I think I was in shock or denial, because I had become pretty unemotional, in spite of all I knew of their intentions. I shed no more tears. I had a cold hatred for St. Odhran. My duty was to get away from him, to spoil his plans as much as possible. I exercised by running around the room shouting pop songs to myself, then jumping up and down on the bed, then trying some of my mum’s tai chi and yoga positions. By the time I stopped I had worn myself out and lay on the comfortable feather bed, panting and staring up at the heavily decorated ceiling, which had masked, naked people doing things which were not so much obscene or sexual as impossible to interpet, which was probably just as well. The walls, too, were decorated. They showed a painted forest through which a procession of people and monsters marched. All the colors were the usual dark greens, browns, reds and purples. Pretty oppressive.
As I looked around my room, I found myself nodding off in spite of my determination to try to stay awake and think through my situation. I was soon fast asleep, dreaming of cows with animal heads, of Lord Renyard dressed like an old-fashioned Victorian nanny, of Elric/Monsieur Zodiac carrying a huge black sword, which I thought at first streamed with blood until I saw that there were glowing letters engraved in the metal, red as the albino’s eyes. Then came my grandmother, Oona, with her bow and arrows, loosing one shaft after another into the carcass of a monstrous wolf which pranced and snarled at the edges of my bed, gathering courage to pounce.
It was very dark in my room when I heard a scratching at the door, which swung open at my mumbled greeting. I didn’t see anyone come in until a large face with green-yellow eyes was close to mine. A rumbling purr broke from the throat of the beast I recognized as our black panther. Then the door opened again. A female slave stood there, holding a tray on which was a steaming beaker of liquid like tomato juice. This slave was masked and naked, like all slaves of the upper orders. She had a really lovely body, all rounded muscular curves, and her soft, glowing skin seemed unnaturally pink in the faint light coming through the high windows. I realized I didn’t know how to turn a light on in the room, and was surprised by the soft radiance which slowly filled it.
The slave made no attempt to offer me the tray but put it on the nearest surface and crossed back to the door. Was she checking to see if she’d been followed? Meanwhile the panther sat down between us. I felt sudden relief, a sense of gratitude. I wasn’t really surprised when the panther’s companion stripped off her mask and revealed herself as Oona, wearing what I now saw was a flesh-colored body stocking. She had obviously worn it to hide her albino skin, which would have been easily detected even in the murk of corridors lit primarily by flaming torches.
“I thought they’d left you behind,” I whispered. “How did you get here?”
My grandmother smiled. “By ornithopter, the same as you. I didn’t inhale much of the poison gas which knocked you all out. I was able to hold my breath and pretend to be overcome. Both Empire ships took off at the same time. One carried von Minct, and the other left with you. But they had forgotten our ship, which returned and found us. I flagged it down and persuaded the pilot to fly me to Karlye, where a major battle was taking place. In the confusion I disguised myself and joined troops retreating over the Silver Bridge. Things were so confused on the other side, with soldiers and fighting machines everywhere, that I easily made it to Londra.” She grinned. “So unused have the Granbretanners become to attack by those they conquer that they have few defenses in the city. With a little help, I slipped through the gates and reached the palace.”
“But you didn’t have any keys …” I looked at the door she had entered by.
“I am not above using the odd manipulation.” She reached down to pat the panther. Another vast purr rumbled in the cat’s throat as she looked up at my grandmother, who answered her with a kind of huff which the panther responded to by half closing her eyes in a friendly way.
“Where did she come from?” I asked. The panther hadn’t been with us when we fled Mirenburg.
“Oh, she always knows where to find me.” My beautiful grandmother smiled. “We have a rapport. Sometimes we might almost be the same creature. Come, get dressed quickly. I’m taking you away from here.”
“Escaping!” I was excited. Maybe this was why I had not felt total terror at the Dark Empire’s plans for me. Maybe I had always known she would come for me. “Do you know about that traitor, St. Odhran?”
