The Greenstone Grail (43 page)

Even wearing his goggles, the sun was dazzling. It must have been around midday: the glare was right overhead, bleaching the blue from the sky, reducing shade to mere wisps and dimples etched on a colourless landscape. The vastness of the Grokkul had disappeared into sand and rock, melding with its surroundings. He knew it was there – he could see the double row of its spines – but somehow, the threat seemed barely real. Some torn fragments of cloth lay outside the cave; the blood spots had long since evaporated. He thought: I’m trapped. Even if I could get past the Grokkul, I have no transport, and the city is hundreds of miles away, and the suit might protect my skin but the heat would kill me in under a mile … His only chance was to sleep, and return home the way he came.

Back in the cave he explored the recesses, sliding his fingers between the bars of each grille, but the rock did not waver. He kissed Kwanji’s swollen hand, thinking he should have done it before, and returned to the entrance, leaning against the wall in an attitude similar to hers, eyes closed, searching his mind for the portal that would take him back. But although he found it, now the wrong-coloured blotch was dark and opaque, with no fizzing snow effect. It was like approaching a door, unexpectedly sealed without handle or key: his thought
beat on the panels, but it would not yield. In the end, unexpectedly, he slept.

When he awoke he was still in the cave. Beyond the entrance the sun was sinking towards evening. His neck was stiff from the awkwardness of his position, and he was very thirsty. He drank the rest of the water and stood up, squirming through the narrowness of the cave mouth, halting just outside. He couldn’t simply wait here to die, he had to try something, even if it was pointless. Anyway – better quick than slow. Maybe the power of the cup would help …

He stood in the lee of the cliff, screwing up what was left of his courage, watching the sun crawl down the sky, behind the barrier of the mountains.

Eric had taken to sleeping in the back room of the antique shop, guarding Rowena’s treasures, or so he said. She lived in the flat above. He had come upstairs for a meal a few times, when specially invited, but appeared hesitant about intruding on her private territory. However, they usually breakfasted together in the back room, sharing her daily paper, the
Telegraph
of course, while he asked questions about Tony Blair, and the aftermath of the war, and what the world was all about.

That morning Rowena was on the phone from an early hour, still chasing up contacts in the faint hope that she might pick up the trail of the stolen cup. She had just drawn a blank with a dealer in Oxford and was exchanging general courtesies and comments on the summer weather. ‘Well, we had that big storm on the day of the robbery but it’s been very hot ever since … Yes, it was unlucky – if the lights hadn’t blown the thief might have had no opportunity … A dwarf, really. Police want me to say it was a child but I know what I saw – would’ve had to be a bloody young child … Ran
off into the woods. The kids went after him but he got away in the rain. Coming down like a monsoon … You didn’t? Lucky you …’ She rang off, remarking: ‘They didn’t have a storm in Oxford. Nice for them. We only had it here – almost like someone laid it on.’

‘Is possible,’ Eric said. ‘Force can do many things. Control weather – control minds.’

‘Really believe that, don’t you?’ said Rowena. ‘Sometimes, you almost convince me. Uncanny, the whole business.’ She poured more tea for herself, and coffee for Eric, who had acquired a liking for it bordering on addiction. ‘Stealing a cup you can’t sell, Von Humboldt dying like that – now they say it’s natural causes – too many things that don’t fit, little things, niggling at me …’ Her voice petered out; she replaced the coffee pot, frowning. ‘That conversation just now – there was something, something that didn’t quite …’

‘You think they lie?’ Eric asked.

‘No – nothing like that. A false note. Bugger – can’t find it. It’s there, but I can’t find it.’

‘What is this bugger that you always mention?’ Eric said. ‘Is word I hear often, but I not understand.’

‘It’s a swear word,’ Rowena explained. ‘You use it when you’re angry.’

‘What does it mean?’

Rowena told him. Eric looked rather surprised. ‘In my world,’ he said, ‘we have swear words, but not like that. We use words for story, corruption, untruth. What people do in sex is not bad. Is just a matter for them. I must use this word?’

‘Not if you don’t want to,’ Rowena responded. ‘Use any word you like.’ She left Eric to choose and reverted to her former problem, glaring furiously at the middle distance.
Then her face changed. ‘But … how odd. Why should he –?’ She picked up the phone again, re-dialled Oxford. ‘Sorry to bother you again. Need to check about the weather. Are you sure it didn’t rain? – Not anywhere round there?’ She hung up, and looked at Eric. ‘It didn’t rain anywhere near Oxford that day,’ she said.

