Chaos Quest (5 page)

David told Kate about Tiger as they sat together in Geography that morning, colouring pictures of river systems. Kate had always been very fond of Tiger and was clearly upset by the news. David was relieved that she didn’t immediately ask if he was going to get a kitten. He was about to tell her about Christine’s unexpected insight into his feelings when all the lights flickered and there was a long rumble of thunder.

There was an excited mutter of conversation. Good storms were rare in Edinburgh; was this going to be one?

A moment later there was a flash of lightning so sudden and vivid that they all jumped and the loudest crack of thunder they had ever heard and all the lights went out.

Morgan spat out earth and bits of heather and opened his eyes. For a moment he had no idea where he was or what had happened and then, with a sickening lurch, memory returned. He sat up, wincing at the pain in his back and in his head and looked around. There was no sign of Thomas or the girl.

The chapel was a ruin.

At first he thought that Erda’s blast of power had struck it, but as he looked he realied he was looking at something that had been ruined for a long time.

He struggled to his feet. Stretching away around him was a huge city, nothing like the town that had been there before.

So, she had blasted him through time and she and Thomas must be back where he had been minutes – or perhaps hours – before.

He had to get back, help Thomas. He would have to go back through to the briar glade and wait for the pool to change. Of course, they might already be there. Thomas might have succeeded where he had failed and be waiting for him anyway.

He could see the pack that Thomas had been carrying lying in the grass a little way off and went to pick it up before he went through the cave.

As he straightened with the pack, Morgan saw him, lying on his back near the bottom of the steep slope. He scrambled down like a man caught in a nightmare, willing him to sit up, to move, anything.

“Thomas?”

Thomas lay on his back, the empty sky reflected in his open eyes. Although Morgan knew already somewhere within himself that Thomas was dead he rubbed his hands and stroked his hair and called to him, then gathered him in his arms and listened to the sound of his own sobs.

She watched in silence, become the smallest thing she could, a ladybird on the tip of a grass blade, trying to understand. What had happened? Thomas’s life had
stopped. Had she done this? How? All she had done was push them away. She had not seen anyone whose life had stopped before.

His brother sobbed and rocked him in his arms as though it could undo what had happened. She knew it could not. Nothing could. When a life stopped it could not start again.

Morgan had no sense of the passing of time as he sat talking to Thomas, saying the things he’d never properly said when he was alive.

At last the words ran out. He laid Thomas down and closed his eyes, then gathered him up in his arms and got with difficulty to his feet. Willpower took him up the slope to the mouth of the cave. He did not look back as he stepped through, or notice the ladybird on his shoulder.

Abruptly, he was back in the briar glade. He traced the path outward between the thorny trunks and emerged into the Wildwood.

Tisian stood in the clearing, waiting for him, her face aged by grief. He heard her intake of breath as he stumbled to his knees and laid Thomas on the earth of his own world.

“You knew,” said Morgan.

“I felt him die,” replied Tisian, “as though someone had ripped a hook through my heart.”

“That’s not what I mean,” continued Morgan wearily. “You knew before we went, didn’t you?”

“I see possibilities, nothing more.”

“You tried to warn us. But why didn’t you make it clearer?”

“It was not clear to me. In any case, Thomas would still have gone if his fate demanded it.”

“
Fate
?” He gave a bitter laugh.

“Don’t laugh at fate. If you don’t believe in it, why are you doing this? I know the answer; don’t lie to me. You feel you are bound to this because you are your father’s son. Perhaps Thomas too believed he was bound in some way. His death may have a purpose that we don’t yet see.”

“Purpose?” Morgan’s grief exploded into anger. “What purpose could it possibly serve? I led him to his doom and that is something I must live with.”

The ladybird flew from his shoulder to a crack in the bark of a nearby tree.

They buried Thomas near a rowan tree, digging the grave together, their argument put aside for the moment, and burned a twist of herbs and a pine branch on it as was the custom.

“Will you not stay here with me for a while?” asked Tisian.

Morgan shook his head. “No. I must go back and find her. This is not yet finished.”

“Rest first. At least wait until morning.” Her hair had come down as they dug and hung halfway to her waist.

“No.” He got to his feet and they faced each other over the grave. “I must go now. She may not be too far away.”

She could see that there was no point in trying to
dissuade him. Instead she walked with him to the edge of the briar glade. “Take care,” she said.

