The Wizard's Promise

by Cliff McNish

  And behind these children were more breathless bunches: brothers and sisters, small family parties, clutching each other. From all the towns and villages across this part of the world they came. None were such slick flyers as the sentinels, but that didn’t stop them. If they could make it into the air at all, one way or another they did so.

  One type of child seemed less fearful than the others – or perhaps they only masked it better. These children were far too precious to be together. The largest sentinel units had one attached if they were lucky – a spectrum.

  Rachel watched them all arrive, and noticed something: whenever the children saw her or Serpantha their frightened faces lit up, transformed.

  ‘They think … they think we’re going to make all the difference,’ she said.

  ‘They’re wrong,’ Serpantha told her. ‘Only one person can make a decisive difference now. We must get to Yemi as swiftly as we can. Rachel – fly me there. I am still not strong enough.’

  ‘Wait!’ Heiki held Rachel back. ‘We’ve tried that! Yemi won’t listen. He’s acting weird, ignoring everyone, just hovering in the sky surrounded by animals. Don’t leave, Rachel – please! We need to know what you’ve managed to find out about the Griddas. Tactics. Deployment. How do they battle? What kinds of spell do they favour? What –’

  ‘Don’t you understand?’ Rachel gripped Heiki’s arm. ‘Children can’t defeat these Griddas! Even their infants never stop fighting. I’ve seen them. They don’t give up, and they won’t care how many they lose to the sentinels!’

  ‘We have to try at least!’ Heiki said. ‘Won’t they kill us anyway? Should we make it easy for them? I won’t just sit back and let them! Rachel, I’m depending on you. If you could join that team over there, they need –’

  ‘No,’ interrupted Albertus Robertson. ‘The spectrums agree with Rachel. We’ve now been able to scan the Griddas at close range. A few of the sentinels will hold their own for a while. All other children will be immediately overwhelmed. Wait …’ His head twitched. ‘The first Griddas have entered our atmosphere.’

  ‘Where?’ Heiki asked.

  ‘Everywhere.’

  The sentinel units above Heiki wanted clear instructions, having been told the same news by their own spectrums.

  ‘The largest concentration is over the Asian peninsula,’ Albertus said. ‘Over the Huang Hai, the Yellow Sea between eastern China and Korea. The same place,’ he added, ‘where Yemi is located.’

  ‘The Griddas realize that Yemi is still their greatest threat,’ Serpantha said.

  Rachel picked Serpantha up, her information spells plotting the fastest path to Yemi.

  ‘One moment,’ Albertus said to her. ‘Since we cannot win this battle, we should negotiate. We have many materials to bargain with: animals and other foodstuffs; base and refined metals; our loyalty, or at least a pretence of that, and –’

  ‘The Griddas won’t be interested in any of those things,’ Rachel said. ‘They’ll only want to fight.’

  Albertus Robertson blinked, seeking alternatives from the other spectrums. ‘There is no better option at present,’ he said. ‘Therefore, we will attempt to negotiate.’

  ‘It won’t work, Albertus. Don’t go. These Griddas haven’t come to talk!’

  ‘Even so, we could distract them briefly. That may delay the main assault, giving you and Serpantha time to devise a new strategy with Yemi.’ Albertus smiled, his lips brushing hers. Then, before Rachel could say anything, his thrill-seekers carried him skyward to meet the Griddas. Seeing those two girls so unflinchingly take him up, Rachel at last understood why, of all children, the spectrums chose the thrill-seekers as their companions – only the most fearless children could ever have flown without question into those clouds.

  The Essa had stayed quiet all this time. Now they braved the light and tugged Rachel forward. ‘Find Yemi!’ they burst out. ‘Take us to him! Take us!’

  Serpantha held Rachel’s hand. With their combined strength they flew across the world.

  23

  The Three Layers

  Gultrathaca slowed the army down as they neared Orin Fen.

  To report on the disposition of Wizard sentries she deployed stealth teams, holding the bulk of the Griddas well back. ‘We need to make sure there are no High Witches keeping watch,’ she told Eric, to allay his suspicions. ‘We don’t want them knowing we’re here.’

