Second Night (2 page)

His persistent reticence and wilful lack of cooperation renders our archive information disastrously incomplete and makes an absolute mockery of the Oath of Allegiance, to which we are all entirely and irrevocably blood-bound. Time is against us and such wanton faithlessness can only serve to the detriment of our preparation for the forthcoming vigil three months from now.

I require a resolution to this insupportable situation with all due speed and consideration before we meet next in Council at the end of October.

Jonas E. A. Pring

Master

OCTOBER

GUARDIANS YEAR 148

CHAPTER 1

The candle glimmered and went out. A match flickered, cupped in a shaking hand. The candle flared. The old man bent down, groping clumsily for the spent match dropped on the polished mahogany floor. He sighed irritably. Dawn was near and he cursed himself for allowing the frailty of his aging body to seduce him into sleep – slumped sideways in the chair in his study – while the stars rose and set unnoticed through the hours of an all too rare night of unclouded sky in that bitterly inadequate year.

The observatory was his uniquely private place. Others had entreated him to share it. He had refused. The darkness of the wholly black interior was relieved only by the gleaming brass fittings on the enamelled black telescope, resplendent on its great cast-iron pillar in the centre of the room, and the fine, pale gold lines on the star charts painted around the curving walls. Densely woven, silk blackout curtains closed off the four round windows that were precisely aligned with the major compass points.

He stood upright, leaning heavily on his walking stick – the palm of his free hand pressed against his forehead – mocked by the echoing of his every laboured breath around the cavernous space under the dome. When the customary dizziness had passed, he set about opening the heavy copper shutter. There was no time to pursue the formal activities of the gentleman astronomer that night, no time to light the red lamps and point the great telescope at the stars. The dome was already aligned with the meridian. The shutter would open on a view to the south.

He lifted the long steel rod off the hook on the wall and fitted it into the crescent-shaped bracket at the base of the dome. He gripped the mahogany handle and began to wind the gearing. Slowly, the system of pulleys took up the slack. Slowly, the great mouth rumbled open, gaping toothless into the heavens. The glare from the full moon sinking rapidly towards the southwest drowned the light of all but the brightest stars. No matter.

Anxious not to miss the culmination of the night's viewing, he positioned the observing ladder, which ran smoothly on leatherclad wheels around the circular brass channel laid into the floor. It was a handsome set of mahogany steps, standing eight feet high with a cushioned guardrail around the top. Leaving his stick at the bottom, he hastened up the ladder and braced himself against the rail to stare into the sky. At this height he stood in glorious isolation from the pitiful clamourings of his everyday life. He was at one with his God, his vision straining to see into the multidimensional mysteries of the worlds within worlds in all that was known of the visible universe and those others that lay beyond it.

Venus was the morning star that month, rising over the hills to the east. Jupiter was bright, but the old man wasn't interested in following the progress of the planets at that moment. He sniffed the air, cursing the rain that would return by the end of the day. The sky was faintly misted but still clear in the last hour of what would have been a fine observing night, when the turbulence of the atmospheric air currents would have least affected the telescope's piercing vision. Only the God knew what chances of insight he had wasted in such fruitless slumber, such squandering of the precious droplets of time left in the dregs of the cup of his lifespan.

He lowered his gaze to the great constellation of the Goddess, known to the uninitiated as Orion but returned by the Guardians to its former, most illustrious heritage. Tracing a line rising north from the blue star at the point of her right slipper towards Polaris, he stopped at the first magnitude luminary gleaming at the zenith almost midway between them. The identity of Wotan's Eye was exclusive to the secret lore of the Masters. It was the third brightest in the northern hemisphere and the most splendid of the stars that night. What the nineteenth-century telescope magnified as a rich, yellow, single star had later been discovered to be a closely connected system of two binary pairs, which more aptly reflected the many-faceted nature of the mighty deity for whom the Masters had agreed it should be renamed.

Will there be a kindly refuge for humanity in that distant place?
the old man wondered.
Will our starships ride the waves of space unfoundered when Ragna Rök is finally upon us? Or will we find ourselves far from our own ruined world and facing the moment of the last and greatest of all treachery?

