The Serpent in the Glass (The Tale of Thomas Farrell) (27 page)

‘What are we doing here?’ Thayer asked as he glanced about the room nervously.

Thomas looked up at the blank parchment. ‘Testing a theory. Treice, can you get a chair?’

Treice nodded and dashed out. He was back in seconds. Thomas took the chair from him and put it beneath the podium.

Penders shot a look back into the Hall. ‘What now? Dugan will be back soon.’

‘Now we find out a bit more about who we are!’ Merideah pulled something from her robes. It was her prefect badge.

Penders rolled his eyes to the ceiling. ‘Oh please, you can’t wear that! It isn’t going to impress Dugan or anyone.’

Merideah ignored him and stood on the chair. ‘I’ll go first.’ She opened the badge and pricked a finger with the pin so that a small drop of blood appeared. Thomas winced. After pressing her finger to the parchment, she stepped back on the large chair so that the others could see. Nothing happened for a few seconds, but then a thin red line began to appear, stretching up the parchment and expanding into a great tree of names. Then, finally, two names a little larger than the rest appeared in the blood writing atop the page:
Lios
and
Svart
.

‘What does it mean?’ Penders asked.

‘It’s a family tree. My father and grandfather are here.’ Merideah pointed to the bottom of the parchment. ‘I don’t know who Lios and Svart are though. Thayer, have you heard the names before?’

Thayer frowned. ‘I do not think so, but I am not the best person to ask. My skill is with more practical things. You could ask Taelon.’

A few seconds later the tree and names on the parchment faded so that it lay blank again. Merideah jumped down and wiped the pin with a handkerchief. ‘Who’s next? Thayer? We know your race, so maybe we could use you as a sort of control experiment?’

Thayer didn’t seem to know what Merideah was talking about, but he volunteered all the same. Removing a small knife from his robes he cut a small gash in his palm as the rest of the children, except Merideah, screwed up their faces.

Thayer got up on the chair and let a few drops of blood fall onto the old paper. Thayer’s ancestry gradually filled the parchment and ended at the top with the name
Tethra
.

Thayer clambered down and Merideah offered him her handkerchief. He stared at it blankly.

‘It wasn’t that emotional,’ Penders said.

Merideah shook her head at Penders. ‘It’s for his hand, silly!’

Penders grinned.

Thayer declined the offer. He held up his hand. It had already stopped bleeding. ‘Tethra was the first king and father of the Fomorfelk.’

‘I thought as much,’ Merideah began. ‘So that’s how we tell what race we come from.’

Penders went next and the Parchment showed the name of Humbal atop his tree. There wasn’t much doubt that Penders had Humbalgog blood in him, and so Humbal must’ve been the father of that people.

Treice went back to Lios, the same name that had appeared on Merideah’s tree. As Treice had blue eyes and blond hair, it was likely Lios was the father of the Alfar.

Thomas and Jessica stood either side of the chair as Treice stepped down. Treice went to hand the handkerchief and prefect badge to Thomas, but Thomas indicated toward Jessica instead.

Treice awkwardly handed them over to Jessica, who smiled in gratitude. Treice removed himself to the doorway. ‘I’ll keep a look out for Dugan.’

Jessica watched as the small pinprick of blood faded into the Blood Parchment. She waited, but nothing happened. A disappointed look on her face, she stepped down.

Thomas stared at the blank parchment once he’d climbed up onto the chair. Pricking his thumb, he took a deep breath and pushed it down onto the base of the parchment. He waited, but the canvas remained quite blank. Thomas felt a sudden emptiness. He’d hoped to find out not only his race, but how his parents had fitted into it all. Miss Prowse would’ve been impressed!

‘I wonder why nothing happened for us?’ Jessica said to Thomas as they stepped out of the chamber and the wall reasserted itself. Thomas didn’t know. It made no sense.

Merideah slipped her badge back into her cadet robes. ‘Perhaps we should do as the Headmaster suggested? One of those books in the library must say something about the Blood Parchment or the fathers of the races of Avallach.’

Dugan appeared moments after they left the hidden chamber. He gave them a look through narrowed eyes before piling the bells, bowls, plates and goblets onto the tray. The children exited the Hall as Dugan shuffled off grumbling something about his workload.

‘I don’t see why we can’t use the Anywhere Lift,’ Penders complained as he puffed his way up the stairs.

‘The Headmaster said we can’t use it unless we’re with a teacher,’ Merideah reminded him.

