by Holly Race
‘Anyone spot what she’s running from?’ Natasha asks us.
We all peer down the street. Apart from a few other dreamers there’s no one there. Then I see it.
‘The inspyre.’
‘Yes!’ Natasha says, pointing at me. ‘Do the rest of you see it, behind the dreamer?’
A swirl of blue light dances after the woman. It doesn’t seem threatening, but it is definitely following her. Then the woman glances at it.
‘Oh my God,’ Phoebe startles. In the split second that the woman turned, the inspyre transformed into a shadowy figure. It doesn’t have any features – it barely has limbs – but it’s loosely human in shape and shrouded in grey cloud. As the woman speeds up, the figure morphs back into inspyre. Suddenly that dancing light has a sinister feel.
‘That’s a stalker, guys. It can take any shape or none at all. Dreamers can’t see inspyre in its purest form, but with a stalker they can feel it, like a lurking sense of dread.’
‘Shouldn’t you be killing it?’ Ramesh says.
‘Not yet. Stalkers aren’t necessarily dangerous. The harkers have decided this one’s safe for now.’
‘But what happens if it catches her?’
‘Stalkers tend to match a dreamer’s pace instead of actually aiming to catch them. They feed off their fear, you see. The only time it might get dangerous is if the dreamer decides to give up. The harkers will tell us if anything changes.’
We leave the woman and her stalking inspyre behind and move on down the street.
Ramesh leans over. ‘I’ll see what I can find out, but at some point I want to hear why you think Medraut has anything to do with Annwn.’
I nod curtly and glance back. The dreamer has begun to run. I always hated those kinds of nightmares – my stalkers never took a form. I’d just have a sense that someone was following me, and I couldn’t shake them off. When I woke up it would take me ages to calm the hammering of my heart. That’s how I feel at the moment, I realise. Like a shadowy figure is lurking behind me, waiting to take me out. A shadowy figure that takes the shape of Sebastien Medraut.
17
Ollie joins me as I’m leaving for school the next morning. Neither of us says anything, and I keep waiting for him to peel off, but he sticks beside me like an irritating shadow.
‘Are you lost?’ I eventually snap.
‘Why are you suddenly hung up on Sebastien Medraut?’ he asks.
‘I’m not.’
‘You are. Dad said you were asking him more questions.’
I shrug in what I hope is a disdainful manner. ‘Just because I’m developing an interest in politics –’
Ollie’s cough of laughter interrupts me. It’s fair enough, to be honest.
‘Do you think Medraut had something to do with Mum’s death?’ he asks.
‘What? What makes you think that?’
He’s about to answer when he spots something up ahead and tenses.
‘The plaque next to the herb garden,’ he says shortly, then turns on his heel and takes a side street that goes nowhere near his school. I look up and stop dead. Because there, lounging against a wall, surrounded by a cohort I last saw at nighttime on Wanstead Flats, is Jenny. She is looking straight at me.
I hover in place for what feels like hours, wondering what to do. I have been frightened many times in my life, but the only time that fear has paralysed me is around Jenny. I can almost feel the fire licking against my legs; the sudden spark that leaped towards my face that has marked me permanently. She’s not allowed to come near me. It’s the law. But what use is the law when there’s no one to enforce it? Ollie’s left me on my own again. For all I know, he purposely steered me this way to help her finish off the job.
Jenny gets up. Her gang follows her and spreads out across the road.
Nah. I turn round and take the long route to the Underground station. Humiliation pumps through me. On the tube, all through school, all the way home, I burn with it. I can’t help but feel that people are staring at me more than usual. I am more aware of my strange appearance than I have been for months. I prickle with the certainty that Jenny is going to pounce on me and no one will do anything to stop her.
