He sat down behind the teacher’s desk and opened his book. ‘Rashid, please read Sonnet 18 and then give us your interpretation of what you have read. Given your analytical prowess just now, I can hardly wait to hear more.’
After the end of the period, Jamie waylaid Nick at the classroom door.
‘Do you have any idea what was up with Aisha?’
‘No, how would I? I didn’t see what scared her any more than you did.’
‘I didn’t mean that. I meant the bigger picture. It’s something to do with the DVD, isn’t it? With that game?’
‘No idea,’ Nick murmured, and tried to push past Jamie. But Jamie held him by the sleeve.
‘There’s actually something really rotten going on,’ he said. ‘Come on, Nick. Can’t we talk to each other normally? Aisha isn’t the only one I’ve seen howling today. Something similar happened to a girl in Year 7. Found something in her bag that completely shattered her. But she didn’t want to talk about it or show it to anyone, not for anything.’
‘Yeah, so?’ He pulled his sleeve out of Jamie’s grasp, but kept standing there. Colin and Rashid weren’t around, the noise level in the classroom was high; no-one could eavesdrop on Jamie and him. ‘You don’t seriously believe Aisha is telling the truth?’ Jamie’s face reflected more amusement than dismay. ‘A spider – fat chance. You saw it as well as I did: she had a note hidden in her hand.’
‘Maybe it was a picture of a spider,’ Nick joked, immediately felt stupid and waved his remark off. ‘Yeah okay, I saw the note too. But I don’t know what the story is with it. Maybe her boyfriend broke up with her by letter.’
Jamie gave him a lenient smile. ‘Honestly, stop acting dumb. For the last ten days or so everything’s been different around here. Since the game’s been going around. You must have noticed that.’ ‘You really are paranoid.’
Jamie looked at him thoughtfully.
‘It’s a shame,’ he said. ‘I should have accepted your offer yesterday and got my hands on this DVD. Then I’d have something I could go to Mr Watson with.’
‘Oh well, too bad. But you know what? You’ve got completely the wrong idea,’ Nick said. Because the game is much smarter than you, Jamie Cox, and it would have easily outwitted you.
* * *
The canteen was crowded, despite all the students who were away sick. Nevertheless, thanks to his height and since he wasn’t feeling particularly polite today, Nick had managed to nab a plate of salad and a bowl of unidentifiable pasta. But what now? Normally he would have sat with Jamie or Colin, but neither of them was an option today.
He looked around and reeled, his tray along with him, when he spotted Emily at one of the smaller tables. She was waving, and he nearly dropped everything in order to wave back, but that would have been a waste. Because she wasn’t waving at him. She was waving at Eric, who immediately steered a course towards her table. Within seconds they were engrossed in a conversation as if they’d only been briefly interrupted.
Nick’s hunger was history. He banged his tray down on the closest free space, and stared at the food. School slops. He should have tipped the stuff over Eric’s head.
‘Is someone sitting here?’
The universe hated Nick Dunmore, that much was obvious. Smiling coyly, Brynne placed her bowl of salad on the table and put a glass of water next to it.
‘Oh, spaghetti!’ she said as if she’d never seen any before. ‘Enjoy your meal!’
The food would come in handy after all. Nick could use it to stuff his mouth full and avoid having to answer her drivel.
‘Didn’t Aisha make a big fuss! Did you see what was in her hand?’
Nick shook his head, and twirled more pasta onto his fork. The white sauce it was swimming in tasted vaguely of mushrooms.
‘Doesn’t matter anyway. I would never put on a performance like that, that’s for sure.’ She was waiting for his agreement, but Nick was concentrating solely on his salad, which was positively bathed in vinegar.
Why couldn’t he be like Colin? He would have said: Beat it, sister.
And got some peace. But Nick dreaded the wounded expression he would see on Brynne’s face, and his own bad conscience.
‘Hello! Anybody home?’ Her hand was making windscreen wiper motions in front of his eyes.