  Eric half-nodded, barely hearing her.

  Gultrathaca ached for combat. Her pack-sisters had already started inflating their muscles, readying themselves. She wanted more than anything to join them, but still needed to be mindful of Eric. What would he make of the battle-wail of the infants when it started?

  As for the Wizards, no doubt they would be prepared. Such a large Gridda army could not have gone unnoticed. Even so, Gultrathaca could not wait for the conflict to begin. Win or lose, she thought, win or lose, did it really matter? Her Griddas were not empire builders. Unlike the Highs, they had no patience for the gradual accumulations of power and status. What Griddas demanded was war, or the prospect of war, or the promise. They were built for its mayhem, designed for its fulfilment. What else could have carried the Gridda packs so far across the insanity of space?

  For all those centuries, Gultrathaca thought, Heebra lived in the heights of her eye-tower, fantasizing about this special moment. But the Griddas, not the Highs, would enjoy it. Feeling her heart race, Gultrathaca calmed herself. She quietened her soldier spiders. She told the healers busy dropping painkillers into her veins to wait a while longer. She kept the watchers focused on Eric. This is a glorious day for all spiders, too, she realized; everywhere around her, they were alert and active.

  All, that is, except the spiders of Jarius.

  Gultrathaca hardly recognized her any longer. There was the same expression on Jarius’s face she had seen linger on Fola’s so many times in the Assessment Chamber: fear. Only the dumbest animals were without fear entirely, but humans and those they affect are full of fear, Gultrathaca thought. It hovers about their eyes, like a trap. What was wrong with them? What were they afraid of?

  She gazed at Jarius, suddenly pitying her.

  When Eric and Gultrathaca stopped, the pack-leaders could no longer contain the infants. ‘Orin Fen! Orin Fen!’ they hissed amongst themselves.

  Everyone sensed the planet now. It was so near that Gultrathaca could almost reach out for it. She sniffed, testing the quality of the invisibility spells. They were beyond her understanding. And under the invisibility layer were fortification spells. Gultrathaca probed them, realizing at once that they were virtually impregnable. It would take her Griddas centuries to smash through, or forever.

  How long would it take Eric?

  Gultrathaca squeezed him lightly. Had she miscalculated? If Eric could not break through the Wizards’ protections, most of the Griddas would perish – the infants were too weary to make the return trip to Ool unless they could recuperate on the world below.

  Gradually the stealth teams brought in their news. There was nothing to report, no sign of Wizards. Where were they? Snug behind their protections? Waiting for the Griddas to wear themselves out before showing themselves?

  ‘Eric,’ she asked. ‘Can you … can you deal with the spells around this world?’

  ‘I’ll see.’

  Eric stared at the empty space where he knew the planet to be. Its protections were intricate, labyrinthine, marvellously engineered; too sturdy for any number of Griddas to breach – and that shocked him. This was Wizard magic; Eric had no doubt. But where were the Wizards? A couple of old trails marked that they had been here, nothing more. What was going on? Why would Wizards so carefully shield a world of imprisoned Griddas?

  There could be many reasons, he thought. He didn’t have time now to worry about those reasons. The important thing was that there were Witches on this world. Now that he was closer, Eric realized the leaking scent traces were more similar to High Witches than Griddas, and that mad
e sense. If High Witches supervised this world, he would expect them to be flashing around in the skies below.

  He gripped the feathers of the prapsies, deciding.

  Beneath the invisibility spells, there were three layers of protection. He had to act as soon as he cut through the last one. Gultrathaca would only keep him alive for as long as she needed him. He might only have moments to wrap his destruction around all the Griddas and Highs on the planet.

  Good, he thought. Less time to think about it, to think about what I’m doing.

  The prapsies were entirely quiet beside him. They had stopped asking questions, stopped insulting Gultrathaca, stopped fidgeting. They no longer even talked to each other. They simply pressed against him. He didn’t dare look at them, not now.