Ollie was probably just winding me up, but that night I run round to the herb garden before I go to the stables. Sure enough, there is a stone plaque fixed to the wall behind a rosemary hedge. On it are carved the names of every Head Thane Tintagel has seen, starting with Arthur Pendragon. I scan the rest, occasionally landing with a jolt of familiarity on a name I recognise from my history lessons. At the bottom I find three entries:
1981–2001: Lady Bethany Caradoc
2001–2005:
2005–2008: Lord David Richards
2008– : Lord Lionel Allenby
I peer closer at the space between Bethany Caradoc and David Richards. One name seems to be missing – or rather, erased. Whatever name used to be carved beside the years 2001–2005 has been covered up with some sort of putty. I trace over it with my fingers, desperate to have my suspicion confirmed. My fingers seem to spark; an electric shock that travels along my arm and right into my skull. I snatch my hand away.
‘Knight? Shouldn’t you be saddling up?’ an apothecary says, making me jolt. She kneels down to dig at some saplings.
‘Yeah. I’m going now,’ I say, casting one last look back at the plaque. I’m sure something’s different, but I don’t get a chance to look more closely because at that moment Miss D’s impatient voice summons me from across the gardens.
We’ve been invited to shadow Bedevere on a mission to watch them tackle a poisoner – a type of nightmare we haven’t been allowed to see until now because it’s so dangerous. As we ride out over Tintagel’s drawbridge and into Annwn, I glance at Ollie, wondering why he wanted me to look at the plaque. It’s an odd thing to do if it was just a prank. To top off my confusion, I’m starting to get a headache.
‘Fern?’ Ramesh says, breaking into my reverie. ‘Are you okay?’
I nod.
‘Thinking about your mum again?’
I look around, worried someone will overhear him. It still feels strange to have shared this with someone else.
‘It’s okay, no one’s listening,’ Ramesh says, then when I don’t reply, adds, ‘I did ask around about Medraut, but it’s difficult, being a squire and, well, I don’t really know what I’m asking …’ He trails off, clearly hoping I’ll give him all the gossip about my dead mother.
‘One Voice.’
‘What?’ Ramesh says.
‘I didn’t say anything,’ I reply. ‘Did you … did you hear that too?’
‘One Voice, One Voice, One Voice.’
The whole group is now looking round, trying to find the source of the sound. One Voice – the name of Sebastien Medraut’s political party.
‘It’s coming from the air,’ Phoebe says in wonder.
‘From the inspyre, actually,’ Rafe calls back. ‘Medraut’s been gaining power lately, hasn’t he? If you see loads about him in Ithr, it stands to reason you’ll come across his slogans and ideas in Annwn. Don’t take any notice of it for now.’ But I don’t think I’m the only one who spots Rafe exchange a look with the other experienced knights. They’re hiding something.
We ride to a little square north of King’s Cross: a set of Georgian townhouses that stand around a walled garden like gossiping friends. A crowd of thanes is already gathered on the steps leading into one of the houses. There’s a solitary reeve and an assortment of veneurs in their black tunics. They move around the house like police at a crime scene.
On paper, the veneurs sound harmless enough. They are supposed to look after the animals in the castle – the horses that carry us knights into battle; the cats that have slipped through cracks in Tintagel’s defences to hunt smaller nightmares; the dogs that sometimes attach themselves to a thane.
They also look after the morrigans.
This will be my first time meeting a morrigan. They are kept in the eyr
ie, at the very top of one of Tintagel’s towers.
‘They’re a bit … unusual,’ Rafe told us as we rode. ‘Technically they’re vampires, but don’t let that put you off. They feed off your imagination and memories, so they can be really useful to us in certain circumstances, but you should never be left alone with a morrigan unless you’re trained.’
Now I see the things, I am even more creeped out by them than I was by Rafe’s description. At first they just look like large crows perched on the leather-clad wrists of the veneurs. Each one is hooded like a bird of prey. Then one stretches its wings to reveal ragged grey skin instead of feathers, like a cross between bird and bat.
‘What’s that on its wing?’ Ramesh asks, pointing to a tag attached to the morrigan.
‘They all have one,’ the Veneur explains. ‘A few years back some morrigans went missing from the eyrie so they all have to wear these trackers now.’