“Oh, yes,” she said, “I know all about St. Odhran.” She seemed too disgusted to say more.
The Heron Palace was alive with sound. Were we under attack? The building itself was moaning and whining, and the fluttering flames of the overhead flambeaux made the corridors seem alive, organic. Oona and the panther trotted swiftly over the uneven flagstones, keeping me between them. We went past doors from which came all kinds of animal noises, suggesting this was some sort of private zoo. It smelled like the zoo, too. In reply to my whispered question, my grandmother put her thumb up, indicating I had hit it in one.
When she got the chance, she murmured into my ear, “This is the menagerie of Asrovak Mikosevaar. He was a keen collector. Many powerful people here keep menageries.”
“I’m used to barred cages and all that sort of thing. Or at least big ditches and glass!”
“These are not for public view,” she whispered, “but for private pleasure.”
Before she could tell me more I felt the warm night air on my face and smelled that mixture of soot, scorched metal and burning coke which was the predominant smell of the city. “This brings us out near the river, which is exactly where we need to be.”
“Won’t they be looking for me? I mean, you might be able to disguise yourself as a soldier, but nobody would believe I was one. Not even a little Gurkha.”
She smiled. “We’re not going back the way we came. I’m hoping to follow the trail of Klosterheim and von Minct. I found their prisoner.”
“The boy? Jack?”
“Yes.”
“How did they get Jack here? He wasn’t with them in Mirenburg.”
“They know a way of traveling between Mirenburg and Londra,” she said. “But I can’t use it. The wheel. Anyway, Jack’s out of harm’s way for the moment.”
While we held that whispered conversation we hurried along the galleries. Only once was our way blocked, by a couple of masked male slaves who weren’t really suspicious of us but were curious. Oona’s response was to reach out and bang their heads together so that they slipped gently to the floor. I was very impressed.
“You’ll have to show me how you do that, Grandma,” I said. I was taking a perverse pleasure in using the term to this attractive young woman, who really was my grandmother!
“Later,” she said. “When we are all safely back in Ingleton, there’s a lot I do want to show you. Wisdom that has to be passed on.”
I was no longer certain we’d ever make it back to North Yorkshire, but I was heartened by her promise even though I suspected she made it to reassure me. The galleries were getting more populated, busier, with slaves bustling back and forth, carrying everything from trays of food to furniture. I was surprised they didn’t notice the panther, but when I looked for her she had disappeared.
“Where are we?” I asked the first time we paused.
“We have left Mikosevaar’s and are now approaching the apartments of Taragorm, Master of the Palace of Time.”
“Isn’t he one of our worst enemies?”
“Which is why we went this way rather than another,” she said. “I’m guessing they’ll first try searching the streets surrounding Flana’s when they find you gone in the morning.”
“What happened to your panther?”
“Oh, she’s become absorbed in someone else, don’t worry.” It was the only answer she gave me. I wondered just how much magic was around. I caught a distinctive odor I associated with both electricity and the sulphur stink that matches make when you strike them. For some reason, I thought of it as the smell of magic.
> We descended, by steps and slopes, lower and lower into the palace depths. This part was deserted. Then Oona opened a small door in the side of a very narrow passage, and even I had to duck to enter. She closed the door carefully behind us. She felt around in the dark. I heard something rustling, and it scared me. I stuck close to my grandmother. “What’s that …?”
A Bic sparked. A conical yellow candle burned with a smell like fried fish.
Gradually I made out a small room. It seemed to have been used as a sort of store cupboard. In the far corner, a figure stirred. He yawned as he turned over on a dark grey mattress, blinking awake.
It was the young man I had seen before, whom I’d tried to track down without success in Mirenburg’s Mechanical Gardens. I saw his face clearly now. He had the same high cheekbones, almond eyes, strong mouth and chin, the gently tapered ears, that I had seen on Oona and my great-grandfather. The young albino turned his head towards us.
