The Speed of Darkness Read online

  Contents

  Title page

  Acclaim for the Chronoptika sequence

  PART ONE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  PART TWO

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  PART THREE

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  PART FOUR

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  PART FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Also by Catherine Fisher

  Copyright

  If you liked this you’ll love . . .

  CHAPTER ONE

  For what the Mirror truly is, or what infernal power first forg’d it in the deepest earth, who can say, nor how in lost ages it was used by barbarous men . . . ?

  The Scrutiny of Secrets by Mortimer Dee

  Out at sea, a glint of darkness appeared on the water.

  It was very small, just a slit, as if some opening had been slashed through time and tide.

  A gull flew over it, curious, then turned away with a scream of sharp fear, because out of the gap surged a storm-battered ship with torn black sails. It came prow-first with a burst of spray, flung and spun on its wild journey, and the single figure clinging to its mast yelled with triumph at the churning sea.

  The sky clouded rapidly, with great coppery thunderclouds that piled up over the horizon. Gulls raced for cover. Seals dived deep.

  All along the north Devon coast, flags began to rattle and awnings flap with sudden gusts. It was 29 October, two days before Halloween, and no one was expecting anything.

  By six p.m. the first weather warnings were out, issued on TV and radio by startled broadcasters, scrawled on boards at the ends of fishing piers, passed on by urgent coastguards down the coasts of Devon and Cornwall and Wales. It was the first storm of autumn, there was a mighty Force 9 gale at the heart of it, and it had come out of nowhere.

  By seven the tempest was in full fury. Defences crumbled, sea walls burst. Small fast rivers gushing down from the moors brought mud-red floods to swell the chaos. Crashing against roofs and windows, against flapping tarpaulins and smashed chimneys, heavy rain poured down all night, so that, lying curled in bed or huddled at upstairs widows with torches, people thought the end of the world might have come, and that they might not survive until morning.

  A dark, slanting storm. The sedges lay flat under it. The moor became a black bog, and the Wood of Wintercombe threshed and cracked and roared. And deep in its heart water rose from the flooding river and poured into the cellars and vaults of Wintercombe Abbey, up stairs and along corridors, under the bedroom doors, making the Monk’s Walk a torrent, raging even to the foot of the obsidian mirror, chained in its harness of steel and malachite.

  George Wharton didn’t hear any of it.

  When he opened his eyes, late on the morning of the 30th, it was to close them again immediately with a groan of agony.

  ‘For God’s sake turn that noise down,’ he moaned.

  His head swam. He tried to remember who he was. Where he was, even. After a few seconds of panicky concentration he dredged up the dim knowledge that his name was George Wharton, that this was a hotel bedroom, and that the giant woodpecker carefully drilling holes in the inside of his head was a hangover.

  He dared not move.

  Cider.

  It always did this to him. He had sworn never to touch the bloody stuff again.

  He lay with his eyes closed in a fuzz of pain.

  The funeral.

  Old Uncle Tom’s funeral wake.

  The White Hart, Shepton Mallet. That’s where he was, and if somebody didn’t turn off that rattling noise outside he would scream.

  After a useless ten minutes with his head buried in the pillow he knew he couldn’t stand it any longer. He dragged himself into the white-tiled bathroom, drank a whole glass of water and then went to find some headache tablets in his bag. There were none.

  He groped for the phone.

  ‘Hello? Reception? This is room . . . er, ten. Listen, do you have any painkilling stuff?’

  The woman sounded distracted. ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Headache tablets.’

  ‘Oh, we might have. I’ll send something up if I can find it. But with all this . . .’

  ‘And could you turn off whatever’s rattling?’

  ‘Rattling?’

  ‘On the roof. Hell of a din.’

  A moment’s silence. He became aware of distant shouts, splashings like water, the whine of machinery. Then she said blankly, ‘It’s rain, sir. It’s a flood.’

