Eternal (25 page)

He looked straight at me. “I’m in love with you,” he said.

“I’m in love with Sarah Venetia Rosamund Fitzalan. So you’re stuck with me now, if you’l have me.”

I didn’t say anything. I had no words for that moment.

We kissed, and with that kiss we sealed something between us forever, that no quarrels or misunderstandings would ever undo. It was hard and real and eternal, like a stone in my pocket.

“Let’s go, Sarah,” said Helen. “It’s time.”

Then we mounted our horses and rode like four avenging angels across the darkening val ey. We rode as close to the edges of the peat bogs as we dared before veering away and up again to the higher ground that led to the Tor and the caves. As soon as we came under the shadow of the great crops of limestone, we slipped off our horses and tethered them to a straggling thorn tree.

“Don’t worry,” whispered Cal, seeing me glance at them anxiously. “I’l come back for them later, whatever happens.

I promise.”

I smiled fleetingly at him, touched by his concern, then looked around to examine the place we had arrived at. It was the first time I had been to White Tor, but I recognized the biggest cave mouth from pictures I had seen of it. It was just as Maria had described in her journal. I silently sent her a message of thanks.

Josh led us into the cave, eager to get closer to Evie at last. He had explored some of the cave systems in Wyldcliffe before and knew some of their physical dangers

—airless tunnels and deadly crevices as wel as the constant threat of rockfal s or underground flooding. But there was nothing Josh could do to guard us against the evil spirits that inhabited those hidden places. We simply had to trust one another and walk blindly into the dark.

Josh went ahead, and we fol owed him down the first tunnel. Soon we reached the place that Maria had mentioned—a wide flat area like a smal chamber of rock.

This had been blocked off on her journey and Sebastian had used his powers to open the way to the underground kingdom on the other side. But we had no need to do the same. A doorway had already been opened in the rock wal , a perfect arch with smooth, polished edges. Runes and spel s were carved around it, grotesque signs with unknown meanings. I didn’t like this open, welcoming door.

It was too much like walking into a trap.

We crossed its threshold al the same—we had no choice. Cal squeezed my hand briefly as we went in single file into a new tunnel that was much narrower and lower than the first. Our flashlights created huge unexpected shadows on the wal s as we moved forward.

Ahead of me I could see that Josh was stooping down, and behind him Helen was also walking along with bowed head and stiff arms. I guessed that she, who belonged to the air and the light, was suffering most in this narrow space. At least I was with Cal. Even here I felt warmed by his love. He had come back to find me, to swal ow his pride and start again, and he was taking this journey for the sake of me and my friends. Wherever he was, I was at home. How could Helen keep enduring her loneliness? I wondered. But when she did find love, I knew it would be deeper than most people could only dream about. A love beyond the confines of the world, hadn’t Miss Scratton promised? I wondered what she had meant and when this would happen for Helen; then I remembered that Miss Scratton had told so many lies and that maybe this had been just one more.

“Wait!” Josh whispered. “We’ve reached the end of the tunnel—be careful.”

We emerged one by one into the cavern where Maria had been nearly a hundred years before. The beam of my flashlight wasn’t powerful enough to reveal the whole of the vast cave, but I caught glimpses of high rock formations and clusters of crystal and shining yel ow stalactites. The air was very cold and the underground lake gleamed black, as slick as oil. I couldn’t make out the far shore, which was lost in shadow. Water dripped unseen, like a dul heartbeat. Now al my terrors came back to me, and I dreaded to feel the clutching hands of the Kinsfolk dragging me away at any second.

Torches sprang into life as though lit by an unseen hand.

They were stuck into niches in the rocky wal s and spread their light over the sides of the cave. But the lake—there was something evil by the lake. A low stone trough ful of water stood at its edge. It was a crudely carved coffin.

“No—no—no!” Helen moaned. Then I saw it too.

Evie was lying in the stone coffin, under the surface of the water. Her lips were slightly parted and her eyes were closed. Her skin was white as swansdown and there was no life in her at al . So it was true. My vision had been right.

Evie was dead and our quest was useless. The whole world seemed to shudder to a halt, and I sensed my grief like a rock in the distance ready to crush me, but for the moment I was numb, holding off the pain.

