Jack Shian and the Destiny Stone

by Andrew Symon

  “You’re going to get a Tula facial!”

  She reached over her shoulder with her wand, and cried out, “Cædo-vis!”

  The hex hit Fergus full in the face, and he fell back, a hideous crater where his eyes and nose should have been. Sanguina, never once taking her eyes off Jack, pushed the blade back through her body, and it toppled onto the floor behind her, clattering as it fell.

  “I’ll pay you for that!” she spat, and thrust her wand forward again.

  Jack dodged the first hex, but he could see that this strategy would not last long. And when the next hex hit him on the right hand, his sword flew.

  He looked around frantically. The room was filled with contests: Boabans firing hexes, and prisoners slicing and parrying with swords; but no one was free to help Jack. He backed away as Sanguina hopped forward, cackling evilly, clearly enjoying the prospect of impending execution.

  There was a blur behind Sanguina as a small figure rolled over the icy floor. Jack just had time to see the young girl grasp his sword.

  “Ungula!”

  Sanguina’s body shot into the air as leg and hoof parted company. Then, as her body crumpled to the floor, a spine-tingling moan filled the room.

  Jack looked in astonishment at the girl.

  She spoke!

  “You spoke.” Even as he said the words, they sounded strange.

  The girl was wasting no time. She sprang into the fray, hacking, parrying hexes, slashing. Displaying skills that Jack had taken weeks to master back on Ilanbeg.

  The Boabans were vicious, even courageous; but they were outnumbered. And while several hexes had found their mark, leaving prisoners apparently lifeless on the frozen floor, they could not defeat more than a dozen wielding swords. Boaban bodies too began to litter the floor, their oozing stumps protruding from long green cloaks. The floor was so cold that the sticky red fluid had little chance to spread: it chilled instantly, forming tacky patches.

  Swordless, Jack tried to avoid the hexes that flew around. Then, stepping in one of the blood patches, he slid unceremoniously forward. As he landed, he saw Ossian’s blue-cold face next to his own.

  That’s my big cousin!

  Jack’s blue eye burned fiercely. He grabbed Trog’s knife from his calf, and hacked madly at a Boaban who was trying to hex Armina. Both hoofs came off, spraying Jack’s face with blood. Wiping his face, he saw that there were just two Boabans left – and Morrigan.

  “Give up!” roared Phineas. “And you may live. You can never hope to take all of us!”

  “Ye haven’t seen yer other friends,” sneered Hema. Icily calm, she backed away, tugging at Morrigan’s sleeve. “Show them, daughter.”

  Daughter?!

  Morrigan clicked her fingers, and three bodies floated through the doorway into the hall; accompanied by Malicia.

  “Ye think ye can really defeat us?” sneered Hema.

  Jack stared with disbelief.

  But I took Malicia’s feet … hoofs … off. She’s supposed to be dead.

  “Yer puny Shian hexes don’t last here,” scoffed Malicia, hobbling into the room. “Oh, my feet may tak’ a while to mend; but just look at what awaits ye!”

  The three floating bodies fell to the floor.

  Armina was first to them.

  “It’s Kedge! They’ve bled him too!”

  Kedge gave a moan; and with good reason. Slash marks showed down his face, his neck … in fact, his entire deathly pale body.

  “His friends didn’t last long,” commented Morrigan coldly, looking at the Twa Tams’ bodies. “Too long on the bridge, I expect. Malnourished Nebula insects.”

  “You made sure we were starved!” shouted Jack. “And they were bad enough to start with!”

  Slowly, the slain Boabans were starting to rise. Hobbling painfully, they joined Hema and Morrigan.

  There was a stand-off for a moment while each side re-grouped. Armina placed crystals on wounded prisoners’ foreheads, and Gilmore busied himself using haemostat bandages on the prisoners’ open wounds.

  “As ye see, ye can niver kill us!” gloated Hema triumphantly. She put her arm around Morrigan’s shoulder.

  Fenrig broke ranks. Having cowered by the wall while there was fighting, he now strode furiously up to his sister, and slapped her.

  Startled, Morrigan thrust her wand at Fenrig’s face, and was about to utter her hex.

  “She called you ‘daughter’!”

