“That’s it,” she laughed in relief. “My father knows yours . . . anyway . . . I really liked your poem.”
“I didn’t write it. It was ‘The Song of Amergin.’ ”
“Er, I know, I meant the way you performed it.”
“Thanks.” His gaze drifted away from her—scanning for Sam, she assumed. He wasn’t making this easy at all.
“I thought you were at boarding school,” she struggled on. “What are you doing here?”
“Uh,” Jon said, and looked at his feet. “We were. Dad decided to take us out and send us here instead.”
“Oh,” she said, and thought it extraordinary that Lawrence actually might have listened to her father’s throwaway advice. “Do you mind?”
“I don’t know yet.” The sweetness of his face and the fall of his hair was playing havoc with her insides. He caught her gaze with those melting brown eyes as if he wanted to confide something vital, and would if she could only win his trust.
“What subjects do you like best?”
“Um . . . English is okay, and biology . . . I’d better go.” He started to turn from her, hands in pockets, head down. A sudden small flame of courage lit inside her and, on an impulse, she stepped after him.
“Jon, could I ask you a favor?”
He stopped, met her eyes again with a wary frown. “I suppose so.”
“Your brother Sam has something of mine.”
“What?”
“Ask him,” she said more confidently. “He’ll know what it is. It’s not much, but it’s important to me. Could you get it from him, and bring it round to my house? Please? When you’ve got time.”
He looked perplexed, then gave a quick smile that lit up his face. Her heart sprang like an elated lamb. “Yes, okay. No problem. See you later.”
“I’ve found out everything, got all the gossip.”
Mel’s words circled around Rosie’s head as she trudged home with Lucas, damp grass squelching beneath their feet. Ghostly clouds turned the twilight luminous. She could smell snow. She glanced anxiously at the Crone Oak as they passed it, but nothing moved.
“So, you think any of it’s true, then?” asked Lucas.
“What have you heard?”
“All sorts. The kids in my class have talked about nothing else all day. Sam was expelled from his posh school for fighting,” said Lucas. “There are so many rumors flying around, I don’t know what to believe.”
“Sam took on three boys and put them in hospital,” Rosie said flatly. “That’s the truth.”
“How d’you find that out?”
“Mel, of course. Her mother has sources. Sam was already on umpteen warnings.”
“Wow.”
“I hope that’s not admiration I can hear in your voice.”
“No, no,” Luc said quickly. “Why did our school let him in, then?”
“Why d’you think?” said Rosie. “Lawrence is loaded. That’s why his school took so long to expel him, and why ours was so eager to take him on. Money.”
Lucas gave her an eloquent sideways look of disgust. “I know one thing. No one dares say anything to Sam’s face. Everyone’s scared witless of him.”
It had been a strange day, with Sam’s incongruous presence and tantalizing glimpses of Jon. It was as if they’d already webbed the school with the tangled atmosphere of Stonegate Manor. “I’m not afraid of him,” she said.
“Brave Rosie. I’m not scared either, then.”
“Good,” she said, “because if he lays a finger on you, I’ll kill him.” The comforting bulk of Oakholme shone behind webs of winter trees. After a moment, she asked, “Lucas, do you like Jon?”
“Seems all right,” he said, offhand. “I don’t know him yet. Bit quiet. If we were in the same year, we’d probably dodge sports classes together.”
An hour later, when Rosie came down from her room, she heard her mother talking to someone in the kitchen. Her heart skipped. She’d changed into jeans and a soft wine velvet top, brushed her hair to a deep shine . . . just in case Jon came.
She walked steadily down the hall towards the glow of the kitchen, saw her mother leaning against the warm bulk of the Aga cooker with her hair in a loose ponytail over her shoulder. She was smiling and chatting to someone concealed by the door. Rosie bit her lower lip to redden it, swallowed hard, and strode casually in.
The young man sitting at the farmhouse table was not Jon, but Sam. He was out of school uniform and in jeans with a grey cable sweater, looking older than seventeen and perfectly angelic.
The world juddered under Rosie’s feet.