“Jack,” murmured Oona. “I’ve found her. You must lie low here for a day or so. Then we’ll try to get away.”
He nodded. He hardly seemed interested in what she said. “My father …,” he began, then stopped. He frowned. “Who are you, girl?”
“My name’s Oonagh,” I told him. “Are you Jack D’Acre?”
“That’s close,” he said. “It’s what they call me at home. I know your voice. The girl in the factory …”
“That’s right.” I wondered where his home was, and was about to ask him when Oona said, “Jack’s from London. Not Londra. He lived in Clapham before Klosterheim and von Minct got news of him.” She moved back towards the door. “I must find some clothes and a better mask or I’ll be of no use to anyone. I’ll return as soon as I can. Should something happen and I don’t get back, let me show you this.” She went to the far wall of the little room and pulled away some boxes and sacking. She pointed to a short door down in the wall. “You’ll have to lead Jack to safety, Oonagh. If you are in danger, go through there. It will take you to the river, where I think you’ll be able to find a boat. The panther will help. It’s the only way to escape the city now.”
Then she was gone. When I next looked, I saw that the panther was sitting guarding the door, her eyes closed, her head hanging slightly as if she slept on her feet.
“Are you the female principle they keep talking about?” The boy stood up, came towards me. He stumbled, almost fell, his hands grabbing at air.
His red eyes stared at me without seeing. I remembered Mrs. House’s oracular remarks: “You have been in danger since the day you were born!” He was the same boy from Mirenburg. I racked my brains to try to think of what else Mrs. House had told me. “The Blood,” she had said. “You have the Blood.” Well, I knew that from the Countess Flana, too—whatever it meant!
I didn’t know what a female principle was exactly. “I spoke to you in the factory. Then I saw you later in a sideshow. Aren’t they still looking for you? What happened?” I went up to him and reached out my hand and took his. His soft, gentle fingers followed the contours of my face.
“You’re young,” he said. “Younger than me. The one who helped me. I heard Klosterheim talking about ‘the female principle.’ They seem almost scared of us.”
“I kept my mouth shut. Did you say anything?”
“No,” he said, “but then, I have no secrets. Klosterheim and Gaynor have been holding me prisoner off and on for quite a while. They found me in London and then brought me here. That was ages ago. Then they took me to Mirenburg, where the wheel is, so they could move through various different versions of our world. That’s how we managed to escape the big flood. Did they take you to Mirenburg?”
“No,” I replied. “I think they were using you to try to trap me, as well as your father. After I talked to you in the factory, I saw you a couple of times, in different places. They almost captured me once, but Oona saved me.”
“She’s a saint, that woman,” he said. “Were you part of McTalbayne’s gang?”
“I don’t know the name.”
“Worst bastard that ever was on the street,” he said. “Charged you rent for the cardboard box you lived in.”
“You were homeless?”
“I told you. I had a home. A decent-sized box.” He grinned to himself as he felt his way over to a small chest which had been placed against the wall. “Want something to eat?”
“No, thanks,” I said, watching him open the chest and take out what looked like a pie made of green pastry and bite into it.
“These are good,” he said. “Meat. Sure you won’t have one?”
“Maybe later. I’m not that hungry. So when did they first capture you?”
“First? A while ago. I don’t know exactly. McTalbayne had us up west on a run. I was always used as the diversion, see, because I’m blind and look sort of funny. So that was my job. I was in Marks and Spencers, having a bit of a fit, while the rest of them stripped the racks near the door. We’d done it a hundred times before. Then, suddenly, I felt myself grabbed. I thought it was the Old Bill, the cops, but it turns out to be Klosterheim and that filthy wanker von Minct. They pretended they were police. Only when I was in the car I realized they were bullshitting me. They got me down to the river and over the bridge, and before I knew it, it was ‘Three, please’ for the London Wheel.”
“You’ve been on it?”
“Well, only that time. A waste of money in my case. Next thing I knew, I was in Mirenburg. Weird place, isn’t it? Are you a Londoner, too?”
