by Tuson, Mark
Ugh, that’s cold, Peter thought. ‘But what about the law? Aren't there any repercussions?’
Eric closed his eyes, blinking slowly. ‘Usually not,’ he said, ‘when it’s clear that it couldn’t be helped or that it was self-defence. We’ve already talked about it in your absence, and everyone who was there agrees that it was in self-defence.’
He wasn’t sure whether to be relieved at them having discussed it in his absence, or enraged. He felt both, and didn’t know how to express either. Instead, he was wondering about the need for it to have happened in the first place…
‘What about Will being a double-agent, though?’ He said. ‘Surely someone must have known.’
Eric didn’t seem to have had a response ready for that. After a moment of staring blankly in Peter’s direction, he quietly spoke again. ‘We should talk somewhere a little less obvious.’
Peter looked around, momentarily remembering his paranoia of a few minutes ago. He nodded. ‘Yeah.’
Eric cast a spell on Peter, a slightly more polished variant of the stamina spell he had cast on himself in the club. They walked, quietly and slowly, carrying on in the direction Peter had started on, until they reached Cleveleys. There was a cinema, and further along there was an amusement arcade, at which they turned inland and walked toward a hotel.
It was starting to get dark now, and with the dark it was getting cooler as well. Peter was shivering in his shirt, and the cold was making his forearm ache and throb violently.
They walked into a hotel which had a public bar, and Eric ordered two large brandies. Peter jokingly shouted ‘wassail!’ and the two of them laughed and downed the rich, potent fluid in one. They ordered another glass each and retreated to a small round table in the corner of the narrow bar.
Eric looked a lot more relaxed than Peter felt, which seemed a little inappropriate to Peter, given the events of the day. He looked around slowly, apparently just taking in his surroundings, rather than being paranoid concerning them being followed, and Peter stared at him.
It looked like he was about to say something, but it took a good minute for him to actually open his mouth.
‘Will,’ he said, delicately, ‘must have been a very good actor.’ He took a slow sip of his brandy. ‘We haven’t been able to get any information, really, but it seems that he was either a very good actor, or else had been enthralled, just like our headmistress back at the Guild.
‘Of course, we’ll never know now. But –‘ he held up a hand, having seen the look that must have been on Peter’s face ‘– that doesn’t matter now, because that outpost, or base, or whatever you’d like to call it, has lost its leader and the actual hardware, so to speak, of the base. There’s just a handful of grunts, and they’ll either crop up or vanish. If they crop up, they’ll be easy to deal with. So don’t worry.’
He looked Peter in the eye and silently inclined his head and raised his glass. Peter humbly did the same.
‘There’s something I’m curious about, though,’ Eric continued. ‘What was all that about a tomb and your little recitation?’
Bollocks. He looked down into the deepest recesses of his glass and sighed. He supposed it was only right that he should at least give Eric an answer.
‘I thought it wasn’t as significant as that,’ he started by justifying himself, realizing how snivelling and pathetic it was likely to sound. ‘I was just curious, and ploughed at it because I wanted to know.’ Eric frowned.
‘I found the tomb underneath the Guild, right at the bottom monastery, a few years ago. It gave me nightmares, and among them was a dream about a young man, saying the words I recited. It was so real and so shocking that I couldn’t forget it, however hard I tried. But I didn’t know anything about it. There wasn’t anything in the Guild’s library, except the odd footnote that half-alluded to an ancient history, or proto-history or something.
‘Then I ended up having a conversation with Eddie about something or other, and he mentioned that the Guild was established, what, twenty thousand years ago?’
Eric nodded.
‘So I started looking at what might be known about that period, but of course there was no writing then, no history, and nothing I could find out. Not just that, but there’s nothing about palaeography or palaeolinguistics in the library. But there’s plenty on the Internet, so when we were in Blackpool I was spending some of my off-time on an old laptop reading about it. I learned loads. But I must have been being watched.’
