Second Night (15 page)

For once, his mentor wouldn't be of any help. He knew Alan would steer clear of him while he decided what to do. The offer was seductive and almost impossible to refuse, as it was meant to be. There was much to be gained, but what else would have to be given up in the process?

CHAPTER 24

Sir Jonas sat upright and silent, his face a mask of apparent composure. Inside, he was seething, gagged and bound in the vice-like grip of jealousy and doubt.

The God wills, the Goddess nurtures, the Fate-Spinners decide – but why should they set this young upstart, this boy, above me? I am no ignoble get of a bastard line. The blood of a great lineage runs truly in my veins and yet I am set aside.

It suited him to think of the tall, muscular figure, catapulted prematurely into manhood, as a boy, an arrogant adolescent who was in dire need of being put firmly in his place. However highly he might be favoured, even the hand that hefted the spear was evidently not immune to the lure of the Guardians' sacred stone. Let it do its work. Let him squirm with desire for it. Once they had him under oath he would have to come to heel, or be cast out.

The silence in the great chamber began to wear thin. Caz's face was unreadable. Sir Jonas waited for him to speak. The question, when it came, was surprising.

‘Who do the runes favour ultimately? Do they go for the good guys or the bad guys?'

The old man swallowed his fury, clearing his throat and coughing before he could trust his voice to convey the required degree of authority.

‘I believe you already know the answer to that,' he replied. ‘The runes are neither good nor evil and take no sides. Within their entirety lies every aspect of the human experience. There are few among us who are truly evil and few who could claim to be wholly good.' He pointed out a handsome, diabolical face on the wall. ‘For example, Loki embodies all our human qualities. He is mischievous and a thief, and yet he is a sworn blood brother to the High One, worthy of the company of both gods and giants. He has been demonised in the later, Christian-oriented writings but he is not totally evil, he is not a devil.'

Caz shrugged. ‘Never mind that he was the direct cause of the death of Baldr.'

The irony was not lost on the old man. ‘In Loki we confront the extremes of human nature personified, where good and evil are essentially indistinguishable from one another. We are all capable of being our own worst enemy. When we turn the other cheek to avoid confronting what we know to be evil, it is hardly virtuous. History is littered with the results of such behaviour. Indeed, it could be argued that in so doing we are condoning evil rather than seeking to overcome it.'

‘But Loki's a shape-changer. That's not human.'

‘Isn't it? We may not have the ability to so obviously change our physical appearance but we have many faces, yourself not the least.'

Good point,
thought Caz,
and which of my faces is the real one now, I wonder?

‘But I learned a long time ago that you can't trust the good guys to save you,' he said. ‘Everyone liked my dad but that didn't stop him from dying, did it? We kept the Hag Night Vigil in good faith and I lost Bryn. It seems to me that the good guys have to pay to win and then they'll only get what the bad guys decide to leave them.'

‘But the warriors of Valhall are not evil, Caspar. In life they were strong, brave souls who have been duly rewarded for their valour. We cannot blame them for being as they are. We summoned them as we summon all our life circumstances. We made the choice and we must accept the consequences of our choosing.' He sounded patronising.

Caz immediately stiffened. ‘Don't preach at me! I know all about consequences and accepting! None better! But
I
didn't choose to get into this. You set me up. You're probably setting me up again. How do I know?'

‘You were free to refuse!' retorted Sir Jonas. ‘No one forced you to keep the vigil! That was your own idea!'

‘I had to save the horses!'

‘Only in your view! Nothing was predetermined. Have you considered that the warriors may have only appeared because
you
were there? Have you thought about that?'

‘They came because of Kyri!'

‘And why did she come? Long before you came here, didn't you ever dream of riding the perfect horse?'

‘Who doesn't?' Caz admitted. ‘But then I thought I'd found her when I first saw Bryn.' He shrugged. ‘I suppose if you wish for something long enough you get it in the end, even if it's more than you bargained for.'

