The Book of Dead Days

by Marcus Sedgwick

  “Yes,” said Kepler, “we have to find Boy. He’s the one in danger.”

  “What does Valerian want him for?”

  “I will explain,” said Kepler, “but let me find you first. I have some matches but they are a little damp. . . .”

  Willow heard the noise she had heard before—the small scraping sound and then a fizz of sparks, which rapidly died away.

  “Wet. Where are you?”

  Willow nearly laughed in spite of herself, in spite of the horror.

  The louder noise started again and Willow knew that Kepler was getting closer. She didn’t like the idea, but she equally didn’t like the thought of being alone in darkness anymore.

  “That’s it,” she said. “I’m this way. Yes, this way.”

  And then Kepler bumped into her foot.

  “That’s close enough,” she said. “Now, tell me what is going on.”

  3

  It was working, after a fashion.

  Boy crawled on his hands and knees a handful of paces behind Valerian, who made slow progress. Valerian was walking more and more slowly all the time. Boy wondered if he was getting tired, or if his arm was giving him more pain, but whatever the reason, Boy found it no trouble at all to keep up with him, even crawling as he was.

  Slowly they made their way on through the catacombs. Occasionally they would come across a branch of the canal, gurgling gently, the water an oily black snake that shunted off into the next section of tunnel.

  Now they were in a long corridor, a straight path with a low ceiling composed, Boy supposed, of buildings that soared away above their heads into the City, into the long-forgotten daylight.

  It was an unsettling world, far underground, in this deserted empire unknown to almost everyone. Boy was now following Valerian down a low tunnel in which sound behaved strangely. There was an echo from the scrape of Valerian’s boots, but it was a short, dry sound, cut off almost as soon as it had begun. The ceiling hung with miniature stalactites, at the end of which were small, ice-cool drops of water. When one of these fell onto Boy’s neck it was all he could do to stop himself from shrieking and giving himself away. And then there was the smell, musty, damp, full of spores of unseen fungus noiselessly swelling in the lightless passages and caverns.

  They passed a gateway—an iron gate, with a massive rusty iron lock. Behind it the darkness stretched away into depths that no one would ever see.

  Along each side of the corridor were low doorways, and at each one of these Valerian would stop a few feet short and then peer in.

  As Boy passed them, there was still enough light from Valerian’s lamp to see strange numbers over the lintels, carved and then painted. The numbers made no sense to Boy, but some of the doorways bore inscriptions instead. Sometimes, said one, it is better to die than to live .

  Oh, good! thought Boy. Just the sort of thing Valerian will love.

  Then he saw something that bothered him, though he couldn’t work out why. Valerian began to scratch his nose. For a long time Boy watched, trying but failing to work out what it was that upset him about this.

  Boy scratched his nose.

  Suddenly Valerian dropped his pace near to a dead halt and tiptoed the last inches to a doorway, swinging the lantern round in a rush.

  “Boy?” he called, and something in his voice made Boy’s skin creep. He hung back farther from Valerian’s light, until he was sure he would not be seen by his master.

  Valerian moved on.

  “Boy!” he called. “Boy, I know you’re there. Come out. Let’s talk. There’s really nothing to be scared of. I need your help.”

  Boy didn’t want to listen, but had no choice. He crawled on after Valerian, all the time hoping that he would see a way out, maybe a patch of light, or feel a breeze of fresh air.

  Valerian had stopped. The light from the device was failing and he could not carry it and wind the handle at the same time. He placed the box on the ground and, steadying it with his foot, he leant down and began to wind the handle evenly, looking about as he did. The light from the globe shone strongly again, and Valerian picked it up.

  “I don’t want to hurt you,” Valerian said, and Boy thought about Willow and wondered if she was dead. If she wasn’t, he shouldn’t have left her. But what could he do? He had had to run, or Valerian would have had him. Broken arm or not, he would have had him, of that Boy was sure. Valerian always got what he wanted. Always.

