The Hero's Tomb (20 page)
Authors: Conrad Mason
Tabitha sprang forward, sliding to a halt in between the two of them. The ogre blinked at her, frowning in confusion.
‘Leave him alone,’ she said. She’d meant it to sound tough, but it came out petulant, like a child’s complaint. If only she had her knives …
Up close, Tabitha could see the man’s eyes properly for the first time. Cold, blue eyes that didn’t belong in the face that wore them.
‘I don’t want to hurt you, little girl.’ It really
was
two voices, speaking as one. ‘But you leave me no choice.’ Tabitha tensed, ready to dodge. But instead of swinging his sword, the man kicked at her feet, sweeping
her legs away so that she fell in the mud with a thump. He loomed above, his blade glinting.
‘Don’t touch her!’ Joseph’s voice.
Tabitha rolled over and saw that he had stepped forward, limping slightly. His eyes were wide, as though even he couldn’t believe what he was doing. He drew the wooden spoon from his pocket and aimed it at the man in white.
The man laughed. ‘A goblin with a spoon. What next? A fairy with a feather duster? Well, I’ve had enough.’ He strode towards the tavern boy, with the ogre’s piggy eyes tracking his every movement.
Tabitha could see Joseph’s chest heaving as he took deep breaths, fighting to control his fear. Hal’s words flashed through her mind.
Don’t let him use the wand.
‘Joseph!’ she yelled. ‘Put the spoon away. Please! It’s too dangerous …’
But he didn’t seem to hear her.
The man in white was coming closer and closer.
Focus, Joseph. You can do this.
Fear gripped him suddenly, and he almost flung the wand away in a panic. Tabitha was lying in the mud, yelling at him, telling him not to use it, but he had to block that out. He couldn’t let anything break his concentration.
Think the right thoughts.
But what were they? What was it like to be the Duke of Garran – or whatever creature was inside him? With Jeb it had been so easy, but with this man he couldn’t imagine. He felt like he was stumbling in the dark, with nothing to hold on.
Please. It has to work. It has to.
His head ached as though a hundred fairies were trying to smash their way out of it, and still there was no warmth, no tingling in his body. The spell wasn’t happening.
The man’s fingers closed around Joseph’s throat. And at the same moment Joseph looked deep into those ice-blue eyes, and he knew. The thoughts came surging up inside him, flooding his mind.
I am justice. I am fury. I am hatred
…
I am the Light.
The magic arrived all at once, a heat which exploded out of him, racking his body more fiercely than ever. He almost dropped the spoon, but he clung on, as though to a broken spar in a shipwreck.
The air thrummed, the man’s blue eyes went wide with shock, and the next instant Joseph was …
… Somewhere else.
Bright light streamed in through high, arched windows. The walls were of white stone and hung with white banners. Even the floor was polished white marble. Everything seemed to glow. It was a hall, big enough to fit a galleon inside.
Joseph looked down at the battered wooden spoon in his hand, at his skin and his clothes, still the same dull greys and browns.
He didn’t belong here.
The hall was empty but for two figures in the very centre of it. Sitting on a white wooden throne was the Duke of Garran, dressed in the same mud-spattered
uniform he’d been wearing half a second ago, on a distant hilltop. He was smiling, but his pale eyes stared blankly straight ahead.
Standing behind the throne, one hand resting on the back of it, was a slim, ordinary-looking man with long brown hair and a hooked nose. He wore chain-mail under a long white tunic, and a winged sword was stitched in silver on his chest.
At the sight of Joseph the stranger tensed, his hand tightening on the wooden throne. ‘What are you doing here?’ he said.
Joseph stumbled forward. What was this? It hadn’t been like this with Jeb. He had stepped straight into the goblin’s mind. He
was
Jeb.
‘Answer me, mongrel. Who are you?’
‘I-I don’t— Where is this?’
The man’s eyes narrowed. Icy-blue eyes. The eyes Joseph had seen in the Duke’s face, moments ago. ‘You are in the Duke’s mind,’ said the man. ‘The furthest reaches of it. The space which lies beyond the limit of his perception. And all of it belongs to me.’ He rested his chain-mailed hands on the Duke’s head. ‘Leave now, while you still draw breath.’
‘Why don’t
you
leave?’ said Joseph, trying to ignore his rising fear. ‘Whoever you are. You’re not real.’
The man laughed scornfully. ‘I am not real? Each
day they tell new tales of me, raise new statues to me, write new songs of me. I am the hero that never died. I have lived centuries longer than you ever shall.’
And suddenly, Joseph understood.
He looks nothing like in the paintings, back in the House of Light.
