The Jade Boy (25 page)

He paused for moment.

“I doubt the boy of jade here would have come to his death, so quickly and so willingly, if it hadn’t been for you. And now that he has completed the rites of binding, just as your clever mother so carefully explained, he is my creature. I think the game is over.”

Cazalon allowed his words to sink in. Then he began to laugh. The harsh noise coiled around the chamber so that the stones themselves seemed to ring.

Ann’s eyes blazed. Painfully she pushed herself up and stared defiantly across the chamber. “But my mother has a last message for you.”

Cazalon’s eyes sparked with interest and he limped over to grab a hank of Ann’s matted white hair, pulling her face back so that she looked directly into his eyes.

“And what is that, little one?”

Ann glowed with hatred.

“My mother says that you are a fool, Cazalon. And you will fail because your servant will betray you.”

She spat the last words into Cazalon’s face.

Without warning, Cazalon raised his hand and slapped Ann’s cheek so ferociously that her head snapped back, hitting the floor behind her.

Every muscle and nerve in Jem’s body strained to move, but he was trapped – rooted to the spot. As he watched in horror, he felt a single tear trickle down his face.

Cazalon contemplated Ann’s motionless body for a moment, then he turned and regarded Tapwick through narrowed eyes. He repeated Ann’s words softly.

“
Your servant will betray you
.”

As before, his voice echoed strangely around the chamber so that the stones seemed to whisper ‘
betray betray betray
’.

Tapwick twitched and cowered against a broken pillar.

“No master! I wouldn’t… never. Not me… Please, I—”

But as the little man whimpered, Cazalon slowly raised his staff and pointed it at his steward. Instantly Tapwick fell silent – all the colour drained from his terrified face, even from the red-raw sockets of his eyes. A peculiar greyness flowed over his body
like a shadow, from the curls of his ragged wig, down over his hunched shoulders, around his arms, chest and legs all the way to the tips of his pointed shoes.

The steward simply froze like a small stone statue.

Cazalon struck the ground just once and Tapwick shattered into a million tiny pieces. The count stirred some of the fragments with the end of his twisted staff, smirking as he did so. He turned to Jem and laughed aloud at the expression of horror on the boy’s face

“It is such a pity that I am going to have to kill you too, Jeremy. For you would have made such an amusing pet. So much better than the mute halfwit and the monkey!”

The man seemed suddenly weary and sat heavily on a fallen column. He clicked his fingers and the light from the orbs dimmed.

Cazalon thought for a moment and then leaned forward to draw something that looked like a man with the head of a hook-beaked bird in the dust. After a moment he looked up.

“Do you like stories, boy?”

Jem was silent. He refused to look the man directly in the eye.

“Ah. The young prince is angry with me.”

Jem flinched.

“Oh yes! I know who you are, Jeremy Green. I have known for a very long time. It is the only reason I befriended that fool Bellingdon and gave the elixir of youth to his vain wife. I needed to gain access to you.”

The count grinned. “I always knew a greedy woman like the duchess would use the mummia in dangerous, not to say fatal, quantities.”

Cazalon seemed to relish the word ‘fatal’, rolling it around his tongue like a delicious sweetmeat. “To be frank, it has all been such an entertaining game. It passed the time most enjoyably… while I waited for your thirteenth birthday.

“Do you not see?” he continued. “It was you I wanted all along. Not her money. And certainly not her husband’s ridiculous scheme to profit from building a new city. Although, I concede…” he paused for a moment and rubbed out the image in the dust with his foot, “that Bellingdon’s ambitions did prove rather useful. He and his stupid, greedy friends are exactly the sort of souls I need.”

He stared speculatively at Jem, before adding, “But you shall be my most important soul of all.”

Cazalon stood up wearily and limped over to where Ann lay. He prodded her with his foot, but she didn’t move. Was she alive? Jem wanted to run to her but his legs wouldn’t obey him.

Cazalon’s voice rang across the chamber.

“Let me tell you something about myself, Jeremy. It would amuse me to see your reaction. And anyway, as you will not leave this place alive, I feel that I can trust you with my greatest secret.”

