Battle of the Sun (11 page)

THE NIGREDO

T
here was a shudder and a shimmer, and all at once the Phoenix had vanished, and in its place stood the Magus in his long black cloak. He was holding a big iron key.

‘Jack, the doors to the Dark House are open now. I can no longer prevent your coming and going. You are your own master now. But follow me, if you please – this one last time . . .’

Jack was confused. The Magus was his enemy. Why was his enemy talking like a friend?

Jack followed the Magus into the house and into the laboratory. There was a vessel on the floor sealed and wrapped in sacking. Some of the smaller tongs and bellows and stirrers and jars were packed in cases. Wedge was there, frantically wrapping and stacking.

Then Jack saw his mother. She had been carried into the laboratory.

‘I was about to put her with the other statues,’ said the Magus, ‘but as she is your mother, you may decide for yourself.’

‘She is not stone,’ said Jack, a cold fear creeping through him.

‘Is she not?’ replied the Magus mildly, and then he grabbed Jack’s arm, and pulled him to the brazier that leapt with green flames. Jack realised that his own physical strength had greatly increased, and that he could throw off the Magus if he chose to, but because he was afraid, he did not do so.

‘Jack,’ said the Magus, ‘how different it might have been if you had served me. Together we could have ruled the City of Gold and, piece by piece, land by land, the whole world. You as my rightful heir.’

‘You have a son,’ said Jack. ‘His name is William.’

The face of the Magus darkened like a lake at night. ‘I have no son. He failed me. He could not complete the Work. There he is – with the rest.’

Jack shook the Magus off him, and walked into the antechamber beyond the laboratory. He shuddered. All the boys were there now: Anselm, Robert, William, Peter, Roderick . . .

‘Crispis . . .’ he said under his breath, but the child was so small he could not see if he was there or not.

‘Why have you done this?’ said Jack, angry.

‘They are of no further use,’ replied the Magus.

Jack walked sadly towards the statues and put his hand on Robert’s shoulder. His heart was burning with sadness and anger, but he knew he must show nothing to the Magus. He was not ready yet to test his power.

The Magus was timing the progress of the moon. He smiled his dark smile. ‘And now,’ he said, ‘I will give you a free choice, Jack, for you are not my servant but my enemy, yet because you have taken the power of the Sunken King, and because you are the Radiant Boy, I must bargain with you. Here is my bargain. Put your hand in the fire with mine, as the new moon aligns with Mars, and your mother goes free. If you do not . . .’

‘My hand in the fire?’ asked Jack, who was afraid, not of the pain, but of the true motives of the Magus.

‘I must join with you to use your power,’ said the Magus. ‘Only the golden power of the Radiant Boy can complete the Work.’

‘No!’ said Jack. ‘I will not do it.’

The Magus glanced out of the window. There was the moon.

‘Then . . .’ said the Magus.

Jack returned to the laboratory and looked at his mother. As he looked, a hard grey cold began to steal over those warm parts of her that yet remained. He saw her lips half open in surprise, his own half-name just issuing from them like a whisper. Then the air in her nose seemed to freeze. Her eyes implored him. Jack grabbed the Magus by the arm, and with easy power – and he saw the surprise in the Magus’s face – Jack plunged their twined arms into the flames.

The flames leapt up, like snakes, like coils of dark life, for the fire was no ordinary fire, and its brightness was dark, and in truth its heat was dread cold.

All the time that their arms burned, Jack kept his eyes fixed on the Magus, and he saw in those eyes many lives, many secrets, and he thought he saw one single fear. If he could find that fear . . .

The fire burned down and went out. The brazier was void and cool. Jack stood back, shaking his arm, which seemed just as it had been. The Magus nodded his head.

‘Thank you, Jack. You served me after all.’

Then, with a rush of wind, the Magus was gone.

Jack went to his mother. He stroked her hair, but it was stone. He touched her cheek, but it was hard. He kissed her lips, but they were cold. She was motionless and still.

He betrayed me
, thought Jack bitterly.
I gave him my power, and he betrayed me.

Jack looked around the laboratory. The furnaces were out and the alembics no longer bubbled and popped.

He walked through into the library. The books had gone. The stone shelves were empty. He walked through into the hall – and the place was hung with silence.

