The Ghost Roads (Ring of Five) (3 page)

“Sometimes I think it would be better just to put a bullet in him. Then no one could make use of him.” Devoy did not need to look to see that Marcus Brunholm had appeared behind him. Brunholm made a point of using secret entrances whenever possible.

“Admit it, Devoy. The only reason you don’t do it is that we need his power more than the Ring does. We’re in big trouble.”

“What’s he doing?” Devoy said. Danny had stopped to talk to his friend Dixie, but there was something wrong.

“They’re up to something sneaky,” Brunholm said. “I can tell.”

“They’re students of spying,” Devoy said drily, “they’re supposed to be sneaky.”

“Yes, well,” Brunholm said, “there’s another matter I’d like to bring to your attention. This power of Danny’s, the power of the Fifth, as they call it …”

Devoy turned sharply. Somehow membership of the Fifth had uncovered a mysterious power in Danny, something that welled up inside him, capable of unleashing a huge destructive force.

“What do you know?”

“I researched it in the Library of the Antiquaries …,” Brunholm said.

“Not like you to study, Marcus.”

“I thought we might use the power in defending Wilsons.”

“Ah. Continue.”

“The power is a rare side effect of a union between Cherb and human—in this case, Danny’s parents. The changes on a genetic level were so profound that an effect not dissimilar to nuclear fission can emerge from the very atoms of the child. A human atom bomb, in other words.”

“Luckily, such unions are almost unheard of. Cherbs despise humans.”

“Perhaps. But it was not always so. In the ancient days there were many such marriages. Any children these couples had were examined at birth for signs of the power, signs now lost to us.”

“And if the signs were found?”

“The power was too dangerous to control. Eventually it consumes the holder, and those near to it. Indeed, in extreme cases whole towns were lost.”

“Did anyone learn to control the power?”

“No one … Any child who showed signs of having it was left outside to die.”

“But is there no cure, Marcus, no antidote?”

“In one old document I found what purported to be a cure.”

“Purported to be?”

“If death can be said to be a cure,” Brunholm said grimly, “for the words were ‘The Fifth may be washed of his power …’ ”

“Yes?” Devoy said. “And saved?”

“I haven’t finished,” Brunholm said. “ ‘The Fifth may be washed of his power only in the waters of death.’ ”

F
ar below Devoy and Brunholm, Dixie was staring at Danny with her mouth hanging open.

“You have Nala in the summerhouse?”

“I didn’t know what else to do.”

“If anyone sees him, they’ll kill him, or worse!”

“Worse?”

“Can you imagine what Brunholm would do to him to get information on Cherb troop movements?”

“I can’t think about it now, Dixie. I have to go to the Butts.” The Butts were the network of underground passages beneath Wilsons. The traitorous dead of several centuries had found refuge there, and they roamed freely. Once, Danny and his friends had tried to sneak through the Butts and had encountered the dead. A cold hand had
thrust a ring into Danny’s shirt. The ring bore the entwined initials “S” and “G.” Steff and Grace—Danny’s parents.

“Whoever or whatever gave me that ring knows something about my parents. I need to find out what I can.”

Danny had learned who his real parents were, but he had struck a wall of silence when he attempted to find out how they had died. Both Devoy and Brunholm had said they did not know, and the detective McGuinness, though he had tried, hadn’t been able to find out anything.

“I want to go with you, Danny, but I’m afraid of the dead.” Dixie shivered, and Danny remembered with a pang of guilt that he had allowed her to be taken by the dead as a servant on their last mission, although he had rescued her in the end.

“You don’t have to go far into the Butts, just come as support,” Danny said. “Les is mad at me over Nala, and Vandra flat refuses to go anywhere near the Butts.”

“I’ll go with you to the entrance, but no farther.” Dixie flickered, disappeared and reappeared twenty feet away. She possessed the Quality of Indeterminate Location, and when she was nervous, she couldn’t control it.

“Let’s go, then.”

The entrance to the Butts that Danny had chosen was a nondescript little door beside a buttress that shielded it from view. Danny picked the lock in seconds.

“Good luck, Danny,” Dixie said. “I’ll stay here. I promise.”

