The Ring of Five (13 page)

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ground. Danny plunged on, his eyes and mind fixed only on the tracks. Wet hail gathered under his collar and drove into his eyes.

The ground sloped downward, and Danny skidded on the wet, icy grass. Something about the tracks suggested an even, unhurried gait. The person he was following was not fleeing in panic. Danny snatched a heavy wet branch from the ground for a weapon as he followed the tracks into some shrubbery.

In and out the footprints weaved, always purposeful. The trickle of melting sleet down the back of Danny's neck had cleared his mind a little, and he moved with more caution now, checking before each turn in case his attacker was waiting. The sleet was starting to ease. The tracks were becoming less well-defined, fading away to muddy marks in places. Then, with a final rattle of icy drops on the leaves, the sleet stopped completely. Danny looked around. Wet, dark green laurels and yews stretched off in every direction. There were marks on the ground in front of him, but there was no way of telling which mark might be a footprint.

Danny was suddenly aware that he was holding the branch so tightly that his fingers had gone numb. The attacker had escaped. He relaxed his grip. It was then that he saw a gate in the yew hedge in front of him, lying open as though in invitation. Swinging the stick in front of him, he made his way toward it.

There was no one on the other side--at least, not as far as he could see. But someone had been there recently.

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He could tell by the fresh flowers placed on the rows of graves enclosed by the rustling yew hedge.

Danny moved forward, afraid to disturb the quiet of the place. There was a tarnished brass plaque set into a stone pillar just before the first grave. Danny bent to read it.

THIS MARKS THE FINAL RESTING PLACE

OF THE VICTIMS

OF THE SECOND GREAT PURGE.

VICTIMS OF THE RING

REST IN PEACE .

Danny felt a shiver run down his spine for the second time that day. He looked at the first grave. There was a name and a photograph of a smiling couple on what looked like their wedding day. Danny looked closer. The couple had wings. He read the name: Knutt!

Danny went through the graveyard. Dixie's parents were there, her dad making a funny face, her mum staring off into space with the same vague look Dixie wore most of the time. There were other faces he recognized from cadets he had seen around Wilsons. At the very end of the last row he found what he thought must be Vandra's parents, for they looked identical to her, down to the two incisors that protruded over her lips. The inscription read

C. V. VAUNT, PHYSICK AND HEALER

GLADYS VAUNT, PHYSICK AND HEALER

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Danny leaned on one of the headstones. There were so many graves....

"Yes, Wilsons is virtually an orphanage," a voice said, as if reading his thoughts. "You can tell why so many of them are against the Ring."

Danny wheeled around. The detective McGuinness was standing at the gate, with the black knife that had been thrown at Danny in his hand.

"You shouldn't be out on your own," McGuinness said, "although this time you were safe enough."

"Safe enough?" Danny retorted angrily. "That knife was meant for me!"

"Meant for you? That is one thing we can be clear about. It was not meant for you."

"You could have fooled me," Danny said. McGuinness looked at the knife thoughtfully.

"If it had been meant for you, it would be buried in your heart by now. This is a Knife of Implacable Intention."

"A knife of ... what?"

"Implacable Intention. It means that it will do whatever the person who throws it wants it to do. If they had wanted it to kill you, then you would be dead. These knives are quite a rare thing, thankfully."

"So it was meant to miss me? It doesn't make sense."

"Everything makes sense on some level," McGuinness said. "You need to learn that. Now, they will be looking for you. You had better go back. Here, take this."

He held out the knife. Danny took it from him. It was smaller than it had looked earlier, and it felt cold but

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almost alive in his hand. Without thinking, he slipped it into his jacket pocket.

"If I have the knife now," he said, a sudden thought springing into his mind, "... does it mean that I'm meant to have it, then?"

"You might be right," McGuinness said with a grim little smile. "Now you're beginning to think like a spy." Danny wasn't sure whether it was meant as a compliment or not.

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THE HALL OF SHADOWS

An anxious-looking Brunholm was waiting for Danny when he got back to Wilsons. "Where have you been?" he demanded. "Are you all right?"

