by Jan Siegel
Only no one was completely sure the fat man was bluffing.
‘Kill him if you like,’ he said. ‘If you really feel rash enough to risk your master’s displeasure. But living or dead, you will leave him here.’
The pause stretched out for a dozen heartbeats.
Then the Fellangel moved, swifter than sight, flowing into an arrow-streak which sped through the door and vanished into a flying shadow and the sudden boom of wings. The door swung wide and slammed shut in a blast of wind. Random pitched forward onto the parquet, startled to find he was still alive.
Pen said: ‘Are you all right?’
They all looked at the fat man. He seemed as untouched by his little victory as by the confrontation which had preceded it. He still exuded mild kindliness, kindly mildness, an aura both comfortable and comforting.
He said: ‘Well, well.’
They stared at him in dawning realisation.
Jinx was struggling to remember a remark Azmordis had made – something about a fat man blocking the door...
‘This is Bartlemy Goodman,’ she said.
AT NUMBER 7A Temporal Crescent, everything changed. Eve Harkness, returning that evening to be confronted by the new resident, was rapidly disarmed by his gentleness, his quiet capability, his manner at once beneficent and faintly implacable. She arranged to move out the following day, both relieved to be removing her granddaughter from residence with such a questionable group of friends and reassured that, under Bartlemy’s aegis, a mantle of acceptability would be cast over Pen’s ongoing connection with them. With Mr Goodman there she felt, insensibly, that nothing terrible could happen. Random was transformed from a delinquent stray to a poor boy in need of – and receiving – help, Gavin required only a chaperon to become perfectly suitable, and even Jinx, in the afterglow of her relationship with Uncle Barty, became just a girl in black lipstick with a few teenage hang-ups. Eve could retire from the scene and Bartlemy would take care of things. Somehow, no one could doubt his ability to take care of anything.
It took less than twenty-four hours for him to become Uncle Barty to all of them. Pen thought he was a natural uncle, the uncle everyone would have if they could choose. Since his arrival, Jinx became easier to be around, and the wary friendship between her and Pen relaxed into something more comfortable.
‘I suppose it’s all over now,’ Pen said on the last morning, trying not to let her reluctance show. ‘We rescued Random. And you found the real owner of Bygone House. There’s no reason for me to come round any more.’
‘You’d better,’ said Jinx. ‘We’ve just got a breathing space. You’ve saddled me with a serial killer, for one thing. Don’t you dare walk away from that. Let’s be grateful Gavin didn’t bring back the psycho from Greece as well. She looked like a total shitcake.’
‘Shit... cake?’ Pen hazarded.
‘Like a fruitcake, only with shit for fruit. If we’re going to try and find the other wannabe apprentices, ten to one they’ll all be like that. It’s not going to make this place much fun. I’ll be hitting the portals just to get away from them.’
‘Portals,’ said Pen with a sudden smile. ‘Been there, done that.’ She had never been there, done that before with anything. It felt good. She was nearly fourteen, she had become a real lawyer, an executor for someone who had (eventually) died, she had a Past. A past that included portals, and the adventures that lay beyond...
‘Uncle Barty’s going to teach me to make biscuits,’ Gavin said, wandering in from the kitchen. He had been in a haze of culinary awe since supper the previous night. ‘Orange biscuits, cinnamon biscuits. He says with the right biscuits you can do anything.’
‘If yours are half as good as his,’ Jinx said, ‘you’ll have your own TV show in a month.’
‘I don’t want my own TV show. I just want...’
(To forget. To forget how the blood spurted out, when the witch-girl sliced the boy’s throat. To forget how he had felt, when the dragon looked through the crack at him – when they slammed the door against the crowd fleeing the Dromedon – to lock the bad memories in a little casket, and bury it deep, deep. But he mustn’t do that. That way lay emptiness, and coldness, and the brutalisation of the spirit.
Biscuits. Bartlemy’s biscuits could do anything...)
‘I just want to make good biscuits.’
‘As long as we get to eat them,’ Pen said.
Infernale
IN THE DARK Tower, Azmordis did not gnash his teeth. Teeth-gnashing was for small-timers. He is Shaitaan and Satanas, Bale and Baal, Ingré Manu, Utzmord, Lord of the Flies, King of the Abyss, the Shadow beyond all shadows. From the cracks in the wall, from the dark under stones, his eyes are watching, his ears listening. He knows that mortals are overflowing with good intentions, ready to pave the way to Hell. He has catalogued every human weakness, every vice, every little temptation that aspires to the name of sin. But he still does not understand their laughter, or their mercy, or the greatness of their heart. Weary ages have passed, millennia and trillennia, and he has learnt everything, and understood nothing...
‘Mortals always want happy endings,’ he told the Fellangel who stood by. ‘Do they not know? There are no endings, only moments of transition. The door that closes must eventually open again. When I am gone, Another will take my throne. It cannot be prevented. That is the way of things.’
‘The way of the Force,’ nodded the Nightwing at his side.
‘What? Ah, that is one of those human stories. They can be useful. Though I find it somewhat unrealistic that the dark side never wins. They should take a look at history. I win all the time.’
His servant did not contradict him. Possibly he was too polite.
‘And... this time?’ he murmured.
‘In the end, I will win. It is... inevitable.’
But there are no endings, whispered an echo – an echo without a voice. Only moments of transition.
There are no endings...
In Temporal Crescent, people were eating biscuits.
About the Author
Jan Siegel has written in several different genres under several different pseudonyms, but fantasy remains her preferred form of fiction. She also works as a poet, journalist, freelance editor, and occasional teacher, her interests covering a wide range of subjects including horse riding, adventure travel and wildlife conservation.
An idealist, Siegel is continuously surprised to find fact stranger than fiction and real human beings even more bizarre than any character in a book.
The crow king is dead. In the field below, all creatures tremble as the Murder gathers to choose a new king, from the rival sons Sintus, Milus and Nascus. When the crows drive everyone from the fi eld to keep the reckoning secret, the quail Ysil, Cormo and Harlequin believe they must simply follow their elders to safety.
But when the crows turn against each other, the forest becomes full of danger. In the confusion, the last wolf, Asmod, shucks off his isolation and begins to raise an army to claim the kingdom for his own. Hidden truths are brought to light and enormous sacrifices are made; Ysil and his friends must make an epic journey and an unthinkable alliance if the lesser animals are to survive.
‘Lupus Rex is a wonderful, wise book. I was entranced. The message within these pages is one the world needs to hear.’
Douglas Preston, co-author of The Relic
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