“Why?” he asked as he disappeared along the path.

The glade would not let him reach the pool. The path wound around and about, but would not bring him to it. He forced his way between the rose vines until his arms were torn, trying to cut a way through with his hunting knife. At last, he reached the pool, only to find it was overgrown with an impenetrable tangle of wrist thick stems. It was impossible to reach it. He let out a howl of frustration and forced his way out, no longer feeling the thorns tear his flesh.

When he emerged again, Tisian was still there. She said nothing.

“The Door has closed to me,” he panted. “I have to go back. I must go to the Empty Place. They will send me there.”

“No! Not that way.”

“There is nothing else I can do. The other Doors are too far away. I must go back before I lose her trail.”

She held up a hand. He could see her struggling with herself.

“Wait. There is another way. There is a Door you know nothing of. In my house.”

“Your house? But …”

“Why do you think I choose to live out in the Wildwood away from everything? I was set to guard it long ago, but now comes the time it was made for. I cannot pretend any more that it is not.” She sighed. “I am late in life to come to fear, but it seems I must. I had hoped that this would not happen in my time
of Guardianship.” She said no more and he was too weary and sick at heart to question her further just then.

They walked back to the house in silence, Tisian twisting her hair back up into its untidy knot. Walking behind her, Morgan saw the earth stains on her green and blue skirt from Thomas’s grave and had to stop, his hand on a tree, while he caught his breath again.

The sagging door of Tisian’s house stood open, as it always did. He followed her in, both of them ducking under the lintel.

After the bright afternoon light outside it took Morgan’s eyes a moment to adjust to the relative gloom. He had been here many times before, but now he looked about him as though seeing it all for the first time; the bed with its patchwork quilts set in an alcove, the shelves of cooking pots and dried herbs and things that had caught Tisian’s fancy when she was out walking in the wood: pine cones and feathers and birds’ eggs and seed heads and a score of other things. More patchworks hung on the walls, so that from the inside it seemed as much a tent as a house.

“Wait for morning,” she entreated him again.

“No. I must go now. Show me how.”

She lifted aside one of the patchwork hangings and there was a door of blonde wood with an iron latch. He turned to her before he lifted the latch.

“Thank you. I will come back, don’t worry.” A small spider clung to his boot as he opened the door and stepped through.

Tisian closed it behind him and let the patchwork
fall, then went to the window and stood, looking out at nothing, for a long time.

The lights had gone out all over Edinburgh and the power had stayed off for the best part of two hours. The lightning must have struck some crucial part of the supply network, the staff said.

Kate found herself strangely unsettled by it. She didn’t mind thunder and lightning at all – liked them in fact – but just thinking about
this
thunder and lightning made a shudder run down her spine. For some reason it made her worry about her family, her friends. She couldn’t throw off a feeling of foreboding, even when the lights went back on at last.

It wasn’t until they met up again at lunchtime (emergency sandwiches because of the power cut) that she found it had had the same effect on David.

“Cats are meant to know when there’s going to be a storm,” said Kate. “Maybe this is the same sort of thing, but in reverse, sort of. There are ions or something in the air and we’re sensitive to them.”

“Mmmn …” David didn’t sound convinced.

The feeling had passed by the end of school and they dropped round to Mr Flowerdew’s on their way home as planned, to water the plants and drop off some food for Erda.

There was no sign of her, which was not unusual, but it brought the sense of foreboding back into Kate’s mind.

“I’m sure she’s okay, but we can come back tomorrow before football and check,” said David.

“What time’s your match?”

“Ten. What about you?”

“The same, but it’s just a practice.”

They locked the door behind them and headed home.

He stepped into a small room in another house, brighter than Tisian’s. There was a large window with thin white curtains, a chair, a big wooden cupboard and a bed. He went to the window and moved the curtain aside to look out. There were houses all around him, some three or four storeys high and a street below the window with the strange smelly vehicles he recognised as cars from his few previous visits to this place and time.

He let the curtain fall back and sat down on the bed, his head in his hands, overwhelmed again. He was so tired. He lay down for a moment before he went out in search of Erda and exhausted and sick at heart, was asleep in seconds.

The spider let itself down from the bed on a silken thread and a few seconds later Erda stood there, watching Morgan in silence. She took the little hawk that Thomas had made and laid it beside him on the bed.

What have I done
? She asked in the silence of her mind.
What am I
?