Danny opened his mouth to tell him about the knife attack, then closed it again. For some reason he didn't want Brunholm to know.

"They're almost ready for you in the Hall of Shadows. Come quickly." Danny felt a wave of dread wash over him. What were the shadows? Had he not been threatened enough?

"I'm not going."

"Of course you are," Brunholm said.

"No," Danny said obstinately. Brunholm's smile was a cold affair.

"Yes you are. If I were you, I know what I would be

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thinking. I have been kidnapped against my will and brought to a place where people have tried to kill me. I don't want to be here and yet I don't know how to get back home. Meantime, I am told a mad story about Upper and Lower Worlds and Cherbs and all sorts of things until my head is spinning. I am offered a chance to get out, although there may be danger attached. All I have to do is go into the Hall of Shadows and say no. No one will force me to say yes, and then I will be able to go home."

Danny stared at Brunholm. It was as if he had read Danny's thoughts. Except for one thing: a picture of his home formed in his head, an empty home, his father's coat gone from the coat stand at the door, his mother's car keys missing.

Brunholm hurried Danny through the front door. He stopped in front of a black door that Danny had never seen before and pushed some buttons in the wall--it was an elevator. The doors opened creakily and Brunholm shoved him in.

The elevator interior was wood, old and scarred. A brass panel held a row of buttons, but there were no numbers. Brunholm stabbed at them quickly and the elevator jolted to life, but Danny could not tell whether it was going up or down. The lighting was low and Brunholm did not speak. Danny was starting to get nervous.

"What is the ... the Hall of Shadows?" he asked. Brunholm shook his head and grinned. In the dimly lit elevator Danny could see his teeth shining unpleasantly in the dark.

The elevator lurched to a halt and they stepped out

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into a foyer. The floor was made from black wood, and there were black velvet hangings on the walls. As Danny looked up and down, Brunholm seized one of the hangings and threw it aside. With the other hand he thrust Danny in behind the hanging. Danny gasped and turned to try to get back out, but he could feel only stone under his fingers. Trying to keep back the rising tide of panic, he looked slowly around.

He was standing on a balcony, as if he was in a theater. He had the impression that the darkness below him was full of people, but he could not see or hear them. There were other balconies stretching out to either side of him, and these seemed to be full--if not of people, then what? Shadows? Certainly something stirred in them, and there was a low whispering coming from that direction. And not just to either side of him. With a gasp he realized that they were behind him as well, cold, whispering shadows that were closing on him so that he had to move forward to get away. They were whispering of dark things--schemes, plots, betrayals--so that he felt he would do anything to get away from them.

The edge of the balcony came closer and closer, and below it, the darkness. He could not go back, and yet there would soon be no room to go forward. He looked desperately about him; then he saw it: a narrow wooden plank, black, like everything else in this place of shadows, that arched up into the darkness. He put one foot on it, and then the other foot. The shadows behind him were close enough to touch. He imagined clawing hands, and he shuffled forward a little more.

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Then the other shadows in the balconies joined in the whispering, and this time it was as if they were telling stories--of friendships betrayed, of kings and governments overthrown, lies told, secrets revealed. He struggled to keep his balance, desperate to get away from them and knowing that his only hope was to go forward. Then he started to hear actual voices, snatches of actual plots. "... betrayed them all, I did ...," a man's voice said, full of wicked triumph. Then a woman's voice: "... I planted the knife right between his shoulder blades, the traitor." He heard a girl's plaintive tones: "I was next in line.... They put the poison in an apple.... Ah, the pain ..."

The voices were all talking about him now. He put his hands over his ears, but they would not be shut out, these tales of murder and betrayal. Blindly he stumbled forward, deceit and misery flooding his mind. Who are you? The question formed in his mind, and it was answered by a thousand whispering voices.

We are the cheats and liars and traitors. The betrayers of home and family and country. We cannot rest. We cannot rest
.

