by Chris Ward
After some cold vegetables and a piece of leftover fish from yesterday’s dinner, he packed up his things, shouldered his bag, and got moving again. The yellow sun had started to set, though the sky was clear, so the red sun would remain his companion until he decided to rest for the night. He hoped he could make it all the way to the foot of Source Mountain before he had to sleep.
An hour later, though, he was on the verge of giving up. His feet were dragging, his shoes felt full of rocks, and carrying his bag was like carrying a dead horse. Each step was like pulling himself up a chain. There was no way could he go on.
He stopped to catch his breath, wondering why he sounded so hoarse, until he realised most of the sound wasn’t his breathing at all, but something else.
A short distance ahead, the river bent around a natural curve, and Benjamin steeled himself to walk that far, gritting his teeth at the ache in his legs and back. Then, as he reached it, all of his aches and pains melted away.
The view had opened out to the west, and there, standing high above the surrounding hills, he saw it.
Source Mountain.
It rose high into the air, the beginnings of the Great Junk River a vast cobalt grey snake wrapped around it.
He was so, so tired, but he was nearly there. Gaining an extra spring in his step, Benjamin broke into a kind of stumbling jog, something like a magnetic pull drawing him relentlessly toward his destiny.
‘Where is he?’
Cuttlefur shook his head. ‘I don’t know. He ran off in a sulk and didn’t come back.’
Godfrey scowled. ‘He must not be allowed to disrupt the Dark Man’s plans.’
‘Wherever he’s gone, it doesn’t matter. He’ll be out of the way tomorrow.’
‘I hope you’re right, but I have a bad feeling about this.’
‘Look, just get back to being an innkeeper and let me worry about tomorrow. Make sure they go on the cruise without any trouble.’
‘The creature … is it ready?’
‘I—’
A bell rang from somewhere farther up the corridor, cutting off Cuttlefur’s words.
‘What’s that?’
Godfrey scowled. ‘The dining bell. But it doubles as an alarm. Besides Barnacle, only that fool Jim Green knows how to activate it. One of the professors must have wanted an assembly.’
‘Why?’
‘Only one way to find out.’
They split up. Cuttlefur headed back to the guest rooms to make his appearance look less suspicious, while Godfrey took a circuitous route through the kitchens that would bring him to the dining hall. When he arrived, Ms. Ito was standing up on the small stage at one end of the dining hall, with Professor Eaves on one side and Professor Caspian on the other. While Cuttlefur came in through a side door to slip in among the pupils near the back, Godfrey made a point of not looking at him.
‘I’m afraid we have a small problem,’ Professor Eaves said, stepping forward. ‘One of our number has gone missing.’
A murmur passed through the crowd. Godfrey noticed the red-haired girl, Miranda, looking around desperately as though searching for someone.
Ms. Ito stepped forward. ‘Anyone seen Benjamin Forrest since this afternoon?’ she barked. ‘Fool boy has run off. Although, I couldn’t give a hoot and believe he deserves to get eaten if that should prove his fate, but professors Eaves and Caspian have convinced me otherwise. Anyone seen him?’
No one answered.
‘Thought as much,’ Ms. Ito said. ‘In that case, we’ll be going out to scout around the grounds in an attempt to find him.’
Godfrey lifted a hand. ‘Um, wouldn’t it be better to wait for the morning?’
Ms. Ito glowered. ‘Quiet, fool. You can see well enough with that red sun up there, and if he’s near, now’s the best chance grab him. Jim Green has located some flashlights to aid us under the trees, however.’ Turning back to look at the pupils, she said, ‘Make pairs. No less, no more. If you don’t have any friends, your job will be to search the guesthouse itself. I’d like to point out that this could be a grisly matter. If you are to find Forrest, or even just a piece of what might have once been Forrest, then by all means, call it in.’ She gave a grim smile, which Godfrey thought had more humour in it than was appropriate. ‘We’ll do our best to piece together what happened to him.’