  Eric felt, suddenly, like a Gridda himself, or what they represented: the consummate murder weapon. It chilled him, this destructiveness. He felt as if he had become a skilful rolling into one of all death spells, like Rachel’s deaths improved on, with no nobler spells to hold them back. All the journey he had been perfecting this deadliness. He knew exactly how to unstitch Gridda bodies. It was a terrible task, and inhuman, not human at all, but he was capable of it. He had to be.

  All around him the infants were screaming to each other, almost hysterical. Eric made himself watch. He let the horror of them settle in his mind. He reminded himself what these same Griddas had done to Rachel and Larpskendya, to Serpantha, to Yemi.

  To carry out his plan Eric needed to distract Gultrathaca. She was not behaving with the same abandon as the others. ‘The planet has several different protective layers,’ he told her.

  ‘Can you break through them?’

  ‘If I get help. The defences are too strong for me on my own.’

  ‘What do you need?’

  ‘I’ll get rid of the invisibility mask. When I’ve done that all the Griddas should fire their spells into the protection layers. That will weaken them enough, I think, for me to finish the job. We’ll have to rest between layers.’

  ‘Rest?’

  ‘There are several to get through.’

  Gultrathaca looked quizzically at Eric. His expression was blank. Was he plotting something? Did he already know what lay beneath? It didn’t matter. As long as he ruptured the defences, nothing else mattered. Her claw was waiting for him after that.

  She gave the orders to deploy the Griddas around Orin Fen. ‘Eric, please hurry,’ she said, once they were positioned. ‘The Griddas below must be suffering terribly.’

  ‘I’m ready,’ Eric said – and he was. All the Gridda army and Witches on the planet were within his range. He also had a surprise. To keep Gultrathaca off guard, he had prepared all the anti-magic he needed. With one silky motion of his mind he would remove all three protection layers at the same time.

  ‘Are you afraid, Eric?’ Gultrathaca asked, seeing him shake.

  He ignored her. He removed the invisibility mask. A huge yellow-brown world was revealed. Gultrathaca signalled for the Griddas to set about breaching the protections. They barely scratched the first layer.

  Eric steadied himself. He clutched the prapsies. ‘I’m sorry, boys,’ he whispered. Encompassing the first protection-layer girdling the planet, he destroyed it. Immediately he smashed the second layer – so rapidly that even Gultrathaca did not have time to notice. Before Eric tackled the third layer he could not help himself. He stared at the prapsies. And they stared back. On the entire voyage, had they ever stopped watching him?

  ‘We don’t understand, Eric,’ one murmured.

  ‘Oh boys,’ he said. ‘Forgive me.’

  ‘Forgive what?’ Gultrathaca glanced sharply at Eric. She realized that serious damage had been done to the protections without any need for rest. Eric had not required the Griddas.

  He was lying.

  Eric felt her claw on his spine, and knew he had delayed too long. He should already have broken through the third layer! What are you delaying for? he asked himself.

  But he knew, he knew. He was frightened of dying. Now the moment had come, he clung to Gultrathaca, as if she would save him. He was afraid of dying and he was afraid of killing. He was afraid of everything.

  He couldn’t do it – but he had to.

  He raised his hands. They were primitive directors of anti-magic, but they had never let him down. He pointed one of them. He pointed the index finger of his right hand at the southern rim of the planet below, and began to trace the tip around the edge.

  No more delays. He cancelled the third layer of protection. He closed his eyes.

  He was ready.

  And so was Gultrathaca. She sensed a dreadful undoing start to work on her, but there was still time. Her nail lay over Eric’s heart.

  But she did not use it. She wavered. Eric also wavered. He held back. Gultrathaca had expected to see legions of Wizards pouring from Orin Fen. Eric had expected a flood of Griddas and Highs.

  The creatures actually rising up from that world were ones neither of them could believe.

  24

  Huang Hai

  Rachel, Serpantha and the Essa flew across four seas and two continents, following Yemi’s scent.

  Finally, where the grey waters of the Huang Hai lap up against Shindao, on the Chinese shore, they found him. Yemi was surrounded by birds. They circled him in protective silence: flock after flock, local birds and birds that had never been seen before over Chinese skies.

