Mist & Whispers (21 page)

Anya found Thule extremely disorientating. The eight-sided buildings spiralled around the streets, creating a maze which led right into the stomach of the city where the library stood.

‘Your buildings are so different to ours back home,’ Steph observed, heading up the library steps. ‘Everything at home is all square and boring; I love the funky shapes here.’

Gavriel smiled. ‘The eight sides are tradition, going right back to the dawn of time. It was believed that if you honour all of the eight Gods, none would befall their wrath on your home, nor your business, nor even your marriage. Each side represents a God: Nerin, the God of the sea, Tempestas, the God of the skies, Theopia, the Goddess of the land, Constance, the Goddess of wisdom, Osgar, the God of war, Rivalyn, the Goddess of innocence, Guinimere, the Goddess of love, and Sarras, the God of the Damned. Seems silly now, having lived like that for so many centuries, believing in Gods.’

Wolfond shot a disapproving grunt at Gavriel.

‘Come on Wolfy, we all know it’s naught but myth, otherwise, why would the Gods leave us like this, with the Darkness and all the death and destruction it has caused? Why not step in and fight for us?’

‘There’s no question in faith,’ he replied, his ardent, burning eyes challenging his leader’s opinion.

Gavriel shook his head and looked back at the Four. ‘Why must talk about heavenly beings always turn so hellish?’

EVEN IN THE
dark, the library was magnificent. It was more like a palace than a city library. Golden cases, laden with books of all shapes and sizes, twisted with the contours of its host, each standing proudly on an endless floor of beautiful peach and ivory marble. Octagonal, crystal cabinets housed ancient and important looking texts and scrolls. How many floors there were, Anya couldn’t say, for balconies seemed to tower right up into the heavens above.

It captured nothing of the dirty streets of the city that lay just beyond its doors, like they’d stepped, once again, into another world. Anya was so taken, she couldn’t even manage aloud the
wow
that circulated her brain as she walked around.

‘This is amazing,’ Tim said to Gavriel as his hands hovered over one of the crystal cabinets, containing a lavish set of scrolls, all written in gold ink.

‘Knowledge is divine. It must be honoured so.’

‘Gavriel, where were the Kingdom’s records kept?’ Anya asked, fighting the temptation to haul up in a corner and read.

‘This way,’ he answered, and the Four followed with Wolfond hanging back as usual.

As with the city layout, all the shelves were set around octagonal pillars and snaked around the library.

It didn’t take long for the Four to realise Gavriel was not at all familiar with the place. ‘Just here...’ his words would tail off as they’d round a corner, and a long silence would follow once he realised his navigation was steering them in a wrong direction. This went on for some time, all around the lower floor, on each of the upper levels and a second time around the ground floor, until he eventually gave up. ‘I’m sorry, it has been many years since I was last in this library, and I must confess, this isn’t somewhere I’d often visit.’

Something bumped beneath the floor where Anya was stood, startling everyone. She swung round and lowered the lantern Harrion had given her to the ground, the light revealing a trap door.

BANG. BANG.

The sound was definite, and with purpose. Gavriel drew his sword and placed himself between the Four and the trap door, Wolfond at his side, crossbow ready.

Heart in mouth, Anya watched as the door started to creak open.

‘Oh, people! Actual people!’ came a raspy voice, and the trap door swung wide open. A small man, wearing a peculiar burgundy tailcoat, poked his head up from the passage below. He was an odd little fellow, with bulging eyes, greyish skin and electric wisps of dirty, black matted hair.

Gavriel held his sword to the man’s neck and stared down at him with suspicious eyes. ‘Who are you?’

‘Wilburh,’ the man said, his eyes crossed down at the blade. ‘The librarian.’

Gavriel raised his eyebrow, but his sword remained, ready to see him on his way to the afterlife should he turn mad. ‘The librarian? Tell me then, can you take us to where you keep the records?’

‘Of course, if you would kindly lower that broomstick, I can take you there now.’

