. The shop should be open by now. Was she busy? – was she out? – had Nathan done a bunk? It seemed wildly unlikely. Nonetheless, he was uneasy. After a few moments’ thought, he summoned Sergeant Hale.
‘We’re going back to Eade,’ he told her. ‘I want this business cleared up. As far as it’s possible to clear it up, anyway. I’m damned if I’m going to let this theft turn into another unsolved crime statistic.’
They went out to the car park – ‘We’ll take mine’ – and Pobjoy drove off purposefully towards the village.
Annie was admitted to Riverside House by the cleaner, who told her in faltering English that Madam was in London and Mr Addison had gone shopping in Crowford. Sainsbury’s, Annie deduced. She asked if he would be long, but this seemed to defeat the girl’s linguistic abilities so Annie did her best to explain, using simple words and gestures, that she would wait. The cleaner returned to her chores for about twenty minutes, cleared away the dusters and the Dyson, stared at Annie in evident bewilderment, shrugged, and left. Alone in the house again, Annie wondered how long Michael would be. She prowled around downstairs, keeping her ears open for any sound, wondering if Rianna really was in town and trying not to second-guess the clock. As always when you are waiting for something, time stretched out. She had escaped the waiting at the bookshop, only to find herself caught in the same trap here. Frustrated, she tried the door to Rianna’s tower, but it was locked as usual. But it must be the spirit who locked it, she reasoned, not the real Rianna. Michael would notice if his wife never went into her own private rooms. And the spirit, surely, couldn’t carry the key, not if it was turning back into water at regular intervals. So … the key must be around somewhere. She opened drawers in the kitchen and living room, ran up to the master bedroom to check the dressing table and fumbled in coat-pockets and a couple of unused handbags. Now she had something to do, something other than waiting, she did it, feverishly. Drawing a blank, she stopped to think, considering the nature of the spirit and the unknown individual, witch or wizard (Bartlemy said it would have to be someone Gifted) who had called it up. Someone who remained in the background, unseen, perhaps using Effie Carlow as a spy and the water-demon as a killer. Someone who wanted the Grail to open the Gate between worlds. But the spirit would’ve retained the key; there would be no need to pass it on. Where would a water-spirit hide something?
Even before she had finished the thought, she was in the bathroom. There was nothing in cupboard or cabinet but when she lifted the lid on the lavatory cistern there it was, glinting through the water. A key. It had to be the one. A human would have placed it under a stone or a flowerpot but for a sea-spirit the logical place was in water. Annie rolled up her sleeve to retrieve it. Of course, there could be nothing of importance concealed in the tower, but …
She didn’t want Michael to come back now. Not yet. Not till she knew. (If the tower hid no sinister secrets, she could put the key back, and she needn’t even mention taking a look.)
She made her way to the locked door, inserted the key with a hand that trembled slightly. It fitted. She turned it and pushed the door open.
She was in a kind of study-cum-sitting room, much like Michael’s in his tower but more cluttered. Publicity stills of Rianna in various roles crowded the walls, often alongside far more celebrated stars. There was a sofa with embroidered cushions, a desk littered with newspapers and magazines, an expensive flat-screen TV, a video, DVD, sound system. A silver laptop stood open on the low table, with an empty mug beside it. A bookcase curved with the wall, filled with elaborate editions of the classics – unread, Annie thought – and the fat glossy spines of coffee-table books on subjects like costume and origami and the jewellery of the Russian royal family. Oddly, it was the one room in the house that bore the stamp of a personality – a rather actressy personality, with artistic inclinations, all very predictable. Except for the smell. A faint, sweetish, sickly smell that caught her straight in the gut. She peered into the mug and saw it was full of fur, though somewhere underneath there was what might have been a piece of lemon. Lemon tea, Annie concluded. Watching her weight. She glanced at one of the newspapers on the desk, and saw it was months out of date. She was conscious of her pulse-beat intensifying, shaking at her chest. But she couldn’t go back now. A twisting stair led to the upper chamber, all white-painted iron fretwork. The treads creaked beneath her feet.
The smell worsened.
She recognized it now. As a child of ten or so she had stood at her grandmother’s bedside while the life gradually oozed out of her, the body failing while the spirit hung on. But all people know that smell, whether they have smelt it or not: it is in our race memory, as old as breathing. The fear of it is part of the formula for living. Annie’s steps slowed, then quickened again. She cupped a hand over her nose and mouth.