“Thanks, Dixie.” Danny was nervous. The dead of
Wilsons were, after all, the cheats and traitors of history who had proved themselves capable of any betrayal. He patted Dixie on the shoulder and plunged into the darkness.

At first the air was musty, but not unpleasantly so. But as he penetrated the maze in the foundations of the building, the air grew colder and the odor changed to a sweet smell of putrefaction, as though something were rotting in the shadows. Danny shivered. His torch caught something glistening in the dark. He shone the beam on a jelly-like mold on the ground, which heaved and writhed as though something, or someone, was trapped within.

Dark thoughts flitted through Danny’s mind. He found himself thinking about his own death. He imagined a mournful procession to a graveyard at dusk, a new grave dug among ancient tombstones.…

“Stop it,” he said firmly to himself, but the dread would not go.

Every twenty yards or so, he stopped and called out “Hello,” but no answer came, save for a swarm of blowflies that appeared out of nowhere, fat, slow-flying things that caught in his mouth and nostrils. He batted them off, trying not to think of what they might have been feeding on.

“Hello!” he called again and again, with the same result. You’re going about this the wrong way, he thought. If you were one of the traitorous dead, you’d be the one who was wary of a stranger.

He stopped and turned off the torch. The blackness around him was absolute, and the silence pressed
down like a weight. He fought the panic rising inside, the feeling that he would be consumed by the nothingness around him. Then, at the farthest range of his hearing, a sound … someone whispering.… There it was again. Voices, cold and far-off. Another noise—dead leaves, perhaps, or scurrying feet. Ice stole through his veins. The noises stopped, but he knew, though he could see and hear nothing, that someone or something stood very close to him in the dark. A person, but not a living one, for a living form would not be able to quiet its breathing in the absolute stillness, and whoever was beside him made no sound.

He felt that he had been standing there forever, assailed by dark thoughts and evil imaginings, waves of horror sweeping through him. Just when he thought he could take no more, a bony hand touched his arm and he felt his insides turn to water.

“What do you need from the dead?” The voice was mournful, rasping, full of terrible regret that could never be assuaged.

“Nothing.… I mean …”

“Nothing!” The voice was scornful. “What does a child know of nothing? Wait until you have walked the halls of the dead and breathed their stench and misery before you talk of nothing!”

“I’m sorry …,” Danny began.

“Sorry … sorrow …” It wasn’t a voice any longer, but a low moan like a winter wind blowing across a moorland at night.

“The ring,” Danny managed to gasp. “We were in
the Butts and someone put a ring in my pocket. A ring with initials on it … ‘S & G’ … Steff and Grace … my parents …”

There was a long silence; then his dead companion spoke.

“Steff and Grace. The living child comes among the dead to seek his parents. Who has heard of such a thing?”

Danny tried to ease himself away, but the bony grip tightened.

“What do the dead long for? What do they dream of when the stillness of the tomb descends? What one thing would they take from among the living to succor the endless night of death?” The words echoed in the damp stone chambers of the Butts and fell away. Silence returned. Despair gripped Danny. The silence stretched on and on.

“It’s a question.” The voice said abruptly.

“What?”

“It’s a question. What one thing would the dead take from among the living to succor the endless night of death?”

“I don’t know.”

“Speak!”

“I don’t know!”

“Well, for me, it would be a cup of tea,” the dead voice said, “a cup of tea and maybe a plate of muffins.”

“Tea?”
Danny managed.

“With milk and sugar.”

“Who
are
you?”

“Name’s Hinault, James Hinault, former professional spy, and a damn good one until I got caught coming out
of the judge’s wards with the verdict in the Schiele case under my coat.”

“Who was Schiele?”

“It doesn’t matter, sport, he’s been dead for a hundred years or more.”

“What did they do to you—when they caught you, I mean?”

“Hanged me high, then had me drawn and quartered for good measure.”

“Drawn and quartered … doesn’t that mean …”

“They butchered me like a prize hog, but the Guild of Spies got hold of the body and stitched it up again. It was in the contract, and I’d paid my dues. Always did, no matter what. But never mind that. Let’s go somewhere a little cozier. Talking with the living is a little frowned upon in the Butts, you might say.”

