The Sword of Feimhin (38 page)

Mo hesitated again, her eyes closed. ‘I'm trying to understand … I'm getting message after message. There's so much coming through, it's confusing. I think … I believe that I'm getting an important communication – a message, a warning, I just don't fully understand as yet, but it's coming from the True Believers. We should do nothing to upset the Akkharu.'

‘The Akkharu?'

‘That's what the True Believers call these slug-like creatures.'

‘In legends,' Magtokk spoke, with his eyes wide with interest, ‘the Akkharu were exquisitely skilled craftsmen – the weavers of the gods.'

Mo said, ‘The True Believers warn against disturbing them. They say that we mustn't interfere with them.'

‘Are they – the Akkharu – even aware of our presence?'

‘Yes, they know that we're here. They're deeply disturbed by our presence in the valley. I'm getting that message overwhelmingly.'

Alan looked up into the falling dusk. The sky was cloudless and a deepening shade of green in which the first pallid stars were beginning to appear.

‘I don't get it, Mo.'

‘No more do I, but I get the impression it has something to do with me – with my Torus.'

‘Can we communicate with them in some way? Reassure them we mean them no harm?'

‘I'll try again.'

Mo closed her eyes again for a minute or so. ‘From what I gather, it isn't possible to communicate with them in words.'

‘Well then, how are we going to communicate?'

Ainé was clearly vexed by the rising confusion. ‘Mage Lord – we have an army halted in their march. Surely this is another of the Tyrant's tricks? Another delaying tactic?'

Alan agreed with her. ‘Mo, you have to press for more information. We need to know what's really going on here.'

Mo nodded, her face turning up to the rapidly darkening sky. There was no moon, but an increasing proliferation of stars, washed with the beautiful tides of Tír's galaxy. Mo's face was extremely pale, her eyes shining. Her voice was a husky whisper: ‘I'm getting another message, but I don't think it's coming from the True Believers. I think it's coming from the creatures themselves – from the Akkharu.'

Alan stared hard at Mo, whose Torus was blazing. ‘Be careful, Mo. We don't know what's going on here.'

Qwenqwo, Magtokk and Bétaald were all silent.

Alan was unable to suppress his anxiety. ‘Mo – maybe Ainé is right. Maybe we should put a stop to this right now.'

‘No – wait, Alan. There is a message coming through. You wanted to know if we could communicate with the Akkharu. They are about to … Oh!' she shrieked.

Alan clapped his hands to his head.

‘You're getting this too?'

Alan heard shouts from Ainé and Magtokk, who were holding their heads exactly as he was.

It felt as if his mind were being invaded. There was something extremely disturbing about the black clots that looked as if they had been flung violently against a bone white sky. They were moving, metamorphosing, coalescing into patterns that were as threatening as they were indecipherable.

‘Mo?'

She was speechless, her pale face staring back at him, shaking her head from side to side.

Alan was climbing to his feet. As he did so he saw the Kyra reach out and snap the Torus from around Mo's neck. He saw Magtokk hold out his hand to the Kyra and demand the amulet back from her reluctant fist. ‘I understand your concern, Kyra of the Shee. Mo is confused and terrified and indeed she has good reason for her consternation, but you cannot disconnect her from her destiny.'

The Kyra held the Torus in her fist. ‘What do you imply, magician?'

‘Her destiny is approaching.'

‘What do you know of this?'

‘Enough to realise that she needs support and guidance. Her destiny is a great burden for one so young.'

Ainé reared back, even more suspicious of Magtokk and reluctant to return the Torus to Mo.

‘Did you place those frightening images in our mind?'

‘No, but magic comes in many forms. It can be disturbing when we do not grasp its message.'

Ainé shook her head. She looked at Alan: ‘Mage Lord – what does your oraculum say?'

‘I think you can return the Torus to Mo, but we'll ask her not to wear it for a little while. We all need time to settle and get a better handle on what happened just then.'

The Kyra handed the Torus to Mo, but she remained obdurate. ‘We should leave this place.'

Alan nodded. ‘Yes – I agree.'

