The Traveller's Stone

by S J Howland

  Chapter Twelve

  Xander slipped through the front door into the dimly lit hallway. There was a sliver of light shining out from under the kitchen door at the end of the hall and the rumbling sound of many voices. He hesitated a moment and then hurried up the stairs, two at a time. If he was missed and people had been worried then it was probably best to find out first from Ollie and Len. As he walked along the upstairs corridor, he could hear their voices coming from the bedroom.

  ‘We can’t just sit here forever, Ollie,’ came Len’s sharp voice. ‘This could be serious.’

  ‘And do what?’ demanded Ollie.

  Xander pushed the bedroom door open, feeling guilt sweep over him as he saw the two figures huddled on Ollie’s bed, Len looking pale-faced and worried. They both glanced up as he entered the room, smiling sheepishly at them.

  ‘Hi,’ he got out before Len almost throttled him with the strength of her hug. She pulled away as quickly as she had launched herself at him and hit him on the arm. ‘Don’t ever just disappear like that again,’ she said, her voice oddly choked. As she saw Xander looking guiltily at her red-rimmed eyes, she cleared her throat and glared at him. ‘Ollie’s been freaking out,’ she snapped.

  Xander looked over at Ollie, whose eyebrows had risen nearly into his hair.

  ‘Um – no! I told Len she was over-reacting and that you’d be fine. It’s not like you’ve been gone that long,’ he said.

  Xander stared at him in surprise. With everything that had happened at Mistleberry and then his extraordinary experience at the brownies’ home, it felt to him as if a lifetime had passed since their argument.

  ‘So, where’ve you been, if you don’t mind our asking?’ asked Ollie, a little awkwardly and Xander realised that their fight, which seemed so long ago to him, was still at the forefront of Ollie’s mind. He decided that the quickest thing to do was just to tell everything and try to straighten things out with the two of them.

  ‘Well, you were both completely right,’ he began.

  Len walked back over to Ollie’s bed and sat down, waving her hand imperiously for him to continue.

  ‘We’re listening,’ she said primly. Ollie rolled his eyes and elbowed her in the ribs, whereupon Len’s face creased into a grin and she dropped the pompous attitude. Xander felt the tension break, and he laughed, collapsing onto his own bed.

  ‘When I left you I went to Mistleberry,’ he said. He saw Len lean forward, ready to launch into some kind of speech, and he lifted his hand quickly. ‘Just let me tell the whole thing and then you can say “I told you so” as much as you want. It’s fair enough, as you did, and you were right.’

  He recounted what he had found at Mistleberry, the attack of the shades and how he had been unable to stop them at all.

  ‘What happened then?’ demanded Ollie. ‘Clearly you got out of it somehow.’

  Xander hesitated. The brownies’ secret was not his to tell. They had not said anything to forbid him but they had made clear they were reverting to their previous relationship with him, invisible again. He looked at the two people he trusted most, who had stood by him unflinchingly, and made a quick decision.

  ‘I’ll tell you what happened but you have to promise, to swear, that you won’t tell anyone or act any different.’ He stared at both of them, his face serious and they both nodded, equally solemn. Xander took a deep breath and plunged on. ‘I didn’t get out of it at all. The brownies rescued me. They held off all the shades and asked if I would accept their help, and then they got me out of there and took me to their home.’

  ‘Huh?’ said Ollie, his jaw slack with surprise.

  ‘Asked you?’ said Len. ‘Brownies don’t talk to people. They just don’t. They think they’re invisible and they don’t speak. And how could brownies have stopped shades?’

  ‘Yeah, about that – I can explain, but this is what you can’t ever tell anyone.’

  Xander recounted everything he could remember about the Penance, the brownies’ home and what he had experienced and seen there. While Ollie and Len stared at him, for once entirely speechless, he told them about the cliff, the Stone and the choice he had been given. After he had finished, they both sat staring at him wide-eyed. The silence was just growing uncomfortable when Ollie finally spoke.

  ‘Well, no one can say you don’t know how to spend an evening, can they?’