I was fascinated. “Yes,” I said hurriedly. “What? You mean the London Wheel took you to Mirenburg?”
“That’s how they travel,” he said. “What part of London?”
“Well, I was born in Notting Dale, but we moved to Tufnell Hill. Near the old windmill.”
“Oh, I know it,” he said. “McTalbayne used to take us up there on the way to Hampstead. We did the fair and that. Apparently it’s the last working mill in London. Owned by a recluse of some sort. I know McTalbayne had his eye on the place but got put off when he went to see if he could break in …”
I had the strangest sensation, talking to that blind albino boy who looked so much like my grandparents and Monsieur Zodiac. The panther was still sleeping by the door.
“Do you know who your mum and dad are?” I asked him.
“I’m told my father was Elric and my mum was a dreamthief. Then there’s my sister.”
“They think I’m her.”
His hand came out again to explore my face. “Oh, no,” he said. “There’s no resemblance at all.”
“So it’s mistaken identity, is it? Because we’ve got the same relatives?”
He shook his head. “Don’t ask me. That pair didn’t tell me much. I found out from my real sister almost everything I do know. Which isn’t much! How are you related?”
“Oona,” I said, “is really my grandmother.”
“Oona?” He burst into laughter. “Oona? You mean the woman who brought you here, right?”
“Right.” I was a bit upset by his response.
“Well, I don’t know what she’s been saying or what anyone else is telling you,” he said, “but we can’t be that many years apart.” He spoke in a coarse, rather aggressive tone. Maybe, I thought, he is just defensive. He must have had a terrible time since he was a baby.
“Eh?”
“Oona just can’t be your grandma,” said Jack D’Acre. “She’s far too young.”
“Well, that’s what you’d think—”
“I know it. Far too young. You’ve got it completely wrong. Oona’s my sister.” He put his hand to his mouth. “Oops. I wasn’t supposed to tell anyone that. Keep it dark, okay, or we could be in trouble.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
I DECIDED JACK’S ordeal had addled his mind, so I didn’t press the subject. A bit later my grandmother returned briefly with a further warning to lie low. “Hawkmoon’s made impressive advances. They say he has supernatural help. A crystal whose facets res
emble the multiverse itself, the light representing the moonbeam roads. He is capable of moving whole armies across space and time. His army vanishes for a while and then reappears hundreds of miles deeper into enemy territory. Meanwhile the Empire makes finding you two its priority. Huon has offered rewards and punishments. Some of the punishments have already started. Flana herself, I understand, is suspected.”
King Huon had ordered an intensive search for me and the blind boy. The biggest operation Oona had ever seen. We were more important to the Dark Empire than the defense of its city. I tried to ask how Jack D’Acre could be her twin brother, but she had no time to explain, she said. “It’s to do with the relationship of one world of the multiverse with another. The closer they are in conjunction, the closer their time lines. We grow used to these discrepancies when we travel the moonbeam roads. I suspect that is the secret Hawkmoon has. Klosterheim seems to know something about the duke’s source of power. The Empire wants to find anyone who has the ability to travel in that manner—you and Jack in particular.”
At least I now understood how she looked roughly the same age as her father. So it really was possible, for a special few at least, to go back into history and meet their own parents before they were born! Did it mean you could manipulate events? Change the course of history? From what she said, this power was granted to you only if you were one of a kind, or at least a manifestation, like Elric, of a recurring hero called the Champion Eternal.
When Oona left to scout out our escape route, she took the panther with her. She had given me plenty to think about.
Those resonances began to make sense of so much that had been a mystery to me. If I ever got back to school and passed my A-levels, I decided to specialize in mythology and anthropology at university. Then came a fresh anxiety: Had the school holidays ended? Was I being missed at Godolphin and Latymer? It’s stupid the kind of things you think of when someone is threatening to hang you upside down and bleed you to death like a pig!