‘Yes. Sorry. What did you say?’ I’m a bloody wimp.
‘I asked you a question,’ she said, with emphasis on the last word. ‘Ah. Sorry, I’m quite tired. What did you ask?’
‘If there’s something that you’re supposed to say to me.’
Pardon me? That he’s supposed to say to her?
‘You mean I’m supposed to say thank you? For the thing? Okay, thanks very much. Satisfied?’
Brynne’s smile faded. She shook her hair back and pressed her lips together tightly.
What was wrong now? He’d stayed polite, hadn’t he?
‘I was wondering what was up with you and Jamie,’ Brynne began after a few seconds of silence.
‘What do you think is up? Nothing at all.’
She put on a knowing look. ‘Rubbish. You two got stuck into each other about . . . you know, about the thing. Didn’t you?’
Nick didn’t answer, and Brynne took that as agreement. ‘Don’t even worry about it. You’ve got heaps of friends, you don’t need him. He’s not exactly one of the cool people, anyway. Did you see the shoes he’s wearing today?’
She actually giggled. And she was actually embroiling him in a conversation about his best friend’s bad taste in clothes. Nick threw the fork onto the rubbery pasta and pushed his chair back. ‘I think I’ve had enough. And the next time you feel like slagging Jamie off, choose someone else.’
‘Hey, it was . . .’
He didn’t hear any more, he was already on his way out, although he still had to walk past Emily, who took no notice of him at all. She was listening to Eric, with her chin resting in her hands and her head tilted slightly to one side, and he was talking non-stop.
I need to go home, Nick thought. Beat opponents up until the hard drive starts smoking.
Except that he still had two periods to go in the afternoon. Couldn’t he skive off for the rest of the day? He felt dizzy when he thought of the head start all those people were getting who were missing from school today.
But if he stuck it out now, maybe he could afford a fake sick day tomorrow. No, damn it, tomorrow he had to hand in the Chemistry assignment. It was due tomorrow!
Fine, well at least that settled how he was going to spend his lunchtime. He took his bag and looked for a quiet window seat in the library.
He fetched two books off the shelf and began copying out of them, changing the sentences as much as possible as he wrote. There! It wasn’t all that bad after all. He’d already managed half a page. There was a graphic too that he could incorporate to give the assignment a professional look.
He copied it and then kept writing, and managed two pages. They certainly weren’t good, but they existed. Satisfied, Nick looked out of the window onto the rainy schoolyard below, as if there was some chance that he would find inspiration there for two more pages. But all he saw was Dan, who was supposed to be absent today. And yet he was standing down there, all by himself. Why wasn’t Girl Guide number one sitting at her computer?
Nick watched Dan as he ducked behind the cypress hedge that separated the schoolyard from the car park. He was holding something in his hand. Binoculars? No, a camera.
Nick squinted so he could see better. Dan was photographing something in the car park. Unfortunately Nick couldn’t tell what it was; the right wing of the school building was in the way.
After a short time Dan lowered his camera and looked around. He strolled into the middle of the courtyard and did a reconnaissance of the classroom windows at ground level. He stopped at one of the windows and took a few more pictures, before entering the building and disappearing out of Nick’s field of vision.
Nick would have liked to leap up and sprint
down the stairs so he could intercept Dan and ask him what he’d been doing there. Except that Dan would never come out with it.
But it wouldn’t be a problem to grab the camera from him and take a look at the last few pictures. No, he wasn’t going to do that. No.
Instead Nick turned over the sheet he’d been intending to work on.
He wrote DAN on the right side and drew an equals sign after it. A quarter of an hour later he had created an astonishing number of equations. Not exactly relevant to his Chemistry assignment, but undoubtedly more interesting.
DAN = Sapujapu? No, he’s too nice. Drizzel? Possible. Or perhaps Blackspell?
ALEX = no idea. A lizard perhaps? Gagnar? Or a dark elf: Vulcanos? Could be anyone. Could be everyone.
