Destiny (20 page)

Riders on foaming black stallions were galloping through the broken windows, calling out with savage joy and making after the stag. They were dressed in skins and leather and wore masks of green, and their long hair blew free behind them. The walls of the room seemed to tremble and flicker, and I saw the wild green forest glade that had once been there, before the Abbey had even been built.

“The Wild Hunt rides for you, Helen!” Velvet cried.
The Priestess and her followers gaped in horror, trying to avoid the plunging hooves of the horses and the sharp spears of the hunters, as the fearless riders galloped in a circle, blowing on bright horns whose wild, sweet notes echoed through the night. The stag darted away, but now the hunters had other prey—the Priestess and her dark brood. And other riders were joining the hunt: Cal charged up on his faithful old horse, his face grim and desperate as he searched for Sarah in the crowd, and behind Cal, riding through the night on a beautiful white mare, was Josh. He thundered over to where I stood breathless, and swept me up onto his saddle. “Agnes and Cal found me, but I came back only for you,” he said. “Everything I am is yours, Evie, if you want it.”

“I want you so much,” I answered, my voice shaking. “I want to start again. Can you forgive me for making you wait so long?”

“There’s nothing to forgive.” Then Josh kissed me, and I was home at last. His arms were wrapped tightly around me and he was warm and kind and true, and I was ready to start again. Josh was the sun after rain, he was the morning after the storm, he was a spark of healing in a bitter world…. He was Josh, and there was a whole future waiting for us.

But right then the battle had begun. Everything else
would have to wait. The coven had recovered from the initial shock and swarmed forward to defend their mistress. The Wild Hunt was ranged on one side, and the coven on the other. The Dark Sisters were trying to drive the hunters back with their bright knives and their long flaming torches. Helen, Sarah, and Velvet stood back to back in our circle. Terrified students cowered where they could, sobbing hysterically. Cal launched himself onto Dr. Franzen, who whipped out a short black knife and slashed at Cal frenziedly. But Cal ducked and wrestled him to the ground; then Dr. Franzen lashed out again and sent Cal spinning across the floor…there was blood on his face…then I couldn’t see him anymore. I slipped down from Josh’s horse. “Go and help Cal!” I said, then ran back to Helen and the girls. We held hands in the circle, meaning to call on Agnes to help us. But we were surrounded by the howling women, goading us with their fiery weapons, and the Priestess was bearing down on us. Helen turned to Velvet. “Can you hold her off, with your Wild Hunt? I need you and Cal and Josh to stay here and just make sure that none of the students gets hurt. And I need Sarah and Evie to come with me.”

“Of course,” Velvet replied eagerly. She was holding a torch she had snatched from one of the Dark Sisters, and
she looked like a warrior queen, dangerous, but proud and happy. “It’s your time, Helen, Do whatever you have to do.” Then she smiled. “I chose right, didn’t I? I took my second chance. Now go!”

“Thank you—thank you!” Helen cried. Velvet leaped out of the circle, wielding the torch like a flaming sword, as Helen began to sing, a high pure note above all the fumes and noise and madness. The last thing I saw before the dark, confused battle scene vanished was Dr. Franzen running up and catching hold of Velvet’s hair, and I heard the Priestess chanting a terrible incantation in a reckless, despairing voice….

But I was somewhere cool and dim. My anxiety about our enemies, about Josh, and Cal, and the battle, my astonishment about Velvet—all that suddenly left me like taking off a heavy coat and slipping into cool water. Sarah and Helen and I were holding hands, and Helen was singing. It was so beautiful that I thought my heart would break.

Her song was as pure as the starlight, as clear as a mother’s voice calling to her child, as sacred as an angel singing in praise of the wakening world. Helen grasped our hands firmly as she guided us through the secret paths of the air, and this time there was no annihilating
storm to pass through. This was all peace, and beauty, and light. We danced on the wind, Helen, Sarah, and I, sustained by her song and renewed by our sisterhood. We saw the trembling shapes of familiar places below us, a long way off, as though through deep water: the Abbey, the ruins, the ring of stone on the Ridge, the tumbled remains of Uppercliffe, and the cave mouth on the White Tor. I thought I even glimpsed the shadow of the old cathedral at Wyldford Cross. “Where are we going?” I asked Helen, though it seemed that I didn’t speak, but that she understood my thoughts.

