Buried Fire

by Jonathan Stroud

  When Michael finished, Vanessa Sawcroft said, "I don't understand. It's never happened so close together as that. First Michael, then – less than a day later – Stephen too. And how could Michael see the gift rising? How could he predict where it would come out? We've never known when. Sometimes it's been fifty years before another person received the gift. That's why there are so few of us. It's always been pure chance."

  But Mr Cleever's face was being split by a huge, slow grin, which widened all the time, until it seemed every tooth in his head was majestically displayed. Then he lowered his jaw and brought it up again suddenly, with a single sharp click.

  "I've got it," he said. "All of a sudden, I've got it. And I know more certainly than ever that we are in business. We've got it right."

  He leapt from the chair and began to pace the room, forcing Michael and Vanessa to swivel constantly where they sat. His great pink fist slapped against his palm as he spoke.

  "The seal was split on Monday," he said. "On that afternoon, the cross was removed from the earth by our good friend the Rev. Aubrey, leaving one arm in the ground. On the same day, by chance, Michael was sleeping in the Wirrinlow, in the Pit. The master stirs, it senses that the seal is split and weakened. It sends forth its breath, which Michael receives, becoming stronger than any for many generations. All well and good. That night we take the remaining arm, breaking it for ever. Under the earth, the master responds. Michael is drawn to return to the Pit, bringing another with him. He sees the gift, he lets his brother receive it. But for whatever reason, for whatever personal inadequacy, Stephen rejects it. He only breathes in the barest fraction of what he could have had, if he had been wise."

  He paused. The others sat there, drinking it all in.

  "But what does this tell us? It tells us exactly what we hoped! That the master is ready for release. It only remains for us to break the bond, and we shall be freed too!"

  Much of this Michael did not understand. Talk of seals and bonds meant nothing to him. But talk of freedom was important; his soul had been weighed down with the fate of Hardraker and those others who had gone before him.

  "Do you mean that we shall avoid the slowing down of the soul?" he said. "The endless death that is not death?"

  Mr Cleever sat down again. He bent forward with sparkling eyes, whose excitement stung Michael's own.

  "For the last twenty years," he said, "I have experienced the joys of my gifts. I have lived as well as any man could dream of: all my appetites and desires have been fulfilled. But during those years, a nagging fear burrowed deep inside me. I knew that time was running out. Almost daily, I felt my energy sapping, my life growing rotten deep inside me, like a maggot-ridden apple that still looks good and shiny on a tree. I saw what had happened to Hardraker. I knew the limitations of our condition, our appalling fate. But I would not be quelled! I thought long and hard about what had happened to us, to all those poor, exalted, cursed ones who had been picked out over the centuries. I knew how close we were bound to our master under the Wirrim. And then it came to me. Its fate was our fate. If we wanted to live, live on perhaps forever, rejoicing in our power, going wherever we wished about the world – we had to release it from its prison in the soil. Make no mistake about it, that is why we have received these gifts. We have an obligation, which we must fulfil, and once we have done so, we will be well rewarded."

  His voice was almost gone now, thinned out to the barest hiss which filled the room with a conspiratorial tremor. His face was inches from Michael's own. "To free ourselves," he whispered, "we must free the dragon."

  31

  Stephen had left the village by the allotments, running up the hill among the trellises and bamboo canes, until he found a small gap in the fence which opened out into the fields. He squeezed through, and lay in the dust-dry grass for a few minutes, peering through the hole back down towards the mill-stream with his heart racing and sweat dripping from the side of his face. No pursuit came, and there was no unnatural feeling in his head. Mr Cleever had lost him.

  Once his breath had returned, he got to his feet and began to lope across the field, angling toward a thick scrubby hedge which ran away from him along the right-hand side. The land still rose upwards, and he knew he was conspicuous from the houses behind him and below, but once beyond the hedge a safe barrier would protect him from any watching eyes.

  He reached it safely, and worked his way along it till he found a gate. On the other side, an enormous wheat field stretched along the rolling hillside. The chimneys of the Monkey and Marvel pub could just be seen at its opposite corner.