COLIN = Lelant. But he was too cheerful for that today. Feels invincible. But who knows what happened during the night. Maybe BloodWork, after all? Or Nurax?
HELEN = Aurora? If so, she’s dead. Tyrania. A possibility. Arwen’s Child? I’d laugh my head off.
JEROME = LordNick? But why?
BRYNNE = Feniel, probable, because disagreeable cow. Or Arwen’s Child? Or Tyrania?
AISHA = probably dead, explains why so shattered. Aurora?
RASHID = Drizzel? BloodWork? Blackspell? Xohoo?
Defeated, Nick threw the pencil on the table. There was a question mark after each of his guesses. Not a single game character was a definite match. And it was equally possible that he hadn’t even encountered Colin yet in the course of the game – like so many people from the graveyard, like the members of the Inner Circle. For example, who were Beroxar and Wyrdana?
No, there was no point. He would stop racking his brains about it. It was better to work now and immerse himself in Erebos again later with an easy conscience.
Nick took a new sheet of paper and kept writing, without really understanding what it was about. He had three and a half pages finished when the bell rang for the start of class. That wasn’t so bad; he would manage the rest this evening and then quickly type everything up. It would work out. Somehow.
With every day that passes my reality becomes less valuable. It’s loud, disordered, unpredictable and arduous.
Reality – what can it do? Make you hungry, thirsty, dissatisfied. It causes pain, strikes you down with disease, obeys laughable laws. But above all it is finite. It always leads to death.
It is other things that count, that are powerful: ideas, passions, even madness. Everything that elevates itself above reason.
I withdraw my consent from reality. I deny it my assistance. I dedicate myself to the temptations of escapism, and throw myself wholeheartedly into the endlessness of unreality.
CHAPTER 14
‘I have been expecting you.’
The messenger is sitting on a chair in Sarius’s room at the tavern when he arrives later in the afternoon. The sun is low, casting honey-coloured rays through the windowpanes.
‘I hear it has been an interesting day so far. Tell me about it, Sarius. Did anything unusual happen?’
The messenger wasn’t going to accept no for an answer, that much was obvious.
‘A girl called Aisha had a sort of nervous breakdown.’
‘Do you know why?’
‘Not exactly. She found something in her English book and got a fright. I couldn’t see what it was.’
The answer seemed to satisfy the messenger.
‘And what else happened?’
Well, what?
‘I watched Dan Smythe secretly taking photos. Of something in the car park.’
‘Good. What else?’
Sarius thinks about it. What else should he talk about?
‘Tell me about Eric Wu. Or Jamie Cox,’ the messenger prompts him.
He already knows everything, Sarius realises. And he’s testing me. ‘They were talking to each other.’
‘What about?’
‘No idea.’
‘That’s a shame.’
The messenger rises from his seat in a supple motion. He seems superhumanly tall in the tiny room. He turns back once more at the door, as if something has just occurred to him.
‘I am worried,’ he says. ‘Erebos has enemies and they are growing stronger. You know some of them, don’t you?’
Sarius’s thoughts are whizzing around chaotically in his head. He won’t talk about Emily and Jamie, no way. Maybe about Eric? No, better not. But he should say something, and fast; the messenger appears impatient.
‘I think Mr Watson doesn’t approve of Erebos. Even though he certainly doesn’t know much about it . . . He tries to question people.’
‘A valuable piece of information. Thank you.’
The messenger’s smile is almost warm.
‘Now hurry. Whoever brings me a golden hawk’s feather will be richly rewarded.’
‘What golden hawk?’ Sarius inquires, but the messenger has turned his back on him and leaves the room without another word.
Sarius finds his way by asking. At the baker’s he’s informed that he should head south and to watch out for the sheep. The first mistake in this world, Sarius thinks. Sheep!
