"Naya Vestu," he whispered to himself
"Naya what?" Cassidy asked trying to take in the painting which showed a group of elves and dwarves locked in bloody battle, with vampires in the centre seemingly attacking both sides.
"It's one of our most popular stories." Darwin walked over. "Back when the vampires lived in Venefasia, in the Naya Valley, there was a war."
Cassidy pointed to the elves and dwarves in the pictures. "I'm guessing you mean these guys?"
Darwin nodded. "The war cut off supply routes, and our people started to starve. So they made a bold, some say suicidal decision to make a run for a gateway to the Realm of Men. There was a problem though. The gateway was over two hundred miles away, across mountains and on the other side of the battle lines."
"I'm guessing you couldn't travel during the day."
"Right. And there were few places to take shelter. Anyways, the Naya Vestu tells of their flight, of the night they fought through both the front lines of the elves and dwarves, left forty thousand of them dead."
"Forty thousand?"
"The story is a tragedy really. Over two thousand set off from that shady valley. Out of over two thousand that originally set off, only two hundred and thirty three made it through the gateway, the rest either killed in the battle or too slow to make it to the caves that acted as sanctuary before the sun came up."
He stood there looking at the painting. He'd seen it thousands of times but never up close. Those faces of his people, the ones he always thought looked angry and powerful from afar took on an air of desperation up close. Flee, or die, he thought. That was the only choice they had back then, and it was the only choice he had right now.
"We need to do the same," said Darwin.
Both Cassidy and Honest Tom looked at Darwin curiously.
"If these creatures are killing vampires, then we need to get the survivors somewhere they can't find us." He pointed at the painting.
"The Realm of Magic?" Honest Tom queried. "That won't be easy. The wizards now guard the portals."
Darwin nodded. "Never said it would be easy, but what other choice do we have? Besides the wizards don't control all the portals."
"Round here they do." Honest Tom replied. "And where would you go, if you got through?"
Darwin pointed at the shadowed valley in the background painting. "The Naya Valley."
Honest Tom laughed. "Back to the place we tried to escape from?"
"Why not, it supported our people for thousands of years before the war. It's in permanent shade."
Honest Tom thought about this for a moment, stroking his chin as he thought about it.
"Look, I can go out in the day. We wouldn't be totally defenceless."
"What do you think, sireling?" Honest Tom asked Cassidy.
"Oh, I don't count," Cassidy said. "I'm not a vampire."
A look of concern flashed across Honest Tom's face. He sniffed. "But you're not totally human either?"
"Angel," Cassidy said, shrugging her shoulders. "Sorry."
Honest Tom snarled, turned grabbed Darwin and threw him against the wall. The sword in Darwin's hand clanged to the floor.
"What are you doing bringing someone like her in here," he spat, "desecrating the final resting place of your lord and king."
'Relax," said Darwin trying to struggle out of Honest Tom's grip. "She's Fallen. Besides with the protective spell gone, half of Heaven could come walking in here if they wanted."
"How do you know she didn't do this? This could be a plot by her people?"
Doubt entered Darwin's mind. He trusted Cassidy implicitly to the point that he forgot their respective races were at war. What if she was trying to convert him? What if she was behind these attacks? No, he flushed the thoughts out of his head.
"If it was," he spat back, "we'd already be dead."
This seemed to shock Honest Tom, who let go of Darwin.
"It's not the end, Tom. We'll get to the Naya Valley and make a new start."
Tom looked back at him, his eyes glistening with the tears he was holding back. "Your plan is crazy. It'll never work. Better we scatter, disappear into the shadows."
"No! We have to stick together, gather up all the survivors. You know London better than me, where's a good place to meet? Somewhere Metzger wouldn't know about, couldn't tell those creatures about."
Tom stared off into the distance thinking, before snapping his head back to Darwin. "There's the old disused factory up near Walthamstow"
Darwin shook his head. "I don't know it."
"It's perfect. Loads of disused buildings. It's used by a lot of the younger vampires as a place to drag back their prey."
"OK," said Darwin wondering how he'd never known about this place. "So who do we know is still alive?"
"It'll just be those who go off on their own: Brian and Julie, Monk, the Patel twins, Dieter, probably D'Toeni."
Darwin didn't know all of those names. How out of touch he felt. Here he was trying to help rescue a people who had never liked him, and people who he'd never even heard of. He'd never felt so much an outsider as he did now. But this also represented an opportunity, a fresh start. If he could do his bit to help, maybe they'd accept him.
There were other questions, of course. What did that dead man in the back alley have to do with all this? The tentacle had killed him, not tried to attack Darwin. He needed to find out what that notebook said, and he needed to do it without Honest Tom finding out about it. He couldn't be sure it was connected but neither could he be sure it wasn’t.
"Right," he said, walking to Metzger's desk, rummaging around in the drawers. He removed a pen and paper and handed it to Honest Tom. "Draw us a map to this place."
"Why?" asked Tom. There was fear in his voice, like a child that didn't want to be left alone. "Where are you going?"
Darwin looked at Cassidy and then back to Tom. "Urm," he started, thinking on his feet. "We're going to get the transportation to get us from there to a gateway."
