Ruins Page 3

  “Weakling,” Esus snarled.

  Shame and anger boiled Nicholas’s stomach and he drew on all of his strength to force Esus’s blade away. The phantom’s sword left his and Nicholas scrabbled to his feet.

  Esus is the raven, he thought again through the pounding in his skull. He’d spotted the bird in the weeks following his parents’ deaths. It seemed to follow him everywhere he went. It was the symbol of the Sentinels, but he didn’t know why.

  Esus prowled between the trees and an image of him fighting Diltraa flashed before Nicholas’s eyes. Esus had hacked off the demon’s head using the Drujblade, the bone dagger that Isabel had given to Nicholas. He felt queasy at the thought of Esus repeating the trick with him.

  He raised the sword, his hands shaking. What was Esus doing? The few times he’d encountered him, Esus had been elusive and forbidding. Why would he save Nicholas from Diltraa only to kill him now?

  “What’s going on?” he asked.

  Esus whirled at him, slashing the sword in a silver arc. Nicholas raised his own and they clanged together. Esus swung at him again and again, pushing Nicholas through the trees. His back struck a trunk and the swords clanged again, but Nicholas lost his grip and his weapon thudded to the earth.

  Esus hissed and slashed above Nicholas’s head. A decapitated branch clattered to the ground.

  “Again,” he ordered.

  “What are you?” Nicholas panted, retrieving his sword. It felt heavier than before and he trembled, clasping it before him. He grit his teeth as the swords clashed once more. He moved sideways, away from the trees. He could barely see the blades as they moved. He responded to Esus’s spars impulsively. Breathlessly, he staggered, his shoulders aching, pleading with him to drop the sword.

  Esus dealt another blow and Nicholas’s sword sailed out of his hands. A boot struck his chest and Nicholas thudded to the forest floor, Esus’s sword slicing down.

  “No!” he cried, hot fear overcoming him.

  The blade went into the ground by his head and remained there.

  “Again.”

  “I can’t.”

  “How do you expect to fight the emissaries of the Dark Prophets when you cannot fight me?”

  “I don’t even know what emissaries means,” Nicholas shot back between pants.

  “The demon nearly claimed your life,” Esus spat. The memory of Diltraa’s blazing white eyes leapt into Nicholas’s mind and his cheeks burned. He stared at the emotionless mask hovering above him and attempted to see through it. He had used his powers to get into Malika’s head; that was how he’d driven her away. Perhaps he could do the same with Esus.

  He pushed, striking out with his mind, picturing a sword thrusting into Esus’s skull.

  All he saw was a black void. A nothingness. A buzzing like insects screamed in his ears and Nicholas winced, pushing harder, sensing an alien presence. Something angry. A seething, boiling, formless entity.

  Esus. He could sense him. Nicholas didn’t know exactly what he was sensing, but it was something physical, deep within the phantom. His soul? His darkest secrets?

  “Good,” the phantom rasped. “That is how you will fight.”

  Was he aware of what Nicholas was doing? What was he doing?

  Esus turned and peered into the forest.

  The connection snapped and Nicholas shook his head, the buzzing gone, replaced with a crashing headache – and the sound of somebody approaching. He was sweaty and weak with fatigue, but he also felt oddly elated. He’d done it again. He’d tapped into the power within him.

  Jessica appeared. Isabel scampered at her feet and Lash the bodyguard lingered behind.

  “Well?” the cat asked.

  “The boy is weak,” Esus replied tersely. “Green. His training must begin at once. Show him.”

  Darkness crowded in around him, as if the phantom had drawn on every shadow in the forest, and he was gone. Nicholas heard wings beating above their heads.

  Esus is the raven, he thought again.

  “What just happened?” he demanded, shakily getting to his feet. Esus had called him weak, but he had a feeling he’d done something right. The phantom had pushed him. The sword fight was to scare him. The real test had been what he’d done to defend himself.

  “Are you injured?” Isabel asked.

  “Just my pride.”

  “That doesn’t count.”

  “Didn’t think it would. What did he mean by training?”

