Waywalkers: Number 1 in Series (6 page)

They were defensive again. ‘Have you got your papers? Who are you?’

At this Sam seemed to lose his temper, rising and stretching up to his full height.
His eyes seem to burn into you, as if reading your mind
, thought the captain of the gate.
The lady had had eyes like those, but hers had been blue – and softer, kinder.

‘I am Luc Satise, I am Sam Linnfer. I am Sebastian Teufel. Now you tell the people at the monastery that I’m coming under one or all of those names, I don’t mind which. Tell them that whoever of
my
family murdered Freya may be after them too. Tell them that she was killed with a dragon-bone knife, which can destroy even an immortal. Tell them all that, and show me to the monastery!’

Something about Sam didn’t allow for arguing. A boy ran ahead, while the captain trucked up with Sam in a rackety jeep that took five goes to start moving, and stalled on every street corner. The guards seemed very proud of it.

All the way the captain went on talking nervously in Tibetan. He had known Freya. ‘She came out of the snow one day. Said she had to visit the monastery. She was kind, very kind indeed.’

‘How often did she come?’

‘Recently? Once a month, maybe twice. We never saw how she arrived, nor how she left. All she’d say was that she was trying to track down a long-lost cousin.’ He laughed. ‘That’s like telling a child to keep his nose out of things he can’t understand.

‘Her visits started about six months ago. She already knew someone at the monastery.’

We always do. If you know where or how to look there’s someone we know in every street of every village of every country.
 

The captain added, ‘How do you know her?’

‘I’m a long-lost relative too,’ Sam replied mildly. ‘Well, half-brother. Same father, different mothers.’

The streets were narrow and bumpy, not designed even for the rough tracks of the jeep. As they went people turned to stare, huddling in doorways from the snow but nonetheless following with wary eyes.

‘Forgive them,’ the captain said, as though embarrassed by his people’s lack of European manners. ‘Apart from the lady they have never seen another of your kind.’

Our kind? I suppose we are another species.
‘Was she alone?’

‘There was a man with her the first time. She left him at the monastery. As far as I know he’s never left.’

Sam was bursting with questions, but the captain was there first. ‘May I ask – where did you learn Tibetan?’

‘I’ve spent time in a lot of places.’

‘Forgive me,’ the captain said again – apparently he felt obliged to apologise for everything – ‘but how many languages do you speak?’

‘Lots, many of them defunct.’ It was the only answer Sam would give.

The monastery appeared out of the snow. At the gates a couple of monks, in orange robes, were ready to usher him inside. Hastened down freezing candlelit corridors, he glimpsed tapestries and golden Buddhas and heard the distant low chanting and rumbling horns of other monks at prayer. Without a word from his escorts he was barrelled into a small stone room in which a fire glowed. A man, in a robe dashed with the streak of red that marked him as abbot, turned, bowed slightly and said, ‘You came.’

‘Were you expecting me?’ Sam asked, taking the seat offered him. It was the only one in the room, and it embarrassed him that the abbot had to stand. But the abbot insisted, and it was near the warmth of the fire.

‘Before I tell you more, I require proof that you are Sebastian Teufel.’

‘Ah.’ Sam stood up, took off his outer clothing and unslung the package on his back. He drew out the long silver sword.

With a sigh of satisfaction and a dip of his head as though in the presence of a holy object, the abbot lowered his hand over the blade and let his eyes drift shut. ‘Yes,’ he whispered. ‘I hear it. She said I would. I do not know much of your world, and believe less of what I hear, but it was the same with her. I could hear it around her belongings too; everything she touched seemed to hum.’ He looked up sharply. ‘You have more?’

Sam also produced the dagger and the circlet. This he held before him by the tips of his fingers as if his touch might profane it, even though it was his own.

It was on this that the abbot focused most of his attention. ‘So. You were crowned too. As well as your brothers. Tell me, is it true that if anyone other than its real owner wears this, he will go mad?’

‘I believe it is the case. Do you?’

The abbot smiled thinly. ‘I believe that superstition has a lot of power, whether its claims are true or not. And I also believe that, somewhere, every myth is grounded in reality. If the lady was so afraid of wearing it, then it seems likely that her brother would be afraid too. Either you have no fear, or it is a lie that the crown is your own. I do not believe it to be a lie, though I am not sure whether I believe it to be entirely true. So you will not mind proving that it is truly yours?’