“Cozier?” Danny couldn’t imagine anywhere in this damp, cold underworld being cozy, but Hinault kept his grip on Danny’s arm.

“Can I turn on the torch?” Danny asked.

“Keep it off for a minute,” Hinault said. “You drew enough attention to yourself going through the tunnels earlier.”

Danny heard the click of a lock and a hinge squeaking. He was led through the door, which closed behind him.

“Put on your torch now,” Hinault said.

Danny found himself, to his surprise, in a railway carriage—a luxurious carriage with leather seats, brass fittings and faded velvet drapes where the windows had been.

“Previous owner was a railway enthusiast,” Hinault
said. They sat down. Remembering what the dead man had said about being hanged, drawn and quartered, then stitched up, Danny turned reluctantly toward him. Hinault’s face was battered, and one eye was missing. His head lolled to the side at a strange angle on a neck that was longer than it should have been. Stitches in coarse thread on his throat disappeared below his collar, and his body was lumpy and lopsided like a badly stuffed sack. Hinault stared at him with his one good eye, and Danny wondered shakily whether he would ever get out of the Butts.

“So,” Hinault said, “what’s this all about?” Danny took the ring from his pocket and showed it to him. “Steff and Grace Pilkington—who would have thought it?”

“Did you know them?” Danny sat forward.

“ ’Fraid not,” Hinault said, “but I heard they were killed. You see, the dead don’t have much to do with the living unless they’re on their way here, when they do become of interest, if you follow.”

“But … Steff and Grace aren’t here,” Danny said.

“No,” Hinault said, “only the faithless end up here, those with nowhere else to go.”

“Then who gave me the ring, and why?”

“Who gave it to you I can’t tell, but the why might be more interesting.”

“What do you mean?”

“There’s a great silence around your parents’ death,” Hinault said. “The silence was even commented on down here.”

“I know!” Danny exclaimed. “No one will tell me anything!”

“Think about it, sport. Cherbs and humans get together, marry, have children. There’s a lot of folks who would have an interest in stopping that kind of peace. You get peace, then there’s awkward questions about why there was war in the first place, and who kept it going and why. Take it from me, many a person has been killed for less.”

“Then why give me the ring?”

Hinault edged closer and dropped his voice.

“There are rumors of a rebel movement—the S and Gs, they’re called. Very secret, but they’re trying to show that there can be peace between Cherbs and humans. I heard they were trying to contact you. Some say you’re not to be trusted, others say you’re the last hope to lead the Two Worlds away from war. Now. I’ve said enough.”

“Please,” Danny said, “who are these people? How do I find them?”

But Hinault would say no more. Danny pressed him again and again. He had let the torch fall away from Hinault’s face, and it was only when he lifted it again that he realized his mistake: you did not pester the dead. Hinault’s face was fixed in a rictus, his one good eye red-rimmed and staring, staring for a moment, then rolling back into his head so that only the white was showing. Then the mouth opened, wider than any mouth should open. Danny had a vision of rot and putrefaction, such things as human eye should not fall upon; then he was enveloped by a smell that was more than a smell, a hideous, clinging fog of odor that made him retch. Last came the sound, a screech as though the gates of hell had opened
and a legion of the damned rode out with foul war cries to destroy the earth. Gagging, choking, holding his ears, refusing to open his eyes for fear of what evil he might see, Danny reeled from the railway carriage, driven before the stench and noise, blind to all save panic.

He had no idea how long he had spent in the tunnels, when finally a voice sounded in his ears, distant but familiar.

“Danny … Danny!”

Somehow he followed it to the source and found the entrance he had used to enter the Butts. He pulled at the latch, then sprawled out into the fresh air, panting, his nostrils full of hideous odors, his mind assailed by visions of the dead.

“Danny … it’s Dixie.… Are you all right?”

“Yes.” He gulped great lungfuls of fresh air. “I think so.” He shook his head, trying to rid his mind of the thoughts of the dead.

“What happened?”

“Dixie, you know how nothing is ever the way it looks in Wilsons? And when you find out what’s really going on, the truth is always worse than you thought it might be?”

“I know what you mean. I think.”

“Well, what if the truth
wasn’t
as bad as you thought? What if there were
good
secrets?”