The Bone Quill

by Barrowman, John

  ‘I’m inside a tree,’ yelled Em, relieved that she was not alone. ‘But I can’t get out. The stupid hound has me trapped.’

  She could hear loud rustling coming closer. It came into her mind that whoever had animated the hounds was coming down the hillside. She had to get out of here.

  Digging into her tunic pocket, Em pulled out the pad and the pencil that Duncan had given her before they left his studio and began to draw.

  As she sketched, a beam of light unrolled like a blind over the opening of the hollow in the tree and covered it completely. At the same time, a similar light rolled up the other side of the tree, creating a new opening for Em to crawl through. The hound remained immobile, as if it had already turned to stone, its black coat shimmering from the light of its animation and the harvest moon drifting from the storm clouds overhead.

  Em’s animation had come at a price. A figure with a crossbow over his shoulders scrambled down the hill, heading straight for the light. Em felt trapped, unable to run. The only choice was to attack. It went against her nature, but with a strength and fury she didn’t know she had, she began to kick and scratch, taking the monk by surprise. But just as it looked as if Em might be managing to punch and squirm her way to freedom, the hound suddenly let out an earth-shaking howl and sprang on top of her, pinning her shoulders to the hillside.

  ‘Mum! Help! Help!’ But Sandie had vanished.

  The heat from the hound’s wet breath was blistering the skin on Em’s neck, yet she couldn’t move no matter how hard she struggled. Fire burned in the beast’s eyes. Em could see her own reflection in the flames. Terror thickened her blood, tightening her muscles, making her head pound and her shoulders ache against the pressing weight of the slobbering monster.

  ‘Mum? Where are you?’ Em screamed.

  How could this be happening?

  The hound tipped its heads to the moon and howled. The more she fought against it, the more it appeared to solidify in front of her eyes. Em shivered with fear and pain, exhaustion and defeat.

  Fear.

  That’s it, Em thought. Let my fears loose.

  She forced herself to stare into the beast’s eyes, to allow her panic to build as the monster met her gaze. Her heart raced. Her mouth felt as if she had swallowed sand. She let go.

  At first, nothing happened. Then a fireball the size of a melon shot from the top of a nearby pine tree, exploding at the feet of the monk. He screamed and leaped away from the burst of flames.

  A volley of fireballs followed instantly from the first one, shooting from the trees like flaming hailstones. One hit the haunches of the hellhound, igniting a line of flames up its legs and along its spine to both its heads.

  That one had been a bit too close.

  Em tried to turn her head away from the crowns of flame now white-hot on the top of the hound’s heads, but she couldn’t. Her face was reddening from the heat, her skin burning, burning …

  Control, Em, she reminded herself hysterically. Get your fears under control before this forest becomes an inferno.

  But the fireballs persisted. The trees lifted their branches into the darkness like limbs and lobbed fire in every shape and size, while the monk danced around the hound in a desperate attempt to stamp out the blaze. His efforts were in vain.

  Em’s eyes were smarting from the smoke that had erupted from the thick, brambly undergrowth around them. The monk yelled as he batted a fireball back up into the trees like a cricket ball. Then he jumped on top of a crackling, spitting band of flames curling across the ground like a—

  Python, thought Em involuntarily.

  At once, a fiery python’s head lunged from the blaze, its pink, fleshy mouth wide enough to swallow a man, its hooked fangs the size of a dragon’s claws. It hissed and sent flames sparking across the monk’s robes. Howling in a frenzy, the monk stripped off his robe, hopping in tattered and filthy long johns as he beat out the flames with his cassock.

  Almost the entire hillside was engulfed in flames, when out of the thicket above them, a second monk appeared. Trying not to panic about the ring of fire all around her, Em noticed the figure’s commanding air.

  With long, dark hair draping a face already shrouded beneath his cowl, this monk let his gaze fall on Em. His stare felt like a cold hand squeezing her heart. Despite the burning heat, Em shivered uncontrollably. Without a word, the monk looked away, and she felt the power of the flames once again.

