Читать книгу The Witch’s Kiss Trilogy - Katharine Corr, Katharine Corr - Страница 21

It took a while for Jack to calm down sufficiently for Merry and Leo to make any sense of what he was saying. One minute he was talking about the recent attacks in Tillingham – attacks he now knew he had carried out – the next he was reliving the past, mentioning names and places neither of them had ever heard of. But one thing was clear: the manuscript was right. Gwydion had woken from the enchanted sleep. As far as Jack knew the wizard had only been awake for a few minutes. But that had been enough to trigger the recovery of Jack’s memory, at least partially.

‘This is all Gwydion’s fault, not yours,’ Leo offered. ‘You know that, right? It’s not really you attacking people.’

Jack shook his head.

‘My hands wield the blade. My hands are red with their blood.’ He looked at Merry, his eyes glittering in the moonlight, and Merry thought how different his face was really from that of the King of Hearts: still beautiful, but kind and sad too. ‘Did I not try to kill you?’

Merry nodded. ‘Yes. Though you didn’t get to, in the end. I mean, something stopped you, or stopped whatever was controlling you.’ She didn’t know what else to say. But, as Jack dropped his head into his hands, she felt a twinge of pity for this strange boy, fifteen hundred years away from his home, more alone than any of the other seven billion people on the planet. ‘I’m sorry, Jack. I wish we could help you. I wish—’ She caught herself, and stopped. Because she wasn’t supposed to help him, not really. She had to keep reminding herself: if she was reading the manuscript right, she was supposed to kill him.

‘There is one thing you can do.’ Jack started ripping blades of grass out of the ground next to him. ‘You can tell me truthfully how long I have been asleep.’

* * *

All things considered, Merry reflected, Jack was taking it pretty well. He accepted Merry’s outline of what had happened – there was a lot of stuff he still couldn’t recall – and her explanation that a new plan for dealing with Gwydion had been constructed while he was asleep. But when she finally told him, after using as many delaying tactics as she could think of, exactly how many years had passed since he had last seen the sun, she thought he might freak out. After all, he had just learnt that all the people he had ever loved were dead. And not just dead: so dead that nothing was likely left of them but dust. Not even dust.

If it were me, thought Merry, I would be completely freaking out right about now.

But Jack didn’t. He clenched his jaw, and for a moment Merry could see his hands, balled up into tight fists, shaking. But that was it.

‘Um, are you OK? I mean, it must be a terrible shock for you. Do you—’ I’m sitting here in the dark with a fifteen-hundred-year-old boy who tried to stick a sword in me eight days ago, and I’m about to ask him if he wants to talk about it. Seriously?

Merry cleared her throat. ‘Do you believe us now? That we are who we say we are? Because we really need your help.’

‘I believe you. And I will do anything I can to stop the wizard.’

‘OK.’ Leo leant forwards. ‘Do you know what Gwydion’s current plan is? I mean, is he trying to get out from under the lake himself, or is he just going to keep sending you out? And aren’t you meant to be cutting people’s hearts out?’

Jack groaned and dropped his head into his hands.

‘Oh,’ Leo murmured, ‘I’m sorry.’

They waited while Jack recovered himself. After a few moments he looked up again.

‘I cannot answer you at the moment. Perhaps the knowledge will return to me. But Gwydion must not escape the lake. Before, he would take people from their homes, practise his magic on them – I used to hear them screaming …’

Leo blanched. ‘We can’t let that happen here. And we’re not going to. We’ve got various, you know, magical artefacts that have been passed down to us.’

‘May I see them?’

Leo went to get the parchment out of Merry’s pocket, but she put out her hand to stop him. ‘I think – I think maybe that’s not a good idea. We don’t know whether the – whatever it is, that takes you over, whether it gets to know the things you know.’ She frowned. ‘Or whether it tells Gwydion what it knows. Do you understand what I’m saying?’

‘Yes. You are right, of course. I am not—’ Jack’s mouth twisted into a parody of a smile, ‘—safe. When the curse controls me, I am trapped inside my body. I see what it does as it follows the wizard’s orders, hear it speaking with my voice, but I have no knowledge of Gwydion’s deeper strategies. Perhaps it is reversed when I am myself.’

