Alchemy, Book Two of the Mercian Trilogy Read online

  But if what the spirit of Fairburn said was true, there was no context that would excuse his actions. He had condemned these people not to death but to an eternal limbo, stripped of the very essence of who they had been.

  Across the crowded chamber, a young girl emerged from the wall and Will could not stop himself calling out, “Kate!” But she did not hear or see him, and to stare at her vacant expression was too painful a reminder of how she had once laughed and made him laugh, and how she had so willingly volunteered to be bitten in the hope of becoming his companion.

  “Good Kate,” cried Fairburn. “It would have been far, far better for her had the plague taken her, and not your tainted act of friendship.”

  “Are their souls gone forever?”

  Fairburn ignored him at first, and appeared almost to be carrying out a headcount of the dozens of spirits emerging and disappearing all across the chamber. Finally, it seemed, the numbers were declining again.

  “Nothing is forever, even you. Perhaps especially you. When you die, their souls will be released from you and restored to them. I don’t know what will happen to yours, but if there’s any justice, it will be destroyed.”

  “I care nothing for what happens to my soul. But nor do I believe you. It is possible, I will allow, that I have reduced them to this, but I would know if I carried all these souls within me.”

  Again Fairburn appeared not to be listening. There were only four spirits left in the chamber, and as each disappeared into the walls, he looked more and more puzzled.

  Only Will and Fairburn were now left in the room, but Fairburn looked up into the air, lost in calculation as he said, “Eight hundred and forty-three, I make forty-four, but there should be one more …” With an air of cheap theatricality, he fixed his gaze on Will and said, “How could I have forgotten?”

  He waved his hand at the far wall with a flourish and it immediately showed the outline of a human form. It took shape: a woman, wearing a rich blue dress of the kind worn in Will’s childhood, golden hair, pale skin. She stepped out on to the floor of the chamber, a young woman of radiant beauty, at once both familiar and unknown to him.

  She wasn’t like the others, and she stared about the chamber as if confused, wondering how she came to be here. These spirits had all been summoned by Wyndham, but this one alone appeared to know that it had not wished to be brought forth.

  Coaxing, Fairburn said, “Come, spirit, come into the chamber.” She was walking towards the centre of the room, but not apparently in response to Fairburn’s instructions.

  The spirit looked past Fairburn and saw Will for the first time, and now she stopped and stared, and a slight hopeful smile formed on her lips. It faded as she glanced at Fairburn and when she turned her attention back to Will, she seemed eager to impart some message to him.

  She did not speak, but reached up and took hold of a pendant hanging round her neck, brandishing it at Will as she stared at him, smiling again, with something that looked like encouragement. Then she let go and put her finger to her lips. Only as she turned away did the smile fade, a deep and private sadness taking hold of her features.

  “Stay a while, spirit,” said Fairburn. But the lady walked a circle round the vicar, and gradually sank into the floor as she did so, as if descending a wide spiral staircase. “Spirit, this distresses you, I know, but you are commanded to stay! See here the evil before us …” But the spirit had gone.

  Will didn’t know what to think. Had this been a victim, she would hardly have smiled, or made intimate gestures that had certainly been meant to communicate something, even if the meaning had been lost on him. Besides, he would have remembered a victim so striking from so early on in the course of his sickness.

  Fairburn had looked briefly deflated, but he rallied and looked at Will, shaking his head. “It’s hardly a surprise that your first victim should find it so disturbing to see what you’ve become.”

  “My first victim? I think not – I have never seen that fair lady before.”

  “Your mother, William of Mercia, you have just seen the spirit of your mother.”

  Will knew instantly that it was true, though he had never seen her, and he felt as if he’d received a body blow. If he’d had tears, he would have shed them all gladly now for the mother he had never known.

  “My mother died in childbirth.”

  “Your mother was murdered during childbirth, by those who served you even then, to protect your poisoned legacy.”

  “You lie,” said Will, though he was aware of his own voice sounding weak, his thoughts struggling to hold fast against this onslaught.

  “Lie? Did I not show you your destiny? Aside from me and the woman whose grave misfortune it was to give birth to you, you can hardly deny the eight hundred and forty-three souls you have taken – that wicked tally is your destiny, and merely the first act of all that is to come.”

  Will had been alive long enough to know that there was no lie greater than that which was held up by facts. These were facts, all these many victims, but he still believed, had to believe, that there was a lie at the bottom of all this, a lie created by Wyndham in his battle to destroy him.

  “I don’t accept that – it is the sickness I have been cursed with, and it has been a curse, but my destiny is to escape it. As I have said before, I know my own heart.”

  Fairburn looked full of hatred as he said, “Your heart, as I believe you know, stopped beating a very long time ago. Accept death, William of Mercia, and release the souls of these good people. That is Mr Wyndham’s offer – accept death willingly, gratefully, or he will destroy you, and the torment he will inflict will be greater than hell itself could offer.”

  “If Mr Wyndham is so powerful, why does he not tell me these things himself?”

  “He will, when the time is right.”