  “Nicholas,” Jessica said. “It’s time we talked.” Her calmness unnerved him.

  “No kidding,” he said. “Where is everybody?”

  Jessica was already gliding between the trees, spectre-like in her silver and black attire, and he hurried after her. He assumed she was leading him back to Hallow House, but he couldn’t be certain of anything anymore.

  “They have departed,” Jessica explained. “The Festival of Fire is over. You’ll have to excuse Esus. His methods are somewhat unconventional. He wanted to catch you off-guard.”

  “Well, he succeeded,” Nicholas muttered.

  An uncomfortable sense of foreboding squeezed his ribcage. What had Esus meant by training? Sentinel training? The squeezing intensified. Were the secrets of the Sentinels finally going to be revealed? Did Esus expect him to fight? And if so, who was going to teach him?

  “What is Esus?” he asked, slowing his pace as he tried to catch his breath.

  “This way,” Jessica said. She saw his hesitation and smiled mischievously. “Esus was a wild thing when the Trinity came upon him. Savage as nature itself, prowling the woods; half mad, half feral. In his breast, the Trinity sensed a fearsome instinct. An unflinching bloodlust. And, perhaps, unfaltering loyalty to any who bested him in battle. They couldn’t fathom what he was. He was of two worlds; part of this one, part of another. He could change form at will. Snap his bodily chains and become something else entirely.”

  The Trinity. Nicholas had seen them mentioned in books, too. The Sentinels worshipped them like gods.

  “The Trinity tamed him to a degree,” Jessica added. “Wrestled with his spirit. His fire. Taught him words. But they didn’t integrate him into civilised living. They needed his wildness, his innate violence.”

  They reached the house. The windows glimmered, casting distorted shadows to the ground.

  “And The Trinity?” Nicholas asked.

  “Come,” Jessica said, opening the front door. “Let me show you.”

  Nicholas held his tongue. He didn’t dare hope that Jessica was finally ready to answer his questions. Silently, he followed her through the house, traipsing down the dusty corridor that led past the Pentagon Room. Finally, they came to the garden at the heart of Hallow House. It had yet to reclaim its former glory. Great patches of bare earth gaped like wounds yet to heal. But here and there, budding foliage had appeared, bright green toes wriggling out of the ground.

  “That will be all, Lash,” Jessica said to her guard.

  The brute eyed Nicholas distrustfully and Nicholas resisted giving him a rude hand gesture. Acknowledging her command, Lash nodded at Jessica and strode back the way they had come.

  “You’ll have to forgive him, too,” Jessica said. “He takes his appointment very seriously.”

  Nicholas nodded. “As the grave.”

  “Like the garden, we’re still recovering.” Jessica led him between the flowerbeds. Isabel scurried after them and Nicholas watched her pause periodically to scrutinise a new scent. Despite her caustic nature, she seemed to have made peace with her feline predicament. For now, at least.

  “I’m grateful for your actions that night,” Jessica continued. “Without you, I’m not sure Diltraa would have been defeated.” Nicholas didn’t say anything. He couldn’t take any credit for that. It was Esus who had lopped off the demon’s head.

  “What did you think of the Festival of Fire?”

  “It was... different.”

  “The Sentinels are a proud people. They were raised as fighter
s and it takes a lot to shake them. I must offer my own apology, also. The book I left with you, the blank Chronicles. It was not meant to anger you, but illustrate how much of a secret that period truly is. If you come with me now, I’ll explain everything.”

  Jessica knew he’d been angry? He wondered if there was any privacy whatsoever in Hallow House.

  They came to a clearing. A rough circle of flat earth with a curious pit in the centre. Nicholas recognised it as the spot where the willow tree had stood. He and Jessica had used it to hide from Diltraa and the demon had ripped it from the ground, leaving the tree’s agonised roots exposed.

  “There’s a reason Diltraa targeted the garden,” Jessica said.

  “It said something about the Trinity,” Nicholas recalled. The memories flickered, felt half-glimpsed. He had cracked his head against a tree and it was still sore.

  “It wanted to know the whereabouts of the Trinity,” Jessica said. She laughed and Nicholas watched, confused, as Jessica strode into the circle of earth.

