‘We’ll do it,’ she said. ‘Me and Will.’
Scrubbing was a cold and thankless task: a full hour kneeling on the stone floor, dragging a heavy metal bucket full of tepid water, with the sound of the rasping wire brushes making it difficult to talk. A full hour of working while your competitors slept. Stefan knew Harriet hadn’t volunteered without a reason. He could feel her building up to her question, and the impatience tightened along the back of his neck.
‘Okay, just ask it!’ he finally demanded, turning to face her kneeling form. She looked up, and in that moment he could see her almost losing her nerve.
‘Keep scrubbing,’ she said.
‘What?’
‘The sound of the brushes will stop anyone hearing.’ She scrubbed her way closer to him, head down, so to a passer-by she would appear absorbed in her task. ‘Keep scrubbing.’
Stefan nodded and resumed the heavy circular motions with his brush. The sound filled the dining hall and they could whisper in safety.
‘Where are you from?’
Stefan stopped scrubbing.
‘Scrub,’ Harriet reminded him. ‘And tell me the truth.’
‘I told you—’ Stefan started, but Harriet cut him off.
‘You told me a lie. You know nothing about the Academy, your magic is as powerful as I’ve ever seen but it’s untamed, you’ve told me nothing about your family, your clothes are wrong, and today, when you could have had a place guaranteed in the Royal Guard, you risked it for me. So tell me where you are from, and what you’re doing here.’
Stefan felt a slow tide of relief wash over him. He had wanted to tell her, and now he would have to. He felt no fear at this thought, for he had trusted her from the first moment. If she had meant him any harm, she could have done that twenty times over.
‘Who else knows?’
‘Knows what?’
‘That I don’t belong here. If you’ve noticed, who else has?’
‘I don’t know. No one, I don’t think. I’ve had more to do with you,’ she added, a little too quickly, as if trying to reassure him of something she herself did not believe. ‘Most of them are too caught up with their own worries to look around.’
‘Not Malcolm,’ Stefan said.
Harriet paused her scrubbing. ‘No,’ she agreed. ‘Not Malcolm. But you still haven’t answered my questions.’
Stefan took a deep breath. ‘I saved you, because I need you. I need you to be there at the end.’
‘Need me for what?’ Harriet asked.
‘I need you to help us save the prisoner.’
Harriet did not pretend to be surprised, or even shocked. She did not ask which prisoner. She just resumed her scrubbing, thoughtful and silent.
Then she asked, ‘Who is “us”?’
‘It’s a long story,’ Stefan said.
‘Then we’d better scrub more slowly.’
And so, kneeling beside Harriet, scrubbing one flagstone at a time, Stefan recounted the very many improbable events that had brought him from the comfort of his bed to the cold hard reality of the dining-room floor.
‘You are very brave,’ Harriet said, when he was finished. ‘If they catch you, I think they will kill you.’
‘I try not to think about that,’ Stefan said. He knew that was a big part of surviving here. Not thinking too hard about what might happen if things went wrong.
‘You don’t have to help me. If you don’t want to be involved in this, just fail the next challenge.’ Stefan looked up, held her gaze and spoke the next words slowly, so there could be no misunderstanding. ‘Just, please, don’t tell anybody.’
‘Of course I’ll help you.’
‘You don’t have to,’ Stefan said. ‘It’s not your problem. You don’t know Alice.’
‘Neither did you,’ Harriet replied. ‘Until she asked you for your help.’
‘Yes, but—’
‘You helped me, Stefan. You didn’t have to, and you did. Now I will help you.’ Harriet had more to say. Stefan could see the way her mouth fell silently open, testing out the words.
‘I’m not used to people helping me,’ she said. ‘My father told me that seeking help was a sign of weakness, and he always made it clear how much he wanted me to be strong. Before I left here, he told me not to talk to anybody if I didn’t have to. He told me I couldn’t trust anybody.’
‘Do you think we can do it?’ Stefan asked. ‘Do you think it’s possible for us to rescue Jackie? How many guards will be up there?’
