So Below: The Trilogy

by Matt Whyman

“We had high hopes for you at the Foundation,” he tells her. “You especially, Blaize. You have a hot temper, but I admire that. It shows a strength of spirit that could one day reap untold rewards.”

  Blaize remains silent for a moment. She rests her hand on her hips, and lifts her gaze for a moment across the city skyline.

  “Think about it, Blaize,” the brute continues, and steps towards the building. “Open your mind and consider the choices you face, for only one path can be true to you. Trust me, Blaize. Trust every word I say.”

  Behind him, at a safe distance, the boy who had feared a sticky end hauls himself off the floor and frowns. If he didn’t know better, this brute was making an attempt to place the girl under some kind of hypnotic spell. Everything from the rhythm of his voice to the way he repeated her name with every breath sounded like an attempt to speak to her on a psychic level. Moving very quietly, so as not to draw attention to himself, the boy taps his radio pack gently on the cobblestones. “Billy, do you copy? We have a situation occurring here. Blaize is going to need some back-up. The entire crew would be good, I think. It’ll need an army to stop him now.”

  This time, it seems, his appeal is picked up loud and clear.

  “Request denied, Bravo Leader. There’s only two operatives here, and I’m not permitted to leave my post.”

  “But we have to help her!”

  “Easy, soldier. I’m going to patch into her earpiece now, and issue her the command to stand down.” The switch is marked by a crackle and popping noise in the boy’s ear, and then Billy’s voice returns, addressing the girl on the roof this time. “OK, Blaize, no sudden moves. Just get yourself out of that hot zone. Find a safe way to go to ground and we’ll bring you in when the coast is clear, do you copy . . . Blaize? I repeat, do you copy?”

  The boy shakes his head, fearing the worst. By now Aleister is skirting the foot of the building, looking for a way to claim his quarry. He’s still talking to Blaize in a very strange tone, while the girl continues to look out blankly from the ledge three storeys above.

  “It’s no good,” he reports to base, when the girl begins to sway. “I think we’ve lost her.”

  In response, another voice kicks in through his earpiece. It sounds just like Blaize, but it’s broadcasting from the bunker. An appeal from one sister to another in a time of need.

  “This is Scarlett. You mustn’t listen to that man. Blaize? Listen to me! There’s more to him than meets the eye in every way. I know that, and so do you. Be strong, sis. Resist his words and get away while there’s still time! Do it for me, Blaize. I’m begging you!”

  The girl on the roof says nothing. When she blinks, as if stirring back to her senses, the first thing she does is to rip off the microphone mouthpiece and headset. Aleister watches the equipment smash on the cobbles at his feet, and beams broadly. “That’s my girl!”

  Blaize looks down directly at him. “You can keep it as a memento,” she tells him, and grins as his own smile vanishes. “Because that’s the closest you’re gonna get to me!”

  Before he can draw breath, she has turned away from the ledge and disappeared from his view. Only a traffic camera might record the moment that follows, one of the elevated eyes designed to take in the bigger picture. Through that feed, the girl can be seen kicking off her pumps, and sizing up the distance across the roof to the fire escape that switches down the building opposite. Without warning, she breaks into a sprint, headlong towards the abyss, and then leaps with all her might on reaching the point of no return.

  For a beat, it might seem as if all London has frozen in time, but for the girl in the air. She swings her arms and legs forward, just as Yoshi had taught her, but from every view imaginable it’s increasingly clear that she’s not going to make it. Blaize herself can see her bid is doomed. In desperation, she reaches out for the fire escape, but it just seems to tip away as gravity drags her down. Her limbs begin to flail, grabbing at fresh air for every flight she passes, but there’s no time to scream or even see her life flash before her eyes. Indeed, the only thing she witnesses is a hulking figure rush below her and catch her in his arms. A bald-headed brute, it turns out, who collects his breath as she does, and rounds tight blue eyes on Blaize that share in her relief. “Now that,” he says, “was one hell of a fall.”

