The Bone Quill (28 page)

Matt suddenly felt incredibly homesick – not just for his sister, but for Zach, Simon, his grandpa, his mum and his dad.
His dad.

‘I’ve come from very far away.’

Solon wrinkled his nose. ‘Well, you should clean yourself up. You stink of manure.’

Laughing, Carik indicated a small water trough outside the stable. Humiliation piled on top of guilt as Matt silently washed the manure from his sleeve and combed some of the stink from his hair with his fingers.

A distant bell pealed out through the still morning air.

‘Lauds – morning prayers,’ said Solon. ‘If the rebellion has succeeded, the rebels and this prophet will be gathering in the monastery.’ He swept his blond hair into a ponytail and tied it with a strip of leather. ‘I need to be sure that they have not harmed Brother Renard. If they’ve put him to sleep, he’ll be safe, but if they’ve taken him ... his powers will be far too easy to control.’ He touched Carik’s shoulder. ‘You stay here with this boy.’

Matt bristled. He didn’t like the way Solon said ‘boy’.

‘Wait!’ he said as Solon headed into the woods. ‘I’ll come with you.’

‘No,’ said Solon without turning round. ‘I don’t trust you.’

‘Then why are you leaving me here with her?’ said Matt, his anger rising. ‘I could easily take her hostage or something.’

‘I am capable of protecting myself,’ said Carik sharply.

‘I do not want you near the monastery,’ Solon said.

‘I appreciate that you gave me shelter, but I don’t care about what
you
want,’ said Matt. ‘I need to know what happened to my mum and my sister, and I’ve already wasted enough time. So I’m coming with you whether you like it or not.’

S
olon
stopped and stared.

‘Your sister? The girl with the stripe in her hair was your sister?’

‘Yes! Have you seen her?’

‘I met her, with the Abbot. She and her—your mother came through the tapestry. Their sudden appearance was ... a shock.’

Matt’s eyes were burning with anger. ‘I need to know where they are!’

His distress was drumming loudly in Solon’s mind.

‘I am sorry,’ Solon said, hesitating.

‘Sorry for what? You better not have hurt them.’ Matt yanked the sword from Solon’s hand and tossed it across the clearing. Then he grabbed Solon’s shoulders as if he could shake the answer from him.

Solon jerked himself from Matt’s grasp. The boy lunged at his back instead. Solon heard him coming, side-stepping just in time. The action only served to enrage Matt more.

‘I am sorry because your sister and your mother were caught in a fire that burned up the hillside last evening,’ said Solon, backing away. ‘We saw the flames engulf the clearing.’

‘You’re lying!’

‘We’re not,’ said Carik.

‘They left the Abbot’s tower to meet up with others,’ said Solon. ‘After the Abbot discovered the bone quill was gone and poor Brother Cornelius had been butchered.’

‘Your sister was trapped by one of the hellhounds,’ said Carik softly. ‘There was nothing we could do before the flames closed in on her.’

‘You were there and you didn’t help her!’ screamed Matt, shoving Solon back into the trunk of a tree. ‘And my mother? You—’

Solon grabbed a nearby slop pail and swung it against Matt’s head to defend himself. Matt saw the swing coming but not soon enough to duck, and the rim of the bucket sliced across his forehead, cutting it.

Rage and blood blinded Matt. All the terror and shame and fury he’d been feeling exploded through his fists and his feet. He threw himself at Solon, pummelling him ferociously.

Carik tried to get between them, but she timed her interference badly. A direct kick to the back of her knees brought her down. Solon’s eyes widened in fury, and he lunged at Matt, the two of them rolling across the dirt.

Carik got quickly to her feet and grabbed Matt’s hair, yanking him off Solon. ‘Stop!’ she commanded, struggling to keep Matt’s arms and fists under control with her own weakened arm.

Breathless and aching, Matt pushed Carik away. He wiped blood and tears from his eyes with his sleeve, adrenalin churning in his stomach. Then he rolled on to his side and vomited. When he sat up, guilt and heartbreak overwhelmed him.

He had been too early, and now he was too late.

Carik tore some strips from a turnip sack and dunked them into the water trough, passing Matt and Solon each two wet strips.

‘Clean up your wounds,’ she said angrily. Then she headed over to the pigsty, where she scooped up a handful of mud and brought the thick muck over to the boys.

Matt cleaned his face as best he could with the thin, coarse strips. When the open wound was visible above his eye, Carik slathered mud on top of it. Matt tried to pull away. She glared. He stopped.

‘Be still,’ she said. ‘It’ll dry in the sun and keep the wound closed.’

