The Bone Quill (22 page)

Almost the entire hillside was engulfed in flames, when out of the thicket above them, a second monk appeared. Trying not to panic about the ring of fire all around her, Em noticed the figure’s commanding air.

With long, dark hair draping a face already shrouded beneath his cowl, this monk let his gaze fall on Em. His stare felt like a cold hand squeezing her heart. Despite the burning heat, Em shivered uncontrollably. Without a word, the monk looked away, and she felt the power of the flames once again.

Even in the distorting light from the fire and the light from the moon, Em could see this monk’s robe was more elaborate than those of the other monks she’d seen – a rich purple that shimmered in the flickering light. Overlapping silver chevrons were stitched on its wide, draping cuffs, and the same design was banded around its broad hem.

The monk turned to look up at the burning hillside. Em gasped.

The back of his robe was embroidered with a black peryton.

T
he
magnificently dressed stranger seemed to walk through the ring of fire burning around Em and the hellhound. Em was losing all feeling in her own shoulders, as the hellhound’s massive paws pressed deeper into her skin. She could barely detect any movement from the beast at all since this monk had appeared.

The figure seemed to be issuing some kind of wordless instructions to the first monk, who made a sorry picture in his tattered long johns and burnt sackcloth cassock. Then the purple-clad stranger raised his hands. Powerful jets of water suddenly shot from the silver chevrons lining his sleeves, straight at the burning branches and the ground fires. In a matter of minutes, he had extinguished all the flames, leaving the stretch of hillside a smouldering wasteland.

Trying hard to ignore her pain and her predicament, Em stared in awe. Then she saw it. The telltale glow of an animation, a thin pulse of light running around the stranger’s sleeves. Was this man the one that her mother believed was trying to steal the bone quill and
The Book of Beasts
? The one they had travelled through time to stop? If so, Em thought, gagging and coughing in the thick smoke that was choking the hillside, it looked as if they were too late.

She didn’t notice him kneeling next to her until he was already there, his hand on her cheek, his eyes burning from beneath his hood. The hound’s snapping jaws were moving again, forcing her to keep still.

The monk touched her shoulder, using his sleeve to mop at the bloody cut from the hellhound’s claws. Em sensed a disturbing mixture of emotions: anger, tenderness, sadness, jealousy, and something powerful that she couldn’t name. It was like the feeling she got after she and Matt had a fight, a sense that she wasn’t sorry but felt badly that they had fought.

The monk wiped some of the sooty filth from Em’s forehead. Then he stood, pulled a drawing from the sleeve of his robes and tore it up. The hound erupted in a blaze of yellow, leaving her covered in fiery embers of light and black ash.

The monk snapped his fingers, and Em descended quickly into darkness.

A
t
the very moment that Matt, Em, Simon and Sandie were fleeing across the hillside, Solon was sprinting up the tower stairs to the Abbot’s study and discovering the Abbot unconscious on the floor of his ransacked cell.

The beautiful tapestry was in shreds, as if someone had deliberately cut it into pieces, and the furniture in the room – the desk, the high-backed chair, a cushioned bench where the Abbot often read for hours on end – had all been overturned and torn apart. The Abbot’s desk had been upended, but Solon spotted a corner of parchment caught beneath it. He set the desk upright and was startled to find the first page of
The Book of Beasts
. How had it got here? He slid the page safely under his tunic just as he heard footsteps on the parapet below.

Solon dashed to the window. There was no sign of anyone on the parapet. But down in the cobbled courtyard, he saw two monks curled next to a tree in the middle of the compound. There were two more lolling against the portcullis, and the villagers manning the ramparts slumped over the side.

Leaning over the Abbot’s body, Solon smelled the distinctive perfume of lavender, the sharp odour of hops and the sweet scent of valerian root. The rebels had taken over the monastery by putting everyone to sleep. It was a bold plan. Sleeping monks could not animate.

Solon hoped that wherever the Abbot had hidden the rest of the unfinished manuscript of
The Book of Beasts
, it was still safe.

Standing in the centre of the chaos, he was at a loss about what to do next.

When the Abbot had returned from his discovery of poor Brother Cornelius’s body, Solon had taken the strange woman and her daughter outside and urged them to flee to safety. He decided now that his next task was to protect his old master. And then what?

Who could he trust?

You can trust me.

Solon started at the sudden voice in his head.

Carik?