‘Broomstick?’ The word caught Gavriel off guard.

‘Or fish, whatever you want to call it.’

They all looked round to each other, neither one sure if he’d said what they all thought he had.

Gavriel lowered his sword and helped the man out of the passage, his eyebrows still raised, half confused, half suspicious.

‘This way,’ Wilburh said, and he turned toward the steps leading to the first floor. ‘Oh, and mind the puddles. Blasted rain won’t give in.’ He took a book from the shelf beside him, opened it, and held it above his head as he walked.

Moonstruck,
Gavriel mouthed to the Four as they followed Wilburh up the flight of stairs.

He must have been seeing things, Anya thought, confirming her earlier choice to remain quiet about the whispering voices and pirate ship she’d seen out in the woods.

WHILST THE FOUR
went through the records, Wilburh twittered about the books, having full blown conversations with some of them. He even invited a large hardback downstairs for a lecture on ancient ink-making techniques. The book did not look keen.

‘He’s got to have been here somewhere, otherwise how could he have built that sundial?’ Papers were strewn all over the table, having gone through census after census in search of just one name, but it was nowhere to be seen and Anya was getting frustrated.

‘Maybe it was a different Weaver. We can’t be sure they were linked,’ Tim said, his mouth sloping with disappointment.

‘Oh yeah, it’s just a simple coincidence that the guy who gave the Princess the Lunaris jewel – the jewel the riddle tells us we need to move on to the next place – was called Weaver
as well
as
the guy who wrote the riddle in the first place.’ She snatched another paper from the mass of records in front of them and sighed, loud and on purpose.

‘We’ve been through these papers twice. Unless he’s over 150 years old, which is pretty unlikely – ’

‘It’s not that unlikely,’ Gavriel chipped in from over by the window. He was keeping watch, both on the street below and on the mad librarian. ‘We better head back to the others soon, make camp for the night.’

‘You say it’s not unlikely someone lives to 150?’ Tim said, looking most keen to hear what Gavriel meant.

‘Well, most men live until they are in their 200’s, 210’s even.’

‘For real?’ Anya blurted.

‘Yes,’ Gavriel laughed. ‘Why, how old do people live where you come from?’

‘Gosh, average age must be eighty-five?’ Tim replied, the others all nodding in agreement.

‘Wow, eighty-five? So young. How do you fit anything in such a short space of time?’

The Four looked at each other, unbelieving smiles tugging their lips. Just when they think they’re getting used to the crazy, it gets bumped up another notch and renders them speechless all over again.

‘I know it’s none of my business, but, are you looking for someone? Is that what your private quest is? Because I could help.’

Part of her wanted to tell him, but the truth was she still felt selfish by giving her own quest any precedent, and she hated feeling that way. Still, his help might solve this riddle, and as bad as she felt about the Virtfirthians, she also felt bad about dragging her friends away from their homes and loved ones.

The others looked to her, their eyes telling her they wanted to let him in.

She let out a sigh, making a decision she didn’t feel a hundred percent comfortable with. ‘Kind of,’ she said. ‘We were given instructions, of a sort, though they’re quite vague. If the prophet was right and I do somehow manage to bring any kind of normality back to the Kingdom, we will eventually have to leave here and return to where we came from. But, it wasn’t really simple how we got here, and it’s going to be just as tricky moving on. By the looks of it, we need the Lunaris jewel that Princess Abeytu used to wear. I’m not sure why or how, but without it, we can’t get home. We’re trying to find the man that gave it to her, the same man the King employed to build the sundial when Harrion was born. We’re hoping that if we find him, we can ask him where we can find another jewel.’

‘Along with a few other questions,’ Michael muttered under his breath.

‘I’ve never heard of him, though I have seen the sundial; it was pretty special. Pardon the joke, but it must have taken him a long time to complete.’

