Wyndham picked up on it straight away and said, “Relax, Christopher, they’re in the city, you know they are, so there’s no one to see us, no one to hinder our progress.”
Field laughed, then looked at Chris with a puzzled expression for a moment before saying, “I know where I know you from! Don’t you run that hippy veggie-burger type place?”
Wyndham laughed, saying, “Mr Field, you are a tease.”
Field smiled, pleased with himself, completely unaware that he’d just been silenced. And then the car stopped and they climbed out, waiting only while the driver handed Wyndham a long cardboard box. Chris knew, of course, that it contained a sword.
Dr Higson met them in the hall and ushered them immediately towards the chapel. Chris noticed the headmaster’s hand was heavily bandaged, which filled him with misgivings, but Field, suddenly useful, allayed them by asking Higson outright.
“What happened to your hand, Doc?”
Higson grimaced at the way he’d been addressed, but lifted the hand up to display the bandaging as he said, “I run the perimeter of the school every morning, but the ground’s frozen of course, which I didn’t allow for. Took a tumble, bruised the wrist, broke some fingers.”
Field produced an odd superior laugh as though the injury supported one of his long-held beliefs, then said, “I’ve never held with jogging.”
No one replied.
They stepped down into the chapel and Higson waited until the door was closed before saying, “Please, follow me.”
There were some steps to a crypt towards the left-hand side of the altar, but Higson led them instead to the right where, behind the altar, there was a small locked room that looked as if it had once been used for storage. It was empty now except for some electric camping lanterns in one corner.
Once inside, Higson locked the door, then opened a panel in one of the walls. There was another locked door beyond it, but before opening that, Higson reached down and picked up one of the lanterns, saying, “We’ll all need one of these.”
They picked them up and turned them on, then Higson unlocked the door and started down the steps on the other side of it. Before following, Wyndham turned to Chris and Field and said, “Very few people know about this tunnel, but trust me, this is not what we have come to see.”
They descended, and at the bottom of the steps they followed a narrow tunnel for some distance until it opened into a small circular chamber. Chris moved around the walls, but could find nothing to suggest any further openings.
Field looked up at the roof of the chamber and said, “What is it, a priest-hole or something?”
Wyndham smiled and said, “It’s a gateway to another world, Mr Field, something quite extraordinary.”
Field said, “What d’you reckon, Tofu, you just looked around the walls, see any gateway?”
It took a moment for Chris to realise Field was talking to him, and he laughed and said, “No, as it happens, I don’t, but I’ve known Phillip long enough not to doubt him.”
“Quite,” said Wyndham. “You see, Mr Field, this gateway is designed to be opened by one person and one person alone. So though I knew it was here, I had no way of accessing it. Then Christopher suggested something, and I have to admit I was sceptical, but he convinced me, and I’m glad he did …” He opened the box and removed the weapon. “A sabre, used by William of Mercia himself, touched by him, if you will. Now stand back and behold.”
Higson immediately stood with his back to the wall. Chris and Field followed suit and then Wyndham drove the point of the sword into the floor of the chamber. It was stone, and yet the blade slid through and the sabre stood upright when Wyndham let go and joined the others at the edge of the chamber.
The ground startled to tremble. Chris put his hand flat against the wall and realised that, despite the cold, his palm was damp. He could feel his heart racing too as the ground in front of him appeared to wobble and shimmer, then it peeled apart around the impaled sword, revealing a spiralling stone staircase descending into darkness.
They all stood in silence at first, matching the hollow stillness that now surrounded them. Unsurprisingly, it was Field who spoke first, laughing as he said, “Now that is amazing.”
Wyndham appeared to appreciate the comment, but still said, “On the contrary, Mr Field, that is just the beginning. Come, follow me.”
They set off down the steps, and on reaching the bottom, set off along another tunnel. But there was no longer a single tunnel, and they turned several times, but also ignored many other tunnels that led off the route they followed.
At first, Chris tried to remember the turnings they’d taken, in case he became separated, but he lost track, not least because he was more spooked by the atmosphere down here than he cared for the others to know. There was something sinister in the air of the place. Perhaps it was just because of the other tunnels and the air moving between them, but there seemed a constant background noise, sometimes like wind howling through distant chambers, other times like the whispering of many voices.
Was this the underworld, he wondered, or at least the entrance to it? There was something malign in the atmosphere, there was no doubting that, and he imagined being alone down here would unsettle a person’s mind very quickly.