Solon packed his nostrils with leaves to staunch the bleeding, as Carik wiped mud across the slice on his cheek. ‘We’ll try to find out what happened to them,’ he said in a low voice. ‘But if they survived the hellhounds, I don’t think they could possibly have survived the fire.’

After a beat, he leaned towards Matt and offered him his hand.

Matt stared at Solon’s outstretched palm, his face blood-streaked and wet with tears.

‘If you’re going to find your father and stop this rebellion,’ said Solon, ‘then you’re going to need our help.’

‘How do you know we’re talking about my father?’ Matt whispered.

‘Because you said that the stranger who has come to our island is a Guardian,’ explained Solon, ‘and you hesitated before telling us that your father is a Guardian, too. We may be peasants, but we’re not stupid.’

Matt nodded, accepting Solon’s hand unsteadily. ‘I’m sorry I hurt you,’ he mumbled. ‘And thanks for the offer. But I think I need to do this on my own. After all, my dad is the only family I have left.’

Auchinmurn Isle

Middle Ages

The Night Before

S
andie
had lost her footing while scrambling to Em’s defence against the slobbering hellhound, and was tumbling head over heels back down the hillside. Even her dress snagging on bramble bushes was doing nothing to stop her freefall.

‘Em!’ she screamed.

In one ungainly roll through a thorny briar, Sandie slowed enough to see a woman in a modern orange safety vest running into the smoking blaze. Before disappearing behind the curtain of smoke, the woman turned and smiled at Sandie.

Sandie couldn’t believe what she was seeing. How was that possible?

But then she was off again, slipping out of the briar, her head bouncing off a tree root. She lunged and caught the end of the root just as the rest of her body swung off the edge of the overhang.

Her hands were bleeding, and she had cuts across her arms and legs. Her dress was torn and filthy. Scrambling to get a better grip on the overhang, her legs bicycled against the rocks. It was a long drop to the beach. Sandie dolphin-kicked furiously, trying to heave herself up on to solid ground, but the tree root was not having it. As if in slow motion, it lifted from the soil. Her arms flailing in the air, Sandie dropped off the edge.

The
woman in the safety vest marched into the smouldering haze in time to see a monk in an ornate purple cassock crouching down to lift a sleeping Em into his arms.

‘Stop right there and leave the wean alone,’ Jeannie demanded, her hands on her ample hips, ‘before we both do something we might regret.’

Malcolm froze at the sight of the Abbey’s housekeeper standing amid the ash and debris of Em’s fears. He had spent his entire life listening to Jeannie. She’d been like a mother to him, and he wished he was confronting anyone but her.

Taking a step back, he dropped his hood to reveal the grotesque skeletal shell of his face.

Jeannie didn’t flinch. Her stance remained resolute, her grey hair recently shampooed and set, her short leather boots tight on her thick ankles and her best wool coat peeping out from underneath the safety vest. It was as if she’d left the house to go to church, instead of travelling through time to meet a monster.

‘You don’t scare me, Malcolm Calder,’ she said. ‘I’m taking the lass and we’re going home. All I ask is ye think about what you’re doing here, and let us bring you home, too. This isn’t right and you know it. You’ll fracture history and change everything.’

Malcolm burst out laughing. The old lady was making demands on him? On Malcolm Calder, who was destined to be so much more than a Guardian and a father? He flipped the cowl of his robe back up over his head, concealing his ruined face beneath its folds again.

‘You always did see the best in all of us, didn’t you, Jeannie?’

‘It’s still in there, son,’ she said, her voice and her stance softening. ‘Come home, why don’t you? For the sake of your weans and your poor dad.’

‘One day, Jeannie, you’ll realize there’s a demon in all of us,’ said Malcolm. ‘I’m simply choosing to let mine free.’

He turned back towards his daughter. But before he could reach down and pick her up, the peryton crashed through the tops of the trees and swooped down. With a toss of its head, it flung Em up from the leaves and on to its back and flew out over the blackened treetops, down to the beach – and out of sight.

Malcolm howled in rage. ‘You cannot stop me, Jeannie! No one can!
I am unbound!
I found the bone quill and took it and I hold it here, against my heart.’ He struck at a leather pouch around his neck. ‘My own son released me from the purgatory into which my father and my wife had bound me.’ He took a step towards Jeannie. ‘I have killed, controlled,
ruled
the superstitious fools on this island and when I find
The Book of Beasts
, Hollow Earth, the world and the future will all be mine!’

Faster than Jeannie could have believed possible, he vanished into the smouldering woods, the firelight glinting on the embroidered black peryton of his robes.

Jeannie did not give chase. Instead, she kneeled down and began to brush away the layer of ash covering the ground, before scrabbling at the soil with her fingers, burrowing her hands deep into the earth.

Then she closed her eyes and imagined.