Waywalkers: Number 1 in Series (15 page)

Outside the door the two valkyries had stopped, waiting for them.

‘Peter,’ said Sam in a low voice, ‘help Andrew to the street corner and wait for the ambulance. Don’t get in it until I arrive.’

‘Sir?’

‘Just do it. I won’t be long.’

He turned to go, but Andrew croaked something. Sam turned, trying to show sympathy despite his racing heart. ‘Gabriel,’ breathed Andrew. ‘If I don’t… then Gabriel. They’re on to her anyway, I might as well tell you.’

‘Why are they after you?’ asked Sam quietly.

Andrew gave a bitter laugh. ‘I found the location of the keys. They’re going to free Pandora – God!’ His face twisted in pain and Sam instinctively took a step towards him, even as his eyes involuntarily rose to the closing forces around.

Andrew looked very small and fragile and somehow not strong enough to support the knowledge he possessed. ‘There’s more, you’re in danger…’

Sam gave his shoulder what he hoped was a reassuring squeeze. ‘You’ve time to tell me later,’ he urged. ‘When we’re out of here.’

On the street the door thudded shut as the Firedancers moved in behind them. The valkyries came forward with careful menace, intent on stopping their departure.

Sam turned so that he could see both enemy parties while keeping himself between them and Andrew. ‘Ladies, gentlemen,’ he said, politely bowing to each. ‘Can I help you?’

‘Give him to us,’ said one Firedancer softly.

‘Ah. We have a problem there,’ said Sam, backing up slowly to keep near Peter and Andrew as they moved down the street. ‘You see, I’m a very suspicious person. And I suspect you might not be the people to care for my invalid friend.’

In the hand of one of the Firedancers something gleamed. A small blade, fashioned from what might well be dragon bone.

‘Give him to us,’ repeated the Firedancer.

‘No.’

People were staring, unsure what this strange confrontation signified, or how to interpret the dangling figure of Andrew.

A car braked suddenly at the kerbside, and the window was wound down. Out of the corner of his eye Sam saw Whisperer, reaching behind him to open the passenger door.

‘Peter! Put Andrew into the car!’ he snapped. ‘Whisperer! Get Andrew out of here by whatever means!’

Peter began lugging Andrew towards the car, and a valkyrie made her move. Sam was already there, raising one hand with his palm thrust towards her chin like a martial arts fighter. Even though he didn’t connect she staggered back as if struck. One Firedancer sprang forward. A knife flashed, and watching mortals scattered in panic. Sam got his dagger free, and used it to stab through one knife-wielding hand. The other he caught in a fist of magic, twisting both down simultaneously.

‘Come on!’ screamed Whisperer.

‘Go!’ he yelled. ‘I’ll find you!’

The second Firedancer lunged for the car. Sam leaped after him, catching him round the middle and dragging him away from the door as it slammed shut. He heard someone yell in rage, and kicked the nearest shin, before leaping away and yelling in Russian, ‘Help me! They’re mad!’

The crowd hardly blinked. Too much TV had clearly inoculated them against such sights as a lone man being attacked by a group of strangers. They could have been waiting for Sam to scream a ninja challenge and disable his enemies with a double-backwards somersault. Typical mortals.

The trouble about being noble
, thought Sam as the car pulled away,
was that you rarely get away with it
. He couldn’t hide from himself the realisation that, single-handed against four of Heaven’s maddened servants, he stood utterly no chance of winning. Taking a risk, he passed his left hand in front of him with a sweeping gesture. In the trail of his upraised palm his attackers staggered back – and Sam turned and ran. Sprinting down the centre of the busy road, he was counting on being able to regenerate physically in ways that the others couldn’t. Cars swerved and screeched around him, but he kept on blindly running. He saw a tram stop and headed towards it, eyes fixed on a tram advancing in the distance. The sounds of pursuit were close on his heels. Turning frantically he saw that in some measure his mad dash through the traffic had thwarted his adversaries. A Firedancer was nearest, then a valkyrie; the other two, following in dense traffic, wore the fear of all things mechanical inscribed on their faces.

