The library door closed behind them and D’Scover began searching along the shelves.
“Anything I can do?” Adam asked, running his finger along a jumbled collection of book spines.
“You could look too,” D’Scover said over his shoulder.
“I don’t know what I’m looking for.”
“Nor do I exactly, but we shall know it when we find it. We are searching for a book that will give us a ritual to discover the whereabouts of someone who can help us,” he said without turning back to look at Adam. “It is a Ritual of Finding and therefore will want to be found. We simply have to look with the right eyes.”
“You’ve finally lost it, you know that, don’t you?” teased Adam. “What does that even mean?”
“If we are meant to find it, then we shall, but only if we look with care,” D’Scover replied flatly.
“Right, I’ll take your word for it,” Adam said.
He turned his back on D’Scover and began to slide single books out from the densely occupied shelves. They seemed to enjoy this handling and most offered a dusty flutter as he separated them from their neighbours. Some even curved their spines like waking cats and gave off a creaky stretch as he carried them to the table. After a while Adam realised that he had drifted into talking to them, offering a little phrase of comfort or praise as he looked through them.
“Wow, you’re handsome, aren’t you?” he would say to one and, “Don’t worry, all be over in a minute,” to another. After many hours, a jostling pile of freed volumes sat on the desk and yet he still had no idea if they were closer to finding what they were looking for. D’Scover seemed deep in silent concentration in the darkest corner of the room as he pulled book after book from the shelves, quickly flicked through their pages and slotted them back in place.
Adam leaned back in his chair and stretched. “I wish one of you could help me out,” he sighed, and swung his feet up on to the desk.
At first he thought that it was his own movement that caused one of books on the top of the pile in front of him to ruffle, but it did it again a moment later. Feeling distinctly foolish, he leaned over and stared at the cover.
“Can you help me?” he asked softly and, once more, the pages fluttered in their bindings.
He picked up the book that he had already examined and laid it in his lap where it puffed itself up like a chicken fluffing its feathers and settled down again. Adam opened the front page and looked at the frontispiece that he had already scrutinised.
“I don’t get it,” he muttered. “I’ve already looked right through you and found diddly-squat. Are you hiding something?”
The pages of the book began to flick past as though caught by a stiff breeze. Adam lifted his hands out of the way to avoid accidentally stopping the rapid search through the volume. After a few seconds the pace slowed then stopped. Adam looked carefully at this page, scanning down the lines, desperate for something that might look as if it would help.
“I wouldn’t know a Finding Ritual if it jumped out and knocked me on the head,” he told the book. “You’ll have to be clearer than that, mate.”
Slowly one of the pages of the book began to curl in on itself until the outside edge of the page tucked itself neatly into the bindings at the margin. Adam picked the book up, at first assuming that it was upset in some way and had curled up in a sulk.
“Hey, don’t fold your pages in half; it’ll leave a crease if you get closed up with a page like that.” He reached out to unfurl the page, but then stopped and took a closer look. An idea hit him so hard he jumped with realisation.
“I think I’ve found it!” he called out. “Come and have a look at this!”
D’Scover climbed down from his ladder and, with a head carrying a thick crop of trailing cobwebs, came over to where Adam sat.
“I didn’t see it at first; it was just there all of a sudden.” He held the book up to D’Scover. “I asked it nicely, and it showed me – how about that?”
D’Scover looked at the book where the page had curled in half. The words ran from one half of a page across to the next. Where previously it had been two pages of distinctly different text, now there was one legible page – the Finding Ritual. The library was heavy with static electricity which crackled along the surfaces like tiny vivid blue ants. D’Scover stood with the curled-page book resting in the crook of his left arm, his right arm raised palm upwards in front of him. As soon as he had started reciting the words on the pages, the room had grown dark. Clouds which once drifted benignly over the building stopped and gathered in churning masses outside the glass. Adam could not hear D’Scover’s words, but he had learned that there was no need to shout rituals for them to be effective – just believing the words as you spoke them was enough.