  And, beneath them, on the shore, there was an even more remarkable sight: animals, pressed up against the surf. The scale of the gathering was so great that even Rachel’s information spells could not count the number. All the animals were quiet. Predators stood alongside prey and there was none of the usual noise or panic that occurs when animals are crowded tightly together. Each animal stood motionless, with shut eyes. Their mouths were open, as if inhaling something blissful. Their heads were inclined contemplatively to one place in the sky.

  In that place, slightly above them, was a boy in a bright orange T-shirt.

  ‘Yemi!’ cried the Essa. There was no path to him, except through the birds. As the Essa tried to make a pathway to Yemi, the flocks turned their beaks on them. Then Yemi’s yellow butterflies pushed between the birds. They made a gap for the Essa, guiding them. Rachel and Serpantha followed.

  As the Camberwell Beauties led Rachel towards Yemi, she could hear her own heart booming over the quietude of the scene. Yemi’s eyes were closed. He appeared to be asleep, his chin pointing towards the animals.

  ‘Have you … have you ever seen anything like this?’ she asked Serpantha.

  ‘No, nor any Wizard,’ he whispered.

  ‘What are they doing?’

  ‘I do not know, but can you feel the magic linking Yemi and the animals together? Can you feel the tranquillity of their minds?’

  Rachel felt it: the calmness. And it was not merely the minds of the animals and Yemi that were calm. The sea itself was calm. The winds had gentled. A shark, straying under the waters below, beat its fins away again. Even the sunshine, as it filtered through the clouds, cast the same pallid light evenly across Yemi and the animals on the shore. There was no dappling; there was no place where the sun was brighter or darker against his face or that of the animals – as though the natural differences of shade and light should not be allowed to intrude on their meditation.

  Rachel felt as if any words would be an interruption of whatever was taking place here, but she had to speak. The peacefulness of this scene would soon be shattered by the Griddas.

  Fola hung wide-awake and suspended in mid-air next to Yemi.

  ‘What’s – what’s happening?’ Rachel asked her.

  ‘I can’t tell,’ Fola said. ‘Yemi came here, I don’t know why. The animals followed him. They have been just like this for so long.’ She shook Yemi. ‘I tried to wake him. It’s not possible!’

  ‘It is some kind of trance-state,’ Serpantha said. ‘All the animals are with Yemi inside it. I can’t tell if t
hey are aware of the Gridda threat.’

  The Essa pulled at Yemi’s eyelids, trying to rouse him. Rachel united her magic with Serpantha, attempting every kind of waking spell.

  ‘What can we do?’ the Essa cried. ‘Make him listen!’

  Above them, a shriek levelled across the sky. The noise was not human. It came from the lungs of a Gridda pack. If anything could have broken the quiet reflection of Yemi, this would have done so. His expression did not alter.

  High in the clouds overhead, one sentinel unit waited. As in so many other skies across Earth, it stood alone guarding an enormous area. The leader of the unit, a boy Rachel did not know, flew amongst his team, shouting instructions. His voice was hoarse. A small girl with long red hair was by his side, following him wherever he went: a spectrum.

  Seeing their courage, Rachel felt anger welling up inside her. Gultrathaca had lied about most things, but what about her accusations concerning Larpskendya? Rachel had not wanted to consider these before. She faced Serpantha.

  ‘Where are the other Wizards?’ she demanded.

  Serpantha’s expression was anguished. ‘Whoever could come, has done so.’

  ‘What does that mean?’ Rachel said angrily. ‘Don’t you have a whole world of Wizards? Larpskendya told me that often enough. Even he’s not here this time. If I hadn’t risked my life to save you, there would be no Wizard on Earth at all. What are we supposed to think of that?’

  ‘There is no time for this, Rachel.’

  ‘Is it because your own precious world’s threatened? Is that why no one’s here?’

  ‘I will explain, but not now. You must help me to reach Yemi.’

  ‘Help you!’ Rachel shouted the words, pointing up. ‘These children are offering everything because of Larpskendya, because of things he’s told them! Where are the other Wizards?’