Rafe ushers us all in close before we enter the house. ‘Poisoners don’t kill in Annwn, but they’re the most dangerous of all nightmares, and the most difficult ones to deal with. There’s no point in killing a poisoner. It will just come back. The key is to find the root of what makes a dreamer create a poisoner and use the morrigans to remove it. It’s a very delicate process. Morrigans are tricky creatures to control, so I don’t want anyone to utter a sound, okay? It’s crucial that they aren’t distracted.’
We all nod silently, keen to show off our ability to follow rules like good little squires. As we tiptoe up the steps and into a sitting room, my curiosity grows. What can this nightmare be? I imagine all kinds of monsters – horned, fire breathing, spines galore … So when the group spreads out to reveal two men, I am flummoxed.
They sit on a raggedy sofa. One man looks as though he hasn’t slept in weeks. He stares straight ahead with dulled eyes. As I get closer, I realise he probably hasn’t showered in weeks either. His hands and clothing are grubby and he stinks. The person beside him could be his more successful twin. He’s dressed in a tailored suit, his nails are manicured and his hair slicked back. His face is less lined, too, but instead of the lifeless look in the other man’s eyes, his are full of malice. He is bent over his companion, whispering in his ear. Then I notice the telltale blue outline around the malicious man’s form, and realise that this must be the poisoner.
I crane to hear what he’s saying.
‘Pathetic excuse of a man … Do you realise how disgusting you are? You stink. You’re worthless. No wonder you’ve got no friends … You see those people staring at you in the street? It’s because they’re revolted by you. What do you bring to the world? You’re such a burden. Mum and Dad are ashamed of you, they’d be happier without you …’
And I understand, with heart-wrenching clarity, exactly why poisoners are the most dangerous nightmares of all. I can see what will happen when this dreamer wakes up. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but at some point the poisoner will achieve its goal. Suddenly the smell of the man doesn’t matter any more because I have been him. Except my poisoner was not in my own image – it was Ollie, or Dad, or sometimes even Mum – telling me in my nightmares, in my daydreams, in the lonely moments between distractions, that everyone would be better off if I were dead.
I glance at Ollie, suddenly furious. How dare he bear witness to this man’s most vulnerable moment? But Ollie’s expression is a mirror of mine. He is gulping heavily and his eyes are fixed on the poisoner with … is that fear? Recognition, at least. But I don’t understand – I can’t imagine that Ollie has ever had the kind of thoughts that make chains around your heart.
The veneurs surround the dreamer and his nightmare and, as one, remove the hoods of their morrigans. The creatures’ eyes are red, like mine. Most of them home in immediately on the dreamer, but one or two peer round at the assembled group. I try to edge closer, slipping around Phoebe to get to the front.
Someone grabs my wrist and I stifle a cry of shock. I am sparking with energy. An arc of inspyre leaps from the ceiling towards me. I look to see who it was who grabbed me – Ollie. He looks just as shocked as me.
I may as well have shouted out because every single morrigan in the room is suddenly fixated on us.
‘Get them out,’ a veneur snaps. Rafe pushes us from the room and shoves us out onto the street.
‘What was that?’ Rafe hisses.
‘I’ve got no idea,’ I say.
‘Me neither,’ says Ollie.
‘Whatever, you’d both better stay outside now.’
He goes back inside, and I round on Ollie.
‘What did you do?’
‘I was trying to stop you from distracting them.’
‘Well, that worked out well, didn’t it?’
We shove each other as we peer through the window to see what’s happening.
The morrigans are perched strategically on the dreamer’s shoulders and head, with their beaks dipped into his flesh as though it’s a flower brimming with pollen. I can’t hear anything, but the motion of the creatures’ throats as they guzzle the dreamer’s memories is revolting. It’s working, though: the poisoner is fading. At first he goes fuzzy at the edges, then translucent. What is most fascinating, though, is the transformation in the dreamer. Something lifts and sparks behind his eyes. His face, too, seems younger. It’s hope, I realise, my heart blooming. He is rediscovering hope.
