Portent, A Ravensborough Novella (The Ravensborough Saga) (3 page)

'What's up with you?' asked my mother. The words were innocuous enough, but the tone held a hint of antagonism. We hadn't been getting along too well lately.

'Late night,' I answered now, shoving another spoonful of flakes into my mouth to prevent me saying more than I should.

'How was Darkfield?' she asked. Mum was the Pagan fanatic, not me. She liked to know every single details of all our meetings and activities, no matter how boring they were. I believed in the work of the Daughters. You couldn't grow up in a chapter and not absorb at least some of the ideology. If I was left to my own devices, I'd probably be involved with the Daughters in some way. But this 'high priestess' security guard job? Not cool.

‘Nothing much was going on,’ I answered. ‘A couple of patrols, nothing to write home about. Or to distract me from the fact that I should have been studying.’

‘I’m sure you’ll do fine,’ she said, in a tone that was probably meant to reassure me. I bit back the retort that came to my lips. How the hell would she know?

I knew I was being unfair to my mother. She thought that pushing me into the Daughters when I was a teen was a good idea. She'd never listened to my dreams of becoming a forensic scientist. Even if she had, she wouldn't have liked the idea of such a 'Rationalist' job.

But then Darkfield had come under threat. The increase in Rationalist terror attacks hadn't made our membership levels fall. On the contrary many more people signed up and paid their tithes as an act of defiance. But it had meant that people were afraid to be seen to be active. And that was a problem.

Only a handful of active members were left and, if I tried to pull back, they'd be left trying to manage all the shifts by themselves. And I'd never hear the end of it.

Aside from that, mum's job was barely covering rent and food. I'd won a scholarship to university, but was always worry that my grades would slip – and that I'd lose the funding. I knew I should try to get a job to contribute financially, but honestly where was I going to find the time?

There was nothing in the cupboard. Our electricity was about the only thing that hadn't been cut off. I was going to have to go and get more money off my doting father. My doting father who had promised me the sun, the moon and stars and then decided not to deliver once he'd remarried. It galled me to have to go and plead with him for money, but it looked as if I had no choice.

When I left Vyrion 1 the sky was that rich blue that you get just after dawn, where it's unmistakably day time but you can still make out some stars in the firmament above. As I walked to my train stop, I noticed a black bird flying in the sky above me. On its own this meant nothing, after all. When you lived in a city called Ravensborough seeing members of the crow family wasn't exactly unprecedented. But I could tell from the flight path that it was one of our ravens, and that it was Darkclaw.

If he was hanging around me this long there must be something really strange afoot. But what?

When I got off my train Darkclaw was again waiting for me outside the station. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up, and I felt a wave of nausea that was nothing to do with exam nerves. I walked into the exam campus, which was milling with people. I strode past the exam hall, with students outside talking in high pitched voices and frantically looking over highlighted pages of notes. Truth be told, I should be doing a little of that myself, but once again my Pagan life was interfering with my college one.

Finally, I found myself in the campus rose garden. In a couple of hours it would be thronged with people trying to avoid classes and eat lunch. But for now, it was mercifully silent. I put my arm out and Darkclaw flew down and landed on my arm.

'All right,' I told him. 'Let's make this as quick as possible.' He opened his beak and made an ear splitting screech.

Of all the fricking days.

Again I cleared my mind. The images cycled through in the same sequence as before. Bird, book, key, fire. Again, it meant nothing.

'I'm sorry, I don't understand what it is you're trying to tell me,' I said.

He flew off, obviously disgusted at my lack of understanding.

I went to the exam hall, and found my desk. The hall was the oldest building in the school, and its draughty cold reflected this. High vaulted ceilings soared overhead and figures from the university's five hundred year history stared down imperiously from the walls. I fiddled with my answer booklet as I waited for the questions to be given out.