  There was a pause, and then Len spluttered. Suddenly all three of them were laughing so hard that Xander had to lay back across his bed, his stomach hurting and tears running down his face. Eventually they all fell quiet, with just the occasional hiccup from Len, and Xander rolled over, pushing his hair back off his face.

  ‘So, what do you think?’ he asked.

  ‘Well, obviously we haven’t seen those pictures that you did,’ said Len thoughtfully, pulling her legs up and wrapping her arms around them. She rested her chin on her knees. ‘But it sounds right. The Pavilions can somehow stop the shades destroying everything, and the key is that star wall. If Xander is the seed of the ancient blood –’

  ‘Whatever that means,’ interjected Xander, but Len waved that away.

  ‘– which the hobs seem to believe, then we still need to figure out how to get in there, unless Xander can just waggle his fingers at it or put his blood on it, or something.’

  Xander screwed up his face in distaste at the thought of blood, but it was Ollie who spoke up.

  ‘Well, before Xander starts randomly smearing walls with gore, how about we look at other options? I don’t think it can mean literal blood, anyway. We never did figure out what that last bit means; the stuff about the ‘marks of the kin’. That has to be relevant.’

  ‘What exactly did it say?’ asked Xander, frowning. Ollie fished under his bed for a moment and then produced a crumpled piece of paper, which he tried to smooth out before giving up and handing it over to Xander.

  ‘The marks of the kin stand guard eternal,’ Xander read out and then pulled a face. ‘Well, we know what they are guarding now but what on earth are the marks of the kin?’ He stared at the paper as if the words would re-arrange themselves into something that made sense by sheer willpower alone, then shoved it away with a disappointed sigh. ‘I just don’t get it.’

  ‘What do we do now, then?’ asked Ollie, leaning back on his bed.

  ‘Well, while you think about it, you two could always spend a bit of time tidying up this dump,’ remarked Len. ‘Honestly, it’s a complete tip. Don’t you put anything away?’

  Ollie just shrugged. ‘It’s easier to find stuff this way.’

  ‘Yeah, right,’ said Len. ‘I’m sure that will convince Gran. You’re sitting on all that formal wear. It’s totally messed up.’

  ‘Since when do you care?’ asked Ollie.

  ‘Oh, I don’t.’

  Xander had tuned out the usual sound of Ollie and Len bickering as he stared in frustration into space, but something Len had said triggered a vagrant thought in his subconscious. He turned to look at Ollie who, as Len had correctly pointed out, was sitting on a pile of their formal wear, his sash dangling down with the Peverell family sigil half-obscured. He stared at it, his mind groping for something, running the words through his head: the symbol of the family, the mark of the family. The mark of the –

  Xander lurched forward and grabbed at the sash, nearly dragging Ollie off the bed.

  ‘Oi! You almost had me on the floor then,’ spluttered Ollie. ‘Don’t let Len’s sudden fetish for tidiness set you off.’

  Xander ignored him, brandishing the sash in the air.

  ‘This is it!’ he burst out. ‘Can’t you see it? Your family is your kin. This is your kin mark, right here. Look!’

  They both leant forward obediently, gazing at the sash.

  ‘Could the Families really go back as far as that?’ asked Ollie, chewing on his lip as he eyed the mark thoughtfully. ‘The hobs were talking about something really ancient, weren’t they? And it says the marks stand guard eternally.’

>   Len grinned. ‘Gran would tell you that there is nothing older than the Families. Right back at the dawn of time they were there, informing the other cave people of the only socially acceptable way to carry a club.’

  ‘So that must be it,’ said Ollie, slowly. ‘The marks of the kin are the Twelve Families’ sigils.’

  ‘Maybe we’re supposed to look for them carved somewhere on the Pavilions, guarding something?’ asked Xander.

  Len had been eying the sash, deep in thought, but at this she looked up.

  ‘They can’t be there in plain sight,’ she said with certainty. ‘Don’t you think that if they were, then the Families would have known about it after all these centuries? They would definitely make a big deal about it during the Solstice if their sigils were carved into the Pavilions themselves. Talk about feeding their self-importance. The marks must be disguised.’

