For a moment he remained bewildered, then realised he’d been caught up in an earthquake. He clung to the ground as if in danger of falling and felt it convulse again. He’d never been in an earthquake before, never even known anybody who had, but he remembered reading somewhere that they never lasted very long… fifteen seconds, thirty seconds, something like that. He also thought he’d read that earthquakes weren’t too dangerous if you were outside. It was falling buildings that killed you. All he had to do was lie here and wait. Everything was going to be fine.
Then a vaettir landed on his back, howling.
Henry twisted to try to throw it off when another one arrived, then another and another. He jerked sideways in sudden panic, but the vaettirs were pinning him. He could smell their musty stench, feel their breath on his face and neck. For some reason they hadn’t started to bite or scratch him yet, but it was only a matter of time. More and more kept arriving, more and more fell on top of him. There was no possibility of escape. In a moment they’d begin to tear him limb from limb. Meanwhile it was as much as he could do to catch his breath.
There was a high, blood-chilling scream from somewhere behind him. The weight on his body eased at once; then suddenly he could breathe again. He felt something else roll off him and turned painfully. To his astonishment, the vaettirs were gone, every one. He pushed slowly to his feet. The ground had stopped shaking. The earthquake was over. He was alone in the desert. Distantly he could hear the soft pad-pad of vaettir footsteps, but they were receding, fading into nothing as he listened. Nothing was making sense any more, but he was still alive.
Then he realised it was too good to be true. He’d no idea what had panicked the vaettirs, but there was one of them returning now. He could hear its running steps quite clearly and now he could see a shape looming out of the darkness. Something inside Henry snapped and he felt a rising fury. His hands curled into fists. He’d survived a single vaettir attack before. This time he was ready for the brute.
‘En Ri!’ hissed the vaettir.
Henry blinked. ‘Lorquin! Is that you?’
‘We did it!’ Lorquin called excitedly. He was beside Henry now, grinning.
‘The draugr is dead?’ Henry frowned. He didn’t believe it.
‘I killed him!’ Lorquin said.
Her, Henry thought. The draugr was the vaettir queen. But he stopped himself correcting the boy.
‘You were great, En Ri,’ Lorquin told him. ‘They will sing of you as a wonderful Companion. You lured away the vaettirs more skilfully than any Companion in the history of the world.’
It was probably an exaggeration, but all Henry could think of saying was, ‘The vaettirs are gone.’ Which was true, but he still had no idea why.
‘They must return when the draugr screams,’ Lorquin said, ‘It is always so.’ He grinned at Henry again, ‘I made him scream big, didn’t I?’
‘Yes, you did,’ Henry said. For the first time he noticed Lorquin was carrying a stone dagger. The blade showed a dark stain. The kid must have used it to kill the draugr. And he thought Henry would be sung about!
‘Now I am a man!’ exclaimed Lorquin proudly. ‘The gods celebrated my victory – did you feel the earth move?’ He seized Henry’s hand and squeezed it in a curious gesture of affection. Then he sobered. ‘We must go now, En Ri. The vaettirs will create a new draugr, but sometimes they wish to seek us out and take revenge.’
‘Where are we going?’ Henry asked.
‘To join my people,’ Lorquin told him happily.
Fifty-Seven
The Abbot was a large, muscular man with a shaven head and drooping moustache. He looked more like a bandit leader than a monk and Blue liked him at once. But she found it difficult to tear her eyes away from his companion, a tiny, wrinkled individual in a grubby yellow robe. ‘This is the Purlisa,’ the Abbot said, using an archaic term that Blue vaguely remembered meant ‘Treasure’ or ‘Precious One’.
It was clearly an honorific of some sort, so she bowed. ‘I am Sluce Ragetus,’ she told him, choosing one of the old aliases she used when she travelled as a man.
‘We’ve been expecting you,’ the Purlisa said, his eyes twinkling. He glanced at the Abbot. ‘Haven’t we, Jamides?’
The Abbot snorted.