A couple of sniggers came from the back, but most of the pupils didn’t know whether or not to laugh. Miranda stuck up a hand. ‘What if we can’t find him?’ she asked in a frightened voice. ‘What if he’s run away?’
‘Jeremiah Flowers made the Bay of Paper Dragons as safe as anywhere could be in Endinfinium,’ Ms. Ito said. ‘However, if he’s gone outside the boundaries, then his fate is his own. We might come across him again, or we might not.’
More murmurs rose up from the pupils as they began to bunch together into groups, and then, with a series of mini-discussions and rock-scissors-paper games, into pairs. Miranda snapped at some girl for trying to pair up with Cuttlefur. Fat Adam noticed Godfrey’s old buddy, Snout, standing awkwardly off to one side and barreled forward to claim Tommy Cale for his partner. Three second-year girls affirmed their resolution to fight to stay as three by linking arms and huddling together like penguins.
Ms. Ito sighed and waved everyone to the door. ‘Be back in one hour,’ she said. ‘If we haven’t found him by then, we’ll figure out what to do. Of course, “nothing” gets my vote, but we’ll see.’ She paused. ‘Oh, and don’t get lost. Anyone not back here in one hour officially no longer exists. We haven’t got time for any more search parties.’
As the room emptied, leaving only Ms. Ito sitting at a table at one end, drinking the tea that Jim Green had brought for her, Godfrey backed away into the shadows. This wasn’t good. None of this disruption would please the Dark Man. But he didn’t know what else he could do.
‘I’ve changed my mind,’ Miranda said, as soon as they were out of earshot. ‘I don’t want to leave Endinfinium anymore; I want to stay.’
Cuttlefur stared. ‘What do you mean? You can’t … Things have been arranged.’
‘Have they? Tell me how we’re going to leave, then. Because you haven’t told me anything.’
‘I’ve been waiting for the right time.’
‘Now is the right time.’ She glowered. ‘Spit it out.’
‘Tomorrow afternoon,’ he said. ‘Someone I know is coming to pick us up.’
‘Who?’
‘I don’t know his name.’
‘Well, where is he?’
‘On the other side.’
‘The other side of what?’
‘The world. He’s not here, in Endinfinium. He’s coming through tomorrow at approximately five o’clock. He’s going to pick us up and take us back with him.’
‘How?’
Cuttlefur shrugged. ‘I don’t know for sure. He didn’t say.’
Unable to stop herself, Miranda slapped him hard across the cheek. His head snapped back, her hand smarted with the impact, and immediately a wave of shame washed over her, almost choking her.
‘I’m sorry.’
Cuttlefur rubbed his cheek. ‘What was that for?’
‘I don’t know. I’m sorry. I think I’m just worried about Benjamin.’
Cuttlefur smiled. ‘Don’t be. He’s a Summoner, isn’t he? He can look after himself. He’ll be back soon.’
Miranda sighed. Would he? Cuttlefur had the kind of face that made it easy to forgive, but she was quickly losing her feelings for him. All he did was talk, talk, talk …
‘Look, I can’t tell you everything, but I can show you something that will help you make your decision.’
‘What?’
Cuttlefur pulled out a photograph from his pocket and held it out for Miranda to see.
A smiling, middle-aged man stood with one arm around a woman who had a kindly face. Just to his side stood a boy of about ten, holding a dog on a leash. Behind them was a stone farmhouse set against a clear, blue sky.
/> ‘Who are these people?’ she asked.
‘That’s them. That’s your family. I was given this to show you if you began to doubt me.’
Miranda snatched it out of his hands. All three people were looking right at the camera, and everything about them seemed peaceful, welcoming.
It was perfect. Everything she had ever dreamed of.
‘The lady, her name’s Nicola,’ Cuttlefur said. ‘She runs a dressmaking shop. Her husband, George, is a fireman. And the boy, Stanley, he’s your foster brother.’
Miranda tried to pass the photograph back, but her hands began to shake and instead, it fell to the ground between them. As Cuttlefur bent to pick it up, Miranda bolted off into the forest, climbing off the path and pushing through the trees until Cuttlefur’s shouts had grown faint in the undergrowth behind.
