Buried Fire

  Beyond the steps, a long hall stretched ahead, losing itself in the dusk of the house. For some reason, Sarah began to feel uncomfortable. There were too few windows in the hall, and too many black doors slightly ajar. The silence was oppressive. She really should wait for Mr Cleever before continuing her tour.

  A door on the left, black with age, was open. Sarah looked inside, conscious for the first time of the sweat on her hands and down the back of her top. The house seemed to be acting like a reservoir of heat, though its thick old walls should have kept her cool.

  The room was empty. An old carpet lay across the centre, studded with a few chairs and a moth-eaten sofa, and the windows were thickly curtained off, endowing it with the half-light of a sick-room. Sarah returned to the hall, at the far end of which was a huge door, almost certainly the main one which led to the yard. And on her right there rose a staircase.

  All of a sudden, Sarah wished to be outside again, in the pollen-heavy air. The air here was too thick and stultifying. She would wrap up her tour early and come back another time. In company. Maybe just a speedy look upstairs, to check for rotting and structural damage. Then she would go.

  The staircase rose with the steepness of a ladder, sandwiched on either side by the plaster wall. A narrow window high above gave it a mediocre light. After six steps it turned sharply at ninety degrees; six more steps and then another turn. So old-fashioned. The house must be hundreds of years old. The air was very hot, and grew more so with each step; it was like climbing the staircase in a hot house in some Botanic Gardens.

  She stopped short. Had there been a tiny sound, a quiet scraping suddenly cut off, from somewhere in the upstairs room?

  Silence surrounded her. A voice inside her screamed out to turn and go, to escape into the fields and sunlight, but another stubborn voice said. 'Rats. I might have guessed.' Very, very quietly, Sarah went up the stairs, one by one, placing her feet on the edges of the wooden treads.

  She climbed another step.

  The board creaked; its sound had the impact of a knife in her back. Sarah froze, a heaviness seemed to weigh down on her spine. Don't be stupid. You're grown up now. Five more steps, and she reached the top of the staircase.

  A landing. Through a nearby door there was a glimpse of a bathroom; white walls and a huge four-legged Victorian tub. A mirror too: curtained-off, except for a crack at the bottom, where its surface showed. 'Why a curtain over a mirror?' she thought. 'This place is weird.'

  A quick look and then go. She strode across the landing, to where a brown and polished door stood wide open. The room beyond was bathed in sunlight, and there were white sheets of paper on the wall. Then she stepped through and saw the rest of the room, and her heart started pounding against her chest so hard that it seemed it might break through.

  A chunk of stone lay on a white-clothed table, surrounded by a mess of pens and paper. It was rectangular in shape, smooth along every edge, except one, where the surface was rough and jagged. She knew it immediately for what it was, and also that she could never lift it by herself, for it was two foot long, and nearly a foot thick. A large greasy-looking sheet of tracing paper rested on the flat upper surface of the stone. Someone had carefully been tracing the outline of the carving on the cross.

  For a moment, Sarah considered turning tail and running immediately. Then she stepped forward. She had enough evidence for the police, true, but not quite enough for herself. What was going on? This tracing . . . She bent over it and examined it closely. A head, crudely drawn, little more than a rough oval with two dots and a slash for a mouth.

  Suddenly, she wheeled round: the sheets of paper pinned to the wall on every side were tracings and copies and photographs of the rest of the cross, magnified to all proportions, covered with annotations in red pen, diagrams, yellow highlights – and alongside them; older documents, sketches, and large scale Ordinance Survey maps of the Wirrim.

  'Oh Tom,' she thought. 'You were right. But what on earth are they doing it for?'

  One particular piece of paper caught her eye. It seemed to be a cross-section of a piece of ground. Stick figures stood on a rough curved line. Below it was stuck a photocopy of the creature in the centre of the cross . . .

  A noise. From the stairwell. A floorboard creaking.

  Oh no.

  Where could she hide? Out on the landing? No – they'd be round the corner in a moment. No. Another door – at the end of the room. Small. Perhaps a cupboard. Try the handle. Turns? Yes. Quick, dive through.

