Circle of Stones (17 page)

Sylvia's lips were warm at my ear. “Keep close to me.”

I intended to. She seemed to see in the dark like a cat; she led me through the rubble of the site.

There was no sign of the watchman. And the others of the Oroboros must have come as secretly; there were no horses or carriages in the half-made street.

We hesitated at the entrance to the cellar.

Sylvia withdrew her hand. “Well. Are you sure you want to do this?”

“It's too late to go back.”

She looked at the dark doorway. “No it isn't.”

“You don't have to come.”

She seemed to smile sadly in the dark. “No, I don't.” But she didn't move away. Instead I heard her sigh, & she whispered, “Are we really saving him, Zac? Or betraying him?”

I had no answer to that. Instead I edged past her & slipped into the cellar.

It was bitterly cold, & as we went down, it seemed deeper than in the daylight, as if we descended through time. The bare walls exhaled a noxious damp; I saw my breath fog the air as I inched through the dark.

The pile of wood rose in front of us like a screen. I paused, listening anxiously for voices, but the shadows ahead were quiet. I dared not speak to Sylvia now; the room would have echoed our murmurs. And the foggy night had crept in after us so that I could barely see her.

I reached out & touched the wood. It was icy, the rough grain catching on my fingers. I eased myself to the end of it & peered around.

The arch & passageway were black.

Then, as I stared, a flame sputtered to life in the secret room. I saw nothing but the flame; it was carried down by an unseen hand & touched to a wick.

The flame steadied & grew. Yellow light flickered in the chamber. I saw the bare walls, lined with shadows. I saw the pool, faint steam rising from it. A bubble rose to the surface & plipped silently.

The flame moved. From candle to candle it went, until there was a ring of light about the water. Vast ripples of shadow slid down the walls. The darkness crackled & murmured.

They must be there already. The men of the Oroboros, the secret cult that I knew nothing of. Were they men of power in the city: lords, councilors, merchants, the great and the good? Was Ralph Alleyn among them, or Greye? Or were they antiquarians like Forrest, men who dreamed of druids & lost gods, who elaborated foolish theories in great books that no one read?

I could not see. I was at the very edge of the wooden screen & I still could not see.

Sylvia's grip was tight, but I pulled away. I stepped across to the archway, a brief instant in the light, crept into the passage & flattened myself against the stones there, my heart thudding in my chest.

And then I took a breath & peered into the chamber.

Bladud

B
eyond the world's orbit is darkness. We live in the light of the moon and the sun, of torches and candles. We fear what lies outside our warm ring.

But druids and wise men need to know. We need to know how the darkness sometimes creeps inside us, how we let it in. Fear, betrayal, dread. These are the mysteries of time, that snake that eats its own tail.

I remember I climbed my tower in the early morning and looked out from its top. I could see a long way, as far as the downs. I could see the day's beginning, and in the west, I could see the place it would end. Because the day is a circle too.

I fitted the wings to my back and I spread them wide.

My heart leaped with fear as the breeze nudged me. My feet were at the very edge of the stonework; the feathers all rustled and moved with the energy they held.

Once before I had been in a place between life and death.

Now I was there again.

I leaped into the blue sky. I screamed.

Sulis

T
here was a passageway, and at its end, a chamber.

In the chamber was nothing but some sort of circular feature in the center.

The walls were bare stone. Simon said, “Well. No treasure, then.”

They stood, looking around.

Sulis was disappointed, as if she had expected some message from Forrest here, some object left by him. The roof was dim above her; she flashed the light over it and they saw the carefully corbelled rings of stone.

“What was it for?” Josh muttered.

“Good question.” Simon went out for the camera and carried it in. “There's nothing to tell us.”

Their voices rang as if they were deep inside a shaft, or as if the great facade above the ground contained them, even down here. Sulis crouched down over the central circle.

“There's this. It's a pool. Or it was.” Even now the earth looked damp. She put her hand down and felt it; there was a faint but real warmth, and her fingers sank into a soft mud studded with tiny gritty stones.

Simon bent and stared. “A hot spring? That's quite remarkable.”

She felt the warmth in her fingertips. Something made her dig deeper; she scraped her fingers deep, leaving five gouges that slowly filled, as she watched, with water that seeped up from the depths of the earth.

“Forrest must have known it was here.” Simon was excited now. “Perhaps it was the reason he even chose the site for his Circus. I'm sure no one else knows anything about this.” He glanced around. “We should really get some geofizz down here, you know. There could be all sorts of stuff underneath.” He shone the flashlight into the darkness; the light ghosted over something pale.

“There,” Josh said. “What's that?”

The flashlight refocused, searching. Sulis turned hers that way too. Both beams met, and converged, and stopped.

