Web of Fire Bind-up (17 page)

Firebrand drew deeply on his cigar and the end glowed a deep red. He held it between his finger and thumb and watched the smoke drift up from the tip in thick, aromatic wisps.

‘Odoursin wants to get his hands on you pretty badly, Sam.' He tapped the end of the cigar so that the ash fell into the silver ashtray on his desk. ‘So right now, you're in the best place. Believe me.'

‘I don't wish to be rude,' Sam ventured uncertainly, ‘but why am I here?'

Firebrand narrowed his eyes and stared at Sam through the smoke that curled from the end of his cigar. ‘You're here because of the prophecy,' he explained. ‘Odoursin believed that bringing you to Aurobon was crucial to his future success.'

‘I still don't get it,' said Sam.

‘After their attack failed at the start of the war, Odoursin's army retreated into the mountains and vented their anger on our ancestors – the Olumnus – virtually wiping them out. And when they took over their caves, they found the Book of Incantations.'

‘The Book of what?'

‘Incantations,' repeated Firebrand. He got up from his desk and walked across to the window overlooking the airfield. ‘It was previously thought of as a legend, a magical book containing prophecies which accurately foretold the future. Its discovery was of enormous significance to us all, and strengthened Odoursin's belief that his destiny was to rescue Earth from what he saw as its human parasites. He began to believe that his defeat in battle was fate's way of bringing him to the book in order to prepare him for future victory. After having the book translated, he was convinced of it.'

‘But what does it say?' asked Sam.

‘Well, there's a lot of pretty general stuff about the fall of kings and empires and the conjunction of planets and constellations and suchlike. But take a look at this.'

Skipper flipped off the lights as Firebrand pulled a cord to draw the curtains. He picked up a small handset from his desk and a screen lit up on the end wall.

Sam peered through the darkness as words appeared on the screen. He read:

… and so it is written that there shall be seven states of darkness; the decay of religion, revolution, famine, earthquakes, war, the poisoning of the Earth and plagues and diseases. When these prevail, the Great One shall come from the sky and Earth shall be saved.

‘Now, if you think about it,' said Firebrand, ‘that just about sums up the state of the Earth at the moment. The planet's been polluted to such an extent that it's become a huge rubbish tip. People are either turning their backs on religion or using it as an excuse to persecute others – you don't have to look very far to find people fighting each other. Add earthquakes into the equation, and the fact that there are millions dying because they haven't got enough food to eat, and you're nearly there. Just toss in a plague or two and everything's in place for the Great One to arrive. Simple really.'

‘The Great One being Odoursin,' said Skipper.

‘Well, that's what he believes himself to be.'

‘Don't you?' asked Sam.

‘I have to admit, I was sceptical,' Firebrand replied. ‘Most of the prophecies in the book are so general that you could use them to predict almost anything. But then something happened which changed my view completely.'

Firebrand glanced around and lowered his voice, despite the fact that there were only the three of them in the room. ‘One night we were secretly observing some of Odoursin's men on patrol in the forests when we saw a young woman wandering alone and barefoot through the trees. She was distressed and appeared to be searching for something. The patrol followed her for several minutes until she reached the edge of the forest and watched as she climbed over a ditch and into an open field. Here she walked a little way and then stopped as if unsure what to do next. Odoursin's soldiers shouted to her to stay, but she gave no indication of having heard them. The patrol then entered the field and walked towards her, at which point, much to everyone's surprise, she simply disappeared.'

‘Disappeared?' Sam echoed.

‘Vanished into thin air. But after that she began to appear at irregular intervals, always at night and always disappearing before anyone could get near her.'

‘Did you find out who she was?' Sam asked.

‘Not at first. But her appearance coincided with a huge increase in activity from Odoursin's forces and we began to suspect that this figure was of great importance
to him. We began to see much greater concentrations of horseflies in the towns and cities of your world. Their deployment could only mean one thing: they were searching for her.'

‘But why?' Sam tugged at his lower lip. ‘Why did they want her so badly?'