Jem stared at the floor. He didn’t want to listen to the man, but he didn’t really have much choice.

“I am more than three thousand years old, boy. What do you think of that?”

Jem glanced up in shock and disbelief. Cazalon smiled bleakly.

“Yes, I thought that might capture your attention. What is more – Cazalon is not my real name. I purchased the title many hundreds of years ago. The library of the Court of Cazalon in the Pyrenees possessed the greatest and oldest collection of books in Europe at that time and so, of course, I had to
have them. Knowledge is power, Jeremy, and I needed power to help me avoid a terrible debt.”

Jem was listening now, despite himself. He watched as Cazalon walked haltingly back to the broken column and sat down again. The count swiped some dust from his cloak and continued.

“My true name is Kaphret. Three thousand years ago, I was a priest at the temple of Horus in Thebes. We called our land the Nile Kingdom. You would know it as Egypt.

“I was young, clever and ambitious. The pharaoh was a fat and stupid youth and yet people revered him as a god. I was jealous. I knew that I had more worth in a single lock of my hair than that dullard. But the people still worshipped him… Or so I thought.”

Cazalon bent his head and stared at the floor, before continuing, “You must always be careful what you pray for, Jeremy. I prayed to the dark god Set to give me power… and he answered.

“In return for three thousand years of life he demanded my eternal soul. I accepted his bargain. Who wouldn’t? But what I didn’t care about all those years ago was that I sold the afterlife of my soul for the merest speck in time. I exchanged eternity for a just thirty centuries, Jeremy. Do you
know what that means?”

Jem shook his head slowly and Cazalon’s mouth twisted into a bitter smile.

“It means that when Set comes to claim his dues I will utterly cease to exist. There will be no world beyond this one waiting for me, no Land of the Dead, no Heaven, no Valhalla, no Elysian Fields, no Isles of the Blest. There will be only the void. An eternal nothingness. And Set is coming soon. Very soon.”

Cazalon shuddered and Jem realised, with a jolt, that the man was frightened.

“Three thousand years go very quickly, boy. I first started to worry about my… future many centuries ago. I travelled the world to find a way to escape my debt.

“From shamans in the frozen wastes of the north to mystics in the mountains and temples of the east, and from the seer tribes of the southern deserts to the shapeshifters of the plains of the New World, I have learned the deepest secrets of earthly magic from the wise ones.

“And recently I have dabbled with the new magic, the science that so fascinates your royal father, he has established a special society to investigate it. I must
admit, Jeremy, I had great hopes for the experiments I carried out to capture a soul on the point of death. You saw the experiments on those wretched animals. Obviously, the next step would have been to transfer my soul to another living vessel. I did think that Ptolemy might be suitable, but as he is so very stupid and damaged, the risk to myself—”

Cazalon stopped himself. “But I must return to our story. Many years ago now, in the time of Queen Cleopatra, I found a scroll in the great library at Alexandria. It was written in Greek, but the knowledge was much older. It spoke of the Androtheos – the man-god of the Western Isles.

“The Druids of Albion, from whom your little friend Ann over there is directly descended, had perfected a rite to endow an earthly man with all the powers of a god. And I knew then, Jeremy, that if I could meet Set as his equal, then he could not claim his payment. I too would be an immortal.”

Ann… descended of the Druids of Albion! Jem was astounded. Had she known this already?

“I’m sure you can imagine my disappointment when I discovered that Elizabeth Metcalf, Ann’s mother, the most powerful druid priestess in these lands was… indisposed,” Cazalon continued.
“But when I heard that her only child, a little girl of just six years, was alive, I made it my business to find the girl and to use her blood to communicate with her departed mother.”

Cazalon shifted and arched his back as if he was in pain.

“It has cost me a great deal to make the blood bridge, Jeremy, more than it has cost my
white-haired
ward. It is the most dangerous, terrible magic imaginable. Every time I crossed back over the bridge I left a little piece of my life force behind in the dead lands, but I had to do it. From Ann’s living lips I have heard the voice of her dead mother – and she told me how I could become the equal of a god.”

Cazalon paused for a moment and stared at Ann’s huddled body.