Mo accepted her Torus, but kept it within her hand. She looked up into the broad, orang-utan face of Magtokk with its twinkling dark eyes. She felt the shuddering of his belly laugh as his huge arm, so shrouded with ringlets of hair they resembled Rasta dreadlocks, enfold her shoulders.

‘You and I,' he whispered, ‘we'll explore. When the time is right.'

‘And when might that be?'

‘When the magic calls again.'

‘Is this Magtokk the Mischievous talking?'

‘Of course.'

Mo wasn't sure if she could face that call when it came.

When Gully woke he was still arguing with Penny in his dream. He was explaining how he hadn't let her down. Then his eyes sprang open, blinking through the fog of the clinging dream. He felt for his glasses where he always left them. Finding them, he shoved them roughly onto his nose and sprung out into the freezing cold room. A wintry light was oozing in through the blinds on the window next to the sink. When he opened the blind, it didn't feel right. The light was wrong for dawn. It looked more like falling dusk. Penny's sleeping bag, right next to the shelves, was empty. It wasn't even ruffled. It was like she hadn't slept in it at all. He moved out of the big room, calling out her name in a rising panic. ‘Penny …
Penny!'

Even as he scurried through the vestibule and into the map room he was puzzled as to how he could have slept through the day. Had she slipped something into his cuppa?
His bare feet were sticking to the freezing concrete. He found the map room empty.

The memories of last night burst upon him: Penny coming back, her eyes red from bawling. Penny ignoring him, pushing away every time he tried to hold her. Penny telling him they wasn't safe no more. Penny curling up into a ball in the corner.

‘
Hey, Penny? Wot's wrong?
'

‘
A Skull … He tried to
…'

‘
Wot you sayin', gel?
'

‘
He … hurt … me
.'

‘
Oh, no – oh, Penny!
'

‘
Your fault
.' Penny had screamed at him, her eyes flowing over with tears. ‘
You wouldn't give me the pigeons
.'

‘
I don't understand
.'

She wouldn't explain. She wasn't able to explain. But Gully could read it in her eyes. Something bad had happened, something terrible.

‘
They're sayin' you killed a Skull
.'

‘
I did. I killed him – I killed him, Gully!
'

She had hurled the backpack onto the floor and the dagger fell out of it, clattering over the concrete. Gully had stared down at it, at the silver thing in the hilt what was glowing. Then it just came up off the floor and it landed in Penny's hand all by itself.

They had both screamed.

‘
Oh, Penny – Penny, gel
.'

It was so spooky it had frightened Gully half to death.

‘
The dagger – it saved me
.'

‘
Penny!
' He had rushed forward, tried to hold her.

But she turned the Scalpie's dagger towards him. ‘
No! No!
No!
Don't you dare! Don't you dare touch me! Don't you dare!
'

Gully opened all the blinds in the room and that was when he found the note. Then he knew she had left him again. He couldn't read the note because his eyes were full of tears.

*

Penny was sitting against the wall in the entrance hall of the ghost Tube station. Last night she had slept, a few hours, curled up into a ball on the gantry under the map ceiling. She had not wanted to wake Gully by returning to her sleeping bag. Now she felt like curling into a ball again. She could feel the weight of the heavy dagger in the backpack between her shoulder blades and the grimy wall. She could sense it too, not just physically, but in the deeper crevices of her mind, as if it were calling her. She was breathing deeply, too deeply – hyperventilating. Already she could feel pins and needles in her fingers and painful cramps in her feet, but she couldn't help herself. The muscles around her mouth were jumping, like a purse with somebody jerking at the strings.

She had been unable to talk to Gully about what had happened in the garden of St Paul's Cathedral. She would never be able to talk to anybody about that. It was why she had slipped two tablets into his mug of tea. She knew she couldn't talk to him and she needed time to finish the
ceiling. Gully wouldn't have let her do it. He was too upset. She knew she was leaving Our Place for good and she needed to think, to collect her thoughts, so she could finish the map before she left. She had known it would be hard, heartbreaking even, and all the while uncertainties were reeling in her mind.

She needed to think about the Grimlings' nest.

