The Serpent in the Glass (The Tale of Thomas Farrell) (30 page)

‘Y’know,’ Stanwell suddenly said, as they approached the end of the road and Cnocmorandolmen came into sight through the trees. ‘The carriage do seem ’eavier today.’

Thomas gulped. He hoped Stanwell wouldn’t question him or ask any difficult questions. Thomas couldn’t lie. He never had been any good at that. He’d just go red, lose his voice, and feel very, very uncomfortable.

‘I do be thinkin’ some of your friends ’ave put on a little weight. Probably that Plundervast. Always do be eatin’ when I see ’im!’

‘Ah, yes! Yes, that’s probably it,’ said Thomas, who gave a nervous laugh that Jessica would’ve immediately recognized as an attempt to hide something.

‘Right, ’ere we are,’ Stanwell said as, he brought the carriage to a stop. ‘You get changed quickly now!’

Thomas climbed down and moved to the back coach. Jessica was rubbing her knee. He took a quick peek in the end coach. It looked empty.

‘Is he out?’ Thomas asked, keeping his voice low.

‘Yes, he’s behind the bush on the other side.’ Merideah flicked her head toward a large bush with branches that looked like mistletoe.

‘Great!’ said Thomas. ‘We should have plenty of time.’

After Thomas had changed back into his casual clothes, Stanwell took the carriage back to the long, wooden building he called the coach house. Once he’d pulled out of sight, the children called Thayer out from the bush, and they all made their way to the Hill of Stones (as Thayer called Cnocmorandolmen). Thomas pulled out the Glass. Its glow was visible even in broad daylight.

Thayer still seemed fascinated by the Glass, even though it wasn’t the first time he’d seen it.

‘Stanwell!’ Merideah hissed.

Thomas spun around and saw Stanwell making his way though the trees. Why was he back so soon? Thayer couldn’t run without drawing attention to himself. He seemed to recognize this and so stood rooted to the spot as the rest of the children stood in front of him.

Thomas grabbed Thayer’s large hand and shoved the Glass into it. ‘Quick, go through and hide!’

With a look of fear on his face, Thayer dashed through the Way Gate but, to Thomas’s surprise, the boy came out the other side. It hadn’t worked. Thayer, now wide-eyed, looked back and then at the Glass. Just as Stanwell came up the hill Thayer ducked behind the stones.

‘You weren’t long!’ Merideah said, as Stanwell reached them.

Stanwell smiled. ‘No, I met ol’ Chinwag, and ’e offered to tend to the ’orses; ’e likes to be doing it every now and again, so I’s let ’im,’ Stanwell explained. Thomas had no idea who Chinwag was, but he’d picked a bad day to help Stanwell out.

‘Dinnsenchas!’ the Caretaker called out, as he walked past Treice and Penders, both of whom gave concerned looks as their eyes flickered to the stone behind which Thayer hid.

Stanwell ushered the children through and, a little reluctantly, they stepped into the golden flash of light. Thomas wondered what they could do, but any ideas for action were scuppered as Stanwell urged them on.

‘Come now, I do be ’avin’ to be back in two hours and only ’ave a little time to clean out my pond and get a little bellytimber!’ Stanwell said.

Wondering briefly what on earth bellytimber was, Thomas followed the others back into 2B without a chance to look back again as Stanwell ushered them from behind like a shepherd whose flock refused to go into the pen.

After closing the door, Stanwell led the children down the corridor, at which point he left them and went to his office. Thomas and the others kept walking until they reached a turning in the corridor. Here they stopped and poked their heads around the corner to look back toward Stanwell’s office.

Jessica pulled on her hair. ‘Why couldn’t Thayer get through? He had the Glass.’

Thomas shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’ It had been Thayer’s part to hide in the tower and then open the door to 2B from the other side. The plan seemed to have fallen apart.

‘Maybe the stones briefly stopped working again?’ Penders suggested. The Way Gate had failed again some weeks ago, but it had not been brief — the entire Club had been unable to go to the Grange that weekend.

Jessica silenced them all with a raised arm. Stanwell had emerged from his room. They all pressed themselves against the wall as they heard Stanwell clattering toward them with what was no doubt his pond-clearing equipment.

‘My, those were ugly!’ Jessica eventually said once the Caretaker had lolloped past them in a pair of green waders.

‘Let’s go,’ Thomas said. No one argued. He felt terrible. If Thayer had been caught on Cnocmorandolmen, how would he get back to the Grange?

