Matt sighed. “Don’t try to unravel it. Just think about how it actually works. That’s all that matters.
“Five Gatekeepers in the past. The same five, born again, and fighting in the future. Sometimes, we meet…”
“In the dream world.”
“Yes. Otherwise we’re separated.”
“Then how did I get here? What am I doing here now?”
Jamie didn’t understand everything Matt was saying but it was clear to him that he had somehow jumped from one world to another and that he didn’t belong here.
“This is the one thing that the Old Ones never understood,” Matt replied. “I can explain it to you now but they never realized it and that was how I was able to deceive them.
“This is how it works. Somewhere, in your world, there is a boy called Matt. And if he were killed, I would instantly replace him… so there would still be five Gatekeepers. And if I had been killed, the future Matt would have been called to replace me. Do you see? It’s as if each of us has two lives. To kill us properly, the Old Ones have to kill us twice.”
“Sapling was killed.”
“Yes.” Matt bowed his head for a moment and when he spoke, his voice was low. “There was never anything for Sapling to find at Scathack Hill. I sent him because I knew he would die there. And he knew it too. I told him. Flint blames himself but the truth is that Sapling sacrificed himself for the rest of us.
“You see, I had to let the Old Ones kill one of us. They had to think that the circle had been broken, that the Five would never meet and that they had won. That would make them careless. They saw Sapling die but they didn’t realize that you would be sent to take his place and that there would be five of us after all. And that’s exactly what happened. They allowed Inti to slip through their lines. And when you and Scar rode down into the battle – that was it. We beat them by a trick.”
“But if I’m not Sapling, how come I can speak his language?” Jamie was still aware that the words he was using would have made no sense in twenty-first-century Nevada. “How come I can ride a horse? And this…” He picked up Frost. “I feel this sword was made for me. I’d never killed anyone in my life but as soon as I had it in my hand…” He stopped, preferring not to remember the slaughter of the day before.
“One day you will fight another battle,” Matt said. “And by that time you will be equally skilled. The past learns from the future and the future learns from the past. I’ve already told you. We are always the same Five.”
“But we have different names.”
Matt nodded. “It’s true. But where do names come from? We don’t choose them. They are given to us.”
Jamie thought for a moment. He had been called Jamie because it was the name of the doctor who had examined him when he was found abandoned as a baby. Scott had been christened after a box of grass seed. Those weren’t their true names. They were just something to put on a form.
“In this world, Inti was named after the sun,” Matt went on. “But in the future he will be called Pedro. It doesn’t matter. The names make no difference to who we really are.”
“What is your real name?” Jamie asked.
Matt fell silent. “I prefer to use my name from your world,” he said. “I’m just Matt.”
Jamie had pins and needles in his leg. He wondered how long they had been sitting here. The sun was rising higher all the time. “There’s not much more to add,” Matt continued. “But you might like to know where you are. Ten thousand years from now, this country will look very different. It will have formed into a small island. Its name will be England. The forest will have been replanted and there will be a village about a mile from where we’re sitting now. The village will be called Lesser Malling, and although the people there will have forgotten all about the Old Ones and the battle that we’ve just fought and won, they will have faint memories that something important happened here. There will be a stone circle, built around the very place where you and I, Inti, Scar and Flint finally met. That circle will come to be known as Raven’s Gate.”
Matt smiled to himself and pointed down.
“You see this river where we’re sitting? One day, it will save my life. Well, not exactly mine.” He pointed upstream. “The other Matt will swim from over there and he’ll come up spluttering and half drowned right at this spot. And when he drags himself out, he won’t know anything about me. Because, you see, he belongs to the future. And I’m here in the past.”
“What happens now?” Jamie asked. “You’re going to send me back.”
“Yes. You have to find your brother. I have to warn you, Jamie, if Scott has been taken by the Old Ones, you must prepare yourself for the worst. They’ll hurt him. They may try to change him. If you do find him, he may not be the same.”
“He wasn’t at Silent Creek,” Jamie said. He suddenly felt miserable. With everything that had happened in this other world, he had forgotten how he had failed in his own. Scott had been at the prison but he had gone. The search had to begin all over again. “Where do I look for him?”
“Use your dreams. The dream world that we visit acts in a strange way. Sometimes it sends us messages in the form of pictures or symbols. Always remember what you see there. It may mean something.”
Matt stood up.
“I have to go,” he said. “There’s still a lot of work to do. And in a few days’ time I’m going to travel with Inti to his country. There’s a weak spot there and we have to construct a second gate to make sure the Old Ones can’t break back in. Inti has a brilliant idea for a sort of lock, but on a huge scale. We’re going to design it together so that it can be built into the desert floor-”
“But what’s the point?” Jamie interrupted. “You’ve already told me that the Old Ones are going to come back again.”
“Well, that’s an entirely different argument. Just because we know they’re coming back, doesn’t mean we can’t try to stop them. And the longer we keep them out, the more time the world has to restore itself.”
“Do you really have no idea where I can find Scott?”
“I’m sorry. But he must still be alive. If he’d been killed, Flint would have replaced him and he would have somehow managed to find you.”
There was a loud screeching sound and something swooped out of the sky, landing on the outstretched branch of an oak tree on the other side of the river. Jamie started up, alarmed – but it was only an eagle. He wondered where it had come from. It wasn’t moving now and seemed to be staring right at him.
Matt had noticed the bird and Jamie had the impression that it meant something to him. “There’s one more thing I can tell you that might help,” he said.
“What’s that?”
“There are two gates that exist in my world and yours. We made the first of them ourselves today. Inti and I will design the second very soon. But there’s something else that you need to know about. There are also twenty-five doorways.”
“What do you mean?”
“How do you think we’ve travelled these great distances to find each other? Inti has come from the other side of the world and I can assure you he didn’t take a boat! The doorways are short cuts. You go in one door and you come out another a thousand miles away. There are doorways in your world too.”
“Where?”
“They are all in sacred places – or places that have become sacred mainly because the doors were there. Places of worship. Buildings of one sort and another but also caves, burial chambers, even hills. They’re marked with the same five-pointed star that we carried on our banners. It’s the symbol of the power of Five. You’re going to need to find them. All of you.”
“How do we do that?”
“There’s a map. It was drawn by a man called Joseph of Cordoba. He was a monk but they made him into a saint. He was one of the very few men who knew about us and our war with the Old Ones. He put the map in his diary and it shows all twenty-five doorways. Find the diary and it will give you the secret paths around your entire world.”
“How do I get back to my world?” Jamie asked.