Waywalkers: Number 1 in Series

by Catherine Webb

  ‘Where is he? Where can we give him the fate he deserves?’

  Odin spoke softly, almost kindly. ‘We don’t know. He’s clever. He’s running. There are places, though, where he can be found. Gehenna. Pandemonium. London. Paris. And sooner or later, if we don’t find him, he’ll come to us. He won’t be able to help himself – to stay away from those nearest to her. He loved her too, you know.’

  ‘Everyone loved Freya. My Freya.’

  ‘Yes, well, apparently not everyone. And you deceive yourself if you think she was yours. She belonged to no one but herself; that, so it seems, was how she sealed her own fate… But you know what to do. Find him.’

  In farewell, Odin gave Thor a reassuring clap on the shoulder, before turning to march through the Portal. Slouching, Thor watched him go; then he looked around and surveyed the clearing, as if he’d only just noticed its existence.

  His eyes narrowed. ‘Who’s there? Show yourself!’

  Sam was careful not to move. He said nothing, his breathing terribly loud. You couldn’t find a rhino, you clod, let alone me.

  ‘By all that’s honourable, show yourself!’

  Honour, Thor? You’re not bright enough to know what that means. Now, courage – that’s a virtue I can bear to acknowledge as yours. Unfortunately, you also have a tendency to overdo it, at a major cost to your brain.

  Thwarted, Thor gave a grunt of anger and, in his turn, strode away through the Portal.

  Sam watched him go.

  Around the Hell Portal there was no mist, natural or otherwise. It was situated a short bus ride from Holcombe, in a hilly expanse of hedged pastures where sheep munched on soaking grass and their wool dragged under the weight of rainwater. Sam, zipped up against the drizzle and shouldering a bulging bag, was already wearing his thermal gear as he trudged across the fields, growing uncomfortably hot. England was rarely as cold as he was dressed for.

  ‘Mud, mud, mud,’ he sang half-heartedly as he stamped along. Grass was all that grew up here, and for miles around there was no sign of human life. His feet squelched.

  Abruptly the land descended into a little dip where in prehistoric times a river had carved its passage to the sea. At its base was a dry watercourse a few feet wide. Sam descended to the riverbed, then began to climb, following it to where the source would have been.

  After about ten minutes, with the sky darkening and the wind growing colder, he reached a copse of oak and hawthorn trees. He forced his way in, clambering through a tight growth of branches that would have kept out all but the most intrepid. Inside the copse it was even darker, but gave shelter from the rain. Sam probed for, and quickly felt, the Portal, a shadow gateway standing in mid-air a few feet in front of him. Carefully he turned his mind on to the Portal, by willpower alone forcing it to open for him.

  Only the Sons of Time could Waywalk, so he’d been taught. Everyone else lost their way.

  He wondered which Portal he should try to open at the other end of his journey. Each Portal led to another, but such was the flexibility of the Ways that you could decide in advance which one. It was an inaccurate method of travel; you’d often arrive miles from where you wanted to be and with no means of reaching your destination anyway. The benefit was that if you took a Portal to Hell, you had immediate access to a Portal leading anywhere on Earth. Nevertheless he disliked Waywalking.

  As white fire defined the misty Portal, Sam reached a conclusion. Yes. He’d go to Gehenna, drop off a few things.

  He pressed his way into the Portal. Immediately he was surrounded by a pale mist and felt the sudden cold. Shadows stirred and leered around him. He gritted his teeth and began to walk, forcing each foot in front of the other with agonising slowness. It was hard to breathe; he had to take only shallow gasps of air, and each one left him racked with weakness. There was only as much air in the Ways as you brought with you through the open Portal. Stay in the Way for too long, and you would suffocate.