The Ritual continued and a low hum filled the room, making the bowls of D’Scover’s collection jiggle and dance on their tables, adding the clink of china to the noise. Adam covered his ears, but the hum was inside his head. He looked at D’Scover to see if it was affecting him too – but he remained still, moving only his lips as he continued with the Ritual. The tall man held his hand up in the air and a ball of light began to form in the open palm. It throbbed with an intense brightness almost too much to look at and lifted to revolve just above the surface of his hand. The hum began to subside, and the ball gained a round and frosty surface, trailing blue vapour as it turned.
“I think it is ready.” D’Scover’s voice made Adam jump.
“What do we do with it?”
“This,” D’Scover said, and took a few steps backwards away from the hovering ball of light.
The blue vapour began to cloud around the light ball giving it a diaphanous halo. Adam could make out shapes within the mist beginning to grow and spread out around the light ball. He moved closer.
“It looks like . . . a tiny world!”
“It is our world, give it time,” D’Scover said.
Inside the ball the Earth began to rush towards the mist, the image magnifying rapidly as it did so. Adam reeled with nausea as he tried to focus on the swiftly changing view. After what felt like an agonisingly long time the ball slowed and Adam could make out England through the veil of clouds. This continued to magnify until the image settled itself on just one part of the country.
“But Cornwall is still a big place,” Adam said, realising where the ball had chosen. “How’s this gonna help us? What are we looking for anyway?”
“I have told you, we need some help. Have patience. Look now,” D’Scover said.
The image stopped and focused in, now moving at such a slow pace that it almost escaped the eye. It closed in on a single village, growing closer and clearer. Adam looked away for a moment to note D’Scover’s expression of intense concentration. When he looked back at the ball, it was so tight to the village that they could see people moving about along the tiny streets. The village wrapped itself round the arms of a peaceful-looking harbour where the sea bumped its head against a strong defensive wall. A quiet Cornish town with the usual sprinkling of tourists and locals. All were spending their lives under the watchful beady eyes of the seagulls circling the harbour in an endless search for food.
“I know this place,” Adam gasped.
“How?” D’Scover asked. “How can you know where this is?”
“I was fostered for a while, to a family who thought they couldn’t have kids. Good place until she got pregnant and they sent me back,” Adam explained. “Anyway, they took me on holiday; they had a holiday cottage just outside this village. The place is called Polcastle. How weird is that? I mean, what’re the odds of that happening?”
“The odds are very good if it is meant to be.”
“What do you mean?”
“Destiny,” D’Scover said flatly.
It would take a few hours to find an agent in Cornwall who could gain access to a safe computer for a Hotline. The time had rushed past and most working offices were long closed up for the day. Office computers provided the safest route over which to Hotline: there were so many of them and they were unwatched at night. A Hotline did not leave any trace on the hard drive and many computers were left on overnight so it was often possible to find a way through. However, finding one of the computers left on in a rural area was by no means simple. They had no choice but to sit down for a long wait.
D’Scover managed to convince Adam to pass the time in Dispersal as he had spent far too long maintaining his substance already. The boy had not yet walked among the living unnoticed and, though there was no time to practise, he would have to do so very soon.
When he was alone, D’Scover cleared away all the remaining books from the table in the library and prepared for his own Dispersal. Back in his office he called through to Emma in reception.
“I shall be placing myself in Dispersal shortly; could you carry out an alert if my clearance call comes through?” he asked her via the hands-free phone on the desk.
“Yes . . . sir,” she replied. She sounded hesitant. “Sir, before you go into Dispersal, could I have a quick word with you?”
“Of course.”
Emma came into the office and stood nervously by the desk, looking around and avoiding eye contact with D’Scover.
“Well, come on, speak. You are not normally this reticent,” he told her. “What is on your mind?”