“Hello, sweetheart,” said Jessica. “You’ve got a visitor. Can I leave you to it while I do things upstairs? Kettle’s boiled.” She was gone, not waiting for Rosie to answer, let alone ask her to stay. Sam stood up, edged to the kitchen door and casually pushed it shut.
“Hi,” he said.
“Would you please leave?” Rosie stood stiff and hostile in the center of the room.
“In a minute. Jon said you—” Sam’s shoulders were drawn up in contrition and his eyes were somber, not mocking. He held out a closed hand. When she didn’t respond, he placed an object on the table. There was a waterfall of hard little clicks and her crystal pendant lay there, glittering on its chain. “You asked for this, so . . .”
“I thought he was going to bring it himself.” The dismayed words were out before she could stop them. She groaned inwardly. Damn, damn.
Sam’s eyebrows flickered. “I see.” He sighed and fidgeted, looking uncomfortable. “Sorry to disappoint, but he didn’t seem that bothered when I offered to come instead. I mended the chain, by the way. Look, Rosie . . .”
She stood with her arms folded against him, furious and helpless.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Really, truly sorry. We got off on completely the wrong foot.”
“I don’t think we did,” she said. “It looked to me like you started exactly as you meant to go on.”
“No, no, I didn’t. I’m an idiot. I want to make it up to you.”
Her kind nature wanted to believe his apology, but her memory called up the bruise he’d left on her arm at the party, his sadistic pleasure in taunting her. “You could try explaining why you changed schools,” she said crisply. “I heard bullying with violence and grievous bodily harm.”
“Who told you that?”
“Who didn’t?” she retorted.
He looked away from her, his voice low and flat. “Yeah, I got expelled for fighting. So? They had it coming.”
The easy way he admitted it shocked her. “And that made you feel big and tough, did it?”
“Not really, no.”
“What about Jon?”
“He didn’t want to stay on his own, so Father took us both out.”
“And are you planning to start roughing up everyone at our school instead?”
“No,” he said, with the trace of a laugh. “Only if they piss me off.”
“You’re really charming, aren’t you?”
“Just honest.”
Rosie didn’t know what else to say. He made her jumpy and angry and she desperately wished he would leave. Perhaps she could perform some cleansing rite on the pendant, so she could wear it again. “Anyway, thanks for bringing back my property finally, although I don’t know why I’m thanking you.”
“I understand.” He moved towards the back door, stopped. “Rosie, would you, er . . . How about going for a coffee with me sometime?”
She stared at him in complete shock. “Are you asking me out?”
“No!” Sam said quickly. “Well, yes. Only for a coffee.”
“What for?”
He appeared tongue-tied for a moment. “So I can say sorry properly. And, you know, you’re not completely repulsive.” He smiled.
The suggestion floored her. She turned hot with panic. She was ready to fantasize about a gentle boy with the eyes of a poet—but not ready to put herself at the mercy of a rogue with a reputation an
d fresh blood on his hands. He’d already tried to kiss her—what else would he do?
No—god, no. The potential for fresh humiliation was boundless.
“You must be joking.” All the rejection in the world blazed in her voice. He actually flinched.
“Right.” The cruel, intimidating glitter reappeared in his eyes. He gave a twisted grin, angry or embarrassed at her refusal. She’d sounded harsher than she’d intended—but she was thinking of schoolboys bleeding on hospital trolleys, the raw sting of the chain breaking across her throat, Matthew crouching bloodied and wretched behind a hedge, saying, He’s crazy, keep away from him.
“It was worth a try,” he added. “Plenty more girls at school. In fact, your mother’s pretty fit.”
“Get out,” she said, panic turning to outrage.
“What happened to my cup of tea?”
“You’re asking for boiling water over your head. Could you be any more obnoxious?”
“Haven’t even started yet.” He crossed to the outside door, paused with his hand on the doorknob and said, “You like Jon a lot, don’t you?”
“He’s okay,” she said defiantly. “I can’t believe you’re related. He’s nothing like you.”
“No kidding.” Sam opened the door onto darkness and she tasted needles of ice on the air. Slipping away into wintry gloom he glanced back at her, his face pale in the closing gap. “You do know he’s gay, don’t you?”