‘It wasn't her they wanted,' Firebrand went on. ‘It was something that belonged to her. Fortunately, we were able to get our hands on a translation of the prophecy and find out what that was. We moved fast and managed to find her before they did. Unfortunately, despite our best efforts, it wasn't enough to stop them.'

‘But who was she?' asked Sam.

By way of reply, the handset clicked quietly and the words on the screen dissolved, to be replaced by an image of a woman of about thirty-five. She was standing in a summer meadow, her auburn hair held out of her eyes by her left hand as she waved to someone with her right. Behind her was a low hedge and beyond it a redbrick house. It was a beautiful summer's day.

Sam gave a cry of shock, longing and recognition.

The house was his own and the woman standing in the field was his mother.

The handset clicked again and the image faded to black. The following words appeared in its place:

When the Dreamwalker's Child walks in Aurobon, then shall the East be in the ascendant; a plague shall descend from the sky and the Earth will fall into
shadow… but the Dreamwalker's Child shall rise up against the Darkness.

Sam looked at Skipper and saw that she was staring at him.

‘Guess who,' she said.

A small flame of fear and excitement began to burn in the shadows around Sam's heart.

‘Me?' he said.

Firebrand nodded. ‘That's why they're so keen to get hold of you. They think you're the Dreamwalker's Child – the one who's going to spoil the party.'

‘And with our help,' added Skipper, ‘that's exactly what you
are
going to do.'

Sam's mind was racing. Suddenly everything around him seemed to come into clear, sharp focus, as though someone had twisted a camera lens and transformed the blurred edges of his new world into hard, precise lines. He saw the red heat as it crawled slowly down the crisp brown sides of the cigar, saw the rough, hard calluses on Firebrand's hands and saw the light from the screen reflected in Skipper's eyes, shining like a pool full of sapphires.

‘But why didn't they just kill me?'

‘Because of the first part of the prophecy. Odoursin believed he needed you alive in Aurobon so that his forces would be victorious. He saw the people on Earth as the Darkness and believed that in some way you would help him to defeat them. But Hekken and the rest of the Council disagreed, suspecting that the Darkness referred to their own forces. They believed that once you were in Aurobon, it would be safer to kill you. We've recently learned that they have been successful in persuading Odoursin to believe this too.'

Sam blinked and tried to focus on what Firebrand was saying.

‘When we realised that Odoursin's forces had made a connection between the woman who walked in the forest and the Dreamwalker of the prophecy,' continued Firebrand, tapping another column of grey ash into the ashtray, ‘we couldn't be sure that the connection was a correct one, but neither could we take any risks. So we threw all our resources into finding her before they did.'

Sam shifted in his seat and thought how strange it was to hear his mother talked of in this way, hunted like some fugitive on the run. But he listened and said nothing.

‘We programmed her image into our most powerful computers, which analysed every scrap of data we had – hair colour, skin tone, height, bone structure – you name it, we analysed it. The most we got from that was a 78 per cent probability that the woman was of English descent, although for all we knew she could have moved to the other side of the world or been born to English
parents who lived in Africa. We had no way of knowing for sure.'

Another image of Sam's mother appeared on the screen, although at first he didn't recognise her. It was night-time and she stood alone in the middle of a field, clearly terrified. She stared wildly at something in the distance and her face was smudged with dirt and tears. All she wore was a simple nightdress. Sam swallowed hard, then felt a small hand close around his own.

‘Don't worry,' whispered Skipper. ‘It'll be all right, you'll see.'

And although Sam couldn't see how anything could be all right any more, her words calmed him and he squeezed her hand tightly in the darkness.

‘We took a chance and focused on England,' Firebrand continued. ‘Every single piloted insect that we could spare was taken off normal duties and transferred to search squadrons. Fly populations soared that year, but luck was on our side. After seven months we found her.'

The handset clicked and the face on the screen merged smoothly into a much happier version of the same person. Sam's heart leapt as he saw his mother smiling once more, stretching up in the sunlight and pegging clothes onto a washing line.

