Fantastic Schools: Volume 2

by Nuttall, Christopher G.

  She put Mr. Hunt in his arms and set him against the inside of the arch. Then she turned and stood at the threshold. She looked around, walked away and back, and stopped just at the threshold. She blanched and fell to her knees.

  “Now I can’t go in.” she said in a voice blank with disbelief.

  “Is it because you were going to get someone to bring me in? Can you go in for some other reason?” Arnould asked.

  She stood up doubtfully, but moved no further. Her hands fell to her sides.

  “No, I still can’t. But, of course, at some point I would try to bring you in. If only I had thought of going for help when I was inside!”

  “Can you use your rod?”

  She drew it out, and bent her head, trying to think of what to say. Then she drew her knife, and held the two instruments up.

  “Imris, Erich, Bastien, and Lissanter, I rosh vocat: reveal this secret.”

  Nothing happened.

  “Imris, Erich, Bastien, and Lissanter, I raghoth vocat: open our way.”

  A breath of wind stirred and dampened her hair, and the umbrella rolled to point in another direction. She lowered her arms.

  “Imris! Erich! What do you want? What’s happening? Make some sign! Call someone!”

  She waited, and nothing came but the rustling of the ivy. Arnould hugged Hyram as he had done on many dark nights in the days that followed Sandy’s funeral, when the beggar had made and given him the ragged toy in compassion. Suddenly Sandy pressed her lips together and raised her instruments with a glare in her eye.

  “Bastien! Lissanter…”

  Her fingers loosened, and the dark wand dropped to the ground with a clatter. She stared in horror at the fallen rod as if it was a venomous snake. Her lips trembled as she breathed through her open mouth.

  “He left me! He opened my hand! Bastien!” She clenched both hands around her knife, as if to keep it from leaving also. Arnould asked shyly if she was able to pick the rod up again. She drew back one foot with a stiff jerk and bent down. Her fingertips slowly gathered up the rod into her hand, and she straightened herself, holding it to her chest. Arnould watched her nervously. She swallowed, and shook herself.

  “We’ll have to find help outside the gate then. Townsend is nearest, and should be in a house of his that is nearby.”

  She sheathed her rod and knife carefully, retrieved the umbrella, and held out a hand to Arnould. He came out of the shadow of the arch, carrying Hyram under his arm, and took her hand. As they went he looked back. It was so easy to walk away; it still seemed that they should just as easily be able to walk through the open gate onto the gravel beyond it.

  Arnould remembered hardly anything afterward, until they stood before Townsend’s door, and Sandy had pulled the bell cord. She had an unnatural, nonchalant manner now, and he was too afraid to ask the question that was heavy on his mind: why hadn’t their father and mother met them? Why had no one met them, or heard her calling?

  A porter answered the door, and jumped when he saw them. He bent towards Sandy and whispered:

  “You two should be inside Hoarwell, why did you come here?”

  Sandy answered in a commonplace tone that was wholly unlike her,

  “We tried, but the gate won’t let Arnould in, or let us get help from inside.”

  The porter gave Arnould a sharp look of suspicion that made his heart sink, but the expression vanished, and the man gave Sandy a glance of unspoken apology: he clearly trusted her in every way.

  Lord Townsend did not show any surprise, but his blank expression and absent-minded manner showed even Arnould, who did not know him, that he was as nonplussed as any of them. He was tall, long faced, with stringy, dark, reddish hair, and a thin bald patch so irregular and jagged it reminded one of an overstuffed cushion tearing open at the seams. He went into another room, leaving them sitting together on a divan in the parlour. Arnould leaned against Sandy with his head on her shoulder, and they were silent for many minutes. Sandy was the first to speak:

  “You know what our false parents called you?”

  “Yes, they always called me Hadrian. And they called you Bertha.”

  “But you always knew your name was Arnould Balfour. They couldn’t take away the names given us by Father and Mother. But do you know our false parents’ names?”

  “No. I always called them Father and Mother. Everyone else called them Mr. and Mrs. Belem.”

