Battle of the Sun (4 page)

THE SUNKEN KING

I
n the dead of night Jack woke up. The light of the moon was shining directly on his face and across the floor towards the door. Jack swung out of bed and pulled on his jacket and shoes.

He tried the door. It was locked, but Jack knew what to do. His own father had been a master blacksmith, and before he died he had given Jack an iron tool with blades and picks and pokes and prongs that were all folded together, as many as you could count. The bit of iron didn’t look like much unless you opened it out – it looked like something for picking stones out of horses’ hooves, or paring your nails, or gouging a hole in a block of wood, but that was a good thing because it meant that no one wanted to steal it.

Very quietly Jack jigged the iron tool in the lock. There was a sharp click and the door opened. In a second Jack was out of the room and down the stone stairs.

At the third turn of the stairs, Jack saw a door half open, and the low light of a lantern burning. There was a noise. Jack hesitated, poised as a cat, and crept along the wall. He could see no shadow moving on the floor of the room, so he guessed that someone was sleeping in there. Jack took a deep breath, held his breath, and crossed the opening of the door.

He could not help glancing inside, and what he saw stopped him in astonishment.

It was the room of the Creature(s).

A bed was sawn in two, and each lay snoring in his and her own half. Each had half a pillow, with the straw stuffing falling out, and half a blanket with the threads unravelling. By each half a bed was half a table and on each half a table burned half a tallow candle.

By the window was a chair split down the middle, and over the back of one half of the chair were his clothes, and over the back of the other half of the chair were her clothes. On the wall was a painting of a green lion, but the painting had been roughly broken in two, and the jagged edges of the canvas pointed at each other. Jack looked down at the floorboards underneath the painting. It was a strange thing – it was as if the painting had just been painted and the halved lion was leaking gold. There were little gold spatters, like candle wax, all over the floor.

Jack was hypnotised by the room. The breathing of the Creature(s) was like a spell. He felt himself being drawn in, closer and closer to the bed, to the half-body, to the half-face. He put out his hand.

Suddenly he seemed to hear a little dog bark, and he came to his senses, and shook himself, like a dog that has fallen into the water and jumps out.

Boldly, he snatched up the candle from the table nearest to the door, and made his way again down the dark stairs towards the hall, where he was sure he could unlock the front door and find his way home.

But as he reached the hallway, he heard an unmistakable sound of groaning and a voice, wavering and thin, that cried, ‘Help me! Help me!’

Jack hesitated. The door to the courtyard was right in front of him. He had his iron tool. He could escape.
Now, now, now.
And the voice came again, ‘Help me! Help me!’

Jack turned. He moved quickly towards the back of the hallway, and saw steps going down, down. It was pitch black, so black that his candle only lit the tiny square around his feet. Cautiously he took the steps one by one, as they became damper, danker, and he wondered if this was the way into the well.

There was no sound. ‘Who’s there?’ called Jack.

The groaning began again. It was behind him. Jack turned and saw a tiny opening in the wall, very low, so that he had to stoop to get in. As he bent under the mossy lintel, and straightened himself up again, he saw an unlit torch on the wall, and he lit it with his candle. The torch flared up, making Jack blink with the sudden light, and cough with the acrid smell of resin and turpentine.

‘Help me,’ said the voice.

Now in the light of the flare Jack saw the keeper of the voice.

In front of him was a big glass tank, made of thick wavy glass filled with an amber-coloured water, and inside the tank, on a throne covered in barnacles, sat a sunken king.

The King’s crown was sunk deep on to his head, and his head was sunk low on to his chest, and his chest was drooped towards his stomach and his stomach was low on his legs and his legs were deep in the water, and his feet were mired in weed.

His eyes, so set back in his head that they might have looked rearwards, regarded Jack. Such blue eyes, each like a grotto. Underwater caves of eyes that held in them deep secrets, of treasures and gold and lost ships.