I tried to work out what the symbols had meant. I hadn't studied ravenology as heavily as I should have. I tended to communicate mainly with Quince, my own raven, and I'd been talking to her for so long I didn't need to interpret the symbols. I just knew what she was trying to tell me. Like the verbal shorthand that couples have, we just got each other.

I needed to think more about the symbols. I ran through them in my head, but nothing was clicking with me.

I decided to put it out of my head. The questions were handed out and the exam started. I was relieved to see that some questions I knew were on the paper. I should pass, but whether or not I’d get a high enough grade to hang onto my scholarship remained to be seen.

I got to a section on the application of science to agriculture. It wasn’t the most glamorous of sections, in fact, truth be told it was completely boring, but I knew part of it so I decided to give it a go.

The section was about the differing applications of ammonium nitrate. It was a pointless question, really. Ammonium nitrate had been used as a fertiliser, but very few people in Avalonia used it anymore. It was hard to get a licence to use it, because ammonium fertiliser was also used in…

Explosives. More specifically, bombs.

CHAPTER THREE

I needed to get to Darkfield.

I stood up much to the surprise of the invigilator. 'I'm sorry, I have to go,' I said and turned and left.

I ran across the university square dodging people and sending one elderly professor stumbling.

'Sorry!' I called back over my shoulder. I tried to pick up speed as I ran out onto the streets of Ravensborough. It was a twenty minute walk to Darkfield but I didn't know how long I had. I'd have to run all the way.

I was surprised to find out how unfit I was. I'd been on my school track team, and I shouldn't be getting puffed this easy. But then, sitting outside a temple was pretty sedentary. Maybe I should be running laps of it or something. I was beginning to understand why many nightclub bouncers spent a lot of their free time in the gym.

On and on I ran. My lungs burned with the effort. As I got closer to Darkfield the crowds thinned out, meaning I wasn't bumping into as many people as I'd been earlier. A glance above me confirmed my suspicions. A swirl of flying black birds followed my progress. The animals were instinctive, they followed and protected all the Daughters. There was no way they'd be up there if I was on the wrong track.

That was a bit of a mixed blessing. I so badly wanted to be wrong, wanted all this to be down to an overactive imagination and bad communication with the birds. If I was this bad and made mistakes of this magnitude, maybe they'd demote me. That way I could still be part of the Daughters and go on and become a forensic scientist. How great would that be?

Of course, if I was wrong, then I'd just left my exam for no good reason. I'd have to meet with my tutor and explain, but insanity wouldn't exactly make a good defence...

Still, I couldn't think about that now. Just keep running, Kara.

A couple of streets away from Darkfield, I stopped. Bending at the waist I tried to slow my heart rate by breathing slowly. If a Rationalist guard caught me going into Darkfield the way I was now, there would be hell to pay. Somebody that worked up would raise alarm bells, and they wouldn't believe my reasoning. The guards had little time for 'Pagan superstition.' If I was right, and what I had forseen was going to happen, they'd assume I could only know about it from being involved myself. And that could turn nasty.

I wished I had a cell phone that actually worked. It was another thing on the list of non-essential expenses that my mother and I had to forgo. It didn't matter much, because I had nobody to call. Apart from a couple of friends that lived in the Vyrion complex, everyone I socialised with was in the Daughters. And they could always send a raven if they needed to contact me. But Morgan...Morgan was still doing his work experience in Darkfield. I could have called him and told him to get to safety.

I knew where the bomb was. In a deserted warehouse on one of the side streets. Nothing was really in the vicinity. I had no idea why anyone would place a bomb there. But then, I couldn't understand why anybody would want to kill innocent people. It seemed so over the top and twisted.

There was only one building that could possibly be damaged in the area if the usual Pagan-style fertiliser bomb was used and that was the record centre. Where Morgan was.

I walked as quickly as I could without looking like I was rushing. As I'd foreseen in the raven's vision, there were a number of Avalonian Guards there, but they were all clustered in one area. That seemed very odd: surely, if they were all going to guard the one area there was no point having so many there.