  “Their names are Seris, the woman, and the man is Caron. They didn’t want you to know. Did it seem strange that you had a different last name?”

  “I thought everyone had different last names.”

  They smiled at that.

  The porter brought in a letter on a tray. Townsend came out to meet him, took the letter with tongs, and placed it in a chalice that was standing in the center of a small table. He held a patterned disc of metal above it, and spoke a command in Latin. Nothing seemed to happen, and he took the envelope out and opened it with a dagger off the mantelpiece. He read it, and handed it to Sandy.

  “Arnould should know what this says.”

  Then he turned away and stood with his hands clasped behind his back. Sandy sat up.

  “They sent it.” she said.

  * * *

  Our Lord Townsend,

  This is to inform you that the boy Hadrian Belem, stolen from us this night, is under the binding of Orechis, with the stipulations that Hoarwell House must not attempt to remove the bond or to hinder us in retrieving the boy; they are to deliver the boy to the Artwine train station by four o’clock, and none of them are to be present in the station while we are there, which we will be soon afterward; any breach of these stipulations will cause the immediate and complete destruction of the boy.

  Your servants respectfully,

  Mr. and Mrs. Belem.

  * * *

  “Is all this necessary?” Sandy said, “Can’t they just say, ‘Do what we want, or Arnould will die?’”

  Townsend turned around.

  “No. The binding of Orechis is complex in what stipulations may be used. It is required to be very specific, among other things.”

  There was a ring at the door, and Townsend went with his porter to answer it. They returned with a stranger, dressed in long robes as dark as Arnould’s hair, and belted with a rope like a medieval monk. The man’s nose was hooked, his moustache bristling, and his glasses thick. He pulled off his gloves and bowed.

  “I’m called Rupert Dahl. Townsend contacted as many of us as he could, but no one is able to leave Hoarwell House. I happened to be outside already; the rest will have to help from where they are.”

  Sandy’s eyes shone, but with a piercingly dead light.

  “He can’t see his father and mother?”

  Dahl merely repeated that those inside Hoarwell would help from where they were.

  “As I understand,” he said, “Your father and mother have already aided you?”

  Sandy turned to Arnould.

  “The rain. The mist, the wind: they came from Father and Mother, they are the ones who rescued you. If I had come alone, the Belems would have simply taken me back. Now, will you ever see Father and Mother at all...”

  Townsend told Sandy to show the letter to Dahl. He read it and nodded. Then he looked at Arnould.

  “Arnould, this is what your fate will be if they retake you. When once you have fully entered adolescence they will begin to feed on your youth, until within a few years you waste away to a slow death, and they will find another to take your place. This is what became of their own two children.”

  He said this so placidly that it seemed to Arnould as if he was lying; or was that only the desperate hope of his mind? Dahl went on:

  “We cannot help you when they come, so we’ll help you now to prepare, while there are still some hours before us. You will have to fight them yourself.”

  Arnould looked at Townsend and Sandy. It was obvious that there was no other choice, other than giving up, but the unbelievable aspect
of the scenario made it difficult to think about. Yet he could already see that Dahl had begun to reawaken the spark of defiance in Sandy at least: the glare in her eyes was becoming frightening. Townsend moved off sharply, beckoning to him to follow.

  “We’ll need to find your affinity. I’ll get Alaric on the telephone, he may be able to guide us to find it by books.”

  They explained to him that each person bears an affinity to a certain card in a deck patterned after the elemental law. It resembled old Latin playing decks of seventy-eight cards: fourteen in each suit, and twenty-two trumps: the lettered cards. Townsend’s affinity was the Esquire of Cups; Rupert Dahl’s affinity was Temperance, the fourteenth lettered card, the Hebrew letter Nun; Sandy’s affinity was the King of Swords.

  By a tedious, makeshift process involving charts and repeated guessing, guided by the card master of Hoarwell in the buzzing tones of the phone, they found Arnould’s affinity to be the Three of Rods. Then he formally signed the Declaration of a Witch Hunter, and they began a rapid study of both basic and advanced apotropaic metaphysics.