  “Come out, Boy. I know you’re there. Come out, Boy. I need your help. Haven’t I helped you all these years?”

  Valerian sounded tired. He sounded old and pathetic and sad, and Boy wished he would be quiet.

  “I found you. In the streets I found you, groveling in dark places. I gave you a life, and a place to sleep and food. We’ve come a long way, Boy, you and I, haven’t we?”

  Boy thought about just how far he’d come. Here he was, still groveling around in dark places. Well, at least that was familiar ground. He watched as Valerian slid up to another of the low doorways and repeated his trick of stealing the last inches on tiptoe. Finding nothing, he moved on.

  “I’ve always looked after you, haven’t I, Boy? Yes, I have. But now I need you to help me. That’s not so much to ask, is it? You know I’m in trouble, Boy, don’t you? You know I need help. You are my famulus! I need your help, Boy. You’re the only one who can help me now.”

  His voice was full of pain and pitiful to hear.

  Boy found himself crying in the darkness.

  “Please, Boy. Come out. We can go on as we did before. I’m not going to hurt you, Boy. I need you. You don’t know how much you mean to me. And besides, there are things I’ve never told you—things I should tell you. About who you are, where you came from. You’d like to know about who you really are, wouldn’t you?”

  Now Boy was listening hard. Valerian couldn’t know anything about his parents, could he? But supposing he did? What if Valerian died and he never found out?

  “Yes, I can tell you who you are, Boy. I can tell you about your father, your mother. So come out and let me talk to you.”

  Boy stood up. Valerian could not yet see him, but Boy began to walk slowly, his heart thumping in his chest, toward the light.

  “I do need your help. And I can tell you who you are, Boy. Who you are, and where you came from.”

  Now Boy stood a few feet behind Valerian.

  “Who am I, Valerian?” he asked quietly.

  Valerian jerked round and lifted the light high, making sure it was really Boy he was looking at.

  “Boy!” he shouted. “There you are! Come on, there’s no time to lose!”

  But Boy stood still, and though his blood beat through his veins as if they would burst, he spoke calmly to his master.

  “I’m not going anywhere, Valerian, until you tell me who I am.”

  Valerian took a step toward Boy, his face blank.

  “I give the orders, Boy, you know that. Now come here. I won’t hurt you.”

  Boy took another step backward.

  “Who am I, Valerian?” he cried. “You said you’d tell me.”

  “Boy,” growled Valerian, coming closer, and for the first time Boy faltered. He could see Valerian’s eyes more clearly now, he could feel them eat into his own, finding their way into his mind, making him feel so small, so helpless. He would do anything Valerian told him. He always had, he always would. . . .

  With an effort, Boy wrenched his eyes away and ran several steps back into the shadows.

  “Come here,” said Valerian. “Come here!”

  “No,” said Boy.

  “Come here!” Valerian shouted. “You! Boy! Come here!”

  Boy turned and ran into the nearest doorway.

  Valerian’s light bobbed after him.

  4

  “But what can we do?” Willow said.

  “We need to find a light,” said Kepler, “or we shall die down here. Let me try another match now. The warmth from my hands may have dried them a little.
”

  This time there was a stronger flicker of flame that lasted longer but died as it reached the wood of the match.

  In that short time Willow saw Kepler had a cut above his right ear, a vivid slash of red across his face. He stared at the failing match intently, his desperation clearly visible.

  “What happened to your head?” asked Willow. “Did you fall?”

  “In a way,” he answered. “Never mind that now. It happened when Boy and I parted company in the canals.”

  “But the canals . . . ?”

  “Are not deep. No more than waist-high in most places. You need to watch your step occasionally. There’s one place a little farther along where—”

  “But why were you coming down here? To find the book?”

  “No,” said Kepler, and he laughed, a snorting noise that Willow hated him for. “No! I came down here to hide it.”

  Now Willow was confused.

  “To hide it? To hide it?”

