Ross Lawhead (49 page)

“Go!” Ecgbryt commanded them.

Daniel drew his sword and went to stand near Ecgbryt. “You better hurry, Freya.”

Freya looked beseechingly at Ecgbryt, who nodded at her and then turned his back.

Gritting her teeth, Freya dug up towards the light. She pushed with her legs and pulled herself forward just as a shower of loose dirt and pebbles fell upon her head. She was completely buried except for her forearms and ankles. She couldn't move her legs enough to kick herself forward, nor could she move her shoulders to pull herself out. Worse, she couldn't breathe—cool, damp earth completely covered her face. She flailed her arms as much as she could, trying to find something to grab, but found nothing.

Twisting, turning, and scrunching herself together and thrusting herself forward like an inchworm, she finally managed to get her head and shoulders out into the open air and blinding light. Her arms were next and then the rest.

She stood, blinking. Although bright to Freya, the sky showed it was only evening. She was in a field with a small clump of trees nearby and a large stone building just beyond that. She looked down at her feet on the ground and the loose earth that she had climbed through. She could hear nothing but the sound of the birds in the distance—no sound from Daniel or Ecgbryt.

And then with a lurch, the ground beneath her collapsed along the line of the corridor they had been walking down. It made an almost indescribable sound—a sort of muffled,
basso profundo crump
.

She watched the caved-in earth for any further movement and spied something pale and wriggling frantically. It was Daniel's arm.

Fast as a shot, Freya was over there and pulling at him with all her might. She wasn't strong enough to shift him much at first, so she started desperately to dig and claw away the dirt around him.

She managed to uncover his face—she had almost been standing on it—which allowed him to breathe, with huge, grateful gasps, and from there they worked together to extract him completely.

“Ecgbryt—” was his first word, still spitting dirt from his lips.

“Ecgbryt—”

“Is he still down there?” Freya asked, alarmed. She wasn't sure she had the strength to dig again. “Where do you think—?”

“No—” Daniel sputtered. “He pushed me. He pushed me away. When the walls started caving in . . . he could have pulled me towards him instead.”

“Maybe not, maybe . . .”

As Freya searched for words, Daniel shook his head. “I saw his face, his eyes. He didn't want me with him. He didn't want me.”

“Excuse me,” came a voice from behind them. “But who might you be?”

They spun around and found a boy, a tall, lanky teenager with dusty-brown hair, staring at them in amazement. “Where did you come from?”

“Freya,” Daniel whispered, “what do we do now?”

EPILOGUES

1

Now . . .

“So, Freya—where do we go?” Daniel asked, studying the board that had the train timetable posted on it.

“It looks like we take . . . this one, here,” said Freya. “That's the village that the church is in, at least. We'll have to ask around after that.” They stood, still staring at the map, both thinking the same thing. “I hope it works,” Freya said, voicing the thought.

“The knights had to negotiate a labyrinth just to get to Niðergeard in the first place, remember?”

“Well, we'll just have to see. It may be a moot point anyway— we may not be able to get under the arch.”

“We'll manage it somehow,” Daniel said. “The other option I see is to head back up to Scotland and try to find where we came out. We'd have to navigate the Wild Caves again, which may be hard, but still possible . . .”

Daniel looked at the clock underneath the departures board.

“We've got about forty minutes. Shall I grab some food for us?”

Freya nodded and gave him some money. “I'll be on the platform,” she said. “Get me a coffee as well.”

Freya stepped through the automatic doors and found an empty bench. She sat and bent over, putting her head in her hands.

She squeezed her eyes shut and rubbed her temples, still not quite believing that she was about to do what they were doing—going back to Niðergeard. All the years of her life from now to the last time she was there were about trying to put it behind her—literally and figuratively.

And if it didn't work? She'd go back home. After seeing the date, she'd found that she'd been under Stowe's influence for over a week. No doubt she'd been reported missing. If, that is, she was even enrolled at Oxford University. She realised now that she wasn't sure where Stowe's enchantments started and where they ended. It was possible that every tutorial that she'd had with him, and every other student she'd shared them with, had been illusions.

She shook her head, trying to dislodge the dreadful thought from her mind. It'd be worth getting in contact with her parents somehow, though. She just couldn't think of a way to do it without jeopardising their mission—what she'd come to think of as her mission. Everything was traceable these days, and they were probably already on a dozen CCTV recordings, although Daniel had, he'd said, taken her along routes where there was less risk of that.

How and why he'd come to consider and accommodate for that, she meant to ask him . . .

“Excuse me, miss?” a female voice asked.

Freya looked up, squinting at an officious-looking form silhouetted against the sunlight. She raised a hand to shield her eyes.

“Yes?”

“Are you Freya Reynolds?”

Her eyes fell upon a badge that read Thames Valley Police. “Um, no, sorry, I'm not. Sorry.”

The policewoman nodded. “Could you step this way, please?” She held up an arm, indicating the station forecourt.

“Um, what's this about, please?”

“Step this way, if you don't mind.”

“I'm waiting for someone, and our train will be here soon.”

“I understand. Step this way.”

No options left to her, Freya stood with legs that shook like jelly. It would be a mistake to say too much without knowing what the police knew. She had to keep her story—whatever that would be— simple and opaque. It would be work, but she had spent most of her life keeping secrets. The trick was to always keep a few things in reserve, so it seemed like all her lies had been broken through when it was really just a single layer of them. If need be, she would throw them Stowe and the abduction. She would have to rewrite that, however, but she was certain that she could play the traumatised victim, in shock after her abduction, who was irrationally trying to escape to anywhere. It didn't have to make sense—she just had to stick to it.

