Elves and Escapades (Scholars and Sorcery Book 2) (17 page)

“Oh, let her in on the fun,” Esther says, unexpectedly. “She might be a help, right, Kitty?”
 

“Oh, what do I care if she comes or not? Bring the whole school, if you insist. Just hurry!”

 
Defeated, I nod, and Rosalind’s smile gleams with triumph as she turns back into the room. For all my concern and guilt, I have to admit that I find the idea of her company comforting. After all, she was by my side the last time I was having an adventure out in the dark.

seven

D
ARK
M
AGIC

IT’S VERY QUEER, hurrying down the school drive with three other girls in the middle of the night. I keep looking over my shoulder at the school looming behind us, wondering if anyone will look out and see us, as we wind our way past the playing fields.

It’s a relief once we’re out on the road. It’s only about half mile from the school gates to the village, a road I’ve followed on so many Saturdays before, so familiar I could cover it with my eyes closed. It’s unsettling when Kitty turns sharply to the right on the outskirts of the village and leads us up the path to some low cliffs. I follow with some foreboding. There’s nothing up there but a small ruined church, too minor and decrepit to be of much interest to holidaymakers and therefore being allowed to crumble indecently fast.
 

Gravestones shine dully in the moonlight. I’ve always quite liked graveyards before, liking the idea of people laid to rest under my feet, sleeping peacefully through the centuries. Tonight, perhaps it is the suspicion that dark magic is afoot, but the gravestones seem to loom ominously. I shudder and cover Rosalind’s hand where it is tucked into my elbow.

“Are you sure this is it? It looks deserted.” Even Esther looks ill at ease in the dimness, her usual smoothness deserting her. She pulls her school cloak more tightly around her.

“I’m sure. Daddy’s told me about parties here. It’s supposed to be a place the elves originally used as a gate into our world; that’s why the church, to try and keep them out through prayer.”

“Your father might be here?” I asked, startled. “Why do you need us, then?”

“My Daddy’s safe back in Scotland. Or at least, he’d better be, because if I find out he’s involved in these tricks, I’ll surely make him pay.” Even in the dark, I can see Kitty’s round eyes glitter. She looks for all the world like a tiger cub. For all her small stature, I find I don’t envy her father if he find himself on her wrong side. “Come on.”

As we approach, I catch sight of a flicker, like a fire, through one of the church windows. There are voices, too, high with excitement, and laughter, carried faintly to us on the wind. It’s horrible, somehow, the indistinct sounds of revelry in a ruined place of worship, merriment floating out over the final resting place of dead bodies. Kitty moves lightly on ahead, apparently unconcerned, but the other three of us move closer together, a girl clutching my arm on either side. I feel like I could willingly do some clutching myself. I didn’t, after all, volunteer to take on the role of the plucky boy guiding two clingy girls on an adventure.

I glance at the two faces beside me and regret the thought. The brave darlings. Rosalind is holding her head high and Esther looks unwontedly serious, yet determined. They’re plenty plucky enough without me. I am conscious of an overwhelming rush of affection for them both.

 
Kitty draws to a halt, raising one hand to signal us to stop. She seems to be listening hard, her head tilted to one side. I can’t work out what she hears. Perhaps she has cat-like hearing in those feline ears of hers.

“We need to figure out what’s going on before we know what to do,” she murmurs. It strikes me that she isn’t whispering and that there’s no sibilant hiss to draw attention from the revellers. Kitty is obviously no stranger to midnight adventures.

She moves forward, shoulders straight, step confident. To my horror, she seizes the rotting, broken ruin of the church door and eases it open, very slowly. It grates against the flagstones with what seems to my strained senses to be a deafening racket. Every time the rotten wood gives a warning creak, Kitty stops and waits, the four of us poised to flee. After a while, when the sounds of the party show no sign of subsiding, she resumes her task.

When the door opens enough to admit a schoolgirl, Kitty turns back to us.

“Well?”

