Auchinmurn Isle
Present Day
‘She’s too quiet,’ said Henrietta, sitting on the edge of the bed and touching Em’s temple with one of her fingers.
Em recoiled. But she couldn’t get away from her grandmother’s hand. Her head felt terribly heavy and the headache was pounding much too loudly.
She was so tired.
‘What are you plotting in that colourful little head of yours?’ Henrietta mused.
‘We won’t help you,’ Em repeated stubbornly.
‘I find that hard to believe,’ said her grandmother briskly. ‘You see, you have already helped us immensely. One might even say that all of this is down to you in the first place. Tanan? The tapestry.’
Rolled in a heavy canvas tarp, Tanan dragged the tapestry from its place against the back door. Then he unfolded a large sheet of plastic and spread it across the stone floor. Together, he and Mara donned gloves and gently, slowly, with great care, unrolled the bulky, fragile fabric. Then they kneeled beside it with an almost religious reverence.
The images on the tapestry sent a biting chill through every part of Em’s body. For a fleeting moment she was drowning and she couldn’t get a breath.
‘Astounding, isn’t it?’ said Henrietta, clasping her hands together in ecstasy.
Vaughn had told them Henrietta had stolen the tapestry. He had even anticipated that the woven image had changed in some way. But nothing could have prepared Em for this. She was looking at the same scene she had painted in the central panel of her triptych.
Like her painting, the tapestry depicted a central figure riding the black peryton, long hair covering part of his face. Em felt more certain than ever that the figure was Malcolm. The peryton’s tack was more detailed than she had painted it: a black face plate studded in silver beneath the beast’s blazing eyes, a red collar embroidered in gold with many of the mythical beasts that Em recognized from the strange rings that had circled the Era Mina several days earlier. The peryton’s saddle looked like flames licking across the red and gold fabric. Malcolm was clothed in the same armour Em had painted, wings forged high on his shoulder plates and the silver spiral on his chest.
In the tapestry, the hideous army of half-faced knights trailing behind Malcolm were captured in lush black and silver threads. The Grendel dominated the narrative, its grotesque presence looming over the scene.
The worst section of the tapestry was the one that Em could not bear to look at for more than a second. Matt lay slumped and bleeding, the bone quill jutting from the flesh above his hip.
‘Why are you showing me this?’ she choked.
‘Isn’t it obvious?’ said Henrietta, removing her gloves. ‘We need you to take us to Malcolm. We plan to help him finish his quest, and then we need you to return us to the present where, in return for your help, you and your brother will be spared the same consequences as the rest of your family.’
‘I don’t know of any way to get back to the Middle Ages,’ Em stuttered. ‘If I did, I would have returned for my brother before now.’
‘Ah,’ said Henrietta softly, ‘but I think you do. And if you choose not to tell me of your own volition, then I will have to persuade you.’
The older woman’s fingers pressed into Em’s head, melding to her flesh and feeling their way into her imagination. Em screamed in anguish.
‘Stop! Please!’
The pain was excruciating.
And then it wasn’t.