The Chimera's Curse Read online

  “Off you go,” said Mrs. Ridley.

  Col urged Skylark forward. Though the rain continued to stream down, it no longer mattered to him.

  If they want the full repertoire, said Col with a chuckle, they’ll get the full repertoire. What do you say to Syracrusian Spiral, Athenian Dive, followed by Thessalonian Roll? This was a little something he and Skylark had been working on in private. Theoretically, you couldn’t do those three moves in sequence. He and Skylark were about to prove the theorists wrong.

  You’re on! said Skylark.

  A good starting height was the secret to the success of the maneuver. They climbed up so that they were almost lost in the rain clouds.

  Careful, hold on, Col, cautioned Skylark. Remember my back is very slippery in all this rain.

  Get on with it, you old nag, teased Col. I’ll remember.

  With a kick of his rear legs, Skylark launched into the downward circle of the Syracrusian Spiral, twisting with perfect loops over an imagined spot on the ground (they had chosen the head of a startled Captain Graves). They then moved fluidly into the Athenian Dive, wings tucked in like an eagle plunging for the kill. Col clung close to Skylark’s neck as his knees found little purchase on the pegasus’s rain-slicked flanks. Both knew that they were at the point where the possible shaded into the impossible. So far, they had managed to stay on the right side of that line, but these weather conditions were threatening to push them over. Col braced himself for the final test. Just before they reached the level of the treetops, Skylark pulled away in a Thessalonian Roll, flipping both himself and his rider over in a three hundred and sixty degree turn. Col’s fingers slipped but he dug them deep into Skylark’s sodden mane. He kept his seat—just. Once righted, they glided down to land with barely a spray of mud in front of the judges. There was silence. Captain Graves was gaping: he had not known his pupil could do any of those moves, let alone do them together.

  Finally, Clare Ridley spoke. “When I said no limits, I was thinking more along the lines of a few Grade Six moves—not moves right out of the rule book entirely.”

  Col’s heart sank. Skylark’s perky ears dropped back.

  “Amazing,” breathed Sergeant Middleton. “I’d have said you couldn’t do that, but I just saw it with my own eyes. Amazing.”

  Col began to feel a bit more hopeful.

  Mrs. Ridley was recovering from her surprise. “That’s certainly given us plenty to think about. But don’t try that again, will you, Col? Beginner’s luck might run out.”

  “Oh, we’ve been doing it for over a year now,” said Col quickly. Seeing their shocked faces, he added, “We had to do it when we were fighting Kullervo in Mallins Wood, which was how we discovered it was possible, you see?”

  “I’m not sure what to make of that,” said Mrs. Ridley. “What do you think, Will?”

  Sergeant Middleton scratched his chin. “I think they should not do it again…” (Col held his breath) “…unless they’re at the World Championships with us. That maneuver should wake up a few of our competitors, raise the bar on what we get up to.”

  “Yes,” said Mrs. Ridley, her uncertainty vanishing as he gave the answer she wanted to hear. “Give us a few weeks and we’ll be back in touch about your training for the squad. We might have a few problems with the age limit, but then…Anyway, that’s our problem. Leave it to us.”

  “Great!” Col grinned at Skylark. Neither could believe their luck.

  Captain Graves stirred. The rain was relenting and the sun peeping through a break in the clouds. “So what about their Grade Four practical?”

  “It’s a hard one,” said Sergeant Middleton with a smile warming his stern face, “but I think they might just have scraped through. What do you think, Clare?”

  “Scraped through with distinction, I’d say.” She smiled back, nodding at Col.

  Connie and Gard had retreated to the front parlor for her training that weekend. No longer allowed to go to the Mastersons’—too near the moor and the chimera, in the opinion of the Trustees—she and Gard had been forced to improvise a new routine. Today they were planning the next steps for her training. She had mastered the shield, sword, and helm—they were now second nature to her—and felt fairly confident with the hauberk, which she used to assume the protective powers of a mythical creature. The lance and the quiver and arrows were next on the list.