“It’s difficult, sir. I don’t want to cause any trouble, but agents are pressing me to talk to you.”
“Spit it out.”
“It’s the boy, Adam. Some of the other agents are wondering why you’re spending so much time on his training. I mean, after all, it doesn’t normally take you to train a new agent, it’s done by one of the other longstanding agents. It’s got them all talking. Gossip has reached me and they’re all saying the same thing. They want to know if he’s to undertake a Trial and if he’s the boy from the Vision,” she blurted out, hardly taking a breath.
“Well, word does get around, does it not?” D’Scover replied. “Take a seat.”
She sat down opposite him, more at ease but still avoiding eye contact.
“I will be honest with you; the boy does have some of the attributes for him to fulfil the requirements. However, you are aware of much of the history of the Brotherhood, and so you know we have been here a number of times before. I cannot tell you if he is the child of the Vision or not. He is undergoing a longer training period than most agents do and I do not normally take on agent training as you know, but he is very young and needs an authority figure he can trust. He seems to trust me and so it has fallen to me to train him. As for a trial, that is up to the Senior Council to arrange and I cannot second-guess them.” He leaned back and looked at her frowning face. “Does that explain things a little better?”
“Yes, sir, but . . .” she mumbled.
“Come on, say what you want to. I need to Disperse whilst I still have some time to myself.”
“I’ve been handling a lot of calls from agents around the country recently.” She looked at her lap. “All of them have been dealt with, but it . . . it just seems there has been . . . been a lot of activity in places that you wouldn’t . . . expect,” she stammered.
“Meaning?”
“Well, spirits who’ve previously been considered dormant or harmless or even just folk tales are up and causing trouble. Nothing drastic, a few broken vases, thumps in the night, footsteps overhead, that kind of thing – but it seems to be getting worse.”
“Go on.”
“Last week I had a report of a woman who had been pushed out of a window, and another from someone who woke up scratched and bleeding, like a cat had attacked her, and this morning . . .” she hesitated “. . . blood, from taps, bleeding into the bath.”
“Why was I not told?” he asked.
“It wasn’t a problem, sir. As I said, the reports were all easily dealt with by agents in the field.”
“And so why mention it at all?”
“I wondered if it was just us, so I called a few friends at other offices around the world and they have it too. Reports are flooding in about dormant spirits who’ve become active and are causing problems.” She finally looked up at him. “Is it the beginning of the end times?”
“What makes you say that?”
“That’s what the Vision says, doesn’t it? That the end will come and that after the final Trial the Brotherhood will no longer be needed and we’ll all have to take the Final Dispersal.”
D’Scover smiled and leaned back, aware that his substance was slipping from him and his hands had already taken on a gauzy appearance.
“The Vision concerns itself with change, not destruction. You know that the Senior Council do not wish anyone to know the exact wording, but you can be assured that the presence of Adam here does not mean the end of the agency. There are always times when old spirits get more active, and it is a normal sign of the flux in the beliefs of the living. When there are times of trouble around the world, they seek something to believe in and that always makes the old ones wake up and shake about a bit. It will fade as it always has. Now . . .” he sighed, “I am exhausted and if there is nothing else, I would appreciate it if you could lock us down until my call comes through.”
Emma stood up. “Yes, sir. I’ll call you as soon as your clearance is granted. In the mean time you can be safe in the knowledge that everything is moving smoothly ahead with the arrangements for the manuscript from America.”
“Thank you, Emma,” D’Scover said. “Efficient as usual.”
When he was alone again, he gestured to the balcony doors, waiting while they slid back, allowing a rush of cold air to fill the room. He stood for a moment on the balcony, watching the flickering sulphur-yellow lights of the city below before he too went through the motions of his Dispersal and cast his substance out into the sky.