  The wand hovered. “Fen,” she said softly, “did you never wonder?”

  “Mum’s dead!”

  “Yours; not mine.” Morrigan looked up at Hema, who smiled back lovingly. If a cold-hearted, callous, blood-sucking murderess can be called loving. “And you can see that we are all very alive!”

  “Not all!” shouted Armina triumphantly. She pointed to one Boaban Shee who remained on the floor.

  That’s the one I got with Trog’s knife …

  Jack looked down at the blade he still had in his hand. What was it Marco had told him? Trog believed his knife knew what to do?

  “Shian hexes may not work for long,” he said slowly, “but I bet you don’t like Norse steel.”

  For the very first time, a look of concern spread over Hema’s face.

  “There’s been no Norse here for centuries,” she said, trying to sound confident.

  “Well, now you’ve seen their steel again.”

  In a flash, Jack had dived towards Malicia’s legs, and he hacked at her stumps with the knife.

  Taken by surprise, the mallison couldn’t even scream as her stumps were reduced further. She rolled over, lifeless.

  Jack scurried back to his father, and got up cautiously, holding Trog’s bloodstained knife in front of him.

  “We’ll take you one by one if we have to. Or you can show us the way off this island.”

  “Ye think one knife can take all of us?” scoffed Hema, firing a rapid hex that floored Phineas. “Ye’ve nine to kill, brat.”

  “He’s the one who killed Malevola,” smirked Morrigan.

  “Then I shall leave him ’til last.”

  Jack gulped. As the hoof-less Boabans began to advance, he sensed the Nebula men wilting at the thought that their swords could not finish them off. Even Enda seemed at a loss for words.

  “Ye’ve been poor guests,” mocked Hema, growing in confidence. “Eating and drinking yer fill. But we’ll live off ye for a while.”

  “I’m keeping the big country boy.” Morrigan eyed Ossian’s recumbent body with satisfaction.

  The prisoners began to back away.

  “You’re not keeping any of us,” shouted Jack, as he tried to keep the panic inside him down. “We’re leaving.”

  … If we can. But how do we to get off Tula?

  “Enda?” he said hopefully, looking at the big Irishman; but Enda’s shaking head told its own story.

  “The Nautilus charm won’t work here, Jack. This place is cursed.”

  Jack heard Ishona sobbing quietly.

  “Without me to show you the way, you’d never last an hour out there,” Morrigan mocked them, glancing at the window. “Even in the daylight.”

  Jack risked a look through the great window, and could make out the first glimpses of the dawn.

  “Morrigan is right,” crowed Hema. “The Kildashie and their Thanatos friends burned the last of our trees, before they scurried away with the Raglan stone; now no creature can survive on Tula outside these walls. Unless of course ye know the path to the Rainbow Bridge?”

  The path … My path …

  Jack felt instinctively for the Mapa Mundi around his neck – nothing. He saw Hema look at him sharply. She must think I’ve got it – Morrigan will have told her. He gulped hard.

  There’s no Mapa Mundi … so who can show us our true path?

  Marco and Luka had talked of the power of the map; and the justice of Gosol. But they weren’t here. Papa Legba? No sign of him …

  Jack looked down. His father lay, motionless.
/>   Oh no: not again.

  It came to Jack in a flash.

  Who had tried to steer them away from the Blue Men of the Minch? Who had followed them all the way from Ilanbeg to Lyosach?

  “Our brother will help to guide you …” “Our brother John will be watching you, from a distance …”

  The eagle! He has the power of Gosol … He came when the Urisk was beating Caskill …

  Jack concentrated hard. Despite the cold, sweat broke out on his forehead.

  We really – really – need some help here.

  With a crash, the far wall imploded. Light flooded the room as the great bird flew in.

  23

  The Swamp

  Jack shielded his eyes from the sudden brightness – but the shock to his system was nothing compared to the distress of the Boabans. Screaming and covering their eyes from the unaccustomed light, they made for the dark corridor behind them.

  “It’s lumos!” screeched Hema.

  Jack risked a peek to see where his father was, but it was the young girl and Ashray who came into sight.

  “This way!” squeaked the Ashray.