  ‘Oh. OK.’ He put the phone down, groaned again, and thought about getting right under the blankets and just dying there.

  But the word flood bobbed back into his mind. Was that what she had said? It was enough to make him struggle up against the pillow.

  He felt for his mobile phone. At some point last night – maybe between the speeches to old Tom’s memory and the start of the singing when the second barrel of the old man’s APPLE KILLER MAX got broached – he’d turned it off. Why the hell had Tom left his most potent cider for his family to drink at the wake? Was that some sort of twisted revenge?

  He switched on. The screen went nuts.

  YOU HAVE FOURTEEN MISSED CALLS.

  ‘Whoa!’ He rubbed his head and looked at the numbers. They were all the same. The screen said

  REBECCA

  REBECCA

  REBECCA

  REBECCA

  with ferocious insistence.

  He called her.

  There was a buzz, and then she came on, her voice crackling and distant.

  ‘George? Oh my God, at last! I’ve been calling you all morning! Where the hell have you been?’

  He took a nauseous swallow of water. ‘Asleep. The wake was a bit heavy. Uncle Tom bequeathed his home-made and it makes dynamite look like weak tea. What time is it?’

  ‘Gone twelve!’ She sounded frantic. ‘Haven’t you even seen the news? I’m going mad with worry. I can’t get any answer from Wintercombe – I’ve tried the landline, everyone’s mobiles, the e-mail, and there’s nothing. They must be so flooded down there, George – you know how deep in the valley they are! And it’s Halloween tomorrow!’

  ‘Wait! Wait . . . hold on.’

  He fumbled for the TV remote, found it on the floor, rolled over and pressed it. Rebecca was still talking, her tinny voice drowned out by the newscaster, but even as Wharton winced and thumbed the sound down he saw the images on screen – broken bridges, floating cars, vast tracts of farmland under water, people and dogs being winched from the roofs of houses.

  It looked like a real disaster.

  ‘Where the hell did this come from?’ he muttered.

  Bringing the phone back to his ear he heard, ‘. . . pick you up in half an hour. Lots of roads are flooded but I’ve got an idea how we can . . .’

  Fear finally pierced his self-pity. ‘You can’t get Jake? Or Sarah?’

  ‘I’ve been telling you! I can’t get anyone. Be ready, George.’

  The phone went dead. He looked at it, thinking that if she was in Exeter she’d be driving like a maniac to get here in that time. He called Jake.

/>   Straight to voice-mail. But Jake might still be on the journey, the last experiment.

  He tried the house phone. Just a single high-pitched note. Cut off? Lines down?

  On the TV apocalyptic images swam. A leisure centre with children sleeping on the floor. A seaside promenade with waves twenty feet high battering it.

  Couldn’t they predict these things?

  A weatherman appeared; Wharton turned the sound up, cautiously.

  ‘. . . completely unexpected. A very sudden depression in the Atlantic, and it’s as if it came out of nowhere. Certainly the Met Office have classified it as a freak storm, and we’re monitoring it very closely now as it moves inland . . .’

  He turned the TV off, rolled out of bed and stood up.

  The world reeled; he grabbed the wall.

  ‘Cheers, Uncle Tom,’ he muttered.

  Forty minutes later the red car screeched up the drive, next to the pump churning water out of the downstairs bar. Wharton threw his bag in and squeezed after it.

  ‘All right?’ Rebecca said. She had wellies on and a heavy-duty mac.

  ‘Stuffed with painkillers.’

  ‘Breakfast?’

  ‘God, no.’

  ‘There’s food in the back. Water too. I’ve borrowed boots and a coat that should fit you.’

  She was driving with fierce concentration, her long red plait tied back tight, a knitted hat crammed on. After they had backed up a few flooded streets and on to the main road he said, ‘You’re worried.’

  She flicked him a glance. ‘I’m terrified. Everything was all ready, George! Maskelyne and David have been working so hard on the mirror they’re exhausted. It was tuned to the finest of margins. They can hit anywhere in the last five years to a matter of seconds. You’ve seen the success they’ve had. And now this!’