The King raised his hand. The fingers were long, like stems of coral, and covered in small scales like a fish. Jack suddenly remembered how his skin had been scaly when he was reeled out of the well. He shuddered. Would he become like this sunken king?

‘Come near,’ said the King.

Trembling, Jack approached, determined to show no fear even though, at this moment, he was made of fear.

‘You are Adam Kadmon,’ said the King.

‘I am Jack Snap,’ said Jack.

‘It hardly matters what you call yourself,’ said the King. ‘If you were not Adam Kadmon, you would not be here.’

‘I don’t want to be here,’ replied Jack. ‘I have been kidnapped by the Magus.’

‘And it is the Magus who has imprisoned me in this tank,’ said the King. ‘I was his master once, and I have tried to prevent him working his evil, but I have failed. Where I have failed, you must succeed.’

‘He wants to turn lead into gold,’ said Jack. ‘That is what the alchemists strive to do, is it not?’

‘He would turn all things into gold – do you understand me, Adam, all things into gold.’

‘All things into gold . . .’ repeated Jack. ‘He hasn’t managed any of it yet – the other boys told me so.’

The King nodded. ‘Once upon a time, I had power over him, and he could do nothing without my command. But he studied in secret, and chose a way that was not the Way of Light. He overcame me, and here you see me now, usurped and in prison. He cannot kill me, for there is an ancient law that prevents a servant from killing his master – even such a servant as he, dark as he. Instead he waits for me to die.’

‘I could shatter the glass,’ said Jack. ‘You could escape with me now.’

The Sunken King shook his head, and his hair was like seaweed that flows under water. ‘That will change nothing. My power must first be renewed.’

‘How can that be?’ said Jack.

‘You must find the Dragon and bid him prepare a Bath. In those strange waters, I can be renewed. But there is not much time left for me. I am already beginning to dissolve.’

And it was true. As Jack looked at the Sunken King he saw how blurred and watery were his outlines.
The amber colour of the water is his lifeblood
, thought Jack.
He is becoming the water he sits in.

‘If the Magus is free to follow his own path,’ said the King, ‘ruin will follow him. There will be nothing left of life, do you hear me, Adam Kadmon? Nothing left of life.’

‘My name is Jack Snap,’ said Jack, and he felt it was important to keep saying his own name, lest he too should begin to dissolve in this formless place, or grow dark in the Dark House. His name was his outline, and his own quiet light. He would be his own name.

‘When you say Dragon, what is it that you mean?’ said Jack.

‘I mean Dragon,’ said the King.

‘There are no dragons,’ said Jack. ‘The very last dragon that ever lived was killed by St George, here in England.’

‘We are in the cellars of the Dark House,’ observed the Sunken King, ‘yet the Dragon is lower down yet. You must dive deeper, deeper dive.’

As Jack was about to argue more about this matter of a dragon he heard a noise above him in the hall. He clapped his hands over the flare, burning himself a bit but not crying out, then moved as fast as he could back up the stairs, holding his jacket around the candle so that he could see his way but not be seen. As he got to the hall, he saw that the door to the courtyard was wide open. His heart leapt. Without thinking he dropped his candle and ran. He would be free, he would go home, he would escape. There was no more need of darkness and dissolution. No more to do with kings and creatures and boys and stone beds. He was his own Jack and he was in the courtyard under the stars, and there was the outer door to the street, and that was open too, and he had crossed the cobbles, and reached it, and he was out, and straight into the arms of . . .

The Magus.

‘How now, little fish? What are you doing swimming here, eh?’

Jack struggled and he kicked and he fought, but it was useless. The Magus was strong as twenty Jacks, and soon had him bundled back through the doors into the hall and into the library where a fire was burning and the room lit.

A grey servant stood waiting for orders.

‘Fetch Wedge,’ ordered the Magus, and to Jack, ‘So you thought you would leave me so soon? Oh no, that cannot be.’

Wedge came hopping into the room. He was dressed in half a nightshirt and wore half a bedcap on his half-head.

