Thirteen

It is the middle of the day when Eric finally feels he has enough energy to stagger from his bed, but when he does, something has cleared in his head. He has a long hot shower, trying to think, think more clearly.

Automatically, his hand reaches for the shower controls. He turns the power up, and reaches for the temperature control, and slowly, fighting the urge not to, he takes the temperature down, and down and down, until he is showering in what feels like ice water. It’s agony, but he forces himself on, until his whole body is shaking with the cold, then heaving in great spasmodic shudders. He looks at his hands. They are virtually blue.

He falls backward out of the shower, and shaking on the bathroom floor, everything comes back to him.

Images swim through his head—they are the broken pieces of fractured memories; the journey to Blessed, the flowers, his device. Merle.

He lies for an age on the floor, holding a picture of her face in his mind. Merle.

The answer lies beyond the hill.

He looks out of the window. It’s very quiet; he guesses it’s a Sunday, though he’s not sure anymore.

This is the perfect time. In five minutes he is whizzing fast on his bike, fully aware that he has to pedal hard, as he makes his way up the steep, steep hill that he knows leads to the western half of the island.

As he cycles, he repeats her name in his head, using it as a mantra to keep his mind clear. Merle, Merle, Merle.

At the top, he takes time to look behind him, checking to see if he has been followed and, satisfied that he has not been, forces his way back through the undergrowth, looking for the eyes on the rocks.

He finds the first quickly, and crawls on hands and knees to the second, and then the third.

By the time he gets to the fourth pair of eyes, he is able to stand, and at the sixth, he is in open country again.

The land slopes down in front of him, a mixed terrain of grasses, rocky patches, clumps of purple heather, and marsh. He follows the eyes, and very soon, he turns a corner, resting a large outcrop, and there lies the narrow causeway that will take him to the western half of Blessed.

Again he glances behind and, seeing no one, hurries on, half running, half stumbling over the uneven ground.

The causeway could be man-made. He’s not sure. It looks natural enough now, but it’s not much more than a jumble of large boulders and smaller rocks, against which a small beach of sand has formed. It seems that there are really two islands here, the one severed from the other in some geological moment millions of years ago.

The distance between them is short, and in a dozen strides he’s across and into a very different landscape.

There are no trees here.

He follows the eyes on the rocks, a series leading him on, painted who knows how many years ago, and within moments he discovers the first secret of the western half of Blessed. The flowers.

He sees just one at first, then a couple. He stumbles on and sees a dozen more, and then, turning a corner in the rocks, hundreds. Thousands.

He knows it must be the Little Blessed Dragon Orchid. It is as mysterious as its name. A tall stem, with odd, curly star-shaped leaves clinging to it, and the flower itself, a dark purple-black thing, weirdly contorted. He looks closely, and can indeed imagine that it is a dragon’s head; there are even little bumps on the upper petal that look like horns, and a long black tongue protrudes from the mouth of the upper and lower petals, like that of a dragon, black with poison and evil.

He goes to pick one, but something stays his hand. Even the scent of the flowers makes his senses swim, and he stands up, deciding to move on.

The ground dips and rises again, and the eyes pick up once more. It seems obvious to follow them, and after a short scramble along the rocks, he sees something that takes his breath away.

There is a church in front of him. It’s like no church he’s ever seen, but he knows it can’t be anything else.

It is wooden, of a single, high story, with a pitched roof, which he is looking at side on. He is openmouthed as he makes his way around the building, where a small tower or portico frames the entrance.

The place is a ruin—he can see that—and has obviously not been used in years.

Like a traveler from another time, he staggers toward the waiting, gaping mouth of the building, and enters.

It feels like walking into the jaws of a huge wooden whale, and, if it is, he is swallowed whole by the beast.

The building itself is just a prelude.

What he sees next is the real surprise.

Where the altar should be, there is something massive, hidden.

A large cloth is draping something, hiding a long rectangular shape, which stands upright in the vast space of this temple.

He walks forward, feeling this is more unreal than any dream he has ever had. As he puts his hands out to the corner of the old, gray, tattered cloth, and pulls it away from whatever is underneath, it is as if he is hovering above himself, looking down, watching himself act.

What is underneath the cloth is a painting. It is absolutely huge.

Dazed, Eric steps backward again, trying to take it all in.

What he sees is a painting of such realistic horror, and yet at the same time such dreamlike variety, that his mind cannot comprehend it all at once.

There is a click on stone somewhere behind him, and he turns.

Tor stands in the doorway. Behind him Eric can see the other Wards.

Tor approaches, and immediately, Eric knows the game has changed.

“It is appropriate,” Tor says, “that you should have seen it. You should know why the gods brought you here—to help us.”

He turns to his followers, and calls out instructions.

“Cover that up. And take him. The door, please!”

Suddenly the interior of the church fills with people, through unseen doors on either side of Eric.

While hands wrestle with the job of hiding the painting under the cloth once more, other hands close around Eric’s wrists.

He tries to struggle, but there is no point. There are too many of them, even if he could wrestle free from their grasp for a moment, more hands would seize him.

The most frightening thing is their silence.

Their eyes do not even meet his; they just hold him firmly, three or four on either side.

“The door!” Tor cries again, and now real fear stabs Eric.

He has been taken beyond the painting altar, and beyond, in the far wall of the church, another door is swung open.

Framed through the doorway, he can see the short distance to the sea, which burns brightly blue, but his eye is caught by what lies midway between the door and the sea.

It is a stone table.

Now he begins to struggle, quietly at first, then desperately.

Sheer fear surges from his stomach, into his mouth, making him want to be sick. He fights harder, but the more he struggles, the tighter the silent hands hold him.

He is steps from the stone table, and there is Tor at his side, as he is pulled backward toward it, kicking and now screaming, screaming.

They rip his shirt from his back, cast him onto the table, still pinning him fiercely. The stone rips into his skin, the sun almost blinds him, but his wide terror-staring eyes have time to see Tor draw a massive curved knife from somewhere.

He hands it to Henrik, who steps forward.

In another corner of his tunneling vision, he sees a face he knows. A face he has known for always.

Merle looks down at him, tilting her head.

She whispers to him.

I followed you.

Eric screams, and though his mind has largely stopped working already, a final thought bleeds into it, following on from so very many strange thoughts.

I, thinks Eric Seven, have lived this before.