“And so, Elizabeth directed me to this ancient place – known to her druid ancestors as the Oak Grove. It is a portal where the ancient power of the earth can be harnessed. But first that power needs to be awakened… and fed.”

Cazalon smiled, “And that, Jeremy, is why I needed Bellingdon and his greedy friends. To awaken the spirit of the grove I must sacrifice a bonded soul to every point of the compass – so that the power of the
four Guardians of the Gates to the World will flow to this very spot.”

Still rooted to the ground, Jem’s horrified expression must have given his thoughts away: He is mad.

Cazalon merely laughed. “Oh foolish Jeremy – I was never interested in burning London and profiting from a new city. It was only this place, this very spot, that I wanted. I will use it to magnify my power. When I am a god I will build a new temple for myself above the Oak Grove on the site of St Paul’s. The land for my wonderful temple will be purified by the fire that is raging above us at this very moment.

“I believe you have already seen my design for the building where people will come to worship me for ever?”

Without pausing for an answer, the count continued. “The contract that Bellingdon, Avebury, Kilheron and Pinchbeck signed in their own blood has delivered their souls into my care and soon I will use them… Then I will use you.”

Cazalon stopped and caught his breath. He bent double for a moment and rubbed his leg through his black breeches. He looked across at Jem and his
mouth curved into a cruel smile. “Would you like to see what three thousand years do to a body?”

Jem gulped and tried to turn away, but he couldn’t move his eyes from the man sitting in front of him.

Cazalon drew back the lower folds of his cloak and removed one of the elegant leather boots that covered his legs to the knee. Jem flinched when he saw the man’s foot. It was black and twisted. Peeling skin clung tightly to grey bones clearly visible beneath the desiccated flesh. Narrow yellow toenails appeared to sprout from the wrong places on the count’s withered foot. After a moment Jem realised they seemed unnaturally long because the flesh around them had shrivelled and died. A fat grey maggot crept from beneath one of the toenails, reared up, wriggled and then burrowed beneath a tattered flap of blackened skin. A foul smell filled Jem’s nostrils.

It was the stench he had come to recognise. Cazalon was rotting alive.

The count’s painted eyelid twitched as he regarded his foot. He was silent for a moment, before he spoke again.

“The powdered mummia helps, but death is slowly creeping through my body – and I fear that making
the blood bridge has hastened the decay. I have ten years at most before Set claims my soul.”

Cazalon stood up and grinned broadly. “And that, my dear Jeremy, is why I need you so very badly to achieve my transformation. For a long time Elizabeth babbled about spilling green blood in the Oak Grove and, I’ll admit to you, I was confused. Then she started to talk about sacrificing ‘the jade boy’ and things became much clearer.

“Her words led me to you, Jeremy Green,” Cazalon placed a heavy emphasis on Jem’s last name. “You see, to become the Androtheos, a man must sacrifice the first-born son of an anointed king. The deed must be done on the cusp of the boy’s thirteenth birthday and the victim must have come willingly to his fate. Guided by a dead witch and a greedy duke, I found exactly the child I needed.

“When you gave me your shirt and your neck band back there, you completed the last of the rites of binding and allowed me to control you completely. And so, we might say, that you have come willingly to this place to complete the ceremony. The fact that you came to the city to find your little friend has only strengthened the magic. It is almost too perfect!”

Jem tried to shout but no words came. He couldn’t even twitch a finger. He scanned the cavern, desperately seeking some means of escape.

Cazalon smiled at Jem’s stricken expression. “Tonight you should be journeying into manhood, Jeremy, but instead you will be taking a very different path.”

It was no use – they had failed. Tolly was searching in the wrong place, Ann was surely dead, he was about to be sacrificed and Cazalon was about to become more terrible and powerful than ever. Something inside Jem seemed to break.

His feet started to move involuntarily and he walked stiffly, like a stringed puppet, to stand in the very centre of the cavern, beneath the domed ceiling. He didn’t even try to resist.

Cazalon leaned on his staff and watched.

“Well, my young princeling, enough stories for today. I think it is time to begin.”

He snapped his fingers and Jem’s world went black.