He suddenly realized how easy it was to be talking about this. ‘I must have been being watched...’ he repeated, trailing off.
‘And she knew about that,’ said Eric. ‘She knew, and presumably so did Will. And if they were watching you, they must have known from quite early on. In fact, if Will was on their side, he must have been feeding them whatever information was available to him, on the quiet, from right when we arrived.’
He turned white. ‘So... Rechsdhoubnom must know. Maybe he had instructed her to find out whatever she could about what you know.’
‘Yeah,’ Peter said, a little absent-mindedly. ‘She definitely went in far enough.’ His head felt like it was going to split open just thinking about it. He finished his brandy.
Eric looked concerned and tired, but Peter suddenly felt full of energy. His arm was pounding along with his head; the brandy had don’t little to help him other than to make him feel somewhat more tired than he had previously thought possible, which, when combined with his new-found energy, probably born of adrenaline, made him feel woozy and more than a little bit manic.
Peter stood up suddenly. He needed to move, he needed to get shit done. ‘I need to see Eddie. Can we go back, I need to talk to the Steward.’
Eric nodded slowly, looking more pensive by the moment. He drained his glass and set it carefully back on the table. He stood up and led Peter to the door, but it didn’t open on the main street in Cleveleys. It opened into the main entryway of the Guild.
Eight: A New Task
Peter went through first this time, and the portal closed the moment Eric had followed behind him. Oh, there’s no place like home. He looked around, wide-eyed, remembering everything about the place. He hadn’t realized how much he had missed it.
He didn’t even notice Eric as he took off, running again, fuelled by adrenaline and brandy, not by magic, for Eddie’s office.
When he arrived at the door, he exploded in through it without knocking, opened his mouth to start talking. What he was going to say, however, nobody had a chance to find out, because he promptly passed out in the doorway.
His mind drifted. Before long, he became aware that he was surrounded by figures in black suits, all in a circle. Beyond the figures, there was infinite darkness, which contrasted to the bright spotlight that shone upon him. He was dancing, a waltz by the feel of it, with an old woman… the enthralled headmistress. She pulled away from him after a few minutes and started making garbled sounds that weren’t quite speech, and then he noticed that she was wearing academic robes, with a bright, phosphorescent hood which reminded him of glow-sticks.
Suddenly the scenery changed and he was sat at a wooden table, with her stood over him wearing a grey suit and a red lanyard around her neck. She was speaking English now.
‘You know why you’re in detention, don’t you?’
He went red and looked down at the dark, dense-grained wood of the table. It was the old-fashioned kind of table that he remembered from his earliest days of primary school, with a surface that could open to expose a small box, and an ink-well in the far right corner. He hadn’t been this embarrassed in as long as he could remember. His hands were on the table, but they weren’t his hands. Wait… no, they were. He looked up and around, noticing his reflection in the window. He must have been seven years old.
‘No, miss.’
She slapped his face so hard that his head ached, and he closed his eyes as he began to sob. The tears were hotter and stickier than they should have been.
‘Open your eyes, little pudding!’ The last word had a venomous cruelty to it that made him cry even harder.
He tried, but they were glued shut with his tears.
‘I said open your eyes!’ Her voice was full of raw, primal anger, which made him want to wet his pants.
‘I’m trying, miss!’ He could hear the anguish in his own voice, and he tried harder, contorting his mouth and making his eyes hurt with the effort. Eventually they opened, and he saw blurred streaks of dark crimson suspended in his vision. She was pointing at the table.
‘Do you know what that is?’
He looked, and noticed now that the desk was covered in red liquid, shimmering in the electric light from the ceiling. The liquid was bubbling up, out of the ink-well. He sobbed again, loudly and without shame.
‘What is it, boy?’ She shouted, angrily.
‘It’s blood, miss.’
He looked up at her, imploring, and she smiled, the glorious smile of approval, and she put her left hand in her jacket pocket and took out a piece of paper. From the paper she took a little sticker, which she put on the front of his dark blue, though now heavily blood-stained, woollen school jumper. He looked down. It was a small golden star.