  “Of course, when the time is right.” Suddenly Will remembered Asmund’s comment about the many obstacles faced in the life of a great man, then his suggestion that Will had been no random victim, that his sickness had been long planned. “You spoke of my poisoned legacy – what did you mean by it? Or was that just another piece of embroidery to make me believe my mother was murdered on my behalf?”

  Fairburn looked uncertain how to respond for a moment, then closed his eyes and whispered, “Do I tell him that much at least?”

  So not only had he been summoned by Wyndham, he was in communion with him even now, just as Asmund had been with his master. If Lorcan Labraid had only communicated with Will in much the same way, this entire process would have been a great deal simpler.

  Fairburn nodded, having been given approval, and said, “William of Mercia, this is your vile truth – the bloodlines of the four vampire kings meet within your person and yours alone, making you the one of whom these evil prophecies speak.” He gestured to the inscriptions on the walls around them. “That is why your mother was murdered, to ensure there would not be another to challenge your uniquely wicked claim.”

  As he spoke, Fairburn began to look less solid, a thin mist emanating from him, reducing him to transparency, to vapour.

  “What about my destiny? What do you know of it?”

  At first it seemed there would be no reply, but at the last, Fairburn’s voice emerged from the final swirling fragments of his form.

  “It is not in front of you.”

  Fairburn had gone and Will was alone in the chamber. He tried to think what Fairburn might have meant by those words, trying to imagine how his destiny might be behind him rather than ahead of him. It took Will a minute or two to see a different meaning, one that was not a riddle but literal.

  He turned and looked with horror at the painting in front of which he’d been standing all this time. There, among countless inscriptions, was a picture of a king sitting on a throne, and though the art was primitive, it was undoubtedly intended to be Will’s likeness.

  Surrounding him, just as they surrounded the boar’s head relief in the neighbouring chamber, forming a cro
ss, were the four swords. Most disturbingly, the throne sat on top of a small hill, but on closer inspection, the mount revealed itself to be made of naked and mutilated bodies, blood-spattered, faces wracked with anguish and pain.

  Will recoiled from it, but he was angry too. He had already been dragged down into wickedness by this sickness, but he would be dragged no further. He refused to accept that this image represented anything of his future and he strode out of the chamber – he had done evil things, but he was not evil, and evil would not, could not be his destiny.

  It left him more determined than ever to press ahead. As troubled as he was by seeing his victims, as shocked by the possible truth of destroying their souls, he had to keep going or everything, including those eight hundred and forty-three deaths, would have been pointless.

  With nothing more that he could do for the time being, Will simply walked, fast, exploring passage after passage until each one and the overall pattern of the labyrinth were familiar to him. There was no other feature in there and all paths led back eventually to the pentagonal chamber.

  He reached it again and again, but even though he had been in the circular chamber once, he could not bring himself to walk the once-dark corridor to look at it a second time. The memories already associated with that second chamber, of the wall painting, of the soulless faces of his victims, of his mother, were still too troubling.

  Yet as he stood for the last time next to the bronze relief, staring at the tunnel which had taken him there, the thought of his mother offered some reassurance. She had recognised him, had she not, suggesting her spirit had watched over him as he’d grown. And she had tried to impart some advice, even encouragement, something she surely would not have done if only evil awaited him.

  Will thought of her clutching the pendant round her neck, but he had not seen the item of jewellery and could not now know what it had signified. Unless … He reached up and held the broken medallion round his own neck, wondering if this was what she’d been trying to tell him, to think on this medallion and all it promised. It was cold in his hand now, but it had been warm, and somewhere else its twin was warm against Eloise’s skin. It promised a different future to the one painted by Fairburn, and that different future was the only one Will dared imagine.

  10

  Will returned to the house, put the sabre back where it belonged and descended into the cellars. It was another hour before he felt that slight telltale prickling on his skin, warning him that the sun had struggled above the eastern horizon.

  Now his imprisonment here was total, for the next eight hours or so anyway. He paced from cellar to cellar, trying and failing to take his mind off the needling hunger for blood that swept over him, carrying him along. It was a craving made even more unbearable by the recently rekindled memories of his many past victims.

  Helen, whose name he had not known, had been taken in the late autumn of 1988, around the same time of year that he’d met Eloise. And her sacrifice had been made for what now seemed the most meagre of reasons, sustaining him only through the winter months and into the spring when he’d hibernated again.

  Then he’d slept for twenty years, during which time a boy called Stephen Leonard had grown into a man, unknowingly preparing himself for the role of Will’s next victim. Nor did it ease Will’s mind to know that the boy, Jex as he’d become, had been chosen by other forces before Will had found him.

  It was painful to think back on it, and worse to know that there would be an eight hundred and forty-fourth victim, that there had to be because Will’s own spirit seemed to be gnawing away at him, crying out for the sustenance it needed.

  At some point during the morning hours, he heard someone in the house above, a man, whistling as he went about his business. Will’s hunger for blood intensified and it was a relief to hear the slamming of an outer door, the removal of a temptation he could only have resisted for so long.