They walked for some considerable time, until finally Chris detected that they were walking up a long, slight gradient. The thought that they were heading back towards the surface, however slowly, gave him some reassurance.
And then, quite unexpectedly, they stepped into a large round chamber with a domed roof above them, entrances to another two passages on the other side of it.
Speaking quietly, Wyndham said, “Place your lanterns around the room, avoiding the centre of course.”
Only as he added the final instruction did Chris realise there was something in the centre of the room, a sight that so astounded him he almost dropped his lantern, and struggled to tear his eyes away as he placed it on the floor.
The body of a man hung by his feet from the roof. Chris couldn’t see what the binding was, but it also bound his legs together and his arms to his sides. It looked almost as though roots growing down from the earth above had been used to fasten him in place. And as if that wasn’t enough, a wooden stake had been driven into his heart.
His clothes appeared to be leather, but had taken on almost the same colour as his mummified skin which clung to his bone structure, making him look barely human. Yet he had been human at some point, and the remains of black hair hung from his head and showed on his withered face where there had once been a beard.
Beneath his head, in a pile on the floor, lay discarded swords, as if some sort of offering, or perhaps even as a mockery to the man – or creature – whose slow death must have been one long torture. Free yourself, the swords seemed to be saying, reach out for one of us and free yourself.
“Gentlemen,” said Wyndham with the theatricality of a circus ringmaster, “behold Lorcan Labraid, the Suspended King of legend, the last of the four, the only one who yet lives.”
“Except for one slight fly in the ointment,” said Field. “This guy’s dead, and he’s been dead for a pretty long time by the look of him.”
Even as Field spoke, Chris realised with horror that the creature had opened its eyes, first at the sound of Wyndham’s voice, then looking to Field. Field must have seen it himself because before Wyndham could reply he said, “Good God, I don’t believe it, he’s staring at me, the ugly …”
“Quite,” said Wyndham.
Higson stood back almost near the tunnel entrance, as if wanting no further part in the proceedings. But then Chris guessed he’d seen the creature before. For his own part, Chris couldn’t resist moving a little closer.
He was amazed that a creature he’d heard spoken of in such revered tones – the evil of the world, who called to William of Mercia, the Suspended King – could look so diminished, so pathetic. And yet there was something disturbing about him still and Chris went to great e
fforts to avoid his gaze, even as he was aware of it following him round the room.
“Well, Christopher, tell me what you’re thinking.”
He turned to Wyndham and said, “I’m thinking so many things, but I suppose the most obvious is, doesn’t this finish it? Kill Lorcan Labraid and it’s all over for Will. OK, you’d still have to kill him, but he’d be stopped from ever fulfilling his destiny.”
He felt a twinge of guilt as he spoke, but as always at times like this, he reminded himself that he owed no loyalty to Will. As he and Rachel had stood paralysed in the church at Puckhurst, he’d heard Will bartering their blood against Eloise’s, and if Asmund had accepted, he would no doubt have given them up. No, he owed no loyalty to William of Mercia.
“That’s very true,” said Wyndham. “And naturally I’ve considered it, but as ill-equipped as Labraid seems to defend himself, there is some sort of protective force in place around him, one which no sword has yet managed to penetrate.” He gestured to the floor beneath Lorcan Labraid’s head. “You witness the swords of those who have tried.”
Field had been walking in a slow circle round the suspended body, but said now, “No one’s hit it hard enough, that’s all. I don’t care what it’s made of, you hit something hard enough, it’ll break.”
Wyndham shrugged and said, “I’m all for another attempt, if you think you can bring your considerable strength to bear, Mr Field.”
“Well, I don’t see Tofu or the Doc being up to it.” He looked at the pile of swords on the floor, edged closer and kicked them. A few skittered clear and he examined them before picking up a broadsword. He gripped it with both hands, giving some less than convincing swipes through the air before approaching the hanging figure.
“Gotta sever the head, right?”
“That’s correct.”
With no more ceremony, Field took a big swing and the sword swooped down and hit the side of Lorcan Labraid’s neck. Chris prepared himself for what he expected to follow, the brief slicing of flesh before the explosion of blue light. But as Wyndham had suggested, the sword blade bounced off as if Field had just met rock or metal.
“Whoa!” Field struggled to stay on his feet from the power of the rebound and the sword flew from his hands and hit the wall at the side of the room. Labraid appeared unmoved, his eyes still passively following his observers.