Maybe she shouldn't think of it as the Grimling nest – that extraordinary place she had barely glimpsed immediately below St Paul's Cathedral. But really, of course, it was much more than a Grimlings' nest. It was the true City Below. That juxtaposition could not be accidental. She knew that it was somehow closely related to important landmarks – important spiritual landmarks – in the City Above. But she still needed to know how far this closeness extended. It seemed logical to assume that the spiritual landmarks were like nodes that linked world to world.

If St Paul's was a critical node in both worlds, the fulcrum of everything perhaps in both City Above and City Below, she needed to know a lot more about the labyrinth that extended below it.

She had caught a glimpse of that labyrinth when she had peered into the Grimling nest through the cleft in the rock. She recalled it now, vividly: the roaring sound of the river falling in the background and the creatures, the most alien creatures she could have possibly imagined, who were … constructing something within the natural caves, something
huge and strange and marvellous and terrifying and wonderful.

Penny had followed an eastern course on her map of the City Above and she had figured the most likely nodes that would, almost certainly, give rise to deeper, vitally important, connections with the City Below. She had focused her mind on filling in some of the missing pieces on her map, even though her desire to leave Our Place would not be suppressed. It felt as if the drawing was infused with her own blood in blues, mauves, charcoals and black.

She thought about many things while she was hyperventilating in the ghost Tube station. She thought about the wrongness of putting the sleeping pills into Gully's tea. She knew, when she did it, that it was unforgivable, and that she would have to write a note for him, apologising and explaining. She also knew that she would have to apologise to Gully for blaming him in their argument that last night. Gully wasn't to blame for what had happened to her. It was that horrible man – the Skull.

Now Penny tried to clear her mind of that memory. She knew she had to think clearly to be able to make her way carefully back along the left hand tunnel.

Stop! Look! Listen!

There were no sounds to worry her any more; no ticking of the deathwatch beetle, no rustle of the mouse scuttling. It was as if the ghost station were holding its breath.

Anticipation rose in her, like a physical wave. She felt
the shape of it and began breathing too fast again, making the pins and needles and cramps worse.

If Gully had only given her the live pigeons, she might not have gone to St Paul's in the City Above. Here and now she was faced with returning to the Grimlings' nest and she had nothing to distract them with. All she had was the dagger. But now she recalled the Scalpie back at the little Church of the English Martyrs and how the Grimlings had buzzed all around him when he was holding the dagger. They hadn't appeared to threaten him at all. It was more like they were protecting him. Now she was here and she had the Scalpie's dagger. Would the Grimlings recognise the dagger and leave her be?

She retrieved the torch from her backpack before slipping the bag back onto her shoulders. In its light she could see the green and the creamy white tiles of the walls and the winding staircase leading down.

But she wasn't quite ready to go yet.

It was no good. She couldn't suppress it, or forget what had happened. She couldn't forgive the man who had done that thing to her: the man who had regarded her as a thing to be abused for his pleasure. She just couldn't force the memory out of her mind. The terror surged in her as if it had found its own niche in her heart and soul. As if it would never go away but just crouch there, ready to spring back at any moment. She felt the powerful hand around her throat, the blow that had broken her nose, the horror of the knife blade slicing through her clothes – and then …
Thank heaven – the dagger! The dagger was the only thing left that she trusted now, the dagger was her only friend.

I know I killed a man. But I don't feel guilty. I don't feel guilty at all
…

It was hard to take a breath deep enough to fill her lungs. She was weeping copiously.
I don't care! I don't care! I don't care! I'm glad. I'm glad the dagger killed him. I'm glad, I'm glad – I'm glad
.

But then a voice came into her head, a voice that was eerily consoling. It was the voice of the man she had met in the dark and rainy streets when she emerged from the City Below, and the …
thing
… was hurting people in the caravan.

Jeremiah
. Penny's fingers pressed against her lips. Jeremiah's voice was talking to her inside her head.

She didn't understand how his voice could come to her inside her head. It puzzled her that he knew her name. Had she told him her name? She didn't think she had. She was very careful who she told her name to. She couldn't rightly remember, though normally she remembered just about everything.

A new sensation flooded her mind. An uncontrolled – uncontrollable – flood. Jeremiah wasn't right about the word, anger. He should have said it was natural that she should feel rage.

Yes
, she thought,
yes, yes, yes!