Eric was murmuring to himself, presumably trying out potential swear words for size. ‘Fantasy!’ he essayed. And then: ‘I tell you, storm not natural. Someone make bad weather.’

‘It’s not that.’ Rowena thought for a long minute, then dialled a new number. Evidently no one was there.

‘You are upset,’ Eric said, watching her expression, concern imprinting his own features. ‘Who do you call?’

‘Annie.’ She shrugged off the worry with a visible effort. ‘Never mind. Nothing important. Time to open up.’ Her assistant wasn’t due in that day, and she wasn’t going to take time off sorting out minor inconsistencies. Eric started work polishing a walnut side table, and Rowena decided to think of something else.

She tried Annie’s number again half an hour later, without success. She tried Bartlemy, and got the machine. Then she closed the shop.

‘Come on,’ she told Eric. ‘We’re going to Eade. Probably a wild goose chase – but I think something’s wrong.’

‘What is wild goose?’ Eric demanded, in the van which was Rowena’s standard means of transport. ‘Is dangerous?’

‘Don’t know. But we’ve got one dead body – two if you count Effie Carlow – and the Grail’s gone, and … why tell such a damn silly lie?’

‘What lie?’ Eric said. ‘Who lie?’

Rowena explained.

The spellfire had told Bartlemy little that he didn’t know, and beneath his customary placidity he was growing anxious. A further period of reflection had given him a new idea, the same idea which had occurred to Nathan. He was mildly irritated with himself for not thinking of it before. ‘The woodwose,’ he told Hoover, as he pulled on suitable boots. ‘Nathan’s retiring friend. If anyone saw anything, it would be him. No, you can’t come. You’ll make him nervous. I’ll go alone.’

He wandered through the trees for some time, well away from the path, moving very quietly for all his bulk. Few twigs snapped under his feet; the leaf-fall of a dozen winters scarcely crackled. Birds watched him, but piped no warning. On the border of the Darkwood he came to a hollow oak, struck by blight or lightning years before: nothing now remained but the outer husk of the trunk, colonized by insects and parasitic plants, deep in a thicket of nettles. Nathan had passed it twice in his searches, but he hadn’t stopped to look inside. Bartlemy glanced through a fissure in the bark, drew back a short way, and sat for a while on a bank nearby, patient and immobile, while the wood grew indifferent to his presence. When he got up, his movements were slow and altogether noiseless. He
parted the nettles with hands that felt no sting, clearing a way into the secret heart of the tree. Through the fissure, he saw something like a bunch of bent twigs, half buried in leaf-shreds and wood-dust. It sat motionless, petrified, the elongated head in profile, returning his gaze with one whiteless eye. Remembering Nathan’s name for it, he said very softly: ‘Woody?’

If something already still could become even stiller, it did. Bartlemy thought the very beat of its heart froze. He said: ‘I’m Nathan’s friend, you know that. I’m your friend. We’ve lived side by side a long time without disturbing each other. I’ve always known you were here. I’ve always left you alone. I mean you well, little one. You have no need to fear me.’

The woodwose still didn’t answer, but he thought its heart began to beat again, a tiny fluttering drum somewhere beyond the edge of hearing.

‘I know you’re in trouble,’ Bartlemy said, keeping his voice very low, very gentle. ‘I can help you.’

The woodwose jumped like a grasshopper, hitting its skull against the inside of the tree, then shrank even further into the hollow, willing itself into invisibility against wood-grain and dust-shadow. But Bartlemy’s eyes were long trained to see things that didn’t want to be seen.

‘It’s all right,’ he went on. ‘I can protect you. Come to the house; stay in my garden for a while. Nobody enters there without my permission.’ Except a dwarfish thief – but he had taken precautions since then.

‘It will find me,’ Woody said at last, its voice less than the whisper of a whisper.

‘Not if you stay with me,’ Bartlemy said with quiet authority. ‘I have power: you can sense that. In my garden you will be safe.’

‘Nathan can’t help,’ Woody said. ‘He looked for me, but I was afraid … He can’t help. It would come after
him
.’