You are the Stardreamer
, the house said.

“What have you got?” asked Kate when she met David the next morning.

“Milk, rolls, eggs and a sweatshirt of Christine’s out of the washing pile.”

“Mmmn … nice. I’ve got cereal and pasta and mushroom sauce and more underwear.”

They walked down the hill. It was already hot although it was only quarter past nine. “Glorious summer in prospect”, said some of the comments in the papers, while others talked glumly of “irreversible climate change due to global warming”, all because for once, Kate’s dad said, they were having a decent spring.

They let themselves in and picked up a couple of letters that had arrived for Gordon. In the hall, the big grandfather clock that had stopped on Mr Flowerdew’s death looked down on them soundlessly.

Usually Erda came right away from wherever she was to see them when she heard them arrive, but today there was no sign of her and no sound. Kate called her name and a few seconds later heard noises from one of the bedrooms.

Morgan opened his eyes and was baffled at first by his surroundings. He lay still, waiting to remember and when he did, wished he could forget again. He sat up slowly, with some difficulty. His whole body felt stiff and battered, buffeted by the blast of power that had killed Thomas. He could hear voices coming from somewhere else in the house. How long had he been asleep? His hand brushed against something and he looked down. Thomas’s hawk lay on the cover of the bed beside him. It took him a moment to put things together and realise that Erda must have been here.

The voices came again from somewhere below. He went to the door and opened it, wondering if he would find himself looking at the back of Tisian’s patchwork, but in front of him he found a bright hallway with several doors opening off it, the top of a stairway visible at the far end, voices floating up to him.

He went along the hall and started down the stairs, which curved around to the left. As he came round the curve he found himself confronted by a boy and a girl, not children, but not grown yet either. The girl had fair hair, cut short to her shoulders, and the boy was dark. They were staring at him with wide eyes and open mouths. Suddenly he realised what he must look like, torn and bloody and wild, appearing without warning in their world.

Kate and David looked up as they heard footsteps coming along the hall and down the stairs, but instead of Erda they found themselves looking at
a man, a complete stranger. He had longish dark hair and wore clothes of green and brown: trousers tucked into boots, a shirt with a jacket-jerkin thing over it. They were all tattered and stained with earth and what looked like blood. The man’s face and hands were scratched and smeared with blood too. He looked awful.

They all spoke at once:

“Who are you?” asked David.

“What happened to you?” asked Kate.

“Don’t be frightened,” Morgan said. “I don’t mean you any harm.”

“We’re not frightened,” said Kate, almost sure she wasn’t, in spite of the man’s appearance. “If the house let you in, you’re probably okay.”

“We were just expecting someone else to come down the stairs,” said David. “You surprised us.” That was true anyway.

“I came through a Door from … another place and was here,” said the man. “Up there.” He pointed back up the stairs.

“What happened to you?” repeated Kate. “How did you get hurt?”

Morgan sat down heavily on a step, lost for words. The boy and girl came closer, concern in their eyes.

“Are you all right?” asked David.

He passed a hand over his eyes. “No.”

“Can we help?” asked Kate.

He lifted his head and looked properly into their faces, for some reason fearing a trick, but he saw nothing but puzzlement and honest concern.

“Are you hungry? Thirsty?” she continued.

How long was it since he’d last eaten a meal
? He couldn’t remember. He nodded.

“We’ve got food. Come into the kitchen and sit down and we’ll get you something.”

He followed them obediently down the stairs. The girl stopped at a door.

“You might want to wash some of the blood off your face.”

He nodded and went into the room she showed him and watched her run the water. There was a mirror on the wall and when she left him alone he stared at his reflection blankly. He hadn’t realised how bad he looked, wild-eyed like a madman. It was a wonder they hadn’t turned and run as soon as they saw him. He rubbed at the blood on his hands and face until most of it was gone, pulling out a couple of thorns that had stuck deep. A few of the scratches started to bleed again and he dabbed at them with a towel. After a while he gave up and followed a trail of sound through to the kitchen.

“Sit down. There’s some tea for you. The food’s nearly ready.”

There was a mug on the table, steam rising from it. He sat and drank. It was hot and sweet and he wrapped his cold hands round it as he drank.

They’d made him toast and scrambled eggs and they sat opposite him as he ate ravenously and in silence.

“Thank you,” he said when he had finished.