Then, when she was sure he wouldn’t be able to find her, she began to cry.
33
Source Mountain
When Benjamin woke up, the yellow sun had set, but the red sun still hung low over the hills to the east. Clouds like wisps of smoke left behind by some passing airplane drifted across the evening sky. He shook out the stiffness of his legs as he stood, estimating he had only slept for about three hours.
Source Mountain rose high above him, a black cone that buzzed with the sound of rushing water. The river beside which he had camped grew rapidly more violent as its path steepened toward the mountainside, while the Great Junk River swept away to the south. Up this close, the climb looked nightmarish—steep, jagged patches of open rock face broken by torrents of water. Benjamin followed the tributary up the slope until the noise of the water was so great, he could barely hear himself think. Source Mountain was solid rock out of which the Great Junk River and its tributaries had carved their channels. Trying to cross one was a death wish, so he had no choice but to follow the gradual upward spiral of the riverbank, freezing water sloshing over his feet.
The difficultly of the ascent meant he could think of little else but the next hand- and footholds. By the time he had found a ledge wide enough to sit and pause for a breath, Benjamin was surprised to see he was already halfway up. From so high, the world looked strange—great clouds of swirling mist to the north, and above the sea hung curtains of churning white-and-grey that kept secret what lay behind.
The ledge faced north, so the south was hidden, but forested hills to the west rose and fell, dipping into valleys fertilised by the great river’s tributaries, opening up into wide lakes, and finally reaching the foothills of the High Mountains themselves. Benjamin shivered as he stared at the peaks poking up through the clouds. Was the Dark Man out there somewhere, watching him? They had sent him running back to his lair with his power depleted once, but in time, he would regain it, and he would return. How long would that take?
Pangs of guilt filled him again. His fledgling power had helped to save the school and everyone in it, so if he left … what would happen? The Dark Man had captured Grand Lord Bastien, supposedly the strongest magic user in Endinfinium. If he had caught him once, surely he could catch him again?
Benjamin pushed himself up onto stiff legs, forcing himself to begin climbing again. Nothing could be gained by thinking about it. He had made his choice: to follow Jeremiah Flowers into the unknown. Endinfinium and its struggles no longer belonged to him.
Hours passed, and each step blurred into the next, while his senses numbed to the roaring of the water, his skin to the spray that soaked him continuously like a broken showerhead. Source Mountain took him higher and higher over the land, so by the next circuit, he was afforded a panoramic view of the Bay of Paper Dragons, a dark green ‘V’ of forest connected to an oval of deep blue encircled by twin headlands as tight as crab pincers. From high up, it looked like a giant stag beetle pointing out to sea.
Finally, the mountain, which had for so long seemed to rise straight up, had flattened out. He was near the peak and whatever he would find there. He remembered what Basil had said about Jeremiah weighing himself down to get into the source water, but he had made no such plan.
He had just one other, and he had no idea if it would work or not.
Soon, he would have no choice but to find out.
When he rounded a final bend, he was there, at the top of Source Mountain. Benjamin let out a long gasp and sank to his knees in a mixture of exhaustion and relief.
From the ground, Source Mountain had looked flat-topped, but now he realised it was an inverse cone. He had arrived at the rim of a crater, down which he looked onto a wide lake. The surface seemed calm and serene, but at the southern end, a single gushing river led away through a channel gorged into the rock.
Except for a few shrubs, very little vegetation grew among the rocks, and it was cold enough Benjamin was glad he had remembered to pack an extra sweater and pair of socks, even if both, like the rest of his gear, were damp from the constant spray.
A path led down through outcrops to the lakeside. With his legs feeling odd to be descending after so much time climbing up, he started down with a spring in his step and a feeling that, at long last, he was about to find some answers.
The lake’s edge was as calm as it had looked from a distance, but out in the centre, the water churned and bubbled as if rising up from a spring below the surface. Benjamin dipped a finger into the water, then drew back, shivering. Freezing, like from snowmelt.