The half-moon cast little light upon the man-made, swollen belly of earth that was Silbury Hill. There was just enough to throw a distorted round shadow on to the stone-strewn landscape. Halfway up the circular path that wound its way around the hill a fleck of silver bounced from the ground, and vanished as quickly as it appeared. Another spark appeared and skittered across the grass, then another, and another. More and more sparks spewed from the grass and soon two fountains of brilliant, glittering light rose into the inky sky and joined each other to form a dazzling archway. From the arch stepped a cowled figure that walked on up the spiral path, closely followed by another and another, slowly climbing the hill in silence. Twelve dark figures assembled in a circle around the collapsed summit.
“Bring her here.” The voice was more a memory of a voice than an actual sound. “We must hear what she has to offer us.”
“But it has never proved useful in the long term,” came another voice from another part of the circle. “Why should this instance be any different?”
“The time is different. This is a time of great change; that fact alone is enough to ensure that we hear every bit of possible information. The Senior Council rest their success on knowing everything they possibly can. It is part of our remit to listen.”
A number of the cowled figures nodded in agreement.
“We should be in majority agreement,” the questioner said. “It is our way; it is written.”
“This is so. Shall we hear this woman speak?”
Ten members of the circle lowered their heads in a single nod of consent; only two remained still.
“It is agreed. We shall summon her.”
A low chant spread through the group and a circle of blue-black sparks, barely visible in the darkness, began to form in the middle of the assembly. In unison the Senior Council raised their hands, palms facing towards the churning dark sparks in front of them, and suddenly, with a loud crack, an indistinct human shape appeared in the circle. She turned around and about within the confines of the circle, her incomplete substance hovering above the collapsed crest of the hill. As soon as she realised where she was, she dropped to her knees.
“Masters,” her voice was little more than a whisper, “I am in your service.”
“WE HAVE SUMMONED YOU,” the Senior Council now spoke in unison, “TO HEAR THE INFORMATION YOU HAVE OFFERED TO US.”
“Yes, my masters. I am, as ever, happy to serve,” she replied.
“TELL US OF THE BOY AND THE KEEPER OF THE TEXTS.”
“I am aware that you, that all of us Shades, need more information about this child. It is important for us to know as much information as possible and D’Scover is so secretive that we could end up knowing nothing until it is too late to intervene,” she blurted out. “D’Scover believes completely in the boy and will do anything to ensure that he is the child of the Vision.”
“ALL OF THIS IS KNOWN TO US. WHAT ELSE?”
“I believe I can find you more information, given my unique access to D’Scover . . . if I could just be allowed access to the Texts . . .”
“ENOUGH. THE COUNCIL CANNOT, AND WILL NOT, BREAK THE CONDITIONS APPLIED BY THE KEEPER OF THE TEXTS. THAT WILL NOT HAPPEN WHILST THE COUNCIL STILL EXISTS. HOWEVER, WE WILL ENSURE THAT YOUR SUBSTANCE WILL BE ASSISTED SO THAT YOUR MOVEMENTS CAN BE MORE FLUID. YOU SHALL FIND OUT AS MUCH AS YOU CAN ABOUT D’SCOVER AND THIS POTENTIAL. WE SHALL SUPPORT YOU FOR NOW.”
She lowered her head once more. “I shall endeavour to do this for you, masters. I will ensure that your trust in me is well founded.”
But her sycophantic words were wasted as the Council had already begun to chant and her partially held substance was already dissipating. Within seconds, she was gone.
“It is done,” a single voice within the Council spoke. “We have given support for this action. This is a transgression of our rules. A deeply tragic day for the Brotherhood.”
“No,” another spoke, “this is a necessary evil linked to the changes coming. Time will tell if this act is in itself a symptom, or a cause.”
The Council turned their backs on the now empty crest of the hill, and slowly walked back down the pathway and through the arch, which slowly blinked into nothingness.
Adam arrived back in the office before D’Scover. His Dispersal had not been as satisfying as the previous one. He had thoughts on his mind and could not give himself fully to the experience. He could not shake the image of the witch girl from his mind, and secretly hoped that they were going to find her. He had to keep reminding himself she would not know him, would not be the girl in the visions, and probably would not even look like her. But she would be someone to talk to.