“Your face is still bleeding,” said David. “Do you want some plasters?”

Morgan looked at him, baffled.

“We’ve done First Aid at school. We could do it for you,” added Kate.

Morgan absorbed this incomprehensible statement in silence, which they took for agreement. Kate went for the First Aid box while David poured more tea. He let them clean the bleeding cuts on his face and arms and stick little pink bandages over them.

“Well, at least you look better now,” said the boy.

“Thank you. I should explain why I am here.”

I should explain. I should explain … what? I hunt the most powerful being in the Worlds, one who has killed my brother. How do I explain that to them
?

“My name is Morgan,” he began.

“We should have told you our names,” said the girl. “I’m Kate and this is David.”

Kate and David
?

Kate and David showed me
…

He was thrown into fresh confusion. What did this mean? Were they the same people Erda had spoken of and if so … He couldn’t order his thoughts.

They were looking at him expectantly. He had said he would explain. What should he tell them now?

“Are you from another time?” the girl – Kate – blurted out.

“What?” Morgan was taken aback. “No – no.”

“You said you came through a door from another place,” she persisted.

“Yes, I did. Not another time, another place –another world.”

He saw them exchange a quick glance.

“What do you mean?” asked David.

“On this planet there are three worlds: yours, which you call Earth, mine, which my people call the Wildwood and the hidden world, the Underworld. There are Doors between these worlds. In this house is one between your world and mine.”

“Can
anyone
go through it?”

“No. Only certain people have the … gift. My brother and I …”

“Is he here too?” interrupted David.

“No. He died.”

They muttered awkward words of sympathy which trailed back into silence.

“Why did you need to get to our world?” said David quietly.

“I’m looking for someone,” he said carefully, and saw them exchange that glance again. With every moment that passed he grew more convinced that these were the same Kate and David that Erda had spoken of. “You are not like the others I have met when I have been in this world before,” he said, playing for time. “You come and go in this house, you hardly seem surprised by what I tell you … What are you?”

“Nothing. Nothing special,” replied Kate. “We’re just people. Teenagers. But we’ve … seen things. And the man who owned it left us keys to the house when he died so that we could come and go when we wanted to.”

“The Guardian is dead?” Morgan was shocked. “When? How did it happen?”

David ignored his questions and replied with another.
“You knew him? Mr Flowerdew?”

“I do not know that name. To me he was the Guardian. I met him twice when I came to this world through another Door, a few years ago. He brought me to this house once. Until today I did not know there was a Door that led here. I wonder if he did?”

“He died about a year and a half ago,” said Kate. “In a battle against the Lords of Chaos.”

The boy had become very still, Morgan noticed, as though it caused him pain to remember.

“You say you are ordinary, but you talk about the Lords and the Guardians as familiar beings. How many in your world do this?”

“Not many, I suppose.” Kate gave a rueful smile.

“Has no new Guardian come?”

David shrugged. “Not as far as we know. Would we know?”

“He would be here if there was one.”

“Maybe they’ve decided Edinburgh’s safe after what happened before, so they don’t think we need one.”

His slow brain had finally caught up with the conversation and he realised this must be the Kate and David that Erda had spoken of, and that they couldn’t have seen her since his disastrous encounter with her, or they would already know all about him.

“I said I was looking for someone. It is a young woman who is in your world, but does not belong here.”

Kate’s eyes widened. “Do you know her name?”

“Yes. She is called Erda.”

He heard Kate draw a sharp breath.

“We were right then.”

“What do you mean?” asked Morgan, feigning ignorance. “Do you know her?”

“Yes,” said David. “We met her in this house. We thought she didn’t belong here. We thought maybe she’d had an accident and lost her memory or something. Does she come from your world then?”

“Not from my world, no, but I want to take her to where she belongs. It is true she scarcely knows who she is.”

“Thank goodness there’s someone who can take her home. Her family must be so worried,” said Kate, frowning.

Morgan was taken aback to find that they thought of Erda in this way.

“I do not think she has any family,” he said, not really knowing why.

“Poor thing,” Kate said. “Still, at least she’s got us now, hasn’t she?”

Erda soared high above the city, looking through a falcon’s eyes at the pattern of streets and parks and buildings below. Somewhere down there were Kate and David and Morgan. Morgan, whose brother’s life she had stopped, somehow.

The World had told her she was the Stardreamer, but what did that mean and what did Morgan want from her?’