The Hunting Ground (23 page)

Cullayn stood, smiling. ‘Anyway, I don’t really need you, that’s what I’m coming to in this little chat. Ben and Janey are enough. You can go.’ He gazed down at Elliott. ‘Well? What are you waiting for? I never make an offer twice.’

Elliott didn’t move. He knew by now there must be conditions attached.

Cullayn laughed. ‘I like you, Elliott. You haven’t whined yet. That’s what’s kept you alive, not your speed. So then, here’s the charity I’m offering. Leave freely now, or try to make it back to my secret room. That’s where your father and Ben are. They’re both still alive. The room’s not far from here. It’s never far from
wherever you are in here, eh? And if you make it there before me, I’ll let you all go. I promise. I’ll even free Janey. Oh yes,’ Cullayn said, when he saw Elliott’s eyes widen. ‘I caught her. ’Course I did.’

‘What if I don’t get there before you?’

Cullayn grinned good-naturedly. ‘Do you really need to ask that?’

Elliott shook his head.

‘That’s it, then,’ Cullayn said, tightening his belt. ‘I’ve given you plenty of chances, Elliott, and so far you’ve not availed yourself of any. What do you say to a gallant ending? Or do you just want to leave? Take my first offer? Save your skin?’

Cullayn flicked his hand towards the opening into the garden – a you-may-go gesture. Elliott could hear singing birds out there. He could smell the grass Dad had mown yesterday. He turned to face Cullayn.

‘Excellent!’ Cullayn rasped, seeing the decision he had made. ‘Good boy! No wonder your father’s so proud of you. Let’s make him even prouder, eh?’

‘No tricks if I race you back to the passage?’ Elliott said, knowing how pointless a question it was.

Cullayn’s eyes twinkled. ‘I can’t promise that.’

‘I want a head start.’

‘I’ll bet you do. I’ll give you one minute. I’ve already given you more time than you deserve.’

‘My leg’s broken,’ Elliott said, finding it hard to speak
because of his shattered cheek. ‘What kind of contest is it unless you give me a fair start?’ He rose, testing his swelling left knee. The ligaments pulled, knifing pain up his thigh, but nothing was broken. He’d lied, hoping to gain a few more seconds. And another thing: he didn’t remember much about the spider-map, but he thought he recalled the details of how to get back to the dark passageway.

‘Broken?’ Cullayn tutted disinterestedly. ‘You’ll have to hop, then. A man did that once, a sort of hobble to get away from me.’ He stood up to show Elliott what it had looked like.

Elliott practised the gait once, and limp-strode up the corridor.

As soon as he was out of sight, he ran as hard as he could. Three teeth on the left side of his jaw felt loose, but he ignored the pain, desperately trying to recall the details of the spider-map. Time passed – a haze of minutes – and suddenly Elliott felt the corridor descending.

There it was, ahead of him: the small set of steps.

Elliott lunged forward.

Only to find Cullayn jauntily trotting beside him.

‘Amazingly, you
did
go the right way,’ Cullayn said. ‘That poor broken leg must hurt. Let me give you a hand.’

He lifted Elliott roughly by the scruff of the neck,
hauling him into the narrow dark passageway.

‘See this?’ Cullayn said, opening a concealed door in the wall. ‘It hid me when they came to string me up. Came for a hanging they did, and got diddly-squat.’ Cullayn showed Elliott the absence of rope-marks on his neck. ‘By the way, you failed, boy. Time’s up. You’re mine now, your life’s forfeit, and you’ll watch your father die before Ben sees me despatch you on the hunting ground.’

The wall opened fully. Cullayn threw Elliott inside and jumped in after him, drawing the door shut.

Inside, Elliott saw several things at once. He saw Ben kneeling on the stone floor. He saw Dad lying on his side, barely conscious. And he saw Janey. She sat stiffly against a wall, looking as if she was about to have a heart attack – or was holding one at bay only by force of will.

From Ben’s inconsolable expression, Elliott could tell that whatever influence Cullayn had once had on him was relinquished. Of course it was. Cullayn didn’t need that version of Ben any longer. He wanted him as frightened as everyone else.