She thought back to the man who had tried to rape her. As he had torn her clothes off he had ignored her screams. He had laughed at her as if she were … as if she were an unfeeling, unthinking thing. Rage consumed her. It burned in her like a furnace. In her mind she reached out and she hurt him back. In her mind, she clawed at him with a tigress' nails, she bit him with a tigress' teeth. She tore his flesh apart into mincemeat. She felt herself gasping for breath, like a beast that had ripped asunder and fed and fed.

The rage clawed and snapped inside her. She felt as if she were drowning in it. What could she do? How could she stop herself drowning?

Jeremiah's voice returned, calm but insistent.

Penny blinked repeatedly, thinking about what he was saying to her. How could rage turn one's will into fire?

*

The blue light became progressively brighter as she made her way back down the left-hand tunnel. She waded through the pool of stagnant water, uncaring that her teeth were chattering with cold. She didn't even fear the beast with the many faces anymore. Time moved through her as sluggishly as her thoughts. It seemed to take an age for her to arrive back in the giant cave, but finally her ears filled with the sounds of the falling torrent. There was still the opportunity for her to climb back out. The backstreets
where she and Jeremiah had watched the monster divide after feeding on the travellers in the caravan were just overhead. She forced herself to pause and take her time.

There was no hurry.

She forced herself to hold her breath and allow her ears to fill with the roar of the cascade, to allow her other senses to explore.

The air felt different here. A bit stuffy, but there was a wild energy gambolling through the cavern that lifted the hair not just on her head, but even on the backs of her hands and forearms. When she looked down at her hands she saw that they glowed with the blue light. She followed the source of the light. It grew progressively stronger, leading her to the cleft in the rock and the marvellous and terrifying constructions she had glimpsed on her previous exploration: the Grimling hive, the City Below.

Penny climbed to a niche in the wall above a metal arch that braced a section of roof. She moved fractionally so her right eye could see through the crack between a strut of the shoring and the lower edge of the niche.

Stop … Look … Listen
…

She saw bracelets and necklaces of white lights shining through the dark, forming patterns within patterns which ran away into the distance. She saw red lights ahead on either side of two reflecting multicoloured tracks. The lights had coronas and radiating rays, like stars seen through eyes blurred with raindrops. In the dead centre, at the focus of the avenues of stars, was one enormous blue
flare with dagger-like vertical and horizontal spikes, making it resemble a cross.

She climbed down into the hive of the Grimlings and removed the dagger from her backpack. She was no longer afraid of them. She held the pulsing dagger upright in her two hands as waded into the icy cold running water.

At first she was startled to see tunnels everywhere, as if she had shrunk to the size of a gnat and found herself in a cheese full of holes. But then she realised they weren't just ordinary holes or tunnels; she had truly entered a labyrinth, lined by glowing crystals. The Grimlings weren't the builders here, but the guardians and gophers. Other beings – huge, slow-moving beings like slugs – were shaping things. They had jaws that moved side-to-side, which spun fibres like silkworms spinning silk. There were thousands of them, perhaps even tens of thousands, reminding her of factory assembly lines. They were all so slow moving and yet, when you looked down the labyrinth of tunnels, they were working in a frenzy.

Penny stared at the things around her in wonderment as she moved deeper among them. The Grimlings buzzed and darted around her, the noise of their flight echoing like miniature helicopters, their fanged mouths agape. Their goblin eyes were aware of her and examined her from head to toe, but were held back from attacking her by the fact she was holding the dagger in her trembling, clasped hands.

There were shafts leading down into incredible depths.
She saw eerily beautiful, quasi-mathematical shapes in black, gleaming crystal, with a fine, almost musical hum of energy about them. The air glowed blue from crystals suspended in it. As constructions were completed they floated in the air to be towed away by armies of Grimlings. The calm hustle and bustle of the Grimlings comforted her somehow. The airborne crystals were so fine and weightless they diffused about her, provoking rainbows. The constructions, equally uninfluenced by gravity, were massive; they had tissue-paper-thin walls, yet seemed utterly indestructible. Some of the largest resembled the roots of gigantic trees, ramifying through myriad tunnels. If these were roots, she wondered, what structure, mightier by far than any great forest oak or ash tree, were they designed to support?