  “So,” grumbled Gard, leafing through the notes she’d made in the universal’s reading room some months ago, “how is this quiver supposed to work?”

  “I think,” said Connie, leaning over to check her notes as she sat beside him on the old sofa, “it’s a way of storing small bolts of energy from encounters to use later. It sounds quite vicious, actually—one of the warrior tools. The example given in the book was gorgon darts—like cold paralyzing stings. Not as powerful as the real thing, of course, but enough to take out an enemy for a few minutes. It said you could do the same with any other projectile power.”

  Gard raised his craggy eyebrows at her. His dark eyes gleamed under the overhang of his jutting forehead. “And the lance?”

  Sitting next to him like this, Connie could smell his breath, which carried a scent like that of a sooty chimney.

  “The lance is more powerful. It comes from the powers of your companion. Unlike the sword, which the universal directs on his or her own, you guide it to the target together so it takes a bit of practice. It can’t be stored up like the quiver and arrows. I think I did something like this with Storm-Bird the first time we met.”

  “I see.” Gard got to his feet, creaking at the knees as his legs took his formidable weight. He walked to the fireplace and stood in front of it, deep in thought. “Can I ask you a question, Universal?”

  Connie could tell he was concerned about something. “Of course.”

  He turned so he could study her face. “Why do you want to learn more warrior tools? Are there no defensive or healing tools that you could undertake first?”

  She wasn’t sure she wanted to admit the truth to Gard, knowing he wouldn’t approve. “Oh, I’m just following the sequence of chapters in one of the books in the library. I thought that made sense.” The book did indeed run in this order, but that was not why she was doing it.

  “I had a long talk with Jade a few weeks ago,” said Gard, turning back to finger the marble figurine of a white horse on the mantelpiece. “She told me you were talking about challenging Kullervo.”

  “Oh?” said Connie, trying to keep her tone light as if the subject was not of huge importance to her.

  “You wouldn’t be thinking of training yourself with the aim of taking him on?” he asked, stroking the smooth back of the horse with a chipped fingertip.

  “I thought there was no harm in being prepared. I’ve met him three times already—I can’t believe he’s going to leave me alone now.”

  “No, he will not. But that is very different from seeking him out, as you well know.”

  Connie said nothing and looked down at her rounded writing:

  The quiver: deadly against smaller foes, useful delaying attack against larger creatures. A warrior universal should keep a quiver full at all times.

  “Do not try to lie to me, Universal,” said Gard, tapping the horse as if to listen for flaws in the marble. “The uppermost layer of your mind is seething with the idea. It is pouring through you like a lava flow.”

  “I just thought…” began Connie, “I just wanted to understand. If there is a way of defeating Kullervo, I should do everything in my power to find it?”

  “No!” said Gard sharply, the word ringing in the air. “Do not be tempted to think your skills are a match for those of the shape-shifter. Others have thought that and suffered the consequences.”

  “But—”

  “There are no ‘buts,’ Connie. You should not be so quick to assume that as a universal you are always right. Instinct can lead you wrong. I remember Guy de Chauliac…”

  Connie started with surprise, be
fore she quickly reminded herself that the few hundred years separating her from her predecessor would seem but yesterday to the rock dwarf.

  “I was serving as a Trustee with my companion at the time. Guy was headstrong. A loner. The universals under his leadership had stopped offering the shared bond to the Society, wanting to keep their powers to themselves. We were riven with petty feuds and rivalries as a result. I thought I understood him: I, who do not like to mix with others out of my element, believed I comprehended his desire to shut his mind away from everyone else. But I was wrong. He shut himself off because he was proud, too proud to share with others even the crumbs from the banquet of his gift.”

  “I think he was brave,” said Connie boldly, not liking to hear another universal criticized so harshly.

  “Oh yes, he was undoubtedly brave; I do not deny that. But was he right? We had other plans to combat the Black Death. Teams had been sent to places worst hit by plague to deal with the rats. We had begun to take action. It was not only thanks to Guy de Chauliac’s foolish sacrifice that the plague was stemmed.”