  She and the girl stood by the shattered masonry, and indicated for the prisoners to join them.

  The eagle, which had perched on the rubble, now flew into the dining room and dropped a tatty leather volume in front of Jack. Then it wheeled round with a raucous squawk, grabbed the inert bodies of Phineas, Ossian and Kedge, and made for the hole in the wall.

  Jack picked the leather book up, and saw the faint lettering on the cover.

  Gosol.

  He felt a pulsing in his pocket …

  Tamlina’s ring!

  Quickly he took it out. His jaw dropped as he saw the three spiral arms becoming bold once more.

  “The ring’s charging – I can feel it!” He slipped it on his finger.

  “Iain! Gilmore!” called Enda. “Try your sceptres!”

  “It works!” cried Iain Dubh exuberantly, pulling his sceptre out. Levelling it, he let fly with a volley of hexes that had the Boabans, still blinded by the light, cowering further back into doorways and recesses.

  “Everyone! Make for the hole!” ordered Enda, as he joined Iain in firing holding hexes at the Boabans.

  “Don’t just stun them!” shouted Cal. “If they’re spared, they’ll come after us!”

  “Fenrig!” shouted Morrigan. “Don’t let them kill us!”

  Fenrig looked over at his half-sister. Unlike the Boabans she had not been overcome by the sudden brightness, and now she knelt and implored her brother.

  Fenrig was torn. His eyes fixed on his sister as he edged back to the hole in the wall.

  “Mor,” he began.

  “Fenrig, get out,” urged Jack, clasping the leather volume to his chest, and running for the hole.

  The eagle, still clutching the three bodies, now flew off a short distance, and perched on a mound twenty yards away. The light in the dining hall had faded, and Jack found himself stumbling in the near-darkness. Enda, Finbogie and Cal had shouldered Murkle and the Twa Tams, and with the other prisoners they were now climbing over the rubble to get out. They emerged into a freezing sulphurous quagmire; once they were out, the swamp gas started to burn their eyes.

  “We have to get off this island!” choked Armina. “Who can show us the way?” She gave a yelp as she stepped into an icy pool.

  “Make for the eagle!” shouted Ishona.

  As Jack neared the hole in the wall, he could see Fenrig sitting there, looking back at Morrigan. Alone, she looked around in vain: those of her comrades who hadn’t been stunned had all fled into the darker recesses of Fractals’ Seer. Morrigan withdrew her wand, and attempted to level it at the escaping prisoners; but Iain Dubh had seen her, and his hex caught her arm. Dropping the wand, she cursed loudly.

  “Cal’s right: we have to destroy this place!” shouted Iain Dubh.

  “Fenrig!” urged Jack.

  The young Brashat, sitting on broken masonry, seemed frozen to the spot.

  “They were going to kill us all, Fenrig!”

  “No. Mor wouldn’t kill me.”

  “Fenrig, she’s half Boaban. They were going to bleed all of us: it’s how they live.”

  Fenrig was unable to move, even as his sister got to her feet and edged forward, her eyes narrowed. Jack grabbed Fenrig’s shoulder, and pulled him roughly over the rubble.

  “Get away!” shouted Enda. “We’re taking this place down!”

  The prisoners struggled in the murky wasteland to join the eagle, Jack half-dragging Fenrig along with him. When they reached the eagle, it hopped forward and grabbed the leather volume from Jack’s grasp.

  “John?” asked Jack.

  The eagle squawked.

  “The air’s clear here!” exclaimed Ishona.

  “Only around the eagle,” said Jack. “He’s protecting us.”

  He turned to look at the castle. In the misty gloom he could make out shapes moving in the broken wall.

  “Enda! They’re escaping!”

  At a signal from the Irishman, all the able-bodied prisoners levelled their sceptres at Fractals’ Seer, and shouted, “Deleo Structor!”

  The light from a dozen hexes lit up the murky atmosphere for a few moments, and there was an almighty crash as the masonry imploded. Then it splintered, spiralling up into the sky, and was lost to sight.

  “What’s happened to it?” demanded Fenrig unhappily. “My sister’s in there!”

  “We had to,” said Iain Dubh impatiently. “Did ye not realise they were going to bleed all of us?”

