The Ghost Roads (Ring of Five) (25 page)

“Got it!” Toxique cried. He handed a glass to Vandra with shaking hands. Vandra gulped down the foul-tasting liquid. They waited. Nothing. Toxique watched nervously. Vandra’s system was different from those of ordinary mortals. Perhaps the poison would react differently. She slipped off her chair and fell to the floor, but when she lifted her head and spoke, her voice was clear.

“It’s all right, make more. It’s working!”

Toxique turned back to his instruments. Vandra got to her feet shakily. Something was wrong. The smoke and smell of burning was getting stronger. She stepped outside, and looked up, appalled. Flames leapt from the top windows of the house, and heavy black smoke rolled from the lower floors.

“Les, Dixie,” she whispered. She ran back into the kitchen.

“Toxique, the place is on fire!”

“Then we’d better work fast,” Toxique said.

“What about Les and Dixie?”

“They can look after themselves. They’ll have to.”

As Toxique worked, Vandra used a spoon to drip the antidote into the birds’ beaks. As soon as she had finished, she brought them outside and carried them as far away from the house as possible, then turned to look at the dovecot in despair. Those birds were too high up and too sick to help. She started to work on the ones on the ground, trying to ignore the steady roar of the fire and the heat on her back.

L
es and Dixie had reached the long, low structure in the middle of the roof. Although the rest of the building was old, this looked new, and the heavy lock on the door was bright and oiled. It took Les precious minutes to pick it. They pushed it open.

There was nothing old about the contents of the building either. There were several high-powered telescopes set in alcoves along one wall. There was listening and recording equipment, banks of it, with rows of dials and switches. There were directional microphones and infrared body heat detectors.

Dixie opened a cupboard. It was lined with tapes, each one with a date and a record of its contents written in bold letters on its cover. She opened another cupboard—the same.

“Whoever uses this place has been spying on Wilsons for decades,” she said. “Look, here are photos of Danny arriving at the place. Here’s us sneaking into the Butts. And this is the time we went to Tarnstone.”

“Wait a second,” she said, picking up a tape from the windowsill. “This one says it shows us coming up through Ravensdale and finding the sick ravens. That’s only about an hour ago!”

“Which means that whoever was recording from here has only just left,” Les said. He stroked his chin. “Dixie, when you looked out the window did you notice anything strange?”

“Like what?”

“Well, the Hall of Memory was on fire, but there was still only smoke coming from the floor below us.”

“So?”

“The fire started in the room below us. It should have spread slowly downward. There were two fires. Somebody started one in the Hall of Memories. Someone wanted to get rid of us by setting the building on fire.”

Dixie looked about, alarmed.

“They’re not here, Dixie, they had to be below us. Whoever it was set the fire and ran.”

“Les, have you noticed? The floor is starting to get warm. And there’s a bit of smoke coming up through it.…” Dixie’s voice was tremulous. Les put his arm around her.

“There’s nothing in here we can make a parachute out of, is there?” she said. Les shook his head.

“Maybe we should go outside,” he said gently.

“Okay.”

Holding hands, Les and Dixie walked out onto the roof. Flame had burst through here and there. The air was full of smoke, and under their feet they could feel the very fabric of the building trembling as the fire devoured it.

“We should go to the edge of the roof,” Les said. “I think there’s a bit more air there.”

“We’re not going to get off this roof, Les, are we?” Dixie said.

“Maybe you can try disappearing,” Les said.

“It’s too far to the ground. I’d fall and kill myself. Besides, that would leave you on your own, and I’m not going to do that.”

Still holding hands, they walked to the edge of the roof. From below came the sound of crashing timber, and a great fountain of sparks burst from the front of the building, cascading down into the night.

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it, Les,” Dixie said. “I mean, not just the sparks, but the whole world.”

“It is, Dixie,” Les agreed. “We’ll just sit down here for a while, will we? There’s a little bit of a breeze.”

“It is getting hot,” Dixie said. They sat down. Below them the fire roared like a great ravening beast. Someone looking from the ground would have seen them sitting on the parapet, holding hands and chatting, before a huge billow of smoke blew across the roof and they were seen no more.

THE BOATMAN

T
he ravens knew what was happening at the dovecot, but they flew fast and true in the opposite direction. The wild birds had brought them information of troops massing at the ports, and migratory fowl had reported armies on the move. Even more disturbingly, there were reports of activity at remote nuclear bases in the Arctic. Squadrons of Seraphim were in the air, staying high, it was true, but making no real attempt to conceal themselves.

Nothing about the ravens’ flight showed their agony at heading directly away from their dying wives and children. They flew straight and true, converging on a single point, that point being the prime minister’s doomed residence. What was more, they contrived to arrive at exactly the right time to catch Danny when Conal dropped him, surmising that in Danny’s last moments despair would
cause him to unleash his power. Stunned, Danny looked up. He had fallen into a complex web of ropes woven from straw, the end of each rope held in the beak of a raven. There were hundreds of them, but they struggled to hold his weight. Conal and Longford, on seeing Danny fall, had taken off at great speed to avoid the power, but on seeing what had happened, Conal had made a great banking turn and was now speeding toward the net. The ravens and their straw ropes would never resist his awful strength. But as he bore down on them, another crowd of ravens flew into his face. With a cry of rage, he tried to drive through them. Once, twice, three times he tried, but they would not yield. They flew at him, driving him away. With a screech of rage and frustration, he turned and fled.

