"Don't be weak, Michael. Don't forget how Sarah has tried to control you for years. Do you think she'd let you use your gifts as you'd wish? She'd do everything in her power to make you stop."
"I'd like to see her try. But that's not—"
"Exactly. You have moved beyond her. But listen, Michael. There are many things I must tell you shortly. If, when I have done so, you want to let your sister free, go right ahead. I won't stop you. Either way, she won't come to any harm. And soon, you'll be too powerful for her ever to control you again. What do you say?"
"I don't know . . ." Michael felt he was being weak. "Oh, all right, I'll listen to what you've got to say."
"Good. We have to be very careful, we special people. Nosy interferers like the vicar and your sister are constantly at our heels. And I'm afraid your own brother is involved with them too."
"Stephen? But he has the power himself! Well, a little of it." Michael corrected himself. "He didn't stay under long, you see."
The surface of the dragon soul broiled darkly. "I'm going to want details about how Stephen got his power," it said. "It was a very bad thing that he did so. I'm afraid your brother doesn't want to accept his gift. He's scared, and scared boys do silly things."
"Yes," said Michael. "He locked me in."
"Jealousy is a terrible thing, Michael."
"We've got to do it fast, George." Paul Comfrey spoke, and Michael looked at his soul closely for the first time. There was something strange about it. It was dragon-like too, but only in parts; the outline was smudged, as if another shape had been half rubbed out there. Nor was it quite as dark as Cleever's. Alongside the black was a strong hint of dirty yellow, especially around the edges. Then, for the first time that day, Michael remembered Mr Cleever's shout as he had run along another hall in terror the day before:
"What you see, you will become!"
There was something so confused, so mixed-up about Paul Comfrey's soul, that Michael now found himself wondering what the words actually implied. There was no doubt about it, Paul Comfrey's soul was in the middle of a change. It had been something else – possibly some sort of rat, or vole, judging by the shape – and now it was becoming reptilian. The awful implications settled like a weight in Michael's stomach. For an instant it threatened to disrupt his composure, then with an effort of will he brushed it from his mind.
What did it matter what had happened to this weak fool's soul? What matter if changes occurred to his own? He already knew the shape was unimportant. What mattered was that he was growing in power and setting himself apart from other men. Maybe Paul Comfrey was too weak to make the change properly. Well he, Michael, would be stronger, come what may.
"I quite agree, Paul." Mr Cleever was speaking. "Tomorrow night if all goes well. But there are things to sort out first. And introducing Michael to Joseph is foremost of all."
They had been walking slowly down the hall, and now stood before a large door, which Cleever opened but did not pass.
"Michael," he said, "I'd like you to wait here. Mr Hardraker wishes to meet you, but he will need assistance in dressing, so I may be a little time. When he does come, please don't be deceived by his appearance. Paul, go back and mind the door. Vanessa will be along soon, and Geoffrey can't be far behind."
He drew back, and Michael passed through into an immense living room, with high-backed sofas which were already old when his grandmother was young. There was ornate stuccoed plaster on the ceiling, and curly, twisting wallpaper unrelieved by any paintings or picture frames. The windows were covered with curtains as thick and heavy as carpets. He pushed one aside and looked out, and as the sunshine hit him, he realised the room must be in virtual darkness and that he was still using the Sight. It had become almost natural for him to do so, and the thought of turning back seemed strange.
The view outside was uninteresting, so he went to the sofa and lay out flat on it with his hands behind his head. He waited for a long while; how long, he could not have said.
Lost in grim thoughts about Stephen, he was caught by surprise when the door suddenly opened. He stood up in confusion. Mr Cleever entered and cast his eyes over him.
"Open one of those curtains, Michael," he said. "And if I were you I would stick to your ordinary sight while Mr Hardraker is in the room. It can be quite overpowering otherwise."
Michael pulled one of the great heavy curtains over, spilling light into the room. He adjusted his eyes dutifully, aware of a slight tingling across his body, which grew stronger by the moment; anticipation mixed with fear.