Josh stumbled forward with a desperate cry. He plunged his arms into the stone trough and lifted Evie’s body from the water. His face was frozen in agony as he sank to the ground, cradling her in his arms.

“Evie—come back, come back,” Josh murmured, stroking her wet hair. “My darling, my love—” He seemed to be wil ing her back to life, but she hung limply in his embrace. Then he raised his eyes and looked around wildly as though searching for someone. “Agnes,” he cal ed. “If you can hear, help me now! Your spark of healing power—it lives in me—help me!”

Help me . . . help me . . . help me . . . The words echoed around the cavern. Josh touched Evie’s face, as if in blessing; then he kissed her wet mouth.

“Look!” I gasped. Evie’s eyes fluttered, and the breath shuddered through her body. She sat up and threw her arms around Josh’s neck and the next moment we were al crowding round to embrace her, crazy with joy, laughing and crying and forgetting to be careful or afraid.

“And so you have come. Welcome.” A thin, dry voice cut through our celebrations. I saw that in the middle of the lake there was a smal island. A cloaked figure was standing there. I steeled myself for seeing the hateful thing that had once been Helen’s mother, the deadly Priestess.

“Welcome,” she repeated as she slowly turned to face us, letting her hood fal from her face. “I am the Priestess.

You are the Priestess. We are the Priestess.” But it wasn’t Celia Hartle’s spirit that was confronting us.

It was Laura.

Laura? But it can’t be—”

I remembered Laura van Pal andt as pretty and spoiled and not very clever, always hanging about with her cousin Celeste and fol owing her lead. She’d had thick, honey-colored hair and a wide-eyed, slightly startled expression, as though life was constantly taking her by surprise. But she’s dead, I kept saying to myself. Laura’s dead, this can’t be true. . . . I forced myself to look at the apparition’s gray face. Her eyes were bloodshot and her hair was the color of withered leaves, but it was the girl I had known, I was sure. “Laura!” I cried again.

She turned her blank red eyes to me. “Laura . . .

Laura . . . ,” she repeated monotonously. “Yes, that was my name. But that life has gone; I am no longer like you. I serve the king of the Unconquered lords and his Priestess.

I am the Priestess,” she chanted. “We al belong to the Priestess. You belong to the Priestess.”

“I don’t,” said Helen defiantly. “I don’t belong to anyone.”

I had heard her say that once before in sadness, but now she sounded proud.

“You will all belong to me.”

A new voice rang out. Laura sank down, fear and pain flashing over her face. Some force was pushing me to my knees, making me bow down to al that remained on earth of Celia Hartle, once the High Mistress of Wyldcliffe, leader of the coven of Dark Sisters and now the most faithful servant of the Unconquered lords. As she stepped out of the shadows, Cal fel next to me with a groan. Helen struggled; then her body bent and she too did unwil ing homage to her mother. Evie col apsed to the ground, where Josh tried to shelter her in his arms.

Mrs. Hartle’s face was shrunken like a skeleton, and she was shrouded in swirling mist. Dust and ash seemed to fal from her as she moved toward us, gliding over the water without sinking into its black depths. She flicked her wrist and a whip of dark fire lashed out. Cal and Josh were blown off their feet, and the next second they were chained to pil ars of stone.

“So,” she sneered, “you have brought your boyfriends?

Helen, you surprise me, I didn’t think you’d ever attract anyone. Especial y someone so very charming.” She stroked Josh’s cheek with her bony hands, and he flinched at her touch. The next moment she had gagged both of the boys with another flick of her wrist. Cal and Josh writhed and struggled to get free, but they were helpless. I wanted to run to Cal, but I couldn’t move from where the Priestess held us on our knees. I groped in my mind for an earth spel to shake the ground beneath our feet and break the stone they were chained to, but my thoughts were sucked away by Mrs. Hartle’s poisonous presence.

“Leave them!” said Helen. “They are our friends. That’s something you wouldn’t understand.”

“Let me tel you what I do understand,” Mrs. Hartle said in a dangerously soft voice. “You have al rushed here to save your beloved friend, as I knew you would, but you have achieved nothing. You have done exactly as I planned, exactly as I wanted you to do. I’ve had you watched. I have been cal ing for you, Helen, looking for you in your dreams. I summoned you to Blackdown Ridge, the night you came back to the school. I wanted to give you a chance to give up your tiresome meddling in the mysteries, and join my great cause. But of course, you had to resist.