A beggarwoman on whom he bestows a piece of gold reveals to him that he should keep an eye out for a pink-coloured hedge. It’s hard work, and slow, but after more than an hour Sarius has finally collected enough information to take to the – hopefully right – road. He’s promptly interrupted. As usual it’s the outside world that gets in the way.
His phone.
Jamie.
Sarius ignores it. He has stuff to do; he has to leave the city. Hopefully his sword is sturdy enough to stand up to a golden hawk.
After another hour he knows better. He’s been heading in the direction the gatekeeper at the city wall indicated to him. To the south. He’s gone further and further without finding either sheep or a hawk. Instead, the hawk finds him. Unexpectedly, without any warning, an enormous gleaming golden bird swoops down from the sky, glowing like a meteorite. Sarius dives for cover, but he doesn’t have a chance. He’s standing in the middle of open country, and the hawk grabs him with its claws, lifts him a little way into the air and then drops him. Most of his belt goes grey, then black.
Crawl away quickly, before it’s too late. The shrill cries of the bird of prey and the excruciating screeching triggered by his injuries blend together. Sarius clenches his teeth – he still has healing potion, he just has to get to his inventory before the hawk strikes a second time.
But his adversary doesn’t give him time; it has circled up into the air like a gleaming dragon and is readying itself for another nosedive. Sarius draws his sword; he sees the hawk swooping towards him, blindingly bright. He won’t survive another serious injury.
The impact is hard and metallic; the injury tone becomes unbearable, but at least it’s still there. That’s good, it means life. Now, however, the hawk is preparing for the third attack, which will also be the last. A mosquito bite would be enough to kill him in his present condition.
No, please no. Frantically he tears open his inventory. There’s the healing potion – quickly, the bird is still ascending, perhaps there’s enough time, quickly . . .
But the potion only works slowly. Bit by bit the colour is restored, the tone is slowly, slowly becoming softer. In the meantime the hawk has regained sufficient height and is getting itself into position. Even though there’s no point, Sarius attempts to crawl towards the nearest tree while the hawk rushes towards him, filling more and more of his vision.
‘Should I hold it off?’
The messenger. He’s appeared from nowhere, as always.
‘Yes please, quickly!’
Fantastic, Sarius is going to live. He knew he could rely on the messenger.
‘But you must do something for me.’
‘Of course. Gladly.’
Sarius has said yes, so why doesn’t the messenger drive the creature off? It’s already rushing down, and it’s so fast . . .
‘Do you promise?’
/> ‘Yes! Yes! Yes!’
The messenger raises his arm in a casual gesture, and the hawk performs a sharp turn to the left, beats its wings several times, climbs higher and gradually disappears from Sarius’s view.
‘Then come with me.’
The healing potion has begun to take effect. Sarius’s belt is almost completely restored; the tone is hardly more than a buzzing. The messenger leads him to the nearby tree and they stand in its shade.
‘The higher you rise, the more challenging the tasks will be that I set you. That makes sense, does it not?’
‘Yes.’
‘This time it is a task that Nick Dunmore is to fulfil. If he acquits himself well, you will become a Seven. That would put you in exalted company.’
‘Great.’
‘This is the task. Nick Dunmore is to ask Brynne Farnham on a date. He is to make sure she feels comfortable and see to it that she has a pleasant evening. He is to convince her that he likes her.’ Brynne? But why? What does this have to do with Erebos?
Sarius hesitates before answering. He doesn’t understand the point of the task, and the thought of it fills him with dread. Everyone would find out. Emily would definitely find out because Brynne would tell everyone about it.
‘Well? Why aren’t you answering?’
‘I’m not sure I understand properly. Why Brynne? What’s that supposed to achieve?’
It’s as if a cloud has moved in front of the sun. The world becomes grey.
‘Your behaviour is ill-advised, Sarius. I detest curiosity.’
‘Fine, all right,’ Sarius hurries to say. ‘I will do it. Agreed.’
‘Do not return until your instructions have been carried out.’
Just as before, when he was driving off the hawk, the messenger raises his hand. This time darkness descends.