They were just standing around, chatting amongst themselves and occasionally scanning the square. They looked almost as if they were waiting for someone.

As I went to walk past they called me over.

'Affiliation?' asked the guard.

'Pagan,' I answered in what I hoped was as normal a voice as possible. I hoped they weren't going to search me. That would use up valuable time.

'Identification,' the guard said again.

I fumbled quickly in my bag and took out my identity card. The guard scanned it, frowning slightly, looking at the identification card and then at me.

'Hurry up!' I screamed inside my head. I was careful not to let my impatience show on my face. The gun at this guy's hip reminded me that he was not to be messed with. His face was like granite, and I think they purposely chose guards who were unable to smile. They took their jobs very seriously, and were able to dole out all kinds of punishments. I wondered idly whether it was the same in other countries.

'Where are you going?' he asked.

'The Morrigan Temple,' I answered. Well, it was close enough.

'What is your business there?' he asked.

'I'm the high priestess of my chapter,' I answered. I saw the mild curl of his lip in disgust, but it was a valid reason and under Avalonian law he had to let me through. It would be interfering with religious freedom to hold me back, and religious freedom was something that all Rationalists and Pagans took very seriously. At least in public.

He took out his notebook and copied my name down in the notebook. That was strange. They usually only took down your name if you'd committed a crime, so they could add your name to the database of infringements. 'Antisocial behaviour' worked on a points scale in Avalonia. Once you got a certain amount of points you were assigned community service, and enough points could get you jail time. The points you got were ostensibly decided on the basis of your crime, but the guards were also able to assign extra points arbitrarily. Sitting on a wall could get you two points. Asking why you couldn't sit there could get you another two.

I had three points for drinking in a public area a couple of years back. Other than that I flew below the radar. While I was in no danger of getting punished anytime soon, I still didn't want extra points added to my record.

'Did I do something wrong?' I asked.

The guard looked up at me with a grim expression. 'You tell me.'

Well that told me nothing. I took back my ID and walked on. When I got to the temple I saw Fern sitting on the steps outside, painting her nails. It was her watch. Her face showed confusion as she saw me approach. She knew I had an exam this morning. I didn't have time to get into it right now, so I just raised my head and waved.

'Be careful not to spill any on the steps,' I called, as if nail polish on the Temple steps was my biggest concern right now. I walked across the square, my nerves beginning to get to me. If I'd misinterpreted the dream, then I was in real trouble.

I ran over and into the reception area. A bored looking woman glanced over at me and returned to the enormous stack of paper she was holding. I groaned internally. This building was full of paper. Fire would spread here quickly.

I walked over to the counter. 'Look, you need to - '

'I'm sorry,' she interrupted me. 'But the reading rooms aren't open to the public until 10 am. You're going to have to come back later.'

'I know all that, but I'm not here to -'

'I'm sorry,' the woman said. 'But we're not open. I'm going to have to ask you to leave.'

'I don't want to look at the reading rooms!' I shouted at her. The security man started to take large strides towards me. 'There's a bomb in Fenly Street.'

'What?' asked the woman. I had her attention now.

'I had a premonition,' I said now. Pagans would give me far more credence than the guard would. 'I'm a priestess over at the Temple of Morrigan. A bomb will go off today in Fenly, and your building will catch fire. You need to get out.'

The woman froze. She had no idea what to do.

'You need to tell the archive staff!' I told her.

She nodded and went off to do exactly that.

I turned around to the security guy.

'Is there anyone around Fenly that could get hurt?' I asked him.

'No,' he said. 'I mean, there's a few secret societies and all that, but they're nocturnal. They wouldn't be there now. Have you told the Guards?'

I shook my head. ‘No, but I should.’

'No, you're right,' he said kindly. 'You can’t admit that you know anything about this: they don’t believe in portents. The only thing they’ll conclude if you tell them this is that you had to know something about it.'

'But if someone gets killed...' I began. I couldn't even begin to imagine what it would be like to have that on my conscience. It didn't bear thinking about.