  Even in the distorting light from the fire and the light from the moon, Em could see this monk’s robe was more elaborate than those of the other monks she’d seen – a rich purple that shimmered in the flickering light. Overlapping silver chevrons were stitched on its wide, draping cuffs, and the same design was banded around its broad hem.

  The monk turned to look up at the burning hillside. Em gasped.

  The back of his robe was embroidered with a black peryton.

  FIFTY-TWO

  The magnificently dressed stranger seemed to walk through the ring of fire burning around Em and the hellhound. Em was losing all feeling in her own shoulders, as the hellhound’s massive paws pressed deeper into her skin. She could barely detect any movement from the beast at all since this monk had appeared.

  The figure seemed to be issuing some kind of wordless instructions to the first monk, who made a sorry picture in his tattered long johns and burnt sackcloth cassock. Then the purple-clad stranger raised his hands. Powerful jets of water suddenly shot from the silver chevrons lining his sleeves, straight at the burning branches and the ground fires. In a matter of minutes, he had extinguished all the flames, leaving the stretch of hillside a smouldering wasteland.

  Trying hard to ignore her pain and her predicament, Em stared in awe. Then she saw it. The telltale glow of an animation, a thin pulse of light running around the stranger’s sleeves. Was this man the one that her mother believed was trying to steal the bone quill and The Book of Beasts? The one they had travelled through time to stop? If so, Em thought, gagging and coughing in the thick smoke that was choking the hillside, it looked as if they were too late.

  She didn’t notice him kneeling next to her until he was already there, his hand on her cheek, his eyes burning from beneath his hood. The hound’s snapping jaws were moving again, forcing her to keep still.

  The monk touched her shoulder, using his sleeve to mop at the bloody cut from the hellhound’s claws. Em sensed a disturbing mixture of emotions: anger, tenderness, sadness, jealousy, and something powerful that she couldn’t name. It was like the feeling she got after she and Matt had a fight, a sense that she wasn’t sorry but felt badly that they had fought.

  The monk wiped some of the sooty filth from Em’s forehead. Then he stood, pulled a drawing from the sleeve of his robes and tore it up. The hound erupted in a blaze of yellow, leaving her covered in fiery embers of light and black ash.

  The monk snapped his fingers, and Em descended quickly into darkness.

  FIFTY-THREE

  At the very moment that Matt, Em, Simon and Sandie were fleeing across the hillside, Solon was sprinting up the tower stairs to the Abbot’s study and discovering the Abbot unconscious on the floor of his ransacked cell.

  The beautiful tapestry was in shreds, as if someone had deliberately cut it into pieces, and the furniture in the room – the desk, the high-backed chair, a cushioned bench where the Abbot often read for hours on end – had all been overturned and torn apart. The Abbot’s desk had been upended, but Solon spotted a corner of parchment caught beneath it. He set the desk upright and was startled to find the first page of The Book of Beasts. How had it got here? He slid the page safely under his tunic just as he heard footsteps on the parapet below.

  Solon dashed to the window. There was no sign of anyone on the parapet. But down in the cobbled courtyard, he saw two monks curled next to a tree in the middle of the compound. There were two more lolling against the portcullis, and the villagers manning the ramparts slumped over the side.

  Leaning over the
Abbot’s body, Solon smelled the distinctive perfume of lavender, the sharp odour of hops and the sweet scent of valerian root. The rebels had taken over the monastery by putting everyone to sleep. It was a bold plan. Sleeping monks could not animate.

  Solon hoped that wherever the Abbot had hidden the rest of the unfinished manuscript of The Book of Beasts, it was still safe.

  Standing in the centre of the chaos, he was at a loss about what to do next.

  When the Abbot had returned from his discovery of poor Brother Cornelius’s body, Solon had taken the strange woman and her daughter outside and urged them to flee to safety. He decided now that his next task was to protect his old master. And then what?

  Who could he trust?

  You can trust me.

  Solon started at the sudden voice in his head.

  Carik?

