The Traitor’s Sword: The Sangreal Trilogy Two. Jan Siegel
into another place. Sound followed image, and a draught came from it bearing the scent of roses. Bartlemy saw a woman in a garden cutting flowers. The garden was beautiful and the woman well-dressed, but when she lifted her head her face was pinched and sad.
Then the picture changed. Smoke-magic is wayward, unreliable; it can be encouraged but not controlled. The scenes that passed before him were fragmented, their meaning often obscure, with no logic in the sequence, no connecting thread – though Bartlemy knew that much later some connection might be revealed. After the garden the vision darkened. He saw a man whose hooked profile jutted beyond the overhang of his cowl, lit only by a furtive candle-glimmer, head bent towards another and whispering, whispering, while his auditor, a dwarf with more beard than face, listened with dread in the twist of his brows. Bartlemy knew this must be Josevius Grimthorn, ancient warden of the Grail, who had died fourteen hundred years ago, and his henchman (or henchdwarf), a creature long imprisoned beneath Thornyhill Darkwood, until Nathan and Hazel, exploring in the valley, had accidentally freed him. Then came the cup itself, a chalice of polished stone, glowing green in a dim recess, and what appeared to be a gallery of those who had sought for it. The Jewish collector, starving in Dachau – the grandson of an SS officer, drowning in a rainstorm – an old woman, older than she looked, tangled in river-weed – a greedy academic, clutching the wheel of a car, driven mad by phantoms who had eaten his mind. All insane, drowned, dead. And then those who had survived: Eric Rhindon, the purple-eyed exile from an alternative universe, Rowena Thorn, last descendant of a vanished family, Julian Epstein, the badger-haired man from Sotheby’s – and Nathan, who had brought the Grail back from another world so it could return to Rowena, its rightful guardian. And now Bartlemy held it in trust at Thornyhill, the house where her ancestors had lived, until the moment came for which it had been made – whenever that moment might be.
There are three elements to a Great Spell: the female principle, the male principle, and the circle that binds. The Cup, the Sword, the Crown. Relics from a different Time, a different cosmos, forged endless ages ago and hidden away – the Cup in this world, the Sword and the Crown none knew where – guarded by alien forces – until in the city of Arkatron on Eos a ruler thousands of years old should find a way to complete the Spell and save his people from destruction …
But the smoke-magic could not pierce the walls of this world, nor reveal the purpose of the Ultimate Powers (if there was one). Bartlemy saw only the kaleidoscope of quick-change images, the clues that led and misled. A blue-eyed schoolboy with a soft mouth, and Hazel watching him, covertly, from behind her hair – a star that wasn’t a star, looking down on Annie’s bookshop – a phantom in a mirror, too vague to have form or face but slowly solidifying, gone before he could make it out. And then they were inside the bookshop, and a man with an anxious forehead was leafing through a book, a very old book with handwritten notes at the back, in an ink that wasn’t black but brown with age. An ink, Bartlemy thought, that might once have been red. The man bought the book – Bartlemy heard Annie’s murmur of thanks – and the picture followed him out of the shop, and down the street, and somewhere in the background there was a little sound like a sigh, the released breath of an archer who sees his arrow hit the bull’s eye at last. But there was nobody there to breathe …
Lastly a dark figure in a dark room, long-robed, his back to the watcher, presumably Josevius again. He was dribbling powder through his fingers to form a magic circle – there was a hiss: ‘Fiumé!’ and a gleam of fire ran round the perimeter. And then came the muttered rhythm of an incantation, and a slow pale form coalesced at the circle’s heart. The magister, Bartlemy thought, summoning one of the Old Spirits – the Hunter, the Hag, the Child, the One We Do Not Name – in the deal which cost him his soul. But Bartlemy had used few fire-crystals, and as the last one crumbled to a smoulder the image faded into smoke. He unblocked the chimney, and the air cleared, and Hoover came and rested his chin on his master’s knee.
