‘It would be good but it’s too risky in the long term. I tell you, bro, a decent degree plus a few handy connections that the boss must still have tucked away in that antique address book of his, and I’ll be made. Nothing’s going to make me settle for a life like this again.’
An image of Jasper and Charles Fordham-Marshall, sat side by side in a bank vault counting bags of cash, made Caz smile. But that’s Guardian stuff, he thought. I can’t see Jas taking that oath either, not at any price.
Sir Jonas summoned the Guardians to the study immediately after lunch. ‘Has there been more news from Plymouth?’ he asked anxiously.
‘Not since young Jemima phoned a couple of hours ago,’ answered Daisy. ‘The old man was still living then, as far as she knew.’
‘Is he quite unconscious?’
‘I believe so.’
‘And they are continually at his bedside?’
‘From what she said, the boys are doing the bulk of it, Jasper in the day and young Caz is there all night.’
‘I see.’ Sir Jonas adjusted the eyepatch and tapped his stick distractedly on the floor.
‘I’m worried about how he’s managing for food,’ said Daisy. ‘The evenings draw in so quickly now. I’m afraid he’s going to get caught out and then what’s he going to do?’
‘He’ll be all right,’ said John. ‘He’s got plenty of money with him and there’re restaurants and cafes that do deliveries nowadays. He can get stuff sent in wherever he is, especially in a big city.’
‘But what if he’s in that hospital and starts falling about with those stomach pains of his. They’ll have him on the operating table and start opening him up, and then what’s to be done?’
‘Don’t worry, Dais, it won’t happen,’ said Alan. ‘He had a good scare the other night. He won’t be trying anything fancy, particularly so far from home. He’ll slip off somewhere and eat before he goes anywhere near the hospital, if I know anything about him at all.’
‘Have you had any opportunity to talk to him since Council, Mister Alan?’ asked Sir Jonas.
‘No, not yet, Master. I’m waiting for him to come to me about it.’
‘Do you have any idea why he became so ill?’
‘I can only guess that he was trying something different with a casting. It was full moon and he’d been up at Thunderslea for most of the day, which is unusual for him, considering he casts mostly at night.’
‘Do you think he experienced some form of visitation?’
‘I couldn’t say for sure.’
‘Was there evidence of anything untoward at the site? Any damage of any kind?’
Alan shook his head. ‘Nothing. I was up there myself later that same night, after we had got him settled upstairs. I checked the whole place over again in daylight. There was not a mark to be seen, just a few scufflings around the leaves under the tree and a fox could have done that, or a badger.’
‘But you did note a repetition of similar phenomena following the apparent wounding that Madame Marguerite and Mister John reported upon his arrival here that same evening?’
‘Yes.’
Daisy was still shaking at the thought of it. ‘We all did,’ she said, shuddering. ‘I’ve never seen anything like it in all my life. He looked like he’d been beaten up and half strangled. I thought he’d be laid up for weeks and then there he was with not a mark on him in the morning, and seeming not to remember too much about it either when he eventually came to.’
‘It can only have been the result of visitation!’ exclaimed Sir Jonas excitedly. ‘Nothing else could have produced such a reaction. This must augur well for the next vigil!’
‘Or ill,’ muttered Daisy, clenching her teeth to stop them chattering.
When Alan closed the armoury for the night, he buckled his sword around his waist and went to the security room. He scanned the screens quickly. The spear was missing from its case in the exhibition room. He shut down the surveillance system at Thunderslea, reflected for a moment and pressed a second key. The screen monitoring the stable yard blacked out.
He went outside to check the horses. Nanna was eating her hay. The colt was fast asleep on the straw in his loose box. Freyja and Rúna were standing by their doors, watching the stars. Kyri had disappeared.
CHAPTER 44
The sickly sweet stench of death filled every corner of the room, and a sense of menace that had not been there the night before. Jasper had been reluctant to leave.
‘We should do this together, bro,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t look like he’s going to last much longer.’
Caz shook his head. ‘It doesn’t matter to me when he dies. If he does it on my watch, so be it. I’ll be okay.’
‘But you will get them to call me, won’t you?’