  “We must go,” squeaked the Ashray, as the eagle flew off again.

  “Where’d it go?” coughed Arvin, as the suffocating sulphurous gas descended.

  “Why’d he leave us?” mumbled Ossian, who, like Phineas and Kedge, had slowly come round.

  “They don’t usually intervene,” said Jack. “Marco told me: they encourage people to do the right thing. Otherwise they keep out of the way.”

  “Bringing that wall down wasn’t keeping out of the way.”

  Jack pondered this.

  “I willed him in,” he said eventually. “But now we’ve got to help ourselves.”

  The young girl tugged at Jack’s arm, pulling him along a barely discernible path.

  “D’you know the way?” he asked.

  She nodded, and began to trot away.

  “Jack’s right!” shouted Enda happily. “The eagle wouldn’t leave us without the means of getting away! Come on! Follow her!”

  Ossian and Phineas, both recovered now, shouldered the Twa Tams’ bodies, while Enda picked up Murkle’s gaunt frame. In the early dawn light the escaping prisoners made their uncertain way through the boggy swampland. The sulphurous gas that rose from the ground stung their eyes, burned their lungs, and made them half-delirious. But, as Jack kept repeating to himself, the further they got away from Fractals’ Seer the better.

  As he stumbled after the young girl, he pondered.

  What actually happened to the castle? It’s like it was blown to … ach! What do the humans call it? … smithereens!

  Jack was woken from his near reverie by a whistling sound, as a piece of jet-black stone whizzed past his ear. Flint-like, and razor sharp, it was followed by another, and another.

  “Take cover!” shouted Iain Dubh.

  “There is no cover!” yelled Ossian.

  Indeed, the featureless swamp offered no protection against …

  “What are those things?” demanded Phineas, as the dart-like stones rained in on them.

  There was a circling cloud of stones now: almost silent, they whirled around, diving and swooping at the prisoners.

  “Cal!” shouted Enda; but it was too late for the Nebula man. A stone had pierced his chest, and he rolled over, motionless.

  Iain Dubh wriggled over to his fallen comrade and wrenched the dart from his chest.

  “It’s a piece of Fractals’ Seer!” he exclaimed. “The castle
’s attacking us!”

  The cloud above them seemed to intensify. Gilmore tried to use his sceptre to create a force-shield, but there was no power for Shian sceptres out in the swamp.

  Jack looked up as the cloud divided into two. As the larger part flew a short distance off, the other circled above, still an angry, menacing weapon.

  “What’s it doing?”

  The answer came as the larger cloud gathered in intensity, first swarmed up then rained down just fifty or so yards away.

  “It’s Fractals’ Seer!” gasped Jack. “The castle’s re-formed!”

  And as the castle settled and shook itself slightly, Jack could see a figure crawling through the swamp towards them.

  “Over here!” squeaked the Ashray. “We have to go down to go up!”

  In the confusion, Jack had not noticed the girl edging away, but now he could see that the Ashray was frantically helping her to dig in a small hollow. Using their bare hands, they had already created a trench in the bogland.

  Taking their cue, Ossian and Jack joined in, even as a new wave of darts rained down. The trench filled with bog-water that froze and stung the hands at the same time, but Jack worked frantically.

  This girl knows something!

  And she did. The other prisoners quickly joined in – even Fenrig. Leaving the bodies of their dead comrades aside, they dug furiously. Bog-water splashed up as a fresh wave of darts found the trench. Eventually, the base of the trench gave way, and they all tumbled through.

  As with the fall into the cave at the start of the Bridge, there were screams and cries; but for Jack there was a great sense of relief that they were getting away from the darts, and whatever evil was coming out of Fractals’ Seer. The air in the cave was – well, not exactly fresh; but it wasn’t poisonous, like the swamp gas above.

  As the bodies landed, Jack saw the girl pick the Ashray up and hug her. Then whisper in her ear.

  She can talk!

  The Ashray scuttled up to Jack.

  “She says this is the Bridge of Impossibility.”

  “What?!” screeched Armina. “That’s the evil bridge that brought us to this cursed island! And only dark magycks can open it!”

  “No,” said the Ashray firmly. “That’s for coming here. Leaving is different.”