‘Well,’ Bartlemy said, ‘was that helpful, or wasn’t it? Do we know anything we didn’t know before? Or – at the risk of sounding like Donald Rumsfeld – do we only know things we don’t know?’ The dog made a whiffling noise. ‘Who was the man in the bookshop? Would Annie have any idea? It might be worth making a little drawing, and showing it to her. It’s a pity I’m not a better artist, but my creative skills are usually confined to the kitchen. Still, I can always cheat. Magic is about cheating, after all.’
Hoover gave a short, sharp bark.
‘Yes,’ said Bartlemy. ‘I take the point. If I can cheat, so can others. I’ll bear it in mind.’
He poured himself a glass of something that smelt of raspberries and blackberries, of cinnamon and cardamom, of Christmas cake and summer spice – but most of all of alcohol. When he had taken a sip or two he remarked with uncharacteristic force: ‘I wish I knew what the hell was going on.’
Hoover thumped his tail by way of agreement.
The summer term had begun badly for Hazel. Maths, never her favourite subject, had taken a turn for the worse, and although Nathan usually helped her with it he was busy with his own commitments and somehow, when they did meet, they always had better things to talk about. George was quite good at understanding maths, but less good at explaining what he understood about it. Now, she was floundering in a quagmire of incomprehensible numbers, struggling with the feeling, long familiar to her, that there was no point in trying to think during lessons because it wouldn’t get her anywhere, so she might as well give up before she started. Her own stupidity made her angry, and she turned the anger outward on others. She was used to the idea that Nathan was cleverer than her – Nathan was cleverer than everybody – but it was galling to find herself taking second place to George, whom she had always slightly despised, in a friendly sort of way.
But far more serious was the Jonas Tyler situation. Of course, he didn’t know she liked him – they’d only ever exchanged a few words – she didn’t want him to know, or anyone else – but that was beside the point. She’d seen him twice talking to Ellen Carver, not ordinary talking but the low-voiced, intimate kind of talk that people do when they are close to each other, and Ellen’s friend Sarah said he’d asked Ellen out to a coffee shop. Jason Wicks, already six foot two, went to pubs and terrorized the older villagers of Eade by drinking beer on street corners and throwing the cans into people’s gardens, but Jonas, though he probably drank beer, only did it in the privacy of his own home. Nonetheless, to Hazel a coffee shop represented a possible venue for seduction – the seduction, that is, of Jonas by Ellen, rather than vice versa. She spent her maths lessons brooding about it, and went home on the school bus sitting alone, wrapped in silence. Safe in the lair of her bedroom, she fought with frustration and inchoate rage, feeling herself ugly, undesirable, with a brain that wouldn’t work and a body that let her down. She remembered her great-grandmother – Effie Carlow with her raptor’s eye and witch’s nose, living in an isolated cottage, frightening people, frightening Hazel, drowned in river-water after a spell too far. You too have the power … She didn’t want to be like that, she didn’t want to be old and mad and scary, dabbling in charms and cantrips and other illusions. But the thought of Jonas with Ellen was gall and wormwood to her – it seemed to her, in the blackness of her heart, that she had nothing to lose.
She got out the bottles she had already selected, Effie’s notebook with its peely cover and scratchy writing, the beeswax candle she had bought the day before. Effie’s notes said nothing about a candle, but Hazel felt it was appropriate. (In Buffy, Willow always lit candles when she was doing magic.) She ought to go into the attic – Effie had used the attic sometimes – but the lock was broken and anyway, she had once seen something there she didn’t like. The bedroom was her place, private and secure. She wedged a chair under the door handle and cleared the dressing table by dint of shoving things onto the floor, fixing the candle in place in front of the mirror. Then she remembered the matches were in the kitchen and had to un-wedge the door to fetch them. Finally, she was ready.
She had drawn the curtains but it wasn’t dark and the candle-flame looked dim and unimpressive, a tiny gleam against the many-coloured chaos of her room. The theme music from Lord of the Rings filled the background; she had hoped