33

The Russet at the hour of dawn was the colour of ink. The endless layers of trees were stained with shades of blue-black darkening into black, and the sharp chill of a summer's night lay on every leaf and trunk. Tom and Stephen, sitting against the mottled bark of a giant oak tree, had felt this chill for several hours, and even demolishing most of the chocolate and sandwiches from Stephen's singed rucksack had done little to keep it at bay.

Tom was sleeping, his head against the oak. Stephen had slept only fitfully, and was awake again. He faced the east, where a band of feeble yellow appeared beyond the most distant trees.

Mr Cleever had been right when he predicted that the fugitives would lie low and not seek outside help. The conflict they had entered now consumed them utterly, and events in the world beyond seemed meaningless to them. The elemental forces that sought to destroy them could not be countered by traditional means, by police or magistrate, doctor or journalist. They needed sanctuary, and the forest provided it: it had been as simple as that. They had made their way there, keeping to the stream, and had hidden themselves among the trees.

Half the night the fire had raged and the sirens sounded. Until well past three, the sky itself had seemed ablaze, and shouts and cries of exhausted farmers and villagers had echoed hoarsely on the air. The lanes around the Russet had been alive as never before, with cars, people, fire engines and an ambulance all negotiating the narrow bends.

Three fields had been gutted, and two others damaged. Tom and Stephen had witnessed the sorry struggle from the undergrowth close to the forest stream, watching always for signs of the enemy that followed them. Once they had seen what Tom swore was Mr Cleever's car, flashing past only metres away, but they had not seen its occupant, and it did not slow.

With the dying down of the fire, and the quietening of the night, they withdrew deeper into the forest fastness, and settled down beside the tree to rest.

But now Stephen was awake, his body riddled with chill, stiff as a corpse against the trunk. Something had woken him from deep sleep. What was it? On all sides the forest slumbered, cold and deep. The first birds had not yet woken.

'Stephen.'

Grimacing with the effort, he got to his feet and flexed his deadened limbs. He studied the emptiness around him on all sides, looking keenly into the dusk. Nothing, save the beating of his heart.

He walked a few steps, feeling his burns flare with pain as the circulation hit them. His feet made scuffling noises in the dirt. After a moment, Stephen looked back to where Tom slept on, a pale smudge against the dark tree. Then he turned and set off through the trees.

The daub of yellow in the eastern sky smeared itself wider and higher on the horizon. More and more of the forest became half-distinguishable, ancient trees leaning at odd angles in the blue-grey twilight. Stephen walked slowly, carefully, brushing his way past low branches heavy with leaves.

Then he was in a small clearing, where the ground was covered with ivy, and a huge dead tree, rotten with age, sprawled diagonally before him, across the centre of the space. Its crown was wedged somewhere in the foliage of the forest, its roots protruded like a mass of frozen serpents from the earth. Stephen halted. Sitting high above him, in a crook of trunk and branch, was Michael, still and watchful as an owl.

"Why not come down?" said Stephen, after several moments of silence. As it broke across the forest, his voice sounded curiously muffled.

"Where's Aubrey?" Michael said.

"Somewhere around."

"Don't play games with me. I can read your mind. But it doesn't matter. I would have known if he were close."

"Have you come to kill us, then?" Stephen asked.

"No – though I could, of course. I've come to warn you."

"Sure, like you warned us in the field."

"I didn't kill you then, and I won't now – as long as you're not stupid. If you want proof, chew on this: I sensed you almost an hour ago, when I entered the Russet. I knew you were asleep; I could have tracked you down while you slept, or brought Cleever to you. But did I?"

"I don't know," said Stephen.

"Don't be a fool!" Michael struck the bark with his fist and the whole tree shuddered. "Listen to me for once in your life! What I've got to say is for your own good."

"Well?" Stephen stood waiting, his body tense, his mind as calm as possible, trying to be receptive to any psychic disturbances in the dawn forest around him. He felt no threat, no presence, save the emanations of anger and anxiety beating strongly from his brother. 'He's probably telling the truth,' he thought. 'For what it's worth.'

On his branch, Michael shivered suddenly, violently. "God, it's cold," he said. "Listen, Stephen, my power is stronger than theirs, though they only half realise it. They couldn't have picked you up in the forest, and even now they don't know I've done it. Probably, they'll never know."

He broke off, as if doubting himself. The darkness of the sky behind him was shot through with a pale light.

Michael's shoulders were slightly hunched as he spoke again. "I've come to you, Stephen, even though you didn't believe me once, even though you locked me in. Because we were brothers. So listen: something will happen today, and you can do nothing about it. It's a good thing, at least for us, and if you had any sense you'd keep quiet, wait the day through, and see what happened. But you haven't, so I'll be blunt. They know you're in the Russet, and will be watching the fringes."

