the fighting had begun, as if feeding on so much death?
Matt stood where he was. Jamie examined him properly for the first time. He was just a boy with square shoulders and short dark hair, but his face was much older than his fourteen years. He had the eyes of a man, full of wisdom and experience. He was dressed, like Jamie, in a coarsely woven grey shirt that hung down below his waist, crossed by a leather belt running diagonally across his chest. He had a sword in one hand and a shield in the other. The symbol that he had chosen was a fish.
Matt suddenly raised his hand, not attacking his opponent but pointing to the side. Two knights had been closing in but they were instantly thrown back, sent flying off their horses by an invisible force. Several humans – overlords and slaves – were hurled into the air. Matt had created a corridor in the fighting and a second boy stepped into it. Jamie looked across the clearing and saw what could have been a mirror image of himself. Or it could have been Scott. But he knew that it was Flint. Flint was bruised and exhausted from the battle, his clothes torn and his shield broken, but still quite obviously his identical twin.
Flint walked forward and at the same time Scar made her appearance, bringing down a man twice her size, stabbing a second and leaping over a third with her sword angled up in front of her, her eyes fixed on Chaos as if she planned to attack him all on her own. Now there were three of them surrounding the motionless figure, the black space at the centre of the conflict.
The King of the Old Ones was amused by the new arrivals. “Three of the Five. But not enough. Still not enough!” The words vibrated in the air. They made Jamie’s head ache. He felt sick.
He was about to step forward but before he could move, another boy ran past him, almost brushing his shoulder. It was Inti. He was soaking wet from the rainstorm and there was blood running from a wound on his cheek. He had lost his shield but he still had his sword.
“Four of you!” The words came hissing out of the darkness, full of contempt.
“Five,” Jamie said, and joined the circle.
Flint saw him and nodded, his face filled with delight. Inti and Scar smiled. Matt gave nothing away. He unsheathed his sword.
And that was when the King of the Old Ones knew that he had been deceived. The boy who was dead was somehow alive again. Inti had arrived, unseen, on the battlefield. Chaos was surrounded by the Five, who had been born for this very moment and sent to defeat him. Four boys and a girl. Each of them armed. The battle, raging all around them, was almost forgotten.
“Go back where you came from,” Matt said.
He took a single step forward and stabbed with all his strength, burying his blade in the creature’s heart.
The others did the same. First Flint, then Inti. The King of the Old Ones writhed as each blade went into him. His shape was shimmering like ripples on a pool of water. But three blows was not enough to finish him. Scar went next, burying her own sword up to the hilt. And at last the creature cried out, feeling pain for the first time.
Jamie was the last to step forward. Gritting his teeth, he plunged his sword into the blackness in front of him. He felt his arm freeze and wondered if the blade had shattered. At the same moment, he was deafened by the terrible death scream of the defeated king.
The five points of the five swords had touched.
Chaos had never been a man and at that moment he lost the pretence. He seemed to explode outwards, completely losing his human shape, becoming nothing more than a huge shadow, a sort of living night that was at last being torn apart by the coming of the day. He screamed one last time and his servants knew, right then, that the battle was lost. The sound reached the furthest corners of the world and still it didn’t stop. Every evil being in the universe heard it and knew that the end had come.
Jamie was paralysed. If Frost was still in his hand he couldn’t move it. He could feel the power of the Five now that they were finally together and, although he had never been stronger, at the same time he was overwhelmed. The power was intensifying and he was sure that it would break him apart. It was more than he could bear. He tried to look for Finn or any of the others but it was as if nothing existed outside the circle they had formed. He was aware only of four faces. Matt, Flint, Inti, Scar. They were all strangely alike, all fixed in silent concentration and he knew that they were feeling exactly the same as he was.
The King of the Old Ones was no longer there. It was as if he had been turned into smoke that was already drifting away. The Five were standing in a circle, their blades still touching, but with an empty space between them. And nothing could reach them. Although the fighting still continued all around, it was as if they were inside a crystal jar. Swords flashed but the blades broke in mid-air. Spears and arrows rained down on them but bounced off uselessly. The condor plunged towards them in a last, desperate attempt to reach them but its outstretched claws suddenly shattered and it was sent spinning away, a shapeless ball of feathers and blood.
Jamie wondered if he had been more badly hurt than he’d thought. Was he dying? All the sounds of the combat were very distant. There was a great rushing in his ears and a sense of something flowing through him. The Five were cocooned, completely safe, at the very centre of the battle but apart from it.
And now something even stranger was happening.
The five of them seemed to be moving, turning slowly as if on a merry-go-round. But it wasn’t they who were moving. It was the world that was moving around them. The field and the forest and the hill were spinning faster and faster until they no longer existed. They had become a blur, nothing more than a streak of colour that swirled around them with no beginning and no end.
There was an ear-shattering crack. Jamie looked up.
The sky had opened. A chasm had appeared, the very fabric of the day peeling back to reveal a universe filled with stars. At the same time, the wind was howling. It had formed a tornado that was tearing up clumps of grass and pieces of earth. First, dead bodies and then living ones were being pulled into it and carried away through the vortex. With every second that passed, the process was becoming stronger and faster. One after another, the servants of the Old Ones were being taken, spinning helplessly as they were carried up. Jamie watched them as they were pulled into the void and knew that he was partly responsible for what was happening. It was his power that was doing this. He and the other four.
The remaining fire riders had gone, ripped off their horses and blown away like rags. The fly-soldiers had disintegrated. The spider and the hummingbird – all the giant animals – were no more than specks, spiralling ever further upwards. Finally, the dark shadow which was all that remained of Chaos was sucked in, following them into oblivion. And then at last it was over. The tunnel closed up behind them. The wind died down. There was a distant rumble of thunder and the sky rolled back, closing off the darkness, healing its own, self-inflicted wound.
The Five stood in silence.
“Sapling…” It was Flint who had spoken. But Matt raised a hand, holding him back. Not yet.
Scar stepped forward. She was staring at something high above her, shielding her eyes. Jamie looked up and saw that at last the clouds had parted and the sun had been allowed to show its face.
“So that’s what it looks like,” Scar muttered. “I always wondered.” She turned to Matt. “What does it mean?” she asked.
“It means that it’s over,” Matt said. “We’ve won.”
BENEATH THE STARS
They stood looking at each other, the five Gatekeepers: Scar, Inti, Flint, Matt and Jamie. None of them spoke. Too much had happened too quickly. Jamie only knew what Scar had told him, a very small part of the history that had brought them all here today. But he understood that a journey had just ended, and one that had taken their entire lives.
All around them, everything was changing. And it was happening with incredible speed. The Old Ones had brought the planet to the edge of destruction, polluting the water and darkening the sky. But now that they had gone, the world was restoring itself. The rain had stopped as quickly as it had started and the ground was already dry. The clouds had parted as surely as if they had been curtains waiting to be pulled and the sky on the other side was a dazzling blue, the sun already spreading its warmth over the ground. And with the coming of the sun, true colour had returned. The forest, which had seemed black and grey, was now many shades of green. The pine trees
