The War of the Grail (35 page)

Then he heard a shrill whistling in the distance and his skin rippled. It sounded like round shot.

A second later, he heard a series of cracks and rumbles as several guns were fired.

It was starting again.

He glanced at Kanvar and, without either of them saying a word, they began running across the broken stonework. All around them, people were hunting feverishly for cover. Everyone knew what was in store for them now and wasted no time in finding shelter.

The grumble of the guns grew louder. When Jack looked towards the east, he spotted the dark specks of round shot swarming over the wall. The white smoke of the rebels’ guns billowed across the battlements.

The firefight was growing hotter. He and Kanvar had to get back to the Folly Brook camp quickly.

A round shot shrieked out of the sky and slammed into the ground ahead of Jack. Another swung down from the left and smacked a pillar in half.

Jack and Kanvar clambered over piles of rubble, ducked through archways and charged across courtyards. More balls hailed down around them, clipping stonework, shredding trees and punching holes in buildings.

As they ran alongside a low, crumbling wall, Jack heard a familiar screech. When he looked up, he saw a shell plummeting towards him and Kanvar. It was already so close he could clearly see the black ball and the fizzing fuse. Blots of smoke trailed behind it.

For a second, the shell seemed to hang in the air – as if time had stopped. But then it smashed into the ground behind the wall, spitting up a puff of dust.

Jack’s heart bashed in his chest. He knew the shell could detonate at any moment, and he mustn’t be near it when it did. Both he and Kanvar charged forward, skidding on the shattered stones.

Jack felt as though he were wading through mud. Every step he took seemed intolerably slow. Why was it taking him so long to get away? Why couldn’t he move faster?

Then he heard a cry behind him. He spun round and saw that Kanvar had tripped over and was now on all fours on the ground.

Jack’s heart pounded. He shouted at Kanvar to get up.

Kanvar leapt to his feet and was about to run when the shell exploded. He was wiped out by a screaming wall of metal, stone and dust. Shell fragments whistled through the air. Jack flung himself to the ground, hands over his head in a vain effort to protect himself.

He lay still for a moment, panting heavily, heart racing. His ears rang so loudly he was deafened for a moment, but then his hearing returned.

He was still breathing. He was still alive.

He jumped to his feet again and saw a huge bulb of dust roiling before him. But there was no sign of Kanvar.

Christ.

He charged into the dust, coughing and spitting grit from his mouth. He scoured the rubble and finally spotted Kanvar lying half buried under the broken masonry that was all that remained of the wall.

Jack rushed across to the Sikh and squatted down. ‘You all right?’

Kanvar opened his eyes. His breathing was shallow and there was blood on his face. He frowned slightly and stared up into the sky. ‘I do not know.’ He turned to face Jack, his eyes focusing again. ‘I do not know if I’m all right.’

Jack’s eyes strayed down to Kanvar’s stomach. And then he felt as though the ground were sinking for a moment. A large chunk of shrapnel was poking out of Kanvar’s abdomen. Glistening blood was pouring from the wound and soaking into his tunic.

Jack squeezed his eyes shut for a second and gritted his teeth. That injury looked bad. He doubted Kanvar could survive.

But he couldn’t give up hope yet.

He grasped Kanvar’s arm. ‘I’ll get you out.’

He began dragging the slabs of masonry aside. He quickly swept away the smaller pieces, but the larger chunks proved more difficult. Sweat burst on his forehead as he tried to shift the heaviest lump of rock. He grunted and pushed with all of his strength. But the stone wouldn’t budge.

‘Leave it,’ Kanvar said in a weak voice.

Jack looked across at Kanvar. ‘What?’

‘There is no point.’ Kanvar shut his eyes. ‘I am departing from this world.’

‘No. You hold on. I’ll get you out and get you to the hospital.’

Kanvar opened his eyes again and shook his head. ‘There is no hope for me. I can feel the life leaving me.’

A round shot tore past overhead and crunched into a building nearby. In the distance, a shell exploded in mid-air, blossoming into a red and yellow garland.

‘I can’t just sit here,’ Jack said. ‘I have to try.’

He glanced around and saw no one else in the area. He shouted for help as loudly as he could. But no one came to his aid.

Kanvar grasped Jack’s arm. ‘There is no need. I am happy.’

‘Happy? What the hell are you talking about?’

‘I followed Waheguru’s will. I made the right choice in helping you. There is nothing to regret.’

Kanvar’s eyes clouded over and slowly closed.

Jack shook Kanvar. ‘Don’t fall asleep, you hear me?’

Kanvar’s eyes remained closed, but he was still breathing.

Jack scanned the surroundings again. The dust had faded, but he still couldn’t see anyone. ‘Help! I’ve got an injured man here! Help!’

‘Listen to me,’ Kanvar said suddenly.

When Jack looked back, he saw that the Sikh’s eyes were open once more.

‘You must try to use the Great Yantra,’ Kanvar continued. ‘You said you knew the design well. That might mean you know it well enough to hold it in your mind.’

‘Don’t worry about that now.’

‘No. Listen. You must promise me you will try. If you gain the power, that could change the course of the war.’

‘All right, I promise I’ll try.’

‘Good … Waheguru bless everyone.’

Kanvar sighed, then his head lolled to one side and his eyes went blank.

Jack shouted over and over again for help. He cried out so loudly that his throat hurt. But no one came.

And it wouldn’t have done any good if they had.

Kanvar was gone.