"They'll never let us through," Tom said, but to Darwin's relief he was drawing the map.
"Let me worry about that,” he said. And half of him wasn't bluffing either. As someone who could go out in daylight, he was the best person to source and deal with transport. "How long do you think it'll take for you to try and make contact with the survivors and get them there?"
“I don’t even know how to get in touch with most of them,” Tom exclaimed.
Darwin was losing patience. “Those that you can get in touch with, Tom. How long?”
"A couple of days?" Honest Tom replied with a distinct lack of conviction.
Good that gave Darwin some time.
"OK. Look we'd best both get out of here in case they come back."
Honest Tom scoffed. "And how am I supposed to do that? It's daylight out there."
"Take the sewers," he said. "You should be able to get a couple of miles away at least."
"And you know this how, exactly?"
Darwin winked at the vampire as he bent down and picked up Metzger’s ornamental sword from the floor. "How do you think I ever escaped this place?"
"Here," Darwin said, handing it to Tom. "Take this. It's not much of a sword but if you clobber someone round the head with it, they're not going to wake up in a hurry."
Honest Tom eyed the weapon suspiciously.
"You know people won't trust you, Darwin," he said. Darwin felt a little taken aback by this. Couldn't Tom see he was trying to help? Or maybe he could. He'd never liked Darwin though, had he?
"Well," he said. "I'm all they've got, so they better well start."
CHAPTER TWELVE - X Marks The Spot
Maureen dried her eyes and blew her nose. She sighed and lent against the oak door. What was she going to do? She'd never felt so lost or alone. She shuffled upstairs, her worries heavy on her shoulders, her anger unabated.
You have a decision she told herself. You can either just let them walk all over you, or do something about it. What wa
s the worst they could do anyway? They were already going to take her home away from her; the Inquisitor all but said so. She'd never been a quitter so why start now? No, she owed it to Ernest to at least try and uncover what was really going on.
She sighed to herself. Pipe dreams and fancy.
"I reckon that trip into Venefasia did something odd to your head, Maureen Summerglass," she said. "Gave you delusions of grandeur."
One of the cats looked up at her. "Yes," she told it, "your mother has started going a bit loopy. Must be all that mana in the air."
How bizarre, she thought. She'd dreamt of visiting Venefasia since she was a little girl, but had to make do with just seeing it nearly every day through a door. And then the one day she gets chance to step through, it's the worst day of her life. Any other day, they would have had to drag her back home, physically push her back into her own realm. But yesterday, she couldn't wait to leave Rofen's office and get back to her house. For what, she still didn't know.
"Perhaps the Friary is doing me a favour," she told the cat. "Most people would have been retired twenty years by now."
She entered the living room, deciding she would light a fire before brewing herself a cup-of-soup. She walked over to the fireplace and the armchair that had been set up in front of it. It was there, poking out from underneath the side of the chair, that she noticed a folder.
She picked it up and looked through it. It was Ernest's file, it must have fallen under the chair when the Inquisitor’s briefcase sprung open. She flicked through the pages, hoping to find some fresh insight into the mystery of Ernest's death, but her instinct had been right. From the papers alone, it would appear as if the Inquisitor had been telling her what he believed to be the truth. Rage boiled up again inside her. Someone must be covering it up, and whoever it was must be pretty high up. Her suspicions immediately fell on Rofen. She had no proof of course, but she'd always been pretty sharp, even now at her age.
She flicked through the papers again. Real birth certificates, a fake one listing his place of birth as Bradford upon Avon. Then there were all manners of fake utility bills and bank statements, all listing Maureen's house as his place of residence, but under all this, she found a map of a city she did not recognise. It was only after close consideration that she realised it must be New Salisbury. Marked on there with a big red X was what Maureen presumed to be Ernest's house.
It was upon finding this that Maureen made a decision that would change her life forever. Maybe she didn't have anything more to lose, or maybe her grief had caused her to not think straight.
"I'm going to get to the bottom of this," she said to herself.
She'd said it before she'd even really had time to think about it, a subconscious slip that surprised her. She'd never been one for going off and having adventures, instead content to stand by and let those people who did, in and out of her gateway.
There were a hundred and one good reasons for not embarking on the plan that was forming in the back of her head. First and foremost, she was not an adventurer in any sense of the word, she was a little old lady. Little old ladies did not go out sneaking into other realms.
"Poppycock," she told herself. She was as fit as she'd been twenty years ago and it wasn't as if she was going to go off slaying dragons or anything. No, she'd just simply pay a visit to Ernest's house and see if she couldn't find that notebook everyone seemed so excited about. There was also probably an element of paying her last respects, because it was more than likely they'd now move the body through the Luton gateway and she'd never get to say her goodbyes. Thinking about her plan stopped her crying. She'd seen with her own eyes, heard him tell her so, that Joseph didn't lock his door. What had he also said about people keeping to the right? Could she really sneak through the Friary undetected?
Her heart raced at the thought. What would she say if she was caught? That she was testing the defences? Wouldn't that get Joseph in trouble for not locking his door? Or did she claim some form of senility? Or did she even give a damn what they thought when they treated loyal workers in such a way.