  ‘So, now we have the star wall leading the way, while the family sigils guard it,’ said Ollie. ‘Except we don’t know what that actually means. It’s like going two steps forward and one step back.’ He rolled his eyes and then lay back on his bed, staring at the ceiling as if he might find inspiration there.

  Xander stared down at the sash on his lap, biting his lip. They were so close, he could feel it. It was almost within his grasp and he screwed his eyes shut, wrestling with an idea which was dancing just out of reach. The Peverell family sigil floated before his mind’s eye as he groped desperately, trying to visualise the glowing wall at the Pavilions with its scattering of stars. Stars grouped together in their familiar constellations, forming shapes on the wall. His eyes sprang open, and he stared down at the sigil again, his hands shaking in his excitement.

  ‘It’s Orion,’ he exclaimed, wildly. ‘You’re Orion and the other Families must have matches too.’

  Len leapt up without a word and dashed out of the door, while Ollie sat up and stared at Xander, comprehension dawning as he reached over to grab his sash. He smoothed it out to examine the sigil.

  ‘You’re right,’ he said in an awed voice. ‘I never thought about it before, but this does look a bit like Orion, with his belt in the middle and that slash through it as his sword.’

  Len burst back into the room, waving a magazine at them both. Ollie’s eyebrows shot up as he glimpsed the cover.

  ‘Is this really the time to get caught up with your trashy reading?’ he enquired.

  ‘Idiot,’ said Len breathlessly. ‘Gran never buys this stuff normally, but she got this one because it has an article on the Solstice.’

  She flipped through the pages until she found the headline, ‘Solstice Ball kicks off the summer season’. Several pages followed, filled with glossy pictures of the party, and Xander recognised many of the faces he had seen that night, of prominent Family members.

  Ollie leant over her shoulder. ‘You didn’t make it, Len, I’m afraid,’ he said, with mock sympathy.

  ‘Haha,’ said Len, sardonically. ‘Look, you twit! All the Families are represented here, which means all of their sashes and sigils. Honestly, sometimes I struggle to believe we’re actually related.’

  Ollie elbowed her half-heartedly as he stared down at the pictures, then he made a long arm to grab a notebook and pencil from under the pile of shirts on his bedside table. After tearing out a couple of pages, he leant over Len to lay one over the first picture he could see where the sigil was clear and carefully traced it out, then wrote the Family name next to it in neat letters. For several minutes, they were all busy flipping through the magazine to find the best representations of each sigil and then tracing it out. In the end, they had six pages of the notebook, each with two sigils on it, and Len shoved the magazine to one side.

  Ollie produced an atlas from his bookshelf and turned to the end where there were several pages representing the night skies. With one accord, they all dropped to the floor, putting the open atlas in the centre and spreading the pages of sigils out around it. They looked back and forth between the book and the pages, and for a few moments silence reigned in the bedroom. Then the arguing began. Most of the sigils were fairly obvious and easily matched to their corresponding constellations, but for two or three of them their stylised representations were not so straightforward to match, until Len flipped forward in the atlas and found that the southern hemisphere was represented separately. For once, she managed to restrain any sarcastic comments, and they found the final sigils.

  ‘This has to be it,’ said Len, speaking faster than usual in her excitement, as they all sat and regarded the fruits of their labour. ‘We go to the star wall at the Pavilion, we find those constellations, Xander works his mojo and then we get in there and fix it.’

  ‘Fix it how?’ demanded Xander. ‘The last time I tried to tinker with something that powerful it didn’t go too well, remember.’

  There was a small silence, and then Ollie just shrugged.

  ‘Len was right then; it wasn’t the proper place. This is different. I do think we need some help though. Mistleberry shows that the borders are weakening everywhere and who knows whether even the Pavilion is still safe. We should take some Travellers with us – we can’t depend on the brownies to come fish Xander out twice in one day.’

  ‘I doubt they impose a quota,’ said Len. ‘But I think Ollie’s right. Also, I think we should ask Callan Reeve to come. There’s no-one who understands more about the power in Haven than him, except for the hobs and they aren’t talking to humans anymore.’