T
he Great Yantra hung in Jack’s mind, glowing white on a black background. With his eyes shut, Jack recalled every part of the design. He saw the outer circle, the four arms of the cross and the inner circle where the arms met. Each section was entwined with knotted Celtic patterns. In the middle, a whirlpool-like marking coiled into the very centre.

Kanvar had been right. Jack had found it easy to hold the yantra in his mind. He’d seen the design so often over the years, it was branded in his head.

He straightened his back and breathed in deeply. The material world began to recede. He heard the crack of shells exploding and the steady boom of gunfire. But none of this mattered to him. The battle was taking place far away, in a distant land.

He was approaching the purusha realm. A holy silence encased him and the air about him seemed still. He was outside time and outside his own body.

He focused all his attention on the Great Yantra, and the design circled slowly in the darkness.

And then, without him expecting it, the yantra locked into place and steadied. He bent all his thoughts towards it, blocking out anything else.

And suddenly it blazed into brilliant light.

In that instant, he knew, without any doubt, that Katelin’s necklace was a yantra. Only a yantra would come alive in his head in this way. Only a yantra would blind his inner eye with light.

Jack sat in a small chamber deep within the ruined palace. The other inhabitants of Folly Brook were huddled in the adjoining rooms, sheltering from the missiles that had been raining down on them for the past hour. Only Sonali crouched with him in the tiny grotto.

He held Katelin’s necklace up, the ringed cross circling slowly in the light from a single candle. Before him, spread out on the floor, was Kanvar’s map of Britain and Ireland. The chart had survived the blast – unlike Kanvar’s spyglass and pistol, which had both unfortunately been destroyed.

Sonali’s brow furrowed. ‘It’s hard to take all this in.’

‘I know,’ Jack replied. He’d just explained to her, as quickly as he could, everything he knew about the Great Yantra.

Kanvar was dead, and now it was down to Jack to make sense of what he and the Sikh had discovered just two hours earlier. Sonali was the only person he could talk to about all of this.

Sonali gazed at the map and then back at the dangling necklace. ‘They do look the same. I can see that. The map is missing some parts. But otherwise it matches.’

Jack nodded. ‘And just ten minutes ago, I managed to hold the design still in my mind. It’s a yantra, without a doubt.’

‘What I don’t understand is why that necklace? Why would it have been made into the shape of this Great Yantra?’

‘I’ve been thinking about that. The thing is, this necklace isn’t one of a kind. There are lots of them in Wales. You see the design on shrines too. There are even a few in Clun Valley. It’s all over the place.’

‘How could that be?’

‘I heard a theory once that the ancient Britons knew about the sattva streams. Jhala told me this, actually. The idea is that the Britons set up markers to show where the streams ran. They would put up standing stones, things like that. The markers were like a map. Maybe the Britons mapped out the whole Great Yantra.’

‘That would be a huge task.’

‘True, but they could have done it over time, couldn’t they?’ He placed the necklace gently on the ground. ‘The thing is, I’ve been in the Great Yantra twice before – that I know about, at least. The first time was the meeting point under Mahajan’s castle. The ancient Scots buried their kings in that exact spot. They must have known there was something important about it. The second time was with Kanvar, a few days ago. I was in another part of the yantra where a few streams meet. And that just happened to be in a stone circle. It can’t all be a coincidence.’

A shell pummelled the roof directly above them. The impact made Sonali jump, and tremors coursed through the walls and floor. The shell burst a second later and metal fragments flayed the stonework.

Sonali brushed a stray lock of hair from her face. ‘But, if the Britons knew the yantra, wouldn’t they have used the power?’

‘That’s just it. I reckon they have used it. At least, a very few people did in the past.’ He nodded at the map. ‘I think this yantra is what we in Britain call the Grail.’

‘The Grail? When you told me the story, you said the Grail was a cup of some sort.’

‘I think the stories could be wrong about that. Or maybe whoever first told those stories was trying to keep the truth about the Grail secret. In any case, I reckon Galahad and Oswin both found out that the design could be used to release a power.’

‘They learnt to meditate and hold it still?’

‘Something like that. We Christians pray. That’s a bit like meditating. Maybe they both just stumbled across the secret.’

A series of balls battered the roof and further lines of dust trickled down.

‘So, you said you used the yantra.’ Sonali fixed her gaze on Jack. ‘That means you have the great power, then?’

Jack sighed and ran his fingers through his hair. ‘I don’t think so.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I managed to hold the yantra still, and it worked. The yantra lit up. You know how it is. But nothing happened after that. I didn’t get any knowledge about the power.’

‘Ah. You think it’s because—’

‘Because I’m a blocked siddha, yes. That’s the way it always is when you’re blocked, isn’t it? You can learn the yantra, but you can’t use the power.’

Sonali nodded slowly. ‘Unless you can use your special ability.’

‘Exactly. If I could break the law of karma, my guess is I’d be able to use this yantra.’

‘But, at the moment, you can’t.’

Jack tensed his hand into a fist. ‘No.’ It had been a blow to realise that he was so close to gaining the power, and yet still couldn’t achieve it.

‘Perhaps someone else could try,’ Sonali said.

Jack shook his head. ‘There’s not enough time. It takes months to learn a yantra. You know that. I’m the only one who’s looked at this design enough to memorise it.’

Sonali lowered her gaze. ‘That is true. If the yantra is to help us at the moment, it has to be you who uses it.’