‘Well, I’ve heard no talk of prisoners or tunnels, and my father works in the government and likes to tell important stories when he’s been drinking. If they’ve kept this secret from everybody, then it must be important. They’ll have as many as they can afford to spare. Shifts of ten maybe, or perhaps fifteen. I don’t know. I’m just guessing.’
‘And there are two of us,’ Stefan said. Said out loud, it sounded impossible.
‘And your brother and Alice.’
‘So we’re going to need—’
‘Yes. A very good plan. And sleep, if we are to survive this next competition. I’ve heard it involves combat. Come on. Let’s get the water tipped out. We’re done here.’
They returned to their beds, barely able to slip their boots off, they were so tired.
‘I don’t trust Malcolm,’ Harriet whispered, just as Stefan felt himself drifting into the first of his disjointed dreams.
‘I know,’ he murmured sleepily. ‘He’ll stop at nothing to win.’
‘No, that’s not what I mean,’ Harriet replied. ‘I mean something isn’t quite right about him. He’s like you. He somehow doesn’t belong here.’
‘Okay,’ Stefan whispered back, barely able to make sense of the simplest sentence. ‘Let’s talk about it tomorrow.’
‘Alice, are you still awake?’ Arlo asked. Despite being exhausted after the day’s flying, he couldn’t sleep.
‘No,’ Alice replied, burying her head deeper inside her sleeping bag.
‘There’s something I have to ask you.’
Alice groaned and sat up. ‘What is it?’
Arlo flicked on his headlamp. ‘You know when Stefan becomes a Royal Guard, well, what’s your plan then? You haven’t said how we’re going to rescue Jackie. I think we should talk about it.’
Alice’s face was cast in shadow. It made her look older than she was, and more serious. ‘I can’t tell you,’ she said.
‘That’s not fair,’ Arlo replied. ‘We’ve trusted you this whole time. Now I think you should trust us.’
‘No, it’s not about trust.’ Alice frowned and looked away. ‘It’s more that, I’m not sure yet. I’m not sure how we’re going to do it.’
Arlo felt his stomach hollow out, and his bottom lip begin to tremble. He’d doubted many things while he was here, but he’d never doubted that Alice had a plan.
‘I’m sorry,’ Alice mumbled. ‘I should have told you.’
‘We trusted you,’ Arlo said. ‘Stefan is risking his life for you. We both are. And you told us you had a plan.’
‘I didn’t,’ Alice replied. ‘I said I needed your help. And I do.’
She looked at Arlo, as if waiting for him to reply. He was scared that if he spoke now he would start crying. ‘But you sent Stefan to the Academy. If he’d been caught…we’d never have been able to return home. And you didn’t even have a plan?’
‘I have ideas,’ Alice said. ‘Ideas that rely on him becoming a Royal Guard. I’m getting closer.’
‘Tell me what you have, then.’
‘Okay.’ Alice nodded. ‘Maybe you can help.’
Alice reached across and squeezed Arlo’s shoulder. He looked her in the eyes. ‘We’ll get out of here,’ she said. ‘Jackie too. I know we will. I’ve watched their routines, up in the tent. They lower the cage to bring her food. It happens twice a day. And to let her go to the toilet. A guard is always with her.’
‘It could be Harriet,’ Arlo said. ‘What if we ask her to help us?’
‘I’ve thought about that,’ Alice said. ‘But it’s too dangerous. Remember what Joan said. Someone here isn’t what they appear. That could be anyone.’
‘I trust her,’ Arlo said.
‘Why?’
‘Because Stefan does,’ he replied.
‘Sorry.’ Alice shook her head. ‘That’s not good enough. And we don’t need her.’
‘They have magic,’ Arlo reminded Alice. He didn’t understand how she could still be so confident. ‘Anything we can do, so can they.’
Alice shook her head. ‘Not everything. We have twins, and they don’t. And we have the element of surprise.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Remember how we thought Malcolm might have been Haven, when he changed his shape to be a dog?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, what if they thought Haven was among them?’ Alice smiled.
Arlo would have bet that this part of the plan was coming to her as she spoke.
‘What do you think the Royal Guards would do then? Wouldn’t they drop everything to capture him?’