‘The slightest wish can have the greatest consequences,' agreed the old man. ‘So what do you think about the latest edition to the white circle? In your opinion, has the rune been accurately portrayed?'

Caz studied the most recently engraved marble stone. The work could not be faulted. ‘You've got it exactly right, just as it is on the spear. But I don't think
about
it, if you know what I mean. I think
of
it. I see it in my mind's eye but I don't feel it working. It's just there.'

‘And why do you think that is?'

‘It doesn't work alone,' he said reluctantly. ‘And the other twenty-nine are not enough to get it going.'

‘Those are my thoughts exactly,' replied Sir Jonas, doing his best to contain his glee at this unexpected authentication of his own and his grandfather's deliberations on the matter. ‘I have concluded that the Runes of the Deathless work in conjunction, the one with the other. It is my own dearest wish that I live to see what they will reveal.'

‘And if you don't? What happens to your precious order then?'

‘The work will continue. The Guardians will ensure that you are supported in every possible way to achieve the great culmination of a century of sacrifice and hard work.'

‘So if I come to your Council meeting, I will never have to be separated from Kyri or any of the other horses? Is that it?'

‘I guarantee that you will not.'

The bait was swallowed. The trap was sprung. Sir Jonas dared to congratulate himself on a good night's work well done, although how this truculent young candidate would conduct himself in Council was anyone's guess. But he must have confirmation of consent before they parted. ‘So will you be joining us here on the night of October 31
^st
?'

Caz shrugged again. ‘I don't see why not, but I hope you meet late.'

‘Why?'

‘Because it's Hallowe'en and all the normal people I know will be partying that night.'

‘The Guardians are accustomed to keeping nocturnal hours.'

‘That's good, because if I'm supposed to keep all this secret I had better show up at the party first. Unless you want Jas marching in here wanting to know where I am?'

The blue eye opened wide in horror. ‘Indeed not! We will be ready for you, whatever time you arrive.'

‘Then be prepared for a long wait.'

CHAPTER 25

Just after ten o'clock Lauren put on her make-up. She touched her wrists with perfume and sat on the window ledge in an agony of waiting… hugging her knees… watching the garden… watching the sky.

He'll be here in one hour,
she thought.
This has to mean we're bubbling now. But why won't he call? Why won't he get a cell-phone? Why can't I see the moon?

They had been the last to leave the studio after lunchtime theatre group. Caz had turned on all the spotlights. ‘Stand centre stage, I need to try something.'

She had complained, blinded in the flat, white light. ‘I can't see you.'

‘I'm here.' He set up a sequence, circling white light into rose, into red, into purple, into blue around the stage. Silvery beams caught in her bright hair and played over the white silk shawl she had tucked into the waistband of her skirt. He came forward and sat in the front row, studying the effect. ‘Walk around.'

‘I'd rather dance.'

‘If you want.'

She kicked off her shoes and raised her hands above her head, moving in a slow, sensuous rhythm unconsciously timed to her heartbeat.

‘I never see you in the evenings,' she said.

‘I only operate at night.'

‘What time of night?'

‘After eleven o'clock.'

She unwrapped the shawl, throwing and catching it, spinning it around herself as she made a perfect pirouette, aware of him watching her. ‘So where shall it be? Your place or mine?'

‘Where do you live?'

She told him. ‘Is that far?'

‘It's near enough.'

She felt her heart bump in her chest. ‘When will you come?
'

He went back to the console. The lights spun lavender into green, into ethereal blue. ‘I'll come tomorrow night. There are some woods near your house. They are beautiful after midnight. We could walk.'

‘What if it rains?'

‘You won't get wet.'

She danced to the edge of the stage, trailing the shawl behind her, and curtsied deeply, looking up at him. ‘But I vowed I wouldn't sizzle until my sixteenth birthday. Does that change anything?'