  Stephen knew his way about this area blindfold. Two fields and fifteen minutes away was his cottage and his brother. He began to run, but immediately the stabbing pain of a stitch halted him. This reduced him to an uncomfortable fast walk, around the side of the shimmering wheat.

  It was when he was halfway across the field that the road to the cottage came in view, and it was only a minute or so later that a large familiar car sped past the gap at high speed, and he knew that he would be too late. For the first time, he felt the tears welling, and a stinging hotness bathed his altered eyes. He tried to run again, but the pain lanced through his side, and, sobbing with frustration, he was forced to stumble along the edge of the field with the jerks and hops of a wounded bird.

  "Tom, you fool, you told him!" He gasped the words out as he ran. "Couldn't you run too? Now we're done for, we really are!"

  The field seemed to stretch out longer the more desperate he became. As in a dream, his movements became futile alongside the endless rows of corn and the vast impassive hill above him. Long before he reached the end, he saw the car pass back again towards Fordrace. Someone was sitting beside the driver.

  He fell out at last upon the road, just below the pub. A goat-souled person was sitting on a trestle-bench beside the way, drinking a pint. It raised the glass in cheery fashion.

  "Whoa, Stevie-boy! Steady on lad, where's the fire?"

  Stephen switched his sight off for politeness sake – he had hardly known he'd made the shift – but didn't stop. He smiled as best he could with his tear-and-sweat-stained face, and passed on. A few more remarks fell against his back, but by then he was turning the corner and coming in sight of the cottage gates.

  The door stood casually ajar. He saw the ash on the stair carpet. He caught the smoke on his breath. He climbed the stairs, going slowly now, and walked along the passage towards the bedroom door.

  At first he thought it was open because of the light streaming through, but the shape the light made was somehow wrong. He soon saw why.

  The ash was still cooling beneath his feet as he looked through the space, framed by burnt wood. He did not go in.

  For a while he sat on the sofa and allowed himself a cry, but pragmatism soon returned. He went to the kitchen, drank three glasses of water and foraged out some food. After a few minutes of unenthusiastic crunching on a Tracker bar, he went upstairs and brought down his small rucksack, which he filled with bars, apples, crisps, chocolate and three roughly-cut ham sandwiches wrapped in cling-film. He added a bottle of water and stood back to consider it. Then he returned to his bedroom and rummaged through the clutter, unearthing a Swiss penknife, his pen-torch, and a thick winter jumper. These things were added to the sack.

  Then he left the cottage, and locked the door behind him.

  Goat-soul was still sitting outside the Monkey and Marvel, with a gleaming new pint before him.

  "Hey-up!" he said. "You look in better nick now, lad."

  "Jack, did you see Mr Cleever's car pass back this way?"

  "Yes. But that was before you came this way yourself, huffing and blowing like a bull."

  "I know. But did he have my brother in the car?"

  "He did. You don't think our councillor's kidnapped him, do you?"

  Stephen was beyond caring. "Yes he has. Did they head for the village?"

  "Far as I know they did. But what's going on, Stevie? What's
the game? Don't get hoity, lad. Answer me!"

  Stephen walked on. He had not got much further when he was nearly run down by Tom's battered car, which was going much too fast. He leapt up against the hedge and waved his arms. Tom stopped ten yards up the road.

  "You're too late." Stephen wasted no words as he got into the car. "You need to turn round. Didn't they pass you on the way?"

  "Did who?" Tom looked dazed and ill.

  "Cleever and Michael of course. I suppose you told him. Turn the car round."

  "I'll find a wider spot." Tom drove on. Goat-soul watched them incredulously as they passed, turned in the Patrons' Car Park and sailed back towards the village.

  Tom said, "He made me tell him. I don't know how. He just forced himself into my mind and I could hear my thoughts spilling out, telling him what we were doing. I told him about Michael, and about Sarah . . . God help me, I daren't think about it. I was sick afterwards."

  "I'm not surprised," Stephen said. "And he's busted Michael out: the door's burnt down. It seems he can control fire too."

