Ruins (5 page)

A woman. Her hair is white silk, her skin coffee-coloured, her eyes blue as the ocean. She possesses a wiry intelligence.

Nicholas yanked his hand from the coffin, the image fading. He was unsure if he’d imagined the woman. She’d felt so real.

“They’re full of water,” he said, peering into the coffins.

“They have always been,” Isabel’s voice rang. “But where are the sleeping maids? What of them?”

“They have passed into memory,” Jessica told the cat, who had seated herself on one of the candle-bearing shelves.

“Maids?” Nicholas asked. “What is this place?”

“It is the Trinity’s sleeping chamber,” Jessica said simply. “This is where they retired from the world, tiring of its horrors. They slept here for thousands of years. Now they are gone, returned to the earth that birthed them.” Shadows danced across her face as she scrutinised him. “Let me tell you a story.”

She went to the far wall and brushed dry roots from it. “Many centuries ago, there were two sisters and a brother. The boy was called Thekla. The girls were called Athania and Norlath. They were nomadic warriors, their skin dark mahogany, hair white as snow. They were the most feared and loved of the land. In that time, the world was known as
Ginnungap
, and it was a bleak place of death and devils. The Dark Prophets were seated in the wastelands of the west, and their insidious will stretched across the land. Only the iron-willed survived. Iron-willed and iron-boned. Thekla, Athania and Norlath were known as the God Slayers, because that was what people believed demons were – angry gods whose black hearts had been corrupted by their hunger for power.

“One day, Thekla received a message from the town of Nilhands. It was under siege. A monstrous creature had torn the heads from seventy soldiers and used them to fashion a nest for itself in the uppermost quarters of the castle. Riding out, the God Slayers stormed the castle and battled the beast. When the beast was slain, Thekla and his sisters were offered all the riches they could carry with them. But Norlath wanted no riches, no reward save one thing – the bravest women and men of Nilhands would join them, become their companions in the battle against the foul things that corrupted the innocent.

“It was quite a request for unassuming townspeople, but Norlath’s expectations were modest. Five men and two women allied themselves with the God Slayers that day, and together they rode from town to town, exorcising evil everywhere they went. Each town they visited, so more recruits were enlisted, until their army was a formidable thing, always headed by the God Slayers, whose skills on the battlefield were unmatchable.”

Jessica had made it halfway round the room. Nicholas listened raptly. It seemed even the drowsy candlelight had fallen under Jessica’s enchantment.

“Eventually, the time came for the God Slayers and their army to confront the Dark Prophets. War raged for thirteen months. Both sides suffered huge losses, but finally the God Slayers emerged triumphant. They cast the Prophets out, drew on powers that nobody knew they possessed to rent open a seam in reality. The Prophets were banished to the darkest regions of Hell.

“When the remaining beasts were gone,” Jessica continued, “having either retreated to their own realm below the earth or been wiped from Ginnungap altogether, the God Slayers built a town. Hyperion. They forged their own mighty fortress, and the townspeople affectionately called them the Trinity – the three who had saved the world from monsters.

“What the townspeople did not know, though many suspected, was that the Trinity were divine beings. Their veins ran with sacred blood. As the Dark Prophets were the ultimate in depravity, so were the Trinity the ultimate in purity. The name God Slayers was entirely accurate because that’s exactly what the Trinity were – Gods birthed by the very soil of Ginnungap to restore balance to the world. Now that the world was cleansed, it did not need them anymore.”

“What happened to them?”

“Thekla, Athania and Norlath retired below their fortress in three water-filled coffins, where they would wait until they were needed again. Their army became the Sentinels. Each generation that followed knew of the Trinity and what they had done, and watched the world for signs of evil’s inevitable return.”

Jessica stopped. Her hair fell across her face and she seemed sad. She perched on a step behind the coffins.

“But where are the Trinity now?” Nicholas asked. “They’re not in the coffins.”