But even as he reached the stop, Sam knew the tram wouldn’t arrive in time. He was going to have to run for it all the way. He felt his heart beat faster and his skin pale as chemicals, similar to adrenalin in all but a few subtle ways, began coursing through him. He wondered again how well Firedancers could run. Not faster nor farther than he could, surely!

So he ran, hardly aware of where he went, and all the while unconsciously pouring magic into his feet. Pedestrians scattered, and cars hooted as he rushed unseeing into their path. He caught sight of a signpost, and turned sharply on seeing what it said: station.

His pursuers were fast, but he was faster, and that bit sharper. And against his flight was fear – fear that he’d abandoned Whisperer to his fate; Peter and Andrew too.

Follow me
, he thought desperately.
Forget about Andrew. I am your target, not them.

The next street he turned into was crowded enough to give more protection. Slinging his sword from off his back and cradling it, he began to focus less on just running. Against him pressed flowing masses of people like the current in a stream. By chance he found himself shoved by one passer-by into the doorway of a shop. He was choking for breath – in his mad flight he hadn’t noticed how far he’d run. Behind him in the crowd he could see four ripples where each figure was pushing towards him. But there were now so many people between them and him that he felt just about safe enough to try…

The beggar was watching the stranger with interest. Did that coat, and the hockey stick he grasped so tightly, suggest a man of wealth and leisure? Might that boyish face, flushed from running, be graced with a smile of generosity once his breath no longer came in rushing gasps?

So intent was the beggar on this potential client, as he liked to call them, that he was the only person on the street who noticed when… it… happened. The man’s skin grew darker, his clothes lighter; the coat grew a dense fur, the face a beard to match. The hockey stick became a violin case, slung over the man’s now wider, taller back. The eyes drew further apart and lightened, the hair turned a mousy brown and stuck out in jagged spikes from underneath the hat. And as the stranger moved from the doorway into the crowd with the air of a local doing the daily shop, the beggar had already convinced himself that this was what the man had been all along. By the time this altered figure was lost in the crowd, the beggar was chiding himself for being an old fool.

And Sam’s illusion was complete.

T
he
re must be a religion somewhere that classifies me as the faceless man. I wish they understood how hard it is to be faceless.
 

Already Sam was tiring under the strain of sustaining the illusion. Thinking about other things was so hard that, when asked at the station by the elderly booking clerk where he wanted to go, he almost went for his passport.

‘You all right, sir?’

Even his Russian threatened to break down under the effort of concentration. He bought a ticket to Minsk, unsure why but knowing only that he wanted to get away as fast as possible. Peter had his bag with its passports in it – that probably meant a Waywalk had to follow.

But they won’t have been able to get Andrew out of the country, will they? He’s a mortal, he can’t
Feywalk
. And his passport is blown. It’s down to
Moondance
.
 

Sam pictured the workings of the Moondance network as its considerable powers were put into play. After driving for a few hours in a random direction, the car carrying Andrew would pull into a garage, where another vehicle was waiting, also with three people. Two would get out from each car and either go to the toilet or buy a sandwich or some such. On returning, each pair would casually get into the ‘wrong’ car, and drive off. This ploy would then be repeated elsewhere, possibly confusing any pursuit by using cars of the same make and with the same registration number.

But though the Moondance network moved fast, this was still enemy territory. If spirits were pouring in hour by hour to watch the roads and the airports, would they be watching stations too? Or had they fallen for his bluff and gone chasing after the airline booking for Luc Satise and his second, unidentified passenger?

Assume the worst. That way you can be pleasantly surprised if anything else happens.
Meanwhile the effort he made to restore his illusion only confirmed that he didn’t trust himself to sustain it.

He settled for a compromise. From a stand on the platform he purchased a broadsheet newspaper. Only on board the train, once it was clattering out of the station, and his senses hadn’t stirred at any sign of danger, did he adjust the paper to obscure his face while the illusion faded. One passenger gave him a sharp, questioning look, but quickly convinced himself that the clean-shaven, dark-haired man sitting nearby had been there all along, and that he was remembering a bearded gentleman from another journey to another place.