He waited. At the magical moment when the eye of the God shone out against the faded backdrop of the dawn sky, he unsheathed a jewel-handled knife. The blade was etched with runes. Moved by the extraordinary clarity of the star glowing directly above his head, he raised his arms in worship, his voice booming into the vast space under the echoing dome. ‘All-Father! Grant me a sign!'

Struggling to keep his balance, he jabbed awkwardly at the thickened scar at the base of his left thumb, but the knife slipped before he could make the cut, tearing a strip from the paper-fine skin on the back of his hand. Blood ran down his fingers and he wept, fumbling in his pockets for a handkerchief.

‘I have failed to give you a son,' he whimpered, ‘but I am not a coward.' The blood splashed onto the leather-covered rail and he cried out, ‘Why have you abandoned me? I was willing to sacrifice! Even as a child I defied my father for you! I did not refuse the oath! I did not fear to take up arms in your name! Why was I not accepted? Why must I be so denied?'

The star vanished. Ripping away the patch covering the empty socket of his sacrificed left eye, he stared vainly into the pitiless heavens, seeking beyond the threshold of time and space that separated his narrow existence from the mystery of the worlds that he had once been privileged to experience. But the gaze of the God had turned elsewhere. Sir Jonas Pring, Master of the Guardians of the Runes of the Deathless, bowed his head, weeping inconsolably.

CHAPTER 2

The rain came during the late afternoon, the first drops splattering against the window under the eaves at the lodge. Caz put down the pen. The books and papers for the test he was supposed to be working on were easily forgotten.
The spooks owe me!

His long dark hair fell forward around his face and he leaned back in the chair, stretching his legs out under the desk as he reached up to the bookshelf for the plaited leather thong. He tied back his hair, watching the garden – already blackened by unseasonably early frost – gradually blurring into a steady downpour. A thin trickle of water ran across the window ledge and dripped down the wall into the gap between the bare floorboards. His eyes strayed to the picture of the elegant grey mare in the silver frame on the wall beside the window.

They owe me for Bryn! Oh yes, I remember your name, Haldor Vidarsson. I can never forget it. By your hand she was murdered and fed to the hellhounds in front of my eyes. But I have your spear and you will pay – you and every spook that rides with you. You will pay me for Bryn.

His eyes narrowed, remembering that long December night.
We won the first of the Runes of the Deathless but the price we paid was more than we ever dreamed we had bargained for. It was different for Kyri. She was in her own element and knew what she was up against. The rest of us took a real beating and Bryn paid the biggest price of all.

It's difficult to know what effect it's had on the old man, but Freyja's temperament is shot to pieces. We're the ones who have changed the most. She's much stronger physically, like I am. She can endure for longer and jump higher, like Kyri. At least she still eats normally, which is more than can be said for me. The spooks let us come home but we returned to a world we thought we knew and found it didn't know us any more.

That was nearly two years ago when the warriors of Valhall had been unleashed by the God to answer the summoning under the red moon. The outcome of the vigil one year later had been very different.

We prepared and we waited, Sir Jonas and Freyja and Kyri and me. It was Hag Night as good as it gets – clear, covered in stars, no moon. It was the perfect spook-ride night, but the horses were too quiet, even Kyri. Not like the first time. They knew the spooks wouldn't show up and they were right. We waited in the yard for hours, watching the stars, watching the Goddess spinning her thread across the sky until she disappeared behind the trees and dawn was rising over the hills. Then we had to admit that we knew too.

He drained the coffee in the mug on the desk beside him and poured another, dropping a handful of sugar into the tepid liquid.

After that everything went wrong. Even the weather turned against us. The old man got pneumonia and didn't ride for six months. Rúna had a colt. The harvest was a mess. We got some of the hay in, lost the rest, and the straw rotted in the fields.

