Chaos Quest

For what seemed like eternity she hung in the void between the stars, blown by the winds of time and space, fire sparking around her. In the space of a thought, stars were born and died, galaxies spun, huge clouds of stellar dust formed, toppled and reformed. She drifted on the currents of space, always edging imperceptibly closer to the tiny, insistent voices that called to her. An age passed for her in the time it took for a drop of water to fall from a leaf tip.

The voices caught at her now, a frail net of shining, unbreakable sound. She twisted this way and that, but could not escape it. It drew her inexorably towards a tiny world, that hung like a pearl against the endless velvet night.

Nearer and nearer she was pulled, struggling, until she hurtled down, fiery as a meteor, down into darkness and was extinguished.

In the Underworld, The Great Ones watched the sky. The lights that people sometimes called the Dancers flamed across the night, blue and green and finally, red.

“It is done,” said the Queen of Darkness.

The lights – the Northern Lights – burned in
Edinburgh too, even though it was May and much too late in the year. A great display, people said, so rare at any time of year, never mind now. A few of the old ones remembered the ancient stories that foretold disaster, but no one believed such things nowadays, not here.

In the Wildwood, Morgan the Hunter stooped to drink from a stream. The endless woodland summer stretched off in all directions, seemingly limitless. Against it, still as he was, he could scarcely be seen: brown hair and tanned skin, eyes the colour of beech leaves, brown clothes, bow the colour of birch bark.

The sounds of the wood were all around, the rustlings and whispering of the trees, the calling of birds, water dripping from Morgan’s hand, the drone of bees and small insects.

All sound ceased.

Morgan looked up sharply, hair pricking on the back of his neck. There was a moment of poised silence, as though the world held its breath and then chaos broke loose in the wood, birds exploding from the boughs, rabbits, mice and weasels running together in fear, the black deer of the deep wood bursting from the trees, eyes wide in terror. Morgan watched them run until they were lost to sight among the trees and the Wildwood quietened around him once more.

He half expected the Summons and it came almost immediately.

He stepped into the Empty Place between worlds and times and felt the presences gathered there already. Since they would not speak, he broke the silence.

“What has happened? All the creatures of the wood felt something. What was it?”

“
The Stardreamer has been called down
.”

“The Stardreamer? I thought that was nothing more than a tale.”

“
You should know the truth of tales, Morgan the Hunter
.”

He made no answer.

“
The Stardreamer must be found and brought to the Heart of the Earth
.”

“But how? He cannot be commanded.”

“
No, but he can be persuaded, or tricked, or trapped
.”

“Tricked?”

“
Yes. But first he must be found. You are a hunter. Use your skill to track him down
.”

Gordon Syme looked at the open suitcase on the bed, then at the towering pile of clothes beside it. The case would fit into the pile right enough, but it wasn’t going to work the other way.

He sighed and started to cull the clothes. He was no good at packing, not enough practice probably. This was the first proper holiday he’d have had in, what, five years? And even now it was his sister in Spain who’d arranged the whole thing for him.

“Come and stay in May before the weather gets too hot,” she’d said. “You can afford it now you don’t have
to pay rent on a flat. I’d enjoy the company, you and Joe can have a few rounds of golf and the kids would love having their favourite uncle around for a while.”

She’d been very persuasive, but then he’d wanted to be persuaded. Now all he had to do was pack. He managed to shut the case at the third attempt and lugged it downstairs ready for an early start in the morning. His clubs were already there. He looked hard at them and took out his second-best putter and propped it against the wall beside the table in the hall. What was he thinking, taking two putters?

Before he went to bed he went round all the rooms, checking that windows were locked and everything was where it should be. He wasn’t quite sure why he bothered. He’d got used to the weird way the house behaved. That was how he thought of it now, as a sort of living thing. Windows that he left locked when he went out would be open when he came in and objects seemed to wander between rooms. But the really strange thing was that far from finding this scary, it didn’t even seem surprising. He knew this was nothing to do with ghosts or poltergeists; it was something to do with time and with John Flowerdew, who had left him, albeit temporarily, this house.

Then there were the visitors. People turned up on his doorstep every so often, calling him by name, explaining that they had known John Flowerdew. They’d stay for a few hours, or a night, then leave. Or sometimes they wouldn’t leave, they’d just be … gone. At first, he used to look for them, convinced they must be in the house somewhere, but even the strangest things could become
routine and now he didn’t bother. He just let them in, like it had said he was to do in Mr Flowerdew’s will.

It was nearly six weeks since he’d last had one of these visits and even longer since he’d seen Kate and David. Kate and David who had played such a vital part in the impossible events that had taken place eighteen months ago …

At first they’d come round often, as all three of them tried to come to terms with what had happened, but the visits had tailed off as real, ordinary life had taken hold of them again. They had keys to the house; that too had been specified in the will, not that their parents knew. “A place of refuge,” the old man had called it in the instructions “whenever one should become necessary.”

Occasionally he would come in and find one or the other of them in the kitchen, or more likely in the old man’s study, staring into space, thinking.

He’d hardly known them when the battle with the Lords of Chaos had taken place that autumn, but after going through that, there were bonds between them that no one else could ever understand.

Kate seemed to have come through it fine, but he found himself worrying, sometimes, about David. He’d made such a sacrifice for them to win. Gordon doubted that he could have done as well if he had been put to the test. Although most of the time David acted as though everything was fine, he had periods when melancholy gripped him and it was then that Gordon would find him huddled in one of the big chairs in the study under the eaves. He’d learned that it was best to leave him alone to deal with it – even Kate couldn’t lift
these moods from him. He was marked by what had happened, what he’d done.

