Buried Fire
Authors: Jonathan Stroud
BURIED FIRE
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ISBN 9781407048710
Version 1.0
BURIED FIRE
A CORGI BOOK: (from January 2007)
0552 54933 9
ISBN: 9781407048710
Version 1.0
First published in Great Britain by The Bodley Head,
an imprint of Random House Children's Books
Bodley Head edition published 1999
Red Fox edition published 2000
Corgi edition published 2003
5 7 9 10 8 6 4
Copyright © Jonathan Stroud, 1999
The right of Jonathan Stroud to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Fired
JONATHAN
STROUD
Corgi Books
For Gina, with love
Under the old king's barrow, in a hollow place hidden from the winter mists and the summer sun, a dragon coils.
Round and round a hoard of gold its long length stretches, pin tail to razor snout, plugging the airless space like a giant bung. The old king, who had once sat proudly in the centre of his gift hoard, now lies in a corner, a clump of bones swept into the shadows and forgotten.
In the darkness, nothing stirs. The dragon lies as still and silent as a graveyard skull. For a thousand years or more it has never moved, not an inch. But its mind is burning.
The fire is barely a needle prick in size – a blood-red point glowing in the dark, a tiny flame of anger, lust and greed, squeezed almost to nothing. There is no air in the barrow, but the dragon does not need it. The flame of its mind feeds off its own white fury, and burns, burns, burns down the endless years.
Far overhead, in the bright, green world, little things with hasty bodies live and die. But here in the stillness, change is banished, for the dragon has learned to ignore Time.
To do this, the dragon compresses its mind clean of its memory. It allows the pressure of the earth to squeeze out all traces of the life it has left behind.
One by one, across the centuries, it purges its thoughts; they rise, coiling and uncoiling, through the dead ground like bubbles in the sea. At last, almost imperceptible except where they shift the dew, they emerge from the earth and hang above the grass until the breezes drift them away.
The ground where the discarded thoughts appear is thickly grown with foxglove and harebell, and home to a large company of brightly-coloured lizards and little birds. Eager for strange knowledge, their quick eyes watch from hidden places, waiting with a silent hunger.
Only rarely – once, twice in a millennium – does the dragon notice the sagging earth pressing down upon its back. Then the red point flares with sudden anger, and far above, the earth quivers.
Long centuries pass.
The barrow flattens under the weight of grass seeds.
The dragon lies still.
The boy was asleep in the hollow on the hilltop when the dragon's thought came up from the ground and enveloped him. It rose through his body slowly, like a giant soap bubble, with its oily surface quivering and glinting in the sun.
As it spread out across his chest and stomach, the boy stirred uneasily, but he did not wake. His face had time to grimace briefly – then the bubble crept up across his throat and over his face, and the sound of his breathing was suddenly cut off.
Still it rose, a vast translucent dome, until the boy was swallowed whole. A book lying open on the grass beside his hand burst into flame as the thought engulfed it.
Time passed. The sleeping boy slept on in the afternoon sunlight, with a burning book beside him. It burnt unsteadily, with a jittering green and yellow fire, until it was reduced to a fine white ash. A light breeze blew across the hollow, but could not reach inside the dragon's thought, and the pile of ash lay quiet upon the grass. The boy lay like an embalmed thing, steadily breathing the thought inside him.
Quick movements stirred the grass across the hollow. Tiny lizards, flecked with green and orange scales, pushed their way up between the gorse stalks and the early heather. With eager, darting movements, they scuttered ever nearer to the bubble, until one by one, and in ever greater numbers, they passed through its surface, out of the natural air. Small tongues flickered, drinking in the essence of the fiery thought, while the boy's clothes singed around the edges and his face grew pale.
Time passed.
Into the nowhere of his sleep came a red stillness.
It brought with it a sudden hunger, a sharpening of senses and a new keenness of desire. He felt as if he hadn't eaten for a month, a year, a hundred years, though his midday sandwiches lay heavily inside him.
The redness was all around. It had a pink tint, like a strong light showing through flesh.
And it burnt his eyes. All about him everything was aflame – the trees, the rocks, the earth, the sky. Though his eyes were closed tight shut, the heat from the burning world set them both on fire.
Then, just when it seemed to him that his whole face must burn away, the terrible heat died down and his eyes opened. He saw a sky blistered with a savage sunset that seemed to set the world alight. Dark things circled beyond the clouds. A smell of chemicals and cave water stung his skin and his ears caught the sound of gold melting through the mountains. His mouth tasted of cast-iron.
It seemed as if days passed, and nights; the sun moved at a bewildering speed, striping the unknown landscape with zebra shades while his eyes and the eyes of the dark moving things above him watched it all unblinking.
Now he seemed to move
with a lightning movement,
and he was in a different place,
where tall pillars were arching to a point,
and tiny things were running, screaming,
scattering,
leaving an explosion of gold on the marbled
floor beneath his descending claws.
Another movement, and now
a pitch black stillness, of which he is a part.
A red gleam on a wet stone floor,
and a breath
so slow, it ceases;
drawing out an impossible span
years long.
