The Book of Beasts Read online

  TWENTY-SIX

  Vaughn set the unconscious Alice gently on a daybed on the balcony. Holding a corner of his T-shirt to the cut above his eye, Malcolm slowly stood up and went down the ramp.

  Alice’s eyes fluttered open.

  ‘What happened?’ asked Vaughn.

  She opened her fist.

  The medallion from the locked cabinet looked very like the coins the Council of Guardians used for secret votes, until Vaughn looked closer. Instead of a white stag on the front of the coin – the symbol for Animares – and the helix indicating Guardians on the reverse side, this medallion had an inverted spiral with its point on the top. On the other side was the image of a black peryton with a flaming saddle.

  Vaughn pressed the coin back into Alice’s hands. ‘What is this?’

  ‘Have ye ever heard of Hollow Earth?’

  ‘Of course. It’s one of our myths, part of our creation story.’ Vaughn smiled and squeezed her hand. Had Malcolm rattled her more deeply than he thought? ‘It’s a story, Alice,’ he went on gently. ‘No one believes in Hollow Earth’s existence any more.’

  ‘Wyeth did.’ She nodded feebly down towards the kitchen, where Malcolm was noisily opening and closing cupboards. ‘And he believes it too.’

  ‘Malcolm?’ Vaughn said disbelievingly.

  ‘Yes. He wanted to know about the Hollow Earth Society.’

  Vaughn tried to keep hold of the conversation. ‘The Hollow Earth Society? Who are they?’

  Alice’s eyes gazed steadily at him. ‘A secret organization who believe that Hollow Earth must be protected at all costs. An organization Wyeth’s sister belonged to.’

  Someone believed Hollow Earth was real? Not just real, but worth protecting? ‘Protected from whom?’ Vaughn said at last.

  ‘Wyeth’s sister and several others believed that someone of immense power had started up a rebel faction inside the society.’ Alice’s voice was growing weaker. She rolled the coin in her hand. ‘This faction wasn’t interested in protecting Hollow Earth. They wanted to open it, and use the beasts for their own purposes. Wyeth’s sister said that this coin was a way of identifying those rebels.’ She lay back against the pillows, exhausted. ‘Go, son. I’ll be fine. I promise. Go and leave me to my grief. You’ve enough of your own coming your way.’

  She drifted away into a deep sleep, the kind Vaughn knew came from a powerful inspiriting. The balcony was cold; she needed a pillow and blanket to keep her comfortable.

  Vaughn went downstairs, hunting for the linen closet. When he found it next to Wyeth’s bedroom, he grabbed a pillow and a blanket, and carried them back up the ramp to Alice. Lifting her softly snoring head, he slipped the pillow underneath and draped the blanket across her frail legs.

  Her hand was open and the coin was gone.

  Vaughn sprinted outside just as Malcolm and the Land Rover disappeared round the curve of the island. It was a long trek on foot to the ferry.

  Vaughn returned to the Abbey, packed up his belongings and left. He couldn’t stay any more. Although his heart broke at leaving Sandie, he hoped never to see Malcolm again.

  Two things haunted him as he took his motorbike south. Who was the person with ‘immense power’ that Alice mentioned leading the quest to control Hollow Earth? And – more pressingly – would he one day regret having saved Malcolm Calder’s life?

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Auchinmurn Isle

  Present Day

  ‘Enough moping around,’ Renard said briskly, setting a brown leather satchel on the table. ‘We need a plan.’

  As he opened the satchel’s buckles, Em could see a handful of silver medallions inside, a stack of letters tied with twine and the opening page from The Book of Beasts in its Plexiglas sleeve.

  Renard took two coins from the bag and slid them across the table, one to Zach and one to Em. Em turned hers over in her hand, recognizing the white peryton on one side and the etching of the silver helix on the other. She thought about her ghostly visitor again now that she knew who he was.

  Simon took over the conversation. ‘In our research, we have discovered that the black and white perytons are the Protectors of these islands. They appear whenever a descendant of the First Animare calls for help.’

  ‘So they’re like the island’s avatars?’ signed Zach.