‘Vengeance,’ Merry whispered, almost to herself. Jack’s eyebrows raised. ‘Um, in the story our gran told us, Gwydion wanted revenge, on your mother. Because she wouldn’t marry him?’

‘My mother?’ Jack shook his head. ‘I have no memory of her. But you may be right.’ He hunched over, wrapping his arms around his knees. The movement revealed thick white scars around his wrists.

Merry wondered briefly what had caused them, before deciding she would much rather not know. Instead, she asked: ‘What’s it like, under the lake? How do you get in and out?’

Jack glanced over at the water. ‘There is a staircase, up to the lake bed. The shadow within me speaks to the rock – at least, that is how it seems to me. And somehow a passageway opens … But I can never remember the words it uses. There is no other way in or out of the ruins.’ He waved a hand towards the lake. ‘The tower is gone. All was drowned.’

Silence fell. Merry poured herself some more coffee from the flask. It was even colder tonight, almost as if the seasons were running backwards; Leo was looking at his phone, and she could see his breath condensing in the air.

She thought of the braid, the thing that had protected her from Gwydion’s own servant – if the manuscript was right. Was it Gwydion’s hair she had tied round her wrist? The idea turned her stomach.

‘Jack, when you were about to, you know, hit me with the sword last Sunday, something stopped you. Leo said it was like you’d run into a brick wall.’ Merry hesitated. ‘A brick is a sort of—’

‘I know what a brick is.’ Jack said.

‘Of course you do. Sorry.’

‘The giants left them.’

‘Er …’

‘That is what the stories say, at any rate, though Father Brendan said they were untrue.’

‘OK … Well, do you remember whether anything like that has happened before? Have you – I mean, has the thing possessing you ever tried to kill someone, but not been able to?’

The sky had clouded over again, and in the darkness Merry could no longer see Jack’s face clearly. He was silent for so long she wondered whether he was slipping back into some kind of magical trance; at her side, Leo shifted and raised his knife again. Eventually, Jack lifted a hand and brushed something away from his cheek. ‘The King of Hearts is without mercy. I remember clearly the first evening Gwydion sent him – me – out to kill, to collect hearts; from then on, I believed none would escape him. But I am certain, one night, some mishap sent the wizard’s plans awry.’

‘What happened? What was different?’

‘I cannot recall … I see myself holding the sword, plunging it downwards, but then – the blade – I—’ He slammed his palm against the ground. ‘Why can I not remember?’

Merry leant closer to him. ‘Hopefully it will come back to you, like you said. Maybe next time.’

Jack gasped and cried out. Leo swore.

‘Quick – get back. He’s losing control.’

They backed away from Jack as he fought to stop his hand moving towards the broken blade. Merry pulled the manuscript out of her pocket. There was the line of words that would force Jack – or the monster now inhabiting his body – back into the lake. But underneath was a fresh instruction.

Jack finally pulled the broken sword from its scabbard and stood up. He weighed it in his hand a moment, looked at them and smiled.

‘Merry?’ Leo murmured, ‘Say the words.’

‘But Leo, the manuscript, it—’

Jack – but not Jack – started walking slowly towards them, the blade weaving back and forth as though he was trying to choose who to attack first. Leo spread his arms wide in front of Merry.

‘Say the damn words!’

Merry shouted the unfamiliar syllables as quickly as she could. Jack’s face became expressionless and she shuddered, even though she had seen this transformation several times now. He sheathed the sword, turned away from them and walked back towards the lake.

‘What the hell happened?’ Leo was at her side now, breathing hard, his knife still gripped tight in his fist.

‘Look.’ Merry held the manuscript out to him, pointing to the new line of instruction. It was just two words.

Follow him.

Leo stared at the manuscript, glanced up at Merry and shook his head.

‘No. No, we can’t just…’

‘But Leo, I have to try.

I can’t believe I said that. I can’t believe I’m even thinking about getting into that lake.

Oh, God.

Leo shook his head again, but he grabbed Merry’s hand and they both threw themselves after Jack.

