Rise of the Reaper

by Lorna Reid

  Magic lanced and arced across the water, occasionally impacting on the rocky cliff in the lethal crossfire. Poppy watched herself reach a ledge and scramble up, and was about to release a tightly held breath when a bolt of magic hit the girl in the back.

  Poppy tried to shout, but no words came; only other people’s filled her head, swirling like phantoms in the dim light.

  ‘Pull the lost army from their sleep …’

  ‘Nothing is truly lost for long.’

  ‘Well, of all the ways I thought I would die, this wasn’t one of them, girlie.’

  ‘They can’t hold it long. It’s fucking draining them and tearing this timeline open.’

  The whispers melted away to a parched, cracked landscape. In the thirsty ground lay a small metal badge with a silver hawk soaring on a field of green and gold, immortalised in metal and tiny gems. Hot air swirled around her and the ground tremored around her feet and spilt in a long, zigzagging crack that crawled into the distance. Through the heat haze she saw a tower, a shifting rainbow of colours trickling down its smooth sides.

  She was pulled backward, away from the blistering heat and into a softer, more shaded place. It took her a moment to realise that she was back in the grassy passageway at the back of her house. Movement caught her eye and she gaped. Her father walked along the passageway – he looked so young, perhaps only a few years older than her, but she recognised him from Thom’s photos. He was dressed in blue jeans and a loose white shirt. Thom strolled beside him, dressed only in jeans, with his dark shirt slung over his shoulder, and they laughed and chatted. They stopped at the last garden where Danny’s house was, and her father leaned on the gate.

  Thom picked up a stone and flung it at one of the upstairs windows where it tinked against the glass. The window opened and a boy climbed out and dropped onto the roof of a rickety shed, which creaked in protest.

  As he scrambled to the edge, the wood suddenly splintered and gave, and he lost his footing, crashing down onto a heap of grass clippings amid gales of laughter from the other boys. At the house, a downstairs window burst open and an older lady appeared.

  Thom flashed a grin at Poppy’s father. ‘Look out, Pete, it’s your gran!’ Thom called.

  ‘Where do you think you’re going, young man? You’re grounded,’ Peter’s grandmother called. Peter picked himself up and fled down the path, vaulting over the wall in a cloud of falling grass clippings as she leaned out of the window.

  ‘Peter Stone, get back here now! Thomas and Jonathan, you’re in big trouble.’ Thom blew the woman a kiss and John bowed to her. Poppy burst out laughing and the world faded out.

  She realised she was standing in the Gateway. The Gatehouse loomed behind her and, for some reason, she felt safer, in spite of the dark, rolling clouds and growling thunder overhead.

  Ahead of her, in a small clearing dusted with fallen cherry blossom, knelt Thomas. He was dressed in black and was barefoot, crushed petals and dirt stuck to his feet. Roses and honeysuckle looked on, while more blossom drifted down, settling on an old stone bench nearby and catching on Thom’s clothes. He didn’t stir.

  His head was bowed and, with a lurch, she realised that he was crying. His right arm was in a sling, and tears crept down his face over vicious bruises and an array of cuts, some of which were stitched. His hair was cropped very short – it looked odd, hard – and a long, violent stitched wound was visible on his scalp, red and fresh.

  His shirt was open and Poppy could see a thick, stitched gash running from his neck down over his chest and flat stomach, past bruised and bandaged ribs and odd, circular areas of red healing skin. She felt sick and weak. What had happened?

  As Poppy fought tears, Thom looked up and she followed his gaze, seeing for the first time where he was. A neat, flower-covered grave lay in front of him. Its headstone was untarnished and new. The engraved words burned into her mind, but two devastated her the most: ‘Jonathan Haverstowe.’ Blood drained from her face and the world pulled away from her.

  *

  The basin shattered and the silver liquid gushed over the floor. Before Danny could move, it reached him and the room vanished. Somewhere in the darkness a woman began singing, softly. Danny’s heart leapt. He had heard that voice a thousand times before – heard that song.

  A light flared and his mother set a lantern down on a rock, illuminating a small cave. She sat back against a rough wall and stared through Danny as she sang, her slim fingers stroking a silver locket that hung around her neck. Danny cried out and reached for his mother, but she was pulled away by the darkness.