They lit a square stone. It stood by itself, placed deliberately on the bare floor.

It had been smoothed and on its side an image was carved, unweathered, still fresh from the workmen's chisels. Simon drew in a deep breath.

Then he looked at Sulis.

She was still, unable to move.

“What is it?” Josh muttered.

“A metope.” Simon's voice was low. “An extra one, it seems. One they didn't use on the Circus.”

Sulis stepped forward. She brought the flashlight beam up close to the image, crouched down in front of it, ran the light over its crumbling edges, its sharp smooth surface.

It showed a winged figure, arms wide, plunging earthward.

“Icarus,” Josh said.

Simon shrugged. “More probably Bladud. Forrest was fascinated with the local legend. Some say he even imagined himself to be Bladud, in some strange way. Bladud made himself wings. He threw himself off some temple and tried to fly.”

Sulis touched the stone. She was closer to it than they were. Her eyes were near to the grainy golden stone, the stone of the city, hacked from the downs in Ralph Alleyn's quarry, hauled here and cut into this image. She could see that the winged figure had long hair.

Was it a man? Or was it a girl?

Josh was next to her. He was saying, “Are you okay, Sulis?”

She couldn't answer him. Instead she said, “What happened to him? The druid?”

Simon stood up, his knees creaking. “He was smashed to pieces, the book said.”

She had known that. And in the shadows behind her, in the dark spaces of the chamber, she knew someone else was standing. It wasn't Simon or Josh. She knew who it was.

The smell told her. It made her gasp with memory. The smell of dead leaves and soil, the smell of mustiness, or rain-soaked clothes. She turned her head slowly and saw him near the door, but he already had his back to her. He walked behind Josh and Simon and he made no sound and neither of them saw him go. He walked through the stone archway and didn't look back.

She scrambled up. “I've got to go. To get some air.”

“Sulis . . .”

She was past them, pushing past. She threw the flashlight to Josh and he grabbed it before it smashed; then she was running, through the chamber and under the arch, back into the cellar. A shadow moved before her, perhaps her own, perhaps another girl's, running and laughing, and in front of them both, the stranger paced.

As she ran out into the sunken courtyard, the night was a swirling fog, the moon a silver disk like a coin spun somewhere above it.

She raced up the steps and stopped halfway.

He was here.

He was fumbling at the door of the house—her house. As she froze in the dimness she saw how he pulled out a key and pushed it into the lock. Then he turned it, and the door opened and he went inside.

She stared at the closed black panels in disbelief.

Then she walked up the steps, and followed him in.

The hallway looked normal, though some of the fog seemed to have slid in. The man was running up the stairs, his tread heavy, his breath wheezy. He was already out of sight around the turn of the banister.

“Wait!” she hissed. “Don't go up there!”

Hannah was there, on her own.
Sulis raced up, as quietly as she could. Surely he was only just ahead! But as she turned each landing, the steps were always farther away, his shadow huge and distorted on the wall above, until she came to the door of the apartment and found it ajar.

She walked quietly down the corridor.

“Hannah?”

The living room was empty, the radio singing faintly to itself. From the bedroom she could just hear Hannah's voice, chatting on the phone. Maybe to Alison. Sulis looked around.

The small door to the attic stairs was open.

She ran up, and stopped outside her room.

A sound fluttered inside.

She waited, her forehead against the door, trying to identify it. A soft, crackling flutter. A thud.

She glanced back, hoping Josh had followed her, but there was no one there, and she knew she was quite alone in this, as she had been since that day she and Caitlin had run away and taken the bus to the park.

She turned the handle.

Her room was pale and quiet, the bed neatly made, her clothes in a pile on the chair. No sign anyone was here. But as she watched, a thud on the window made her jump, and then a vivid flash of darkness slashed past her, so that she gasped and jumped back, letting the door slam in her shock.

There was a bird in the room.

It flew in the corners of her eyes, in the slants of moonlight. It fluttered against the mirror, the cornice. It made the coat hanging on the door sway and fall.

It cracked against the window like a stone.

She had to let it out.

Carefully, terrified it would tangle in her hair and peck her eyes, she edged into the room, past the bed to the window. The latch was down; she forced it back and as she did so the bird squawked past her and she glimpsed it, a black, jagged flight, crazy with fear.

She grabbed the casement and tugged it open. Night air hit her face with coolness. She turned. “It's open. Go on. Go out.”

The window yawned wide. Suddenly the room was silent; she stood breathless, the night air blowing her hair in her eyes.

Was there a bird?

Because the room was silent and she was no longer sure about anything anymore.

And then like an arrow it burst from the mirror and slashed past her, out into the dark, and she saw it zigzag onto the wide roof.