Within a few moments they were approaching the water’s edge. But Jack was too far ahead of them. He veered off, began running up the slope where the land rose to form a cliff, leapt – and for a second they saw him outlined against the stars, before he dropped feet-first into the seething waters and disappeared. Leo hesitated, turned away from the hill and plunged down towards the lower edge of the lake, tugging Merry with him.

‘Kick off your shoes. We’ll have to swim.’

They waded out deeper, the lake bed fell away from beneath their feet and Leo let go of Merry’s hand. She tried to push herself forwards, to make her arms and legs move together, to regulate her breathing as she’d been taught, but already the frigid water was in her eyes and soaking through her clothes, taking her breath away –

– cold, that’s what she remembered, the river was so cold and black, the weight of it crushing her, dragging her downwards as she tried to pull him back to the bank, the water getting into her throat, choking her –

Merry sank.

‘I’m sorry, Leo.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous. You could have drowned. You nearly did.’

They were sitting in Leo’s car. Flo’s mum, Denise, had been the witch on duty at the little car park. She’d called Gran and then asked Merry if she wanted to have a go at drying their clothes, managing to look simultaneously amazed and unsurprised when Merry declined. The spell Denise used seemed to suck the moisture out of the fabric: Merry had watched, trembling with cold, too numb to be envious, as streamers of water vapour spiralled away into the night air. When Gran arrived she brought a large flask of a fiery liquid that tasted strangely of thyme. Metheglin, she’d called it. While Merry was sipping it, her insides thawing, Leo shared what they’d learnt from Jack. Gran was particularly interested in the idea of a word that would open the passageway under the lake. Now, she’d gone off to do some research – Gran didn’t seem to keep normal hours – and Leo was waiting for his hands to warm up so he could drive Merry home. At least there was no urgency: at Gran’s (magical) prompting, a work colleague had invited Mum to see a musical in London. The coast was clear for once.

‘But I am sorry,’ Merry said again. ‘We – we might have been under the lake by now …’

‘No. We’d be dead. I was stupid, to think—’ Leo took his hands away from the hot air vent, flexed his fingers. ‘I don’t understand it. There’s no way he should be able to swim down through all that water. Though even if the lake was shallower, even if we’d been better prepared, I’m not sure you …’ He glanced at Merry, shrugged. ‘I thought you loved swimming … but … you didn’t seem to be dealing with the water that well.’

Merry rubbed the tears away from her face. Her chest ached, partly from choking and coughing up water, partly from the effort of not weeping uncontrollably. All the emotions she hadn’t been feeling for the last week – all the shock and terror and disbelief – were beating down on her like hammers on an anvil.

‘I can’t do it, Leo. I don’t think it would make any difference if the weather wasn’t so cold, or if I had a wetsuit on – I can’t do what Jack did. We’re going to run out of time. Gwydion has already won.’

‘No, he hasn’t. There must be another way under the lake. Or maybe we can get Jack to bring the hearts to us. We’ll figure it out.’

Merry wasn’t so sure.

Not for the first time, Merry wished that Bronwen was the kind of mother who kept stashes of prescription drugs in the house rather than relying on herbs, yoga and willpower. Then, she might have been able to swallow a sleeping pill, instead of lying in bed, wide awake, nearly two hours after they’d got back from the lake. Every time she dozed off, some night-time noise in the house jerked her awake, setting her heart thumping, forcing her to switch on the lamp to make sure no one else was in the room with her. Every time she switched the lamp off again she saw faces in the darkness: Jack; Meredith; Alex, his skin blue with cold as she dragged him out of the water. All the people she had failed. Eventually she gave up, and left the light on. The parchment and the sword hilt were in the top drawer of her bedside table, but the plait of hair was still tied around her wrist; she hadn’t taken it off since that first night, when Jack – the King of Hearts, rather – had almost got close enough to kill her. She examined it now – a light nut-brown, with a few strands of grey – and wondered what it was that Jack had been trying to remember.

The recollection of the conversation they’d had with him, the agony in his voice as he told them what he’d done – Merry pulled her knees up to her chest, wanting to shut out the sudden stab of compassion and remorse. It would have been so much easier if he had just kept glowering at them.