  A small room. Dark. Sarah stood there, with her back against the door. Heat buffeted against her face: she felt like she was pressed against a radiator. An acrid tang bit into her nose and made her flinch.

  Then her eyes grew accustomed to the dark.

  The body of an old man lay on a bed.

  It lay on its back, with its long thin arms by its side, stretched out like an effigy on a marble tomb. It was horribly thin; a white drape covered the body, but the sharpness of the ribcage almost pierced the cloth. The lips were drawn back and the eyes were closed.

  And the great heat came from the body. It radiated out in waves which beat against Sarah's temples and burnt her mouth dry. She stood staring at it in mortal terror, unable to think, or act, or do. Her jaw sagged as the last vestiges of her will evaporated.

  And then the body raised its head, and peered towards her with sightless eyes.

  Sarah gave a cry of terror and made a wrench for the handle at her back, tearing at it and pulling the door open. She flung herself through and ran past the cross and out onto the landing. Somewhere behind her, there was a fast movement. Her breath came in gasping sobs as she leapt down the staircase three steps at a time. Halfway down the last flight she stumbled, and hit the remaining steps with the small of her back.

  She lay for a moment at the base of the stairs, then forced herself to her feet. As she did so, a man came out of a room at the far end of the hall. He ran towards her. Sarah fled away along the passage, down the stairs into the scullery and out into the cowshed. Heavy footfalls sounded behind her on the flagstones. She dashed past the cow pens and out into the yard, along a side passage, round a corner—

  Into an empty tool shed. She paused in confusion. She hadn't come this way. Turn round. Through that door. No. Locked. Oh God. Try this one. A barn. No way out. But a ladder . . . up into the hayloft. Quick. Softly now, avoid the rotten beams. Stand still out of sight. Did he see?

  Silence. Sarah was a statue in the yellow-brown dusk of the hayloft. A scuffled footstep sounded outside. A muttered curse. Silence again.

  Sarah stood there. The air was thick with haydust. A slight tremor began, high up in her nose. She twitched it, and closed her eyes in prayer. An itch began in her throat, water gathered in the corner of her eyes.

  Oh God, hold it in, damn you.

  The tremor gathered in her nose, and she pinched her nostrils together with sweating fingers. Her shoulders shook with the effort of repressing the coming sneeze.

  Please . . .

  Then Sarah sneezed. Twice. As quietly as she could.

  28

  Michael stood in the porch until he heard the car approaching along the lane. Then he walked down the drive to the gate. The car pulled in at the side of the road, and Mr Cleever smiled up at him through the window.

  "Very good to see you, Michael," he said. "Care to hop in?"

  He leaned over and opened the passenger door. Michael walked round the front of the car and got in. Mr Cleever reversed in the driveway and sped off along the green lane, past the Monkey and Marvel, and sharp right onto a rough farm track.

  "A short cut," Mr Cleever said. "It's a little bumpy, but you won't lose your breakfast."

  Michael looked out at a row of copper beeches at one end of the field, beyond which the tower of St. Wyndham's could just be seen. Then he said: "The Four Gifts. You said you'd tell me what they are. And how to use them." His voice sounded curiously flat and small, sucked away through the window int
o the blue immensity of the day. He disliked its weak and tinny sound, its irritating lightness. It would not suit him at all.

  Mr Cleever gave a little laugh, and tapped a jig on the steering wheel with his fingers. "The Four Gifts," he said. "Yes, the Four Powers. Well, you've already used the first two quite proficiently. I hardly need to tell you what those are, do I?" He looked sideways at Michael, eyebrows raised.

  "The Sight," Michael said. "That must be the first. And Fire is the second."

  "It is indeed. And you can feel very pleased with yourself for demonstrating it so early. In some of us it took weeks to unleash the flame."

  "I didn't do it on purpose. It just came."

  "Fuelled by anger. Quite. It's a hallmark of all the gifts, Michael, that they are deeply given, and closer tied to our emotions than our rational minds. Although with practice, as you've found with the Sight, we can learn to control them. Whoops!"