  “Yes. You see, Willow, I learnt things. I have been helping Valerian for a long time. We had not seen each other since . . . for years, until one day he just arrived at my house and told me about the specter he faced. He turned up as if nothing had ever happened between us! But when he told me about the book, I knew I would put the past behind me. Now is not the time, and certainly not the place to tell you all the trials and troubles we faced, attempting to find the book. Suffice to say that I discovered that an answer would be contained therein.”

  “But what is the book? What did you learn?”

  “It is an almanac, but much more than that. It holds answers to questions that men ask. It holds information about all manner of dealings, both light and dark. It contains much information on the nature of the . . . agreement into which Valerian placed himself. And it answers questions—questions in the mind of the reader. It could solve Valerian’s problem—of that there is no doubt.”

  “You mean—”

  “Yes, I mean exactly that. Valerian’s life ending in a most horrible way.”

  Willow thought of something that had been bothering her. Something important.

  “Why?” she asked.

  “What?” Kepler replied.

  “You were supposed to be helping Valerian find the book. And now you’re telling me you’ve been trying to hide it from him. Why?”

  “I thought you had realized that. The horoscope. Boy’s horoscope. That gave me the answer, really.”

  “What’s a—?”

  “Horoscope? It’s a method of thinking about people, based on the patterns of the stars and the planets. It explains who people are, and why they are. It has deep scientific basis that few men truly understand, and yet the results of such investigation can be powerful.

  “It concerns the heavens—the stars and the planets and their motions around the Sun, which is the center of the universe, and their relative motions around the Earth.”

  Willow tried to follow what he said, feeling lost and lonely again.

  “The position of all these things in the sky at the moment of an individual’s conception determines the nature, the character, of that individual. Irrevocably.”

  Now Willow began to understand.

  “The piece of paper Valerian found, with Boy’s name on it—is that his horoscope?”

  “Sort of,” said Kepler. “Sort of.”

  “But how can you have worked these things out about Boy? You said you have to know where the planets were at the moment someone was conceived, but no one even knows when he was born—not even he does!”

  “I made a guess. I felt a coincidence. An enormous coincidence, maybe, or Fate working its path through Boy and Valerian’s lives. And mine too. And then I found the book, and the book confirmed it. It showed me. I found out the truth.”

  “But what is this coincidence?” asked Willow.

  “That two people have come to be together. In all this sprawling city of tens of thousands, that two people should find each other. No, I think it is not coincidence. I think this is how Fate works.”

  “So why were you trying to hide it?”

  “Valerian will kill Boy,” said Kepler. “That is the answer. That is the only way he can save himself now—for him to give Boy’s life in place of his own. The pact can be broken only by a life exactly as long as the term of the bargain. That is what I discovered. I guessed much of this. The book confirmed it to me. I guessed who Boy is, and when he was conceived, and I drew up his horoscope. I found that it described the boy I knew very well. And so then, knowing who Boy is and having looked into the book, I knew what Valerian would do if he found out. And so I began to try to cover the path I had started to clear. I came down here to hide the book.

  “In a few hours from now Valerian can offer Boy in place of himself, and he will go free. That is how and why Valerian will kill Boy. That is why we have to find Boy before Valerian does.”

  Willow’s heart thumped inside its rib-prison.

  Boy. Valerian would kill Boy to save himself. Finally she began to understand the insane nature of the journey they had all been making. A dance—a hideous dance with Fate and Death.

  Something else occurred to her.

  “But why do you care about Boy?” she asked.

  “Why do you?” said Kepler.

  Before Willow could answer, Kepler spoke again.

  “I have my reasons, as I’m sure do you. And I want the book.”

  “So where did you find it?” Willow asked. “Who does it belong to?”

  “I heard, after years of searching far and wide, that it had been in the possession of a rich and powerful family. A family who lived in the City itself. A family called Beebe.”

  In the darkness, Willow jumped at the name, but Kepler continued unaware.