‘That’s very surprising,’ Blue told the Purlisa. She smiled slightly. (It was difficult not to smile at the little Treasure.) ‘Until just a very short while ago I’d no idea I was coming here myself.’
‘Strange are the workings of Fate,’ the Purlisa remarked cheerfully. ‘Isn’t that right, Jamides?’
Abbot Jamides snorted again. To Blue he said, ‘The Precious One forecast the coming of a hero who would rid us of a particular problem we face. I believed the omens were against it. Now he wants to crow.’
‘Ah, we can all make mistakes, Jamides.’ The twinkling eyes closed in a long, slow blink as the cheery grin widened. ‘Although some of us make more than others.’
The last thing she needed was to be drawn into the problems of the monastery, ‘I’m hardly a hero,’ Blue said quietly. They were in the Abbot’s personal quarters, a sparsely furnished cell that overlooked a patch of garden. She’d been offered food and drink, but it had yet to appear.
‘Sometimes people are not what they seem,’ the Purlisa remarked. ‘Or what they think they are.’ He smiled at her. ‘Perhaps you are not what you seem, Sluce Ragetus?’
There was something in his tone that rang warning bells. She forced an easy smile, ‘I can assure you, Purlisa -’
But Jamides, the Abbot, interrupted her. ‘I grant it was clever of you to disguise yourself as a man,’ he said.
‘So much less trouble in a monastery,’ the Purlisa twinkled.
The Abbot looked through the window with an expression of distaste. ‘Difficult for the monks when there’s a woman about.’ He nodded sagely, then added, ‘The younger monks.’
‘They have erotic thoughts,’ the Purlisa explained.
The Abbot looked back at her sternly. ‘All the time.’
‘Distracting,’ said the Purlisa. He looked at her fondly and added, ‘From their religious duties.’
‘Lord Abbot – ’ Blue began, wondering what on earth she was going to say.
But the Abbot waved her words away unspoken and his expression softened. ‘You need have no worries about us, of course. As Abbot I am too disciplined for erotic thoughts and the Purlisa is too old.’
‘Almost,’ the Purlisa said.
The Abbot looked at him quickly and frowned.
The Purlisa blinked benignly. ‘She’s very pretty underneath the spells.’
‘Ah,’ Blue said. She had the feeling she was in serious trouble, but it was all she could do not to laugh. ‘About the spells…’
The Purlisa pursed his lips and waved a warning finger. ‘Forbidden here in Buthner. Absolutely, positively illegal. Hideously strict penalties: some might even say barbaric. And nowhere is magic more blasphemous than in a monastery.’ He smiled cheerfully again. ‘Still, I expect you didn’t know.’
The Abbot looked at her fondly. ‘And you have saved us so much trouble with the younger monks…’
‘I imagine we could overlook it,’ said the Purlisa.
‘I imagine we could overlook it,’ echoed the Abbot.
They both beamed at her.
‘How did you know?’ Blue asked. She’d taken a chance with the spells largely because Madame Cardui claimed they were espionage grade and entirely undetectable.
‘The Purlisa is a mystic,’ said the Abbot.
The Purlisa flickered his hands spookily. ‘I see beneath appearances,’ he said in a sepulchral voice. He smiled, then sobered. ‘For example, I see there is a worry in your heart.’
Blue stared at him. The desire to laugh had suddenly disappeared.
‘I expect it’s a lost love,’ said the Abbot. ‘With women it’s always a lost love.’
‘It is a lost love,’ the Treasure said crossly. ‘And there’s no need to mock just because you’re too disciplined -’ he lowered his voice and mumbled ’ – or too ugly – ’ the voice raised again ’ – to have a lost love of your own.’ He turned to Blue and said kindly, ‘It is a lost love, isn’t it?’ This little old man was incredible. Blue said, ‘Yes, it is.’ ‘It is interlinked. It is interwoven. It is part of the tapestry of life.’ ‘Everything is part of the tapestry of life,’ the Abbot grumbled. ‘That doesn’t solve our problem.’