Then Mr Cleever stood aside, and Mr Hardraker entered. Michael felt a great wave of heat erupt through the doorway, filling the room in an instant. A shriveled thing sat in a wheelchair, pushed forward by Paul Comfrey, his face white and sweating. It was dressed in a pair of light blue trousers which displayed a horrible emptiness to the eye, and a thick pink woollen jumper, on which a head lolled. The bald skin was parchment-yellow and parchment-dry, and the two white eye-sockets glared from them unblinkingly. Michael felt a sick feeling in his stomach, but he quelled it, and stood firm.
The wheelchair came to a standstill. Michael waited. Everyone stood silently around, impassive. The figure in the wheelchair made no move, no sign that it was conscious or indeed alive. Michael was searching for something to say when he felt a cold presence slip easily past his guard into his mind, and lie there a moment before being withdrawn. He could not repress a shudder as it withdrew, but he still said nothing. He felt his own power wax hotly in response to the easy entry, and lash out angrily across the room, flailing without any target or control. To his satisfaction, he saw Paul Comfrey wince visibly as the waves hit him, but a smile flickered on Mr Cleever's face, and from the figure in the wheelchair there was no response at all.
Enraged still further, Michael did his best to muster a proper retort. With an ease which surprised him, he framed his anger into a thin rapier-sharp bolt which he directed at Mr Cleever. As he let it go, he saw the same burst of fiery lines across his vision which had accompanied his escape from his bedroom, only this time thinner and more controlled. Then, for a moment, he felt himself amongst another's thoughts – random, alien, and strange. Mr Cleever's smile dropped away abruptly. The thoughts shifted from amused complacency to baffled alarm, and since Michael sensed a defence being mustered, he rapidly withdrew his mind from Mr Cleever's and turned back to study the group as a whole.
He fully expected some sort of mental attack in revenge for his aggression, but nothing happened. Mr Cleever's smile slowly returned, and some of the tension drained from Paul Comfrey's face. There was a movement at the door, and Vanessa Sawcroft appeared. She wore a sling around an arm, and her face about her eyes was badly bruised. She gazed at him steadily, with her bruised face, but though when he had last knowingly seen her she had been checking out his books at the library counter, Michael was no longer surprised by anything.
Then Mr Cleever said: "Michael, Mr Hardraker is pleased to have met you. He wants to shake your hand."
The thought of touching that limp yellow claw, which poked out coyly from the woolly sleeve, was not the most pleasant Michael had ever had. But he was filled with a new confidence. In some way he had been tested, and his response had certainly surprised his new companions. He even had a notion that he had used the Fourth Gift on Mr Cleever, and this gave him a delicious thrill. So, trying not to notice the dead-fish eyes, he walked across to the thing in the wheelchair, bent down and picked up the hand.
The shock of it nearly killed him.
It was ice-cold, colder than ice, colder than the cold which bonds skin to rock and turns breath into frozen clouds of crystal shards. He felt the cold running up his arm, into his body, chilling, stilling, numbing him with the feel of death, thinning the blood and clogging his arteries with ice.
For a second, his brain began to grow numb too, but as his mind grew sweetly weary, his power responded with a desperate surge, and met the ice with fire.
Then
there was an explosion all about him, a rushing of air and an orange light, and screams and shouts came from the doorway beyond. He felt his clothes ignite, heard the windows implode and the plaster on the ceiling crack. And, as if in a dream, he felt the energy within him raise him up, and his feet lift from the floor.
And in that moment of supreme delight, he dropped the hand which he held, and felt the energy fall back inside him. Then his feet returned to earth, hitting the charcoalled floorboards with a soft dry crunch.
The object in the wheelchair had not moved, except for its hand, which was palm up on the trouser leg like a great dead spider. Michael's own clothes were grey and smoking. He coughed twice; the noise was hollow in the ruined room. No windows remained, the curtains were gone. The walls were seared black and yellow with great scorch stains. The tall-backed chairs were skeletons, with wisps of fabric hanging from their bones. And of Air Cleever, Ms Sawcroft and Mr Comfrey, there was nothing to be seen.