  “It had no idea how close it came,” she said, reaching into the ground, into the ugly hole at the clearing’s centre. Nicholas was surprised to see a stone slab buried there. Jessica pushed against it, then moved back.

  “Careful,” she cautioned.

  There came the sound of stone striking stone and loosed earth spilled into darkness. The ground trembled faintly under their feet, then was still.

  “Is that what Malika wanted, too?” Nicholas asked. The red-haired witch had appeared to him as his mother and tried to persuade him to kill Jessica. Malika wanted Jessica dead, but why? Because she was the leader of the Sentinels? Or was there more to it?

  “Come,” Jessica urged, ignoring his question. It seemed there were limits to what she would tell him. She approached the opening in the soil, stepping into it and vanishing. Nicholas hurried over. The stone slab had gone. In its place, a set of rocky stairs coiled down into the earth.

  “Stop dithering,” Isabel called as she, too, disappeared.

  Nervously, Nicholas followed. The air was damp and his nose itched. His footsteps echoed ahead of him, but the staircase quickly widened and he could breathe without succumbing to the fear of being buried alive. A light gleamed somewhere below. It illuminated the craggy walls, which were inscribed with crude pictures and words that he couldn’t understand. He felt very young in a very old place.

  Just when he thought the steps would never end, he reached the bottom.

  They were in an unremarkable stone room. The walls were rough-hewn, the ceiling so low that Nicholas was forced to stoop. Jessica stood before a simple stone entranceway, the cat beside her. She shot a look over her shoulder.

  “Ready?” she asked Nicholas.

  “For what?”

  Jessica smiled and eased open the rocky door.

  Nicholas glimpsed gold. And more stone. Jessica and Isabel went inside and Nicholas tentatively followed. Candlelight wavered across the floor of an ancient tomb, pinching the shadows. Stubby candles were pooled everywhere – on little shelves, in shallow bowls, even on the floor itself – and the wax had melted to form wan rivers. Roots pushed through cracks in the stony ceiling and clung to the walls. And there was gold etched into the walls, still glimmering faintly.

  “Come in,” Jessica said, her voice echoing. She stood by three glass casements in the centre of the tomb. They were coffin-like, but infinitely more ornate, resting side by side on stone slabs.

  At the back of the chamber, a carving of a bird presided over all.

  Nicholas shivered. He was sure the bird had blinked.

  “This is most hallowed ground,” Jessica murmured, watching him as he took in his surroundings. “Few have been permitted entrance here. Isabel–” She broke off, noticing that Isabel was perched atop one of the glass coffins. “Get down! Shoo!” She swatted at the cat.

  Isabel shrieked and hopped onto the floor.

  Nicholas approached the coffins and touched the one at the centre. He gasped and the hairs bristled along his arms. An image flashed before his eyes.

  A woman. Her hair is white silk, her skin coffee-coloured, her eyes blue as the ocean. She possesses a wiry intelligence.

  Nicholas yanked his hand from the coffin, the image fading. He was unsure if he’d imagined the woman. She’d felt so real.

  “They’re full of water,” he said, peering into the coffins.

  “They have always been,” Isabel’s voice rang. “But where are the sleeping maids? What of them?”

  “They have passed into memory,” Jessica told the cat, who had seated herself on one of the candle-bearing shelves.

  “Maids?” Nicholas asked. “What is this place?”

  “It is the Trinity’s sleeping chamber,” Jessica said simply. “This is where they retired from the world, tiring of its horrors. They slept here for thousands of years. Now they are gone, returned to the earth that birthed them.” Shadows danced across her face as she scrutinised him. “Let me tell you a story.”

  She went to the far wall and brushed dry roots from it. “Many centuries ago, there were two sisters and a brother. The boy was called Thekla. The girls were called Athania and Norlath. They were nomadic warriors, their skin dark mahogany, hair white as snow. They were the most feared and loved of the land. In that time, the world was known as Ginnungap, and it was a bleak place of death and devils. The Dark Prophets were seated in the wastelands of the west, and their insidious will stretched across the land. Only the iron-willed survived. Iron-willed and iron-boned. Thekla, Athania and Norlath were known as the God Slayers, because that was what people believed demons were – angry gods whose black hearts had been corrupted by their hunger for power.