But there couldn’t be any doubt. ‘You’re—’
‘I am the son of Leth. The child of the storm. Corin, sometimes called the Bold. Yes, indeed. Perhaps you were expecting a taller, stronger man? But my power never lay in my body. It lies in my heart.’
Breathe. Slow and steady.
Somehow he had to go deeper into the Duke’s mind, to a place where he could drive out Corin and take control.
‘Please, I need—’
‘Leave, half-and-half.’ Corin’s voice was growing harder and colder, and his hands clenched tight around the Duke’s head. ‘Unless you intend to slay me with that wooden spoon. I will not tell you again – this mind is taken, and you should not be here.’
‘My name’s Joseph.’
The hero sneered. ‘I have no use for the names of demonspawn.’
Joseph’s cheeks flushed with anger. Mongrel
. Half-and-half.
He’d heard it all before. He thought of his uncle, red-faced and podgy, who never called him
Joseph. They were just the same, his stupid uncle and this stupid warrior. Just as petty. Just as cruel as each other.
And now he wasn’t so afraid.
You goblins are all alike
, Mr Lightly had told him.
Thieving, sneaking, crafty
…
Well, then. He’d show them how crafty he could be.
Joseph tucked the wooden spoon away in his pocket and brought out the silver pocket watch instead. He held it up, letting it swing gently on its chain, as he stepped forward.
I have to get past him. I have to get deep inside the Duke’s mind.
Corin frowned. ‘What is that?’
He’s never seen one before. Back in the Dark Age, they never had watches.
Joseph smiled. ‘Magic,’ he said. ‘Goblin magic.’
‘You’re lying,’ snarled Corin. ‘A filthy little greyskin like you … you stole it, didn’t you?’
Joseph took a step towards the throne, and there was a soft clink of chain-mail as Corin moved in response.
Was that a flinch?
The great hero – Corin the Bold – could he be frightened?
‘How do you think I got here?’ said Joseph. ‘Goblin magic.’ The words came out unbidden, and his mind raced to keep up with the lies.
What would Jeb do?
‘My
father gave this to me. He was Jebedee the Sorcerer. A great magical craftsman.’
The hero drew his sword in a flash. The famous sword. It glittered in the dazzling light from the windows. ‘Keep away from me, magician.’
‘I
am
a magician,’ said Joseph. His voice sounded strangely detached, as though it was coming from someone else. He held the watch higher, as Corin took a step back, edging away from the Duke’s throne. ‘And this,’ said Joseph, ‘is my … my soul stealer!’ He laid one finger on the watch face. ‘All I need do is break the glass, and you will be sucked into it, held captive for ever with all the other souls I’ve stolen. You see? I am a thief, just like you said. Just like my father!’
Corin hesitated, and something changed in his face. ‘You’re no thief,’ said the hero. ‘You’re a liar.’
Joseph lurched forward, hands reaching for the Duke of Garran.
Corin the Bold darted round the side of the throne, but he was too late. Joseph dropped the watch, leaving it to clatter on the marble floor as his fingers closed around the Duke’s head.
‘No!’ howled Corin.
The Duke’s pale eyes went wide, drawing Joseph into them until he was rushing towards the mind within.
Or was the Duke rushing towards Joseph?
The two of them speeding into each other, fast, then faster.
Faster than light.
So fast that Joseph lost control. So fast he could no longer tell where he was.
Who he was.
What he was.
A single thought surged up from nowhere, consuming him, before their minds came together and everything spun away into nothingness. The warning of a kindly old magician.
The spell will only backfire, and then you’ll be letting Corin-knows-who into your own mind. Do you have any idea how dangerous that is?
‘Joseph, did I ever tell you the story of how the world began?’
Whose voice is that?
The Duke turns, looks into the face of a goblin sitting beside him. He glances down and sees with a shock that his hands are someone else’s hands. Long, slender fingers, mottled grey and pink.
The hands of a mongrel boy.
Where is he? What is happening to him?
Just a moment before he was standing on a hilltop, filled with the power of Corin. Now Corin is gone, and the hilltop too. Now he is in a memory – someone else’s memory. The memory of a mongrel boy.
They are sitting on a pier, just him and the goblin, swinging their bare feet to and fro above the waves – his, grey-pink; the goblin’s just grey. In the distance, the sun is setting, staining the ocean crimson.
‘Long, long ago,’ says the goblin, ‘before humans or goblins or elves, the land was crafted by demons and seraphs. They made everything – the Old World, the New World and the Middle Islands, the mountains and seas and the creatures that walked the earth. The world is soaked in their magic, and it’s that same magic that magicians use in their spells, even today.’
The Duke tries to stand, but he can’t. Strange feelings are welling up inside him. The feelings of a mongrel boy. Love for his father, and the warmth of his father’s love for him.