‘Oh, thank you, miss!’ He smiled up at her, and she smiled back, ignoring the blood now ejaculating wildly out of the desk. She leaned down and opened the lid.
‘Look what you did, dearie.’
He did. At first he saw nothing but blood, up to about an inch below the top of the inside of the desk. After a few seconds, however, something started to appear. Hair. A forehead. A whole head. He giggled and writhed in his seat, full of childish pleasure.
‘Did I do that, miss?’
‘You did, Petey, aren’t you proud?’
‘Ooh, yes, miss.’
She knelt down and picked him up, holding him in a gentle, maternal cuddle. He had done his work, and she had given him his gold star.
But then everything went dark again, and suddenly the kindly headmistress fell away into the shadows, only to stumble forward, suddenly in a black suit and without a head. The body was flapping its hands, a sort of sick jive.
There was a heavy thud behind him. The desk had overflowed and spat the head out on the floor. It was Will’s. It spoke.
‘If you would be so kind…?’
Peter stooped down and picked it up, setting it carefully upon the shoulders of the body. The skin melded together and Will turned and walked away into the shadows once again. For a moment there was only the slight sound of footfalls on a polished floor, and then Will spoke again.
‘My king, he is dangerous.’
He woke up, paralysed, and Eddie and Eric were stood over him. He was in his own room. His throat was sore.
‘Peter.’
Peter gasped. ‘Christ have mercy.’ He coughed. Bloody hell, his throat hurt.
‘You were screaming, Peter,’ said Eddie. ‘Try not to speak. Try not to move either, you’ve been restrained; you were thrashing around and trying to cast.’
It had been a dream. He felt tears form in his eyes, well up, and overflow, running down his cheeks. He was relieved when some trickled into his mouth: it wasn’t blood. Eric turned his back on Peter and whispered something to Eddie. Eddie nodded, and extended his hand, with his wand in it. Peter fell back to sleep.
In the morning, Peter woke up to find he was no longer restrained. He sat up, forgetting about his broken hand for a moment. It didn’t hurt, other than a distant itch. They must have repaired it while he was asleep.
There was a glass on the table near his bed, full of water. He picked it up and gratefully drank, hoping it might help relieve the fiery pain in his throat. It turned out not to be water, however; it was sweet and cool, and sharp. It could have been diluted lemon juice and glycerine, or something like that. Not that he cared, he was just grateful for how much better it was making his throat feel.
Slowly, he got up, washed, and dressed himself. There was a fresh jacket in the wardrobe, and his satchel had been hung on the back of his chair, where he usually put it. He opened it and looked inside. Nothing was broken, but something was missing. His notebooks.
Crap. That was around three months’ work gone, and now without an Internet connection, he had no way of redoing it. He kicked the chair in anger, and sat down on the bed. He could possibly redo it, or some of it, from memory. But there was a hell of a lot of information in those books, which he had worked very hard to acquire.
But, he supposed, maybe carrying on would have been a bad idea. After all, doing that research had got him nearly killed yesterday. Maybe it really was very dangerous, maybe he had been dabbling in things that weren’t for people like him to know. But conversely, what if it was the other way round? Could it be possible that the whole reason why the woman had reacted in the way she had was that she – and probably Rechsdhoubnom and the rest of Werosain with him – was scared of what could be uncovered?
To hell with it. He had set out to speak to Eddie last night, but that hadn’t happened. He was going to take just enough pause to get some breakfast and some coffee (oh, he’d missed the Guild’s coffee!) and then he was going to go and talk to Eddie.