Esther takes a deep breath. “Let me go first,” she says, imitating Kitty’s low, non-whispering tone. “I’m an Illusionist. I can’t turn us invisible or anything, but I might be able to blur and dull us into shadows, just long enough that we might evade notice long enough to slip into a hiding place. I’m not promising anything, mind.”

It doesn’t seem like much of a plan, and I’m loathe to let Esther go into danger on all our behalf, but I don’t dare object too much for fear of drawing attention. Besides, there simply doesn’t seem to be any alternative. I nod reluctantly, noticing with some surprise that all three girls have turned to me to give or deny permission for the enterprise, as if I’m their leader or something. Fat lot of help I’ve been so far.

“Follow me one by one, after counting two hundred slowly, unless I scream for help.” With an airy wave, Esther slips through the gap and into the darkness.

“I’ll follow,” Rosalind says before I reach ninety, and is through before I can forestall her. Kitty shrugs and points to herself as we mouth the numbers together, so in the end I am the last to broach the doorway.

The inner doors are standing open, casting deep shadows into the annexe. Kitty beckons me to stand beside her in the shadowy place on one side. The other girls are huddled opposite.
 

Every nerve in my body is stretched to breaking point, conscious at all times of how ridiculously easy to discover we are, even with Esther trying to cloak us with Illusion. Rosalind meets my anguished gaze and winks, reassuringly. Of course; she is boosting Esther’s magic, and is possibly rather more powerful, even if she’s too tactful to let Esther know. I should have suspected it when she went in before Kitty and myself. I relax a infinitesimal amount, and look out of the shadows into the nave.

It looks, for all its preposterous location, like a fairly cheerful party. There’s a small fire that seems to be giving out far more heat and light than a nonmagical fire would, because on this freezing winter night there is a warm, cosy atmosphere. Wrapped in my cloak, I can feel perspiration bead my forehead and prickle under my chest. Young people in evening dress are sitting most disrespectfully around on the benches, some even perched on pew backs or sitting cross-legged on picnic rugs, chatting and sipping from steaming mugs, and there is a delicious scent of mulled wine.

It takes me a moment to find Diana in the party. She’s wearing her filmy white dress, a wrap over her shoulders, her own mug clutched close and the curiously intent look in her eyes that signals that she is summoning all her Charms and Glamours to her aid. She’s simpering up at a young man in rather dashing clothes, who is smiling meaningfully back at her.

A surge of relief rises up in my heart. I’m pretty sure that it is wine, not coffee or cocoa, in Diana’s hand, and she has no business carrying on like this at midnight, she would be expelled for sure, and the whole set-up is almost blasphemous, but all in all Diana’s transgression doesn’t look like much more than a harmless flirtation with a gentleman only a couple of years older than herself. Kitty had made me suspect all kinds of dreadful things.

I’ve already lifted my left foot, meaning to stride out and scold the silliness out of Diana, fully intending to make her look a foolish little girl in front of her sophisticated friends, when Kitty catches my attention. She raises one finger and points toward the altar.

There’s a chalked half-circle around it, barely visible even in the unnaturally bright firelight. Right in front of the altar, there is a more elaborate design chalked inside. Even as we watch, Diana’s companion takes her by the hand and leads her to stand in the middle of the design, right in front of the fire. He kisses her lips and leaves her there.

Immediately, there is a subtle change in the atmosphere of the party. There is still laughter and chatter, but heads are starting to turn toward the altar and, slowly, the noise starts to die off, so that all that is left is the crackle and hiss of the fire and an occasional slightly frantic giggle. The four of us stand rigid as, one by one and two by two, Diana’s friends put their drinks down and drift to stand on the outer perimeter.

Diana herself is laughing somewhat nervously, her cheeks rosy and her head held high. She looks, for all her height, strangely small and pathetic, the centre of all attention.

“Virgin!” her friend says suddenly, his voice ringing out over the church. I flinch a little at the word; it seems almost obscene, somehow. “Do you willingly share of your power, that we might reach our ancient and beloved ancestors, and draw deeply from the source of magic?”