  "They didn't pass me." Tom's foot was firmly on the floor. The village rushed towards them. "His car was gone, by the time I . . . felt well enough to drive, but I haven't seen it since."

  "Any number of lanes they could have gone down."

  "What shall we do, then?" At that moment, Tom was in no mood for decision-making. His head felt raw and bruised; it was difficult to think.

  "We'll try Cleever's house. Just in case. Though I doubt he'll have gone back there. Then we try Hardraker Farm."

  "Yes. Stephen, I'm worried about Sarah. I told him—"

  "Yes, you said."

  At the village, Tom parked on the edge of the green, outside Pilate's General Stores. He ran over to Mr Cleever's house, leaving Stephen waiting in the car. The green was quieter now; the Punch and Judy man was beginning to dismantle his stall, most of the children had gone, and the throng of cars had loosened around the grass's yellowed fringes. Fordrace was slowing down.

  Stephen began to feel a deep misery and despair settling over him. Michael was gone, and there was nothing he could do about it. Whatever Cleever was, his powers were too great, and the changes to Michael too profound for Stephen to have any hope of reclaiming him. It was hopeless. Futile.

  What was more, he was changing too. His eyes were always burning hot, and sometimes it took a great effort to stop changing focus for no reason. That struggle weakened him.

  No, he hadn't the strength to go on with this. Let Tom do what he liked; he would leave him to it. He was so tired.

  So tired . . .

  – Wait –

  Stephen had sunk down imperceptibly into a disconsolate slouch. Now he forced himself upright in the passenger seat, and shook his head violently like an animal which smells something bad. The weariness bore down upon him still, but he fought against it, knowing that it was artificial, and had been conjured in him by someone from outside. So subtle had been the attack that he had not noticed the delicate manipulation of his thoughts until he had almost succumbed to fatigue and despair. But the thought of just lying back and losing Michael had been too alien to accept.

  And now he would fight back. First of all, he waited. Soon, little by little, he felt a delicate probing in his head. Something which had drawn back when he roused himself now came creeping in again, seeking to find entry into his mind. He let it come, trying to relax, all the time scanning the green for any sign which would reveal his attacker to him. People were walking here and there; the Punch and Judy man was sitting on a canvas chair counting his takings; a young man sat at a cafe table, looking moodily into a cappuccino. On his left, in the bowels of his shop, Mr Pilate was hunched up over the counter, reading a newspaper.

  The thought probed a little deeper.

  – so tired –

  Stephen relaxed his mind, welcoming it in.

  – so tired –

  Then Stephen exploded his anger outwards, sending out a seismic shock of fury and defiance. He felt the trespassing thought shrivel before his onslaught and saw red bolts flash before his eyes.

  The windscreen shattered.

  In the shop, behind his counter, Mr Pilate staggered backwards as if he had been punched.

  Stephen got out of the car, ignoring the startled faces on the green. The pavement was glazed with fragments of glass.

  His sight had changed. He looked into the shop and saw, against the backdrop of soup cans and washing powder packets, a dragon soul hanging darkly. A red light throbbed in its eyes.

  Tom came running over the green. He was still ten metres away when Stephen slammed back against the car with an impact that sounded like a metal crate being dropped. He fell on the pavement and tried to raise himself, kneeling on all fours with a dazed look on his face.

  Tom skidded across the glass and crouched beside the stricken boy. Stephen's eyes were strange. In a whisper, his voice rose from his open mouth.

  ". . . Pilate."

  Tom looked up. Beyond the open doorway, beside the cheerful Wall's Ice Cream sign and the postcard rack, Mr Pilate was walking towards him.

  And Tom's shirt caught fire. A flame rose up impossibly from his right shoulder, tickling the side of his face with its heat. With a cry, he dashed his left hand down upon it and snuffed it out, stinging his palm with the pain. Immediately, a new flame appeared on his sleeve.