A great weight at his heart, and darkness all around him, Jack sat down on the floor. He did not know what to do.

In all his life he had never felt so desolate or so desperate. He loved his mother, and now he had lost her. The Magus was free and powerful. He, Jack, had ruined it all.

‘Please come back,’ he said to himself in a whisper. ‘Mother, please come back.’

He felt something small and warm against his legs. It was Max come to find him. Max licked him and leaned against him, making small noises of encouragement. Jack stroked the dog, but he was too numb to do anything more. He felt as though he had been turned to stone himself.

SOME LIGHT

J
ack?’

Jack looked up from his long silence. He did not know ‘ how much time had passed. The night seemed to be the day now, but what day?

The girl from the tower was squatting near him.

‘You are the Golden Maiden,’ said Jack. ‘You escaped from the tower . . .’

‘Well. I realised that no one was going to rescue me,’ said the girl. ‘I mean, that only happens in fairy stories, doesn’t it? So I rescued myself. Well, that isn’t strictly true. The sunflower grew out of your window and across into my window, and I climbed across it, and then all the way down, like you did, into the kitchen. Then the dog came and fetched me, just like he did now.’

Max came up, wagging his tail and wanting to be stroked.

‘The dog’s called Max,’ said Jack.

‘And you are Jack . . .’ said the girl.

‘And what’s your name?’

‘Silver,’ said Silver.

‘That’s strange, when you are the Golden Maiden . . .’

‘Who says I’m the Golden Maiden?’ asked Silver.

‘The Book of the Phoenix,’ said Jack simply. ‘I saw your picture, and then I thought I was knocking at the door of a house, and that you answered.’

‘You were,’ said Silver. ‘I did. That’s how I got here, because you were calling me, and I came through the fire.’

‘What fire?’ asked Jack.

And Silver explained how she had walked through the fire in the library at home, and reappeared in the library of the Magus.

‘Do you know the Magus?’

‘No, but I know he’s an alchemist, and the last alchemist I met wanted to control time – all of it. It was to do with a clock . . .’

‘The Magus is an alchemist, yes,’ said Jack, ‘and he wants to turn all the city of London into gold – every bit of it.’

‘They always want every bit – all of the gold, all of the time,’ said Silver. ‘Mine had to be defeated, and yours will have to be defeated too. I suppose I’ve got to help.’

‘Where do you come from?’ asked Jack. ‘Why do you wear those strange clothes? What are they made from?’

Silver looked at her jeans and fleece and trainers. ‘I come from Cheshire, in England. It’s in the north of England. And this is London in England, isn’t it?’

‘Yes,’ said Jack, ‘and Elizabeth is Queen.’

‘What year is it?’ asked Silver.

‘1601,’ said Jack, looking doubtfully at Silver. ‘You should know that.’

‘I’m not from your time, Jack,’ said Silver. ‘That’s why I wear these clothes. I come from the twenty-first century.’

Jack didn’t speak. He just gazed at Silver, his brow furrowed. He felt tired and muddled. Nothing made sense . . .

the Sunken King, the Dragon, the Moat, the Magus, his mother, his mother, his mother. That was the dull ache in his body, his mother . . .

He got up. ‘The Dragon might know . . .’ he said, not knowing what he meant. Silver followed him.

They walked through the empty house. All the doors always so carefully closed and locked were open. It was as though a great wind had blown through the house. The library was empty of books, the door to the laboratory stood ajar on its heavy hinges. The door to the downward tree and the Dragon’s lair was gone altogether, and of the tree and the deep forest, there was no sign. The Dragon had gone, and taken his forest with him.

Jack went upstairs; Wedge’s half-room was half empty, half packed half not packed, like someone running away in a hurry.

The boys’ bedchamber was as usual, with the seven stone beds in their stony line, but it felt like years since anyone had been there. The whole house felt like it had been empty for years, echoing sounds and damp smells and a chilly neglect. Jack pointed up through the ceiling, to where he had found the nest of the Phoenix and the Cinnabar Egg.

Jack suddenly slipped and fell, and Silver could see that the boy was dizzy with exhaustion. She led him into the boys’ bedchamber and plumped up a bed for him as best she could, using all the blankets and pillows. While she was doing this, Jack was staring at the King’s ring on his finger. He tried to take it off but he couldn’t shift it.