Gordon roused himself from his reverie and locked the back door, then made himself a cup of coffee and went up to bed to read about Spanish golf courses.

David Fairbairn was walking with his mother in Princes Street Gardens, eating ice cream, while around them snow fell, soft and quiet as feathers. It was warm and they had taken off their shoes to cool their feet in the snow that was already lying.

“I’ve got a Geography test tomorrow,” he said to her, “and I don’t know the work.”

She smiled. “Don’t worry, the answers are all in your teeth.”

He nodded. Of course, he should have realised that himself. They strolled on, watching the children in the playground, then his mother looked up at the sky and stood as though she was listening and the ice cream dropped, un-noticed, from her hand. She looked back at David, her expression a mixture of fear and wonder.

“You must go now, she is coming.”

He woke up.

He lay quite still for a moment, trying to fall asleep and find his way back inside the dream. There had been a time of course when he’d dreamed of his mother every night – at least, it was easier to deal with if he thought of it as dreaming – but such dreams were infrequent now and he always hated it when one ended.

That had been a strange one. It had all made sense while he was asleep, of course, the ice cream and snow and the bare feet, but the last things his mother had said had seemed out of place, not part of that dream at all.

You must go now, she is coming
.

Who?

Kate Dalgliesh’s dreams that night were haunted by howling. She tossed in her sleep, her dreams fragmented, but though she could never see them, the cold and lonely voices of the wolves always pursued her. The night seemed to last an age, and she woke bad tempered and unrefreshed.

Why the wolves again? Why now? Surely all that had died with Mr Flowerdew?

She woke in darkness, suddenly, surrounded by the smell of the crushed leaves and stems she lay on. For a long time, she lay quite still, absorbing the sensations of the leaves against her bare skin and of the movements her body made as she breathed – both quite new to her. Eventually a different sensation, unpleasant this time, replaced that of touch.

Cold
, said the words in her head. She waited for the feeling to go, but instead it got stronger. She tried curling up tightly and for a little time, that helped, but the cold would not leave her alone.

Shelter
, said the words and now she understood. Shelter. Find shelter away from the cold.

She rolled over and got up. There was a shape of yellow light against the darkness a little way off.

Shelter.

She made for it on uncertain feet.

The house put words into her head. Door, it said as it closed out the world of cold and leaves and dark. She stood inside the door listening to the quiet breath of the walls and waiting for the words to settle themselves in her head. They flew at her from all around, whirling about her in confusing patterns that gradually resolved themselves into a kind of order and she knew that she stood in a kitchen – a place for preparing food – and that she needed food, but not yet; first she needed warmth … clothes.

She wandered slowly through the rooms on the ground floor, picking things up and putting them down again, knowledge of the house seeping into her. There was nothing that served her purpose on the ground floor, so she went upstairs.

It was dark up here and she put a hand out to the wall to help feel her way. Her fingers brushed something and suddenly there was light blossoming above her. She stared fascinated, then looked away, half-blinded, to see what her hands had touched and pressed it again. The light disappeared.

Press
. Light.

Press
. Dark.

PressPressPressPress
.LightDarkLightDark. Delighted, she played with it for a minute before moving
on to open a door.

A small room with shiny walls and silver-shiny metal and white tubs.
Bathroom
, said the house. She waited to understand.

Aaah… She twisted a piece of metal and water poured from it. She cupped her hands and drank, then moved around the room sniffing things, feeling them.

She saw herself in the mirror, but did not yet understand that it was her. She moved her head from side to side and so did the being in the mirror. She reached out a hand and placed it flat to the glass and so did the other, but they did not touch. She turned back to the water to drink again, but now it was hot, puffs of cloudy vapour billowing up. She listened to the words in her head for a moment, then found the thing to stop the water going away and climbed into the tub and watched it fill around her. In the hot water she blossomed like a flower, the tightness of bracing herself against the cold floating out into the vapour around her. She slid down under the water as the bath overflowed.

Kate turned her key in the lock. “Hello! Anyone home?”

“Be a surprise if there is,” said David, behind her.

As they had expected, there was no answer and they shut the door behind them, gathering up letters from the hall floor.

“Doesn’t look like there’s anything very interesting,” said Kate as they examined the envelopes. Gordon
seemed to lead a very dull postal life.

“What would you do if there was?” asked David.

“Dunno. Steam it open? That’s what they do in books.”

David shook his head. “Doesn’t work. I tried it once. Wanted to see my school report before Dad did, but all that happened was that the ink ran and I had to pretend I’d dropped it in a puddle.”

Kate grinned. “You never told me that before.”

“Well, I felt really stupid when it didn’t work. I think they must use different glue now.”

“What?”

“On envelopes. It’s always in old books that they steam them open. It probably only works on old envelopes.”

Kate put the letters down on the hall table and wandered off to the kitchen in search of a jug of water for the plants – their official reason for being here – and a biscuit for herself.

The room was a mess, a box of cereal spilled on the big wooden table, with a carton of milk standing open beside it.

“He must have slept in and had to leave in a hurry,” remarked David as he sniffed the milk and poured it down the sink, grimacing. Kate cleared up the cereal and found the biscuit tin, then they each filled a jug with water and began to check the plants. Although it was only a day and a half since Gordon had left, lots of the pots were dry and it took them nearly fifteen minutes to see to all the downstairs plants.

Upstairs there was more evidence of Gordon’s hasty departure: a light left on and a tumble of clothes on the
floor of his bedroom.

“He
really
must have been in a hurry,” said David, “You know how neat he usually is.”

The biggest mess awaited them in the bathroom, when they went in to get water for the upstairs plants. The floor was awash with water, the bath still full. The water in it was muddy, shreds of leaves and twig floating on the surface.