Somewhere far away someone called Jem’s name. As his senses returned, he saw that he was surrounded by a ring of blue flames. Tongues of cold fire licked hungrily at his boots as the dancing circle closed in on him. A deadly numbness began to creep up his legs. This was no dream. It was terrifyingly real. The odd blue flames glinted on the massive hourglass and Jem saw that several hours had passed.

Cazalon stood on the other side of the flickering circle. He had removed his cloak to reveal his bare torso and now a pleated white cloth fell from his waist to his knees. Jem saw that Cazalon’s skin was covered in a coiling, snake-like pattern etched in blue. The count had released his hair from the plait and it now hung to the floor like a thin blue mane sprouting from the crown of his head.

But it was the man’s hands that horrified Jem most of all. For the first time, Cazalon had removed his gloves – and now the boy could see why he had never done so before.

On the right side, from the fingers to just below the knobbled elbow, the count had a skeletal claw. Hardly any flesh remained and the little strips that clung to the long yellow bones were ragged and black. On the left side, the count’s hand was intact, but the skin was puckered and weeping. The flesh was mottled yellow, green and black and studded with gaping sores that oozed a foul yellow liquid. Jem felt his stomach lurch in revulsion.

Cazalon was intoning some words in a language Jem couldn’t understand, and drawing patterns in the dust with his staff.

Just beyond him Ann’s body lay motionless in the dust, her bloody head turned to the wall.

Ann! Tears began to stream down the boy’s cheeks as he realised he had failed her too. He wanted to sob aloud, but his body wouldn’t obey him. He couldn’t move, he couldn’t speak. All he could do now was weep silent tears of despair.

Cazalon looked up from the pattern on the ground and stared at Jem. His black eyes glittered.

“Ah, Jeremy, you are awake at last,” he whispered across the flames.

Suddenly Jem’s voice returned. But the words that came were not his.

“I am, master,” he said. The words tasted like vomit in his mouth.

Cazalon smiled. “And so we begin.”

The count began to chant. His voice echoed around the chamber, reverberating from the walls, which picked up the rhythm and amplified the sound so that the air itself seemed to hum.

Gradually Jem became aware that the slabs of the stone floor within the circle beneath him were beginning to give off a blue glow.

Cazalon stopped chanting, but the humming sound continued, growing louder and deeper. He threw back his head so that his hair swept the ground, then he called out, “Richard Pinchbeck, Alderman of London, come forth. I cast you to the east.

Matthew, Marquis of Kilheron, come forth. I cast you to the west.

Edward, Lord Avebury, come forth. I cast you to the south.

George, Duke of Bellingdon, come forth. I cast you to the north.”

The floor of the burning circle glowed more strongly. Four wispy, ghostly figures began to take shape around the edge of the circle and, as Jem watched, he realised that he was seeing the men Cazalon
had just named – the duke and the other plotters.

As the figures became more substantial, Jem could see the men’s faces clearly. They were terrified and seemed to be calling out, although what they were saying couldn’t be heard. Bellingdon held out his hands as if imploring Jem to help him, but the boy couldn’t move.

Cazalon struck the dusty floor four times with his staff.

“Watchers at the Gates, take these mortal souls in payment for your power!”

The cavern was utterly silent for a second and then it was flooded with a blinding explosion of white light that flared from the eyes of the crystal hawk at the tip of the staff.

The figures now found their voices. With terrible screams, each one of them burned brilliantly and then collapsed in on themselves, shrinking to tiny black pinpoints on the stone floor before disappearing. It was if they had been sucked down into the earth.

Cazalon smiled in satisfaction as the air began to fill with sound. The noise was like a thousand church organs – all playing different, discordant notes. It was beautiful and terrible at the same time and it made the chamber pulse with an unnatural life of its
own. Colour glowed in every stone and the carved walls seemed to ripple and move.

Cazalon watched him through the flames for a moment and then spoke.

“Have you come here of your own free will, boy?”

“I have, master.” Jem struggled, but the
foul-tasting
words came of their own accord.

“Did you give me clothing and food?”

“Yes, master.”

“You are the first-born son of an anointed king?”

“I am, master,”

“Will you allow me to cross the barrier of fire to join you?”