So, he put his satchel over his shoulder and set out. The short walk around the underground tunnel-corridors came just as naturally as if he hadn’t ever been away, and before he knew it, there he was again, in the refectory. Smells of food and coffee drifted into his welcoming and ready nose, and he drifted after them, all the way to the counter. Once there, he obtained the largest mug of hot, black coffee that was on offer, and a fried egg on toast. He ate the egg first, quickly, knowing that his need to get the food inside him was currently greater than his need to enjoy them. No, it was the coffee that he needed to relish and really get the most out of.
Once he was drinking it, the coffee alone made him feel strong again. Not that it was even remotely able to eradicate the psychological trauma he had recently endured. But it was a start. He sat for ten minutes, letting the warmth flow through his body, and the caffeine through his brain. It was the closest to real comfort he had experienced in what felt like a lifetime.
But the inevitable point came where there wasn’t any more he could squeeze out of the mug. He paused for a moment to mourn its depletion, and then carried its remains, and the plate his egg and toast had been on, and returned them to the counter, and then he carried on his way to Eddie’s office.
This time, when he arrived, he politely knocked, waiting to be bade to enter. He only had to wait a count of three.
The door opened, and Eddie stepped aside. ‘Come in.’ He sounded tired, but otherwise relatively at ease. He invited Peter to sit down in front of the table, and resumed his own seat before Peter had even stepped toward his. He sat down slowly, noticing that Eddie really did look tired. It seemed, also, that when he looked at Peter, he did so by way of sideways glances that didn’t seem to last more than a second or two at a time.
‘Eddie, are you alright?’
Eddie clamped his mouth shut and shook his head, staring at the table. His mouth being shut didn’t have the appearance of him suppressing an urge to vomit, however; it was more of a ‘there is emphatically no need for words’ gesture.
‘What is it?’ He leaned forward into the table.
Eddie looked straight at Peter. ‘You,’ he said. ‘You scared the hell out of a lot of people last night, and very early this morning.’
Peter leaned his forehead on the table. ‘I scared the hell out of myself, too.’ He heaved a deep breath and straightened up again. ‘I’m sorry about the screaming. I had a bit of a rough night, you might say.’
Eddie raised his eyebrows, looking a little defeated. ‘That’s not really something that’s to be worried about right now. It can’t be helped. I’m sorry I didn’t let you speak. You fainted because I made you faint. Obviously I should have fully sedated you first, rather than after you woke up the first time. But right then the priority was getting your
arm fixed, it was clearly broken. Plus you seemed somewhat… manic. Which would have prevented you from making any sense.’
Peter raised his injured arm and flexed his wrist. He was grateful for having been knocked out and healed, he couldn’t lie about that.
Eddie continued. ‘I think I might have an idea what it was you were so desperate to talk to me about last night. Eric and I spoke for quite a long time after I put you out last night, and he told me what you told him about. I’ve got to say he’s worried about you. And so am I. But I’d like to hear what you have to say about it.’
Alright, thought Peter. Are you sitting comfortably?
‘Well, I’m guessing you already know about everything that happened yesterday?’ Peter looked at Eddie, hoping that Eric had told him; he wasn’t very much wanting to explain everything after having had to live it - and damned near die it too.
Eddie nodded. Peter was relieved.
‘There was something disturbing about it, how insistent she was that there was more I knew than she could find when she was... probing my mind.’
‘Yes, Eric mentioned that. Tim was curious about it too, as well as a couple of the others.’
That didn’t come as much of a surprise. ‘So that’s got me thinking, what I’ve been reading about and trying to learn about must have touched a pretty raw nerve in them. Like what I’ve read about exposes something furtive. And she... she knows about a dream I had, something I recited that I’d heard in a dream.’
Eddie raised an eyebrow. ‘What was it you recited?’
After taking a breath to steady his nerves, Peter repeated again what he had heard the young man say in his dream. When he had finished, Eddie blinked, holding his eyes closed for a moment.
‘And what happened in the dream?’
‘I saw a village, with a large fire burning, large enough to be one of the buildings. It all looked very real. I was birds’-eye, as though I were floating over the whole scene. There was a young man, it was him who said what I just repeated now.’