Auberon was walking along a footpath towards Comyn’s farm. Around him the afternoon was chill and wrapped in all-day winter twilight; but he loved Charnwood in all its masks. The trees were clawed ghosts in the mist. As he walked, he remembered . . .
Lawrence at Freya’s Crown; hair jet black against his robes, the great stone mound looming behind him. He held the applewood staff and a bronze dish of hazelnuts. The sky above the Dusklands was black glass scattered with snowdrifts of stars. A throng of Vaethyr waited, their Otherworld forms already emerging; hair growing longer and brighter, eyes becoming feline, human bodies elongating. On some shoulders, ghost wings rustled.
Candle smoke curled into the air like soft breath. When Lawrence lifted his staff and struck the stone, the ground trembled; one Gate turning inside another until they all came into alignment and there was the portal, stretching like an infinity of mirrors; the Way to the Inner Realms, the Gate of Gates.
Then Lawrence offered each Vaethyr in turn a hazelnut, and they ate, and passed through.
It had been a beautiful night, that last Night of the Summer Stars twelve years ago; crisp and glowing. It was shortly after Lucas’s birth, a time of renewed happiness . . . Auberon and Jessica had felt the cool grass of Elysion beneath their bare feet as they danced . . . but, later, they’d sat out of the Great Dance itself, content to watch, sipping honey wine.
A perfect, peaceful night. Auberon wondered if he’d missed some hint of the coming darkness. Lawrence’s high-handed abrasiveness had given no clue, since it was his usual manner . . . or was it?
Wilder came from Sibeyla, realm of air, and of course the Spiral-born often found it hard to adjust to Earth. In his twenty years as Gatekeeper he’d proved capricious about the lesser festivals, sometimes not turning up. He’d become feared and disliked. Auberon had reason to hate him; but at a younger age, he and Lawrence had been friends. He had seen Lawrence in moments of weakness that made hatred impossible.
Lawrence had twice opened the Great Gates for the Summer Stars rite. The first time, nineteen years ago, Liliana had been there to support him. Second time, twelve years ago . . . yes, he had looked uneasy. If you ruled out personal matters or stage fright and attributed it to foreboding instead, his grim demeanor took on new meaning.
Third time—Gates locked in their faces, dysir set upon them, Lawrence intransigent.
Auberon felt a dark wave shudder up through the roots of the earth, and through his body. He opened his eyes, tasting soil like death in his mouth. In that moment, he knew that Lawrence was telling the truth. The very rocks, connected to the Gates, pushed the knowledge into him. An amorphous peril slumbering within the Spiral, some formless terror that he couldn’t grasp . . . the image was gone, leaving a dark trail of fear behind it.
Sighing, Auberon continued his walk. The grass squelched under his boots as he followed the lane towards Comyn’s farm. He wondered about other Vaethyr communities around the Earth, their network a delicate spider’s web with nodes concentrated around portals, and all those portals controlled by the Great Gates of Cloudcroft. Really, the Aetherial population of Earth was tiny, and mostly too distant to give Lawrence any trouble. The majority, although they might be uneasy about their Gatekeeper’s actions, still trusted him.
After all, it was Lawrence’s role to be vigilant, to sense threats that no other Vaethyr perceived. It was his gift and his duty. If he’d sensed this gathering shadow from the beginning . . . well, it did not excuse his behavior, but might explain a lot.
Auberon climbed a five-bar gate into a pasture, checking for the massive bull, Brewster. The pasture was empty. The bulk of farm buildings appeared on top of the hill. As he drew closer, Comyn came to meet him, fitting the role of gentleman farmer in a green waxed coat and cap; a natural denizen of the landscape. His rubberized boots left deep imprints in the mud.
“Found a moment out of your busy schedule?”
Auberon had learned not to take offense at his brother-in-law’s bluntness. “You said come up for a chat. Here I am. Is this a friendly cup of tea, or something more serious?”
“It’s serious,” replied Comyn.