‘I will.’
As soon as he was gone Caz closed the curtains, pushed the chair up close beside the bed and sat down.
‘I’m here again, Dad,’ he said, in his father’s voice. ‘There’s no one around. No one can hear us. I want to know about the curse. You’ve been wanting to tell me all these years and now I’m listening. Why are we cursed?’ He gripped the cold hand curled on the white coverlet, squeezing the bony fingers one by one to force a response. ‘Come on, Dad, tell me! Who cursed us? Tell me! You’ve got to tell me!’
The near lifeless husk remained inert. The rhythm of the shallow breathing continued unchanged, the wavering heartbeat uninterrupted in its peaceful winding down towards a gentle ending, in stark contrast with the raging that had been the sum of its thwarted life. Caz dropped the hand in disgust.
‘How dare you die well!’ he muttered savagely.
The nurses came to check their patient. The younger one instinctively drew her cardigan around her shoulders, her eyes darting nervously from the figure on the bed to the silent attendant. She sensed the fury barely concealed behind the impassive face.
‘Would you like me to call your brother?’ she asked.
‘No. We’re used to people dying in our family.’
The curt reply did not satisfy the senior nurse but she was reluctant to challenge it.
‘I want you to ring the bell immediately there is any change in his condition,’ she said briskly.
‘I will.’
‘Is there anything you want?’
‘No.’
The sense of menace grew with every hour. Reaching into his backpack for his Guardians’ knife, Caz slipped the sheath onto his belt under his jacket. There was nothing like this when Dad died, he thought. That was just sad, but this feels bad.
He got up and paced the floor, alert for any indication that the straw man might return to consciousness. A few minutes after two o’clock the heartbeat changed, racing madly. The eyes opened and Caz saw his chance. He grabbed the flailing hands. The nails were blue.
‘Tell me about the curse!’ he demanded.
The straw man’s mouth opened and shut several times, gasping in the net of death. Caz leaned over him, closing his eyes against the stench of the fetid breath. The eyes rolled back in the corded head. What was left of the voice slipped, gasping, past the strangled vocal cords. ‘The sea.’
Caz took both of his grandfather’s arms and shook him.
‘What about the sea?’ he cried. ‘Who cursed us? You’ve got to tell me! Who cursed us?’
Something sharp and heavy knocked at the window… tap, tap, tap.
Caz leapt to his feet. Laughing with relief, he ran to the window and threw back the curtains, expecting to see the raven – but a shorter, stocky bird with distinctly crossed eyes was perched on the ledge.
Mesmerised, Caz pressed his face to the glass while the crow’s thick, powerful beak rapped again – tap, tap, tap – drilling through his forehead. Numb with shock and naked without the wisdom of the raven guiding the weight of the spear in his hand, his mouth worked, dust dry. He shook from head to foot, a cold sweat running down his back and soaking his clothes.
The straw man groaned. Iron hands dragged Caz stumbling back t
o the bedside to witness the final obscene act of his grandfather’s life, forcing his face down to within inches of the eyes opened wide and staring at some unseen horror. The fragile heart raced madly within the rapidly contracting rib cage. The face changed colour, livid red and white. The marks of an invisible chain seared around the scraggy neck and there was a stench of burning flesh. The lips curled back and turned blue.
In the last agonising moment before the heartbeat stopped, the mouth dropped open, gushing stinking bloodied phlegm as Franklin Wylde’s final breath escaped, sighing, from his fractured lungs. In his frozen eyes, the pupils expanded on the black terror impressed into their fathomless depths.
The pressure clamped around Caz’s head and neck abruptly released and he fell back into the chair, retching and gasping for breath. When he staggered to the adjoining bathroom, the face in the mirror looking back at him was deathly white and heavily shadowed under deeply sunken eyes. The stubble was thick and dark on his gaunt cheeks.
Burning resentment boiled over into rage. He drank copious cupfuls of bitter tasting water and strode back into the silent room. There was no sign of the crow at the window and the urgent presence of power was gone. The life force was draining rapidly out of the body on the bed. The distended veins on the head and hands were shrinking. The chain marks were already nothing more than a faint red stain across the throat.