‘I suppose so,’ Arlo agreed.
‘Exactly. So we use the oldest kind of magic of all. We create a distraction.’
'WE HAVE TESTED the extent of your magic and discovered the depths of your reserves,’ Madame Latitude began the next morning. ‘You have proven yourselves. Now it remains only to find which of you have the true grit needed in moments of physical threat. Which of you can keep your head when your very safety is threatened? There is only one challenge left and it will take place tomorrow morning. By tomorrow afternoon we will have found this year’s Royal Guard recruits. You have one day to learn all you can about the art of combat.’
The candidates looked along the line, openly assessing one another, each thinking the same thought: be stronger in combat than five people here, and I will become a Royal Guard. Stefan looked at Harriet and saw that she was smiling, her shoulders wide, her chin proud, as confident as he had seen her. So she was a strong fighter. This didn’t surprise him.
The Major stepped forward. ‘All right, then.’ For once he spoke softly. It was such a surprise that the whole line leaned forward to hear what he said. The Major smiled, relishing his task. ‘Let me tell you a secret. This is the only challenge I really enjoy. If you want to be a guard, then you have to be able to withstand pain, and you can’t be squeamish about causing it.’
He indicated the five competitors nearest to him. ‘Pick up a nettle stick, and choose a partner.’
Harriet and Stefan, at the other end of the line, waited.
‘What’s a nettle stick?’ Stefan whispered.
‘You’ll see,’ Harriet answered.
The five competitors returned to the line, each holding what looked to be a normal stick, about a metre long and as thick as a thumb. The end, though, glowed red.
Malcolm strode with confidence towards Stefan and smiled. ‘Bad luck, old chap,’ he said. ‘You should have taken that life when you had the chance. Oh well. We all make mistakes.’
The other nettle-stick holders chose their partners more cautiously.
‘Now,’ the Major continued, walking through the pairs with a look of sick anticipation. ‘The trick of combat is to trust the magic ahead of your senses. Magic is swifter than the mind, it sees further than the mind, it is more assertive, more effective. But in times of stress, we find it harder to access our magic. When we need it most, we turn away from it. For this reason, you will be blindfolded for your training for tomorrow’s combat elimination, for magic needs no sight. And there is no better way to learn this than through the use of the nettle stick. Each of you with a stick will have fifteen minutes to inflict as much pain as you wish on your partner, striking them only with the tip of the stick, which will sting with the ferocity of an angry insect. And your partner’s job, while blindfolded, is simply to avoid the stick. Do you have any questions?’
Stefan’s heart began to race. For the next fifteen minutes he would stand blindfolded while Malcolm Strawbridge got to sting him with a vicious stick? He only had one question, and it wasn’t the kind to ask out loud: How am I to survive this?
‘Perhaps a demonstration would help clarify,’ the Major said, smiling. He produced his own stick and flicked it expertly. The end glowed a threatening red. ‘Who would like to volunteer?’
Harriet’s hand went up without hesitation. She strode confidently forward and faced the Major, pulling her blindfold over her eyes without being asked. Stefan saw a moment of confusion in the Major’s eyes, undone by her confidence. Malcolm too was watching her intently.
‘All right. So…’ The Major hesitated. ‘If you let it, the magic will find the stick for you. Feel it, read its patterns and, as it comes to strike you, allow your hands to simply push it away.’
He lunged forward with the stick and Harriet moved aside, guiding it past her with the palm of her hand. The movement was graceful and untroubled.
‘Yes, exactly so,’ the Major grunted. ‘But, as the stick moves more quickly it will become harder to engage your magic, you will begin to panic and the lack of vision will overwhelm you…’
He struck again, more forcefully this time, but Harriet seemed to move before the stick had. The Major, undeterred, circled the stick high and then thrust forward, as if fencing, but again Harriet was too light on her feet, leaping more as if in a dance than a battle. The Major began to move, his footwork surprisingly light for such a large man, and the stick moved with such ferocity that it broke the air with a whistle. He pushed, swept low, struck from above, charged, and every time Harriet matched him, as if it were she, not the Major, who was directing the stick.