At the top of the stair she emerged into a bedroom decorated entirely in shades of white. Snow-pale carpet, furniture that might have been designed for Barbie, a canopied bed screened with muslin curtains. Through the muslin, she could make out a shape lying in the bed, dark hair spread across the pillow, the coverlet tucked under its arms. Keeping her hand over her nose, she pulled back the curtain.
I won’t be sick, she told herself. I won’t be sick. She didn’t scream. What was left of Rianna Sardou had evidently been there some time. The hair had outlasted the face, framing a skull sparsely padded with decay. The eyes and cheeks had fallen in. Fingers shrivelled to the bone rested on the duvet. Why does death always come in white? Annie wondered, with some dim recollection of Daniel in the pristine hospital room. Not the colour of weddings and innocence but the colour of ending, of grief and horror. She wanted to turn away but she couldn’t stop looking, gazing and gazing at that dreadful festering thing. Downstairs were the pictures, the pale angular beauty, more striking on stage and screen than in life, the aura of fame and vaunted artistic commitment. And here, this. It was terrible and pitiful.
At last she moved away. Her pulse was still pounding, but then came a sound that stopped it in mid-beat.
The stair clanged.
There was a second when a chaos of thoughts tumbled through her mind, jostling for position. Was it Michael (oh, Michael, poor Michael) or the false Rianna? Where could she hide? But there was no time. She looked round for a weapon, but the only thing she saw was a spiky hairbrush on the dressing table …
A head appeared at the top of the stair. Michael.
Annie rushed into his arms, half sobbing, babbling incoherent phrases: ‘Don’t look … Don’t look … Oh Michael, I’m sorry – so sorry … I should’ve told you what she was. I should’ve warned you …’ His hands moved to her shoulders, prising her off his chest. She glanced up, and saw that his face was very still. Not shocked, not stunned, just still. He looked at the bed with its grisly occupant, then down at her.
‘Dear me,’ he said.
Annie backed away a step.
The crooked smile flickered across his mouth, only now it was no longer a smile, merely crooked. The scruffy, careless good looks seemed to change, in some subtle way, like a mask that shrinks to fit the changing face beneath. With an odd glimmer of detachment she noticed the lines of mockery and cynicism which she had once found so attractive pouching his eyes, dragging at his cheek. Since the kiss the previous night the touch of him had stayed with her, his lips, his arms, warming her thoughts even at the back of nausea and terror; but now it evaporated as if it had never been. She felt clear, and empty, and horribly afraid.
‘Dear, dear me. So you’ve found our little secret. You should know better than to unlock Bluebeard’s Chamber; as far as I can remember, it didn’t do his wife any good either, though I may have that wrong. You shouldn’t have been so damn nosy. You’ve been very useful to me up till now; I’ll really regret losing you.’
‘You killed her,’ Annie said faintly. Things were falling into place in her mind. Of course he would have known about the impostor; Michael, of all people, could never have been fooled. She must have been blind – blind or besotted – not to see it.
‘Oh no,’ Michael said. ‘Not me. I’m actually not much good at killing. Mind you, she was in the way. Our marriage had gone cold long ago. But the killing part – I don’t do that. I don’t have to.’
She felt a gleam of hope which she knew was a cheat. He was taunting her with that hope, his eyes derisive, hard and shallow as glass.
She said: ‘It was … that thing?’
‘I’m afraid so. My lovely Nenufar. She gets carried away. The Carlow woman called her, and then couldn’t control her, and after a while I understand the old hag outlived her usefulness. Or not, as the case may be. As for Von Humboldt – well, Old Spirits have a very simplistic view of the world. She thought getting rid of him would give us the Grail. I arrived too late to stop her. Still, it muddied the waters – bugger, I do seem to be racking up the bad puns. She got carried away with you, too, but on that occasion I was in time. Murder is pretty much her solution to everything. She’s a primitive.’
‘Why do you want the Grail?’ Annie asked, less out of curiosity than the urge to make him talk.
‘Everyone wants the Grail. I’ve sought it all my life, dreamed of it, lusted for it. Didn’t Lancelot, Percival, Galahad? Knights and heroes, all of them. I rather fancy myself as a knight and hero. Of course, all that religious stuff was just the usual garbage: the Church trying to appropriate a far older truth. The Sangreal is about power. A power beyond knowledge, beyond science – the power to move between worlds. Think of it, stretch out your imagination. Even your cosy little mind must have some capacity to dream, some concept of aspiration. When Nenufar came to me, I knew that together we could take it. Through her, I can have it all.’