Michael thought that he had burnt them all to ashes, but then he heard the gasps and coughing starting in the corridor.
30
After Vanessa Sawcroft had recovered from her coughing fit, she helped Mr Cleever and Paul Comfrey carry the wheelchair back upstairs to Mr Hardraker's room. Her clothes, like those of the two others, were badly scorched, and with her arm hanging loosely in its blackened sling, she looked in pitiable shape. Paul Comfrey's hands were shaking so much that Mr Cleever told him off sharply for unsettling the chair; and Mr Cleever himself, though he seemed to have escaped the worst of the inferno, was limping a little as he ascended the stair, and cursed more often than he was wont.
Michael followed along behind. He had a spring in his step.
Once Mr Hardraker had been removed to his room, Mr Cleever and the others took themselves off to wash and find what new clothes they could. Michael stayed in the room with the cross, studying the plans and sketches with a detached interest. He had no difficulty in recognising the Pit, but the reproductions of the cross's carvings puzzled him.
"Well, Michael." Mr Cleever had returned. He had on a new shirt and his face was scrubbed and beaming, but he limped as he crossed the room. "Would you have guessed you were capable of that, when you came with me this morning?"
"No. Of course not. Although I don't think it was all me. It was in response to— Mr Hardraker. It was a kind of challenge. If I hadn't—"
"And you responded admirably. Quite took us aback. We were expecting something, of course, but nothing that fierce, or we wouldn't have stood so close, would we, Vanessa?" He laughed, but Ms Sawcroft, who had just entered, did not. She sat herself down on a chair beside the table with the cross, and after a moment Michael and Mr Cleever did the same.
"Get on and tell him," she said.
"Just getting to it. Now – Michael," Mr Cleever adopted a serious tone. "You were quite right to say that Mr Hardraker had a hand in that little effect, but not exactly in the way you think. In fact, the pair of you produced it together, through a mingling of both your energies and his will."
"I drew on my own energy to fight off his," objected Michael. "He didn't shape it in any way."
"Ah, but he did. Otherwise Vanessa and I would be black smears on the wall of that unfortunate room. Mr Hardraker shielded us from the full force of your fire. And more than that, it was only because of his direction that you were able to bring forth so much power in the first place." Michael frowned at this, and Mr Cleever went on, "Try it now if you want. You'll be able to set fire to things, but nothing like on that scale. I can see you're getting resentful, but you don't need to: you've far more power bubbling inside you than either Vanessa or I have, let alone the others. The point is that as yet you don't have the will to use it. Mr Hardraker does. The strength of his will you would find hard to imagine."
"So why doesn't he try out his special effects on his own?" Michael was quietly furious – the thought of being used by that horrendous old man set his teeth on edge.
"Ah, that question digs down to the heart of our problem, Michael, and it's your problem too, so try to keep a level head."
Michael breathed deep and sat back in his chair.
"We are all of us linked," Mr Cleever went on, "because the dragon has claimed us. And although for a time that makes us fortunate, it carries us into a kind of hell at last. Look at Joseph Hardraker. He was claimed when still in his teens, back in the days when bicycles were a new invention, and the first car had not been built. Oh yes, he's well over a hundred now, is Joseph, and who knows how long he might linger, in his living death, before his heart finally gives out. He doesn't move, he doesn't eat or drink; he doesn't need to any more. Time means nothing to him, he's past all that, reduced to a single flame of willpower burning endlessly in his head. Do you want to know why? It's because he has gone where the gifts must lead us all eventually."
"They make us immobile like our master," Vanessa Sawcroft said.
"They are a dragon's gifts. It gives us its sight, its flame, its flight, its power over the minds of men. For a while we can use them, as long as we stay within a few miles of the Wirrim. If we travel further, we grow tired, our eyes ache, pains wrack our bodies and we die."
"It happened to a man twenty years ago," Vanessa interjected in her flat, level voice. "I didn't have the gift then, but I remember the incident all right. He must have grown desperate, because he took the overnight express from Stanbridge station. That train doesn't stop till it gets to Paddington. And not long after they'd set off, other passengers heard scuffles and thuds from his compartment. They found him thrashing about on the floor with his hands over his eyes, and a minute or two later, with the train pulling ever further east, he was dead."
