Best Laid Plans (4 page)

Gaston clutched his side, blood dripping through his fingers. He glared at Shadrak and snarled, taking a two-handed grip on his sword and coming on with huge clubbing blows. Shadrak threw himself out of the way and rammed the push-dagger into Gaston’s kidney. The lad screamed and backslashed with the sword, but Shadrak jumped clear. Ignoring Kadee’s pleading face, he was about to step in for the killing blow when Rhiannon came hurtling into him from out of nowhere. Shadrak’s head cracked against the wall and he dropped his blades. Her fists were a hazy blur as she pounded his face and for a moment he couldn’t react. Instinct took over and he sagged to the floor, rolling out of the way of a vicious kick. His hand slipped inside a pouch and took hold of a glass vial, which he shattered against the floor. There was a flash, and black smoke filled the corridor. Without wasting a single look back, Shadrak pelted down the lefthand tunnel, one hand patting his pocket to make sure he still had the Statue of Eingana.

I
t was dark inside. Darker even than home when Mummy and Daddy turned off the lanterns and blew out the candles. Back then Sammy had cried himself to sleep. Sometimes Rhiannon had crept into bed beside him and snuggled him up. He missed the warmth of her body pressed against his back almost as much as he missed Mummy and Daddy. The world had grown much darker the day they’d been taken from him, but not as dark as it was beneath the Homestead.

He could hear Huntsman’s breathing from somewhere behind, but he knew he’d get no comfort there. This was the place of testing, the place where Huntsman had found his power. The place where Sammy would find his, if he was worthy.

Something crunched beneath his feet, causing him to jump backwards and whimper. With the next step, his foot came down on a hard object that rolled away. Sammy lost his balance and tumbled to a carpet of twigs, or shells, or something else. He felt the tears coming and started to sniff, but he refused to cry out. Huntsman had done it and so would he. If there was magic to be found under the tabletop mountain then Sammy was going to find it, no matter what.

‘Ssssssssss.’

Sammy clamped a hand over his mouth and tried not to breathe. The sound had come from somewhere to his left, a hissing whisper that set his spine tingling. His eyes strained against the darkness, but he could see nothing. He waved his other hand in front of his face, but still there was only black. He listened, trying to screen out the pounding of his heart, hoping to hear Huntsman’s breath, feel his presence.

Nothing.

Silence.

Darkness.

Sammy turned around, looking for the chink of light from the entrance, but even that had vanished around the bends in the tunnel that opened onto the cave. He started to panic. How could he get out? He had no idea which way he faced. He could spend forever scratching around in the blackness and still never retrace his steps.

‘Sssamuel.’

Two yellow pinpricks flared like twin suns in an otherwise starless night. They swayed and grew larger, slits of black cutting through their centres.

‘Sssahul ssspoke of you. The boy who talksss with antsss. Huntsssman isss here with you?’

Sammy shielded his eyes as fire sprang up illuminating the Dreamer’s face.

‘I am,’ Huntsman said, a small blaze crackling on the palm of his hand. He held it out to the speaker, who stepped into the glow.

A scaly head took shape around the yellow eyes, and a long forked tongue tasted the air. At first Sammy thought it was a giant snake, but then he realized the long wavy neck was sprouting from the body of a man—a huge black man, thickly muscled and naked but for a cloth covering his loins. Sammy scrabbled backwards across a sea of bones, seeking the safety of the dark.

The snake-man raised a bulging arm, his palm facing Sammy.

‘Ssstay little one. No need to be afraid. I am Mamba.’

Huntsman gave a slight bow and held out a hand to Sammy, who used it to pull himself to his feet and then hid behind the Dreamer.

‘Mamba is friend, Sammy,’ Huntsman said. ‘A god of Barraiya People.’

‘Not a god,’ Mamba chuckled deep in the coils of his throat. ‘Sssimply an elder. You have a mother, Sssammy? A father?’

Sammy shook his head, a lump forming in his throat. He squeezed Huntsman’s hand tighter, and the Dreamer stroked his hair.

Mamba rolled his head and blinked. ‘Ssso sssorry,’ he crouched down and peered at Sammy through the crook of Huntsman’s arm. ‘But you have grandparentsss, yesss?’

Sammy nodded. He’d not seen Grandpa Piet and Nana Josie since they’d moved down south when he was four, and Grandad Tom and Granny Anwen weren’t talking to Mum and Dad again. Sammy wondered if they even knew what had happened; if they cared.

Huntsman stood aside as the snake head pressed close to Sammy’s face, its long tongue darting out and licking him on the nose.

‘Ssso you know what it’sss like being a grandchild. My people are not godsss really. But we are the grandchildren of Eingana, and many people think her a goddesss.’

Huntsman’s brows knitted together and his lips curled back. He opened his mouth to speak, but then shook his head.

Sammy flinched as Mamba’s tongue flicked out again, moistening the end of his nose. He tried to give a stern look, but instead a laugh slipped out. Mamba’s tongue dabbed him on the ear and then an eyelid, and Sammy spluttered and gurgled before bursting into great peals of laughter.

Mamba laughed with him, poking at Sammy’s ribs with his big black fingers. Huntsman was grinning from ear to ear and then roared with mirth as Sammy gave a big slobbering lick to the snake-man’s face.

Mamba hoisted him into the air and twirled him around, Sammy squealing with joy. The snake-man let him go in mid-air, Sammy screamed, and then Mamba caught him and tucked him under a massive arm, patting him on the head.

