9
The Collector’s Room
There was a loud
click, a buzzing sound in the wall and a thin fuse burned along a
glass tube in the ceiling, lighting a row of lanterns that
illuminated the room with a faint orange glow. Kate looked for
another way out. There were at least a dozen doors scattered around
the room, but no way of telling which of them led out of the cellar
or which were unlocked.
‘I should have
anticipated what happened at the station,’ said Silas. ‘Edgar Rill
is well known for his inventiveness, though not for his success.
The fireworks were an interesting choice of distraction, but
failure is a habit your friend cannot seem to break. As it stands,
your “escape” was both temporary and convenient.’
‘I’m not going
anywhere with you,’ said Kate.
‘Then you clearly do
not understand your position. I am not giving you a
choice.’
‘You stay away from
her!’ said Edgar.
‘There are only a few
hours before I must deliver you to the High Council,’ said Silas,
walking towards them. ‘We have work to do. We shall begin
now.’
That was too much for
Edgar. He grabbed Kate’s hand and pulled her towards the first door
he could find, leading her on to a staircase that led even deeper
into the depths of the old museum. The steps were steep and uneven.
There was no handrail, so they relied on each other to reach the
bottom, fleeing through the dark with no way of knowing where they
were or how far Silas was behind.
Edgar stumbled when
they came across a small landing and knocked his hand against a
handle in the dark. ‘Doors!’ he said, grabbing it at once. There
were two, one on either side of them. Both locked. The only way
open to them was down.
‘Can you hear him?’
panted Edgar, running for his life. ‘Where is he?’
Kate kept running,
trying to keep her balance on the awkward steps. None of this felt
right. Why were they going down? They should have been going up.
Into the city, into the light. The air changed as they ran,
becoming stuffy and dank, but they kept going, right to the bottom
of the steps, bursting through into the only unlocked room they
could find.
‘Check the walls!’
said Edgar, slapping his palms against the stone. ‘There has to be
a way out.’
Their bootsteps
echoed from the stone walls, but the staircase remained silent.
Either Silas was still waiting for them up there, or he was lurking
somewhere in the dark.
Edgar lit a match and
looked around. ‘Oh no,’ he said, his face glowing in the light of
the flame.
They were standing in
a square room with three doors squeezed together along one side,
each with a collection of switches and levers beside it. Edgar used
the match to light a lantern hooked on to the wall and he held it
up.
‘These must be
Silas’s holding cells,’ he said, testing the first door. ‘Every
collector has a couple of places where they lock people for
interrogation before handing them over to the High
Council.’
‘So this is a
prison?’
‘Sort
of.’
‘How do you know
that?’
‘I just do. This is
not a good place to be.’
‘We have to get out
of here.’
Kate tried the other
two doors. The first was locked, but the second swung open easily.
Inside was a cell just a few feet wide. It smelled musty, as if it
had not seen fresh air for a very long time.
‘No wonder Silas
wasn’t following us,’ said Edgar, pushing past her and feeling
along the cell walls. ‘He knew where we’d end up.’
A strong hand reached
across Kate’s face, stifling her before she could scream and the
cell door thumped shut, sealing Edgar inside.
‘What made you think
I wasn’t following you?’ asked Silas, his voice faceless and
terrifying in the dark. ‘Since you are so interested in disturbing
my work, Mr Rill, it is only right that you should take a closer
look at it yourself.’
Edgar’s lantern light
shone out through the cell window. ‘Let me out of here!’ he
shouted, banging his fist against the glass.
‘Let him go!’ Kate
tried to reach the handle, but Silas held her still.
‘I warned you,’ he
said. ‘This boy is not the escape artist he believes himself to
be.’
Edgar rattled the
door, but it was stuck tight.
‘Let him out.
Please!’ said Kate. ‘He doesn’t know anything!’
‘It’s not him I
intend to question,’ said Silas. ‘You are coming with
me.’
Edgar’s face was
pressed up against the glass, watching them as Silas dragged Kate
away.
‘We can’t just leave
him in there!’
‘He has served his
purpose,’ said Silas. ‘It is time for you to serve
yours.’
Kate struggled
against him as he dragged her back up the staircase as far as the
first landing, where a door now stood open.
‘After you,’ he said,
forcing her inside.
Kate blinked in the
bright light of a lantern that was already lit upon a low table and
Silas picked it up, leading her through a maze of rooms linked by
archways. The museum may have been huge on the surface, but those
main floors were only the uppermost levels of a much deeper space.
Most of the lower rooms held storage crates filled with forgotten
pieces of bone, metal, coins, books and everything else Kate could
imagine, but the further they went, the neater the rooms became,
until they reached some that Silas had obviously claimed for
himself. There were chairs to sit in and old paintings and weapons
displayed on some of the walls, suggesting that this wasn’t just an
ordinary collector’s hiding place. It was Silas’s
home.