Thomas put his ear against the door to 2B as the others crowded behind. He couldn’t hear a thing. He tried the handle, but the door didn’t budge. Stanwell had, as always, locked it.

‘We’ll have to go,’ Merideah said, casting furtive glances up the corridor. ‘Thayer can hide in the carriage and get back to the Grange when Stanwell returns.’

Then suddenly the room to 2B opened and in the doorway stood the Fomorfelk. He hadn’t switched the lights on.

Thomas smiled. ‘Thayer! You got through!’

‘Yes, I slipped in behind Stanwell and hid behind the stones again while he opened that gate in the wall’ — Thayer pointed back toward the space the blackboard normally occupied and then at the handle of the door to 2B — ‘I am sorry I took so long, it was dark and it took me a while to find this latch.’ It was Jessica who’d noticed that the door to 2B had a latch that allowed it to be opened from the inside without the need of a key.

‘The lights are here.’ Jessica flicked the switch after they all slipped into the classroom.

Thayer looked up in awe. ‘These long, flat lamps on the ceiling, what gives them their light? I thought the Old Power did not exist in your world?’

‘It’s electricity,’ Merideah said.

Thayer gave her a blank look.

Merideah thought for a moment. ‘It’s a sort of energy, the same that makes lightning.’

Thayer’s eyes widened. ‘Your world can trap the power of lightning and use it?’

‘Sort of,’ Thomas heard Merideah reply as they all stepped through the doorway to the tower.

Thayer closed the concealed gate by means of a lever sticking out from the tower’s wall. He looked back, still in wonder, as the stone grated back down and shut out the artificial light. It had never crossed Thomas’s mind that someone from Avallach might find his world as fascinating as he found Avallach.

Merideah moved toward the Way Gate. ‘Right, let’s get on with it then.’

‘Wait, I want to try something,’ Thomas said. ‘Thayer, where’s the Glass?’

‘Oh, I forgot. Here it is,’ he said as he pulled the orb from one of the pockets of the bomber jacket.

Thomas didn’t take it from him. ‘Try walking through the Way Gate again.’

Thayer shrugged and walked up to the Gate, walked through and stayed quite visible as he came out the other side.

Penders frowned. ‘Did it stop working again? How will we get through? Maybe the Glass doesn’t work anymore?’

‘Maybe,’ said Merideah. ‘Penders, why don’t you try?’

‘What? OK but I don’t see how it’ll make any difference,’ he said as he took the Glass from Thayer and walked through the stones. Nothing happened.

‘See,’ he said, walking back and placing the Glass in Thomas’s hand.

It was as if the Way Gate had become just a collection of stones again. Nothing more. Merideah tried too, and Treice and Jessica, but nothing happened. Stanwell had taken them through these last few months, so there’d be no reason to use the Glass.

‘Dinnsenchas!’ Penders said in exasperation, but nothing happened.

‘That only works for Trevelyan and a few others,’ Thayer said. ‘Not for cadets.’

Penders gave Thayer a hard stare, but the Fomorfelk didn’t seem to notice.

‘Did you see?’ Merideah said.

‘What?’ Penders asked. ‘I saw nothing. It’s not working. We’re going to have to find somewhere for Thayer to hide until the Club members come back Sunday evening.’

‘No, no. Let me make it more obvious,’ Merideah began. ‘Thomas, go over to the Way Gate, but don’t go through.’

‘Well, he can’t can he? The stupid thing —’

‘Be quiet!’ Merideah interrupted. ‘Just observe things for once Marvin Penderghast!’

‘Marvin?’ Thomas heard Thayer repeat to himself.

Penders bit his lip, but the red face showed his mood.

‘Look at the Glass, not the Gate,’ Merideah said.

They all looked. The Glass was glowing.

‘It wasn’t glowing until I put it in Thomas’s hand,’ Merideah said. ‘Thomas, go through the Way Gate.’

He stepped through the Way Gate. There was the usual flash of gold light, and Thomas found himself in the glowing cavern. He turned around and saw the others on the other side all staring in surprise at where he’d been just moments before. He walked back out into the tower.

‘It only works for you!’ Jessica said what everyone else was thinking. Thomas had worked that much out, though he was slow to accept it. Why would it only allow him to open the Way Gate? Perhaps because it was his father’s Glass? But the book in the library said it belonged to the Alfar kings.

‘We’d better go through if we’re still going to do this,’ said Jessica. ‘Thomas?’