  He took in what they told him mechanically, learned the commands, followed their instructions, worked with no more rest than a change of subject hour after hour. He did it all with a dead feeling inside, where impossibility smouldered like a real substance. It was like waiting hours for a bullet to strike him which was already in the air, trying to learn how to stop it with his bare hands. The glare had gone again from Sandy’s eyes. It seemed to take a long time for her to realise their only attempt was to train him, that she could not save him herself. But there was a sense of not wanting to let go, not wanting to make a final statement, however completely the trap had worked. Seris and Caron Belem had made thoroughly sure that Arnould would not escape them as Sandy had escaped them: their “prayer” they had prayed over him repeatedly had been the invocation of the binding of Orechis.

  At four o’clock Arnould sat hunched on the floor of platform 3 in the Antwine station, with a chalice and coin beside him, and his rod and knife in his lap. Draped over his shoulders was a dark mantle Townsend had given him. His three friends were kneeling on a crate outside, pressing their faces against one of the large windows. The train came in with its slow uproar, and the few passengers dispersed to their various ways, not noticing or not paying any heed to the boy with his strange accoutrements.

  The Belems stepped off the train, in their finest attire, followed by five of their servants dressed in black. They walked towards Arnould without expression, not as a couple, holding hands, but as two dignitaries approach to collect a criminal which has been already apprehended. Each carried a long, ceremonial knife in their right hand, the woman carried a rod in her left hand, and in the man’s left hand was a goblet.

  Sandy clenched Mr. Hunt in her fist, and a lump was in her throat as hard as a stone, but she was unable to cry anymore now.

  Arnould knew that he should attack, that there would be no better moment than before they reached and surrounded him, and begun to weave more webs around him. The fire of fear had risen from smouldering, and if he didn’t act he would in the end be taken without a fight, and his friends’ help would be wasted. But the thought kept throbbing in his mind of the unalterable power of the binding that was on him, a power that could keep Hoarwell House from moving a finger to help him, holding him hostage from hundreds of miles away. What was the most powerful thing he had learned? What did he know best?

  The Belems and their followers suddenly stopped. Arnould was looking up at them, and his eyes gleamed like a cat’s eyes reflecting a lantern in a black night.

  “Ah.” he said.

  Then he stood up shakily, letting the mantle slide from his shoulders, and held up his rod before him with both hands, like a knight holding his sword, or a chorister holding a candle. He began to speak in another language, and, just as he could not cross the threshold of Hoarwell, no one who was there, whether friend or foe, could move a muscle.

  “Aros et Parenne, par notre puissance nous exigeons la pleine audience avec vous, et votre pouvoir par votre autorité…”

  Townsend wanted to tremble, but was still as stone. Arnould’s voice went on, in a perfect, practiced cadence.

  “...vous entendrez notre demande, vous tisserez sur celle-ci cette entrave…”

  Rupert Dahl recognised the command as well, and cursed himself for not realising what Arnould had realised.

  “...vous jetterez sur celle-ci la liaison d’Orechis, et vous la terminerez maintenant.”

  Arnould had made the binding of Orechis on Seris and Caron, having been thoroughly taught it by them themselves, every night as he went to sleep.

  Seris ordered the servants to do nothing the moment she was able to move again. Caron added in a low voice, “And think nothing.”

  The light had vanished from Arnould’s eyes, but they were hard as the rod he held. He spoke in his normal, small voice,

  “The stipla… the stip… the rules are: you will release me from your binding before I count to ten. One, two…”

  “Silence!” Caron cried. Arnould was silent. The Belems dropped their instruments and clasped hands. They rapidly murmured a long countermanding, and Caron spoke again to Arnould when it was completed:

  “Our binding is released, and your binding is now worthless to you.”

  And they bent towards their weapons. Arnould raised his rod, and swallowed.

  “I only stopped counting out loud.”

  The Belems straightened again as they realised what he had said. The look of hatred and disdain they cast on Arnould made him look away. He had counted to ten long before they had finished unbinding him.