  “But, Gard, both he and Reginald Cony felt that there was a way to defeat Kullervo. Reginald told George Brewer in those notes I showed the Trustees.”

  “Ah, George Brewer,” said Gard thoughtfully, “now he was another one. Until today, I had forgotten that I knew him.” He moved to the other side of the fireplace and picked up the bronze statue of a bear rearing on its hind legs.

  “Another what?”

  “Another one who thought he knew what he was doing in the teeth of all advice. He also paid with his life.”

  “So who was he?” asked Connie, determined to get as many clues as she could from the rock dwarf.

  “Do you not know?” said Gard, looking around the room. “We are surrounded by pictures of him, by his things,” he held out the statue, “and you do not know?”

  Connie gazed at the tarnished bear, unpolished over the decades since Sybil Lionheart passed away. A glimmer of the truth flickered into her mind. “He was my great-uncle? Sybil’s husband?” she asked tentatively.

  Gard nodded. “A companion to great bears. A good man in his way. Brave. Clever. Resourceful. He was the obvious choice to plan the evacuation from the Arctic Circle during the last big human war.”

  “What evacuation?”

  “Kullervo was using the chaos to feed his rebellion. Creatures were angry; they choked in the city smog; they revolted at the cruel waste of lives as mankind slaughtered each other. We knew that the Earth cried out under the burden men had placed on her. Kullervo didn’t find it hard to recruit for the army he was amassing in the north. Those who wouldn’t join him had to flee. Among them were many of George Brewer’s great bears. He helped them escape to Scandinavia and northern Canada.”

  “So how did George die? How was Kullervo stopped?” Connie examined the picture of the young man holding her great-aunt’s arm outside the church where they’d just been married. His expression was purposeful, determined. She could see how he might’ve come to be chosen to wrestle with the most difficult challenges.

  “He was a great friend of Reginald Cony, as you know. Reggie told me that George led a team to confront Kullervo to negotiate the release of the creatures still trapped behind Kullervo’s lines. It appears he also thought they could win some of the creatures back to their side and defeat Kullervo.”

  “And what happened?” Connie did not have a good feeling about the answer.

  “They were all taken by Kullervo. Every single one. A useless sacrifice. It has gone down in the annals of the Society as our ‘Charge of the Light Brigade’ into the enemy’s guns. The creatures they’d gone to save were released soon after: Kullervo has no desire to harm his fellow creatures, only humans.”

  Only humans, thought Connie. A creature that relished all natural forms but one.

  “And it seems from the notes you found that George Brewer had other ideas we did not know about. He was thinking of mounting a challenge himself, and he not even a universal!” Gard put the statue back on the mantelpiece with a clunk. “This house has already offered up one victim to Kullervo; I do not want to hear of a second.”

  Connie shivered. She did not want to be a victim, but wasn’t she one already? Kullervo had done enough damage to her over the last few years—invaded the most secret places in her mind; now he had sent the chimera to maim and kill her. If she just sat back as the Trustees advised and let others deal with the situation, she would be powerless to resist his next attack.

  “But what if all of them—Guy, George, Reginald, Edward Alleyne—were on to something? Don’t you think we should at least find out what it was?”

  “They failed. They took grave risks and failed. Think no more about this, Universal.”

  Connie felt something build in her chest. No one seemed to understand! Her gut instinct was that this was a trail worth following, but every time she tried the Society erected barriers in her way. They were fighting a losing battle, support bleeding away as creatures lost confidence. Did the Society expect her to live out her life with Kullervo taunting her in her dreams, to be content like them to weaken bit by bit until she was no use to anyone? Kullervo wanted her to meet him at the mark. He expected her there.

  “If he wants you there then that is all the more reason for you not to go,” said Gard firmly. Connie had neglected to raise her shield and had forgotten that Gard had access to her superficial layers of thought at that moment. “This is no joke, Universal. The Trustees have ruled on this. If you go against them, if you follow this path any further, there will be penalties.”