And now
The blue sky lightened towards evening and a wind sprang up, blowing south-easterly over the hilltop from Fordrace and the Russet Woods. The dying sunlight shimmered on the bubble dome, and the torpid lizards, lying head to tail in a perfect circle against the inside of the bubble's rim, twitched uneasily.
Then the bubble was caught in a stronger gust. It rose further from the ground, and was lifted free at last, to be blown across the hollow and over the ridge, west towards Little Chetton and the sun. The lizards scattered, the ash dispersed on the winds, and only the boy was left, sleeping on the grass, with scarlet weals upon his eyes and cheeks as white as death.
Fifteen minutes later, a cooler breeze caught his face, and Michael MacIntyre awoke.
The Reverend Tom Aubrey was a busy man. Before the afternoon was over he would have to chair three parish meetings, attend one Women's Institute coffee circle and inspect the leaking pipes in the Sunday School boys' lavatories. And he was too hot to relish any of them. The simple fact was that summers and dog collars did not mix. The tight white ring constricting his throat was a perfect trap both for sweat trickling down and for heat rising up. It rubbed and it itched and it grew dirty with a speed that rather annoyed the Reverend Tom.
He sat in his chair in the small white study behind the vestry and scratched the back of his neck with a deliberate care. On the desk in front of him a thick pile of ecclesiastic correspondence stared up at him accusingly, demanding to be read. His eyes flittered across the top sheet, glazing as they went. Behind him, the voices of the workmen in the churchyard, and their radios and spades, drifted in through the blinds along the slats of sunlight. The Reverend Tom sighed, and his sigh became a yawn.
There was only half an hour before the church finance meeting, and he had yet to read the warden's notes on the subject. With a reluctant hand, the Rev. Tom flipped through the papers looking for the report. As he did so, his eyes accidentally rose a little, and caught sight of himself in the study mirror, framed between the rails of cassocks and robes that he seldom wore. He looked at the reflection and wondered what Sarah would think if she saw him now. Handsome? Possibly. Dishevelled? Certainly. In need of a shower and a change of clothes? Yep.
There was a knock at the door. The Reverend Tom lowered his head and interested himself in the topmost paper. "Come in!" he called, in an otherwise-engaged sort of voice.
"Tom—" The church warden, Elizabeth Price, put her head round the door. "The top workman wants to see you – if you're not too busy. Are you too busy, Tom?"
"Far too busy," said the Reverend Tom. "I'll be right with him. What's it about this time?"
"Not sure. They've found something. Won't tell me what, but they've all stopped work, so you'd better come and look."
"More tea all round, no doubt. OK, let's see what it is then."
They took the long route through the nave, since the side-door was blocked with the workmen's things. St Wyndham's church was never warm, but Tom could still sense the mid-afternoon heat pressing down remorselessly from outside. Strong cones of stained-glass sunlight speared down from the windows every ten strides along, filled with silent spirals of wandering dust. A line of poetry came ridiculously into Tom's head. He said,
"Love bade me welcome: yet my soul drew back, Guiltie of dust and sinne, -only it's dust and skin in this place. It's a wonder we don't choke."
There was an old woman in the church, sitting in the final row of chairs before the doors. Tom eyed her cautiously as he approached. He had been at St Wyndham's three months; it had taken him less than three days to recognise and dislike Mrs Gabriel. As ever, she wore her thick red shawl and a look of disapproval. Tom adopted a genial smile and made a forlorn attempt to pass her by.
"Are you not ashamed, vicar?" She was looking straight in front, towards the distant altar. Tom and Elizabeth halted.
"Ashamed, Mrs Gabriel? What about?" asked Tom, though he knew full well.
"Of the sacrilege going on in this ground." She did not turn to him. "It wouldn't have happened in the Reverend Staples' time, nor in the Reverend Morrison's."
"Mrs Gabriel, we've talked about this before," Tom began, but Elizabeth interrupted him.
"I'll just go ahead and tell Mr Purdew you're on your way," she said, and disappeared hastily through the West Door. Tom looked after her enviously.
"The churchyard is a holy ground," went on Mrs Gabriel, still gazing straight before her. "Though I don't expect that word to mean much to you, young man. People had expectations when they were laid there, no matter how long ago. Now you're digging them up."
"Mrs Gabriel," said Tom, shifting from one foot to the other, "there really is no need to be concerned. I've told you about this already. The church foundations are slipping a little on the north side. It's nothing dangerous at present, but we must shore them up. That's why the men are digging here. And because no one was buried on the north side in the old days, there's very little chance of disturbing anybody's rest.
He took a deep breath, wondering if he'd won. For the first time, Mrs Gabriel turned her head towards him. "I still say—" she began, but Tom had had enough.
"I'm sorry, Mrs Gabriel, but I must fly. I've a meeting very shortly. See you on Sunday, I hope." Tom gave a brisk smile and made off, leaving the old lady sitting alone in the church. As he opened the door, he heard her final sally.
"I don't know, vicar. You'll find an excuse to dig me up when I'm gone."