‘You deserve whatever has taken your sorry soul, old straw man,’ Caz snarled. ‘Your curse is dead with you.’
He shut the lids on the dead eyes and closed the jaw on the old man’s final, silent scream. Gripping his knife hilt, he turned on the last of the unseen host he sensed lingering in the stifling room.
‘You’ve made your point, but the curse is finished. It ends right here with the old man, do you hear me? My family is free and I’ll find my own reckoning. The curse is dead!’
Footsteps came running down the corridor as soon as he pressed the bell button. The young nurse came in and went to the bed. ‘He’s gone then.’
Caz nodded. ‘Yes.’
She wiped the dead man’s chin and straightened the coverlet.
‘It was for the best. Would you like me to call your family?’ she asked kindly. ‘Do they want to view the body?’
‘No, take him away. We weren’t close. We’ll sort it out in the morning.’
‘Can I do anything for you? Would you like something to drink?’
‘No, I’m going. You could call me a taxi. That would be good.’
‘Where shall I say for?’
‘Torpoint ferry.’
CHAPTER 45
The river crossing marked the county line from Devonshire into Cornwall. The ramp lifted up and locked into place as soon as the deckhands closed the barriers behind the last car. The engines laboured, straining between the forces of tide and wind to take up the slack on the huge chains and pull the ferry across the water.
The deckhands exchanged looks as they stepped over the feet of the cloaked and hooded figure sprawled on one of the seats in the passenger area – another nutter come out of the woodwork for the night. Don’t we see them all?
Caz sat up, staring miserably at the view of the city lights, shattered into myriad pixel images by the bitterly cold, sleety rain slanting across the windows in front of him. The spooks had caught him out again and this time there was no doubting that they meant business. Battle was joined. The two remaining Runes of the Deathless were the prize and it would be a fight all the way to the bitter end to win them.
But there was still a glimmer of hope. Someone had warned him. ‘You are pursued.’
Who told me that? He tried to fit a voice to the words – a rasping voice, from beyond the threshold of the Shadowed World. Was it Haldor Vidarsson, Bryn’s murderer? But he was going to kill me as well. Why would he want to help me now?
One of the deckhands shouted to his mate. ‘Bloody hell! Did you see that bird?’
‘What bird?’
‘A bloody great big, black bird just flew across the bow! Didn’t you see it?’
‘Can’t see nothing on a filthy night like this.’
Caz leapt up and ran out on to the open deck, into the streaming, howling wind. The stark white lights along the railings played havoc with his night vision. He leaned out over the rail, all his senses straining. Is it the crow or the raven?
In one direction, white waves pounded the ships moored in the receding dockyards. In the other, a distant wedge of light resolved into spotlights. The second ferry was fast approaching from the opposite bank. He heard the rumble of the engines and the brakes grinding in a badly parked car on the advancing deck.
The gap was almost closed between the two vessels when all sound was suddenly sucked out of the night. Frozen in the dreadful moment of silence, he saw a small, open boat with a red sail pass under the bows. It was carved into the likeness of a heavily-scaled serpent, high-prowed with the tail curling over the stern as though the carving ran the length of the keel. A man stood at the helm, his face clearly visible under the lights as he tacked up the river against the wind. For a split second Caz thought it was Jasper, and then he saw that the man was stocky and red-bearded.
Rain and storm rushed between them and the boat disappeared. The ferries passed in a distorted world without sound or feeling. Small details were crazily amplified. Masses shrank to pinpoints. Caz had no feeling in his feet. His hand passed through the billboard on the railings. He had no sensation of his heart beating.
Have I disappeared too? he wondered fearfully.
The ferry docked. The ramp was let down and the traffic sped away into the farthest reaches of the Western Peninsula. The deckhand who had seen the bird noticed the solitary passenger still standing by the rail on the upper deck. He ran up the steps and tapped the cloaked figure on the shoulder. There was no response.
The man stood in front of him, gesturing, but Caz’s eyes were blank. The mouth, inches from his face, looked huge. Great globs of saliva dripped from black and white teeth as the tongue slapped up and down. The finger jabbing into his chest was a gigantic sausage sprouting spiny black hairs around a slab of pitted nail.