He led Auberon across the farmyard to a barn. Inside, the air was wreathed with the steamy stench of cattle. Railed in a pen stood Brewster, Comyn’s pride and joy, the magnificent brown bull that had triumphed in the show ring and earned him a fortune at stud. The concrete stall was swept clean, the straw fresh and golden. Brewster, however, stood with his head lowered, no fire in his eyes. His coat was dull, muscles wasted. Auberon was shocked to see him.
“He’s dying,” said Comyn. “We’ve kept him going but the last couple of days—” His hand sliced the air to indicate sudden decline.
“What does the vet say?”
“Hopeless. We’ve tried everything.” His voice was gruff. “End of the line.”
“He’s quite an old man now,” Auberon said gently.
Comyn let himself into the pen and stood stroking Brewster’s once-hefty neck. The bull huffed, swiveling cloudy eyes towards him. “He’s not a mortal bull, Bron. He came with me from the inner realms. A wedding gift from my clan.”
Auberon had always lived in the surface world. His family had owned this farm for generations. Comyn, however, had been Aelyr, Spiral-born. He came of an Elysian clan called the Fheylim, a tough, fierce, dark-haired people from which Auberon’s family had also branched. That made him and Comyn distant cousins.
Long ago, during a solstice rite in Elysion, Phyllida had met Comyn and brought him to the surface world. Since Auberon had his own business and no desire to be a farmer, he’d asked his parents to leave the farm to Comyn instead. Despite the gift—or because of it—Comyn had an edge of disdain towards him, an Elysian who’d rejected his farming heritage to build houses for humans. Auberon tried to ignore the needling.
“I know,” Auberon said, leaning on the top rail of the pen. “There’s such vigor about Brewster, as if he’s the very archetype of a bull.”
“That’s precisely what he is.” Comyn stroked the bellowing flank. “Human myths overflow with bulls. He is the sun, the fire of life. Can you guess when he began to lose his health?”
Auberon exhaled. “When Lawrence first closed the Gates?”
“Exactly then. Brewster hasn’t eaten the grass of Elysion for five years and this is the result. How long before we fade, too?”
Phyllida appeared from the gloom of the farmyard. Her hair, falling over the collar of her waxed jacket, blazed under the barn’s fluorescent lights.
“It’s the wa
y things are, Bron,” she said. “My skill to diagnose and heal is no longer as instinctive as it used to be. I feel I’m only half a doctor. We take for granted those Spiral-connected energies that give us an edge over humans, until they fade.”
“Everything is affected,” Comyn said fiercely. “Everything.”
“I know,” said Auberon, “but we’re strong. We still have the Dusklands. Even if Lawrence keeps the portal shut for fifty years, we’ll survive.”
“As what?” Comyn turned to face him. “Mortals with our memories gone? No chance of rebirth, just plain old death? Is that what he wants? Is that what you want for your children?”
“No, but there are worse things than living in this world—”
Comyn cut him off with a growl. “It’s our birthright, as Aetherials, to have free access in and out of all realms—regardless of the rules the self-appointed jobsworths of the Spiral Court try to impose upon us. Bron, if he doesn’t get those Gates open, whatever these supposed dangers, he’ll have no choice. We’ll force him.”
“No.” Auberon made a placatory gesture. “I understand, but forcing him would be wrong. Whatever we think of Lawrence, he’s acting to protect us. He may open the Gates tomorrow.”
“That will be a day too late for Brewster,” Comyn murmured. “Why do you, of all people, defend him? Are you afraid of him? Happy, are you, for your children to be denied their birthright and turn into human drones?”
“Of course not!” Despite himself, Auberon was angered. “But what possible reason could Lawrence have for lying?”
“Who knows?” Comyn flared, striking the rail with the flat of his palm. Brewster snorted, showing a flicker of fire as he swung his great horned head. “Conflicts like this led to our fall, our influence fading from human history. Now we live in secret, like fugitives! Left to me, there’d be no Gatekeeper and no Gates, either. D’you think I can watch my bull dying and not think the unthinkable? If we have to depose the almighty Lawrence Wilder, so be it!”
Auberon waited for the outburst to end. “No,” he said firmly. “If we do that, we might unleash the very peril that Lawrence fears. We could lose the Spiral for all time.”
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