Everything held an air of lifelessness. When he picked up a plastic toy robot from the water near the shore, it flopped lifelessly in his hands, casing broken, chilled by the water. As he held it, though, a strange sense of warmth began to seep through it, and after he put it back into the water, his palms felt warm when he touched them together. For a few minutes, he watched it drift toward the head of the river, wondering if he would one day see it again, bouncing around, filled with the joy of reanimation.
Benjamin took a deep breath. It was time. He closed his eyes, feeling for the power like the Grand Lord had shown him. Always before, with no knowledge of what he was doing, he had drawn the power from himself, using his own life-force to give power to something else and hurting his body in the process. But now he understood. His mind searched out to the ground and to the air around him, gently pulling, taking just a little from hundreds of tiny sources and bringing it all together in a way he could use it.
In his mind, it felt like a ball of energy. But reanimation magic wasn’t like storybook magic; he couldn’t create something from nothing. All he could do was push and pull, influence one shape to become another. When he felt like he had enough power, he pushed it forward, using it to influence the air to create a wedge within the water, parting it to reveal a path down into the lake and to the very source of the water itself.
And when the path was wide enough, he began to walk.
34
Conspiracy
It didn’t really bother Snout that nobody wanted to work with him. It was always easy enough to amuse himself. After lights out last night, for example, when everyone else sat in their rooms, chitchatting about the day’s events and recalling the thrilling horror stories Jim Green had told them around the campfire, he had excused himself for a toilet break and gone off wandering into the guesthouse’s unused corridors, finally coming across a small amusement arcade that had been ignored and forgotten beneath sheets that had collected so much dust as to become grey. A couple of machines still worked, and a bucket of metal tokens he had found in a corner had kept him entertained until the small hours, when he had finally crept back to his bed and lain in the dark, waiting for both Benjamin and Cuttlefur to return from whatever secret missions they had gone on.
It didn’t bother him that both had sneaked out, too. He didn’t really care where they had gone. In fact, it meant that none could dob to the teachers on the others, for fear of being similarly incriminated. After he had heard Cuttlefur show up fifteen minutes after Benjamin, he had fallen into a contented sleep.
Now, with the rest of the kids out looking
for Benjamin, Snout saw a perfect opportunity to see if any of the other machines worked. He had spent his time before playing a couple of fruit machines, but hiding underneath another sheet was an ancient space invaders game, the kind that sat in the corner of pub family rooms and hardly ever got played. Unfortunately, he had been pretty tired when he left the arcade last night. Now, he struggled to find the room again.
Left here, surely? He took a left, but ended up at a dead end. He retraced his steps and tried again, but came to a staircase this time. Was he even on the right floor? He went down, and because he didn’t recognise the floor he was on, he went down again. It looked more promising, but surely he was now in the basements? He shrugged. No matter. Perhaps he would find something even more interesting down here.
He was just about to turn a corner, when he heard someone coming the other way. He ducked into an alcove and cowered down behind a fitted bookshelf that had begun to detach itself from the wall. A moment later, a fat shadow stumped past, huffing and puffing.
‘Stupid fools … not long now … I’ll be out of this dump by tomorrow.’
Snout lifted an eyebrow. Alan Barnacle, the oversized innkeeper? But his voice sounded different now that he was talking to himself. Almost familiar. Snout frowned, trying to recall where he had heard it before, but it was like listening to someone you know speak with their head inside a box of tissues.
Where had he heard that voice before?
He peered from his hiding place to see Barnacle stop at a door at the end of the corridor and poke a key into a lock. The door swung open, and Barnacle muttered a greeting to someone inside, then went in and closed the door.
The lock clicked.
Snout thought about the arcade machines, wishing he knew where they were so he could quickly forget about all of this and hurry off. However, whether he liked it or not, his curiosity had bloomed like a giant sunflower until it was so big, it crowded out all other thoughts around it, leaving him only one option. With his heart pounding in his mouth, he crept up to the door and pressed his ear against it.