“Surely, master.”

Jem felt prickles of terror run down his spine. Inviting Cazalon to join him was the last thing he wanted to do, but he couldn’t stop his tongue.

The count smiled in triumph, and, leaning on his staff, he stepped through the ring of flames.

He grinned down at the boy and the pointed tip of his black tongue licked the corner of his mouth. From the folds of his waistcloth, he revealed a curved dagger.

“And will you allow me to cut out your beating heart?”

“No!”

A great shout rang around the chamber, but the words were not Jem’s.

Tolly barrelled through the ring of the flames, knocking Cazalon to the floor. The count’s staff was jolted from his hand and skittered through the flames, coming to rest next to Ann’s body.

At the same moment a tiny black and white blur dropped from above and wrapped herself around the man’s head, knotting her tail and limbs into the mane of blue hair. Cleo shrieked and growled as she bit and scratched at the count’s ears and nose with her sharp little teeth and claws.

Cazalon staggered to his feet and grasped the monkey by the neck. He ripped her from his head and flung her to the floor. Cleo yelped, but Jem noticed that as she fell, she took with her a hank of the man’s hair and a bleeding scrap of his scalp.

Cazalon spun to face Tolly, drew his dagger and made a swift, vicious lunge in the boy’s direction.

But Tolly was too quick for him, stepping deftly to one side so that instead of sinking into his throat, the blade merely pierced the linen of his shirt at the shoulder.

Tolly yelled in pain and gripped the top of his arm.
He was wounded. Jem saw bright drops of blood seeping through his friend’s fingers.

Cazalon’s eyes narrowed. He stood a few feet away from Tolly on the inner edge of the flaming ring and began to laugh.

“Who would have thought that my animal could talk?” he sneered. “After all this time it seems that my most tedious pet has found a voice.”

Tolly’s eyes flashed. “I have always spoken, Cazalon, but only to those worthy of hearing me.”

The boy’s voice was clear and defiant and the words rang around the chamber.

Cazalon kept his eyes fixed on Tolly and he began to trace a pattern in the air with his withered hand.

After a moment he spoke. “It seems I may have underestimated you, Ptolemy. Still, the only thing I hear in your voice now is despair. You cannot save your friends. It is too late, even now your feet are turning to dust. Look boy, look at the ground beneath you. Do you see how you and stone are fused?”

Tolly looked down and Jem saw that his friend’s bare feet appeared to be part of the cavern floor. As he watched in horror, the dark skin of Tolly’s ankles began to change colour and gradually a dull greyness crept up his legs.

Cazalon started to laugh again and the rasping sound scraped the walls of the chamber. “What a pity it is that the moment you find a voice I have to silence it for ever.”

Tolly yanked desperately at his feet and as he did so, a few drops of bright red blood fell from his shoulder to the stone floor. Immediately there was a hissing, spitting noise, like the sound of fat sizzling in a pan.

The globules of Tolly’s blood formed a little pattern on the ground near his feet, but after a few seconds, instead of sinking into the dust, the blood began to move.

At first the droplets rolled towards each other to form a single stain no larger than a robin’s breast.

Then the patch began to spread. Very soon it was the size of a plate and then a coach wheel, all the time spreading faster and wider.

From the centre of the flaming ring, Jem watched as little red tendrils began to shoot off from the edge of the bloodstain, winding and weaving their way across the stone.

“What have you done?” Cazalon hissed at Tolly as the veinlike channels rippled swiftly across the circle. The count had to step back to avoid the pulsing red
network that now covered most of the ring. It was as if the blood was searching for something.

Rooted to the spot, Tolly watched in silence as the tendrils finally reached Cazalon’s feet.

Still holding the blade outstretched, the count was now surrounded by a network of threadlike whorls and patterns on the stone.

As the first of the tendrils touched his skin, Cazalon let out a horrible scream, as if he had been burned. He stepped back, but the weaving red filaments burrowed through the dust and quickly sought him out.

Jem watched as the man’s rotten feet quickly disappeared beneath a growing network of wriggling scarlet veins.

“This is not possible!” Cazalon gasped in pain, flailing desperately with the blade to cut at the heaving mass around his feet.