  ‘Exactly.’ Simon picked up the coin in front of his son. ‘We’ve always known that this peryton was a symbol of the Animare.’ He tapped the tiny peryton on the medallion. ‘Until recently, we always assumed that the etching on the back, the helix, was the Guardian symbol.’

  ‘And now?’ asked Em, studying the silver helix on the back of her coin, rubbing her thumb over the etching.

  ‘Now that we know the stories of Hollow Earth are in fact true,’ Simon continued, ‘we think the helix means something quite different.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It once stood for the monastic Order of Era Mina, representing both Animare and Guardian,’ Renard said. ‘But now we think it has something to do with time. How we perceive it, how we measure it. The shape suggests time is not linear, as we generally perceive it to be – one event after another, creating ripples of complex causes and effects, measured as seconds, then minutes, accumulating into hours and days and so on. We think this represents the fact that Hollow Earth exists outside the normal way we measure time. It is eternal.’

  The quote etched on the woodcut that Arthur Summers sent them right before his death jolted into Em’s mind.

  To our sons and daughters. May you never forget imagination is the real and the eternal. This is Hollow Earth.

  If time was a series of overlapping circles as Renard described, it was exactly like the great gyroscope of beasts they had just seen spinning over Era Mina. Real and eternal. If it was true, Hollow Earth existed outside time.

  More understanding surged through Em. The quote had never been just about the place where the beasts of the ancient stories and myths had been imprisoned. It was also about those who must protect Hollow Earth with their imaginations. The sons and daughters of the island’s first defenders, through all of time. Countless individuals down the generations. Renard and Jeannie.

  Em and Matt.

  ‘Years ago, Em,’ said Vaughn, pulling her attention back to the conversation, ‘your dad found a coin similar to these, but with a black peryton on the reverse. I think that discovery set him and his mother Henrietta on their quest to find and open Hollow Earth.’

  Simon passed two mugs of hot chocolate to Zach and Em. Em sipped the rich creamy drink, letting it soothe her. Fresh ideas shifted and settled in her head.

  ‘Do you know where Hollow Earth is, Grandpa?’ she asked.

  ‘It lies beneath and between the two islands, in a supernatural hollow at the centre of the earth.’

  I knew it!

  Zach arched his eyebrows at Em. You did not.

  Renard slipped the page of The Book of Beasts out of the satchel. ‘In ancient times, the monks of Era Mina began this book to bind the beasts in Hollow Earth, lock them away forever. Albion is said to live there with them, guarding them. Only direct descendants of Albion can open Hollow Earth again.’

  ‘One to use the sacred bone quill Dad stole from the monks to draw the beasts out again,’ Em guessed. ‘And the other to keep their emotions steady and controlled as they do it. Right?’

  Renard nodded.

  Sandie paled. ‘Malcolm is a Guardian descendant of Albion. He only needs The Book of Beasts, the bone quill, and an Animare?’

  Vaughn swore loudly and got up from the table. Em jumped from her chair.

  Take it easy, Em…

  ‘Mum!’ Em was barely able to hear Zach’s voice through the drumming in her head. ‘Matt’s the Animare. Dad already has the bone quill. If he finds The Book of Beasts, all he has to do is inspirit Matt to do what he wants. Then he’ll have everything he needs.’

  PART TWO

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Edinburgh

  Pr
esent Day

  The setting sun dodged in and out of the clouds, raking light across Edinburgh Castle and the historic buildings of the city’s Old Town. Henrietta de Court was enjoying high tea in the Balmoral Hotel on Princes Street, at a table with a clear view across the Royal Gardens to the National Gallery of Scotland where, according to her man on the inside, the handsome and enigmatic Orion agent, Vaughn Grant, had sprinted from the gallery three hours ago, torn up a stack of parking tickets stuck to his motorcycle and roared west towards the motorway.

  Henrietta expected Vaughn had gone directly to the Abbey before beginning to track her and the tapestry, which at the moment was securely stored in an old cottage she had taken on Auchinmurn.

  The morning’s euphoria had left her feeling dangerously giddy. Henrietta was not a woman to laugh lightly, but she smiled now, affording herself the luxury of humour. Although not quite as she had intended, this would be the catalyst for her coup; her seizure of full authority in the Council of Guardians, first in Europe and then across the rest of the world. She had more than enough confidants and collaborators in place, ready to move with speed and aggression at her command, the moment she gave it.

