Land of Hope and Glory (13 page)

‘What is it?’ Sengar called.

‘Nothing,’ Jack replied. ‘Just making sure of something.’

‘Hurry up.’

Jack closed his eyes. This was it. He would have to use his power. There was no other way.

The water was cold and swift, making it difficult to stand still.

‘Your mind is like a rippling pool.’

He thought of the yantra and it glowed white before him.

He breathed deeply and concentrated on the air passing in and out of his nostrils. His heartbeat slowed, the centre of his forehead trembled, and then he noticed a trace of sattva.

He reached out to his surroundings with his mind. He was deep enough into the meditation now to sense he was in a medium stream. Good. He would have preferred a strong stream, but this was better than nothing.

Jhala had said to him, ‘To use a power you need three things: sattva, a yantra and your mind. Sattva is the fuel, the yantra provides the instructions and your mind is the engine. The more sattva available, the easier it will be for you to use your power.’

The yantra glimmered and wavered. But each time he brought it into focus, his mind’s eye zoomed in on the bottom right. He kept forcing his mind back to the full design. And finally he managed to hold the yantra steady. Now he just had to keep it there a little longer—

Then his mind snapped back to the bottom right.

He gasped and opened his eyes. His heart was racing, his breathing was shallow and his wound pulsed. How could he do this? He couldn’t even hold the yantra still.

‘What are you waiting for?’ Sengar called out from the bank.

Jack tried to ignore the Captain. He splashed some water on his face, then wiped it off with his sleeve.

Now. He had to do it now.

He closed his eyes again and focused on the yantra. But it kept sliding away. His mind wouldn’t rest.

Elizabeth flickered in his thoughts. He saw her in the cell, lank hair over her face, tears on her cheeks. And the question of why she had ever joined the mutiny kept pounding in his brain.

Was it because of a man she’d fallen for? Now that he thought about it, this seemed unlikely. When had Elizabeth ever done anything just because someone else told her to? Even as a child he’d called her ‘wilful’.

A wilful child who’d run away one night. He remembered this now . . .

He’d been sleeping in his cottage and something had made him sit up and stare into the dark. He panted. Something was wrong. But he couldn’t see or hear anything untoward. Katelin was shifting and sighing on the straw mattress beside him and he could see the vague bundle of his five-year-old daughter in the corner. There was nothing to worry about; he should get back to sleep.

The wind tugged at the shutters and crackled in the thatching.

Something about his sleeping daughter didn’t look right. He slipped across to the corner of the bedroom.

He stood dead still and the floor seemed to drop.

Elizabeth wasn’t there. The bundle he’d seen was just her bunched blanket.

‘Elizabeth!’ he shouted.

‘What is it?’ Katelin was already standing.

‘She’s not here.’

They were both outside in seconds, both calling out, although the wind ripped the words straight out of their throats.

‘You get help in the village,’ Jack shouted. ‘I’ll head to the forest.’

‘I’ll come with you.’ Katelin clung to his arm and her long blonde hair swam around her face.

‘No. We have to spread out. She could be anywhere.’

He pulled himself away and ran across the field towards the dark line of the trees. He glanced back once and saw Katelin’s pale form flitting along the road. The village was only a few hundred yards away and she would soon be there. Old Jones and the others would help her look for Elizabeth.

Halfway to the woods he realised it was pointless just charging around. He had no idea which direction Elizabeth had taken, or even when she’d left the cottage. He would have to track her, and the best way to do that at night would be to use his power.

He called her name one last time, hoping—

And then there it was, a faint cry that found its way through the whirling wind.

He called out again, and the tiny voice responded.

He ran in the direction of the voice, shouting her name over and over again, his throat cracking at the effort. He stumbled into the trees and battered his way through branches and leaves as if fighting off an enemy. He tripped on a tree root, fell, got up, fought on.

Her voice guided him through the speckled dark.

And finally he found her, huddled in a hollow, dirt on her face and scratches on her hands.

He scrambled down to her, took her in his arms. ‘What happened?’

‘I’m sorry I ran away.’

He searched her face. ‘Ran away? Why?’

‘I was looking for the Grail.’

‘The Grail?’

‘Like Sir Galahad.’

He half laughed, half choked at her reply. And he lifted her up and carried her out of the hollow and back through the moaning, uneasy trees.

And now, finally, these thoughts were slipping away and the night that Elizabeth disappeared was fading . . .

The yantra shimmered and he locked his thoughts on it.

He reached out again for the sattva about him, drawing it in, using it to feed his meditation. The scent of sattva grew stronger. A good sign. He was smelting, extracting sattva from his surroundings and processing it with his mind.

A tingle built in his spine. He became more aware of the slurping water, the hush of the wind, the faint heat of the sun.

The spirit realm was close now. God was close.

The yantra froze in his mind. He held it there . . . and then the design burst into blinding light. Spirit and matter, purusha and prakriti, touched.

Fire rushed up his spine and crackled over his scalp. A grand, vaulted cathedral sprang open in his mind.

He was in the centre of a vast and intricate lattice . . . interconnected.

6

J
ack lifted his eyelids. Everything was sharp and distinct. He could see every coil of water in great detail, every shaking leaf on every tree, every flying insect embroidering the air. At the same time it all seemed unreal, as if viewed from a great distance. He sensed the sharp pain in his chest and the pulse of the sattva-fire, but this was distant too. His body was not his own.

He stared beneath the surface of the river and spotted a misty, silver ribbon twisting in the water. He noticed another thread nearby, then another. He stood up straight and glanced around. Patches of gleaming mist were dotted under the water, along both riverbanks, across the ground beyond, everywhere.