  Who else would it be? Brother Cornelius locked me in this cell after treating my wounds and then he left. What is happening out there?

  An uprising.

  Why?

  Solon found the answer coming unbidden to his mind. I think rebels wish to divert the mission of the monastery and free the beasts of Hollow Earth.

  Release me from this cell, and I can help you.

  Solon’s head was a muddle of mixed emotions. He had made a choice when he carried Carik back here to the monastery from Skinner’s Bog. They had forged a bond, out there in the swamp, speaking to each other in their heads and fighting the Grendel together.

  But could he truly trust Carik to help him?

  After all, she had come to the island with the monks’ enemies in the first place.

  A feral howl fractured the night. Solon darted to the tower window that looked over Era Mina. He could see the campfires of the stonemasons next to the foundations of his master’s half-built tower. Then, from the corner of his eye, he saw a figure on the parapet. He ran to the arrow slit directly overlooking the ramparts.

  Brother Thomas stood beside the parapet, a quill and parchment in his hands and a crossbow slung across his back. As Solon watched, the hellhound gargoyles that crouched silently on the turrets stretched out of their horrible stillness, became the size of bears, leaped out of the stone and galloped with eyes blazing and coats afire up the hillside after the strangers from a distant place. Their howls shook the air as they went.

  Another monk appeared out of the shadows. This monk was of medium height, but stronger and more powerful than Brother Thomas in every way. Brother Thomas handed his sketch of the hellhounds to the more powerful man, who slipped it inside his richly decorated robe. The garment looked familiar to Solon but he couldn’t place it at first.

  Brother Thomas began to draw again. Solon had never seen a monk so purposefully and yet so mindlessly animate his art. What Brother Thomas was doing went against every vow he had taken as a member of the Order of Era Mina.

  Was the monk in the regal robe controlling Brother Thomas in some way?

  Solon shifted closer to the arrow slit and saw the image of a black peryton stitched on the back of the stranger’s robes. At that moment, Solon remembered two important things: where he’d seen the images on the richly embroidered robe before, and how much he needed Carik’s help after all.

  FIFTY-FOUR

  Solon and Carik crawled out of the tall window of the cell where Brother Cornelius had put her. They both tumbled to the soft, muddy ground.

  Solon froze as two monks raced into view, the hems of their cassocks brushing close by his face. He pulled Carik close.

  Rebels.

  How do you know, Solon?

  They are awake.

  ‘Have you seen Solon, Brother Devlin?’ shouted one.

  ‘Nowhere. Cornelius never expected him to return from Skinner’s Bog, curse him. We must find him and put him to sleep. Brother Thomas says we cannot succeed in our endeavour otherwise.’

  When the two monks had gone, Solon grabbed Carik’s hand and pulled her to her feet as gently as he could, though she still winced with pain. They sprinted into the forest, under a canopy of trees. On the cusp of the hill, smoke was shading the darkness like strokes of white paint on a black canvas.

  ‘Are you alright?’ Solon asked.

  ‘I’m fine,’ she said, rolling her stiff shoulder. ‘Do you have a plan?’

  ‘No,’ Solon admitted. ‘But we must find a way to stop Brother Thomas. I saw him chase after the strangers as I left the Abbot’s tower. He had a crossbow.’

  Tell me again about these strangers.

  They fell naturally into speaking in thoughts as they walked deeper into the woods. It was safer.

  They have mystic qualities like ours but stronger, like no others I have encountered.

  As they crested the hill, the air grew more choked with smoke and flames, but Solon knew they must go on. Through the smoke, he saw the monk in the purple robes kneeling beside the time-travelling girl, who was pinned beneath the paws of a huge two-headed black hound. Brother Thomas stood to one side, his cassock burned and filthy.

  Solon touched Carik’s shoulder, directing her to an opening in the briars that tangled round the trees. She steadied herself against him. They faced each other for a beat, the air crackling between them. Then, without warning, water drenched them from the tree tops.