‘Why didn’t you use her to deal with Dave Bagot,’ Annie inquired at random, ‘instead of getting yourself a nosebleed?’ She was inching backwards as she spoke, more on reflex than plan. He didn’t move. He was between her and the stair, and there was no other way out.
‘It was a great chance to look heroic,’ Michael grinned. ‘To act the gallant Galahad. Although you did pretty well yourself. You know, I really am sorry about this. Why you had to come poking your nose in … What are you doing here?’
‘It’s not important.’ She was fighting to get control over her shaking limbs, her pumping heart. ‘Are you saying you liked me, and it’s such a shame you have to –’
‘Good Lord, no. But I was fairly confident I could get the Grail from you, without piling up any more dead bodies. That inspector’s beginning to get suspicious; he could be a nuisance. Besides, I needed you to help me get close to Nat. Nenufar thinks he’s important – I’m not sure why. Of course, once you’re gone, I’ll be around to – er – share his grief. We could become pretty close.’
‘No!’ she said, the flash of anger driving back fear, for a few moments. ‘I’ll open the Gate and return to warn him. I swear it.’
His expression stalled. ‘How do you know about the Gate? You’re not Gifted.’
‘And you are?’
‘Oh, I always knew I was special. I could control the minds of others, make my own destiny among the feckless, the aimless, the failures. I learned spells from old books – that’s why I studied history, to pick up the clues – and the language of the Stone, the language of power, came to me in dreams. That’s the beauty of the Gift. If you know you have it – if you seek to use it – then it uses you.’ He didn’t seem to understand the full implications of his words.
‘It brought you here,’ Annie said. ‘It drove you …’
‘For years the image of Thornyhill haunted my sleep. When at last I found it, when I moved here …’ He paused, faintly smiling. Faintly inhuman. ‘Rianna thought the village was quaint. Huh. Nenufar came to me by the river, wearing a face she had found somewhere, the face of a nymph, but her eyes were her own. She was all coldness and hunger.’ He shivered with remembered sensuality. ‘When you’ve touched a spirit, anything else –’ he looked at Annie ‘– is just a woman.’
She felt her flesh shrink. But the anger revived, warm inside her. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I’m just a woman. But I can open the Gate. Bartlemy told me –’
‘Goodman? I should have guessed. I thought there might be a little power hiding under the flab. The Carlow hag said so. But the Gate opens only once, my dear – without the Grail, at any rate. You go through it and never return. That’s the Ultimate Law. And you’re far too sensible to be a ghost.’
‘Even the Ultimate Laws can be broken,’ Annie said. ‘I passed through once before.’ She sensed the chink in his certainty and knew she had to take him off balance, distract him, divert him. ‘Your ally was right about Nathan. He isn’t – ordinary. His father’s from another world. I followed someone through into death, and came back pregnant. I did it once, I can do it again. From death back to life. That is my gift.’
She only believed part of what she was saying, but she saw it was unsettling him. He moved towards her, away from the stair. At her back, the dressing table dug into her thighs. Her hand groped for the hairbrush, because that was all there was.
‘You couldn’t do that,’ he said, and the smile crooked into a sneer, but it didn’t work: there was doubt behind it. ‘It would take enormous power – the power of death, the power of the Grail. What power do you have?’
‘The power of love,’ Annie said. ‘But you wouldn’t know about that.’ She brought her arm round, hairbrush in hand, and smashed the spiky side into his face, aiming for the eyes. His glasses were knocked off; he gave a yelp of pain. She kicked him on the shins in passing and bolted to the stair.
She half fell, half slid down the spiral, clutching the rail. Then she was through Rianna’s study and in the main house. Behind her she heard a thump as Michael vaulted the stair. She reached the front door, yanked it open, started down the path –
‘You may as well stop running,’ Michael’s voice said, from the doorway. ‘You’re not going anywhere.’ He sounded relaxed now, mildly amused.
It was there on the path in front of her. It had Rianna’s hair, Rianna’s face, but she could see the water moving under the skin. And in its eyes was the ancient darkness of the abyss.
‘That hurt,’ Michael said, touching his eye. ‘Wasted effort, I’m afraid. I told you, I don’t do the killing round here.’
