Advent (67 page)

 
Placing the staff on the timbers beside him with breathless care, he shifted his weight onto his knees and palms and slid one leg just an inch towards the far door, then the other. The pouring noise stopped; he stopped with it. He looked across the room. If he could even get as far as the next corner that might be enough. Beyond that the gallery was raised on stone columns and railed with a thick carved screen. The stone would hide him and wouldn’t creak when he moved. He focused on the distance between him and the corner and the series of infinitesimal movements that would get him there: palm up, fingers splayed, forward an inch, down again, then the legs, the other hand, reaching back to pick up the stick, move it on, lower it gently as a feather falling to earth.

 
Impossible. He couldn’t turn his head away from the person crouched over the table below. She held his eyes like a disfigurement.

 
A feeble yellow light appeared under her body. She had lit a sort of long match, though he’d heard nothing strike. She reached it out towards the five candles. Light spread upwards, her face turned a fraction, and Gawain got his first glimpse of her profile.

 
His eyelids flickered shut and his heart almost stalled. Holly’s strange word rang in his head like a slamming bolt.
Warlock.

 
Escape. Escape. He lifted a hand, held it, put it down as slowly as his trembling arm allowed.

 
The hall was growing brighter. There was nothing he could do about it. Aunt Gwen was lighting the candles, one by one. The cloaking dimness under the beams melted away. Gawain saw the soft blur of his own shadow on the whitewashed wall behind him. If she even turned sideways now, if she glanced round for any reason, she’d see him. He couldn’t risk the slightest movement. All he could do was watch.

 
By the candlelight he saw a design chalked on the table, a five-pointed star. The candles were set at its points, and the silver bowl was contained in the centre of the pentagram.

 
Despite himself Gawain felt a quiver of fascination. This, here, now, was the power that made impossible things happen, the stranger that had walked beside him all his life. This was magic. When he was younger, Auntie Gwen had sometimes let him watch her doing things a bit like this, but what was happening down in the room was no more like those pantomimes than the person below was like the aunt he’d loved, no matter how similar they looked.

 
She began to speak, half-voiced syllables that barely sounded like language at all. It was like a snake had coiled up inside her mouth. Gawain clenched his teeth, but there was nothing he could do except listen to the horrible alien sounds trickling out. The longer he listened, the more, despite himself, he understood.

 
The warlock was calling to someone. No,
something
. The water had become a channel. Something was on the other side.

 
It was answering.

 
The room was suddenly very cold. Though the candles didn’t waver, Gawain felt a sharp and odourless wind circling the hall. Over Gwen’s shoulder he saw in the bowl a grey-blue nothingness, like looking up through a porthole to an ocean sky. Gwen crouched forward, her voice rising. The intensity of her concentration was obvious and now Gawain saw a chance to get out of the room. He seized the stick in one hand and started crawling as quickly as he dared, crouching low as if the rails of the gallery might screen him, though it was all too obvious that they wouldn’t.

 
‘
What do you want
?
’

 
The voice came from nowhere. It seemed to be in the intangible wind. Gawain flinched and pushed himself tight against the wall, staring into the shadows of the room. There was no one there. Gwen bent lower over the bowl, knuckles resting on the table. A noise had come into the hall as if the phantom wind were rising. It masked the tiny sounds he made. He sped up his progress to a reckless creep.

 
‘To question you,’ the warlock said, in her grating voice.

 
‘
Who are you
?
’

 
‘Gawain,’ he whispered, before he could stop himself. The voice was so close, right at his shoulder like the angel in Hester’s picture. There was a pitiful loneliness in it.

 
Gwen spoke at the same time: ‘Do you not know me?’

 
‘
I hardly know myself.
’

 
‘Answer me, then, and I will answer you in turn.’

 
‘
Who am I
?
’ The question was tinged with pain. Gawain stopped, inexplicably touched.

 
‘You must answer me first.’

 
‘
Must I
?
’

 
‘No,’ Gawain whispered, and, ‘Yes,’ said Gwen. He shook his head and forced himself to keep moving. This was the time to find Marina, now, while Gwen’s energies were absorbed in the battle of wills.

 
‘
I am obscured
,’ the nowhere voice complained. ‘
I am wronged. Is it you who wronged me
?
’

 
‘You must answer me first, but because I have power to choose, I choose to tell you this. I have done you no harm. You suffer because all things have fallen into decay. I have come to restore the world. I will right you. I am your saviour as well as your master. You knew me once, an age ago, though you have forgotten.’

 
‘
Forgotten . . .
’ it sighed.

 
Edging further down the gallery’s long side, Gawain was now far enough along to see round Gwen’s back to her profile. He made the mistake of looking once. He shuddered, sweating, then fixed his eyes on the arched door at the far end of the gallery and swore to himself that he wouldn’t look aside until he was through it.