Who else would it be? Brother Cornelius locked me in this cell after treating my wounds and then he left. What is happening out there?

An uprising.

Why?

Solon found the answer coming unbidden to his mind.
I think rebels wish to divert the mission of the monastery and free the beasts of Hollow Earth.

Release me from this cell, and I can help you.

Solon’s head was a muddle of mixed emotions. He had made a choice when he carried Carik back here to the monastery from Skinner’s Bog. They had forged a bond, out there in the swamp, speaking to each other in their heads and fighting the Grendel together.

But could he truly trust Carik to help him?

After all, she had come to the island with the monks’ enemies in the first place.

A feral howl fractured the night. Solon darted to the tower window that looked over Era Mina. He could see the campfires of the stonemasons next to the foundations of his master’s half-built tower. Then, from the corner of his eye, he saw a figure on the parapet. He ran to the arrow slit directly overlooking the ramparts.

Brother Thomas stood beside the parapet, a quill and parchment in his hands and a crossbow slung across his back. As Solon watched, the hellhound gargoyles that crouched silently on the turrets stretched out of their horrible stillness, became the size of bears, leaped out of the stone and galloped with eyes blazing and coats afire up the hillside after the strangers from a distant place. Their howls shook the air as they went.

Another monk appeared out of the shadows. This monk was of medium height, but stronger and more powerful than Brother Thomas in every way. Brother Thomas handed his sketch of the hellhounds to the more powerful man, who slipped it inside his richly decorated robe. The garment looked familiar to Solon but he couldn’t place it at first.

Brother Thomas began to draw again. Solon had never seen a monk so purposefully and yet so mindlessly animate his art. What Brother Thomas was doing went against every vow he had taken as a member of the Order of Era Mina.

Was the monk in the regal robe controlling Brother Thomas in some way?

Solon shifted closer to the arrow slit and saw the image of a black peryton stitched on the back of the stranger’s robes. At that moment, Solon remembered two important things: where he’d seen the images on the richly embroidered robe before, and how much he needed Carik’s help after all.

S
olon
and Carik crawled out of the tall window of the cell where Brother Cornelius had put her. They both tumbled to the soft, muddy ground.

Solon froze as two monks raced into view, the hems of their cassocks brushing close by his face. He pulled Carik close.

Rebels.

How do you know, Solon?

They are awake.

‘Have you seen Solon, Brother Devlin?’ shouted one.

‘Nowhere. Cornelius never expected him to return from Skinner’s Bog, curse him. We must find him and put him to sleep. Brother Thomas says we cannot succeed in our endeavour otherwise.’

When the two monks had gone, Solon grabbed Carik’s hand and pulled her to her feet as gently as he could, though she still winced with pain. They sprinted into the forest, under a canopy of trees. On the cusp of the hill, smoke was shading the darkness like strokes of white paint on a black canvas.

‘Are you alright?’ Solon asked.

‘I’m fine,’ she said, rolling her stiff shoulder. ‘Do you have a plan?’

‘No,’ Solon admitted. ‘But we must find a way to stop Brother Thomas. I saw him chase after the strangers as I left the Abbot’s tower. He had a crossbow.’

Tell me again about these strangers.

They fell naturally into speaking in thoughts as they walked deeper into the woods. It was safer.

They have mystic qualities like ours but stronger, like no others I have encountered.

As they crested the hill, the air grew more choked with smoke and flames, but Solon knew they must go on. Through the smoke, he saw the monk in the purple robes kneeling beside the time-travelling girl, who was pinned beneath the paws of a huge two-headed black hound. Brother Thomas stood to one side, his cassock burned and filthy.

Solon touched Carik’s shoulder, directing her to an opening in the briars that tangled round the trees. She steadied herself against him. They faced each other for a beat, the air crackling between them. Then, without warning, water drenched them from the tree tops.

They threw themselves into nearby bushes, shaken and afraid. Below them, the purple-cloaked monk was moving in a circle, spraying the fiery trees with water. Solon shifted over in the scratchy brambles to give Carik a better view through the undergrowth and haze.

We have to save the girl.

Why?

It was a practical question. In Carik’s and Solon’s world you looked after yourself first. You did not attach yourself to others outside your clan or your tribe without great trepidation. And you never risked more than you had to gain.

Solon did his best to explain.

She’s one of us, Carik. We may need her help as much as she needs ours.