I think there's very little chance of that, Mrs G, thought Tom, as he went outside.
Fordrace parish churchyard stretched in an unbroken ring right around St Wyndham's, and was itself surrounded by an ancient stone wall. On three sides of the church, the grounds were wide and sunny, and filled with a higgledy-piggledy crop of well-tended gravestones. But to the north of St Wyndham's was a narrow strip of grass cast in almost permanent shadow. A path ran through it, close to the side of the church, and one of the four old yew trees grew stunted beside the wall. There were no gravestones here, and no evidence that it had ever been used for that purpose, in all Fordrace's long and quiet history. It was a slightly cheerless spot, and if it weren't for the church's sagging foundations, Tom would have been quite happy to leave the place undisturbed.
Tom walked around the corner and out of the searing heat, which in all directions drained the colour from the yellow-red rooftops of the village and the blue-green bulk of the Wirrim. The shadowy side of the churchyard was littered with piles of earth and scattered work tools, and the red-skinned workmen sat on the stone wall in the fringes of the shade, stretching their legs out into the sunlight and taking great gulps from Cokes and Fantas. Elizabeth and the foreman were standing beside the trench. It ran along almost the entire length of the church wall, practically obliterating the path, and ending under the green-black leaves of the yew.
Tom came over to them, smiling at the workmen on the wall. One of them grinned back.
"Hoy there, vicar. We've got a real wonder for you this time!"
"Found a skeleton, Jack?"
"Better than that, vicar. You'll wet yourself, you will."
"Not a chance. Found something good, Mr Purdew?"
The foreman was a thin man with a face turned to leather by long years in all climates. He reminded Tom of the Bog Man he had seen in the British Museum before he came to Fordrace. There was the same sad resignation about Mr Purdew, who at that moment was staring doubtfully into the trench with a cigarette hanging almost vertically from his lip. Elizabeth looked up at Tom, her eyes gleaming.
"Depends how you mean good," Mr Purdew said. "It'll be a devil to shift, that's certain."
"Just look at this, Tom!" Elizabeth was grinning with excitement. "We'll all be in the papers tomorrow!"
Tom climbed a ridge of dirt to the edge of the trench and looked.
"Good Lord," he said.
At the bottom of the trench was a large stone cross. Still caked in orange clay, it lay at an angle to the trench walls, its shaft extending away from the yew tree, and with its left arm still buried in the earth.
"I think it's very old," said Elizabeth breathlessly.
Tom nodded. It was ancient. You could tell by the shape. It was not like the simple Latin cross, with the three short arms and one extended out into the shaft. It had a circle as well, surrounding the centre, and joining each of the four arms with arcs of stone shaped like the handles of giant cups. That style was called the Celtic cross, though Tom had a vague idea that it wasn't just the Celts who used it. Moreover the whole front of the cross seemed carved with ornate patterns, caked with clay, and impossible to make out.
"Good heavens," said Tom, at last. "Mr Purdew, this is a marvellous find."
"Aye, I suppose you'll be wanting us to shift it out of there, will you?" Mr Purdew flicked ash from the end of the cigarette with a quick purse of the lips.
"Well, we must call the archaeological authorities over at all speed," said Tom. "But yes, with their blessing, we must get it out."
"And I suppose you'll be wanting us to extend the trench and all," continued Mr Purdew, gloomily running a hand through lean hair.
"To uncover the rest of it; yes, of course. Hold on, I've got to have a closer look." Tom crouched on the edge of the trench and swung himself in, landing heavily on the packed earth beside the buried cross. Taking his handkerchief from his pocket, he dabbed eagerly at some of the encrustations of clay on the centre of the cross. Before long his voice rose out of the trench.
"It might be Celtic, or Anglo-Saxon; I don't think the Vikings came this far west, did they, Elizabeth?"
"No way near," she replied. "What do they look like, Tom?"
"Long and sinewy carvings. In the centre at any rate. They wind all over each other. It might be an animal of some kind. Yes! There's a claw."
"Sounds Anglo-Saxon to me. What do you think, Mr Purdew?"
"I think it's going to be the devil to shift it. Can the lads go home, vicar, if you're going to be down there all afternoon?"
"Mr Purdew, I'm sorry! I'll leave you to it. We've got to have this out today!" The Rev. Tom thrust his claggy handkerchief back into his pocket and straightened up. Then he gave an oath. "Oh damn! I think one of the arms might be off. The one that's still in the clay. I can see a ragged edge just here." He ran his finger between the hard wall of the trench and the stone. "Yes. Damn."
"It's bound to be down there," said Elizabeth. "Come on up, Tom. Let's get the museum on the phone."
Tom left the cross reluctantly and walked back along the trench to the for end, where a steep ramp led back to ground level. His heart was dancing now. Let Mrs Gabriel chatter how she would – nothing like this had ever happened in the Reverend Staples' time, nor the Reverend Morrison's. It was Tom Aubrey, new vicar of Fordrace, who had dug here – and if this didn't wake the village up a little, he'd be very much surprised.