“I do.” Diana’s voice is loud and clear, the dramatic effect only spoiled by the slight tremor of a giggle.

“Then, show us your power. Let it blaze into the night and beckon your ancestor home.”

Diana smiles at that. She, I realise suddenly, wants this most of all—the excuse to make her Charm and Glamour shine out unrestrained, and win the hearts of these rich and titled young people. She flings her head back and opens her arms wide.

“Beautiful,” sighs Kitty beside me. The party goers seem equally enraptured; every lady and gentleman in the church is gazing lovingly at Diana. I check across from me. Esther and Rosalind stand motionless, gaze fixed on Diana. None of my friends seem inclined to move to intervene, and I suppose it is up to me, the sole Truth Seer, to go shake some sense into Diana.
 

I step out of the shadows into the room, and Diana, catching clear sight of me, recoils. For one moment her full power lashes directly at me, and I see her as everyone else must see her when she uses her Gifts: her auburn hair glowing more richly than the fire, her eyes full of heart-melting beauty and sweetness, every line of her face pure and perfect. It’s only there for a moment before it fades, and in that moment, as I hesitate, caught in her Glamour, Diana’s friend raises his hand and a bolt of light flies into the fire, turning it green.

The magical heat and light instantly evaporate from the room. The green fire roars higher and higher, giving out only chill. Diana shrieks with fright, collapsing trembling to her knees, and my friends shake themselves like gryphons after a rainstorm as her Glamour fades.

There is something in the fire. A darker shadow on the play of green light, twisting and turning and changing, and becoming more recognisable all the time, showing arms, and legs, and a head with long ears reaching above its hair. . .

“They really did it,” Kitty whispers. I can’t tell if she is horrified or enthralled.

Two men and a woman step into the circle, ignoring the girl huddled at their feet, and long red cords wrap around the thing in the fire. It gives a scream that is like a gryphon and a dragon and my Meggs all at once, and its form becomes more distinct. The circle of party goers are clapping and shrieking. Diana is sobbing at the creature’s feet.

“We need to stop this,” Esther says. I tear my eyes away from the fire long enough to notice that, under cover of the excitement, she and Rosalind have slipped to stand by us.

“Do not resist us, and do not fear!” booms the voice of Diana’s young man. “Father of us all, we hail and honour you. We have offered you the power of an untouched maiden. Now, then, pay the price, and lend us the power that is our birthright!”

The glowing figure is, suddenly, no longer part of the fire, but amidst it, so that we can see skin and hair through the flickering flames.

 
The elf is lovely, incredibly lovely, with a burning cold beauty that drills into my heart like a stabbing icepick, her huge eyes like the soft and deadly snow of a snow slide, her long delicate ears pricked for the kill like a wolf, her billowing shining hair like the bush-fires Cecily has told us of, that swallow trees, creatures, homes and humans for miles around.

She turns her great eyes around the room, the firelight dancing in their iridescent surface, so that they show all colours but most of all yellow and red and orange, like an iceberg lit by a burning ship. She is more distinct now, a cool curve to her lips as if there is no terror in summoning and entrapment by mere humans. She is naked, with an arrogant unconcerned nakedness that shows no care for those looking on her, smaller than human adults yet somehow more intimidating, more looming, than the tallest of men could be.

The party-goers are trembling. The half circle has not yet broken, but a slender girl with long dark hair slides to her knees, followed by a man who props himself up on the floor with trembling arms. Even as they fall, Diana’s companion lifts his tawny head and laughs, with pure triumph and joy.
 

The elf’s gaze slides, unconcerned, over her human captors, including the hysterical bundle of tears that is Diana, then lifts to us. Looking straight through the doors to where we lurk in the corner. When she meets my own gaze, I feel a pulling, a terrible desire to fling myself to my knees in front of her and swear to serve her always. She is so exquisite, so powerful, so alien. . .