18
Despite my coldness towards him, Ramesh is taking my queries about Medraut and treitres as a personal quest. One chilly night, as I hurry back from the stables, watching my breath turn inspyre into snowflakes, Ramesh runs out of Tintagel to find me.
‘I’ve got it,’ he tells me, pulling me up the steps and through Tintagel’s doors, now studded with icicles, ‘or at least I think I have. Or it’s common knowledge but we haven’t been taught it yet. I’m not completely sure.’
‘Ramesh, what are you on about?’
We speed walk to the castle’s hospital. Instead of the sprawling buildings we have in Ithr, Tintagel’s hospital occupies just one of the towers. Platforms are embedded into the stone, spiralling all the way to the top. Each one houses a bed, so the apothecaries can fly between their patients. It’s an ethereal place; the open space both disguises and amplifies sounds so that the whole tower echoes with reassuring murmurs, like waves lapping a shore.
Ramesh doesn’t make me fly, though. He takes me over to the collection of medical books that lie on lecterns on the ground floor, next to the little pantry where herbs hang to dry. He shuffles through the pages of one of them.
‘Here.’ He points to an entry. I don’t immediately read it, because I am drawn to an illustration of the most extraordinary creature I’ve ever seen. It’s lithe, with slender, hyena legs, a long, pointed tail and a face that tapers elegantly into a featureless muzzle. It stands on two legs like a human, though. Its eyes stare at me from the page, following me when I move.
Treitre, the heading says. My heart quickens. The description follows.
You will find no telltale blue light surrounding these creatures, for they are not nightmares at all, but humans. Few people will ever face a treitre; they are rare beings. A study taken in 1999 identified around thirty treitres operating across Annwn.
Becoming a treitre is an onerous and painful process for any aventure brave enough to attempt it. Only those who lack fear may succeed. They must embrace their boldness to the detriment of all other parts of themselves, suppressing emotion and empathy until their human form merges with inspyre to take on the shape of their innermost soul – hard, cold and deadly. For those who succeed, the rewards are great: treitres are the most effective assassins in either Ithr or Annwn and so may charge a high price for their services.
Established treitres tired of bloodshed themselves can glean further riches by training others in the transformation process, and thus cabals of assassins are formed, with apprentices turning to masters as the years go by.
No one has yet found a way to forcibly uncover the h
uman lying beneath a treitre’s shell. They are above the law, for unless they are caught and persuaded to reveal themselves, they shall remain anonymous. If they are killed in their treitre form, then their human identity shall forever be shrouded in mystery. Many kings and queens, dictators and rebels have been brought low by the feared treitre, but the most recent recorded sighting of such a creature was in 2005 in the thaneship of London, where a single treitre laid low some hundreds of knights over the course of several months.
‘You see?’ Ramesh says. ‘All those names on the columns, all from 2005 …’
As if she’d been cut all over.
That’s what Clemmie had said, wasn’t it? I look at the illustration once more. This time I see that the creature’s hands have blades in place of fingers.
‘Thank you,’ I say.
Ramesh puts a hand on my shoulder, and with that tiny gesture of support my throat swells with forbidden tears.
‘Let’s get some air,’ Ramesh whispers, steering me out of the castle and into the gardens. Outside, he watches the paper-clear sky while I try to get control of myself. It’s overwhelming: not just the knowledge of what must have killed Mum, but Ramesh’s kindness. He’s usually so pushy that I hadn’t expected him to instinctively understand that his unobtrusive presence is so much more comforting to me right now than a grand display of concern.
A huddle of apothecaries, swaddled in scarves and carrying baskets of herbs, brush past us. Suddenly, I am running.
‘Fern? You all right?’ Ramesh crashes after me as I vault the hedgerows that divide Tintagel’s gardens from the grazing pastures next to the stables. Round one last curve of a turret and I am there – the herb garden Ollie sent me to just the other day. Everything that had happened with the poisoner had driven from my mind the nagging sense that something about the plaque had changed as I walked away.