“To find Time,” she answered. “And what might have been.”

I didn’t really understand what Helen meant. But she was chanting again, a different call now, soft and slow, and we began to descend. The air moved and changed, shimmering like silk, and we had arrived.

It was dark. We were in some kind of cold, damp room—the grotto, maybe? Or some cellar under the school…Helen struck a match, and lit a candle that was stuck in a rusted iron holder attached to a wall of damp gray stones. It took me a moment to work out where we were.

I had been here before. Down in the crypt under the
chapel ruins, in a series of underground tunnels and cellars. In my first term at Wyldcliffe I had been trapped down here, pursued by Celia Hartle and her coven as she tried to steal the Talisman and use it to bind Sebastian to her will. Sarah and Evie had helped me to fight them as I had held Sebastian in my arms. And now we were back. Everything had come full circle. And I knew that whatever happened, Sebastian would not resent my happiness with Josh. Sebastian wouldn’t have wanted me to stay trapped forever in the dark places we had known together. It was with a profound sense of hope that I turned to Helen and said, “Why have we come here?”

“I have to stop this endless fighting, and there’s only one way I can do it. And I have to do it now.” She began to tug at her finger, and for the first time I noticed that she was wearing a plain gold ring. She held it up, and I saw by the light of the candle that there were faint markings on the inside, letters that seemed to spell the word
now
.

“Do you believe that everything is connected?” Helen asked, her pale eyes gleaming strangely. “I do. I believe.”

She walked to the end of the wide, vaulted crypt and rested her hands lightly on the stone table, or altar, that stood at the other end. She seemed to be searching for something, passing her hands this way and that over the
rough stone. “Look!” she said. Sarah and I knelt down, and saw that Helen was pointing to a faint outline of a circle that had been chiseled into the bottom of the altar, a kind of shallow groove. Helen pressed the ring into the circle, and the whole of the stone table began to swing to one side, revealing a spiraling stone staircase that sank down into the very heart of the earth. It was lit by strange glowing blocks of crystal set into the walls. Helen slipped the ring back on her finger and stood up.

“Where did you get that ring?” asked Sarah.

“Lynton gave it to me.”

“Lynton? The boy who played the music for you? What has he got to do with all this?”

“I can’t really explain,” Helen replied. “Not yet. But do you want to go on, or turn back?”

Sarah and I looked at each other. The complete love and trust I felt for Helen was reflected in Sarah’s eyes. “Do you really need to ask?” I said. “We’re with you to the end.”

And so the three of us went down into the secret earth, a hundred steps and a hundred more, again and again. My old fears of the dark had left me, I was with my sisters, and I wasn’t afraid, just driven on to finish what we had started. We went farther down again until we had lost
count and were dizzy with the many turnings of the stairs and the endless echoes of our footsteps. And when I felt I couldn’t go any farther, and had lost all sense of time and distance, we came at last to the bottom. We passed though a low wooden door and stepped out into a circular chamber carved out of black rock. Four large lamps of crystal gave off a soft, pure light.

The sides of the black chamber were polished and gleaming, and it had no roof. The walls rose up and up until they passed from our sight, as though we were standing at the base of an impossibly deep well. I thought, or perhaps imagined, that high above us I could see a speck of light and a window back to the living world above.

In the middle of the chamber was a round pool, surrounded by a shallow wall. The water came right up to the level of the wall and was perfectly still, like a sheet of glass. A delicately wrought arch rose up over the pool, and from the arch hung an iron bell.

We looked at each other in wonder and went closer, drawn to the strangeness and beauty of it. At the very top of the arch there was a symbol—a circle like the sun, crossed by two swift wings—or was it the shape of two sharp daggers?

“The Seal!” Sarah exclaimed. And then we saw that
there were other shapes and symbols engraved on the bell: interlinking circles that formed themselves into letters and words that we could somehow understand.

I guard Time; that which is, was, will be, and might have been. And each Circle is a part of the Whole.

Helen looked pale, but determined, as though she had made up her mind to do something she dreaded and yet desired.