Soon they reached a
large room that looked much older than the rest. A fire crackled
under an ancient stone mantelpiece set into the main wall and the
air hung with the warm smell of old leather. Silas’s crow was
there, perched sinisterly upon a bookshelf in the corner, watching
Kate keenly as she stepped inside.
She tried her best to
look calm when Silas pointed to a chair by the fire.
‘Sit.’
There was no hope of
escaping this time. The museum’s lower floors were like a maze. She
would only get lost if she tried to run, so she did as she was
told.
Silas took a plate of
food from a table and passed it to her. ‘Eat,’ he said. ‘I have no
interest in food any more, but I find prisoners usually require
it.’
Kate’s stomach
growled at the sight of fresh bread, biscuits and cheese, and the
crow skittered closer, watching every mouthful that she
ate.
Silas pulled over a
second chair and sat down. ‘It is time for you to understand. Your
life as it was is now over,’ he said. ‘Your home is gone, your
uncle has been taken and you are only just beginning to recognise
the lies that have been told to you all these years.’
‘What lies?’ asked
Kate. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘That is because you
have been encouraged to be ignorant. There are those who have tried
to protect you by hiding the truth about what you are, but I will
not lie to you. Being one of the Skilled brings nothing but
persecution, fear and death. You can accept it or try to hide from
it, but you cannot escape it.’
Kate put down her
plate, unable to stomach the food any more, and the crow fluttered
down, stole what was left of the cheese and scuttled under the
table to finish it off.
‘Why did you bring me
here?’ she asked.
Silas sat back in his
chair, studying her face. ‘Do you know what began the war that has
made Albion what it is today?’ he asked.
Kate did not
answer.
‘For generations the
leaders on the Continent have tried to cross our borders,’ said
Silas. ‘And every battle that has been fought - every death, every
kill - was caused by one single secret. That secret was the
Skilled. The High Council are not the only ones who recognise the
value of your kind. As a people, the Skilled are unique to Albion.
There are no reports of anyone on the Continent having access to
the veil. No one knows why, but while the Skilled have thrived
here, other countries have long lived in the peaceful ignorance
that this world is the only world there is.’
‘That’s because it
is the only one,’ said
Kate.
‘Really?’ said Silas,
looking genuinely surprised. ‘Are you sure about
that?’
‘Of course I
am.’
‘Then you have far
more to learn than I realised.’
Silas stared at Kate,
letting the silence grow between them until she was forced to look
away. ‘Believing in a lie can be a comfort,’ he said. ‘But
continuing to believe it when you have already seen the truth can
be dangerous if people decide to use that lie against you. You
cannot deny what you have already seen. The High Council has always
known about the Skilled, but it has been many centuries since they
have shared the same goals. Almost four centuries ago, at the
beginning of the last era, the High Council were tempted by science
and turned against the old ways of the Skilled. They wanted to
study them. Understand them. Pick apart their minds to find out
exactly how they can do what they do. Their greed for knowledge
drove the Skilled into secrecy and the council still hunt them to
this day, believing that they are the weapon that will win this war
once and for all, even though they were the ones who caused
it.’
‘The Skilled didn’t
start the war,’ said Kate.
‘No, the High Council
did that by bragging to every Continental leader who would listen
about how the Skilled can see into the world of the dead, heal the
sick and see the future. The Continent wanted a share of that
knowledge. They wanted the Skilled and the High Council refused to
part with them. Curiously, to those who cannot enter the veil
themselves, the secrets of death are a prize worth dying for.
Tensions grew between Albion and the Continent over many years
until eventually war began.’
‘Why would anyone go
to war over something like that?’ asked Kate. ‘Most people don’t
even believe in the veil.’
‘Believing is not the
issue,’ said Silas. ‘The Skilled can prove the existence of life
beyond this world. Knowledge like that is without
price.’
Kate did not know
whether to believe Silas or not. No one in Albion really knew what
the war was about. It had been a part of life for so long that no
one even questioned it any more.
‘The existence of the
Skilled caused the war that generations have lived with every day,’
said Silas. ‘The promise of their knowledge was enough to throw our
world into chaos, but instead of standing up beside our soldiers to
fight, the Skilled went underground, leaving the rest of Albion to
fight its enemies alone. I have no love for the Skilled, Miss
Winters. It is because of them that I have seen the veil for
myself. I have seen the path of death and it has turned me
away.’
Silas drew the silver
dagger he had stolen from Kalen’s body, held out his hand and drew
the point of the blade across his palm, slicing it open so a trail
of blood shone like a string of beads in the light. Kate watched in
disbelief as his skin began knitting together before he had even
finished the cut and the blood upon it dried to a faint red
dust.