‘Yeah, but no one would know if we used it, would they?’ Penders grinned at Merideah. ‘I remember seeing a landing zone on the roof.’

‘It only responds to the voice of the masters and mistresses of the Academy. Cadets cannot call it.’ Thayer’s words weren’t laboured. He seemed unaffected by the climb. Perhaps he was used to it.

Penders sighed. ‘Not much use it going anywhere if you can’t use it. What we need’s an Anywhere and Anyone Lift!’

‘Or perhaps some exercise?’ said Jessica with a hint of sarcasm. Penders didn’t reply but focused on climbing the winding stairs instead.

There were only a few cadets in the Darkledun Library when they walked in. Engrossed in writing or reading, the cadets didn’t notice the new arrivals.

‘No eating in this library either, Mr Penderghast,’ said a thin lady rearranging several books on a nearby shelf. It was Miss Parley, the Manor librarian and English teacher. Her glasses had gone and she had donned a long, grey dress.

‘Er — no — Miss Parley,’ Penders replied, taken aback at her appearance.

‘Quite right!’ said Jessica

Miss Parley raised an eyebrow. ‘And no loud talking either, Miss Westhrop; whisper if you need to say anything.’

Jessica’s face turned from a smile to a look of shock, followed by a dark frown. Penders swallowed a laugh, a look from Miss Parley ensuring it didn’t come up again.

‘The whole Manor works here!’ whispered Penders when they had passed the teacher.

It did seem that way. Thomas wondered if any of the teachers at the Manor didn’t know of this place. Mr Goodfellow had certainly not known. They eventually found a large table near the centre of the room where the boys promptly sat down.

‘Right,’ Jessica said looking at a long list of categories on a notice on the side of a nearby bookshelf. ‘Historical books seem the most likely to go for. They’re in aisle Eight to Fourteen.’

She looked at Thomas and the other boys. They didn’t move. ‘Merideah and myself will go then.’

Penders and Treice nodded their approval at the girls doing the legwork. Thomas wanted to have a look around, but after the climb thought he might just let Jessica have her way this time. Thayer, quite unaffected by the climb, had a blank look on his face. It was impossible to tell what he thought at all, except that books didn’t seem to excite him very much.

Jessica and Merideah returned after about ten minutes, with a book so large that it took both of them to carry it. Thomas poked Penders who woke suddenly from a slight doze. Merideah flashed a sharp look at Penders as Treice stood up, apparently uncomfortable at seeing Jessica and Merideah struggle. But it was Thayer who approached the girls and took the large book from them, and effortlessly placed it upon the table.

‘Thank you,’ Jessica said to the Fomorfelk. ‘At least there’s one gentleman here!’

Treice blushed and sat back down.

Merideah seated herself in front of the tome and breathed a sigh of relief. ‘Well, the library’s big, the aisles are big and some of the books are big too!’

Thomas read the title of the book:
An A-Z of Major Events, Characters, Places and Artefacts in the History of Avallach
. It was some kind of encyclopaedia.

Jessica took a seat next to Merideah, but the book was so large that almost an entire page extended onto Thomas’s part of the table.

‘Ah, here’s B,’ Merideah said as she flicked through the heavy pages. ‘Ballads — Ballybogs — Bellibones — Yes, here it is: Blood Parchment!’ She scanned the entry and then tapped her chin in thought. Treice, Penders and Thayer stared at her from across the table.

‘Ah, right, yes,’ she began as she prepared to read. ‘
The origins of the Blood Parchment are lost in history, but some say it was created by the Humbalgog enchanters before the Bounding was created in order to provide a means to distinguish between the Humbalgogs and Humans who then both inhabited Avallach. The Parchment would reveal a Humbalgog lineage when it came into contact with the blood of the same, but remain blank when the blood of a Human was exposed to it. It is also said to have been able to determine the bloodline of other races then extant in Avallach. The Blood Parchment fell out of use after the Bounding came into existence, and was subsequently lost to history
.’

‘Well, I guess we’re one hundred percent human, Thomas,’ Jessica said, nudging him. Thomas smiled, but confusion swept through his mind. He felt familiar with the world of Avallach and its people, and a foreigner in his own world of Holten Layme. He couldn’t be fully human.

‘What’s this Bounding?’ Jessica asked Thayer.

‘It is the border between your world and ours,’ Thayer explained.

