The Named (8 page)

With the whole class watching, obviously dying to know what horrendous words could possibly be scrawled on the now crumpled up paper, Mr Carter calms himself, slots the paper into his trouser pocket and carefully takes his expression down a notch or two. ‘Detention,’ he says to Ethan in a deathly quiet tone. ‘This afternoon. I’m supervising. It should prove an interesting hour.’ He turns his attention to me. ‘But I want to see you, Isabel, immediately after class.’

Ethan jumps straight out of his seat, flinging it backwards to hit the wall with a metallic scraping sound. ‘What do you want with Isabel?’ And in a belated attempt to soften his aggressive tone, he adds, ‘I mean … sir?’

Ethan’s exaggerated defensive reaction has everybody sniggering and asking questions. I tug on his shirt sleeve. ‘Sit down, you idiot!’

He glances around at all the attention he’s gathering, his eyes in embarrassment shifting left and right. Finally he sits. Mr Carter shakes his head. ‘You have so much to learn.’ His words feel as if they have a double meaning. His hostility towards Ethan unnerves me, but so does his strange manner.

The buzzer indicating the end of the lesson sounds
and everyone starts gathering their stuff and leaving the room.

Ethan lags behind with me, but when the class is almost empty, Mr Carter orders him out. Reluctantly, and with a concerned lingering look, Ethan leaves.

When we’re alone, Mr Carter asks me to sit down. I perch on top of one of the desks up front so that I’m closer to his eye level. ‘Did I do something wrong, sir?’

‘Other than your recent choice of seating arrangement, not at all.’

I ignore his sarcasm and remain silent. He says, ‘I just want to give you a piece of friendly advice.’

It may be friendly but the tone of his voice makes me uncomfortable and nervous. My fingers clench tightly in my lap. He notices. ‘I don’t mean to frighten you, Isabel. I’m here to offer my hand in friendship.’

‘What makes you think I need your friendship?’

‘Hopefully you never will.’

I don’t get it. This conversation is really weird. Teachers don’t usually take such personal interest in their students. And here he is offering his friendship, yet to Ethan … Suddenly I just have to ask. ‘You’re very hostile to Ethan. What do you have against him? He’s one of your best students. Probably
the
best.’

‘I’m not about to discuss my other students with you, Isabel. But it would be a good idea if you didn’t hang around with him so much. He could have an adverse influence on you.’

‘What makes you say that? He’s a straight-A student, I’m a C. How can his influence be bad?’

‘I’ve heard you’ve been hanging around a lot together after school.’

Finally I see what’s going on, the whole point of this
conversation. ‘Has my brother been talking to you?’

He nods slowly. ‘Matt did approach me, asking about the content of the history project I set the class. He seemed to think there was too much in it. Told me how you and Ethan spend hours every afternoon and most of the weekend working together.’

Heat invades my body, niggling little electric pulses generating in my toes and working upwards, energising every cell. I try hard to stifle the insistent urge to skin my brother alive the second I see him. I take a slow, deep breath to try and calm down. ‘What did you tell him?’

Mr Carter looks me straight in the eyes. ‘I told him that if he had a complaint about my teaching techniques, perhaps he should take it up with the principal.’

My mouth drops open in a soft gasp. Mr Carter didn’t tell Matt the truth, blowing our cover.

‘As a teacher, Isabel, and as a friend,’ he goes on, ‘I can only advise. Ethan Roberts is a distracting influence. A C student can’t afford distractions.’

I can’t help my head shaking ’cause now I’m confused. One minute Mr Carter is coming down hard on Ethan, the next he’s covering up for Ethan spending time with me.

He looks at me piercingly, and my spine prickles all the way down to my tailbone. ‘Do you think I’m too hard on Ethan?’ he asks.

‘Well, yes.’

‘Isabel, I’m not hard enough.’

‘I’m a little confused,’ I say.

‘That’s understandable. But one thing you must remember: trust
no one,
no one but yourself.’

Who is he warning me against? It sounds like Ethan,
but Mr Carter’s natural dislike for Ethan could cloud his judgement there. Just what is he trying to say? This conversation is too weird. I get down off the desk, eager to leave.

‘Do you hear me, Isabel?’

I nod, backing towards the door.

‘If you ever need someone to talk to, remember, you can count on me.’