She looked at the braid again, trying to think dispassionately about what she might have to do. After they’d destroyed the hearts – whatever they turned out to be – she would say the words to knock Jack unconscious, and then –

What? Kill him magically? Stab him? Cover his mouth and nose with a pillow until –

Merry squeezed her eyes shut against the pictures in her head. Even though the image of Jack standing over her with the broken blade was fresh in her mind – still made her breath short with terror – she couldn’t hate him. After talking to him this evening, she pitied him. More than that: she almost (kind of) trusted him. It didn’t make any sense. But somehow, he felt … familiar.

Poor Jack. She tried to imagine him dressed in modern clothes and with a different haircut, and the thought made her smile a little. Jack would make a pretty cute twenty-first century teenager. If things had been different, maybe they could have been friends.

In the dream, Merry wasn’t wearing pyjamas. She was wearing a gown of thick, red-brown wool that fell in heavy folds from below the belt around her waist. Glancing down, she saw objects hanging from the belt: a leather pouch, a knife, a stone with a hole through its centre. Nearby stood a pair of enormous wooden doors, dark-coloured, scarred with runes and symbols.

There was a touch on her shoulder. Jack was standing behind her. He cupped her face in his hands, gazing down at her as though he was trying to memorise every detail of her skin, her eyes, her lips.

‘Jack …’ Merry’s eyes closed. Jack’s lips were firm and cool as they moved against hers; he put his arms around her and pulled her close. For one infinitesimal, infinite moment, Merry was burning, and liquid gold was running through her veins.

Jack drew away, and Merry realised the wooden doors had swung open to reveal –

Trees. Crowded up against the doorway, blocking out the light. Huge holly trees with thick black branches, dark green leaves the size of her hand, long spines, like talons tipped with silver, curving out from their edges. Jack was whispering in her ear.

‘You left me. You poisoned me with the black holly and you left me there, buried alive, as the centuries passed.’ Slowly, his hands tightened around her wrists; he began pushing her forwards, towards the trees. ‘You shouldn’t have left me.’

‘Jack, what are you doing? You’re hurting me.’ Merry struggled to break his grip, to force him back from the doorway, but his hands were like iron manacles on her arms. ‘Jack, stop!’

They passed the door posts and Jack did stop, holding Merry a few centimetres in front of the wall of holly.

‘It’s time for you to sleep, Meredith.’ Jack shoved her forwards.

Merry closed her eyes as the spines pierced her skin …

Jack woke up in the darkness of his room under the lake.

He remembered things, now. He remembered sitting with Merry and Leo next to the lake, confessing the terrible things he had done or been made to do. And all the time his memories of the past were getting clearer. It was hard to believe that Merry was right, that such a weight of years had passed since the witch sisters had left him and Gwydion sleeping under the lake. And yet, the world was so very different. He could recall his childhood: playing among the wood shavings while his father worked, or listening to the clatter of the loom as his mother wove cloth.

His foster-mother, not his actual mother. Because he had only seen his birth mother once.

Once, in – Helmswick. That was the place. Jack closed his eyes, trying to inch his way into the past, to that particular evening. To the night he had been sent out to kill his own brother, to cut out his heart –

The memory flooded back. That was what he had been trying to describe to Merry: the only other time he – the King of Hearts – had failed …

In his mind’s eye Jack could see the room clearly, the bunches of mistletoe and scarlet hangings: it was near Yuletide. His brother was lying on the bed with his eyes closed, a smile on his lips. Dreaming about the girl he loved, no doubt: the very thing that made him vulnerable to the King of Hearts’ malice.

The smile faded when he opened his eyes, and saw Jack.

The boy stared at him, and somehow – was it the wolf’s-head brooch Gwydion made him wear, or some family resemblance? – recognised him.

‘Jack.’

‘Yes,’ the King of Hearts replied. ‘And you must be Edmund. There’s no need to be afraid. I am here to help you. To save you.’

The boy talked to him. Imagined he could, somehow, save himself ‘Please, Jack – you are still my brother. Let me help you. Surely there is some part of you that is still – human?’