  25

  THE BUTCHERS’ SYMPHONY

  There comes a moment in every journey in which you think it must be near the end, but really it has hardly begun. Right now, a band of subterranean travellers can be found at rest. They’re sitting on brick rubble, beside a river that flows over a precipice, and into a dark abyss. They had followed the tunnel this far, travelling miles, it seemed, only to find it broken up here as if the ground beneath their feet had just fallen away.

  “It’s a fault line,” Julius tells them, and sheers his palms to demonstrate. “London is built on clay foundations. When clay dries out, it shrinks and cracks.”

  “Does that mean London is at risk of earthquakes?” asks Livia. She’s perched on a rock beside the old man, eating a fortune cookie. Her aura flickers like a campfire, lighting up the faces around her. “I had no idea.”

  Julius smiles. “This city hides many secrets,” he tells them, and offers round more cookies from his shoulder bag.

  “You’re not kidding!” Mikhail tosses a pebble into the water. “How many more times are we going to be trampled over by those spectral swine?”

  Since their first encounter with the stampede under the palace, the party had endured three similar charges. Each time, the pigs had careered out of the darkness, and simply passed right through them. “If I ever make it back to the surface,” the young Russian continues, “I want to bring one with me. Just think of the cash that could be made on the streets with such a neat little trick!”

  “That won’t be possible,” the old man informs him. “What you’re seeing is simply earth energy that’s passed through a real pig and adopted the same form. Indeed, you may have noticed that with each stampede the number of pigs increased.”

  “They seemed to glow a little brighter, too,” observes Yoshi.

  “That’s because we’re near the source.”

  “Thank goodness for that,” sighs Livia. “My feet are killing me!”

  “When the Faerie Ring fired up yesterday evening,” the old man continues, “it would’ve created a massive volley of earth energy. This is just the last of it discharging. Chances are it burns itself out within a couple of waypoints, and fades to nothing.”

  Mikhail doesn’t look so sure. “I’m sorry,” he says eventually. “Call me a street magician at heart, but I still think it’s a trick. For a start, where are these underground pigs?”

  Julius Grimaldi considers the question respectfully. “Maybe you’d care to focus your head torch across the chasm, Mikhail. I have been this far before, and seen them for myself.”

  “You’re the boss,” he says with a sigh, and twists around to take a look. Across the divide, his twin beams pick out an uneven wall of clay.

  “Try a little higher,” suggests Julius, as Yoshi’s beams join the search.

  A moment passes in silence as the lights drift around, picking out caves in the crevice. The remains of the tunnel over there light up momentarily, only for Yoshi to switch his twin beams to a point further along the rocky ledge.

  “Something just moved!” he hisses, which sees Mikhail’s beams quickly join his own.

  And there on a plateau, in what appears to be a pen put together using sticks and power cables, a herd of pigs can be seen rooting around in straw and dirt. Unlike those that had charged them through the tunnel, these ones don’t glow in the dark. As Yoshi and Mikhail probe the space with their head torches, and the lights leave their flanks in turn, the herd simply return to the shadows once again.

  “If these are the underground pigs,” Livia says, “they’re well looked after.”

  “By whom?” asks Mikhail, and looks at his friends. Nobody responds, as if unwilling
to spell out the fact that Julius’s urban myth about the lost tribe of slaughtermen suddenly seems less outlandish. “Is someone going to tell me what’s going on?” He pauses there for a moment, tipping his head to one side. “And what’s that sound I can hear now?”

  “What sound?” asks Yoshi.

  “Shh! Listen.”

  It’s just a faint, dull strain at first. A refrain from a lone violin, it seems, seeping through the clay vaults overhead. Then, turn-by-turn, other instruments join in, until the party find themselves listening to the unmistakeable sound of an orchestra.

  Julius sits back and closes his eyes. “What you can hear, my friends, is the London Symphony in rehearsal. They occupy St Luke’s, you see. A Hawksmoor church that had fallen derelict before the orchestra took it over. The renovation work that’s been carried out is quite outstanding. Even the foundations have been underpinned,” he adds, gesturing at the chasm. “Which is perhaps a wise act of foresight.”

  Yoshi studies the dark divide, sizing it up with his jump runner’s eye. “So if the church is just above us, the keystone must be close at hand.”