  It felt at times as if these daylight hours would never end, and he left the cellars and the house almost as soon as darkness had fallen. The moon was already above the horizon, approaching its full state and creating a small amount of discomfort on Will’s skin, but he didn’t care, such was the liberation of being out on the frozen landscape after being trapped since the beginning of the day.

  He walked about the woods for a couple of hours and once night had firmly established itself, he strolled towards the school. He knew that Eloise was busy this evening, but he had to go, if only to see her from afar, to be near her.

  Even as he came close to the school, he could hear music, but the hall it came from wasn’t visible from the outside. He returned to his usual spot, looking into the Dangrave House common room from a safe distance.

  It was half empty tonight, but there was Marcus Jenkins, sitting at a table playing chess with his friend. Marcus picked up the black queen, hesitated for a moment and then used it to take one of his opponent’s pieces. His friend said something, shaking his head in irritation, but also acknowledging the skill of the move.

  Marcus answered, smiling, but then turned and looked directly at Will, returning to the pattern that had been broken only the previous night outside his bedroom. It was unnerving, his eyes appearing to reach out beyond the window, and even if Marcus could only see his own reflection, Will wondered what it was exactly that he saw there.

  Marcus turned away again, but it left Will uneasy, thinking back on the empty book, the sleepwalker’s stare. Marcus was Wyndham’s spy, but it was more than that, some mysterious quality that lay within the boy, something Will had sensed even the first time they’d met.

  Will watched for a few moments more before heading off into the woods that bordered the drive, exploring them for anything that might explain the attack of the previous evening. He could hear crows roosting in the branches high above him now, but they seemed to pay no attention to him, just as they had failed to notice him the night before.

  By the time he headed back to the school, the night was drawing on. He came within a hundred paces of a female teacher standing by one of the doors, huddled against the cold as she whispered into a phone, talking to a boyfriend. Will caught the scent of her on the crisp air and veered to the right to escape the ever-present temptation – she was young, and healthy.

  The common room was empty now and as he stood there, a male teacher came in, did a quick check of the room and turned off the light before leaving again. There were some lights on upstairs, though not Marcus’s, and the evening was drawing to a close for Marland Abbey School, just as it was beginning for Will.

  He remained for a minute longer, as if the common room was still full of people, but then got the uncomfortable sense once more that someone was watching him. He looked up – the same darkened window on the top floor – making a mental note of which room it was.

  He took a few more backward steps, and a little while later, as more lights died in the windows and sleep descended, he accepted he wouldn’t see Eloise tonight. It was for the best – he worried that he was depriving her of sleep as it was. Reluctantly he turned and strolled back towards the new house, heading for the stand of trees that obscured each from the other.

  And he’d almost reached the trees before he realised he was not walking alone. Silently and without ceremony, robed figures had appeared a little way to the left and right of him – two of the witches Eloise had asked about only the night before.

  Will stopped and turned. Four more of the witches followed behind, but stopped now at a slight distance, their heads bowed, obscuring the absent faces.

  “What do you want of me?”

  At first there was no response, and when it did come, it was from behind him. “To do your duty, nothing more.”

  He turned to see the seventh standing facing him, close to the trees he’d been approaching just a moment before. She alone showed her face, almost featureless, only darker shadows where her eyes and mouth had once been.

  “My duty?”

  “To protect.” The other
six spirits had started walking towards her and left him behind now on the frosted park. “You need the girl, and the sorcerer knows it, which is why the girl needs you.” Will was about to speak when she raised her arm, pointing past him to the school, urgent as she said, “Now, William of Mercia, she needs you now!”

  He felt a sudden surge of fear for Eloise and glanced over his shoulder at the school, an ominously dark outline against the moonlight.

  “She’s in danger right now?”

  But when he turned back again, the spirits had gone.

  He ran at full speed across the parkland, his nerves torn, fearing what he might be running towards. The spirits hadn’t intervened the previous night, an attack that had been serious enough in itself, so what was happening to Eloise now that they had felt the need to come to him?

  He entered through the side door Eloise had showed him, leaping up the stairs and along the corridors with little concern for being spotted or disturbing anyone. He reached Eloise’s door, opened it, turned on the light so as not to alarm her and closed the door again as his eyes smarted.

  Even when he could see, he struggled to believe what he was looking at. Eloise lay on her back, asleep, wearing a long red cotton nightshirt – but she was not on her bed, she was floating above it and moving slowly as if drawn by a magnetic power. The window had been thrown wide open and Eloise was drifting towards it.

  This wasn’t just an attempt to harm Eloise, but to kill her. If this was Wyndham’s determination, to kill Eloise, it meant that Will needed her alive to fulfil his destiny, whatever that destiny proved to be. He would not let Wyndham win, but he knew something else too, knew it in every fibre of his being – he would kill himself before he allowed any harm to come to Eloise.

  This time at least he could keep her safe. He closed the window first, pulling hard, as if against another hand that was struggling to keep it open. He locked it and drew the curtains lest her light be seen from outside. Eloise seemed to stop moving as soon as the window was closed, but still she hovered shoulder-height above the bed.