Caitlin tapped her axe rhythmically against the stone lintel of the window, lost in thought.
‘He was working on something just before they took him.’ Sophie examined two crumbling leather-bound volumes, various pages marked by hide strips. She trailed her fingers across a gold chalice studded with gems, a half-burned green candle, a polished crystal, a human skull branded with runes. ‘These … I can’t read the words, but these diagrams … and these ritual items — Math was trying to contact the Grim Lands.’
‘Why would he want to get in touch with the dead?’ Mallory asked.
‘Even the gods are banned from going there. But there’s something here about souls … What was he doing?’
‘There’s a message here somewhere,’ Caitlin interjected. ‘If I was trapped with no way out, that’s what I’d do — leave a clue for someone who might come looking for me.’
‘We have to look for patterns,’ Sophie said. ‘That’s what magic is — repeating patterns that influence the underlying patterns of the universe.’
‘Patterns,’ Mallory repeated thoughtfully. ‘You know how I feel about magic — about the same as I do about gods, God and religion. But patterns I can understand.’
Mallory returned to the entrance to get a better view of the room. His gaze fell upon the fallen drapes, the position of the brazier, his recollection of where the magickal items had been before Sophie moved them. He sheathed his sword and extinguished the lantern.
The darkness smothered them until their eyes got used to the faint light falling through the windows. The moon was high and almost full, its rays a bright beam through one window. From another, illumination came from an eternal flame that burned atop another tower nearby. One light white, one ruddy. Mallory returned the brazier to its fallen position. In the moonlight, a handle carved in a serpent shape produced a finger of shadow across the floorboards.
‘Where did the other stuff go?’ he said.
Caitlin placed the chalice on the floor, hesitated. ‘No, that’s not right.’
Sophie adjusted the chalice by a few inches, realigning it with the moonbeam. Another finger of shadow extended to bisect the first.
‘Doesn’t make sense.’ Mallory examined the point where the shadows crossed. ‘The moon wouldn’t be in the same position now as when Math laid all this out.’ Frustrated, he paced the room. ‘Maybe we’re wrong-’
‘No,’ Sophie insisted. ‘This feels right. We’re just missing something.’
‘Four winds … four windows,’ Caitlin mused. ‘The old philosophers had four elements. Wasn’t that the basis of some magic?’
‘Earth, air, fire and water,’ Mallory added, nodding.
‘Five,’ Sophie corrected. ‘Those are the four earthly elements. There was a fifth, quintessence, which was heavenly, incorruptible.’
‘Okay.’ Mallory knelt to examine what they had. ‘The brazier stands for fire, obviously. I’m betting the chalice is water. What lines up with the earth window?’
Sophie held up the skull with a shrug.
‘Mortal clay.’ Caitlin’s voice was hollow, her eyes downcast.
Sophie placed the skull where it had been when they entered. ‘I think the fourth one is supposed to stay empty, for air.’
Mallory stepped back to survey the ritual pattern. ‘And the fifth?’
Sophie picked up the polished crystal. ‘A guess. Or instinct, if you prefer. This was still on the table when we came in. I think we have to place it in the right spot to complete the pattern.’ She weighed the crystal in her hand, then went to select a position.
‘Wait,’ Caitlin cautioned. ‘It might not be wise to put it in the wrong spot.’
Sophie hesitated.
‘If it’s supposed to be heavenly,’ Caitlin began, ‘shouldn’t it be above the corruptible elements?’
Sophie looked to Mallory. He nodded. Tentatively, she held the crystal ahead of her and moved towards the middle of the room. When she was above the centre point, she felt a bodiless tug on her hand that made her shiver. Slowly, she opened her fingers and the crystal remained suspended in the air.
‘Now what?’ Caitlin said in hushed tones.
The crystal rotated slowly.
‘Light the lantern,’ Sophie whispered.
Mallory struck his flint, and the flickering lantern light made the shadows retreat. The moment it struck the crystal, the room came alive with shimmering patterns circling the walls as the crystal turned: words in an alien language, runes, diagrams.
Sophie, Caitlin and Mallory were mesmerised. Each pass reflected information on their retinas, burning it deep into their unconscious.
‘It’s a calendar,’ Sophie said dreamily. ‘What does it mean?’
The moment the words left her lips, the light winked out and the crystal fell, shattering on the floor.
‘MAT,’ Mallory mouthed as the images continued to play across his mind. ‘ANM. Those letters keep coming up. I don’t understand.’
‘It’s as plain as the nose on your face or the tower in the city,’ Caitlin said in Brigid’s throaty rumble. Mallory winced at the relapse: what had brought one of her buried personalities to the fore?
‘What are you saying?’ Sophie asked.
Caitlin/Brigid gave a chilling laugh. ‘Go to a library if you want to understand. It’s all up here!’ She tapped her temple.
A noise on the edge of his perception snapped Mallory out of his reverie. He motioned for Sophie and Caitlin to remain silent. At first there was only the wind, but then came a faint sucking sound like gas escaping from a marsh. Behind it, high and reedy and drawing closer, were childlike voices, but whatever they were saying made no sense; an idiot’s chant.
Mallory peered out of the south window. The foot of the tower was lost in the darkness, yet even so he thought he could see something moving, darker still than the shadows that concealed it.
‘Stop that noise! It’s scaring me!’ Caitlin said in her little girl’s voice. The axe slipped from her fingers and clattered on the floorboards.
Mallory ran from window to window. Waves of shadows lapped all around the tower.
‘They’re coming!’ Caitlin whined.
The grind of the tower door being dragged open. Tiny feet clattering up the steps; empty, idiot voices growing louder.
Mallory slammed and bolted the trap-door that led to the stairs.
‘What are we supposed to do now?’ Sophie said.
‘You can either let down your hair, Rapunzel, or find something we can use to get out of here.’ Mallory began to ransack the chests and cupboards.
Caitlin sat against the wall, hugging her knees and rocking gently.
The clattering of feet came right up to the trap-door, the insane voices now shrill and giggling. The bolt rattled amidst a flurry of clawing with what sounded like birds’ talons.
‘How did they get up here so quickly?’ Sophie breathed.
Head deep in an enormous chest, Mallory emerged with an extensive coil of silken cord.
‘Will that hold us?’ Sophie asked. The clawing and giggling almost drowned her out.
Mallory stamped his boot on one end and tested it. ‘Yeah. Look, you need to do that thing you do. The other end has to be attached to the nearest building.’ Sophie’s face betrayed her lack of confidence. ‘You can do it, combat honey,’ he said softly.
While Mallory secured the cord to one of the iron rings set in the floorboards, Sophie leaned out of the window and silently attempted to summon one of the bats she’d seen circling the tower earlier.
The trap-door burst open with a crash. From the dark beneath erupted what looked like six-year-olds but with grey, mortuary skin, jagged, broken talons and pale eyes like saucers. Their sharp-toothed mouths snapped hungrily.
‘Any time now would do,’ Mallory shouted. With surprising tenderness, he pulled Caitlin next to him and stood between Sophie and the dead children with Llyrwyn drawn.