  Julius unrolls one of his engineering diagrams, and flattens it against a rock.

  “I would estimate that you’ll find it just beyond the pigpen,” he says. “Can you see the passage in the rock leading off from it?”

  Yoshi trains his beams beyond the swine across the chasm.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Well, according to the renovation plans here, and if my calculations back in the Map Room are correct, that’s directly beneath the very centre of the church. The keystone has to be there. All you have to do when you’re across is lay your hands upon it and be sure to think positively.”

  “Is that all?” asks Livia, amazed.

  “Earth magick is a primal force,” the old man explains. “It isn’t rocket science, and nor do you need to mess around with spells. You simply need to be on the same wavelength, which is why fresh young psychics like you are able to tap into it. I have every confidence that Yoshi will know what to do when he gets there.”

  “I will?” Yoshi looks a little mystified. “Perhaps you’d care to remind me.”

  “In simple terms, it’s a question of seeding the ring using the power of your mind, and the rest will take care of itself. If you can find enough time to charge it to capacity, nobody will be able to influence it again for many years to come. It means we can all go home in the knowledge that the city will prosper.”

  “I see,” the boy replies, wondering if Julius has forgotten a few things here. “Even though it’s too far for me to jump, let’s just say I do find a way across, once I’m there, what kind of welcome can I expect from the inhabitants? If slaughtermen are looking after those pigs I’m not sure I want to be the one who meets them face to face.”

  “Wait a moment! What slaughtermen?” Mikhail has been following all this looking quietly amused, until now. He turns to Yoshi and Livia. “You mentioned them and told me not to worry. It’s an urban legend, is what you said!”

  Livia and Yoshi look lost for words. Julius draws breath, preparing to share his theory on the kernel of truth, and promptly finds there’s no need.

  For across the chasm, something can be heard emerging from the tunnel. Something that sounds like it’s taking one step after another. Something clearly walking on two legs!

  “Get down!” Yoshi grabs Mikhail as he swings around to look with his headlamps on full beam. “Kill your lights before we’re spotted!”

  “Lights won’t give us away,” Julius assures him quietly, much to Livia’s relief. “They’re blind as bats. It’s sound and movement that could alert them to our presence.” He stops there, and appears to give thanks to the heavens. “If it wasn’t for the orchestra up there,” he explains, “we wouldn’t even be able to whisper.”

  More movement can be heard across the divide. This time, Yoshi braves peeking over the rubble they’ve retreated behind. His headlamps find the pigs, but can’t quite penetrate the darkness behind them. Even so, there are hunched shapes loping around over there. Some on all fours, others just about upright. They switch across the dark plateau with terrific speed. Then comes the sound of blades unsheathing.

  “What are they doing?” asks Mikhail.

  “Whatever it is,” replies Livia, “one of the pigs doesn’t like it one bit.”

  Sure enough, the youngest of the swine has become agitated. It trots away from the disturbance, squealing nervously. Yoshi follows the piglet with his headbeams, only for it to cut sideways without warning, and vanish from his sight.

  A second later, this subterranean cavern fills with a violent scream. It’s one that ends just as quickly, and makes the soothing strains of the orchestra above sound entirely out of place.

  “Remember these are born butchers,” says Julius. “I imagine they know how to finish their livestock swiftly and cleanly. Chances are the piglet didn’t feel a thing.”

  Yoshi senses a chill creep deep into his bones. “And you want me to find a way into their lair?”

  “Only for a short time,” the old man assures him. “You’ve outwitted a fiend like Aleister on several occasions now. I wouldn’t ask you to do this unless I felt sure you’d come out alive.”

  Mikhail is up on his feet. Picking his way into the river, he peers over the edge where the water falls away, and says: “You could get across from here.”

  With great care, Yoshi joins him, along with Livia and the old man. Far below, the water can be seen crashing onto the collapsed tunnel section. On the far side, the tunnel is intact, although it hasn’t seen water for some time. Whenever this chasm opened up, it had evidently severed many links around town at the time. For stubs of age-old piping bristle from each wall, sheered at different lengths. Indeed, just under the waterfall itself, a length of copper piping reaches further out into the darkness than any other. Yoshi scans it with his torch beams, taking in every crimp, buckle and twist all the way to the other side.