It felt good to have his own face back. The scarred Russian landscape tore by, making Devon seem quaint and neat notwithstanding Sam’s disgust at the degradation of the English landscape. Russia, for all that parts of it had great beauty, was large enough for mankind to have no inhibition in disfiguring vast tracts. And at this season, when the ice was melting and the snow lay muddied and lumped into ugly mounds from a long winter, the land seemed battered to the point of desolation.

He got off a long way before Minsk, having re-erected his illusion, and fell to a study of the Russian rail network, so that a series of changes could bring him to Kaluga, and his meeting with Whisperer, after a whole day on the move. The final complicated route became a long routine of boarding trains, lowering an illusion to recover mental breath, waiting for a change, raising a new illusion, catching a different train, lowering another illusion… And at no time did he cease to wonder what his pursuers might be doing. Though he had the sensation of eyes watching him, he knew better than to trust his feelings. His mind was running haywire: if he had but thought of spiders he’d have felt them crawl, or if he’d dreamt of seagulls he would have heard their cry and thought it real.

‘Why isn’t anyone interested in taking over Earth?’

Sam had been surprised at Annette’s question. ‘You’d rather they did?’

It was in those twilight years when her hair was beginning to turn white, but before she’d started to wish for his death. That would come soon; but for now he padded around her small flat, bringing her tea and trying to ignore how old and tired she’d become.

‘Why not?’

He’d thought before giving an answer, trying to find a way of phrasing his response without putting down her own world. ‘It’s… like the Olympics,’ he said finally. ‘Why rule Hell when you can rule Earth? Why rule Earth when you can rule Heaven? Everyone wants to be on the top podium.’

It hadn’t been the best answer. But he didn’t think he could explain about Heaven, how the stars themselves danced and every tree was laden with fruit and you could sleep anywhere in safety. Partly he felt bad about making
her
life and pleasures seem less; also he feared his description might now be wrong. He remembered Heaven as a place where dragons played in the sky with the angels, but that was before the war.

‘Jehovah was interested in Earth, wasn’t he?’

‘Jehovah was a fool,’ Sam had said, with more passion than he’d expected. Deep inside, a lot more was waiting to burst out than he liked to admit.

‘Jehovah thought,’ he’d said angrily, ‘that Earth was the future – that one day the battle for Heaven would encompass mortals. He believed he could prepare mortals for that battle, in body and soul. He thought he could purge away their mortal vices and create another Heaven –
his
Heaven – on Earth. I told him his ideals would grow out of all proportion. I warned him it wouldn’t work.’

Every word was spat as a snake hisses poison. But he knew that somewhere inside a childish part of him was gloating, ‘I told you so!’ – even as the self that claimed maturity was sickened at it.

He’d almost missed his station. In a rush he got off the train, hardly aware of it having pulled up, illusion rising around him in a flurry of distorted features. Sam cursed himself for a fool, wondering what nearby watcher might have spotted his lapse. Swearing softly, he lurked in a corner of the cold, wet station, and waited, full of dread, for his next train.

he’d been urged.

He was wearing the white robes of a newly knighted archangel, assigned to serve without question the Child of Belief. Assigned to lay down his life, if that’s what Jehovah required. He was incredibly proud of himself, and had already met several other newly appointed archangels, with whom he’d struck up a booming friendship. Uriel, Gabriel, Michael, Rafael – they were all excited about serving their new master.

‘I hear he’s got plans,’ Uriel had whispered. ‘I hear he’s going to take us down to Earth.’

This had extracted several gasps, with the exception of Michael. He was the easy-going one, on whom you could always rely for practical advice and a map. Sam liked Michael already – that friendly, foppish grin, the casual way he talked, and the relaxed manner in which he sent other angels about their duty.

‘Waywalking?’ one had exclaimed. ‘Us? Can we do it?’

‘Not alone,’ Michael had replied, always with an answer – and frequently the right one. ‘But if he takes us, leads the way, then yes, we can make it.’

his mother had whispered in Sam’s mind.

Sam had obeyed, hiding his huge talent with magic, kneeling to Jehovah with the rest, playing the servant and feeling happy with his role. Back then, he hadn’t known who his father was. Only his mother – his mother, the ever-present warmth inside his mind, the circle of fire that blessed him when cold, the dome of magic that protected him from the rain, the rush of power that caught him when he fell. His mother was Magic, and he told no one.