Nathan lay in Halmé’s bed with the Grail in his hands and the coloured lamps turned down low. He had told her about the Mark of Agares and tried to draw it, but the rune was complex and he couldn’t reproduce it accurately. ‘It looks familiar,’ she had said, and on her screen she had flicked through a file of magical symbols in her world, until she found one that was the same, even to the name. ‘Perhaps magic has one language and one set of rules in all worlds,’ she suggested carelessly. She copied the Mark on his arms and forehead in a dark purple ink that had a strange odour, at once herbal and chemical. ‘Now sleep,’ she said. ‘Go into your mind. Find your way home.’ She offered to play what she called sleep music, but he declined. He thought of how he had torn the Mark off his bedroom wall, and pushed the doubts away. He would have to trust to hope. Halmé left him, with a murmur of sim vo-khalir, which he knew meant au revoir, and he lay awake, feeling as if he would never sleep again. He had expected her to kiss him, a loving, probably maternal kiss – had half feared, half desired it – but she hadn’t. And then he thought of the masks, and the contamination, and the Grandir’s restraint with her, and he guessed that maybe they didn’t kiss here, or not often. He had yet to do any serious kissing in his life, but a world without it seemed curiously bleak. He drifted away into a fog of adolescent speculation, trying to imagine Halmé at his own age, smaller, slighter, an exquisite fairy creature with her perfect alien face somehow soft and unformed, and he took her hand and gazed long into the rainbow blackness of her eyes. Then in his thought he kissed her cheek, and she shrank from the strangeness of it, but not far, and he kissed her lips, and thought became dream and spiralled out of control, and he slipped over the borderline into oblivion.
He woke very suddenly in an unfamiliar place. Not Halmé’s room, nor his own. He started to sit up, felt a hand on his shoulder. ‘It’s all right,’ Bartlemy said. ‘You’re with me.’
He was in a bedroom at Thornyhill, and his uncle drew back the curtains on midday sunlight, and when he looked round he saw the Mark of Agares on a sheet of paper taped above his bed. An oil-burner exuded the unmistakable aroma of Bartlemy’s herbal brew. Between his hands was the Grimthorn Grail.
‘I see you brought it back,’ Bartlemy said. ‘Well done. Are you all right?’
‘Yeah.’ He thought he was all right, at any rate.
‘I want to hear all about it,’ Bartlemy continued. ‘But first, I think we should get you home. Your mother’s been worrying.’
Nathan got up to find he was weak and unsteady on his legs. Obviously his longer sojourn in the other world had drained his strength. Bartlemy produced a quick snack of biscuits and cheese, fruit and coffee, and went to call Annie.
‘She’s still out,’ he said. ‘That’s odd. I thought she might be coming here, but she’d have arrived by now. Unless she’s with the police. I think – we should leave immediately. Hoover!’
Nathan snatched an apple, gripped Bartlemy’s arm for support, and they went out to the car.
She didn’t run. There was nowhere to run to. The thing came towards her with a peculiar swaying gait, something on its face that was almost a smile. It shouldn’t be stronger than me, she thought, but it is. Stronger than the real Rianna, strong as the undertow of the tide, as the onrush of the wave. She couldn’t fight it. She was human, weak, powerless. She had no Gift, no resources but herself. Behind her, Michael said: ‘They’ll find you in the river, tomorrow or the next day. Another tragic accident. Oh, the inspector’ll be sceptical, he’ll sniff around for a while, but there’ll be no evidence to find, and he’ll cool off in the end. My DNA won’t feature, and as for Nenufar, no forensic lab could identify her substance. As far as science is concerned, she doesn’t exist. You see, that’s the beauty of magic, that’s its real power. Nobody in the world believes in it.’
But they believe in science, Annie thought, in genetic fingerprints, and you’re human … She whipped round and ran to Michael, clutching at him yet again, reaching up to drag her short nails down his cheek. A thin redness spread along the cuts. Then the water-spirit caught her and pulled her back, locking her in its clammy grasp, the cold hand sliding across her face to enclose nose and mouth and send its liquid matter gushing into her lungs. ‘Your DNA is on me now!’ she cried. ‘The river won’t wash it off. They can pick up the minutest traces. My mark is on you and yours on me! She may be a spirit but you’re not. They’ll know – Nathan will know –’ The hand shut off her nostrils, sealed her lips. She tried to breathe, and breathed water. The dark was coming, and this time there would be no respite. She saw Michael’s expression change, twitching with fury and fear. Nathan will know … At least she had achieved that.
‘Let go! Let go now! Oss-toklar!’
‘How dare you! Release her at once!’