  Xander turned all this over in his head but it was obvious that Len and Ollie were right. There was only one issue.

  ‘How are we going to persuade them to come with us, without confessing to breaking into government buildings by night and telling the brownies’ secrets?’ he asked.

  Len rolled her eyes.

  ‘Tactical truthfulness, of course,’ she said. ‘Suitable vagueness where necessary, innocent evasion and careful control of the narrative. Honestly, it’s like you’ve never spoken with an adult.’

  Ollie laughed. ‘Yeah, right,’ he sniggered. ‘And the number of times that has actually worked on Gran is, oh, precisely zero.’

  ‘We’re telling the truth,’ said Xander firmly. ‘About our stuff, anyway. How can we expect anyone to believe us if we start out by lying to them?’

  ‘And the brownies?’ asked Ollie.

  ‘I can’t tell about them,’ replied Xander. ‘I’ll just explain that I can’t say.’

  ‘Yeah, that’ll go well,’ muttered Len.

  ‘What’s all that noise?’ asked Ollie suddenly, going to the bedroom door to listen. The volume of voices downstairs had been growing throughout their discussion and, as they stood listening, the front door banged again. ‘What’s going on?’

  All three hurried for the stairs, following the sounds of many voices all talking at the same time. They paused just inside the kitchen door. The whole room was packed with people and Xander noticed many of the Travellers he had seen at the Gathering, standing in groups and deep in conversation. Through the open door of Mrs Stanton’s dispensary, he could see her treating someone while James was busy seating several other casualties; with a shock, Xander recognised the pale burns of shade-strike.

  At the other end of the room, near the hearth, stood Flint with Ari’s bright hair visible beside him. With them were Jasper, and several of the Wardens, including Alwyn Atherton, Edric Wooten and Jory Bardolph, the latter’s florid face drooping like a concerned bulldog. Atherton was alternately rubbing his tired face and then interjecting with decisive hand gestures. The back door into the dusky, warm garden stood open, and Xander felt Len’s elbow in his side as she leant forward to whisper.

  ‘There are giants in the garden. What in Haven’s name is going on tonight?’

  As if in answer to her question, Ari glanced over and spotted them standing hesitantly at the door. She slid around behind the arguing group and came over to join them. Her face was serious, the amused sparkle that generally danced in her clear eyes missing thi
s evening. Before she could say anything, Ollie jumped in.

  ‘What’s going on, Ari? Why’s everyone here and what happened to those people?’ He jerked his head towards to the injured awaiting Mrs Stanton’s care.

  Ari frowned, fiddling absently with her orb.

  ‘It’s not very healthy out there tonight,’ she said, her voice low. ‘We’re losing control and even the Wardens are beginning to realise it.’ She glanced back over at the group around Flint where Atherton was now speaking, his face looking lined and old. Flint stood with his arms folded, frustration evident in the tension in his body and his heavy scowl. ‘Of course, that doesn’t mean they plan to listen,’ she added wryly.

  ‘We need to speak to Flint,’ blurted Xander. ‘We’ve figured out how to fix this.’

  Ari shook her head. ‘I don’t think this is the time, Xander,’ she said in a gentle voice, but her expression was firm. ‘Flint will get it sorted, guys. Don’t worry.’

  Len opened her mouth to argue but as she did so, a sharp whistle cut through all the noise. Everyone turned to look as Flint walked into the centre of the room, Bardolph and Atherton behind him looking anxious and unsettled.

  ‘Thank you all for coming,’ said Flint, his voice loud enough to reach the giants leaning in at the door. ‘You know the current situation. After much discussion and consideration, we believe that the best option open to us right now is to guard and aggressively ward all the known vulnerabilities on the border. We’ll be mounting twenty-four hour warding schedules while we work out how to address the underlying weakness.’

  Flint’s eyes flicked towards the table and Xander recognised Callan Reeve sitting amidst a pile of papers and notebooks. He looked exhausted and did not look up from the diagrams of schematics and scrawled equations.