“They slept for so long that they lost form,” Jessica said. “I watched them grow transparent as water, and one day they were simply gone. Reclaimed by Ginnungap. Perhaps we left them too long. We should have roused them sooner.”

“And Esus?” Nicholas asked. He wandered to the stone bird atop the throne and touched it. A new image flickered behind his eyelids.

A raven soars above a battlefield. It plunges through the ranks and sweeps toward three shadows. The sun glimmers, dancing about the figures, who wear silver armour and raise blood-stained swords.

Gasping for breath, Nicholas released the statue. He couldn’t tell if his powers were growing, or if the magic in this chamber was so potent it was heightening them. A rush of exhilaration rippled through him. He’d never been able to summon images on command.

“When they first bested him in battle, Esus became the Trinity’s eyes and ears,” Jessica explained. “And when the time came for their retirement, Esus became the first
Vaktarin
, the first to guard them in their slumber. But as the years bled into one another, even mighty Esus wearied. Men came, fearsome conquerors, and a great battle took place over the town of Hyperion. Afterwards, all that remained was a smouldering ruin. The Trinity’s castle was devastated. In the wake of much bloodshed, Esus entreated a family of Sentinels to rebuild, to create a residence above the Trinity’s subterranean chamber and guard it in his stead.”

“The name of that family was Hallow,” Isabel put in importantly. “They guarded proudly when Esus could not.”

Nicholas’s head was spinning. Jessica had drawn a vivid picture of Sentinel history that he’d been unable to glean from the
Chronicles
. It went back further than he could have imagined. He thought about everything he’d learned at school. Darwin. The industrial revolution. Nazis. That history was familiar, accepted. This, on the other hand…

“This is mental,” he breathed.

“It’s a lot to take in.” Jessica smiled kindly. “Now you see why we have been hesitant to burden you with too much information. I say ‘burden’, because that is what it can invariably be. Can you imagine what would have happened had we spoken of this all when you first arrived?”

“I’d have called the local nuthouse and told them one of their patients was on the loose,” Nicholas said.

Still might
, he thought ruefully, recalling Jessica’s fragile mental state.

Jessica laughed and the sound glanced off the walls. “And now?”

“I still think you’re all nuts,” Nicholas said. He couldn’t deny what he’d seen, though. How had those images jumped into his head, if not by magic?

“You’ll just have to accept it.” Isabel tutted, glaring at him from her alcove.

“Man has his history,” Jessica added more tactfully. “We have ours. They’re intertwined. Ours just happens to be, shall we say, less well publicised.”

“And for good reason,” Isabel drawled.

Jessica seemed to understand that he was struggling.

“Think of this,” she suggested. “This is the history your parents knew. They kept it from you, and that was their choice. But this was their world. And it is yours, too.”

Nicholas looked at the coffins. The inscriptions on the walls. His ears rang. Jessica’s stories clashed with what he already knew about the world. It was like trying to push a square peg into a circular hole. But this room, this
tomb
... it had a feeling. The kind of feeling that usually existed inside a church, or an old house. A feeling of time and pride and wealth.

And he’d seen demons. There was no denying they existed.

“So how did you come into all this?” he asked Jessica. “You said before that you weren’t a Sentinel.”

“No,” Jessica replied. “However, ordinary people have been welcomed into the Sentinel fold for centuries. Those with particular talents. That’s why I was brought in. My Sensitivity meant that Isabel was training me to become a Sentinel, though she didn’t tell me that at the time. When she died, leaving none to take up residence in Hallow House, I became the
Vaktarin
.”

“Esus saw the potential in her,” Isabel said. “He had watched her since she was a child. I suspect he thought she was somebody else.”

“And I have protected the house ever since,” Jessica explained. “It is my magic that shields the house from external forces. For five hundred years, a barrier has enclosed the house – a barrier that you punched through when you pulled Raymond Snelling inside.”

The guilt was a blow to the gut, but Nicholas saw that Jessica wasn’t reprimanding him. Understanding shone in her eyes. Perhaps she knew how isolated he’d felt since moving here; that he knew things were being kept from him. Could that be the reason she was telling him all of this now?