At last I’m outside and take a deep cleansing breath. What was Mr Carter on about? Was he warning me against Ethan? And why would he tell me I can count on
him
, when he just finished telling me to trust no one, no one but myself?

Chapter Thirteen

Ethan

Arkarian meets us outside the entry to his chambers, welcoming Isabel with open arms and a warm embrace. ‘It’s so lovely to meet you at last, Isabel,’ he says. ‘Ah, all is unfolding exactly as it should.’

Isabel’s face turns beetroot red. She swallows hard and licks her lips, eyes fixed on Arkarian’s bright-blue hair. Today it hangs loose around his shoulders, enhancing its vivid colour. I laugh at her reaction. ‘You’ll get used to Arkarian’s cryptic chattering, and his blue hair – eventually.’

‘How you flatter me, Ethan,’ he says drily while waving his hand towards the rock wall as if annoyed it hasn’t read his mind and disappeared already. Obediently it opens to allow us entry into his domain. When I first walked into this dark hallway, softly lit with torches hanging from brackets on the polished rock walls, I was too young to take it all in. I can recall no feelings other than awe at the rock wall disappearing before my eyes. Isabel’s eyes take in every detail of wall and ceiling as if memorising the position of each hair-line crack.

We get to the main chamber, which resembles a workstation you’d find at NASA headquarters a hundred years from now. The room, octagonal in shape, is lined from floor to ceiling with technical equipment that makes no sound except the occasional soft beep with a corresponding flash of light. The centrepiece is what naturally seizes Isabel’s attention. She walks over and lifts a hand as if she can touch the palace that lies within the 3-D holographic sphere with the image of London at its centre.

Arkarian motions with his hand, and the whole 3-D sphere rotates so that now Isabel has a magnified image of the inside of the Palace of Westminster, specifically the Great Hall, where at least a hundred or more are gathered as dinner is bustled away by hardworking servants. A man dressed in bright clothing gathers the crowd’s attention; sitting before them on a stool, he starts reciting a musical poem which soon has the audience in stitches.

‘Geoffrey Chaucer,’ Arkarian explains. ‘On cue and on time. Good, good!’ He rolls his hand again and this time the magnification is reversed considerably. Now we can neither see nor hear the goings-on inside the palace.

‘Th–this history is happening now?’ Isabel asks with a stammer.

Arkarian produces three hand-carved stools, and their sudden materialisation has Isabel softly gasping. I point to the stool in front of her with an open hand and she quietly sits, the three of us forming a triangle.

‘This is the time period I’m monitoring at the moment. There’s trouble brewing.’

‘That’s where we come into it,’ I explain.

‘Yes,’ Arkarian says. ‘And very soon too, Ethan. So how goes your training of Isabel?’

‘Wonderful.’ I explain how adept and skilled Isabel is in the physical arts, and how we’ve recently made progress in developing her healing skills.

‘But I still can’t heal anything on call.’

‘Only when your passions are aroused,’ Arkarian correctly observes. ‘When you feel with your heart.’ He forms a fist over the centre of his chest. ‘That’s how it is at first.’

Arkarian has Isabel completely enchanted. Her eyes gaze at him with a mixture of wonder and awe. I clear my throat to get her attention and to stop her staring so hard. Finally she flicks an embarrassed look towards me. ‘Hmm? What were you saying?’

Her reaction amuses me, though I don’t really get it. ‘I wasn’t saying anything. Arkarian was.’

She nods and swings her gaze back to Arkarian, her skin fast turning the colour of blood. That’s twice she’s blushed in the last ten minutes. What’s going on with her? Now she’s touching the hair around her face, tugging some behind her ears. ‘Oh, yeah, that’s right,’ she says. ‘Well the only times I’ve healed successfully was when I cut myself and unconsciously willed the wound to heal –’

‘And when your brother hit me and you felt responsible,’ I finish for her, glad to see her brain’s functioning normally again.

‘And what of your other skill?’ Arkarian asks softly. Isabel glances at me and I at her. What is Arkarian talking about? At our blank look he sighs.

‘Don’t pressure yourselves. It will evolve, with hard work and persistence.’

He doesn’t say any more, but goes on to explain a little to Isabel about our positions as Guardians of Time. ‘It has always been thus,’ he begins. ‘For longer than I can remember, and I’ve been alive for six hundred years.’