  She signalled for the waiter with a sharp snap of her fingers.

  ‘More tea,’ she instructed. ‘And two additional place settings. I am expecting company.’

  The waiter hurried away to do her bidding. Nibbling on a ladyfinger, Henrietta recalled how she had first doubted her son when he suggested his plan to her years ago at an exhibition at the Uffizi Gallery in Florence. Malcolm’s vision for the Councils was brilliant and with her contacts and abilities she knew they would be unstoppable. It was almost unforgivable that she had let Renard’s weak character influence her view of her son’s and for that she was truly sorry. As a child, Henrietta had worried that Malcolm would grow up to be like his father, lacking any ambition beyond the world of the islands and the limits of the Rules. Certainly Renard never had any indication that Sandie was a mere pawn in their plan for power. She doubted that he was aware of her part in all of this, even today.

  Henrietta sighed and sipped her tea. Renard had been a handsome suitor, and such a delight to seduce.

  The waiter set two places opposite Henrietta before exchanging her tea for a fresh pot. Once the man left, Henrietta spread strawberry jam on a warm scone, added a dollop of fresh cream and bit into its sweet softness, catching a drop of jam oozing on to her chin with her little finger. Outside, the evening traffic was clogging Princes Street. Her guests were late.

  ‘Seul le coeur sait ce que le coeur veut.’ It was a favourite expression of Henrietta’s mother. ‘The heart knows what the heart wants.’ Despite the competition from the brooding Vaughn, Sandie had fallen deeply in love with Malcolm. It had made their plan for a union between an Animare and a Guardian almost too easy. And for that union to result in twins, and such powerful ones at that – ça c’était la cerise sur le gâteau! The cherry on the cake.

  Of course there had been setbacks over the years – Malcolm’s sudden disappearance the worst one of all. It was a betrayal Henrietta had finally coaxed out of Sir Charles, the conniving mercenary fool. Binding Malcolm was a treachery Renard and Sandie would pay for.

  The waiter led her guests to the table. Henrietta licked cream from her fingers, and carefully wiped her hands on her napkin before standing and greeting her fellow conspirators.

  ‘It is not the way we had planned for our coup to begin,’ she said, picking up the silver teapot and filling her guests’ cups. ‘But the time has finally come.’

  ‘A toast?’ inquired the handsome, green-eyed man.

  ‘How delicious,’ said his beautiful dark-haired friend.

  ‘To our sons and daughters,’ said the man, nodding at Henrietta as he raised his cup.

  ‘May you never forget imagination is the real and the eternal,’ purred the woman, pushing her long ink-black hair away from her face.

  Henrietta smiled at Mara and Tanan and added the final line with flair.

  ‘This is Hollow Earth.’

  TWENTY-NINE

  Auchinmurn Isle

  The Middle Ages

  ‘In your time, Matt, are our kind worshipped?’ asked Carik, stretching her legs out in front of the flames.

  ‘The opposite,’ replied Matt. ‘We must keep ourselves hidden.’

  ‘Then things have not changed much at all,’ she said, pulling off her calfskin boots and drying her feet at the fire.

  Carik was right, Matt realized. For all the progress and the developments that human beings had managed to achieve, they still hadn’t worked out how to handle people who were different.

  There was an odd rumbling sound.

  ‘I’m hungry,’ Matt said defensively as Solon and Carik looked at him. ‘It’s been a while since I ate anything decent.’

  Carik pulled her boots back on and lifted her bow from a nearby rock to look for more food. Solon followed her to the mouth of the cave. Matt concentrated on stabbing at the fire while doing his best to eavesdrop on their conversation.

  ‘Go to the north from here, Carik. You’ll be safer away from the monastery and the monks. Matt’s father is growing more powerful every minute. I can feel it.’

  ‘Will you be safe, Solon?’

  Matt sensed Solon glancing back at him. He concentrated on tossing another log on the fire.

  ‘I will be fine.’

  Carik ducked out into the forest, leaving Matt and Solon alone at the fire.