They went on like this for a full minute before Harriet faltered, deflecting the stick without enough force and then pulling back in pain when the tip struck her thigh.
The Major was panting. Sweat formed on his thick brow. He straightened, pausing as much for oxygen as effect. ‘And so the news just got worse for you didn’t it? For it seems this one is going to be difficult to beat.’
Harriet ducked her head, but Stefan could see she was pleased with herself.
‘Defenders, blindfolds on, please,’ the Major called. ‘Attackers, your fifteen minutes starts now.’
Stefan breathed in deep to calm his racing heart. Somewhere in front of him, Malcolm stood waiting, stick in hand. It didn’t take magic to imagine the smile on his face, the glee with which he would strike.
‘Hope you’re not allergic to insect bites,’ Malcolm taunted.
Stefan put his hands out low, the way he had seen Harriet do, and listened.
That was a mistake. Magic does not need to hear.
The first contact was excruciating, a prod to the stomach that felt like a wasp sting. Stefan doubled over in pain.
‘Give him a moment to recover,’ he heard the Major say. ‘The first one is always a shock. Come on, Will. Use your magic, feel the stick.’
Stefan felt movement above him, not the stick exactly but a bluff of motion. His hands went up but found only air. The stick hit his knee. He crumpled. Malcolm laughed. Stefan breathed deep. Unlike a wasp sting, the intense pain from the nettle stick quickly passed.
Feel the stick, he whispered to himself, although he didn’t know what it meant. Again the stick came at him, and again it made contact. Again and again. With the eleventh blow he was ready to surrender. His body was broken by the pain and he had become twitchy and uncoordinated, further from his magic than when he had started.
‘Go easier on me,’ he pleaded to Malcolm. ‘Let me at least experience the magic, see what I’m meant to be feeling.’
‘If I go easy you’ll never learn,’ his tormentor sneered. ‘Come on, chin up!’
The words were immediately followed by a searing pain on Stefan’s chin. Anger boiled in Stefan’s chest, and regret too. Today he had learned two things: that Harriet would be an invaluable ally when it came to rescuing Jackie and that it hardly mattered b
ecause he would never survive the final challenge. He dropped to his knees and hung his head.
‘Get up,’ Malcolm goaded. ‘On your feet, flying boy.’
Stefan staggered to his feet.
‘Last two minutes,’ the Major called to them all. ‘Now you’ve found the stick, start working on letting the magic move your hands.’
But I haven’t found the stick, Stefan complained to himself. It’s found me, every time. He made it worse, thinking that all around him others were mastering the skill. He hung his head, hands out, resigned to the next blow.
‘Don’t give up.’ A voice he knew better than any other, made tiny and uncertain by the distance it had travelled. It was Arlo, sending him a message. But how could Arlo have known? Was it possible that he felt his pain?
Stefan straightened up and remembered what he was here for. It wasn’t about him. Jackie needed him to get this. Her life depended on it. What would Alice say of him if she could see him now?
His mind sharpened, it focused on a single point, which became brighter and smaller until all his thoughts were contained there, and then it disappeared, leaving only…magic.
He did not see the stick, he did not feel it, he simply felt his shoulders loosen and grow lighter. His weight shifted and his fingertips tingled. And then they were moving. The heel of his hand met the stick for the first time and pushed it harmlessly to his side.
‘Lucky,’ Malcolm grumbled, and struck again. Stefan felt his toes skip back, his shoulders come forward and his stomach pull quickly away. His left hand swept down, and deflected the strike. Malcolm came again, once, twice, three times, each movement faster than the last. Stefan’s responses were a blur. He felt more powerful than he ever had before. Elation washed over him.
‘Time!’ the Major called. ‘Swap over.’
Stefan relaxed, reached for his blindfold, and as he pulled it off a flash of red filled his vision and his eyes felt as if they’d exploded with pain. He dropped to the ground, put his hands to his eyes and tried not to cry. Anger burned bright in him. It took every bit of control he had not to launch an attack on the bully Strawbridge.
‘What’s happened here?’ The Major’s voice was short and suspicious.
The Tunnel of Dreams Page 14