  A rough stone wall rushed out of the mist around him, making him flinch as it stopped mere inches away. It was etched with images, odd symbols, and strange writing. In a small space between the etchings, the letter ‘I’ was intertwined with the letter ‘P’ inside a decorative heart.

  The wall sunk away, leaving him standing out in the open, the wind snarling around him and making his ears sting. He was standing atop a vast, broken black disc – some sort of rooftop – edged with jagged rock teeth that thrust high into the sky like lances. Many were broken, the pieces lying scattered about him.

  He jumped as someone ran past and leapt onto the rock between two broken points. Danny’s heart flipped and, for a moment, he thought the young man would fall, but he held onto one of the pieces and looked out, unfazed and at ease. His jeans were worn and repaired at the knees and rear with leather until there was barely any denim left. The bottoms were jammed into scuffed black boots that were laced with a copper-coloured metal wire, and the boy wore a sleeveless shirt of worn black denim. It all looked rough and ready to Danny; it lent the figure a rugged, home-made sort of look.

  Blades bristled at the boy’s waist, but Danny fixated on his right hand. It was buried in a clawed glove that came halfway up his forearm. The figure moved to the very edge of the stone. Danny blinked, and suddenly he was there, too.

  He looked out and his head spun. His vision was filled with a dizzying drop into black twisted trees punching through red earth.

  Writhing black stone formations and foreboding cliffs were overlooked by mountains and accompanied by rivers that glittered and raged in and out of sight among the clutter of the landscape. Beneath the canopy of black clouds, blacker towers drove up into the sky, battered and broken. The sight was bone-chilling.

  For the first time, Danny turned and looked into the young man’s face. He saw an older version of himself look across at where he was standing and smile through tears.

  Voices rose up and crowded around him:

  ‘We don’t want to kill him, we just want to play with him …’

  ‘When I think of the precious thing I’ve left behind, death pales in comparison to the torture I feel.’

  ‘Please fight this, Danny, please. You have to fight this.’

  ‘We know all your secrets, Reaper Boy.’

  Fragments of images and sounds came to him, quicker now, overlapping and incomprehensible: a skeleton lying alone in a room among leaves and decaying odds and ends; screams in the teaming rain accompanying the dull glitter of a blade; violet eyes – violet eyes and laugher and fear; a box with an ornate, decorative lid, inlaid with a burnished coppery metal. And then a light flickered and the bombardment halted.

  He blinked and the scene came into focus – his mother shrugged on a pack and squeezed through a narrow opening of rock onto the shoreline of a raging river. In a split second, Danny was pulled backward, through tunnels and passageways. Pillars and rock and water raced past, and flames and shadows vanished like a comet tail as he struggled to pull away. Blackness overwhelmed him.

  Chapter 10

  ◊

  RUSSELL FELL TO HIS knees as the room spun. Through the roaring in his ears, he could hear crying and voices. White mist clouded his vision, and for one terrifying moment he was afraid that he’d gone blind, and he groped around for support. Someone took hold of his arms and helped him back to the sofa. ‘Russell?’ came a v
oice. ‘It’s Knox. Can you hear me?’

  Russell nodded and sat down. The mist began to fade and the roaring in his ears subsided. Poppy was at the other end of the sofa, sniffing loudly. He could hear Thom talking to her in a soft voice.

  A warm cup was pushed into his hands and Concessa told him to drink. As soon as the liquid touched his lips he felt the chill begin to leave his body and he gulped down the rest, which tasted like chocolate smoke. After a minute, his vision began to return and he blinked several times, trying to hurry the process along.

  Beside him, Poppy was nodding as Thom asked her whether she felt better. Her face was pale and streaked with tears, and her hands were trembling as much as his own. Katrina was sitting nearby, clutching Knox, who was looking extremely pale himself.

  ‘The trembling will fade,’ said Concessa, sitting beside him and squeezing his hands.

  Thom caught his eye and gave him a small smile. He, too, looked pale and shaken. Russell noticed the silver stains on his boots and understood.

  Sitting off to one side in an armchair was Danny. Silver splashes were stark on his dark jeans and boots, and he was silent, head down, clutching a cup as though he might drop it at any moment.