‘Yes,’ Thomas said, clearing his thoughts. ‘Let’s go.’

Once through the stones, Thomas and the others swiftly made their way to the Northern Way Gate. There seemed now to be a slight difference in the order of the symbols on the Way Gate, but perhaps he was imagining it. Thomas took a deep breath and wondered what he was supposed to do. He held the Glass up and nothing happened.

‘Try entering it,’ Penders suggested.

‘That might be dangerous,’ Merideah warned.

‘I don’t know what else to do,’ Thomas said as he walked toward the Gate. As soon as he walked under the Gate a blue film flared out across the entrance and the Glass began to glow very brightly. The energy seemed unstable and began to crackle. Thomas backed away.

‘Quick, to the trees!’ Merideah shouted as the blue light pulsated, warped and became even more unstable.

The children moved back down the hill to the edge of the trees as the blue energy cackled and eventually winked out in loud crack.

‘Is it healed?’ Thayer asked Thomas as they both poked their heads out from behind the same tree.

Thomas shook his head. ‘I don’t know.’

Penders had his hand to his chest. There was a pained expression upon his face.

‘You all right?’ Jessica said.

‘Stabbing pain in my chest — really hurts,’ Penders, whose face was now red, breathed out with difficulty.

‘Indigestion probably,’ Merideah suggested.

Penders shot her a dark look. ‘Lack of food more likely, I’ve not eaten since breakfast!’

Merideah opened her mouth, but before she responded a terrible noise ripped through the air. To Thomas it seemed like a wolf’s cry, except deeper, louder and a lot scarier. It came from the Way Gate.

‘What was that?’ Treice asked nervously from behind a tree several yards further back into the copse.

Then from the Gate a large green cloven-hoofed leg appeared, followed by the body to which it belonged. The children stared, wide-eyed in terror, at what now emerged from the Northern Way Gate. Covered in green fur, it possessed a solitary malicious-looking eye above which thrust a thick horn somewhat like a giant rose thorn. It was so big that it barely fitted through the Way Gate.

Penders didn’t turn his head as he spoke to Treice. ‘Does that answer your question?’

Treice didn’t answer. The creature had spotted the six children at the edge of the trees, and was looking at them with its very cruel single eye.

‘I don’t think it’s happy,’ Jessica managed to whimper.

The creature roared in anger and the children ran. Thomas heard the creature come thundering after them as they headed for the cover of the thicker part of the copse. Glancing back, Thomas saw the beast pause and uproot a tree that lay in its path, snapping it like a branch with its powerful arms. The children worked their way deeper into the trees but the foliage wasn’t dense enough to hide. Then the coach house came into view. Along the side ran a few small glassless windows. Thomas ran toward them, clambering up and through the nearest window. A bale of straw broke his fall. He found himself in a small cubicle. As he stood up Thayer came blundering through the window behind him.

‘Eek!’ a high-pitched voice sounded, and Thomas suddenly realized that a thin creature no taller than his waist, clothed in white furs and carrying a small pitch fork, was staring at him and Thayer in shock. It stood a moment longer then scurried off at breakneck speed, dropping the miniature pitch fork where it had stood.

‘What was that?’ Thomas asked.

‘Just a hodge-pocker,’ Thayer said as he stood up and looked about.

‘They help keep things tidy,’ Thayer said as he found the bolt on the door and opened it.

Thomas and Thayer slipped into the middle of the building where stood the Darkledun carriage. The others appeared from the stalls on either side of the one Thomas and Thayer had come through at about the same time that something big and heavy made contact with the wall of the building, shattering the wooden planks.

‘The carriage!’ Thomas shouted. ‘Before it breaks through!’

Treice, Penders and the girls dived into the first coach.

‘Get the doors!’ Thomas shouted to Thayer as he jumped up to the driver’s seat. He hoped his brief lesson with Stanwell would pay off.

Thayer ran to the main doors, unbolted them and pushed them wide open. Once Thayer had pulled himself up onto the driver’s seat, Thomas flicked the reins. The horses were restless. They could hear the creature trying to break through the side of the building. But they weren’t moving, it was as if they didn’t know what to do.

‘Move!’ said Thayer.

Nothing changed.

‘Rarrrrrr!’ came a terrible sound from the nearest stall. The creature had broken through. On hearing this, the horses bolted forward, almost knocking Thomas over the back of the seat. The carriage, out of control, made its way up the track. Thomas could hear the heavy thud of the creature’s tree-trunk-thick legs running after them. It was moving fast.