Merideah’s nose twitched excitedly. ‘The “veil of mist” Master Fabula mentioned at the Feast of Fires?’

Thayer nodded.

Merideah turned the large pages until she was about half way through the leather-bound tome. ‘Lios was the forefather of the Alfar.’ She continued to the letter S. ‘And Svart was the ancestral father of the Drough.’

Penders smiled. ‘Well, now that’ll confuse Slayne Dretch. He won’t know whether to like you or hate you!’

Jessica raised her eyebrows. ‘I don’t think it matters. Slayne dislikes all Halfkin’ — she looked at Thayer — ‘and Fomorfelk. Though I suppose that doesn’t include Thomas and me.’

‘He probably hates humans too,’ Penders added as he watched Merideah turn through the pages.

Jessica shrugged. ‘Probably.’

‘Thomas!’ Merideah stared excitedly at the page now open before her. Thomas pulled himself out of his thoughts and looked at the book. They all stared at the page but none with more surprise than Thomas. There before him lay a drawing of his father’s Glass. He reached down to his marble bag and felt the large round shape of the Glass within.

‘That looks a lot like it, Thomas,’ Penders eventually said.

‘Yes,’ Thomas said, still somewhat dumbfounded. ‘But what’s it doing in here?’

‘Perhaps there’s more than one of them?’ Penders suggested.

‘Read it, Thomas,’ Jessica said, as she pointed to the small paragraph below the drawing.

Thomas’s eyes found the short entry on the page beneath the illustration.
Gloine Nathair
, was the title of the entry, and, in brackets immediately following, it read
The Serpent Glass or Serpent in the Glass
.

Thomas looked at Jessica who’d clearly already read it. How could he have known what it was called?

‘Out loud,’ said Treice, who could only see the writing upside down from where he sat. Thomas glanced at Miss Parley who was now immersed in a book at her desk some distance away. Treice followed his line of sight. ‘Well, quietly out loud.’

Thomas placed a finger on the text and began to read. ‘The Gloine Nathair is a unique object’ — so much for Penders’ idea — ‘of which little is known. It is mentioned in the
Chronicles of Avallach
(Volume I, page 127) as being used by King Avallach’s enchanters in reference to the creation of the Bounding. According to Professor Maltheus Nynth (1701-1788) the “small glowing orb” used by Rufus Marmanstane, last of the great enchanters, and mentioned in a later volume of the
Chronicles
, is this very same art fact — ’

‘Artefact,’ Merideah corrected.

‘Artefact,’ Thomas said. ‘If so, the Gloine Nathair also held the power to not only pass, but also to heal Way Gates. Later Alfar enchanters were unable to use the Gloine Nathair and its power was considered spent. It was subsequently stored away in the vault of the Alfar Kings and, as far as anyone knows, remains there to this day.’

There the text ended. Thomas sat back and pondered what he’d just read. ‘But how’d my father get it?’ He hadn’t realized he’d spoken his thought until Merideah replied.

‘It explains why we were able to come through the Way Gate that first night, and why Stanwell and the others have to use that password’

Merideah was right, but Thomas couldn’t believe his father was a thief. But how did his father come to possess the Glass if it had been in the keeping of the Alfar? Did it belong to someone else? Was someone else looking for it? Was he in danger? He thought about Gallowglas checking his room every night. Did he know about the Glass, or suspect it might be in Thomas’s possession? And why did the book say the Glass had lost its power, that the Alfar enchanters couldn’t use it? He’d used it to enter the Way Gate. He’d seen it glow and felt the life in it. It was far from spent. More than that, Thomas realized, the Glass felt as if it knew it had returned to the place from which it had come. No, the Glass was very much alive.

— CHAPTER NINETEEN —

The De Danann

The Christmas holiday passed all too slowly for Thomas. Even Jessica, after a day or two, seemed more interested in returning to Darkledun Manor than staying in Birch Tree Close. Christmas wasn’t, after all, much to look forward to in the Westhrop household. A single piece of tinsel hung from Mrs Westhrop’s giant Yucca plant near the front door; a solitary token of the Yule season to any door-step visitors. Not that there were many of those. Though there was the new lodger.

Mr Westhrop had wasted no time in putting Jessica’s room to good use by renting it out. Jessica only had her room back until the end of the holiday, when the lodger returned from visiting his parents in Wales. Jessica found bicycle parts in her bedroom, and several of her stuffed toys had been shoved under her bed along with some of her adventure novels.