She climbed after it, through the window to the base of the great stone acorn that rose into the sky. Below lay the Circus, quiet in the mist, its streetlamps hazy, the great trees at its center masses of uneasy shadow.

“Sulis.”

She turned.

He was sitting on the tiles of the roof. His coat was bunched up behind him like wings. He said, “Remember me, Sulis?”

Her heart thudded. She said, “You've found me.”

“I found you a long time ago. But you'd never listen to me, Sulis. You kept running away from me. Other people, other towns. It was only when you came here I knew I could speak to you. Because this is my place.”

His face was marked with leprosy and scars and dirt. His breath wheezed in the air. His eyes were brown and steady.

She said, “Josh doesn't believe in you. He says you weren't there—in the museum. Or in the street or the bus.”

“Maybe he's right.”

She shook her head. “Are you going to push me off, like you pushed Caitlin?”

Did he smile? “I didn't push Caitlin. You know that.”

“I saw you.” She turned and faced him, and the words built up in her and poured out. “You've always been in my life since that day. You were the one who ruined my life. It would have all been so different without you.”

“Caitlin ruined your life.”

She stared at him, amazed. “Caitlin was my friend.”

“Was she? Are you sure?”

Of course she was sure. And yet, as soon as he said it, she wasn't. It was as if he had focused a light on something never thought about, always assumed to be true.

“You remember.” He lifted a winged arm and pointed. “There she is.”

A ghost of a girl, standing with her back to Sulis, leaning precariously out over the parapet. The faintest outline on the night.

Sulis was cold. Her fingers were chilled.

“If she was your friend, call her. She'll turn around. You'll see her again.”

She couldn't move. Her lips were dry.

She didn't want to say the name. She didn't want to see the girl turn.
She didn't want to see her face
.

A voice said, “Sulis? Where are you?”

Hannah. And Josh. Instantly she ducked inside, ran to the door of her room and locked it, jamming the key around seconds before someone knocked on it, hard.

“Su? Are you all right?”

She stepped back, breathless. “I'm fine.”

“Simon said you ran off so fast . . .”

“I'm fine. I'm just . . . changing.”

“Josh is here.”

“I know. Five minutes. That's all.”

She backed away, climbed outside again. The mist was drifting like faint drizzle, blurring the lights.

He hadn't gone. His sleeves were pulled over his hands, as if he was cold. He turned his head, his eyes attentive as a jackdaw's. “Tell me about Caitlin,” he said.

She sat on the sill. “We played together. We built towers and houses.”

“Together?”

“Sort of together.”

“You mean you built them.”

“Yes.” Sulis nodded, remembering. “I built them. I always wanted to play with those blocks, but she didn't. She said they were boring. Once I built a really high tower, and she knocked it down.”

Why had she forgotten that? “And she made me walk home with her. Every night after school. It was miles out of my way, but she didn't care. She laughed.”

He looked out at the trees. “You could have said no.”

“I couldn't. She . . . was stronger than me. I did what she said.” Now she let herself remember, and the ghostly girl sitting on the parapet seemed to become more solid, the breeze stirring her hair. “When she was there I was smaller and quieter. I was her shadow.”

He preened a sudden feather into the dark. “We're all shadows.”

Sulis was stunned. What door had she unlocked to let this out? Because in all the years since Caitlin's death, she had never let herself think it.

“The running away?” he whispered.

“It was her idea. I didn't want to go. She dragged me.” She remembered Caitlin's hand on hers, the hissed fierce whisper.
Stay then. I don't care. I'll just never speak to you ever again
. The running after. The pleading. The words were hot, humiliating.

“Su!” Josh's voice. A rattle at the bedroom door. She ignored it.

The stranger slid down the roof toward her. His face was healing now, the leprosy fading as she looked. His eyes were brown and deep. He said, “But you went. On the bus. To the park.”

“Oh, but I cried. All the time. I wanted to go home. I was scared. She just kept saying,
Shut up. It'll be fine. We'll show them
 . . . I hated her.” She raised her eyes to his, and whispered it, a hiss of venom on the night.
“I hated Caitlin
.
”

“Su. Please open the door!”

She turned, but his voice stopped her. “And the stranger?”

She stood in the mist and her arms were around herself and she could say it. “No one came up the tower with us. Not that tramp. Not you. Not anyone.”

He smiled, satisfied.

“It was her idea to climb the tower. She pushed me up in front of her. We got to the top and she was laughing at me. Messing around. Saying she could do anything. She could fly. She sat on the edge, her feet dangling. I said,
Get up, come away from the edge.
I begged her. But she wouldn't.”

The ghost girl was real now. The pink quilted coat. The woolly hat. The two blond braids.