He stared wildly at Tolly. “Who are you, boy? A witchdoctor?”

“I too am the first-born son of a king. My father did not wear a crown or sit on a throne, but to my people, he was a mighty ruler,” replied Tolly coolly. “You bought a prince to be your servant.”

Cazalon’s eyes widened. He looked at the seething
red mass around him and then stared back at Tolly. A strange look crossed his face; his mouth opened but no words came. It was if he had suddenly discovered some terrible secret.

“It’s the blood!” Cazalon eventually whispered. “I have spilled the blood of a prince in the Oak Grove, but not the prince made ready for the ritual. Why did you not tell me who you are?” He spat the words at Tolly.

“You were not worth speaking to. You thought I was nothing more than an animal,” Tolly replied flatly.

Cazalon twisted violently but he couldn’t move. Like Jem and Tolly, he was now rooted to the spot.

The twisting, glistening veins gathered momentum as they climbed up Cazalon’s thrashing body, winding themselves tightly around his legs.

The boys watched calmly as Cazalon continued to flail and writhe, hacking at the creeping veins.

His voice grew wild and shrill. “Where is my staff?”

“Here.”

Ann’s voice was hoarse, but it was firm.

The count’s head whipped round and he yelped as his hair was tugged by the veinlike tendrils that now curled around his waist. Ann was standing on the far
side of the flames, supporting herself with Cazalon’s gnarled staff.

“I think you will find, dear guardian, that the offering of royal blood was given, but it was not given willingly. Therefore everything will be inverted. A sacrifice must still be made today… but now, you will become that sacrifice!”

“Never!” he snarled. “Give me my staff, now.” Ann shook her head.

“I command you… you must…”

His voice became a high-pitched shriek of agony as the wriggling scarlet filaments wound and curled into his blue hair, binding the arm and hand that still held the dagger. “I am not ready. It is not time. I cannot…”

The count fought to stop the probing tendrils from creeping into his mouth and nostrils, spitting and jerking his head about.

Then a thunderclap ripped through the air and the ring of blue flames disappeared. Instantly, the walls of the cavern dimmed, the humming ceased and the floor seemed to tilt.

Jem suddenly felt a great jolt run through his body and he collapsed to the stone like a puppet whose strings had been cut. He could move again!

“Cleo!”

Tolly raced to the spot at Ann’s side where a tiny body lay crumpled in the dust. Gently he scooped the monkey into his arms.

Jem was with them both just a second later.

“Is she…?” he gasped.

“Oh no. Please, no,” whispered Ann, her eyes glittering with tears as she looked down at the battered little body.

Cleo still had a clump of Cazalon’s blue hair gripped in her paw. As the children looked, the tiny hand opened and the hair fell to the floor.

Then Cleo took a deep shuddering breath… She was alive.

Huddling the monkey close to his chest, Tolly scanned the tunnels leading from the chamber. “We have to get away from here! I think it’s this way.” He jerked his head.

They began to run.

“Stop. I– I command you to free me.” The
pain-wracked
voice was Cazalon’s. He was now almost completely encased in a bulging, twitching mass of wriggling veins. His head was pulled oddly to one side by the hair trapped in the throbbing scarlet network.

“If you leave me here I will… I will…”

Tolly stopped suddenly and turned to stare at the hideous figure.

“What will you do?”

He took a step towards Cazalon.

“Tolly come on. What are you doing?” Jem was almost at the gaping entrance to a tunnel. He grabbed a candle from a niche and reached for Ann’s hand. Even in the odd grey light that now filled the cavern, he could see that she was weak with pain and exhaustion. Blood glistened on her temple.

But Tolly took another step towards Cazalon. “What will you do?” he asked again, his voice dripping with defiant sarcasm.

Cazalon was suddenly still. He stared at Tolly and his bloodshot eyes narrowed. When he spoke, his slow deliberate words were dipped in venom. “I will hunt you down to the ends of the earth and beyond. And when I find you, every one of you, I will ensure that the pain you have inflicted upon me today is visited upon you sevenfold.”

Tolly took one more step so that he was almost standing next to the glistening red mummy that was Cazalon.