Sam hesitated. This caused the abbot to frown. ‘Why so reluctant? It is a fair test, the one she told me to use. Make him wear his crown, she said. No other man dares.’

‘I don’t blame them,’ murmured Sam, almost inaudibly. Carefully he placed the crown on his head and looked at the abbot. ‘I am not mad,’ he said. ‘I am who I claim to be.’

Still the abbot wasn’t satisfied. Leaning forward, inches from Sam’s nose, he peered into his eyes.

Finally he said, ‘Yes. It isn’t just a trick of the light. You came,
you
came.’

Sam retrieved his dagger and put away the sword, ignoring the disbelief that lingered in the other’s voice. ‘You said you were expecting me.’

‘Yes. There was a backup system.’

‘Tell me. I mean, everything.’

‘Now that is a lot to tell. And I fear I only know parts of it.’

Sam sat down again. ‘Then tell me what you do know. That, for you at least, will be everything.’

‘Ah.’ The abbot smiled. ‘You even speak like she said you would. I imagined your voice – it came very close.’ Wrapping his robes around him and acquiring a serious tone, he assumed the storyteller’s pose. The abbot, Sam decided, was one of those rare beings: a man who reported everything as received by his eyes and ears, not as his mind had interpreted it.

‘Six months ago,’ he began, ‘your friend and her companion arrived at my monastery. He was younger, and where she was quiet he was loud, and where she was serene he was always on edge, striving to do something else. So when she requested that I take him into my order for a while, I was doubtful. But my librarian, whom she knew, spoke well of them. In the end I did not regret my decision to take her companion… Andrew’ – he pronounced the word with difficulty – ‘into my order. He was a meticulous worker, and when he wasn’t with the librarian his time was spent helping my monks with their work. He often visited the sick and went with the monks into the lowlands to pick up supplies. He stayed here… oh, for two out of every four weeks, unless the weather prevented him from travelling. We just called him Andrew. He never gave any other name.’

An immediate clue
, thought Sam.
Weather wouldn’t have stopped one of us. We would have used the Portal.

‘He was always sending postcards – in Cantonese – to England, to France, but mostly to America. He seemed to be looking for something. Each time he returned from the lowlands he’d be carrying more books. Our library nearly doubled. One day I asked him, “Since you have to go down the mountain to buy all these books, why bother to come back up?” He only laughed. “Because up here I am safe. Down there other eyes are watching.” And he was particular about security. No one outside the monastery was to see his face. In the city he would always go through at least four dealers to get one book that he could have got by direct means for half the price. He gave the impression of a man on the run. Except when here, working all hours with my librarian.’

‘What changed?’

The abbot made a judicious noise. ‘First, let me tell you of the backup to this security. He explained it fully to me, you see. “If I’m ever caught out at my own game, there’s someone else. I am, after all, only mortal. Accidents do happen. But he – he will see this thing to its conclusion.” He didn’t have to do anything, he said, because you’d find your way here of your own accord. If something happened to him, Freya would contact you. If something happened to Freya, he was certain you would try to find out what. And once you got on to a scent, he said, you didn’t stop hunting for anything. He seemed very confident that you’d come. I was to give you full cooperation, but to be utterly certain it was you. He described you, your eyes, your crown, your weapons.’

‘He seemed very trusting,’ Sam murmured.

‘He was playing a big game. That much I could tell.’

‘What changed? What went wrong with security?’

‘He made a discovery. I don’t know what it was, but he seemed overjoyed. “I’ve found it,” he said. “I’ve found out what the whole game is.” A few weeks later and he announced that he was leaving. He was very scared. So was my librarian, for that matter. Both seemed terrified. ‘‘Tell the one who will come that it’s worse than we thought. Tell him that at least one of the keys has already been found, and they are foolish enough to be going for the fourth.”’

Sam said nothing. He’d acquired a stony expression and was sitting with his chin in his hands. His eyes were fixed on the flames as though he wasn’t even listening. In fact Sam was a good listener; the best.