  “That won’t support me,” Yoshi says. “If I tried to walk it as a high wire it would just give way under my weight.”

  “Not if you used those to get you across.” Mikhail draws their attention to a latticework of spikes poking through the clay overhead.

  “It’s the tips of the church underpinning,” says Julius brightly. “They’re basically great steel piles that are driven in from above to secure the foundations of the buildings. I do believe if you use the pins to take your weight, and walk your feet across the piping, you’ll make it in one piece.”

  Yoshi switches his attention between them. He touches his temple, aware of a little tension there, which is no surprise in view of what they’re asking him to do.

  Standing beside him, Livia says: “I don’t think this is a wind-up. They really want you to give this a go.”

  “I think you’re right,” says Yoshi, wishing the pain would subside. “But even if the other side was seamed with gold, you wouldn’t catch me trying something this foolish. First rule of parkour – know your limits.”

  “Aww, c’mon!” says Mikhail. “Just as I’m beginning to believe in your kind of magic, you can’t let me down now . . . What do you say, Yoshi? It’s your chance to really impress us! What’s with the funny look? How come you’ve stopped blinking? Hello?”

  He waves a hand in front of his face, but Livia knows that won’t bring the boy back. Not yet, at any rate. For when everything turns white for Yoshi, it’s clear to her that his mind’s eye is opening on a remote view.

  “What do you see?” she asks, bidding for the other two to remain quiet.

  “I’m on the streets of Chinatown,” replies Yoshi. “Something isn’t right . . . I see one of the twins.”

  “What colour braids?” asks Mikhail, in no mood now to suggest this is a trick.

  “Blue.”

  “It’s Blaize.”

  Julius sighs. “Why has Billy let her out at a time like this? They were instructed to remain on the Bridge.”<
br />
  At this, Yoshi’s eyes snap open again. He takes a moment to regain his focus. When he does so, the first thing he does is turn and face the divide.

  “OK,” he says, and takes a deep breath. “Let’s do it.”

  “You’re going to cross?” asks Livia. “But you’ve just said it’s beyond your limits.”

  “Well,” he says, “I’ll just have to put that to the test, and pray that I can prove myself wrong.”

  “But there’s something over there. Creatures of some sort.”

  Yoshi glances uncertainly at Julius. “Somehow, we have to secure the Faerie Ring once and for all. It’s the only way to prevent a whole heap of grief and suffering. Whatever’s over there, it can’t be as grim as what would follow if we bailed out now.”

  Julius pauses to consider this change in heart. “You’ve seen something, haven’t you?”

  Yoshi nods solemnly. “Those pigs might not have much of a future,” he says, “but I’m afraid the fate is sealed for those we’ve left behind in the bunker unless we take action now.”

  “How so?” asks Mikhail.

  “Because it seems there’s a wolf at our door.”

  26

  INTO THE BREACH

  Aleister stands impatiently at the dead end of the alleyway. Blaize is close beside him. She glances up at a security camera, braced to the wall high overhead, and then shares an observation with him. Inside the bunker, from the big seat on the Bridge, Billy watches this feed on a monitor. The way his lips are pursed, you’d think he was holding a lemon segment in the pocket of each cheek.

  “If I didn’t know any better,” he says, sounding as uncomfortable as he looks, “I’d think we were looking at a ventriloquist and his dummy.”

  Scarlett frowns and studies the screen.

  “Whatever’s happened to my sister,” she says, “I’m just glad to see that she’s alive and well.” At this, Scarlett reflects on the awful moment that Blaize had attempted to leap between buildings, only to drop down into the gap. In a panic, Billy had switched to the wrong traffic camera. By the time he pinpointed the correct one, and they had prepared themselves for the worst, Blaize was nowhere to be seen. It was if she had defied the laws of nature and reason, and just vanished like a true magician. Five minutes later, she shows up like this, right in front of the buckled vent, with the brute at her side and Otto close behind.