Elliott limped across. It was hard to believe how much blood from Dad’s head was pooled on the floor. After making him as comfortable as he could, Elliott hunkered down next to Ben and whispered in his ear, ‘Are you all right?’

Ben nodded tightly, containing his fear. ‘Look what’s behind you.’

Elliott turned. Inevitably a large portrait of Cullayn
dominated the view. Even in this most secret of rooms Cullayn hadn’t been able to resist decorating the walls with images of himself. This particular portrait, however, was unique. It showed the owner in smiling close-up but, behind him, the hunting ground was victimless. No one was on the slope. Considering that, Elliott wondered why he found the portrait so disturbing.

Then he understood. It was the very emptiness of the slope.

‘It’s waiting for
us
,’ Ben said, having had more time to take in the significance of the painting. ‘We’re next.’

‘My favourite bit of artwork,’ Cullayn remarked, noticing Elliott’s stare. ‘Has a certain vigour, wouldn’t you say?’

The owner had discarded his starry outline, and now stood before them in straightforward hunting leathers. He glanced briefly at Dad. ‘Your father can’t last much longer, boys,’ he grunted. ‘I doubt this is the fate he envisaged for himself. When he strode so manfully into my East Wing I bet he saw himself as a soldier guarding both his sons from everything wicked. As for the hag’ – Cullayn jerked a thumb at Janey – ‘her nightmare was always that she’d be the one to help me broaden my hunt. And now she’s done just that, hasn’t she? I could never have fetched you both in here half so neatly without her.’

Janey looked pitiful – breathing raggedly, head lowered. Cullayn bent down to her, pretended to caress her face, then slapped it. She offered no reaction.

Strewn across the floor were the remains of three dead bodies. One was the owner. Cullayn’s ghost had rearranged his own desiccated skeleton in a perky pose: arms folded, head on one side, his dead eye sockets gazing wistfully up at his own painted hunting ground.

The other two skeletons were the remains of Theo and Eve. Their clothes, including Eve’s red dress, still clung to their collapsed bodies. Theo’s arms were around Eve’s shoulders, still holding onto her after all these years.

‘Touching, isn’t it?’ Cullayn said tonelessly. Now that the hunt was temporarily suspended, he looked bored. ‘Oh, why wait?’ he muttered to Elliott. ‘I was toying with letting you and Janey have a break, so you’d give me a longer fight, but what do you say? Ready for the hunting ground?’

‘Don’t make the others go to the knight’s room,’ Janey said, coming to life. ‘Don’t make them have to watch.’

Cullayn laughed – obviously happy that Janey had helped him make up his mind – and without bothering to answer her he plucked Dad and Ben effortlessly up
from the floor, one in each hand. ‘No rest for you either, my dear,’ he said to Janey. ‘C’mon.’

Cullayn led the way from the secret room down a series of twisting corridors, watching Janey’s cheeks puff crimson. ‘You were wrong about why Eve likes the knight’s room, by the way,’ he told her conversationally. ‘It’s not because she wants to be rescued. She likes that room because it’s the gateway to the hunting ground. There’s a lovely view, a fine perspective of the slope and trees. She can’t wait to get started, can you, Evey?’

Eve did not answer, but Elliott could see the eagerness in her eyes.

Cullayn hurried them ever faster along the corridors. They finally reached the knight’s room. Eve dutifully closed the door behind them.

All this time Elliott had been searching for a way to distract Cullayn, give Ben at least a chance to get out. But he hadn’t been able to think of anything, and once they were inside the knight’s room what little chance there might have been seemed gone.

Rubbing his hands in anticipation, Cullayn sauntered across to the window overlooking the slope. He peered out.

Eve paid no attention to anyone once she entered the room. She was more interested in the knight. She kept staring devotedly at it, tilting her head curiously. Only
Elliott was watching as she suddenly pulled back. Eve frowned. Twitching her shoulders, she gazed at the scene afresh, as if puzzled by a difference she was not expecting.

It was only then that Elliott caught Janey’s glance – a knowing glint in her old eye. A sly look that said
stay quiet
, and made him turn back to the knight.