"Why don't they come in and get us?" asked Stephen.

"There's been too much activity stirred up by the fire. They need to calm things down now, not set the woods alight. And anyway, there are more important things for them to do. So they're content to watch the Russet for most of the day, and the roads to the village, and if they see you, they won't rely on me to do things for them."

"The Russet is a big place to watch."

"True. But the other thing, which I doubt you'd have forgotten, and which I know the dear Pope won't have forgotten, is this: we have Sarah too. If either you, or Tom Aubrey, makes any serious disturbance today, she's the one who'll feel the consequences. Do you understand, Stevie?"

"Michael, you're talking about Sarah! Your own sister! My sister! What the hell do you mean 'feel the consequences'? Are you going to murder her?" Nothing that had happened so far had hit Stephen harder than this.

"Calm down." Light was pooling into the glade faster and faster. Stephen saw his brother's pale skin, his smoke-stained clothes, the red flash of his eyes when the light hit them. "Of course I'm not going to murder her. No one is. She'll be fine." Michael spoke quicker than before, more uneasily. "I'm just telling you what Cleever said. He won't do anything to her; we're just keeping her quiet till today is over."

"What the hell are you doing, Michael? You're all mad."

"Mad!" Michael raised his head and laughed, a high-pitched shrillness in the thin dawn. From somewhere far away, a cockerel answered him; the noises blended, until the laughter in him drained away. He sat still again on the branch.

"It's to prevent madness that we're doing this, Stephen. You don't know the price we pay for the Four Gifts. If you'd accepted the dragon's breath, as you were meant to, you'd know a whole lot of things you don't. But that's your stupid fault."

"I know about the dragon, Michael."

"In part. But not nearly as much as you think you do. You've taken an outsider's point of view, Stephen, ignoring the fact that you are bonded to it, and us, body and soul."

Stephen shifted from one foot to another. "You're no longer like me, Michael. In the field . . . your soul was melting. Changing shape and colour. Becoming like the others'."

"And what do you think is happening to yours?" There was a slow grin of pleasure; the eyes flashed. "It's only a small change so far, but the horse is no longer what it was, Stevie-boy."

Suddenly he leapt from the tree, came down to the ground fast, but still slower than gravity would have taken him. He was close to Stephen now, holding out his hand.

"Don't you feel the aching in your eyes, Stephen? Don't you feel the deep desire to change, to use the sight? Yes, I know you do. And soon you will want to use the sight forever, to pick out the jewelled souls around you, gather them to you, toy with them, discard them, feel the fire course through you and soar above the world like a bird in flight."

Stephen made to speak, but his brother cut in on him. "Don't bother to deny it. Your gifts are weak and you are weak with it, but you're fated to this. So listen, keep your head down today, and you might still profit by tonight."

"What's happening tonight, Michael?"

The smile flashed back. For an instant, even without the sight, Stephen sensed the tapering snout, the array of teeth. He shuddered.

"A liberation for us all," said Michael.

With a wave of his hands he was back in the crook of the tree. The glade was streaming with early morning light, but Michael, leaning against the toppled trunk, seemed curiously insubstantial, still cast in shadow.

"I'd better go," he said. "They'll be up at eight."

"What about Sarah?" asked Stephen.

"All being well, we'll let her go tomorrow. Maybe even later tonight. She'll be OK."

Stephen sensed a tremor in his head, a flinch in the shared wavelength, and knew that somewhere deep down, Michael was unsure.

He said, "I don't see any reason why I should trust you."

Michael made a dismissive gesture. He was looking up at the sky, sniffing the air. "Because I've risked myself to come here. You don't think they would trust me enough to send me, do you? Not after the cock-up in the fields? Sawcroft and Pilate would rather I burn!"

"In that case, Michael, why stay?"

"Because their fear is rather a compliment. And because they need me. But most of all because I need them. And so do you, Stephen. We're in serious trouble, you and I. But I'll cure it for us, you'll see."

He rose suddenly, into the space at the centre of the glade. Stephen felt a rush of air as it was whipped upwards by the heat above him. There was a rustling. Michael passed in among the smooth, canyon-deep folds of leaves high above the earth.

His voice came calling back from nowhere: "Body and soul, Stephen, body and soul! You'll thank me for it – one day!"

The voice faded. Stephen was alone in the forest. All of a sudden, birds from every tree about him came screeching, wheeling, calling, erupting endlessly into the anxious sky.