And Jack fought for control of his body, felt the shadow within him waver, weaken – but only for a minute. ‘No, Edmund. I do not desire your help. I desire only to serve my master. And his desire is to set you free.’

Edmund leapt towards the door then, but the King of Hearts shouted out the words that rendered his victims powerless and the younger boy fell as though someone had swept his legs out from under him.

Jack went to stand over him, drew his sword, raised the blade point-down above his head –

‘Jack!’

A woman, standing on the threshold, eyes wide, burning against her pale skin. His mother. The next moment she threw herself across Edmund’s body, shielding him. But the curse inside Jack did not hesitate. Jack watched, horror-struck, as his own arms plunged the blade downwards towards Edith’s back, as Edmund screamed –

The blade shattered.

Jack gasped and opened his eyes. And there was Gwydion, standing before him, unchanged by the centuries that had passed: the same dark hair, touched with grey; the same scarred, narrow face; the same contemptuous expression. Jack felt for his knife.

‘It is not there. Neither is the sword. My King of Hearts put them somewhere safe on his return from the world above.’

Jack did not reply. Gwydion watched him for a while.

‘How many years has it been, Jack, since we last stood together under the open sky?’

Still Jack remained silent. How much had the dark shadow that inhabited his body already revealed to Gwydion, that was the question.

‘Oh, I know what has been happening at the lake: when the King of Hearts loses control of you he is deaf, but he is not blind. But who is she, this girl who has thwarted my servant, turned him aside from his purpose?’

‘I do not know,’ Jack burst out. ‘I only understand a little of what she says, and I do not know how she is able to – to prevent me from …’ He stopped. Gwydion would surely realise that he was lying, at least in part.

And then what? Torture. Or Gwydion would use some spell to break open Jack’s mind like an oyster shell – Somehow, he would have to resist.

Gwydion was speaking again. ‘… that is the question. What is it about this girl that defeats us?’ Gwydion paused, his eyes narrowed, studying Jack’s face. ‘Soon I must rest, but first I think … I think it is time to renew the curse.’

‘No!’ Jack backed away.

Gwydion raised his eyebrows. ‘No? But the magic has to be fed, until I can make the effect of the curse permanent. Come now.’ Gwydion beckoned to Jack. ‘You know you cannot resist me.’

Jack stared into Gwydion’ dark eyes, but found no mercy there. ‘I know it.’

He followed Gwydion along corridors, up and down stairs, until they reached a cavernous room lit only by a fire burning in a trench in the floor. There was a chair set facing the fire; a huge chair, made out of some dark wood, carved all over with swirling patterns that seemed to form leering faces when Jack looked too closely. Narrow leather cords were attached to the frame of the chair.

Jack murmured a prayer, took a deep breath, and sat down on it. The cords came to life like so many snakes, wrapping themselves around Jack’s body, his head, his face, holding him fast.

‘Good, good.’ Gwydion bared his teeth, the closest he came to a smile. ‘I enjoy hurting you, but it does save time when you do as you are bid. Now, let me select the sacrifice.’ He went to a wall at the far end of the room, entirely covered with long shelves. Three of the shelves were filled with glass jars.

Jars of hearts.

The hearts that Jack – the King of Hearts – had cut out of the bodies of his victims. Jack tried to remember: how many months had passed between Gwydion capturing him, and the three witches putting him into an enchanted sleep? How many people had he killed?

Gwydion picked up one of the jars and brought it over to the fire. ‘The body is dead, so now I sacrifice the soul.’ Gwydion raised his hands and started to draw the fire runes in the air, chanting in a language Jack did not understand. The runes were a dull red-brown, the colour of old blood. They burned themselves directly into Jack’s brain until he gasped and sweated with the pain of it, but the cords on his face still held his eyelids open. Gwydion pulled the stopper out of the jar and tipped the contents into the fire.

The heart screamed.

As the sound faded, Jack felt himself fading too, until he was sealed somewhere inside his own head, a spectator without any free will. Someone else, or something else, took control of his body.

The leather cords fell away, lifeless. Jack found himself kneeling before the wizard.

Gwydion put one hand on Jack’s head, as if he were blessing him, then raised him to his feet.

‘Welcome again, my King of Hearts.’