  One of the car's front wheels dropped into a tractor rut and they lurched forward violently. Mr Cleever struggled with the steering for a moment, then got them back on track.

  "Four-wheel drive would be preferable for this route," he said, "but needs must. I don't want us to take the village road just at the moment. Right, you've experienced the first two gifts, and it might shock you to know that some of us never get beyond them. Paul Comfrey, for instance, good man that he is, has never got close to the third. Doesn't have the knack for some reason."

  "You mean I might never— What are the other two?" Michael felt a shock of pride at the thought of any limitation.

  "Oh, don't worry. I'm just telling you it's possible, that's all. Personally, I think you'll achieve the others in no time. You're very strong. The Third Gift, now that's in some ways the most delightful of all. It's flying, Michael; or Levitation if you prefer. That really is something."

  "Flying!" Michael could hardly restrain his wonder, or impatience. "How high can you go? How long can you keep it up? That's . . ." Words failed him. "Wow."

  "How high?" Mr Cleever laughed softly. "My boy, truly I do not think there is any limit to how high we might go. I say might, because of all things we must not be observed, and if you go above tree level in daylight, you will be observed by every man, woman and child in the whole parish."

  "But at night though?"

  "At night – yes, it's different then. Once, about ten years ago, when my gifts were young in me, I flew on a moonless night above Fordrace, as high as the Wirrim. I looked down on the orange lights and the dark rooftops, and using the Sight, I saw the owls floating below my feet. No one could see me; they were jewelled ants beneath my silent flight. Now say that is not a glorious power to have, Michael my boy! And here, we go right."

  He turned through a gate, into another field, filled with sun-ripened barley. A narrow gap just afforded them room to drive along the edge, beside a shallow ditch. Michael's eyes were ablaze with a savage delight.

  "When I receive that gift," he said, "I shall use it every night, and sometimes during the day. I can't think why you don't use it more often, or go further. I shall go to London, and cross the sea with it, and spy on people in their houses!" He chuckled with delirious glee.

  Mr Cleever shook his head sadly. "Nice thought, but sadly, it doesn't work like that. There are limitations."

  Michael frowned. "Such as?"

  "Such as being unable to go too far from the Wirrim. And a worse one yet . . ." He let the sentence drift away, and seemed reluctant to discuss it further. Instead, he continued in a cheerier tone: "But the Fourth Gift, if you attain it, gives you the most power of all of them. I have this, and I use it as regularly as I am able. It's the power to enter people's minds, Michael, and encourage them to give up their secrets to you. You can do it in various ways, with various degrees of subtlety, but just imagine the power that gives!"

  Michael said nothing. He was imagining.

  "You have to be careful with it," Mr Cleever went on. "When done at full force, it leaves even the least intelligent person a little distressed. They take a dislike to you without quite knowing why. But used in discrete moments, once in a while, you can learn anything you wish, and with that knowledge, a lot of things can be achieved."

  "But Mr Cleever," Michael said, "if you can read people's minds, you should be Prime Minister or something by now. Not just councillor of this crap place."

  He was surprised by the force of Mr Cleever's reaction. The car stopped with a jolt in the track; Mr Cleever hit the steering wheel with the palms of both hands, and Michael's eyes flared with the pain of his reflected rage.

  "You know nothing," Mr Cleever snarled, turning the force of his glare full on him. "Nothing but what I am telling you. How dare you doubt my abilities, when you, who have only discovered the Second Gift today, are being instructed in the powers by me, man to man? I have not done this with anyone before! None of the others has been so honoured. And I wouldn't do it with you either, if I didn't think your energy was vital to us! If you listen to me, boy, your powers will be truly limitless. But if you cross me, I'll leave you to discover your limitations entirely on your own. And you won't like them, believe me."

  He turned away sharply, and started the car. It bumped along over the fields.

  "I'm sorry," said Michael, though his heart raged within him.

  "And don't lie to me either," said Mr Cleever. "You've forgotten already about the Fourth Gift. And it works all the easier with those of us with the Power. You should have noticed the bond already. The presence of one of us, and what we do, affects the rest, especially if we're close by."