‘Ssseemsss all right for a white fellah.’ Mamba did a pretty good impression of Huntsman.

‘He isss not bad,’ Huntsman jibed back. ‘Thisss here isss a very ssspecial boy.’

Mamba put Sammy down and looked closely at him. Sammy lowered his eyes and snuggled in beside the snake-man, taking hold of his hand.

‘We ssshould take him to sssee the othersss,’ Mamba said. ‘No other whitesss have come to the cavesss asss friendsss.’

‘Nor spoken with ants,’ Huntsman said.

Mamba gave Sammy’s hand a gentle squeeze. ‘Want to meet my family?’

Sammy liked the big snake-man. He was friendly and funny. Maybe his family would be too. ‘OK,’ he said.

Mamba crouched down and offered Sammy his back. ‘Jump up little Sssammy. Old Uncle Mamba will carry you.’

Sammy wrapped his arms around the scaly neck and clung on with his legs as Mamba straightened up.

‘Down we go,’ the snake-man sang as he trudged into the dark. ‘Down, down, deep down.’

‘Down, down, deep down,’ Sammy joined in.

‘Into spider’s lair,’ Huntsman added, and then gave Sammy a big grin that said it was going to be all right.

A
warm breeze caressed him as he stepped lightly over a carpet of silken rose petals beneath a sapphire sky. He ate up the leagues with easy, effortless, strides, the fallen petals giving way to polychrome sands flanked by glistening silver pinnacles; a majestic shimmering city born from the very earth itself.

He paused for an age amidst the glint of the silver monoliths, savouring the crispness of the air and rejoicing in his independence from its life giving gases. Something beat within him, but it was no heart of flesh. No, it was a harmonious note, binding him together in unity with all that he gazed upon and much more.

He would have sat there forever, so content was he, but something called him onwards like the whispering of a familiar lover. He learnt quickly. He now no longer strode the glorious landscape, but merely surveyed its horizon and found himself present at his chosen destination with the speed of thought. And yet there were no thoughts as such, merely an unselfconscious harmony that bore him gently onwards as carefree as a sleeping babe.

A glade appeared in the distance, and in an instant he stood beneath its trees. These were no ordinary trees. Instead, they rose to impossible heights and shone with the light of stars. Ripe and succulent fruit hung from laden branches and he savoured the sight of their beauty, but did not eat of them: there was no need.

An old man with a white beard and sparkling eyes sat cross-legged beneath a tree. He wore a simple brown habit pulled in at the waist by a dark leather belt. His feet were shod in plain sandals and a begging bowl rested in his lap.

As the wanderer approached, the old man’s form shimmered and transformed, the years falling away. His now naked body grew toned and muscular, his eyes sharp and as blue as the sky. A dazzling luminosity shone forth from his flesh causing the wanderer to shade his eyes until they adjusted to the brightness.

‘Welcome, Frater.’ The man smiled. ‘I was called Jarmin, and I see no reason to dispense with that name.’

‘Jarmin?’

‘Jarmin the Anchorite. I dwelt in the city of Gladelvi.’

‘And now?’

‘And now,’ Jarmin chuckled a little at some secret joke, ‘I just dwell.’

‘What is this place?’

‘This is the waiting room for the End of All Things; the forecourt of the Garden of Eternity.’

‘And I am?’

‘You were called Deacon Shader, Frater.’ Jarmin’s smile was radiant, full of compassion. ‘And if you like you shall remain Deacon Shader.’

‘It is a name as good as any. May I sit here a while.’

‘But of course,’ beamed Jarmin. ‘You may sit for all eternity if you wish.’

As he settled himself beneath the tree, Shader became aware of his own nakedness and the perfect form and function of his body, which also glowed, although not with the intensity of Jarmin’s.

‘I am dead then?’

‘Slain by a knife in the back and a demon.’

Shader frowned as thoughts began to form and disappear, like dolphins arcing their way through choppy seas. There was a captain, a lad with a sextant, a big black cook. The smell of grilled cheese wafted into recollection and was gone. ‘I don’t remember.’

‘I don’t recall the manner of my own passing, although Tajen tells me it was horrific.’

‘Tajen?’

‘The Luminary. You will meet him soon enough.’

‘Am I in Araboth?’

Jarmin knitted his brows before he answered. ‘You are, as are all who are redeemed, but you are not yet as well.’

Shader shook his head. It seemed as though a cloud had settled over his memories, smothered his thoughts.

‘What you call Araboth lies at the end of time. By its nature we are all already there and yet, for those still connected to the temporal world, this presents a rather difficult paradox. When you die your next recollection is of the end of time, and yet to those who mourn you time continues on its journey through the aeons. You cannot be both out of time and a decaying memory to those who still inhabit it.’

‘And so?’

‘And so you are here—and there. At the end of time you will pass there, but the end of time is no time and so you are there already; and not.’

‘And Ain?’

‘Ah, there is the current dilemma. We are told that in death we shall see Him face to face, but, wondrously harmonious as things are here, faith is not yet redundant. Tajen is the best one to talk to about such things. He calls this place the garden of Ain, which is but one step closer to our eternal home. Perhaps we could visit Tajen together. I know he will be intrigued by your presence here.’

‘Why is that?’

‘Besides myself, you are the only person in countless generations to reach Araboth. Apparently all is not as it should be in the temporal realm.’

‘What is wrong?’

‘Tajen believes that Ain has been separated from the Earth.’

‘How can that be? Surely for Ain to be Ain He must be all powerful.’