  ‘What happened?’ asked Thom.

  Concessa gave Russell’s shoulder a kind squeeze and stood up. ‘Your best friend’s son got a little upset.’ Her mouth twitched into a tiny smile. How she wasn’t furious was beyond Russell. He hated to think how much the fancy basin cost, but the fact that it was lying in smithereens in a pool of rapidly dissolving liquid didn’t seem to have fazed her one bit.

  ‘Danny did this?’ asked Knox, handing Katrina a handkerchief so she could wipe her eyes. Concessa nodded. All eyes in the room turned to Danny.

  *

  Danny’s anger had vanished with the first chilling touch of the liquid. The images kept flicking through his mind, filling it, but there was an empty ache in his stomach whenever he saw glimpses of his mother. It was all still registering in his brain.

  His hands had stopped trembling so much, but his stomach was twisting. He knew he was in trouble and, for once, it actually bothered him. He could feel everyone’s eyes on him and it made his skin itch.

  ‘What the fuck do you think you were doing?’ said Thom. Danny stared up at his pale, angry face. ‘Do you know what you just put everyone through? What’s the matter with you? Do you know how pissed off Pete will be?’

  Concessa put a hand on Thom’s arm and smiled at him. ‘No harm done. It had a fairer than usual chance of him being able to see something.’ She got astonished looks from Thom and Knox.

  Thom sighed and crouched down in front of Danny. Danny started to feel tears well in his eyes. ‘You’re my fucking responsibility,’ Thom said. ‘You can’t do this stuff, Danny. You’re playing in a dangerous, unknown world. You had no idea how powerful that stuff was. Not just that though …’ He ran a hand through his hair. ‘Your rudeness, as much as anything else. I mean, we heard you from outside.’

  Danny’s mask crumpled slightly and, to his shame, a tear escaped. He brushed it away, loathing himself for being weak. ‘I just wanted to find her.’

  ‘Pete—’

  ‘I know, but this was like insurance, just in case. I wanted to help, wanted to fix it all.’

  ‘We’re doing our best, Danny. We’re closer than we have ever been.’ Thom pulled a thin leather cord over his head and held it out. A red crystal spike glittered in a silver clasp. ‘The day before she left, before that last time, she gave this to me for luck.’ Sadness shrouded his eyes. ‘Take it and give it back to her when we find her.’ He closed Danny’s hand around it and gave him a smile.

  ‘Thom?’

  ‘Yeah, Dan?’

  ‘I, er …’ Danny faltered. How could he say what he had seen when he didn’t even know. ‘I saw Mum. I … I just don’t know where.’

  Thom gripped his hands. Silence fell over the room; the fidgeting and mumbling stopped.

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘Darkness. I don’t know where it is. I don’t know this stupid place. I hate this.’ Frustration threatened to overwhelm him. Thom shushed and soothed, not even flinching when Danny crushed his hands as his anger built.

  ‘She … it was like she was underground somewhere. There were caves. She was in a cave. There was a river and rocks. Passages and pillars and tunnels and walls with writing and carved pictures.’ He saw the look that passed between Knox and Thom and felt his stomach boil. It had been a look of fear. Knox joined Thom.

  ‘Danny, can you remember the rock?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Answer him,’ said Thom, an edge to his voice.

  ‘It was rock … I …’

  ‘Was there a greenish tinge to it? Did any of it look layered at all? Like thousands of tiny lines?’ Knox seemed to be holding his breath.

  Danny frowned, trying to drag the memory out of the mess still swirling in his head. ‘No. No, I don’t think so.’ He shook his head. ‘The rock was black. Especially along the river. It was reddish in places.’

  ‘The pillars, can you describe them? Did they have carved lines, like bands around them, lots of bands?’

  Danny shook his head. ‘No, they were either plain or had panels of carvings and decoration around them.’

  Knox audibly breathed out, shook his head at Thom, and closed his eyes. Thom’s body sagged a little.

  ‘Thank fuck. Thank fuck,’ Thom breathed.

  ‘Not Bicornis?’ Concessa said in a quiet voice.