  He was silent, sharing her fear. For the last three months Wintercombe had been re-organized into a slick and efficient laboratory. David Wilde, Jake’s dad, was a remarkable worker. He had taken over the lab, bossed Piers, who adored him, ordered Venn about like no one else would dare, and, in short, taken control, all with his baby son Lorenzo strapped to his belly like some dark-eyed marsupial. It had been David who had devised the strict schedule of work leading up to Halloween, the day Maskelyne had told them was the best one for Operation Leah.

  If Venn was ever to get his wife back, that was the day they had to do it. The ancient end of the year, the hinge on which summer and winter turned. The night the dead return.

  What’s more, David even seemed to have won some grudging respect from Maskelyne, that strange, scarred ghost from the distant past, the man who knew more about the mirror than anyone, though Wharton was still not sure how far he could be trusted.

  He gazed into the rain. ‘I’m sure they’ll be all right.’

  ‘Yes, but it’ll have been panic. They’ll have had to move the mirror – that could ruin everything.’

  He nodded, feeling sick.

  The car took a bend at speed. Water splashed high into the hedgerow.

  Sitting on a seaside bench, three years away in time, Jake said, ‘Subject in clear sight. Everything in place. D minus two minutes and we’re all set to move in.’

  Silence.

  ‘Dad?’

  The modified mobile phone did not answer. He frowned. ‘Dad? Can you hear me? D minus two.’

  The sun was dazzling him and the ice-cream van down on the beach was playing a merry tune. His watch said 2.58 p.m.

  He cursed, viciously. ‘Something’s wrong.’

  Standing tense against the blue-painted railing, Venn had the binoculars trained on the small boy in the red shorts. ‘What?’

  ‘We’ve lost contact with base.’

  Venn frowned. ‘That wretched Piers! Can’t he keep any sort of link going? That thing has worked every time until now.’

  Jake looked at the watch, anxious. 2.59. ‘What do we do? Go ahead?’

  Venn lowered the binoculars. ‘Are you mad? Of course we go ahead. If this works, we’re all set.’

  Jake stood up. Had he really thought that Venn would stop now? They were so close to success! One more test, to see if it was possible to save a life. It was all they had thought about for months, and today was the day.

  D minus one minute.

  ‘Go!’ Venn snapped.

  Jake shoved the mobile in his pocket and raced down the sunny promenade. It was a bright summer’s afternoon and the beach was packed. Donkeys carried laughing kids across the tide line. Striped deckchairs were pitched everywhere.

  Jake ran down the ramp into the deep sand, his feet sinking into the hot drifts. The boy in red shorts was out there on his own, near the water’s edge. His name, according to their research, was James Paul Arnold. He was seven years old, and on holiday with his parents.

  And this should be the day he would die.

  It was a common seaside tragedy. He had wandered into the water and been swept out to sea. It happened all the time. But for Venn, for all of them, this unknown child would be the ultimate test for Operation Leah. They had worked so carefully up to it, changing all sorts of small things, checking the news reports after each intervention in the past. This was the biggest, the most ambitious. What would this do to the future? And if it worked, could they go on to save Leah, Venn’s lost wife?

  The sand was slippery and scorching under Jake’s trainers. He kept his eyes fixed on the boy, aware that Venn was close behind, but for a moment there were so many people on the beach, throwing balls, digging, running, that he was confused.

  Sun blinded his eyes. He stopped.

  The kid. Where was he?

  ‘Excuse me, would you like to make a small donation?’ Some sort of charity mugger was at his elbow.

  ‘What?’ Jake stared round.

  ‘A donation. We’re collecting for . . .’

  Where the hell was the kid!

  Panic grabbed him. ‘No! Get out of the way!’