No, her mind was made up. She was going to Ernest's house, that's what she had to do.
She folded up the map and then proceeded to walk round the house gathering things she might need for her trip: tissues, a kitchen knife, a pen, some paper. All these and others were put into her handbag for the trip.
She looked down at what she was wearing and tutted to herself. Venefasia was a much warmer climate and her multiple layers, woolly hat and gloves would draw attention to herself. She went upstairs and changed into a summer dress, wearing her dressing gown over the top to hold out the cold until such time as she stepped through the gateway.
And therein laid the difficulty. Joseph was sat the other side, or at least he should be. Would he stop her or would he offer to accompany her? Maureen wasn't sure but thought it best not to involve him in her crazy plan. That way, when they caught her, he wouldn't get fired as well.
She sighed. Listen to yourself, she thought, already convinced you're going to be caught. Why do this, Maureen? Why ruin nearly eighty years of perfectly good service? She knew the answer but the doubts remained.
She paced for much of the rest of the day, waiting for five o'clock in Venefasia, when, providing they weren't expecting anyone late back from the Realm of Men, Joseph would knock off.
#
The day was almost over. Joseph should have gone home hours ago, but Maureen wanted to be extra sure. She'd had plenty of time to reconsider her proposed actions, had mulled it over a hundred different ways in her head. But each time she'd come to the conclusion that this was something she felt she had to do. For Ernest. That didn't mean there wasn't uncertainty. She'd wanted to escape to Venefasia since she was a little girl and part of her worried that this was her enacting that fantasy.
She took a deep breath, and then key in hand carefully, silently, unlocked the door. She stood there a moment as if waiting some reaction. The silence was broken only by one of the cats meowing at her feet.
"You can't come," she whispered, as if there was someone else in the room that she didn't want to hear. The cat rubbed up against her leg in denial, Maureen chased it away by shaking her foot.
She reached for the latch and gingerly, opened it. There was a slight click as it opened, metal upon metal. Maureen froze, waited thirty seconds before continuing.
The door squeaked as it opened. Opening it slowly only caused more noise and Maureen winced at the high pitched squeal it emitted. Stepping through into the corridor and closing the door behind her was just as agonising.
She was now shut in the corridor in the pitch black. Stuck between two worlds she thought, and then worried what would happen if she got stuck here, unable to enter either realm. She shook the thought out her head and fumbled in her handbag, to pull out the small torch she kept for whenever she had a power cut. The light from it was weak, either the batteries or the bulb was going, but it was enough to see the door in front of her, Joseph's door and the latch.
Her heart was now racing, her mouth felt dry. She reached out and touched the latch, waiting a few seconds before popping it open with a metallic clunk. She winced.
She gave the door the smallest of pushes, trying to see if there was any resistance indicating that the door was locked. Maybe Joseph had been lying, maybe he'd found the key and locked it, or maybe, as she found out, he had been telling the truth and the door was indeed unlocked.
Slowly, with her heart feeling like it was about to jump out her throat, she opened it, even slower than she'd opened her own door. The door opened a crack and she put one eye to it, trying to see if anyone stood on the walkway beyond.
It was evening in Venefasia, the setting sun painting the sky in purple and peach. Long shadows made the cloister seem eerie. Maureen stood there staring out the crack in the door for a good two minutes before she felt comfortable that she was alone.
Quickly, she opened the door some more, slipped through, and
closed the door behind her. She looked out and up at the few premature stars that were the only witnesses to her trespass.
There was no time to stop though. She was exposed and needed to get out of the Friary. A woman on the streets of New Salisbury would blend in, but one in the Friary?
Keep to the right, Joseph had said. Well, he'd proven right so far. With a mixture of fear, sorrow and excitement she set off on the adventure she'd always dreamed of as a child.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN - Fight In The Library
Cassidy sat watching the gateway as Darwin searched among the books strewn amongst the upturned shelves.
"It's quite hypnotic, isn't it," she said entranced by the swirling reds and oranges. Occasionally there'd be the hint of a shape, the vaguest of indications that something was out there, just beyond, perhaps waiting.
"This is the closest I've ever been to hell," she said.
Darwin wasn't paying attention, instead trying to find a book he remembered from his youth. "Huh?" he grunted as he continued to search. Even if the library hadn't been ransacked it would have still been a long and difficult search. Vampires, it seemed, did not believe in indexing.
"I said this is the closest I've ever been to hell."
"You should try living with you then," Darwin quipped as yet another book looked promising only to prove useless. He tossed it to the ground. The place was a mess already, one more book wouldn't hurt.
"Hey!" Cassidy retorted standing up and walking over to where he was searching. "What are you looking for exactly?"
"An elvish dictionary, so I can try and translate part of that notebook. There used to be one here."
Cassidy shrugged. "Books get lost."
Darwin could feel anger building up inside of him. He yelled and threw the book he was holding at the portal. As it hit it, it burst into orange flame before disappearing into its depths.
"This is useless," Darwin raged. "I'm never gonna find it."
"I'm sure it'll turn up," Cassidy said, failing to sound reassuring.
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