Trails in sattva. The marks all living things left as they passed through the streams.

He’d done it.

But for how long? The pain in his chest was worsening, and although it seemed far away he could tell it was growing fierce. He had to move quickly.

He scanned the river and searched through the myriad trails of people and animals. The shining skeins were thick in the ford, but more sparse elsewhere. Soon he saw them – the bright, fresh tracks of more than fifty horses going upstream.

He looked over at Sengar. ‘This way.’

The party rode into the river, Sengar’s batman leading Jack’s mare. Jack strode through the water at their head, following the phosphorescent trail. By focusing his attention on the glowing strands, he forced all the other trails from his vision. The trees thickened on either bank and the river narrowed. Branches from both sides almost met overhead, forming a green-tinged tunnel. The smell of dank moss merged with the constant sweet scent of sattva.

After fifteen minutes, the trail forked. Most of the horses had veered over to the left bank – the same bank from which the rebels had entered the river – but around five had gone to the right. Jack paused. To the left he could see the silver glinting on the bank and disappearing into the trees. But there were no hoof prints, no broken twigs, no scratches in tree trunks, nothing to otherwise suggest the rebels had passed that way. He’d seen this before – the trail had been hidden using a power. And one of the few people who possessed this power was William. It was a skill that, like Jack’s ability, could not even be learnt by the siddhas.

Jack glanced at the right bank and saw clear hoof prints leaving the river and passing over a muddy beach.

Sengar followed Jack’s gaze. ‘This way?’

‘Wait,’ Jack said.

He pushed his way through the water and stepped, legs dripping, on to the beach. He studied the tracks of the five horses. The sattva trail wormed and shifted just above ground level and led off into the brush. But there was something strange about the hoof prints. He bent and stuck his finger into the ground – the mud was soft and his finger slid in easily. He looked again at the hoof prints. The impressions weren’t nearly as deep as he would have expected. The horses hadn’t been carrying riders.

He stepped back into the water. It was an old trick, sending a few riderless horses in one direction as a decoy while the main party went the opposite way. But why? William knew all about Jack’s power: the regiment had relied on it often to pursue its enemies. So why would William use his power to hide the tracks when he knew Jack could see the sattva trail anyway?

The answer came to him with the same heightened clarity with which he viewed his surroundings. William was giving him a chance. Jack could easily tell the others that the trail led to the right. No one would doubt him. He could then follow the roaming horses and eventually claim to have lost the trail altogether.

But it was more than just a chance – it was also a test. If Jack led the soldiers along the false trail, then William would know that Jack was still a friend, perhaps held captive by the Rajthanans. But if Jack followed the real trail then William would know that his old friend, for whatever reason, had become an enemy.

‘What’s the problem?’ Sengar snapped. ‘Let’s get after them.’

Jack looked up at the Captain sitting astride his horse, moustache rolling. It would be so easy, almost a pleasure, to lead Sengar along the false trail. He was breathing heavily now. William had given him a way out – he had to take it.

But then he thought of Elizabeth in the cell and the pardon sitting in the top drawer of Jhala’s desk. He couldn’t abandon his daughter.

‘This way.’ He walked over to the left bank and the true trail.

‘There’s nothing that way, sir,’ Kansal said to Sengar in Rajthani.

‘He knows what he’s doing,’ Sengar replied. ‘He’d better, at any rate.’

Jack followed the quicksilver trail out of the water and through the undergrowth. The ribbons danced and rippled a few feet above the ground. He climbed back on to his horse and picked his way between the trees.

They passed out of the medium stream and Jack sensed the sattva thin to a weak residue. He had to scratch about with his mind to find something to smelt, and the effort took its toll. From far away, he noticed he was shivering and the breath was being squeezed from his lungs. His legs and arms grew heavy and he slumped in the saddle. How long could he keep going?

After around ten minutes he saw hoof prints once again, and other signs that the rebels had passed that way – snapped twigs and a torn spiderweb. The area concealed by William’s power had come to an end. He exhaled and let himself slip out of the trance. Immediately, pain thumped him in the chest and he leant forward and gasped for breath.

‘What’s the problem now?’ Sengar asked.

Jack gulped down air and the pain eased. Finally he was able to say, ‘Nothing.’

Sengar’s moustache stiffened, but he didn’t reply.

Jack took a swig of water, forced himself to sit upright and tried to ignore the stabbing sensation in his chest. He shook the reins and the horse eased into a trot. His surroundings were now dull and blurry; the shining trail had disappeared, but the tracks in the material world were easy enough to follow.

They came out of the woods and on to a stretch of flat ground. The trail led to a steep slope and they zigzagged up, the horses slipping and sliding in places, whinnying in complaint. After half an hour they reached the summit, by which time Jack was exhausted again.

The sun weighed on the exposed hill. He paused for a moment, drank some more water, blinked and shook his head to clear his thoughts.

‘Which way now?’ Sengar asked.

‘Hold on,’ Jack said.

He circled about the hilltop on his mare and studied the ground, finding a confused mosaic of hoof prints, all in varying states of dryness. Some marks were light-coloured and brittle, at least two hours old. Others were darker and more moist, clearly more recent.

He found the point where the churned earth of the tracks led down the far side of the hill towards a forested plateau. The rebels had left only one hour earlier, at the most.

He looked back the way they’d come. He had a clear view of the trees with the glinting river twisting between them. He could make out the ford and the plains beyond. Slowly he pieced together the rebels’ movements – it all made sense. William had led his men down to the river, set up the decoy, and then taken them up the hill. From the summit he must have waited for an hour to see whether Jack would follow the true trail.