“The barrier has been reinforced,” Jessica continued, no doubt attempting to prevent Isabel from adding her own commentary. “What happened with Snelling won’t happen again.”

Nicholas felt dizzy with all that he’d learnt. “Well…” he began. “That just leaves me. How do I fit into all of it?”

“You’re an emissary of the Trinity.”

The new voice boomed into the cavern. It set Nicholas’s teeth on edge.

Esus.

The mood in the underground chamber changed as the phantom emerged from the shadows.

Nicholas wasn’t sure if he’d been there all along, listening to them talk. The silver mask caught the candlelight and pitch black eyes flashed like polished pebbles.

“What does that mean?” Nicholas asked, refusing to be intimidated by the figure, despite what he’d just heard about him. He couldn’t fathom how ancient Esus was.

“Restrain from using big words, they confound him,” Isabel drawled and Nicholas shot her a glare.

“You were born with certain gifts.” Esus’s voice drummed hollowly. “You were chosen by the Trinity even as you slumbered in the womb, but a seed of a man. It was you they chose, you they imbued with a drop of their heavenly power – and you who can revive them again.”

“Revive them?” Nicholas began. “What do you–”

“The knowledge resides dormant in you. It is your duty to unlock it by any means necessary.”

Nicholas was dumbfounded. This was what was expected of him? This was the reason he posed such a threat to Malika and the Harvesters? He didn’t want to believe it. He felt a delirious impulse to laugh, or demand proof. And he would have if it wasn’t for the three pairs of eyes fixed on him. He swallowed, his mouth dry.

“Why would they choose me?”

“It was not you alone. There was another,” Esus continued. “A girl. The Trinity chose two. You were raised within the Sentinel fold by Sentinel parents, but she is lost to us. You must find her, return her to us. The Trinity chose the two of you for a reason. Only together will you be able to rouse the Trinity and banish all that ails the world. Without her, it’s possible we are all doomed. If the agents of the Dark Prophets should find her first...”

Nicholas wasn’t sure how to defuse the pressure building in his head. Perhaps this really was why Jessica had kept things from him. He imagined steam blasting from his ears.

“We have reason to believe that she is in Bury St Edmunds,” Esus intoned.

Nicholas knew the town. It wasn’t far from Cambridge. He’d been there when he was younger.

“Which is precisely where Mr Wilkins is headed,” Jessica added softly. “A curious coincidence. So curious, in fact, that it can’t possibly be one. The time has come for you to leave Hallow House. In your brief stay, the climate has changed – both literally and metaphorically.” She winked at him. “Consider this your training. Your gifts are a vital asset; you must learn how to use and control them. Only by doing so may you unlock the knowledge that the Trinity hid within you.”

“You must become a Sentinel,” Isabel added.

“But train how? By finding this girl?” Nicholas asked. Somehow he doubted he would be getting a lightsaber out of it. “Who is she? What’s her name?”

“That, too, eludes us.” Esus’s tone was like wind rushing over a grey expanse of ocean. “The name she was given at birth has been discarded. Lydia Green was her birth name, but that is no longer the case. She has been running for a very long time, but you have a connection. With your gifts, you alone are capable of finding her.”

As if to balance the phantom’s solemnity, Jessica added: “Isabel will be there to help you.”

Nicholas couldn’t tell if the cat was happy about that or not – she always looked miserable. He liked to think she had puffed herself up importantly.

He shook himself. “Sam. Why is Sam going to Bury?”

“Mr Wilkins has a, what do you call it? I forget the terms... A ‘lead’ on the Harvester who called himself Raymond Snelling,” Jessica said. “It seems there’s a house in Bury St Edmunds registered under his name. You’ll help Mr Wilkins with his investigations, familiarise yourself with the Sentinel way. You may even be of use to him. You’ve proven you can handle yourself when it’s required. I think this will be good for you. And Isabel.”