  “A large and powerful family, though corrupt and broken now. They once owned properties in the City, and a large estate in the countryside. They built a church there, as their private place of worship and eternal rest. That was where I found the book, in Gad Beebe’s grave. I had traced it as far as the Beebes. A sum of money to one of their more degenerate members, and the book’s whereabouts became known to me. . . .”

  “But . . .” Willow felt her head swimming. “But I don’t understand.”

  “What?” asked Kepler.

  “Gad Beebe. We looked in Gad Beebe’s grave—there was nothing in there but his bones . . . you must have got there before us.”

  Now it was Kepler’s turn to be surprised.

  “You went to Linden? You went to Beebe’s grave? But how? How did you know his name?”

  Willow smiled.

  “I worked it out, from the music box that Boy got from Green. I don’t know where Green had got it from, but the notes of the tune it played spelled his name. Gad Beebe.”

  In the darkness Kepler started to laugh, bitterly. Then he stopped abruptly.

  “But that is too ridiculous.”

  “What?” asked Willow.

  “That music box . . . I found it in Beebe’s grave. I gave it to Green. Me! I’d brought it back from Linden. It amused me. Then I sent for Green; I needed him to go and meet Valerian. He saw it on my desk, and asked what it was. When I showed him he smiled like a child. He asked for it, along with the money I was paying him. He refused to do the job unless I gave it to him. That thug! But it was nothing to me, so I gave it to him. He must have had it with him when he went out to meet Valerian in the Trumpet.”

  “But it held Gad Beebe’s name!” cried Willow. “Without it we’d have never found the grave. . . .”

  “Fate, once more,” Kepler said. “Fate steering us all for its own ends. . . .”

  Willow thought about what he’d said. It did seem extraordinary—that little music box had made its way from Gad Beebe’s grave, to Kepler and Green to Boy to Valerian, and only she had known what it held. Without it Valerian would still be struggling for the answer, and Boy would be safe. It was a coincidence too great to be anything other than true. The true path of Fate
.

  Then something occurred to her.

  “But why?” she asked. “Why did you send Green to meet Boy, in the Trumpet?”

  “I sent him to meet Valerian—did he send Boy instead? That may have saved his life.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Willow.

  “I was supposed to meet Valerian that evening, to report any progress on the book. He knew I was close to finding it. In fact, I already had the book, and had read it. I’d learnt what it would mean for Valerian. For Boy. So I had to send Green instead. I sent a letter to Valerian at the theater, telling him to meet Green.”

  “But what did you tell Green to say to Valerian? He was expecting to get some news from you.”

  “I didn’t tell him to say anything. I told Green to kill him.”

  Willow froze.

  “Yes, Willow, I told Green to kill Valerian. In another few days he’d be dead anyway, and I knew if he found the book that Boy’s life would be in danger.”

  “But he’s your friend! You’ve known him for years. Worked with him! You couldn’t just have him killed!”

  “We were friends. Once, a long time ago, maybe. Then we fell out. We became rivals. He . . . hurt someone, someone I cared for. He betrayed me, around the time he was expelled by the Academy. We didn’t see each other for ten years. Then he came to ask for my help, but we were never friends again. . . . He told me about the book. And I wanted it. I was never interested in helping Valerian. I wanted the book.”

  “I still don’t believe it,” Willow said fiercely.

  “Listen, girl,” cried Kepler, growing angry. “It’s him or Boy now. Understand that! Only one of them can live! And I want it to be Boy. . . .” They sat in silence until all the questions in Willow’s head fought to be answered.

  “So, what did you do then? After Linden? Did you use the tunnel to get here?”

  “Tunnel?” asked Kepler.

  “It’s how we got here,” Willow said. “We found the entrance to a tunnel in the crypt of the church, and an underground river that led all the way here.”

  “I thought it was maybe so,” said Kepler. “During my researches into the book, I found a map of all the catacombs and canals. I made a model of them in my cellar, to try to learn the routes by heart. It is only because I did that I was able to find my way back here in the dark.”