The rain paused. A biting draught whistled between the cracks in the window frame and a clattering of hail shook the old leaded panes. The white grains sliding in slow motion down the glass reminded him of the first time Sir Jonas had told him about the legend of Ragna Rök, when the world must end in an unimaginable catastrophe of ice and fire. He shifted uncomfortably in the chair, remembering the dreadful waking dream that followed, where he had seen the Earth starved and devastated in the iron grip of three years of everlasting winter.

The old man had said: ‘World's Ending on a planetary scale will begin in our dreams. On a personal level Ragna Rök can take many forms. Any individual crisis can spell an ending to life as we know it.'

That was the beginning of Ragna Rök for me, when Bryn died. My life, as I knew it, was ended. Now I don't know what I am. I don't operate like anyone else I know. Everything about me seems to be different. It's like I've been accelerated somehow, right down to every cell in my body. For Bryn's sake I bound myself to the warrior's vows I'd read about in one of Sir Saxon's old books – no booze and no sex until I'd won the rest of the big three runes. I thought it would be easy to give up what I'd never had. It's not. That much of me at least is still human. Sometimes I think the old man hates me for whatever it is I've become. I suppose it's because of Kyri too. He waited for her all his life and she came when he was too old to ride her.

He touched the blank screen on the wall, bringing up an ethereal image caught on camera in one of those rare and perfect moments of grace when magic permits itself to be recorded. An exquisite, pale grey filly stood tall and proud under the monstrous, twisted boughs of a huge and ancient oak tree, her tail held high, her flowing mane and shimmering coat dazzling in the first rays of the morning sun.

There's all of Bryn in her,
he thought wistfully, a
nd so much more. We call her Kyri, but she is Valkyrjan, one of the legendary Galdramerar come into our time. She is my only vision now. The runes don't work for me. The tree is silent in the forest. I don't sleep enough to dream. The old man only comes out with us at weekends. We don't talk much. He knows another ride to World Tree could finish him. It could finish Freyja too. That's the worst of it. She hates him riding her now. I hear his heartbeat jump and waver when he's lying to me. I hear other hearts too. They speak to me more clearly than the voices I hear arguing in whispers behind closed doors in the manor house. There's a lot they haven't told me, a lot they think I don't know.

A blast of music from the room below startled him back into the tedium of the dismal afternoon. He stamped several times on the floor, shouting, ‘Use your headphones, will you?'

‘Sorry!' called Jemima. ‘I thought you were up at the yard.'

Headlights shone across the wet lawn. A car drew in and parked beside the house. He heard voices calling out and doors slamming.

Jas and Sara are home already. It must be getting late
.

The screen blanked. He shovelled the pile of papers unchecked into the bin under the desk and stood up abruptly, clutching at his stomach as the first familiar pangs of dreadful hunger spasms gripped his guts.
The sun is setting!

Jemima looked out of her room as he ran down the stairs. In her arms, she cradled a white cat with sleepy blue eyes.

‘It's me cooking tonight,' she said. ‘What time will you be back?'

Wide, green eyes gleamed above them from a precarious perch on a narrow ledge over the door. The cat leapt down and settled, purring, on Caz's shoulder.

‘Give me an hour. Make sure you do enough.'

‘I'll do loads.'

‘Good.'

The kitchen was warm. A kettle steamed on the back of the old iron range. Jasper was sitting at the table, checking his phone. Sara Tate was spooning coffee granules into mugs. Her hair was shoulder length, bleached blonde with pink and silver highlights. Her blue-grey eyes twinkled behind chunky, black-framed glasses.

‘Have you got any coffee for me?' asked Caz.

‘It's just coming,' she replied.

Jasper tipped his chair back against the wall, yawning and stretching expansively, watching her under half-closed lids as she moved around the kitchen, refilling the kettle at the sink and putting it back on the stove. She was older than he was. They had been together for nearly two years and a couple of months before, on her nineteenth birthday, she had put her university place on hold and moved in with him at the lodge.

He only admitted to himself how amazed he was that she wanted to be with him. Committing to a relationship was a risky business. Living in the shade of his mother's heartbreak after the early death of his father had taught him that much, and a lot more besides. He wanted what he had with Sara to last forever but he couldn't tell her. He hoped she knew.