Danny could feel the power pulsing like electricity in every cell of his being. He longed to yield and yet he could not. He looked down. The prime minister stood on the pavement outside his residence, gazing skyward and resisting the attempts of his security men to bring him inside under cover. He could not tear his eyes away from the sight of his chief advisor being borne away on the back of a screeching, winged creature. A television camera was tilted upward. The ravens moved sideways so they wouldn’t be seen. Danny could feel that they were at the limits of their strength but that something drove them to hang on, something that was not lust for power or the urge to betray. Down the woven straw ropes he felt their love and despair. With a terrible effort he forced the power to subside. Now was not the time.

As if he no longer weighed as much, the ravens lifted
him higher into the air. The city was laid out beneath him, a place of air-raid shelters and guns, ready for war. The ravens bore him over it, and after ten minutes he found himself drifting slowly down. At first he didn’t recognize the destination—he hadn’t seen it from the sky before—but as the ground approached he saw graves, mausoleums and a little gate, barely visible, letting onto a busy road. The ground sped toward him now, an urgency communicating with him through the straw ropes. With a thump he landed. The ravens had brought him to the entrance to the ghost roads. He looked to the sky, thinking to somehow thank them, but they were already black specks in the distance.

Danny stood up, trying to get his bearings. He had to get back to Wilsons—the answer lay there. And it had to be soon. He had traveled the ghost roads with Beth and Nana, but they had driven, and even then it had taken days, or was it weeks? Time was different when you were on the ghost roads. He had to move faster than that.

He concentrated, gathering his thoughts. The power had subsided a little in him during the flight, but it was still there. The slightest thing could push him over the edge.

Wait a second
, the voice in his mind counseled.
Why are you leaving this whole world to Longford? It could be yours. You could rule it wisely
.

Danny tried to shut out the sly voice of Danny the Spy. In the end, he had to negotiate with it. I have to deal with Wilsons one way or another, he thought. When I’ve finished there, I’ll be back to my spy ways.

The voice fell silent, and as it did, something hit Danny hard from behind. The air was driven from his lungs and he fell to the ground. He twisted around violently and felt fingers like steel hawsers at his throat. He fought for breath and raised his hand to strike his attacker, feeling the power rise in him again. But the fingers loosened, the red mist faded, and he found himself staring into a pair of eyes, one blue and one brown.

“Nala!” He gasped. The Cherb boy released him and hauled him to his feet. Danny rubbed his throat as Nala watched him warily, not knowing what to expect, but Danny looked up and smiled.

“You know,” he said, “there’s something about seeing a friendly face. I never thought I’d say it to a Cherb, but I’m glad you’re here.”

Nala didn’t say anything, but Danny thought he was pleased. He grabbed Danny’s arm and pulled him to a nearby crypt. One wall had fallen in, and Danny hesitated in front of the dark maw, but Nala pulled him inside. The Cherb had obviously made his way out onto the street to look for food, and he had found it. Danny examined the cartons and boxes on the ground. There were prepacked sandwiches just in date, Swiss rolls and biscuits just out.

“Where did you find this?” Danny asked.

“Big steel case,” Nala said, and Danny guessed he had found them in a Dumpster behind a supermarket. But they were none the worse for that. Danny grabbed a BLT and wolfed it, washing it down with a bottle of
lemonade. Nala watched him approvingly as he followed it with a large chunk of Swiss roll.

“Thanks, Nala,” Danny said when he had finished. “I needed that. I can think better on a full stomach.”

The little graveyard was peaceful, the noise of the city beyond the walls almost inaudible. The picture of Longford soaring over the rooftops came into his head. Longford had wanted Danny to destroy the prime minister’s residence to provide a reason to go to war. But his plan had been foiled. Worse, he had been seen on the back of one of the winged creatures. His relationship with the government was damaged, probably irreparably. But men like Longford didn’t make do with just one plan. They had backups, maybe three or four of them. What would Longford do? If he couldn’t trick or provoke Danny into using his power, what else would he do?

Coldly Danny allowed himself to enter the evil part of his mind and unleashed the spy, the schemer.
If it were me, I would capture someone you loved and hold them until you did what I asked. What’s more
, the voice sneered,
you would do as I commanded, for you fear being abandoned more than you fear death itself!

Angrily Danny pushed the voice away. Nala was watching him with concern. The voice was right. The only person who mattered to him was in the apothecary.

Not the only person, he reminded himself. Les and Dixie and the rest of his friends were still at Wilsons. And feeling Nala’s eyes on him, he knew that he counted Nala among his friends as well.

Any veneer of civilization had dropped from Longford. He would do anything to get his way. And Wilsons had been infiltrated at the very highest level. Danny knew that.

“What’s wrong?” Nala asked.

“I need to get back to Wilsons,” Danny said, “but the ghost roads could take weeks and I don’t have weeks!”

“There is other way,” Nala said quietly.

“What?” Danny demanded. “What other way?”

“The way of the dead,” Nala said, “the dark stream.”

“But don’t you have to be … dead?”

“No,” Nala said with a strange look. “Not dead to travel dark stream. Maybe dead at end.”