‘We don't know why she walks through Aurobon in her dreams. But knowing that Odoursin was desperate to find you, we flew round-the-clock wasp patrols for your protection.'

The image changed to one of Sam's face next to a dead wasp. Stretching away into the distance was a line of ants.

‘We've been watching you for quite a while, Sam. Remember this?'

Sam gave a half-smile and nodded. He had watched fascinated as the ants tugged the fallen insect across the patio towards their dark holes in the earth, little knowing that he too was being watched.

‘That wasp had one of our pilots in it, so the ant squadrons mobilised immediately. Standard search-and-rescue procedure. Got it down to a fine art, we have.'

Sam detected a hint of pride in Firebrand's voice.

‘We knew that, sooner or later, Odoursin's lot would find you. In the event, it turned out to be sooner.'

Sam watched as the picture on the screen cut away to a film shot at night from the cockpit of a wasp. The screen was filled with the image of a house approaching at high speed and Sam winced involuntarily as it seemed they must crash, but at the last moment the pilot climbed sharply and shot through a gap in an open window.

Sam recognised his own bedroom curtains just as two black lines appeared at the sides of the screen, pulsated once and then raced to the middle, shrinking themselves into a small, bright square beneath which the words ‘TARGET LOCK' glowed fiery red. He just had time to register the unmistakable shape of a mosquito in the middle of the square before there was a sense of
incredible acceleration and the mosquito was hit full on, bits of its legs and wings disintegrating beneath like grey, ghostly confetti.

‘Nice,' said Skipper.

The screen flickered again and Sam saw himself standing on the lawn. A grey fly was circling above his head, although the Sam on the screen didn't appear to be aware of it.

‘Ooh, horsefly!' cried Skipper excitedly. ‘Go on, take him down!'

As if in response to Skipper's instruction, the screen was quickly filled by the unfortunate insect as the electronic display locked onto its target once more and the wasp hit the horsefly dead centre. This time the large fly was brought crashing down to the ground, struggling among the long grass beneath the hedge until there was a glint of silver sting, a crunching of jaws and the struggle was over.

‘Isn't nature a wonderful thing?' said Skipper as Sam shut his eyes and tried to ignore the queasy feeling in his stomach.

‘Red in tooth and claw,' agreed Firebrand as the wasp flew away from the lifeless insect lying broken in the long grass and up into a clear blue sky. ‘There were some bloody battles on Earth that summer, Sam, I can tell you.' He got to his feet and rubbed the back of his neck. He suddenly looked very tired.

‘It was our belief that Odoursin would try and use mosquitoes to infect your Earth body with some deadly
virus, so that they could bring your essence to Aurobon. They may not have developed the virus that will destroy all human life yet, but there are plenty of existing ones that will kill you quite effectively – yellow fever, for instance. We know that they've piloted
Aedes aegypti
mosquitoes in the past to infect key people with the yellow-fever virus – usually scientists in the tropics who are on the verge of some major breakthrough.'

‘They killed them?' asked Sam in amazement. ‘Why?'

‘Because they're afraid that the success of the new virus they're developing might be threatened by these people. So they watch them in the labs and they wait. Then when a breakthrough cure is imminent, a few ants quietly come and bite a hole in the mosquito net. Night comes, the mosquitoes go in and no one knows anything until the target gets sick and dies. Just another unfortunate accident in the name of medical research.'

Sam gave a low whistle. ‘Does that sort of thing happen a lot then?'

‘Well, they've always done it,' said Firebrand, ‘and in the past they've always been quite subtle about it. A scientist dying quietly in some tropical country isn't the kind of thing likely to cause much of a stir in the wider world. But recently they've been more brazen about it, to the extent that we've had West Nile virus turning up in New York, for goodness' sake. Which made us think that they wouldn't worry too much about a case of yellow fever in rural England if it meant that they could bring their number one target back to Aurobon.'