  “One day, Thekla received a message from the town of Nilhands. It was under siege. A monstrous creature had torn the heads from seventy soldiers and used them to fashion a nest for itself in the uppermost quarters of the castle. Riding out, the God Slayers stormed the castle and battled the beast. When the beast was slain, Thekla and his sisters were offered all the riches they could carry with them. But Norlath wanted no riches, no reward save one thing – the bravest women and men of Nilhands would join them, become their companions in the battle against the foul things that corrupted the innocent.

  “It was quite a request for unassuming townspeople, but Norlath’s expectations were modest. Five men and two women allied themselves with the God Slayers that day, and together they rode from town to town, exorcising evil everywhere they went. Each town they visited, so more recruits were enlisted, until their army was a formidable thing, always headed by the God Slayers, whose skills on the battlefield were unmatchable.”

  Jessica had made it halfway round the room. Nicholas listened raptly. It seemed even the drowsy candlelight had fallen under Jessica’s enchantment.

  “Eventually, the time came for the God Slayers and their army to confront the Dark Prophets. War raged for thirteen months. Both sides suffered huge losses, but finally the God Slayers emerged triumphant. They cast the Prophets out, drew on powers that nobody knew they possessed to rent open a seam in reality. The Prophets were banished to the darkest regions of Hell.

  “When the remaining beasts were gone,” Jessica continued, “having either retreated to their own realm below the earth or been wiped from Ginnungap altogether, the God Slayers built a town. Hyperion. They forged their own mighty fortress, and the townspeople affectionately called them the Trinity – the three who had saved the world from monsters.

  “What the townspeople did not know, though many suspected, was that the Trinity were divine beings. Their veins ran with sacred blood. As the Dark Prophets were the ultimate in depravity, so were the Trinity the ultimate in purity. The name God Slayers was entirely accurate because that’s exactly what the Trinity were – Gods birthed by the very soil of Ginnungap to restore balance to the world. Now that the world was cleansed, it did not need them anymore.”

  “What happened to them?”

  “Thekla, Atha
nia and Norlath retired below their fortress in three water-filled coffins, where they would wait until they were needed again. Their army became the Sentinels. Each generation that followed knew of the Trinity and what they had done, and watched the world for signs of evil’s inevitable return.”

  Jessica stopped. Her hair fell across her face and she seemed sad. She perched on a step behind the coffins.

  “But where are the Trinity now?” Nicholas asked. “They’re not in the coffins.”

  “They slept for so long that they lost form,” Jessica said. “I watched them grow transparent as water, and one day they were simply gone. Reclaimed by Ginnungap. Perhaps we left them too long. We should have roused them sooner.”

  “And Esus?” Nicholas asked. He wandered to the stone bird atop the throne and touched it. A new image flickered behind his eyelids.

  A raven soars above a battlefield. It plunges through the ranks and sweeps toward three shadows. The sun glimmers, dancing about the figures, who wear silver armour and raise blood-stained swords.

  Gasping for breath, Nicholas released the statue. He couldn’t tell if his powers were growing, or if the magic in this chamber was so potent it was heightening them. A rush of exhilaration rippled through him. He’d never been able to summon images on command.

  “When they first bested him in battle, Esus became the Trinity’s eyes and ears,” Jessica explained. “And when the time came for their retirement, Esus became the first Vaktarin, the first to guard them in their slumber. But as the years bled into one another, even mighty Esus wearied. Men came, fearsome conquerors, and a great battle took place over the town of Hyperion. Afterwards, all that remained was a smouldering ruin. The Trinity’s castle was devastated. In the wake of much bloodshed, Esus entreated a family of Sentinels to rebuild, to create a residence above the Trinity’s subterranean chamber and guard it in his stead.”

  “The name of that family was Hallow,” Isabel put in importantly. “They guarded proudly when Esus could not.”