You fled, and set yourselves up against me, al of you, even that simpering fool Agnes, the traitor, who cannot rest in her cursed grave.”

“What is it you want?” I asked desperately. “Why did you take Evie? Why is Laura here?”

“So many questions!” she replied, amused. “The first one—so very interesting. The heart of al philosophy! What do I want? The great question of life. And yet why should I tel you?” Another dart of fire flashed from her, and I felt as though I had been struck on the face. “But then again—why not? It wil be amusing to see you grovel before the heights of my ambition.

“I wanted to become immortal as Sebastian had promised,” she began slowly as though remembering something from a long time ago. “You and your friend Evelyn Johnson prevented that from happening. Yes, you were clever. Clever or lucky—I wonder which?”

“We stopped you because we had right on our side,” I said. “Evil never wins, not in the end.”

“No one ever wins in the end, not in this world, because death takes everything away, even from the victors. When Sebastian failed me, I had to seek another way of evading death’s grip, and I found it. My master is the greatest of the Unconquered lords, he is their Eternal King, and I am his Priestess. By serving him I wil live forever in the shadows.”

“Who wants to live in the shadows when they have known the light?” Helen said defiantly. “And even the Unconquered lords wil not last forever. Time itself wil be destroyed at the end of al things when a reckoning wil be made. Then you’l have to pay for what you’ve done. The Great Creator sees everything.”

The smoke and mist around Mrs. Hartle’s figure seemed to shudder for an instant as she wavered in doubt.

Then she laughed. “I hope you’l be there to see that moment with me—if it should ever happen, which I doubt.

Your gods are silent and spent. Only power is real.”

“Power is real,” Laura echoed in the background. “The Priestess wil triumph.”

”How does Laura come into this?” Helen asked, keeping her eyes fixed on her mother’s face. “What have you done to her?”

“Why do you ask, my daughter? You were there the night that the coven sucked Laura’s soul, harvesting her strength and energy to feed Sebastian and keep our hopes alive.”

“Only because you made me!” Helen cried. The guilt and anguish that she felt was plain to see, and I realized what a burden Laura’s death had been for Helen to carry.

“You could have refused to be at our ceremony,” said Mrs. Hartle. “Yes, Helen, you are just as responsible for Laura’s death as the rest of my Dark Sisters, simply by your presence. You saw me drink too deep of her youth, and she died. But her soul could not pass. It had been forced from her body by our mysteries and was under my command, so when her body died she remained trapped between this world and the next. And when the girl Velvet made her mockery of a spel on the ancient altar, she released not only the bonds you had tried to lay on me, but Laura’s spirit. In her last living moments I owned Laura’s soul, and so she now exists under my command.”

“Didn’t choose . . . had to . . . join the Priestess . . . ,”

Laura intoned.

“Let her go!” I shouted. “Stop tormenting her—and Helen too. Let them both go.”

She laughed at me. “Let them go? You wil al join me, wil ingly or not. Those who resist wil be overcome and yoked to me as Bondsouls. Laura is my first Bondsoul, and there wil be many, many more. Through them my power wil swel , like a spider spawning her brood, and my master wil be pleased. We wil have an army of them, and Wyldcliffe wil be destroyed.” Mrs. Hartle looked coaxingly at Helen. “But if you come to me wil ingly, Helen, like my Sisters in the coven, yours wil be a different destiny. You could be the chief of my handmaidens and share my glory.”

“Nothing on earth would make me join you,” Helen said.

“Except the one thing you real y desire,” Mrs. Hartle replied, her voice soft and low. “A mother’s love. Come to me and I promise I wil love you through al eternity.” Her face changed, and she grew young and beautiful. She held her arms open tenderly. I looked at Helen in alarm. Would she be able to resist this offer of the only thing she had always wanted?

Helen gasped. “Cruel! You’re so cruel! Don’t pretend you can love me. No one can. No one!”

“I have always loved you, my child, though destiny drove us apart,” Mrs. Hartle whispered, and for a moment I believed her. But as Mrs. Hartle reached out for Helen I saw the wild glint in her eye that betrayed her grasping desire for Helen’s powers. “We can start again, daughter,”