  They threw themselves into nearby bushes, shaken and afraid. Below them, the purple-cloaked monk was moving in a circle, spraying the fiery trees with water. Solon shifted over in the scratchy brambles to give Carik a better view through the undergrowth and haze.

  We have to save the girl.

  Why?

  It was a practical question. In Carik’s and Solon’s world you looked after yourself first. You did not attach yourself to others outside your clan or your tribe without great trepidation. And you never risked more than you had to gain.

  Solon did his best to explain.

  She’s one of us, Carik. We may need her help as much as she needs ours.

  Then draw something to get her out of this!

  But it was hopeless; Solon had nothing to draw with. He was about to admit as much when his attention was caught by something high up near the peak of Auchinmurn.

  A pulsing mass of light.

  FIFTY-FIVE

  The Abbey

  Present Day

  Matt decided not to wait until morning.

  Jeannie had forced him to bin his medieval clothes, arguing that they didn’t need to bring the plague back to present-day Auchinmurn. Simon’s had gone, too. Matt rummaged through his laundry basket until he found the old T-Rex concert T-shirt that had belonged to his dad.

  He pulled on a clean pair of jeans and dug under his bed for his boots. Then he filled his rucksack with the map of the catacombs, a box of charcoal crayons, a pad of paper, a flashlight and the wedding picture of his parents. As an afterthought, he added all the coins from his change jar. Who knew what the shiny things might buy?

  Quietly closing his door behind him, he kept close to the wall in the hallway to avoid the places he knew had creaky floorboards. Then he slipped down the far stairs and into the kitchen.

  Embers were spitting and crackling in the fire. Through the French doors out to the garden, Matt could see the protective shield oozing and twisting through the stone wall like candyfloss. He lifted an apple, an orange and two bananas from the fruit bowl at the centre of the kitchen table, and a bag of cereal minus its box from the pantry. Finally, after fetching his parka from the utility room, he slid the little painting of the Abbey from underneath the kitchen tablemat, where he had placed it earlier in the day.

  Can’t forget you, thought Matt, rolling the picture tightly and slipping it into the inside breast pocket of his parka.

  The fastest way to get to Renard’s study and the vault was to cut outside, across the front of the Abbey and back inside via the west tower’s front door. But Matt didn’t have keys to any of the outside doors. Instead he sneaked past the library, the downstairs bathroom and Simon’s office until he came to the hallway
that led to the gym and the swimming pool.

  Matt stopped. He thought he’d heard someone coughing. He waited for a few beats. Nothing.

  Digging in his back pocket, he unfolded the drawing of the Abbey’s catacombs. When he and Simon had been in the Middle Ages, Matt remembered that the Abbot’s tower stood on the present-day site of the swimming pool. If he could find the access to the subterranean parts of the pool, he could find the original tunnels and simply walk under the compound to the vault’s outer wall. He’d think of a way inside when he got there.

  He quietly opened the door to the gym, then stopped and listened again, reassuring himself that he was not being followed. Simon was sedated, Zach would not have heard any of his movements, and Renard slept in the top room of the tower above the vault and would hear nothing through the thick stone.

  He headed for the pool boiler room. It was locked.

  Concentrating, Matt tore a corner from his notepad and drew the doors to the room, adding a hole directly above the handle and the lock. As he put the last stroke to his shading, the doors in front of him shimmered violently, bursting into light. When they dimmed, Matt put his hand through the hole he had animated, flipping the lock from the inside.

  The cramped room was dominated by a water pump, a stack of empty buckets and a long, snaking hose attached to the wall. Matt tore up his drawing, and the doors returned to normal in a flash of blue light. He was now locked inside.

  He marked out the place in the middle of the floor that he hoped would take him down to the catacombs. Wiping sweat from his face, he drew a circle in charcoal with an X at its centre.

  What could he animate to break open the floor? He could simply draw a hole the way he had with the door, but he wasn’t sure how he could draw the dimensions of a hole deep enough to climb through.

  Em would know what to draw, he thought.

  A sudden banging on the door made him jump. His phone beeped a text message. Zach.