  Mr Pilate was standing in the doorway, looking down on Tom. Stephen knew that his attention was for an instant elsewhere. In a flash he had risen to his feet, and launched himself at the grocer's legs in a low rugby tackle. Mr Pilate was taken completely by surprise. As his legs were swept from under him, he toppled back against the postcard rack, going down in a whirl of multicoloured cards. The fire on Tom went out.

  Stephen picked himself up and pulled Tom by the arm.

  "Come on!" he shouted. "Go!"

  From garden gates and windows, the villagers of Fordrace saw their vicar run pell-mell down the edge of the green, with Stephen MacIntyre at his side. They saw Mr Pilate get slowly to his feet and stare after them impassively, before turning on his heels and going back inside. The door was firmly shut and the blinds drawn. The 'closed' sign was flicked over against the window.

  Outside Pilate's General Store, glass and postcards lay strewn together like a covering of snow.

  32

  It took a little under an hour for Mr Cleever to find them.

  Stephen and Tom made for the Haw Road under cover of the summer hedges. Stephen was carrying his rucksack, and moved across the fields with a feral swiftness, his blood racing and his eyes bright. Contact with the enemy had brought new life into his bones.

  Tom followed him, his shirt singed brown at shoulder and sleeve. There was a new determination in his heart. He did not have the advantage that Stephen had – he could not see Mr Cleever or Mr Pilate as they truly were. The difficulty of reconciling the ordinary appearance of things with what was under them had flummoxed him to start with, and made him slow to think and act. But the flames at his shoulder had changed all that forever. His old respectable trappings were flung off, and he ran low along the hedge lines with a single-minded speed.

  They were bound for Hardraker Farm. Stephen and Tom had not discussed it; they had left the village in silence, knowing exactly where they had to go.

  But the fields were blocked.

  They had entered the croplands which meandered over the gentle folds of the Wirrim's lower slopes. Hardraker Farm lay somewhere above them. As they headed steeply uphill, surrounded by high grass and following a thick hedge studded with beech and oak, Stephen suddenly threw himself flat on his stomach. Tom followed suit, catching his first sight of a head moving just beyond the hedge on the top of the ridge. It was a young man's face, pale and thin. Tom squinted at it for a moment, then looked over at Stephen, who shrugged. Neither of them had met Paul Comfrey.

  The head moved along to the furthest corner of the hedge, never once looking in their direction. At
the corner, just when they hoped it might disappear from sight, it turned and began to retrace its path back along the skyline. Stephen swore softly.

  "They know we're coming," he whispered. "He's waiting for us to show."

  "How could they know? He might not be—"

  "He's one of them all right. My eyes are tingling. I just hope his aren't too."

  "But how could he get here so quickly? We've run all the way."

  "Pilate's notified them somehow. They probably read his mind."

  The head arrived at the nearest corner of the hedge and turned once more. Stephen drummed his fingers on the ground.

  "He'll be here all evening. We'll have to try another way. Follow my move."

  He waited for thirty seconds, until the head had left them behind again. Then he stood up, and ducked through the hedge, at a point where it was pierced by a tall beech tree. A moment later, Tom appeared by his side.

  "Did he see you?"

  "Not a chance."

  They were on the edge of a giant wheat field, turned to a lazy gold by the late afternoon sun. A gate at the far side marked the beginnings of the Hardraker fields. Stephen considered it.

  "That's our way through," he said.

  But it wasn't to be. Before they had gone six steps, Tom caught sight of a figure standing beside the gate, leaning against the trunk of a tree. The face was in shadow, but the sun flashed white on an arm in a sling. Tom pulled Stephen down, knowing it was almost certainly too late.

  "It's a trap," he said. "They're waiting for us to get too far in, then they'll cut us off. We've got to get away from here right now, and no arguments. Which way do we go?"

  But Stephen was looking over Tom's shoulder as he said this. "Oh no," he murmured.

  It seemed at first as if Mr Cleever was standing on the hedge behind them. He stood there like a giant white bird perched on an inadequate twig. His shoes were at least ten feet off the ground, resting on the uppermost branches. His hands were stiffly by his side. What's he doing up there? Tom thought. What's the point?