‘The best place to hide a book is in a library,’ Janey murmured so only he could hear. ‘The best place to hide from the hunter is in his lair.’ Elliott stared at her blankly. ‘In the visible angle,’ Janey whispered. ‘In plain sight, in view.’ She gave a definite nod of acknowledgment towards the tapestry. Then she unobtrusively pulled her thin legs from under her so that she could rise when she had to, and cracked the joints in her fingers.

Elliott saw that she’d kept something in reserve after all.

‘I knew Cullayn wouldn’t kill me in the East Wing,’ she whispered. ‘I knew he’d dally, want to play first before he put me on his slope. How could he resist? I needed to watch him fight – the hunter in action. As a teenage girl I’d seen evidence of that, but memory’s unreliable, and anyway he was bound to have added a few new wrinkles to his technique. I had to delay until I saw what he could do. And now I’ve seen exactly what that is.’

She gave Elliott a guarded smile. ‘You were right about Theo,’ she murmured. ‘I knew he’d stay close to Eve if he could, watch over her. But where was he? It took me a long time to work out why Eve kept coming to the knight’s room. It has nothing to do with the view over the hunting ground. She doesn’t even know herself what draws her. But Theo kept himself in the one place Cullayn wouldn’t think to look. Cullayn would never think to look for a ghost that
stayed still.
’

Eve kept blinking at the knight. She ran her fingers over its brow. She picked at the helmet, prodded the armour. Then she let out a sudden cough of sheer surprise – and stepped back.

At the same time a shocked Ben peered up at the knight and Janey abruptly stood up. Flexing her wrists, she began a concentrated slow-breathing.

Cullayn turned back from the window – surprised but not yet alarmed.

From partially-shut eyes, Dad managed to glance up. He felt a static electrical charge building up fast in the room. It puckered his skin. As he blearily searched for the source of it, wondering if it was a new threat to his sons, the life-sized knight began to move.

A stitch – a simple dash of cotton – stretched.

Slowly it expanded, and out of the intricate needlework, caked in threads of cotton, a pattern
surfaced – a shape. It was hidden for a moment in the embroidery making up the knight’s stark outline.

Then Eve screamed when she saw who it was.

Cullayn ran towards Eve, but it was Theo’s ghost – detaching himself, flinging the fibres of cotton from his ghost form – who reached her sooner.

The first thing Theo did was to gaze fearlessly at Cullayn to hold him back. The second was to bring Eve into his arms and kiss her on the cheek so that she knew he was real.

As she gasped in astonishment, Theo turned quickly to Janey.

‘I knew you’d come,’ he murmured.

‘I’m very late,’ she apologised. ‘But you know I had to wait for Eve. Until enough of Cullayn’s power was inside her.’

‘I know,’ Theo said, smiling. ‘Are you ready?’

‘Yes.’

Janey curled her fingers – a supple rotation of the tips – and abruptly the air tightened around her. She peered over her brows at Cullayn and with her gnarled fingers swept a shape around him that was rectangular.

Cullayn, who in that moment had been a blur of speed lunging towards Theo to smash him, found his hand … held.

He looked at it in surprise, the way it disobeyed. Then
he stared with renewed respect at Janey and smiled to disarm her, but the smile had none of his characteristic poise, and they all saw that. Cullayn tried using his other hand. Janey mirrored his movement with her own. Cullayn kicked out at Theo. Janey raised an ankle, stopping him.

‘Eve,’ Theo said softly. She’d stepped back from him, an arm’s length of astonishment. Theo held both his hands out to her.

She hesitated – looked between him and Cullayn.

Taking strength from that hesitation, Cullayn began contorting his body. He flung himself about – different combinations – attempting to find a way out of Janey’s hold. Finally, by jerking a hand, knee and elbow simultaneously, she failed to stop one of Cullayn’s booted feet and it connected.

But not with Theo. Ben and Elliott had stepped in front of him to take the blow. Knocked backwards, the brothers were hurled across the floor.

Cullayn grunted in anger, but his limbs were freer now. ‘So, you’re not quite the perfect puppeteer after all,’ he said to Janey.

He twisted his body and Janey – a study in concentration – almost matched him. But not quite. ‘Hurry,’ she whispered to Theo. ‘I can’t hold him like this for long. Do something.’