How can it be? These creatures are not capable of such emotions. And yet they are there, filling him up, making him feel safe, making his heart overflow so much it nearly chokes him.
Who dares do this to him? Who dares make him feel like this?
‘Now, many years later, war broke out between the creatures of the Old World. That was the Dark Age. And in those days, the humans used to say that the seraphs had made them in their own image, and that it was only the other creatures – the imps,
trolls, ogres and so on – that were shaped by the demons.’
‘What do you think, Father?’ The words are his – and not his.
Elijah smiles and puts an arm around the Duke’s shoulders. ‘I think they worked together. There’s a little bit of demon and a little bit of seraph in everyone, Joseph. Don’t let anyone tell you different.’
Tabitha felt the tremor of magic. She saw Joseph’s eyes glaze over, the air refracting all around him. The man in white had jerked rigid, his blade frozen in mid-air, his hand still clamped round the tavern boy’s throat.
The world seemed to hesitate. Then light exploded from the man’s body, blindingly bright. The hum of the seraphs rose to a piercing scream, and they were sucked away as though by whirlpools, tugged back into the great standing stones.
At the same time, a strange image forced its way into Tabitha’s mind – a blue-eyed man in armour, his mouth open in a silent howl as he faded into thin air
– and then the ghostly figure was gone, and there was only Joseph and the Duke of Garran, both staggering, dazed and blinking.
It was night once more. Dark but for the soft, coloured firelight from the hillside. Silent but for the gentle sounds of the wind and the rain.
Tabitha dragged herself to Joseph’s side, half crawling, half slithering.
I told you not to use the wand. Master Gurney said it was too dangerous.
He had fallen unconscious in the mud, his fingers clamped tightly round the wooden spoon. But he was smiling.
Looking up, Tabitha saw that the Duke had opened his eyes, and they were his own again.
‘I …’ said the Duke. He blinked fiercely, as though trying to shake something from his mind. ‘Who was I … ?’
His gaze fell on Joseph and fury twisted his features, more terrible even than the ice-cold glare of the warrior who had been inside him just moments ago. ‘You demonspawn filth!’ He took the sword in both hands, raised it high one last time. ‘What trickery was that? What have you done to me?’
Tabitha flung herself in front of Joseph’s body, and the Duke’s snarl turned more savage still. ‘You think that will stop me? I’ll kill you, both of you, I’ll—’
A bestial roar split the air.
The Duke half turned. Morgan had surged upwards, wide-eyed with fear, and with anger. He charged, smashing into his master, bearing him backwards with all the force of a cart of rocks rumbling downhill.
They fell together, squirming in the mud, the Duke crushed in Morgan’s tight embrace. Every muscle in the ogre’s arms was bulging. He was growling like a dog, while the Duke let out a soft, strangled whine.
Tabitha clamped her hands tight over her ears and buried her face in Joseph’s waistcoat.
It seemed to go on for ever.
When she looked again, she saw the pair of them lying there, smeared with mud, smeared with blood, and silent.
The Sword of Corin had fallen point first in the ground beside them. It stood upright, quivering, and at last was still.
Major Turnbull took Morgan gently by the shoulders and helped him up. The ogre’s fingers were still curled, rigid as rock, as he left the Duke’s body slumped into the mud.
Newton felt fainter than ever. There was a pool of blood around him, staining his knees. He looked down at his hands – both gripping his shoulder – and saw that they were utterly white.
He fought to raise his head again. Even that was an effort. Butchers had appeared around the circle, stepping over the prostrate magicians and levelling muskets at the watchmen. Tabitha lay curled protectively round Joseph. There was a soft flapping from the sky, and the two griffins landed on standing stones opposite each other, their riders watching, anxious and uncertain. Cyrus Derringer’s body was propped up against Corin’s Tomb.
The rain fell, and the only sound that rose above it was Morgan’s breathing, hard and fast. Major Turnbull guided him to the tomb and he sat on it, fingers still stuck in that same position, eyes staring madly through the mud drying on his face. Gradually, the panting slowed. He blinked. Flexed his fingers. His hands fell limp at his sides, and his head rested on his chest.
Major Turnbull stepped up onto the hero’s tomb, and everyone turned to her. She hesitated. Newton could tell she wasn’t used to this. To being important. Her gaze met his, and for an instant her lip trembled. He watched her expression settle as she made a decision.
‘Whitecoats,’ she called, her voice low and commanding. Feet shuffled, and muskets were raised. ‘Fall back.’
Newton felt his lips twitch into a smile, as his mind
seemed to drift out of his body. His gaze lingered on the griffins perched on the stones above.
Winged vengeance.
The last thing he saw was the mud looming towards him, as he fell into it.