  Knox shook his head. Something flashed across his eyes for a moment and Danny thought that he was going to be sick. Thom’s hand on his shoulder seemed to yank him back from wherever he had briefly been and Knox closed his eyes, touched Thom’s hand and took a breath.

  ‘So. That’s one location down. The worst one,’ Thom said.

  ‘Erm … I keep seeing flashes of stuff in my head,’ ventured Katrina after a long pause.

  ‘That’s normal,’ said Concessa. ‘You’ll have more fragments click together or come to the fore over the following days. Things that you weren’t so aware of may leap out, like aftershocks.’

  ‘Was … I mean, did we see the future or the past?’ Russell was twisting the hem of his shirt around his fist, stretching the material. ‘Some things …’ He fell silent and cast his eyes briefly at Danny before staring at the floor.

  ‘Past, present, future. Sadly they can all appear as a jumble.’

  ‘And the things we saw from the past were true?’ he asked. ‘I mean, they did happen? The things.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What did you see?’ Poppy asked, obviously feeling better. Russell shrank back at her question, glanced at Danny, and then buried his flushing face in his drink.

  ‘Nothing,’ he muttered. Danny believed him as much as Poppy did. Right now, though, I don’t care, he thought. He had seen his mother. Everything else was irrelevant. He started playing back everything he could remember, trying to make sense of it all, find some revelatory connection, anything. He was barely aware of the chatter in the room and had to be tugged from his chair by Thom.

  ‘Where are we going?’ He followed Thom from the room, catching the furious faces of Concessa’s personal guards when they looked into the room at the mess, and quickening his step.

  ‘You? Nowhere. You’re all staying here.’

  Danny puffed and plucked at Thom’s shirt. ‘Well where are you going?’ he demanded.

  Thom led them into a bright lounge room, full of pale sofas and colourful cushions, and scooped an apple from the overflowing bowl on the table. He bit into it and gave him a wink. ‘Special escort for the Oracle on her tour of the city.’

  ‘I want to go,’ he said.

  ‘Nope, you’ll be staying here, out of trouble. Isa will be keeping you company.’ He nodded to the young woman as she swept into the room. ‘I’ll be back later, and then, hopefully, we’ll meet up with Jack. Take the time to enjoy the surrounds, and I’m sure Isa can ans
wer your questions.’ His voice dropped. ‘Just remember what I told you back home about discretion. Remember.’

  Danny watched the door close behind Thom. They had been told repeatedly what to say if they were asked about their lives, and how important it was to maintain the secrecy surrounding the Gateway, but he hadn’t paid much attention. Thankfully, Poppy, in conversation with Isa, was already rattling off their cover story. For once, he felt grateful for her chatty ways.

  ‘So, you’ve really never travelled the Lands much before now?’ Isa frowned. ‘We knew Jack and the others kept you away from things, had you stay with extended family most of the time, for reasons of safety, but still.’

  Russell’s cheeks reddened and he kept quiet. Poppy flicked her hair back and nodded. ‘It’s been for our own protection, after Crowmount. We were never even told a great deal about magic.’

  ‘Most of us get by without being mages.’ Isa smiled. ‘It is essential for the survival of our Lands, and for many of the things we take for granted, but it also brings its own problems.’

  ‘She’s just waiting to be smug about being one of the youngest arms captains in years, and how she’s one of the few people who can actually challenge our father with a blade. Her head can hardly get through the door anymore.’

  Danny swung around, looking for the source of the voice. A boy, a few years older than them, with smooth brown skin and short, braided hair emerged from a large pile of cushions in the corner, clutching a giant paper bag of something and wearing a huge grin.

  ‘That loafer is my brother, Airrell. If he actually applied himself to more than mischief-making and getting arrested, he might achieve something other than trouble,’ said Isa.

  ‘Yeah, yeah. You love me really.’ He fished in his bag and stuffed a handful of colourful crisps into his mouth. Danny’s stomach growled.

  Airrell waved hello and flumped back into his nest of cushions. ‘Besides,’ he added, ‘why should I make the effort? You achieve enough for us both.’ He rummaged beneath a cushion and pulled out a half-eaten sandwich, which he tucked into. Isa and Russell wrinkled their noses in disgust. Danny felt only jealousy.