“OK, see your point, but this can be done. Where did the sword go?”
Chris looked at him and said, “You’re bleeding.” There was a spot of blood on Field’s cheek and Chris pointed to his own cheek to show him where.
Field reached up and wiped it, looking at his fingers as he said, “I don’t know how I did that. Mind, it took it out of me, that did.”
Chris looked back at him, but could no longer speak because Field’s face was now bleeding in several places at once, the blood oozing not from wounds, but out of the skin itself, then out of his eyes.
“I’m not feeling too special,” said Field, still unaware of what was happening to him. His face was running with blood now and it was soaking through his clothes from his body, and then Field let out a dull, surprised scream, and the blood flew away from him, like iron filings to a magnet, a red mist which settled and clung instantly to Lorcan Labraid.
Field stood for a moment, chalk white, stunned, and collapsed into dust which billowed across the floor of the chamber, leaving nothing, not an item of clothing, not a watch or piece of jewellery.
The sword, which had been across the room, and the other swords that Field had kicked aside, slid back across the floor and settled in the position they’d been in before. Chris heard Wyndham laugh at this development, suggesting he’d expected Field’s death, had almost certainly brought him along for that purpose alone, but not for the swords to rearrange themselves.
But then even Wyndham fell silent. Within seconds of the blood mist being absorbed, a visible transformation started to take place in Lorcan Labraid.
His flesh, which had been leathery and mummified, filled out and regained the texture and colour of skin. The body filled out too, straining against its bindings. Even the clothes seemed restored. His hair, which had looked like mere remnants, now hung dark and long from his head, and grew again into a beard on his face.
Within a matter of seconds, and despite the stake through his chest and the bindings that kept him suspended, Lorcan Labraid had come to look very much alive. Chris found himself stepping backwards, doubting the stake would be enough to contain a man who looked this fierce, this strong.
Chris heard Higson say in a small voice, “I didn’t expect that.”
Wyndham was exuberant as he said, “You see, Christopher, you see the true evil we face.”
Labraid’s mouth opened, revealing his fangs, and then his voice, effortlessly powerful.
“Who are you to be here?”
“I am Phillip Wyndham and now, Lorcan Labraid, whether you like it or not, you are at my disposal.”
Labraid laughed and said, “You? You are nothing. You speak of evil? With what knowledge?” Wyndham seemed unsettled, the first time Chris had seen him like that. And then Labraid laughed again and said playfully, “Can you run?”
There was no time for answers. The four lanterns exploded and died, plunging the room into pitch-darkness. And immediately from one of the other passageways came a furious screaming, not of someone in pain, but of some creature – or creatures because it sounded as if there were many of them – bent on bloodshed.
“Quick!” shouted Wyndham. “Follow me!”
Chris responded instantly, tearing into the darkness, finding the tunnel entrance with his outstretched hands, bumping into Higson as he too struggled to escape. Wyndham shouted back to them and they ran on.
Higson had got into the tunnel first, which meant Chris was at the back, that he would be caught first. That only intensified his terror, almost robbing his legs of the ability to move, like those nightmares he’d had as a child, being chased by witches or monsters, his legs like lead.
But Chris kept running into the blackness, blind, judging his direction from his outstretched hands and the sound of footfalls ahead of him and the terrifying screams behind and the occasional shouts of Wyndham.
Wyndham sounded confident, even triumphant, but Chris was too riddled with fear to share in that confidence. The screams were still distant, but they gained on them in leaps, and Chris didn’t know how far they had left to run or at which point they would reach safety.
He ran on, and thought of what had happened to Field and of the transformation of Lorcan Labraid. He thought of the way the lanterns had exploded and the screams that pursued them now, not even wanting to think what creatures might be making a noise like that. For the first time, he thought he understood the true meaning of evil, and for the first time, he wondered if Wyndham himself really understood it, or the nature of the evil he had just unleashed.
Acknowledgements
Thanks go to the following people. To Sarah Molloy and all at AM Heath. To Stella Paskins and Elizabeth Law, and all at Egmont in the UK and US respectively. To Jane Tait for her expert attention to detail. To Sharon Chai for her vision. To Una, as before. And finally, thanks to the many people who’ve contacted me in the last year to tell my how much they enjoyed Blood, both new readers and old friends, with a special mention to Helen P, who perhaps knew before anyone that I would write these books …
“Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,
But to be young was very heaven!”
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Alchemy, Book Two of the Mercian Trilogy Page 21