  ‘We probably could have animated a meal,’ said Matt into the silence.

  Solon looked at him in horror. ‘We don’t use our skills for the mundane and the ordinary.’

  ‘But it’s who we are,’ said Matt, surprised at Solon’s reaction.

  ‘Our powers are a gift from nature, from the islands themselves.’ It was clear that Solon was offended. ‘To violate that gift would be dishonourable. A sin.’

  Matt rolled his eyes. ‘Sometimes, you have to break rules in order to make things better for people.’

  ‘But what if, by breaking the rules, you cause more damage than leaving things the way they were?’

  Matt thought about this. ‘I suppose that’s the chance you take. When you break rules you have to be prepared to live with the consequences.’

  Solon prodded the fire. ‘And are you?’

  ‘Am I what?’

  ‘Prepared to live with the consequences of your actions? Of bringing your father to this time and place and the threat he represents to your future?’

  Matt concentrated on the other Animare’s emotions, teasing them out from the hunger and the exhaustion. The fire spat and crackled between them. He sensed concern and anxiety. No judgement. Solon had no quarrel with Matt or his choices – poor though many of them had been.

  ‘I’m prepared,’ said Matt.

  Solon pulled his dagger from his sheath, offering it to Matt. ‘Then I will help you destroy him,’ he said simply. ‘I will help you defeat your father. Take this as a gesture of my allegiance.’

  The bronze hilt of Solon’s dagger was etched like the wings of the white peryton. Turning the dagger over in his hands, Matt appreciated its weight. Then everything changed.

  As if he was holding a tuning fork, Matt felt the dagger’s reverberations ripple up his arm and across his shoulders as a cacophony of images exploded in his mind.

  At first he couldn’t distinguish or separate them from the conflagration of light and colour. It was as if someone had edited a bunch of film clips together, and was running them all at once at super speed in Matt’s head.

  One image stood out. Matt being dragged through a labyrinth of passageways and dark caves… and blood. Lots of it, leaving a trail behind him.

  ‘It’s… it’s stunning… and, uh, heavy,’ he said quickly, unwilling to reveal to Solon the images he’d just seen.

  ‘It belongs to my master, Brother Renard. He told me it was forged from the dark deposits of Hollow Earth, and it belonged to
Albion himself.’

  Matt had no idea how the ancient dagger had shown what it had, but he knew it was displaying something of his future. Pressing the dagger back into Solon’s hands, he looked directly at him.

  ‘I need to talk to your master. Right now.’

  ‘I’m afraid,’ said Solon sadly, ‘that’s not going to be easy.’

  THIRTY

  Auchinmurn Isle

  Present Day

  Two days after Vaughn’s return from London, things began to go missing from the Abbey. Two cup-sized clay bowls from Simon’s prehistoric Beaker collection. An altar triptych, kept in the sitting room, depicting the Old Testament story of Daniel in the lion’s den. Two framed maps of the island and an assortment of old books.

  Worried that the Abbey’s perimeters had been breached by burglars, Vaughn had taken the boat out to check the islands were secure. Simon planned to walk the perimeter of the compound, to be sure that no one had broken through the animation shield.

  ‘I can’t understand it,’ said Renard in irritation, striding into the kitchen, his glasses on top of his head and holding his long white hair from his face. ‘I’ve lost that folder with the medieval maps I was examining in the library this morning. The one I found in the vault belonging to Duncan Fox. A bit tattered, black, ties with a leather strap?’

  ‘Where did you have it last?’ asked Em, sitting comfortably at the kitchen table, layering chutney on to her thick toasted-cheese sandwich.

  She smiled across the table at Zach, who she knew was keeping a watchful eye on her. She’d have to explain soon to Zach what she was doing, but she needed to work a few things out on her own first. She owed that much to Matt… and to Jeannie.

  ‘That folder was on my desk in the library this morning when I went down the driveway to fetch the post,’ Renard said. ‘I swear it was.’

  He marched out through the French doors and on to the patio, where he met Simon coming out of the gate from Jeannie’s garden. Em watched them chat with some intensity for a few minutes. Simon shook his head and followed Renard back inside, ruffling Zach’s hair as he walked past the table.