  “What kind of penalties?”

  “You will be banned from access to the universal’s reading room. Your training will stop. You might even be suspended from membership in the Society.”

  Connie gave a bleak laugh. “Oh, we’ve been there before, Gard, or is everyone’s memory so short?”

  “Yes,” said Gard, his voice deadly serious, “we remember. But then you were acquitted—you had been wrongly blamed for something you could not control. But this you do control. You are not a little child, Connie: you are old enough to face the consequences of your actions if you disobey the rules in this way.”

  She made no reply but remembered this time to raise the shield so Gard couldn’t hear the chorus of rebellious protests that’d struck up in her head. If there was a way of defeating Kullervo, she had to find it. She could not live with his mark inside her for the rest of her life, threatening at any moment to swallow her up. The others may not see it, but this was a slow torture that would exhaust her as surely as Guy de Chauliac had been worn out by Kullervo all those years ago. Whatever the Society rules, she wasn’t going to stop asking questions. She would face the consequences when they came.

  “So, shall we continue?” said Gard. He took her notebook and leafed through the pages. “Why not study the portcullis? That looks like a useful defense.”

  Connie nodded mutely.

  “Let us begin,” said Gard.

  10

  Candles

  Autumn was passing swiftly. As the trees shed their leaves, becoming more ragged and skeletal each day, Connie found her mood becoming grimmer and more determined.

  “What do you think, Connie?” Evelyn asked, levering open the can of paint in the middle of the empty guest room, which was about to be converted into a nursery.

  Connie almost laughed when she saw the green paint Evelyn had picked out. It was exactly the same shade as the moor when the grass was lush and flourishing in spring. “Very nice,” she said, returning to her task of scraping off the old wallpaper. “What are you going to do about those?” She gestured to the cans of blue paint Mack had bought.

  “Horrible color, don’t you think?” said Evelyn, sniffing disapprovingly at the tins. “Not right for a baby.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” said Connie lightly, “the color has a fresh, seaside feel to it.”

  “But I’m sure the baby’ll be much happie
r with some earthy greens,” said Evelyn, dipping in her paint brush and letting the syrupy mixture drip back into the can.

  Connie saw that the nursery could quickly become a new battleground for Evelyn, and Mack if she did not think of something.

  “I think he’s afraid you’ll make the baby into a banshee companion if you have it all your way,” Connie said as tactfully as she could. “That’s why he’s given you the blue.”

  “What’s wrong with being a banshee companion?” asked Evelyn sharply.

  “Nothing,” Connie said quickly. “But he wants to restore the balance. I wouldn’t be surprised if he tries to get you to go swimming with the Kraken to even up the odds.”

  “Funny you should say that.” Evelyn dropped the brush onto the paint tray. “I refused, of course. I told him it was way too cold to go swimming, let alone go anywhere near the Kraken.” She seemed to be lost in thought for a moment, reflecting on Mack and his perspective on their child.

  It seemed to Connie a good moment to suggest a compromise. “Well, who said the room has to be one color?” she asked. “Isn’t that a bit boring? Why not paint part of it green and part of it blue? You could do a moorland wall and a sea wall.”

  If there was one thing Evelyn did not like, it was to be accused of being boring. “You know, Connie, I think you’re right. But you’ll have to do the blue. The color makes me feel seasick. I’ll do the green.”

  “It’s a deal.”

  They finished preparing the surfaces and began to paint. Connie enjoyed the soothing rhythm of wiping the brush up and down on the wall with Evelyn doing the same beside her. It was rather like tapping stones with a rock dwarf.

  “Do you know anything about Aunt Sybil’s husband?” Connie asked, her mind quickly circling back to the subject that had consumed her for months.

  If Evelyn was surprised by the sudden introduction of this subject, she did not show it. “Oh, not much: he died long before I was born.”

  “Didn’t Sybil talk about him?” persisted Connie, thinking that if she could manage it without Evelyn and Mack noticing, she would stencil a seagull over her waves to sneak in an element of the High Flyers.