  Sam forced himself to keep moving, forced the image of Gehenna to stay fixed in the front of his mind. To lose the image was to lose your way. To lose your way was to die. He stubbornly ignored the leering shadows ahead, but knew he had to keep his eyes open to spot the doorway. Ghostly fingers tore at his face, his hair. Half-perceived voices whispered, pleaded with him for attention, begged him to stop and help them. These were the shadows of people who’d got lost in the Way. Those mortals who hadn’t had Time’s blood and resilience, who’d wandered into a Portal by accident. Those Children of Time who’d lost their way.

  There was a light, burning through the mist. Grateful, seeing his journey’s end at hand, he staggered towards it, nearly tripping over his own feet in haste. The white light grew more defined, formed a doorway, a distinct shape. He fell through it, gasping for precious air and feeling dull aches rise in his legs from the strain of the Waywalk.

  He had come out in, for want of another word, a dungeon. Gehenna had been constructed around a Portal, and the demon architects had reasoned, understandably enough, that if anyone tried to come through a Portal they’d better arrive where they could do no harm.

  So the room Sam emerged into was chilly, dark, slightly damp, with plain stone walls and a heavy wooden door. He considered hammering on the door, but decided there was no point. After all, he wasn’t staying. Instead he unslung his bag of extra clothes, pulled on a woollen hat, wound his scarf across his nose and mouth and took in several deep hauls of breath. Even well prepared as he was for the Tibetan mountains, he stood facing the shadow with trepidation where the Portal waited. Practicality dictated that he got his breath back before attempting the return walk; fear also demanded that he first consider the pros and cons of his actions.

  Which was why for a long time he just stood there, contemplative, mustering the nerve to face those shadows once more. Then briefly his courage soared, and he rushed forward, knowing that if he didn’t start on that swelling of bravery he’d never move at all.

  Mist. Shadows. Pressure. Not enough air, burning lungs, begging, leering shadows. Asking for release, seeking to lure him off the set path. A reluctance now in the Way to respond. The image he’d given it wasn’t near a Portal, and the Way was casting around for the nearest access points. This made the process even harder. He was covered with cold sweat, his hands shaking as air became yet more sparse. A light ahead, but oh, how hard it was to breathe, how easy it would be to let go of the image, let his eyes drift shut…

  The realisation that he was losing the battle between Waywalking and survival started him to new efforts and he moved on faster, eyes fixed on the light, almost reaching out to hold it as he tore through the shadows, mindless of the burning in his lungs and the whisperings all around.

  He exploded from the Portal, to be smacked into by a sharp wind that screamed around the mountains. Sam could hardly see for the intensity of the snowstorm. He’d fallen into a snowdrift, and lay there for almost twenty seconds getting his breath back, in which time a small bank of snow was already building up around him.

  He’d largely forgotten how it was among the mountains in winter – how bitterly cold and dangerous, how thin the air.

  Now, chiding himself for lack of foresight, he could barely call on what memory he had for survival, and recall that his destination was nearby. All he had to do was find it. Don’t stop moving. Do that and you’ll freeze over. You stop moving and you’ll realise just how stupid this whole idea is.

  How he wished he could have prepared in advance, and taken the plane.

  The Tibetans know about hardship, and have known for all of their history. Sam, curious to explore Earth in his younger days, had learned Tibetan. He’d set aside a hundred years for mastering every Earthly language he could, but each time he’d been to Tibet he’d taken one look at the weather, the mountains, and the food or absence thereof, and decided to leave as soon as possible. The land itself seemed set on annihilation, being semi-arid in the north and, in the south, part of the huge Himalayas. First came the Mongols,
then the Chinese, then once more the Chinese, then the Chinese again, with the Indians crouching on the southern borders and watching to see what happened while testing the odd nuclear bomb, just to make sure it had been properly oiled. At one time under Chinese rule, a sixth of Tibet’s population died; the communist regime was ruthless in suppressing support for the Dalai Lama and all his anti-Chinese works. That had really pissed off some of Sam’s family, but even they weren’t going to take on a sixth of the world’s population. The majority of people in Tibet were nomadic, and what few monasteries had survived the attacks of the Red Army were deep in the mountains, where resistance still whispered its message of anti-communism. To little effect.