Isabel’s eyes nearly fall out of her head when he reveals this about himself. ‘How is that possible?’

‘It’s a skill. Like healing is yours. Mine is the ability to remain young, a kind of resistance to the aging process.’

‘Wow.’

‘Each of us that is Named has at least two skills, and sometimes, if we’re fortunate enough, we have three. At your initiation ceremony the Lords of the various Houses will endow you with a special gift. Sometimes these take time to develop – you have to work on them. But your skills are different: you were born with them.’

He then goes on to explain about the purpose of those that are Named to be members of the Guard. And how the Order of Chaos devotes itself to changing certain aspects of history, attempting to create an altered present that will evolve into a future environment that suits their own requirements. ‘Chaos, as we call this opposing Order, feeds and grows on evil – death, destruction, war, plague, malice. The more they create, the larger their armies grow, and the smaller ours become.’ He leans forward in his seat. ‘So you see, Isabel, we have our work cut out. And now you are to be one of us. But before you agree, you must understand there is always the possibility something can go wrong in any mission.’

Isabel’s eyes drop to the ground, giving herself a
private moment to absorb Arkarian’s words. Finally she lifts her head. ‘I understand what you’re saying, but I think I’m missing something.’

Arkarian shoots me a stare which shows just how impressed he is. Of course he knows Isabel’s thoughts, but he is not going to reveal this to her at this early stage in her career. Most people become instantly uncomfortable with that knowledge. It’s Arkarian’s other skill, the one he didn’t bring up earlier. ‘Go on.’

‘Well, why do we need these armies? Why do these people – this Order called Chaos – go to the trouble of stuffing up the past? What’s the point?’

‘The Goddess of Chaos wants the world at her feet. As head of her Order, she wants to rule.’

Isabel’s eyes open wide. ‘She wants to take over the world? You mean like a government?’

‘The Order’s ultimate aim is to destroy everything that we know is good, including human nature.’

I quietly watch Isabel for her reaction to this news. It’s a lot to comprehend in one hit.

‘They’ve already made two attempts to win control,’ Arkarian explains. ‘The third will be the final conflict.’

‘Good will win, won’t it?’ Isabel asks for confirmation.

‘The problem is that though the Guard is prophesied to win, Chaos works hard to change that.’

‘That’s why they tamper with history,’ I add to the explanation. ‘By changing certain past events, they can alter what we know as the present, creating havoc and destruction –’

‘Which feeds their armies,’ Isabel finishes.

Arkarian nods. ‘They mean to create an environment that nurtures their growth and success, and they are
growing now at an alarming rate.’

‘So you’re saying Chaos creates things like disease and war?’ Isabel asks.

‘Widespread diseases like plagues,’ I explain, helping her to understand. ‘Where there is disaster, it’s usually at the hand of the Order of Chaos.’

‘Unbelievable! But this conflict, it’s not planned to happen for a long time, is it?’ she asks hopefully. ‘I mean, like way, way after we’ve been and gone, right?’

Arkarian avoids answering. Isabel isn’t ready to hear this yet. It will just freak her out. Instead he moves us all back to the holographic sphere of London and the goings-on inside Westminster Palace, explaining my mission: to ensure that the young Prince Richard, son of the Black Prince, grandson of King Edward III, becomes King of England. His father has already died, about a year previously in France, and soon his grandfather will join him.

‘There are plans to twist the minds of the council, but that’s not your concern, Ethan. I believe an attempt on the future king’s life will be made in the next twenty-four hours. It’s going to be your duty to protect him and thwart this assassination attempt.’

‘When do we leave?’ I ask.

Arkarian straightens and looks at us both in turn. ‘Tonight.’

‘
Tonight
? But it hasn’t even been
two
weeks! Isabel’s not ready.’

Isabel has her own ideas. ‘What are you talking about? After the things you just told me, of course I’m ready. I’m ready to do anything!’

Arkarian grins, looking pleased at her enthusiasm, and everyone’s mood lightens. But I’m Isabel’s Trainer,
and enthusiasm is not enough. There are so many things I haven’t explained yet, like the transition that occurs in the Citadel for starters.

Arkarian, knowing my inner thoughts, as I haven’t bothered to shelter them, taps my shoulder. ‘Remember, Isabel is to be an observer only tonight.’