‘Time – sundial – genius,’ Anya winked. Then, in only the time it took her eye to reopen, she realised what had been staring her in the face from the moment Barlem told them about the sundial. ‘Oh my God! I can’t believe I didn’t see it sooner! The sundial –
In
time
with kings
– the jewel, it needs to be taken to the sundial, by moonlight.’

She watched the others as they processed her epiphany. Each one of their jaws fell, starting with Tim, followed quickly by Michael, and lastly Steph.

‘But, the sundial was in the castle grounds, wasn’t it? So... it’s gone too?

Silence reigned.

Not only did the Weaver not exist anywhere in the records of the Kingdom, but both the jewel and the sundial they needed to get home had disappeared eighteen years ago.

Shortly after their deflation, Steph and Tim went with Gavriel to persuade Wilburh to return with them to the camp, whilst Anya and Michael stayed to clean away the records. Wilburh had begun making such a fuss, threatening to stop their library privileges if they left the papers out, they’d had to usher him away just to keep the noise down.

‘I’m sorry,’ Anya said to Michael, breaking the silence between them.

‘Don’t – it’s not your fault.’

‘It is. It’s all my fault and we will never see home again. Scott’s is doomed. There is no way we can save it now, and there is no way we can get home.’ She sat herself on the table, legs dangling aimlessly over the edge as the cold realisation of their predicament squashed every last drop of hope inside her.

‘Anya, don’t feel bad. No one could have known any of this was going to happen. The Weaver himself obviously didn’t even see this coming, because if he had, he wouldn’t have left the riddle for someone to find when there was no chance of anyone completing the journey.’ Putting the papers he’d gathered back on the table, he moved to where she was sitting and stood right in front of her. He took up her marked hand and gently rubbed his thumb back and forth over her knuckles. She gave a small smile, neither consoled nor freed of guilt.

‘Hey, please don’t look sad. I’m sure there is another way home, we just have to keep looking, and if when we make it back Scott’s is gone, we’ll just open a new one, as a tribute to Iain.’

Her smile widened, feeling some warmth from his words. ‘You’re right. We need to stay focused on what’s really important here.’

He took a step closer, and with his free hand, stroked her cheek gently.

‘What are you doing?’ she whispered, already knowing the answer but not knowing whether she wanted it or not.

‘Exactly what you said; focusing on what’s really important.’ He leant in to her and their lips connected. As he kissed her, images flashed through her mind, of the good times when they were dating, the times when they argued, and the moment they left Burrow Mump.

And then... a face.

A face a mix of faintly teal skin and dark green scales, eyes of emerald lined with gold, hiding in the shadow of a hooded cloak.

She pulled away from the kiss and bit her lip, trying not to say Lorcan’s name out loud.

‘What’s the matter?’ Michael asked, but the moment the words left his lips, something happened.

The ground rumbled, low and threatening.

‘What was that?’ she said, and they ran to find the others. ‘Gavriel!’ she called out over the balcony to the ground floor, where he, Steph and Tim were still talking to Wilburh. Another breath and the ground shook again, not once but twice.

Wolfond ran in from the street. ‘The giant ones are coming, everybody hide, NOW.’

Then things got really bad.

Something crashed through the roof of the building and one half of it collapsed right on top of Wolfond and Tim, narrowly missing Gavriel, Steph and the crazy librarian.

The girls’ screams rang through the falling building, echoing along with the sounds of crashing stone and smashing glass. Anya sprinted down the staircase, Michael at her heels, and began pulling at the rubble that encased her friends. Steph was already doing the same, though her screams were even more hysterical than Anya’s.

‘Michael, get them out of here,’ Gavriel ordered as he too wrestled with the fallen stone. ‘The trap door – it leads to a set of tunnels that run beneath the city to the Crypt in Wargrave. I’ll catch up with you. GO!’

Another earth shattering sound collided with the building, and this time Anya could see the source of the destruction. Lurching over the gaping hole in the side of the building, club in hand, was something she could describe only as a giant zombie. Its skin was a decayed blackish-green, its eyes numb, bleeding what looked like black blood in the dark, its stench suffocated the air.