Two voices, one very deep, oddly accented, one a little higher in tone. Both familiar. The spirit halted; for an instant, startled, it lost its grip on solidity. Annie broke free from an arm that was suddenly more fluid than flesh, and reeled, coughing and gasping, against a strong supportive body. Eric. Rowena was striding towards Michael like an avenging angel.
‘Knew you were up to something! You said your barbecue in Oxford was rained off, but it only rained here. You’re after the Grail too, aren’t you? You and this psycho bitch were in the woods that afternoon, murdering Von Humboldt. Don’t know how you did it, but you did it all right.’ She rounded on Rianna. ‘Trying to strangle Annie, were you? Never did trust you actress types. You’re going down for the rest of your life …’
Confused, uncertain, Nenufar wavered. Her form shimmered as if river-gleams showed through the veil of flesh and skin. Then she turned and fled, more gliding than running, her feet barely meeting the ground. As she drew near to the shrubs along the riverbank her shape thinned into a damp coil of mist which wound its way between the leaves and vanished towards the water. Rowena stood staring after her, suddenly silent, panting from the impact of anger cut short. When she found her voice again, it was to swear.
Michael, seizing the moment, ran the other way – round the house to the car. It was parked at the side of his tower, in the shade of a tree. Annie heard the click as the system unlocked and saw the lights blink even as he reached the door. Eric released her to go in pursuit but she grabbed his jacket, holding him back. ‘No. No. Look.’
Something was crawling out from under the tree, swiftly engulfing the car, distorting the smooth flanks of the Merc into ripples and bulges. The windows were closed but it flowed through them and up the air vents, making the space within quiver as if in a heat wave. Michael had thrust the key in the ignition; the engine stuttered and stalled. Then he seemed to be beating at nothingness, as though attacked by invisible insects. His mouth twisted and gaped; he clutched at his head. The screaming went on for some time. When it was over he slumped sideways, his face slack, drained of all personality. A phantom glimmer of movement crossed his features as Rowena approached and her reflection curved over the windscreen.
‘Don’t go there,’ Annie said. ‘Here. I’ve got iron.’ The number in her pocket, little use against human or water-spirit, but effective for gnomons.
‘I too,’ said Eric. ‘There is no iron in car?’
‘Chrome. Wood. Plastic. Is he – is he dead?’
‘Not dead, mad. They eat his mind. Nothing left.’
Suddenly, Annie found she was sobbing, from relief or some other reaction, while Eric patted her clumsily; he was still not comfortable with physical contact. She strove to pull herself together, curbing the tears, though she was still trembling inwardly. The gnomons seemed to have gone. She glanced round at the man in the car, and then hastily looked away.
By the time the inspector arrived, with Bartlemy, Nathan and Hazel in his wake, Michael was beginning to drool.
Teatime found all of them except the police in the drawing room at Thornyhill, eating their way through the reserves of Bartlemy’s larder and drinking tea, with stronger stimulants for those who weren’t driving. ‘You never said how you all managed to get there at more or less the same time,’ Annie was saying. After a rather careful interview with Pobjoy, tiptoeing round the more questionable aspects of her story, she was at last beginning to relax.
‘Obviously we all started worrying about you at once,’ said Bartlemy. ‘Anyhow, Nathan was back safe, and I wanted to bring him home. When you weren’t there, we asked along the High Street, like Rowena and Eric. You’ve lived in a village long enough, Annie: you know what it’s like. In a city, no one would have noticed a thing, but here, half the population saw where you were going. Anyway, Hazel joined us and insisted on coming too, then Pobjoy turned up. I was very concerned when I realized you’d gone to Riverside House. After I talked to Woody I was pretty sure Michael was behind the appearance of Nenufar in these parts. I’m not certain how Rowena reached the same conclusion –’
‘He lied about the weather in Oxford,’ Rowena said. ‘Stupid sort of lie. Why bother? Unless he was giving himself an alibi. Couldn’t have done the robbery – too tall – must’ve been the murder. What was that thing acting as his wife?’
There were several muddled attempts to explain. ‘We may never know who she really was,’ Bartlemy said. ‘Nenufar was no more her real name than Rianna Sardou. But with nobody to conjure her, she cannot return. The police will look for her, of course, but they won’t find anything. They’ve got a very old corpse and a murderer too far gone to plead Not Guilty who’ll have to spend the rest of his life in an asylum. Pobjoy won’t be completely satisfied – he’s too intelligent for that – but he’ll make do. The Grail’s been returned and he won’t press the matter of the theft, though I daresay he’ll always suspect you two were involved.’ He nodded at Nathan and Hazel.