“We have been given the gift of our elemental powers, but there is another element—Time itself. And Miss Scratton told us, didn’t she, that there is a crack in Time under Wyldcliffe’s valley, and this is it, right under the chapel that the first holy sisters built here in praise of the One who created all things—past and future, seen and unseen. The ancient men who carved the Eye of Time in the rock under the Ridge were paying homage to this sacred, dangerous place. There is a door here, concealed by this water, between us and the Shadows, and many other worlds. One of them is the world of what might have been. It’s another dimension that lies hidden, coiled inside the ones we see and know, locked away behind a secret door. It’s that door we must open now.”

“How do you know these things, Helen?” I said, mesmerized by her power and beauty and certainty.

“I feel them in my heart. I see things, shapes and forms and meanings, like…like bright angels hovering on the edges of my mind. I believe we have been led here, now, at this moment, to reveal all secrets. Besides,” she said, lightly touching the Seal that she still wore on her blouse, “the Seal is awake now. It speaks to me, and I am home at last.”

“So what do you want us to do?” Sarah asked bluntly. “And how does this help us to defeat the Priestess?”

“We can’t defeat her.”

“But we trapped her in the rock,” I protested. “And we swept her and the coven away when the lake rose up. And we have Cal and Josh now, and Velvet and the Wild Hunt—we can beat her again.”

“And she will come back again and again, each time more deadly,” Helen replied impatiently. “How many battles have we had with the Priestess? This time we have to make an end. Because there’ll always be someone innocent that she can take hostage: a child, a mother, or my friends. She’ll try over and over to force me into giving her what she craves. Even without the powers of our Keys, she’s a formidable enemy. We can’t truly defeat her, or her sorcerer Dr. Franzen, or her terrible Eternal King. We can’t stop the Priestess. But we can stop Celia Hartle from ever
becoming the Priestess in the first place. We can make her choose differently. And to do that we have to turn back time.”

“But that’s impossible!” Sarah said

Helen smiled. “And was it impossible for Evie to restore Sebastian to the One? Was it impossible for you to go down into Death and return as a queen? Nothing is impossible, if you believe.”

“But how—time is fixed, you can’t change it,” I said, puzzled.

“Time is now, and now, and now. It’s a never-ending circle; a whole dance of circles within circles. All we have to do is find the right circle.”

Sarah and I looked at each other, still not understanding but willing to follow. Helen had opened the Seal, and was a daughter of air, the greatest of all the elements, the breath of life. We would follow wherever she went, if she would let us.

Helen began to walk slowly around the pool, chanting, “Holy wind of peace, come to us now, as soft as the breath of innocent children.” As she walked, the air sprang into life, swirling in a shimmering circle of glinting colors. She smiled at us. “Dear Sarah and Evie—lend me your gifts.”

Sarah slowly followed Helen, circling the pool, and as
she walked she opened her hands, and fresh green leaves fell from them, scenting the air as she walked. “Leaves from the living tree, earth’s gifts, heal and bless us, from sunrise to sunset.”

Then I made my circle too. I closed my fingers around the Talisman and silently asked Agnes to help me. “Fire and water, flame and river,” I chanted, “burn brightly, flow sweetly; set our hearts on fire and quench our thirst for what is right and true.” A circle of soft flames flickered and shone at the edge of the pool, floating on the water and reflecting in its glassy depths.

“Thank you.” Helen squeezed our hands and suddenly looked straight at us. “Whatever happens, I want you to know—” She stopped, then struggled to say what was on her mind. “If things change, if I have to go away…”

“What is it, Helen?” Sarah said gently. “What are you trying to tell us?”

“Nothing.” Helen hugged us both in turn, and then let us go. Tears glimmered in her eyes, but she smiled and said, “What was it I used to say—all shall be well? I truly believe that now, even if I can’t see everything that is to come. Let’s carry on.”

She raised her arms and said, “I summon the world of what might have been. I am the Keeper of the Seal. Let
the previous Keeper come to me from the circle of Time, and take back what was hers.” She leaned over the pool of water and reached up to the iron bell, and struck it lightly. It gave out an echoing sound, like the memory of a song. Then Helen unfastened the Seal from her clothes and held it over the pool. “I sacrifice this Key to unlock the door of Time.”