He’d felt her amusement. It was one of those few peaceful times when he was alone with his own devices, not playing servant to Jehovah nor studying Earth for his trip. He was lounging on a balcony carved out of a marble cliff face, looking down at the pink scudding clouds of Heaven and unobserved by all. Few lived this high up – they didn’t like the cold and the thin air. But Sam loved it. Up here, he was alone to do as he pleased. And what he pleased to do was learn about his hidden birthright.

He was playing a game with fire while they communed together, weaving it through his fingers like a cat’s cradle, shaping patterns in the air.

Magic didn’t reply. She never did.

He’d been travelling now for five hours. In an attempt to dull the fatigue of the journey, he’d purchased a puzzle book which he filled in, on the longer stretches between stations, with the mindless efficiency of a man often bored and with nothing to do. When the questions became too easy, and he could spot ten differences between pictures
a
and
b
in the blink of an eye, he delved back into memory. To that bitter day when Jehovah had taken the hands of his angels, and Sam had learnt his father’s true identity.

It had been months in coming. Jehovah had given each archangel a huge list of tasks, ranging from the smallest tweaking of some tribesman’s thoughts to the setting of a fire in a well-guarded palace. We are going to make mortals pure, he’d said. We’re going to make them ours.

No one had really understood the plan. Jehovah was using his skills in manipulating belief; that was all they could agree. Somehow he was going to reform the belief of every mortal on Earth. No one doubted he’d do it, and no one questioned him.

Except Sam. He’d wondered, his mind racing ahead to the many, many possible outcomes of this toil. It had been named the Eden Initiative.

His mother had been uneasy too, when he told her of it. Those who followed Magic’s way of life had often suffered at the hands of people with righteous ideas.

So they’d stood before the Way of Earth, Jehovah looking proud and imposing at the gateway. ‘We are about to change a world, my loyal servants.’

Sam had kept his face fixed in a suitable expression of awe as one by one the archangels linked hands, forming a chain.

He was at the very back.

‘Don’t let go,’ Jehovah had warned. ‘Follow me. If you let go you will lose your way. For you the Waywalk will seem dark and silent. For me it is full of light and noises. Try not to distract me. If you let go of each other, you will also lose me, and when we Waywalk I am all that keeps you from an unpleasant end.’

They’d finished linking hands, Sam behind Michael. Then Jehovah had led the way and they, silent and faithful, had followed.

Sam had immediately known something was wrong. Not with Jehovah, nor with the other archangels, but with
him
. He wasn’t seeing the promised darkness, nor hearing the promised nothing. He saw a white mist, in which shadows lurked and leered, heard whispered pleas from lost spirits, sensing just on the edge of feeling a fading world behind and a growing world ahead. With their breathing harsh and shallow, the other archangels seemed unaware of the light and noise around them. Sam gasped as something lashed at his ankle, but passed straight through like a shadow. That gasp left his lungs burning and head swimming, there was so little air.

‘Lucifer,’ wheedled a voice in his ear. ‘Please come to us, Lucifer…’

Ahead he could see a white doorway, towards which Jehovah was leading them. His palm was soaked with sweat – so was Michael’s. Images filled his mind as he looked at that door – images of the darkened oasis where they were going to emerge. And others – of the shadows, of being lost in this endless white mist, of suffocating, of walking on a bed of death and breathing in pestilence as they went.

Only the Sons of Time could Waywalk, everyone else was blind.

But he wasn’t blind.

‘Lucifer.’

He turned slightly, and felt his hand slip from Michael’s. Immediately he was being tugged back, ghostly claws curling round his shoulders and waist, trying to pull him down. He staggered free, running through the mist towards the white door, the image of the destination burning in his mind.

There was no air left to breathe. Jehovah had vanished through the door, and the others were disappearing with him. Sam rushed forward, closing his ears to the pleading voices, and caught Michael’s hand again, holding with a grip of death. Through the mist Sam glimpsed a white, scared face turning this way and that, blind. He’d never seen Michael so frightened.