"How do you know he had the sight?" Michael asked.
"Joseph knew him. We always know each other for what we are. This man was getting on, maybe in his fifties, and he was slowing right down and losing his powers, so seeing the prospect of an endless old age trailing before him, he tried to break free. But it didn't work."
"You haven't told me why Hardraker is like he is. Why shouldn't he – why shouldn't we die like anyone else?"
"Because," Mr Cleever said, "with every passing day, we become more like the worm itself. We've breathed its breath in to us, we have its gifts, and so we change. And because it has lain silent and still under the earth since time out of mind, needing neither food nor water, nor air nor light, so our souls will grow still too. Our energy leaves us, first slowly, then more rapidly, until we are joined to the dragon in endless waking silence, where once we were joined with brilliance and power."
"When that happens," Vanessa continued, "there is no way out. You cannot even lift a knife to kill yourself, since all your energy has been lost. Only your mind lives on, trapped in your body, feeling the power there, but being unable to use it."
"Most people," said Mr Cleever, "choose to finish themselves before they reach that state."
"Or have their lives finished for them, by ignorant fools," said Vanessa.
"She means the witch scares, but that's all in the past. Nowadays, suicide is the most likely outcome."
"But not for Mr Hardraker," said Michael.
"No, not Joseph. Joseph is unusual, you see. He always was, perhaps because like you he received the gifts at an early age. From what he's told us, he had a wild disposition, and used his gifts unwisely. He had a particular fondness for the Second, which he would practise at night in lonely valleys on the Wirrim. Well, there was soon talk, of course; there always is, when someone uses the Second out-of-doors. It led to trouble, and to a busy-bodying fool butting his nose in, and in the end Joseph had to silence him, which he found easy enough to do. But it shows how careful we've got to be, Michael. Joseph's youthful exuberance put himself – and others – at risk."
"And it hasn't stopped causing trouble for a hundred years," Vanessa added. "Tell him about Willis."
"It's quite irrelevant, my dear."
"Not according to the Reverend A
ubrey it isn't."
"He is quite irrelevant too, Vanessa. We must not overburden the boy."
Michael felt this patronising. "What's Tom Aubrey been up to then?" he asked.
"Willis, the interfering nobody, who's been burnt and dead a hundred years, unfortunately left a few scraps of speculation to be published by the vanity press. They touch on the nature of the Wirrim and what lies in it. I'm afraid that the good Reverend has read it, and has set himself against us."
"He always was a meddling idiot," said Michael.
"However, as I say, that will prove irrelevant. To return to Joseph, he refused to cow-tow to his dwindling energies, and has remained here until his soul slowed to a standstill and his body has almost entirely ceased to function. He refuses to accept the inevitable, and so do I."
"So do we all," Vanessa Sawcroft said.
"How many of us are there?" asked Michael.
"At present only five. Vanessa, myself, Paul, Geoff Pilate—"
"Old Pilate! No way!"
"He's a cagey one, is Geoffrey. And very useful to us. Acts as our eyes and ears, sieving all the village news that passes across his counter. He's the fourth. And you're the fifth."
"And . . ." Michael was reluctant. "I suppose there's Stephen."
"I'm afraid we cannot count him, Michael. This afternoon I came upon him in the company of our dear vicar. They were on their way to take you from the cottage and imprison you in the church. If I hadn't phoned you, and you hadn't used your powers to escape, who knows where you would be by now."
"They wouldn't have held me."
"I'm sure they wouldn't, Michael. But I'm afraid your brother is a traitor to us. Why that is, I'm not sure. How did he come to be offered the gifts?"
Quickly, impatiently, Michael told him. He was reluctant to speak about it, partly because he did not want even to think about his wretched, cursed brother, but also because he was ashamed of giving the undeserving fool the power.
Mr Cleever listened without giving any indication of his opinion. His face was a mask.