‘But you told him you found it, not Nathan,’ Hazel said. ‘I heard you.’
‘I thought that was best,’ said Bartlemy. ‘He didn’t believe me, though.’
‘Who did take it?’ asked Rowena. ‘Who was this dwarf?’
‘That I also wish to know,’ said Eric. ‘If he return it to my world he must have much force.’
‘Not necessarily,’ Bartlemy replied. ‘I’m afraid I don’t know all the answers, and we can only speculate. However, some old records suggest that Josevius Grimthorn had an assistant, a hunchback – or a dwarf –’
‘Ought to be a hunchback,’ Rowena said unexpectedly. ‘Traditional.’
‘At a guess, his master imprisoned him for some unknown offence. He’s werefolk, a true dwarf not just a short human – he must be to have survived so long. Anyway, he’d know there was a transition point in the sunken chapel where the Grail could pass from world to world –’
‘Could a human get through?’ Nathan interrupted. ‘Sorry. I just wondered.’
‘I wouldn’t recommend trying it. Remember, the Grail was going home – and it’s an inanimate object, though clearly it has certain powers. A living thing would probably be annihilated by the forces involved in the transition, even if it was able to pass through that portal.’
‘Why would dwarf wish to return cup to my people?’ Eric demanded. ‘Did he do right thing? Is it wrong, we keep it here?’
‘Again, we don’t know,’ Bartlemy continued. ‘Maybe the dwarf thought he did right. Maybe we’ve done wrong. The spell that can save your people – if such a spell exists – is not yet prepared. Until then, the Grail seems safer here, out of reach of local terrorists.’
‘If I can get it back,’ Rowena pointed out. ‘Julian’s taking it to Sotheby’s again – for the Von Humboldts.’
‘We must do what we can.’
She took a restorative gulp of tea. ‘So,’ she said, ‘I’m really supposed to believe all this stuff – about other worlds and sea-spirits and so on.’
‘Believe what you want,’ Bartlemy said. ‘You know what you saw.’
‘Oh yes, I know. Won’t forget in a hurry.’ She gave a shudder, and reached for another biscuit. ‘What were those things that went for Michael? Not exactly invisible, but …’
‘Gnomon,’ said Eric. ‘From my world. Bring madness. Iron keep them away.’
‘They could be protecting the Grail,’ said Bartlemy. ‘Though on this occasion they seemed to be protecting Annie. We don’t know why.’
‘All over, isn’t it?’ said Rowena. ‘Time we knew everything.’
‘Life doesn’t work that way,’ smiled Bartlemy, both amused and a little sad.
‘Not over,’ said Eric. ‘My people still die.’
It can’t be over, thought Hazel. Everyone else had big adventures except me; I only had small ones. Unless you count getting arrested, and that wasn’t much fun. I wasn’t even arrested properly, in the end, just interviewed …
It isn’t over until I can stop myself dreaming, Nathan reflected. (And Halmé had said: ‘Sim vo-khalir,’ till we meet again.)
I wish it was over, Annie thought, but it isn’t. I haven’t told him about his father – that’s part of this, it must be – but I can’t. Just let me have a little more time – time for innocence, and childhood, and trust, before I have to destroy them forever.
It isn’t over …
Later, Bartlemy said to her: ‘You must be very upset about Michael. I’m so sorry. I know how much you liked him.’
‘It’s odd,’ Annie said, ‘but I’m not. Not yet, anyway. It’s as if, when I saw through him, all the liking – all the attraction – drained away. Perhaps it’s because it was false, all along – he was false – false charm, false courage – his whole persona was just a mask, and when you tore it off there was nothing underneath left to like. I don’t feel betrayed, just a bit silly. Falling for him like a teenager – sorry, Nathan, Hazel.’
‘He was very clever,’ Bartlemy affirmed. ‘He probably used more than charm on you. He was Gifted, but he hid it well. I never picked up on it, and I should have done. He must have suppressed it very carefully in public.’
‘What d’you mean by “Gifted”?’ Rowena wanted to know.
‘How did Nathan get cup back?’ Eric said. ‘That is story I like to hear.’
‘What is the real meaning of the universe?’ Annie added mischievously. She was feeling sufficiently recovered to be a little mischievous now.
They sat there well into the evening, talking and talking, while Bartlemy went into the kitchen, setting the questions aside, knowing that some of them would never have answers, and began to prepare a dinner that would celebrate the occasion, and salve the spirit, and fill the spaces where the answers would not come.