 
‘Now, sky spirit, answer me in turn.’ Her awful mockery of a voice filled the hall. ‘You roam wherever the wind blows. I seek a thing a man-child carries. It is a thing I must hold to right all the wrongs that have been done, and reappoint all the things that have been forgotten. It is a thing of potency. You will recognise it. It is close to the place where I stand on the earth. Search and you may see it. Do you see it?’

 
In the pause that followed, Gav froze mid-crawl, fearing her concentration might break and she would look up.

 
‘
Yes,
’ the voice said, at last.

 
‘A boy carries it?’

 
‘
Yes.
’

 
‘Where is he?’

 
‘Don’t tell her,’ Gawain said. It was barely louder than a breath, but still he clapped his hand over his mouth, horrified that he’d again spoken aloud.

 
The voice said, ‘
Who is the other
?
’

 
Gawain didn’t dare move a muscle. What had he been thinking? What did he think he was doing?

 
‘Answer me!’ Gwen rasped.

 
‘
Across the drowned valley, seeking the ocean. Or where you are, but in a place I cannot see, though I hear him. Now tell me who I was.
’

 
‘Where I . . . ?’

 
Gawain heard the abrupt uncertainty in her tone, felt the spell weakening and knew he might not have much longer. Eyes fast on the door, he made himself press on. It was coming tantalisingly close, so much so that it was all he could do not to jump to his feet and bolt.

 
‘
Tell me who I was
,’ the voice repeated, and its hollowness had a deeper resonance now, as if it had grown.

 
‘You are what you always were.’ Gwen sounded impatient. ‘You are of the order of essences called
genii
, and your place is the air. You—’

 
‘
Not that
.’ The room grew colder, and the strange whistling sound raised its pitch. The thing that spoke with the voice seemed to be prowling the invisible wind, circling its cage. ‘
Tell me what I have lost. Restore my station
.’

 
‘Spirit!’ Gwen had to raise her voice. ‘You spoke of two places, not one. I am not yet fairly answered. Where is the boy with the ring?’

 
‘
The other tells me not to answer
.’ The voice was unmistakably larger now.

 
‘Other? What other?’

 
‘No, don’t, please,’ Gawain mouthed. It was no more than ten strides to the door, but if Gwen so much as flicked her glance to her left, she’d surely see him. His resolution broke and he stole a glance back, saw the mounting fury in the dreadful face and recoiled from it.

 
‘
Will you tell me what I once was
?
’ demanded the wind.

 
‘Yes,’ Gawain breathed, ‘I’ll try,’ at the same time as Gwen shrieked, ‘Nothing! And you will remain nothing unless I find what I seek! Tell me! What other forbids you to answer me?’

 
‘You were free,’ Gawain whispered to it. A phrase had popped into his head, a stupid cliché; it was the first thing he could think of. ‘Free as air.’

 
As soon as the words had left his mouth he knew he was right. The presence was going. He’d answered its question truthfully and released it. He jumped to his feet and began to run.

 
‘No. No!’ The warlock’s screech sounded barely human at all.

 
The phantom wind swept wildly around the room, and now shadows danced crazily, though the air itself was not stirred. The candles guttered. Shadow cloaked the gallery where Gawain ran, five steps, eight. There was a splash, and a dull clang: the bowl being overturned. Calm returned to the hall just as Gav pulled the door, squirmed through the crack he’d opened and drew up in the passage beyond, breathless, filmed with sweat.

 
Now he was deep inside, and suddenly the rules of the game were starkly obvious. He knew what he had to avoid. He’d seen it. The knowledge was unbearable, but on the knife-edge of the moment it was better to know than not. All he had to do was whatever it took to stay out of her way. Hide behind doors, in cupboards, under beds, anything, anywhere, as long as she didn’t know he was there, until he found Marina, and then they had to get out and away as fast as they could. That was it. That was all. The simplicity of it gave him a surge of unexpected confidence. He’d made it this far and not been seen. Quick, then, quick! There were noises from downstairs, but that didn’t matter, downstairs was fine. Anywhere not near him was OK. He looked hard at the doors, trying to keep his head clear of the fog of panic. Marina’s room first. (Footsteps: he froze, staring at the nearest door, but the steps faded.) Which one was it? Which way had he come, the day before? (He remembered the shape of the house downstairs. The main staircase, which was just ahead round a crooked corner; the steps he heard were going away from it, down the panelled hallway towards the front door. She was leaving!) He reached for the nearest door and was about to try it when he realised it wasn’t right. Something about its shape, or the pattern of fat nail heads; not that one. The next one.

 
From downstairs came a grinding scrape. The front door, opening. Gav almost laughed with relief. She was going outside, out of the house. She wouldn’t find him after all—