‘I have to go to sleep,’ he said wearily, ‘and when I wake up, Golden Maiden, tell me all this has never been.’

Jack fell asleep at once, and Max lay down at his feet, with one eye open, black and shining like a living coal.

Silver stood for a moment. She realised she was cold. She looked around for a blanket, realised she had piled them all on Jack, then noticed some clothes belonging to the other boys. It occurred to her that she would be the only person in Elizabethan England wearing jeans, trainers and a fleece. Time for a change . . .

She found woollen breeches, a thick coarse shirt, a leather jerkin, a cap, flat leather shoes and stockings. The stockings were a bit smelly so she decided to keep on her own long socks that were made of wool anyway, because although she came from the future, her house had been built in the past, and it was always freezing.
If this is 1601
, she thought,
the house I live in is only thirteen years old! If I could go there now, it would be new . . . But it would still be freezing
.

She pulled on her cap, shoving her unruly curly red hair out of the way. If no one inspected her too closely, she could be a young boy – like Jack.

She went over to the window and looked out at the skyline of spires and fires. Smoke from the tall chimneys billowed everywhere. This wooden London was all fires and churches, it seemed to her; and she remembered from her history books that before the Great Fire in 1666, London was like a forest, a vast seething growing forest, made out of people and wood – buildings of wood, and burnings of wood. Far past the tight lines of the city were open fields. And Silver thought how it would be, over four hundred years later, of glass and concrete, of cars and buses. How unlikely. How impossible . . .

Breaking her thoughts, Silver went on to the landing. She was drawn to the attic space that Jack had shown her – the nest of the Phoenix. She was agile and strong and light, and by balancing on the banister rail, she could just reach into the opening, and then she pulled herself up, crossing her feet, lifting her knees, and propelling herself through the gap. She fell flat on her face and almost choked with the feathers.

She got up and dusted herself down, her eyes getting used to the dim light. She saw the heavy carved desk, and the book on the desk.

The Book of the Phoenix!
she thought.

Silver went over to it. It was open at the page of the Radiant Boy – and there was Jack.

She turned the page – the Golden Maiden. Yes, there she was. Herself. And she was holding her emblem – the clock known as the Timekeeper.

But Jack won’t know anything about that
, thought Silver.

Now Silver was an ordinary girl, and an extraordinary girl, all at the same time, and this wasn’t her first strange adventure –
but Jack won’t know anything about that
, she said to herself again, wondering what to tell him, how much to explain . . .

She looked curiously through the pages, and most of it she couldn’t read because it was in Latin, but she could see that it was a book about alchemy. There were the alembics, and there was the Nigredo – that was the black sludge stuff that had filled up the Moat – and there was the Phoenix, and there was the Dragon, and there was the spirit mercurius, or mercury, quicksilver and strange. Yes, she knew quite a lot about alchemy, thanks to . . . She shuddered. She didn’t want to think about him.

For a long time Silver sat reading and trying to read the book. Then she noticed it was getting dark, and that the whole day must have passed.
A short day
, she thought, but then she knew from past experience that some days are shorter than others, that time is not what it seems to be by the sun and the clock . . .

She would go and wake Jack, and they would decide what to do next. Silver decided to take the Book of the Phoenix with her, but she couldn’t swing herself down carrying it, and she didn’t want to just drop it through the floor. She looked around. There was an old disused bell-pull in the room, of the kind you use when you ring for a servant, and Silver thought she could take down the bell-pull, tie the cord round the book, and lower the book down on to the landing.

She gave a great tug at the frayed cord, but as it tore from its hook, a bell began to ring,
clang clang clang
– and on it went,
clang clang clang
, even though Silver was no longer pulling the cord.

Quickly she did as she had planned, lowered and dropped the book, then swung herself down after it.

Clang clang clang! Clang clang clang!

The bell woke up Jack.

Max, whose ears were sharper and faster than those of his human friends, began barking. Far below, from somewhere so far below it might have been the bowels of the earth, came a clanking noise, as though an engine or a rusty machine were beginning to grind and whirr.

Silver ran towards Jack, who came stumbling sleepily out of the bedchamber. The two of them gazed down over the banister rail. Max stuck his head between the stair rods, because like it or not, ready or not, someone, something, was coming up the stairs.