‘Not my fault, Master, no, nothing of me, nothing of me!’

‘How did this boy leave the dormitory?’

‘Witchcraft, it must have been!’

‘He didn’t lock the door,’ said Jack suddenly.

The Magus went towards Wedge. Wedge hopped backwards, and they did this all around the room, Wedge hopping backwards and the Magus going forwards, Wedge swearing on all the saints in heaven and all the devils in hell that he had locked the door as he always did.

‘Took the keys off her and locked the door.’

‘She gave you the wrong key, then,’ said Jack, suddenly thinking that was a way to start them squabbling with each other, as well as to save himself from further search and investigation.

‘Spells, it was!’ cried Wedge. ‘Spells, magic! Don’t beat me!’

‘The boy has not learnt to use his powers,’ said the Magus. ‘That I know to be true. If he left the dormitory, and manifestly, he did leave the dormitory, then he left not by magic, but by the door! You left it unlocked, Wedge, and for your stupidity you shall starve for three days and three nights.’

‘Starve her, then!’ cried Wedge. ‘For She is the Keeper of the Keys, as well you know, and She gives me the key of a night to lock the door, as well you know, and I lock it according to the key . . .’ He tapered off, mumbling, ‘as well you know’.

‘You shall both be starved,’ said the Magus. ‘Now get out of my sight.’

Wedge hopped towards the door and, as he passed Jack, he said under his breath in a low snarl, ‘Now you have made an enemy of me, my fine lad, my Jackster. An enemy have you made!’

The Magus sat down at the round stone table and gestured for Jack to sit near him. Unwillingly Jack did so.

‘I have something to show you,’ said the Magus, ‘that no soul here but myself has ever seen. Behold!’

The Magus opened a stone jar that sat on the stone table, and took out a handful of dust. He threw this on the fire, and the fire immediately raged up, and then changed colour, first to green, then to red, then, as the flames turned back to gold, there appeared in the flames in the fireplace, a golden city.

‘London!’ cried Jack.

There was St Paul’s, there was London Bridge with its houses and shops and golden horses going to and fro. There was Cheapside, crammed with stalls selling flowers and root vegetables, and there was Billingsgate, sizeable as a whale, selling every fish of every kind, some in tanks, some in casks, some still gasping golden on golden slabs.

There was the Strand and its printing shops, where Jack was going to be an apprentice. There were the Inns of Court.

There was the Queen’s palace at the Tower of London, and the bear gardens at Vauxhall. There was the river itself, the Thames, turning through the city like a bow, but in the flames it was like a golden bow, that bent past the banks and wharves of the city.

‘Imagine a city made of gold, and each thing in it made of gold, and every person as golden as a precious statue, and the Thames itself a flowing golden god, where a dropped line would hook a golden fish, and where a dipped bucket would pour pure gold. Imagine it, Jack. Such a city would be the wonder of the world and the wealth of the world. A man who was king of that city would be a king indeed.’

‘It is real?’ asked Jack, kneeling and looking in wonder into the flames.

‘It is a vision,’ said the Magus. ‘A vision of what shall be.’

The flames began to die back, and as they did so the golden city shrank and disappeared into the burning wood.

‘So you must stay with us, Jack,’ said the Magus, ‘and if you are what I believe you to be, riches and power will be yours.’

‘What do you believe me to be?’ asked Jack.

‘You are the Radiant Boy,’ answered the Magus, ‘the boy that is written in the ancient books of life, and when your power is added to my power, there is nothing that we shall not accomplish.’

It was almost day. Through the window Jack saw the night disappearing.

The Magus told him to go into the laboratory and stoke the furnace. ‘I shall not punish you on this occasion,’ he said. ‘But I shall watch you closely, and I shall know what you say, what you think, what you do, and where you are. If you become a fly, I shall become a spider. If you become a mouse, you shall feel my whiskers at your tail. If you become a horse, I shall be your rider. And if you are a fish, I shall soon be your net. Run where you will, Jack, I shall not let you go.’