The office was in darkness when he re-formed by D’Scover’s desk, but even in the still silence he instinctively felt that something was wrong, that he was not alone. Staring into the darkness trying to make out who was there, hoping for a movement, he was suddenly forced to shield his eyes as a brief flash of light cracked through the room. Blinking, he leaned forward to the intercom and called through to see if Emma was still in reception and was relieved to find she was.
“Can you call D’Scover back?”
“I’ve had his permission to do so when the clearance for Cornwall is a hundred per cent safe, but it’s not yet,” she said. “Is it urgent?”
“Yes, it is. Summon him now, please.”
D’Scover could see it the second he arrived back. “This room has been searched,” he said flatly when he regained his substance.
“I thought so,” Adam said, “but how? I thought that this office was secure?”
“I thought it was too,” he replied. “Did you see anything at all?”
“Blue light, pop, gone. That’s all, I’m afraid.”
“And you are sure the light was blue?”
“Blueish, yeah.”
D’Scover walked out through the open balcony doors and strode rapidly down the length of it. Adam ran out after him.
“Don’t you want the key?” he asked.
“Not if we are still being watched!” D’Scover responded with an angry whisper. He stroked the wall gently, his fingers running down the non-existent cracks, and heaved a sigh of relief.
“They did not find it,” he said, “but do not mention it out loud ever again. I will sweep the office electronically for standard surveillance devices, but just in case we must be careful about what we say from . . .”
As they both turned to walk back to the office, a dark shadow burst from the office through the open balcony door and launched out over the city. D’Scover Dispersed in an instant and surged out after the rapidly vanishing smear of colour. All Adam could do was peer out into the thin morning light.
The first lilac fingers of morning stretched up over the city and created a vivid backdrop for the confrontation that was taking place in the sky. The grey shape of D’Scover expanded way beyond his regular size and filled the space in front of the building, surrounding the escapee. He wound round and round in an angry serpentine cloud, twisting and turning about the partially Dispersed interloper. As the sky began to turn blue above them, D’Scover closed in. With a sudden torrent of energy, the cloud blackened and a thin column of purple and white light soared upwards and out of his reach. D’Scover expanded across the sky, scattering his substance as wide as he could, but it was to no avail. The intruder had escaped.
D’Scover gathered his substance once more and came to stand on the balcony next to Adam.
“Do you know who it was?”
“No.” D’Scover shook his head. “And at this stage I do not wish to speculate.”
“But you have an idea?” Adam pressed him for an answer.
D’Scover ignored the question and pushed past him. “If you will excuse me for a moment, I must talk to Emma and arrange for the office to be checked fully.”
He strode off at his usual brisk pace with Adam in hot pursuit. Once they were both back inside the office, D’Scover turned and slammed the balcony doors, sealing them with a silver slick of sparks from his fingertips. When he marched back into his office, his expression was even darker than usual.
“Despite the situation here, we must leave for Cornwall right away,” he grumbled as Emma walked into the office behind him.
“The destination may not be secure for very long. I cannot tell what information our interloper has managed to gain from their visit, but I cannot take a chance. They may already know about the girl and that means that she may no longer be safe. We must travel at once.”
“I’m so sorry, sir,” Emma apologised. “There was no sign that the seal on your office was broken. I really can’t explain how this breach of security happened.”
“Emma, I do not have time to talk to you now,” D’Scover said. “This was a very professional job; we will talk about security when I return. Prepare the Hotline for us so that we may use it right away.”
“Yes, sir,” she said in a subdued tone. “If anyone calls through for you after you’ve Hotlined, where can I tell them you are?”
“Tell them nothing.” He looked back at Adam who waited nervously by his desk. “No,” he called after her, “tell them I needed a change of scenery, and tell them I have gone to the sea.”