She thought all of this in just the few steps it took to get back into Oxford's main terminal building.

Once inside, though, she stopped and drew a breath, trying to hide the plunging feeling that she felt in her stomach.

Daniel was standing in the middle of the forecourt flanked by two security guards, another jacketed policeman, and another, younger man in a cheap grey suit and short, military haircut—a police detective straight from TV. He was standing next to a man in a white shirt and tie with a nervous look on his face. Daniel wore a placid, resigned expression, but his clothes and hair were ruffled, showing signs of a struggle. His hands were behind his back, presumably handcuffed.

Freya felt the policewoman at her side grip her arm just under the armpit and at her elbow.

“What's this about?” she asked.

“Right this way.”

“Who's that? I don't know him.”

The man in the cheap suit turned to the nervous man in the necktie. “Is there a place we could talk in private?”

The man, his eyes wide and blinking at Daniel and Freya, nodded and turned. They followed him to a door marked Staff Only.

This led them to a narrow corridor with many doors branching off. The nervous man opened one of them using a key. The detective put a hand on his shoulder. “It may be a little crowded in there,” he said, with a slight Scottish lilt. “You all better wait outside. I'll call when I need you again. You two,” he said, indicating Daniel and Freya, “inside, if you please.”

Exchanging a glance, they entered the room, which was mostly bare except for a stack of chairs and two tables, one upended onto the other. A coffee vending machine that also advertised soup leaned dusty and in disrepair against the committee grey wall. All of this was lit by two luminous strip lights.

The detective pulled a couple chairs off the stack and placed them before Daniel and Freya. “Please, take a seat,” he said, taking a chair for himself.

“It's hard to sit with my hands cuffed,” Daniel said.

“Don't be a baby,” the detective said. Daniel sat.

“Isn't this odd?” the detective asked. “All these sorts of buildings have odd little rooms like this. Would've been an office, in more prosperous times, or more likely a break room for the ticket tellers. But money gets tight, ticket telling becomes automated, and the room is forgotten about. I blame the Tories. Socialism is a small price to pay to keep everyone fed. What use is the free market economy if children go hungry? Economists don't know a thing about economy. Economy is feeding three children on the dole.” He sniffed and looked around him. “Funny thing is, they can't even use this space for storage. Regulations only allot a certain percentage of space for storage and janitorial. If they wanted more space to store things, they'd have to build an extension or get an act of parliament. Isn't that mad?”

Daniel and Freya just sat looking at him blankly, Daniel sitting forward slightly in his chair.

“Sorry,” the presumed detective said. “I do tend to rattle on when I get nervous. Gotta bit of Irish in me. Do you two still not recognise me?”

They stared harder at him.

“Are you a . . . detective, or something?” Freya asked, his face not even vaguely familiar.

“Ah, no, there you have me. I'm not a detective, but then I never said I was. But I
am
a policeman. Just a little outside of my jurisdiction. Ha, that sounded very Hollywood. But seriously . . . ,” he said, reaching into his jacket pocket. He produced a flat black wallet and showed them the silver badge that displayed a thistle, which was clipped to the outside. “Here's my badge and my ID, which is going to give the game away, unless you have any more guesses.”

He seemed to want an answer, so Freya shook her head.

The “detective” flipped open the wallet and held his identification card up close to them. They peered forward and read his name. “Think back, about eight years ago . . .”

“Alex Simpson,” Daniel said. “Yes . . . yes! Of course! You!”

“Aye! I only bloody found you, didn't I? Wandering in our backfields, covered in dirt . . . the famous lost English schoolchildren. We all had to sit through a forty-five minute talk by a policeman about stranger awareness because of you two. I wasn't much older than you, so I'm not hurt that you didn't recognise me.”

“But what are you doing here?” Freya asked.

“Been looking for the two of you, haven't I? And it's—here, Daniel, stand up; I can take those off of you now.” He fished a key ring out of his pocket and unlocked Daniel's handcuffs. “Next time an officer of the law asks for a word, don't take a swing at him, alright? As I was saying, it's been bloody hard tracking you both down. Daniel, you were off the grid, naturally, but, Freya, you were in the system, but unlocatable. A week we've been hunting for you. I've managed to keep it quiet, but your parents are beside themselves. What happened to you?”

Daniel and Freya looked at each other.

“I'm sorry,” said Freya, “
why
are you here, again?”

Alex slapped his head. “I'm sorry, I forgot. Niðergeard. I'm here about Niðergeard business.”

“How do you know about Niðergeard?” Daniel asked, agog.

“It's a long story. I'll fill you in more later, but for now, suffice to say, I'm one of those above ground that exist to look after and care for the knights. I'm picking up where my father left off—like he did with his. It's one of those generational things. Goes right the way back to the Forty-Five.”

Daniel and Freya's mouths hung open.

“Yes, secret society and all that. Well, it's a little more complex than that, but more about that later. First, I need to tell you that things are . . . developing. Listen,” he said, and told them about Dunbeath, Morven, the trolls, and the dragon.

“That . . . sounds bad,” Daniel said.

“It's worse than you think,” Alex said. “Dragons . . .” He puffed out his cheeks and blew his breath out, shaking his head.

“Anyway, what's happened with you?”

“Actually,” Freya said, bracing herself. “There's something I need to tell both of you—”