  His eyes raked the beach. Suddenly it was all so vital, so clear. Only he, Jake Wilde, could do this, at this single flashpoint in time, as if he was some sorcerer, someone from right outside the world.

  He felt giddy with fear.

  Then he saw him. Already in the sea.

  Jake ran. He shoved bathers aside and flung himself in, splashed through a wave, fell, scrambled up. Waist-deep, he felt the undertow drag at his heels. He was too late, for a second he knew he was too late, it was all over. And then with a yell of relief he turned and the kid was there and Jake was grabbing his arm, too tight. ‘Hey! Hi! Listen . . . You shouldn’t be out so far! It’s not safe.’

  The little boy looked up, puzzled and sun-dazzled. Waves lapped high on his chest. He had floppy dark hair, pale eyes and a soaked stripy T-shirt. His skin was sun-warm in Jake’s hand.

  He smiled.

  With an intake of relief that felt more like fear, Jake felt the power of the obsidian mirror, a pure surge of joy and terror. He turned and led the child out of the water, and saw Venn standing close among the sun umbrellas, watching with an agony of intensity.

  ‘Where’s your mum?’ Jake said.

  The boy looked round and shrugged. The corners of his mouth went down.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Jake said hastily. ‘She won’t be far. Look, that lady waving there. Is that her?’

  In the TV reports the mother had sobbed that she had only taken her eyes off him for a moment. Her photo, distraught and tear-stained, came into Jake’s mind, devastated at the careless moment that would wreck

  her life.

  But it wouldn’t happen now, any of it. He had changed all that. And she would never even know.

  Venn muttered, ‘She’s coming, Jake.’

  A plump woman in shorts was running towards them. ‘Oh thank you so much,’ she gasped as she came up. ‘He’s always wandering off.’

  Jake nodded. ‘He was in the water.’ Be careful, he wanted to say. Hold him tight because you nearly lost him for ever. But she just smil
ed brightly and took the child off, her hand cupped protectively round his dark head. He looked back, only once, at Jake. He didn’t wave.

  Jake turned away and checked his watch. 3.02.

  Done.

  He sat suddenly down in the sand, the strength in his legs strangely gone. Staring ahead, he felt Venn sit next to him.

  ‘We did it.’ Venn’s usual arrogance was muted, as if the tiny act with its massive consequences had overwhelmed him too.

  ‘Do you think he’ll even remember this?’

  ‘Nothing to remember.’ Venn gazed out at the blue sea, his blond hair tangled in the wind. ‘How many of

  us have brushed against death in our lives and never even realized it?’

  They were silent. Then he said, harshly, ‘We need to get back. Find out what’s wrong.’

  Jake nodded. He took out the phone again and tried it, puzzled, but there was only darkness on the screen.

  Like a tiny obsidian mirror.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Wild storms have driven many a wrecke on the rocks of Wintercombe, and many a drowned corpse. Mermen and mermaids have been seen here, and water-selkies, and in truthe, far stranger sights, from countries that no men know. For this western coast is a strange and unfathomable land.

  The Chronicle of Wintercombe

  Every lane into Wintercombe was waist-deep in water, but Rebecca had a plan.

  She drove across the moor by tracks and stony ways that Wharton had never seen before, and gradually bumped the car down to a small quay where a dinghy was tied, bobbing on the rough waves.

  ‘A boat?’

  ‘Best way. We can get round to Wintercombe Cove, the nearest opening in the cliffs to the Abbey, and walk from there. It will mean going through the Wood though.’

  Wharton groaned aloud. Since his captivity in the Summerland he had taken care to keep well clear of the Wood. The last thing he wanted was another encounter with the Shee, those silvery, scary creatures with no human emotions but their intense and cruel curiosity. Or with Summer, their beautiful, infuriating queen. The very thought of her smile made him shudder.

  He pulled the wellies on and hauled the mac over his coat.

  As they climbed down the steps a wild wind raged from the sea; the waves were choppy, and he frowned. ‘Whose boat is this anyway?’