  But the monastery where Sam was headed was not only remote but had long been regarded as an international treasure, accessible at least to his pocket guidebook and the makers of postcards. Even the attentive Red Guard hadn’t touched it. Without wanting, for the time, to find proof, Sam suspected that here one of his family had intervened.

  But to arrive up there in winter, coming out of nowhere…

  What will they think? Sam pondered as he staggered through the snow, sensing rather than seeing his path ahead. A European who speaks fluent Tibetan, Cantonese, Mandarin, appearing out of a snowstorm… He already had his excuses prepared. Please sir, I’m a climber, the storm took me by surprise, please sir…

  A shape loomed in the snow, picked out in black and white. Sam saw a colossal wall left over from ancient times when rockets and gunpowder were just for fireworks. The gates were, not surprisingly, closed. The whole city, without electricity or a proper water supply, was little more than half a mile across with, raised up at its heart, the monastery on the card sent to Freya. Sorted in this city, the card would have been carried down the mountain by donkey pack, transferred to a clunky old van in the lowlands, and no doubt read over by at least five airport officials before being loaded on to a plane, to arrive just before Freya died.

  Seeing no other way to gain admittance, Sam hammered on the gate. A hatch slid back and a pair of suspicious eyes took in this stranger wearing none-too-substantial thermal gear bought in Devon. Sam didn’t know whether the gatekeeper noticed his pale skin beneath the scarf, but he heard a snatch of questioning in Tibetan shouted against the storm. He yelled back, ‘Please! Let me in!’

  The hatch slid shut. They’re not going to. Strangers aren’t welcome here. He immediately chided himself for the thought. They’re good people. They’ll let me in.

  A small gate opened, and gratefully he staggered into the relative shelter of a porch. Two men in thick furs and skins began questioning him, even as they took him inside, into the warmth. Where had he come from? What did he want here?

  ‘I’m looking for someone. It’s very important.’

  In the gatehouse were more dark-skinned guards, who looked up in surprise. As Sam unwrapped his scarf and semi-collapsed by a flickering fire, the light of the flame revealed his distinctly European features. Immediately the questioning became more aggressive. With a lot of neglect to its history, Europe was not held in the highest esteem by Tibetans.

  ‘How did you get here? What do you want?’

  ‘I’m looking for someone,’ he repeated. He directed the full force of his gaze on the nearest guard, who flinched. Yes, now that his face was illuminated, there was little doubt. In the firelight his eyes, which people readily saw as dark, dark brown, were nearly pitch black. Or possibly it was the flame, thought the man. Yes, a trick of the light. Everyone thought that.

  ‘Someone who’s been in contact with another European, probably travelling by the name of Freya Oldstock. Blonde hair, blue eyes. Tall. Very pretty. Came out of nowhere, I expect, like me.’

  They looked uneasy. ‘What’s your business with the other European, if she has been here?’ asked one.

  ‘Has she been here?’

  ‘She has.’

  ‘Who did she see?’

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘I’m her friend. She’s dead.’

  There was a shocked silence. ‘Dead?’ asked one. ‘The lady’s dead?’ They, like everyone who’d met Freya, had been won over.

  ‘I need to meet whoever it was she saw.’

  ‘We don’t know who. She always went to the monastery.’

  ‘Then that is where I need to go.’

  They were defensive again. ‘Have you got your papers? Who are you?’

  At this Sam seemed to lose his temper, rising and stretching up to his full height. His eyes seem to burn into you, as if reading your mind, thought the captain of the gate. The lady had had eyes like those, but hers had been blue – and softer, kinder.

  ‘I am Luc Satise, I am Sam Linnfer. I am Sebastian Teufel. Now you tell the people at the monastery that I’m coming under one or all of those names, I don’t mind which. Tell them that whoever of my family murdered Freya may be after them too. Tell them that she was killed with a dragon-bone knife, which can destroy even an immortal. Tell them all that, and show me to the monastery!’