‘That’s
impossible!’
‘That is what the
High Council believed,’ said Silas. ‘Before they were proven
wrong.’
‘How did you do
that?’
‘Twelve years ago a
member of the High Council uncovered a rare book in an old grave
not far from here. The grave belonged to a long dead member of the
Winters family. Your family. And within
that book, she discovered a way for the Skilled to harness the
power of the veil more deeply than just looking into it or using
its energies to heal.’
‘Was that Da’ru?’
asked Kate.
Silas nodded once.
‘Da’ru believed she could use the book’s techniques to alter the
link between a person’s body and their spirit, and I was part of an
experiment to prove that theory. Dozens of other subjects had
already died from their exposure to the veil. I was the unfortunate
one. I survived. Because of this, my blood does not flow like that
of normal men. My injuries heal as quickly as they are made. My
lungs breathe, but I have no need for air. Poison cannot kill me
and fire does not burn.’
Kate looked at Silas
and saw the man in front of her clearly for the first time. There
was something not quite right about him. Something beyond the fear
that he instilled in people with his presence. Anyone could do that
with practice. What Silas possessed was deeper than that. That cold
feeling that Kate always felt around him; the way his grey eyes
reflected nothing of the man behind them. He felt empty to her. It
felt as if he was already dead.
‘Imagine then a
thousand more men like me,’ continued Silas. ‘An army like that
would be unstoppable, making Albion more feared than any other
nation. That is the power the Continent wishes to claim for itself.
The High Council are working towards the same goal, but the force
of Wintercraft almost killed Da’ru the night she made me what I am.
She would not survive a second attempt. For that, she needs someone
who possesses a greater natural ability than herself, someone whose
family possesses an instinctive connection to the veil. That is why
she needs you.’
Artemis had always
taught Kate to trust only what she could see and feel. To him, the
veil was a fantasy created by people who could not face the
finality of death. But sitting there with Silas, the line between
what was true and what was not blurred suddenly. Kate had never
fully shared her uncle’s scepticism of the world and she could not
help believing that at least part of what Silas was telling her was
the truth.
‘If that is true,’
she said, ‘why isn’t Artemis one of the Skilled? He is a Winters,
just like me.’
‘As I told you
before, the Skilled are a dying breed,’ said Silas. ‘The ability is
not always passed down through blood, and fewer are born with every
generation. Your father had the ability to see the veil, your uncle
does not. It is not unusual to see a difference within
families.’
Silas’s crow shook
its feathers and flapped up on to the fireplace, where it stood
pecking at its claws.
‘Are you one of the
Skilled?’ she asked.
‘I was an ordinary
man once,’ said Silas. ‘Now I am something else.’
‘But … when you send
your crow after people … you can talk to it, can’t
you?’
‘My relationship with
the veil is very different from that of the Skilled,’ said Silas.
‘Animals use the veil far more than any of us. They understand it.
All I have to do is listen.’
‘Then … you can hear
what it says?’
‘No. But there are
ways to communicate that go far beyond the basic senses. You
experienced that yourself when you saw through Da’ru’s eyes at the
boarding house. You were not using your own eyes at that time, you
were using the veil. That is what I do. The crow’s eyes become
mine. We hunt together.’
Kate tried to imagine
how such a link could be possible, but after what she had already
experienced of the veil, she realised that she was in no place to
judge what was possible and what was not any more. ‘If Da’ru almost
died doing what she did to you, what makes her think that I won’t?’
she asked.
Silas leaned forward
in his chair, his eyes meeting hers, as if this was the question he
had been waiting to answer all along. ‘Because the book of
Wintercraft was never meant for someone
like her,’ he said. ‘Each person has their own level of potential
and Da’ru reached hers long ago. However much she might deny it,
her level of Skill is accomplished but not extraordinary. Her
ambition far outweighs her talent and it has taken her a long time
to accept that. Wintercraft was written
by your ancestors and was meant to be used by people with a far
greater level of Skill than Da’ru. Your parents both came from
families with strong Skilled abilities and you may well be the last
of a pure Winters bloodline. Generations of potential exists within
you. You are Da’ru’s best chance of using Wintercraft to get what she wants. She does not
care if it will kill you or not, but she intends to make you
try.’
‘But … I don’t know
anything about any of this,’ said Kate. ‘The Skilled … the veil.
And if you are one of Da’ru’s men, why didn’t you hand me over to
her? What do you want me to do?’
Silas stared at her
as if the answer should be obvious. ‘I had to judge your abilities
for myself,’ he said. ‘You may be the most vital part of my
preparations; the key to something I have looked forward to for
twelve long years. You, Miss Winters, are going to help me to
die.’