  The air in the station seemed to contract, and a sound went through it like ice whining in warm water. There was a shivering distortion that surrounded Seris and Caron as if they stood beyond the mouth of a furnace. Seris gave a cry of rage and turned on the nearest of her servants, sinking her teeth into his neck. His fingers twitched, but apart from that he made no sign. Caron understood what she was doing, seized her hair, snatching her head back, and clasped her throat in his own mouth. She struggled like a pinned fly, but his arms enclosed her like iron bands. The man she had attacked continued to bleed without check, such was the curse of the vampire’s sting: he soon wavered and collapsed.

  Caron wrestled Seris to the ground, like a lion with its prey, and ravaged every drop of blood from her flesh. Glutted, he rose from the corpse of his mate, which lay shriveled beyond recognition, leaving the finery of her clothes hollow. His skin gleamed, flushed with the life he had consumed, and he strode towards Arnould to make an end of him as his final act. But his doubled fund of life did not buy enough time for two steps. His skin changed, losing the vibrant hint of transparency, becoming instead like pigments spread on a clay figure. He collapsed headlong, jointlessly, as a thing made of sand when it is overbalanced. The distortions of the air spewed from him, his skin and flesh leapt from his bones in flakes and fragments, his clothes collapsed into faded shreds, his blonde locks scattered like blown feathers, and his blood spit through crevices in the form of dark powder. He lay then as a quiet, oblong heap of ghastly debris, and the air unbent.

  Arnould took his hand away from his face, and lowered his rod.

  Then a multitude of things happened at once.

  Rain fell down like a dropped curtain, as if it had been hovering just above the rooftops. The windowpanes turned to steam and jetted away into nothing, sending the iron framework of the window spinning aside like a leaf. With the whole force of Hoarwell House to their aid in spirit and power, Dahl, Sandy, and Townsend leaped into the station. At the same moment one of the Belems’ servants raised a sword and sprang towards Arnould; Dahl put a bullet through his temples with an unexpected gun.

  Another of the servants dropped a paper into an ornate, silver goblet: the contents of the goblet burst into flame, and the flame fell again into the cup as a stained liquid. The man raised it to his lips; Arnould turned to run, but
stumbled to his knees. As the man began to drink Arnould sank down, and let his rod fall to the ground: the Belems’ servant, a pupil and disciple of vampires, was swallowing the life out of his body.

  Sandy stretched out her weapons with violently shouted words which no one heeded in the confusion. The flame in her eyes now was unmistakable: it was an unbridled fury, wrung with a visceral torment, not a fear of her enemies, but the terror of one who sprints forward to catch someone who is slipping at the edge of a deadly fall.

  Before Sandy had finished her command, the goblet at the man’s mouth shattered in his hand, and blood spilled from his lips down his chin. He put his hand to his face, and fell into a fetal position; his blood streamed from his eyes, nostrils, and between his fingers. Dahl and Townsend defeated the final enemies as Sandy ran to Arnould’s crumpled form.

  His eyes stared unseeing, and his skin was evilly white, covered with bruises in unnatural shapes like fingers dragged along his flesh. She thrust Mr. Hunt into his numb arms, and picked him up. She choked, and the stone came loose from the spring of her tears.

  The carriage wheels roared under the arch. Sandy sat with Arnould in her arms, overjoyed because she could feel him shivering, and terrified by the frailty and nearness to death that the disturbance betrayed. Her rain soaked back was sticking to the cushioned seat.

  She realised that if Arnould had stepped within the bounds of Hoarwell when they first came, the binding would have begun to break, and he would have been destroyed. Her head swam.

  “Thank you Imris, Erich; and I’m so sorry…”

  In an inner chamber deep within Hoarwell House stood a man and a woman facing each other over a round table which was covered with maps and open books.

  The lines of the man’s face and the grey lines in his pointed beard and moustache did not but display the immensity of the force at his command. He held up a long, heavy wand, gilded in a tartan like pattern, resembling the aspect of a sceptre.