‘No.' He moved away from the console. For a moment he seemed to have vanished and then she saw that he had returned to his seat at the front of the auditorium.

‘It's only until the end of the month,' she said. ‘I want it to be special.'

He waved his hand. ‘Keep moving.'

She picked up the shawl. ‘You don't mind?'

‘Terrible fate-bonds bind the oath-tearer,' he replied. It sounded like a quote.

‘Is that some of your poetry?'

‘Not mine. Someone else wrote it about a thousand years ago, but it's still true. You'll break no vow because of me, you can be sure of that.'

He watched her dancing under the lights, drawn into the spell of her movements, and yet there was still that indefinable something about her that put him on his guard. He barely thought about her when they were apart. It was as though she had no real existence in his world – until they came together again, and he found himself entranced by her beauty, by the softness of her pale skin in the magic moments when she pressed herself against him, putting her arms around his neck and looking up at him, her eyes an arresting silver-blue. In those magical, dangerous moments, she was all he wanted her to be. He relished the wildness he saw in her, equally beautiful and horrible.

‘Have you made any vows?' she asked.

‘We all make vows in one way or another. It's when we forget to honour them the problems begin.'

‘What problems?'

‘Life problems. People want to be happy but they mostly complain even when they think. Their heads are full of what happened yesterday or what's going to happen tomorrow. When they get around to thinking about today, it's often negative.'

She pouted. ‘I'm not negative.'

‘Listen to yourself, especially when you think. You might be surprised.'

‘I'm not negative about you.'

He was silent.

‘Now you're supposed to say that you're not negative about me,' she prompted.

‘I'm not negative about you.'

There was something abstracted in his tone. She saw that he was writing rapidly on a scrap of paper.

‘Do you write a lot of poetry?'

‘It depends. Simple, separated words sometimes weave themselves into a dream.'

‘And then you write down the dream?'

‘Something like that.'

Several cleverly executed steps brought her leaping to a standstill directly in front of him. ‘Have you written anything about me?'

He heard her heartbeat falter, just once, and the note of challenging insecurity in her voice. ‘I don't usually write about people.'

‘Would you, if you were in love?'

‘I don't know. I've never been
in love
.'

She missed his ironic emphasis on the last two words. She pirouetted once more and threw the fine, silken, shimmering shawl into his lap. ‘So how will you get to my place? Is there a bus that late?'

‘I'll be there at eleven o'clock and we'll walk. How much you enjoy it is up to you. I have no control over that.'

‘Don't you want just the tiniest little bit of control over me?'

‘No, I don't.'

‘That's not very romantic.'

He stood up and returned to the console, leaving the shawl discarded on the floor. His voice sounded oddly disembodied whispering into the sound system. ‘You must learn to value your skin, Lauren. Life bruises take a long time to fade away.'

She turned her back, pretending to sulk. The bell rang for afternoon class. The lights snapped out. Alone and disoriented on the totally black stage, she remembered Gin saying, ‘He's dangerous, I think.'

She edged forward, feeling for the drop at the front of the stage, calling out nervously. ‘Caz? Where are you?'

A door opened. She saw him silhouetted against the light. ‘I'm here,' he said.

Would he be there for her on this cold, clouded night and make the sky light up with stars? It was almost midnight before she thought she heard hoofbeats cantering lightly down the road. The street lamp beside the house went out and she opened the window, straining to listen.

He's crazy enough to come on horseback!
she thought excitedly.

The muted light from the curtained windows in the rooms below outlined every raindrop dewing the grass on the wet lawns. She saw Caz then, standing under the shadow of the trees at the end of the garden.

He looks like he's wearing a cloak!

She waved, closed the window and sneaked down the stairs, her heart thumping. Her mother was talking on the telephone, making another call home to New York. She heard her father in the kitchen making coffee. For a moment she thought about asking Caz in to meet her parents, then changed her mind.
This is my night. I want lift-off and a love poem!