  "I've noticed. I felt it with you last night. And with Stephen."

  "Ah, yes. Your brother. We're going to have to have a talk about him. But that can come later."

  They were at the end of the field, which for the last few minutes had wound steadily uphill. Mr Cleever turned left through a gate fringed with dark low trees and almost immediately the hill steepened. The car advanced very slowly along an atrocious track. A bank of grass, caught in the shadow of the trees, rose on their right. All of a sudden, Michael saw a set of tumbledown roofs appear over the fringe of the bank.

  "That's the Hardraker Farm!" he said.

  "Got it in one." Mr Cleever fought with the gear-stick to bring the car up the last and steepest incline. At length, they emerged at the top of the bank and trundled slowly over the field towards the buildings. "This is our operational HQ," Mr Cleever said as they turned into the central farm yard. "Right now, it's the base for the most important thing that's happened in these parts for the last sixteen hundred years."

  He pulled over in front of the farm house and turned off the ignition. "And you, Michael my boy, are the most important part of all."

  29

  Mr Cleever led Michael up to the front door of the Hardraker farmhouse and rang the bell. Michael stood beside him, uneasy despite his semblance of calm. The mass of ruined buildings all around made him feel suddenly alone.

  "Who lives here?" he said.

  Mr Cleever gazed impassively at the door. "Mr Hardraker does."

  "But I thought he was dead."

  "He might as well have been, until now."

  A sound of rattling bolts came from the other side of the door. "It's me, Paul," Mr Cleever said loudly. In another moment, the whitewashed door swung open and the way was clear to enter. First Mr Cleever and then Michael trooped inside.

  "Paul, this is Michael MacIntyre; Michael, this is Paul Comfrey." A slight whey-faced man with fair wispy hair pushed the great door to and turned to face Michael. He seemed quite young, perhaps mid-twenties, and his expression was dull, sullen and a little stupid. He was very vaguely familiar and Michael assumed he had at some time passed him in the village. They looked at each other, unblinking.

  "So, you're not running this time," Paul Comfrey said in a slow voice. "I nearly caught you at his house. You were fast."

  Michael narrowed his eyes. "No," he said, "I'm not running." He was thinking how foolish Paul
Comfrey looked. 'I can well believe he hasn't made the Third Gift,' he thought. 'There's no competition there.' Then he remembered Mr Cleever's Fourth Power, and took a guilty side-glance at him. But Mr Cleever seemed to have noticed nothing.

  "Have you had any trouble, Paul?" he asked.

  "Yes. She came up, like you said." Paul Comfrey shifted uncomfortably, but made no attempt to explain.

  "How far did she get? You can speak in front of Michael."

  "She got upstairs." The man seemed most reluctant to give the details.

  "As far as that? Dear me, that was remiss of you, Paul. Were you asleep?"

  "No."

  "Well. What did she see?"

  "She saw the stone. And I think, maybe, she saw Mr Hardraker."

  "She got as far as Joseph? Good heavens, Paul, that must have given her a shock. I hope for your sake that you roused yourself enough to catch her. Did you?"

  "Yes. Had to chase her halfway across the bleeding farm. But she's safe now."

  "Where?"

  "The piano room. I put her car in the back shed."

  "Who are we talking about?" Michael asked, having been bewildered long enough. His eyes were aching sharply and he wondered if he was responding to the tension between the two.

  "If you're in discomfort, Michael, use your sight," Mr Cleever said. "It's good for you, because it trains your power.

  "We have had a visitor," he went on, his dragon soul inky black and thickly flowing in the hallway. "And you may be a little surprised to hear who it is. But I won't keep it a secret from you, because you're so clever you'd soon find out. Your sister Sarah has decided to pay us a call. Yes," he continued over Michael's exclamation, "I'm afraid she has been poking her nose into your affairs again, and has seen things she shouldn't have seen. We will have to keep her here for a little while."

  This was going too fast, even for Michael. "Hold on," he said. "What do you mean? You can't lock her up. Let her go." He felt his eyes flare with anger.