‘I’ll take care of Nathan,’ Bartlemy promised. ‘You were following the man in the wood, weren’t you? The man in grey. I expect Nathan asked you to watch, so you watched him. You saw what killed him. That’s why you’re afraid.’

‘Water,’ Woody said more softly than ever, as if he feared the breeze would overhear. ‘It looked human, but it was made of water. It drowned the man, with its fingers. It chased him off the road, and hit him on a tree, and drowned him.’

‘Did it see you?’

‘Saw me. I ran, but it came after. I hid, but it was searching. Then the other man called it.
Nenufar
.’

‘There was another man?’

Bartlemy walked briskly back to Thornyhill, letting Woody follow at his own pace. ‘Stay near the walls,’ he had told him, ‘in the herb garden. Nothing evil goes near my herb garden. I’ll see the dog doesn’t bother you.’ Woody had seemed comforted, as if telling what he had seen had freed him from a burden. Bartlemy entered the house without looking back; he knew better than to check on him. Another refugee, he thought with the flicker of a smile. One moves out, a new one moves in. Who next, I wonder?

But he had other things on his mind.
Nenufar
. It was a French word for a water lily, but in the language of magic it meant a sea-flower, venomous and many-tentacled, beautiful and lethal. No doubt one of many names for the elusive water-spirit, the name used by the man who had summoned it, who controlled it, who told it to kill. A deadly partnership in quest of the Grimthorn Grail … Woody hadn’t recognized the man, of course. But Bartlemy thought he could recognize him, and he wasn’t happy about it.

In the kitchen, Hoover greeted his master with an imperative bark.

‘What is it?’ Bartlemy asked.

The dog trotted into the drawing room, and barked again at the flashing light on the answering machine. Bartlemy played back Annie’s message and tried to call her, but there was no reply. ‘She may be on her way here,’ he reflected. ‘No matter. The important thing is to do what we can for Nathan. Now. Annie can take care of herself.’

The sun had moved round, and the shadow of the cliff lengthened across the sand. Nathan stood close to the rock-face, nerving himself for a final, desperate dash, trying to decide which way to run. Kwanji had got past the Grokkul, so it must be possible; he should have asked her how she did it, which path she chose, but it was too late now. He thought of holding the Grail out in front of him, in the hope that the magic might afford some kind of protection; in stories, objects of power would do something – well –
powerful
under such circumstances. That was what they were for. But when he looked at the cup in daylight it appeared somehow reduced by the glare, drained of its greenish hue, the coiling pattern almost worn away, the few gems which adorned it dull as pebbles. He wanted to picture it glowing with a holy radiance which would burn anyone who touched it, or lightning flashing from the bowl which would scorch the Grokkul to a cinder. But it looked too ordinary, too cup-like, and he suspected that even if it were capable of such things, he would need to know the spell words first. He recalled the one he had heard the Grandir use, in the chamber of crystals: ‘
Fia
!’ – but nothing happened. He tucked the cup back inside his suit, and returned to checking out the terrain.

There came a moment when, gazing upwards, he thought he saw spots dancing before his eyes, perhaps because of the sun-dazzle. But the spots didn’t vanish, they grew and darkened, descending lazily on the thermals, becoming winged
shapes with arrow-tipped tails, and pointed muzzles. Wild xaurians. Their leader was white; the others were black, or piebald. One of them dived suddenly, snatching up some small creature which was scurrying across the sand. They helped Kwanji once before, Nathan said to himself. Maybe they had helped her again. Maybe they’ll help me. He felt a sudden, impossible surge of hope, and forgetful of the slumbering monster he waved and called to them, though he knew they understood no tongue. But they continued to wheel and turn, scanning the ground for prey, ignoring him. Presently two of them swooped down simultaneously, landing on the twin boulders which marked the arch of the Grokkul’s spine. They began snapping at each other, tails lashing, obviously fighting over whatever they had managed to catch. The sand below them twitched and slid – Nathan cried out in warning – the monster’s head detached itself from the desert floor and swung round. The remaining xaurians dived all at once, darting in and out, slashing at the impenetrable hide with toothed beak and taloned wing. For a few seconds Nathan watched, riveted; then he recollected himself, and began to run. The ground shook with the pounding of the Grokkul’s tail and the shifting of its huge feet, but all its attention was on the xaurians. He sprinted down the slope and plunged into an old watercourse, using the meagre cover to pause and look back.