  Something about Sam didn’t allow for arguing. A boy ran ahead, while the captain trucked up with Sam in a rackety jeep that took five goes to start moving, and stalled on every street corner. The guards seemed very proud of it.

  All the way the captain went on talking nervously in Tibetan. He had known Freya. ‘She came out of the snow one day. Said she had to visit the monastery. She was kind, very kind indeed.’

  ‘How often did she come?’

  ‘Recently? Once a month, maybe twice. We never saw how she arrived, nor how she left. All she’d say was that she was trying to track down a long-lost cousin.’ He laughed. ‘That’s like telling a child to keep his nose out of things he can’t understand.

  ‘Her visits started about six months ago. She already knew someone at the monastery.’

  We always do. If you know where or how to look there’s someone we know in every street of every village of every country.

  The captain added, ‘How do you know her?’

  ‘I’m a long-lost relative too,’ Sam replied mildly. ‘Well, half-brother. Same father, different mothers.’

  The streets were narrow and bumpy, not designed even for the rough tracks of the jeep. As they went people turned to stare, huddling in doorways from the snow but nonetheless following with wary eyes.

  ‘Forgive them,’ the captain said, as though embarrassed by his people’s lack of European manners. ‘Apart from the lady they have never seen another of your kind.’

  Our kind? I suppose we are another species. ‘Was she alone?’

  ‘There was a man with her the first time. She left him at the monastery. As far as I know he’s never left.’

  Sam was bursting with questions, but the captain was there first. ‘May I ask – where did you learn Tibetan?’

  ‘I’ve spent time in a lot of places.’

  ‘Forgive me,’ the captain said again – apparently he felt obliged to apologise for everything – ‘but how many languages do you speak?’

  ‘Lots, many of them defunct.’ It was the only answer Sam would give.

  The monastery appeared out of the snow. At the gates a couple of monks, in orange robes, were ready to usher him inside. Hastened down freezing candlelit corridors, he glimpsed tapestries and golden Buddhas and heard the distant low chanting and rumbling horns of other monks at prayer. Without a word from his escorts he was barrelled into a small stone room in which a fire glowed. A man, in a robe dashed with the streak of red that marked him as abbot, turned, bowed slightly and said, ‘You came.’

  ‘Were you expecting me?’ Sam asked, taking the seat offered him. It was the only one in the room, and it embarrassed him that the abbot had to stand. But the abbot insisted, and it was near the warmth of the fire.

  ‘Before I tell you more, I require proof that you are Sebastian Teufel.’

  ‘Ah.’ Sam stood up, took off his outer clothing and unslung the package on his back. He drew out the long silver sword.

/>   With a sigh of satisfaction and a dip of his head as though in the presence of a holy object, the abbot lowered his hand over the blade and let his eyes drift shut. ‘Yes,’ he whispered. ‘I hear it. She said I would. I do not know much of your world, and believe less of what I hear, but it was the same with her. I could hear it around her belongings too; everything she touched seemed to hum.’ He looked up sharply. ‘You have more?’

  Sam also produced the dagger and the circlet. This he held before him by the tips of his fingers as if his touch might profane it, even though it was his own.

  It was on this that the abbot focused most of his attention. ‘So. You were crowned too. As well as your brothers. Tell me, is it true that if anyone other than its real owner wears this, he will go mad?’

  ‘I believe it is the case. Do you?’

  The abbot smiled thinly. ‘I believe that superstition has a lot of power, whether its claims are true or not. And I also believe that, somewhere, every myth is grounded in reality. If the lady was so afraid of wearing it, then it seems likely that her brother would be afraid too. Either you have no fear, or it is a lie that the crown is your own. I do not believe it to be a lie, though I am not sure whether I believe it to be entirely true. So you will not mind proving that it is truly yours?’