At last he reached the end. The plank led to a small platform. The voices faded away, and a light came on above his head, so that the shadows shrank back. Devoy sat on another balcony in front of him, and down below him were the cadets. He could see Les looking anxiously up at him, and Dixie and Vandra.

"You have walked the gauntlet of shadows," Devoy said, "and have not been put off course by the whispering.

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Now is the time to answer the question. Will you join the fellowship of the shadows, always to work in the dark, forever to be wary, to walk in the vale of deception? Will you be a spy? Answer!"

Danny could see his parents' faces in his mind's eye. His friends at school. He thought of the times that someone had tried to kill him since he had come to Wilsons, of the looks he got from cadets who despised him because he had the appearance of a Cherb. He remembered all of this and his lips formed the word "No." But then another image came into his head, of the graveyard where the parents of his new friends lay. How could he let these friends down when they had given everything to fight the Ring of Five?

The Ring! Once again he felt a dark thrill at the very name! Even now they were out there, sunk in plots he could not even imagine, weaving webs of intrigue that were beyond the minds of ordinary people to understand.

"Answer!" Devoy said again. Danny could feel the eyes of all the cadets on him. Even, he thought, the eyes of the shadows were watching him. And from the shadows it seemed he caught a faint scent of perfume--the perfume his mother wore! Anger and self-pity stabbed at him--he was left alone with the frightful shadows at his back and a terrible decision before him. He looked Devoy in the eye and felt his mouth move as if it did not belong to him.

"Yes," he said. "I will join the fellowship of the shadows. I will be a spy." And as his friends whooped with delight below him, thoughts of the Ring and of his

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parents jostled in his head. Had he joined because he cared about his friends, or because he was drawn to the Ring? Had he joined because his parents had betrayed him?

"Take you the oath of the shadows? That under the multitudinous roofs of this academy of the devious arts, you will keep faith, tell no secret, commit no perjury, countenance no fraud, unless in the service of Wilsons, or may the shadows consume you and count you among their number for eternity?"

"I take the oath," he said faintly, and the shadows clustered around him.

When Danny was brought into the library of the third landing by Valant, Devoy was standing at the window looking out, his hands clasped behind his back. Valant left. Danny stood awkwardly in the middle of the room, waiting for Devoy to turn around. Sleet came down the chimney and hissed in the fire.

"Look above the fireplace," Devoy said without moving, his voice so quiet that Danny could barely hear him. Danny turned to the portrait.

"Suzerrain Longford," Devoy said, "once principal at Wilsons, now head of the Ring." Danny looked up at Longford. Head of the Ring? The man was almost boyish-looking, with a flap of hair that fell forward over his eyes, and yet those eyes followed Danny around the room, a hint of mockery in them.

"He waited until he knew everything about us, every

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secret, before he revived the Ring. Quite brilliant, really. It was only by a miracle that we survived at all."

"What have I got to do with this?"

"Tell me." Devoy swung around. "Why did you say yes in the Hall of Shadows? Why did you agree to join Wilsons?"

"I ... I saw my new friends ... what happened to their parents. I felt I would be letting them down."

"Is that it?" Devoy demanded. "Is that all? Did you perhaps feel something more than that? A thrill in your veins? The dark appeal of treachery, the desire to deceive, to feel the power of that deception, to betray?"

Devoy's face as always was expressionless, but his eyes searched Danny's as though they would see into his mind. Danny remembered the poker lesson and let all expression drain from his face, feeling as if someone had drawn a veil over his thoughts. At that moment he knew that he could fool Devoy. He could feel the eyes of Longford in the portrait on him. He had of course felt an attraction to the Ring, but the words that came out of his mouth sounded sincere.

"No," he lied, "I just wanted to help."

Devoy stared into his eyes for an eternity; then he nodded in what looked like satisfaction.

"Sit down," he said. "You need to know the history of the Ring of Five." Danny sat.

"Once the Two Worlds lived in harmony. Or in balance, I should say. A balance between good and evil. The Cherbs represented the evil side of the Two Worlds, but