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When Tom woke up he had no idea how long he’d been unconscious for. The first things he became aware of were the cold, dusty floorboards pressed against his face, and the soreness of his right arm trapped beneath him. He rolled over onto his back, flexed his arm gently, and then sat up, wondering what had happened.
Nimue had gone, but other than that, the room looked the same. Had she really left them here? He struggled to his feet, shouting, “Nimue!” over and over again. But his calls were swallowed by the walls, and the silence quickly settled round him.
What was he going to do? If he did nothing he would be trapped here with the others, possibly forever, and he was in the unenviable position of being fully aware he was trapped in a spell. He’d go mad. There was no delirious enchantment to muffle his mind. He paused for a moment, weighing up his options. His unease doubled as he stood alone, feeling the weight of eons shifting around him. It was as if he was suffocating.
Suddenly it struck him – he knew what his talisman was. The silver bough, tucked in a pocket of his cloak. Fahey had said something about it protecting him. But from what? Madness? And then he had a moment of panic; had Nimue stolen it while he was unconscious? He patted his pocket and sighed with relief. It was still there. How come it didn’t protect him from specific spells? He shrugged. He had enough to worry about.
He turned to Merlin. Perhaps if he could rouse him, Merlin might be able get them out. But then he realised – if Merlin could do that, surely he would have escaped years ago.
The advantage of not being enchanted, like the others, was that he had his sanity, and a talisman. Tom straightened his shoulders with determination. He was going to get them out of there.
First things first, he couldn’t just leave Merlin lying on the floor. It was wrong. He ran downstairs and grabbed a pillow and blankets off the bed, putting the pillow under Merlin’s head and wrapping the blankets around him. It was probably pointless, but it made Tom feel better.
Now it was time to see how Arthur and Orlas were. Outside the tower the air was mild, with hardly a breath of wind. It felt like spring or autumn, as if it was the beginning or the end of something, but some trees were in full leaf, while others were shedding leaves – layers of their rich reds and russets were strewn across the ground, collecting in bundles against jumbles of rocks and in overgrown thickets. Daffodils nodded in the sunshine, and a tangle of roses was growing through the trees. Tom was sure all this wasn’t meant to happen at the same time. If this place had no seasons, did it also mean it had no day or night? He would soon find out. But that also filled him with panic. How would he know how long they had been there? The Other already had a misplaced sense of time; with no markers at all he could be here centuries and never know. What if he’d been here months already?
But it felt almost beyond time, with a watchfulness that could wait, and had waited, for millennia. He was tempted to see if there was a boundary, and was about to set off in a straight line, keeping the tower behind him, when he decided against it. There was a very real chance he could get lost, or even forget what he was doing in the first place. Which was? Oh yes. Getting out of here. He shook himself. Was he drugged? He had to act. Now. Before he fell asleep, like Merlin.
He could see Arthur the bear, absently wandering through the trees. He made a beeline for him, jumping over streams and scrambling over boulders, before coming to a halt a short distance away. Feeling foolish, he shouted, “Arthur, can you hear me? See me? Hello! Are you in there?” But the bear simply shook himself like a gigantic dog and ignored him. And Orlas, grazing in the distance, continued to tear up huge chunks of grass. Whatever Tom decided to do, he was going to be doing it alone.
He raced back to Merlin’s room. If Merlin had taught Nimue the spell, and if the tower was a representation of Merlin’s workshop, then the spell must be here somewhere, maybe in a spell book. And if he found it, he might find a way to reverse it.
He was worried that something in the room might have changed, but he found it just as he had left it. The fire still burned, and candles still spluttered in dark nooks. He doubted Merlin’s spell book would be on one of the shelves; surely it would be on a workbench if he used it frequently. He started looking on the bench furthest from the door. Papers were scattered across it haphazardly, and he rifled through them. What did a spell book look like? Old and leather-bound? He found letters, scrawled notes, books on animals, birds, and the properties of stones. But no spell book.
He moved on to the middle bench, working methodically from one end to the other, getting distracted by drawings of eyes, dissected hearts, and other grisly organs. And then, buried beneath a pile of papers and bags of herbs, he found it. A huge, black, leather-bound book of spells.
He cleared the space around it, and opened it carefully. It was very old, and worn with use. The front cover was marked and stained, and when he opened it he found the spine was broken, and the pages turned easily, some loose at the edges. The pages were well worn too, the edges grubby where they had been handled.
A quick glance was enough to show him there were hundreds of spells. Each started on a new page, and some were long, going on for pages, while others were only a few lines. There were notes and small drawings in the margins, and trapped within some pages were feathers, herbs or flowers, and what looked like fragments of animal skins. The writing was small and cramped, as if spiders had walked through ink and scrambled across the page.
Tom sighed. This could take a while. He pulled over a stool and settled in.
After what seemed like hours, during which he became distracted by several bizarre-sounding spells, Tom eventually reached the end of the book. There was no spell for imprisoning a person. That made sense – why would Merlin want to write that down?
A wave of despair washed over him and he realised he was very tired. How could he break a spell he couldn’t even find? He rubbed his face and put his head in his hands. He had never felt so lonely. His eyes were closing with tiredness, and he rested his head on the spell book, his head spinning with questions.
Seconds later, he jerked upright. Nimue hadn’t recast this spell, she had just taken them back into it. That was a different spell. He needed to reverse Nimue’s spell, so that should be the spell he looked for. Now he groaned again. If he was to rescue Merlin, he would have to find the original spell and reverse that. But by reversing the spell and rescuing them, would he kill Merlin? Nimue had thought so.
His head hurt. Magic was complicated, and he had no idea what to do.
He dragged himself to his feet. He had to find the spell to imprison a person. It had to be here somewhere. Damn Nimue. And damn her green eyes.