‘Flying high, are you, buye?’ said the man, not expecting any kind of a sensible answer. ‘Stupid sod, you’re so far out of it, you don’t hear a word I say, do you?’ He turned the nutter around and pushed him down the steps to the passenger gangway. ‘Here’s where you get off. Watch where you’re going, don’t trip over the bloody chain and don’t fly back this way until you’re straight!’
Caz followed the line of eyes jumping out at him from the fat brown serpent writhing up the slipway, until they twisted into a mass of knots and disappeared into a gaping cavern under the road. He was wondering if he should follow them when a well-remembered voice called out to him, deep and resonant. The Galdramerr was dancing star-bright against the shadows. Before her, thrust upright into the grassy verge, the spear burst into flame.
The full force of the raging night crashed back into his awareness as he grasped the blazing shaft. Raw energy bellowed through every cell in his body, his heart swelled and the rune ignited. He leapt onto Valkyrjan’s back. The battle frenzy throbbed once more in his veins, and he threw back his head and laughed. The lights of the little town went out.
He shouted. ‘Go, Kyri! Go!’
She leapt forward, but this was no star-ride to World Tree. The mystery of the universal worlds was here and now – present time, present place – pulsating on the brink where worlds collide and mesh.
They left the road and headed for the wide countryside, running south and west, scenting the sea. Villages swept by. Fields and fences flashed briefly under the crystal fire trailing luminous in Valkyrjan’s wake. Horses cried out and pounded their stable doors. Cattle scattered. Sheep fled. Summoned, the ocean lifted its mighty shoulders. White-crested, a giant wave gathered up and rolled landward, thirsting to feast upon the shell-strewn beaches and coves under the wind-savaged headlands.
When
time began in the depths of the young firmament, the first and the greatest of all stars glimmered, flared and shone, and was snuffed out. But life was seeded and found momentum. The first-born, the giants, claimed the glimmering ghost-light of that star’s passing for their own, and no god or hero who came after had greater claim.
That light lit the bowels of Naglfar, the giant’s monstrous ship fashioned from the nails ripped from the fingers of dead men – the same light but ghastly. It was stained with the shreds of the mouldering flesh of those who were not heroes, whose shields and spears did not hang under the great roof beams in mighty Valhall. The vast and creaking sail was wrought in the likeness of a colossal warrior bound by his entrails to the mast, his hands grasping the length of the spar. The great wings of his lungs, spilled out from his axe-hewn ribs and spread across his back, were taut with the hot breath of Múspell from where the ship was come.
Naglfar rode the boiling foam, breasting the towering black wave. The bellowing of giants rose above the raging of wind and weather as Valkyrjan bore Heartbiter, young and proud, to the cliffs’ edge. Dazzling, the Galdramerr reared, calling her challenge. The steersman roared. The oarsmen, belched forth from living rock and wielding the thigh bones of some forgotten beast, thrust their gargantuan blades to breach the wall of water. Pinned to the prow, the skeletal head of a gigantic raven rammed the cliff face, its gaping beak tearing into earth and tree and stone.
Caz raised the burning spear, the rune blazed, but Valkyrjan sprang back. Too late he recognised the tiny figure trapped where the surf drew back from the rocks far below. A huge hand, half formed and flaming, whipped a white-hot chain over the bows of the ship to pluck Franklin Wylde from the sea and toss him, shrieking, to the one who straddled the raven head. Jasper’s face he wore, this Son of Laufey, and Jasper’s voice he used to taunt his brother as he casually ripped out their grandfather’s fingernails. But the malice was the tormentor’s own.
‘We await you, Heartbiter!’
Caz caught a glimpse of glittering eyes before the wave crashed down and Kyri leapt for the cliff path. Her light was put out. The spear was cold. The ship had vanished. His grandfather was taken and there was no longer any doubt of the identity of his pursuer. Only a son of giants could ride the prow of Naglfar. Only the God could unleash the Trickster from his bonds.
Second Night Page 20