‘They were to leave the same day. Andrew headed directly into the lowlands, and my librarian planned to follow a few hours later by a different route. I could not convince them to stay. Before my librarian could leave, a snowstorm began. It was so sudden I almost couldn’t believe it – there was no reason why it should have started. At this my librarian became even more fearful. “They’re coming,” he said. “They know I’m still here.” The next morning he was missing, and hasn’t been found since. No caravans left in the night. No furs were taken, nor any animals.’

‘Dead?’

‘No one could survive without either,’ he said calmly. ‘Unless they were a brother to Freya, that is. Yet now you tell me she is dead?’

‘Yes.’

‘I am very sorry. Freya was special.’

There was a long silence. Sam seemed frozen to the chair, staring into the fire. The crown still rested on his head, lop-sidedly, as though he’d forgotten about it. Finally the abbot spoke again. ‘What was Andrew looking for, that has already cost lives?’

‘I don’t know. I suspect, but I don’t know.’

‘The keys?’

‘Yes. The Pandora keys.’

‘Will you tell me about them?’

Sighing, Sam sat back. ‘A legend, little more. Four keys to unlock four forbidden doors behind which are imprisoned four spirits or people. Hate, Suspicion, Greed are the spirits. Forbidden from Heaven and locked away for all time from that world at least, though their siblings thrive in Earth and Hell.’

‘And the fourth door?’

‘The big granddaddy of them all. Cronus.’ Sam’s eyes became slightly misty as he murmured, ‘In the beginning was Cronus, and nothing changed. In the beginning was Cronus, and Cronus was the emptiness of life without death and time without seconds. Then came Time, who with his children imprisoned Cronus in a place of nothing for himself. But Cronus is hungry, and wants to add to his nothing the whole universe.’

Sam seemed to shudder, as though snapping out of a trance. ‘The truth is, Cronus is a vastly powerful entity who no one really believes in, who’s sworn to destroy Heaven, Hell, Earth and, most importantly of all, Time.’ He gave a discomforted smile.

‘It’s like the big bang theory, but in reverse. The universe began when Time took
over. You get your explosion, after which the universe will continue to move for ever because Time is giving it that nudge it needs, in the form of seconds, minutes, hours etc. But
before
the big bang, when everything was compressed down at a single point with no change, no movement, no
life
but still
existing –
that was Cronus. You have to be careful about defining him. He exists, sure. But I don’t think you can say Cronus lives.’

‘Locked away.’

‘Yes.’

‘How fortunate,’ murmured the abbot. ‘And what would happen if these spirits were freed?’

Sam smiled faintly. ‘Oh, I’d guess we’re talking minor apocalypse, fall of kings, death of princes. Whoever controlled the Pandora spirits, you see, would literally be able to destroy his or her enemies at a word.

‘So, say I had Hate under my control. I could enter Heaven, march up to… oh, Nirvana, and say, “Hi pals, surrender or you die.” And the guys in Nirvana would naturally answer, “Die, die, evil scum, die.” At which point I would release Hate on to them. Brother would hate brother, sister would hate sister. A soldier preparing to charge my army would suddenly loathe the man standing next to him, and attack his own comrade. The commander would despise his generals and order their deaths, the generals would despise their commander and try to decapitate him. It would be a bloodbath – while I just sat watching with a smug grin.’

‘A fate worth avoiding, then,’ said the abbot. ‘But why do you think Freya and Andrew were looking for the keys?’

Sam thought for a long time. ‘I don’t know. Freya would never use the Pandora spirits, of that I’m sure. She was a Daughter of Love, so employing Hate would be against her nature, against her
blood.
Perhaps the keys are in danger from elsewhere – from somebody against whom she was trying to protect them, by finding them herself. And perhaps that someone got to her first.

‘In which case Andrew is now very important. Not only might he know where the keys are, but it’s fair to assume that if he’s caught his captors will use his knowledge to their own advantage. Which wouldn’t be at all nice.’

The abbot sighed, and folded his arms across his chest, the first sign of feeling the cold he’d shown. ‘I do not understand the movements of your kind. I have read in books that you wander the Earth, and every legend at some point is grounded in fact. I have seen people emerge untouched out of a snowstorm with nothing on their backs and then disappear again without a word. I have seen Freya, Andrew and my librarian turn pale at the mention of keys and spirits. I have seen a man with black eyes who wears a silver crown and stares at the fire without moving, no matter what he hears. All this I can attest to. Believe it I do not.’