mark darrow and the stealer of Read online

  ‘Oui, oui,’ laughed the little man, clapping his hands.

  ‘You’re making fun of me now,’ Mark said. ‘I think I preferred it when I thought you intended eating me.’

  A ripple of laughter went round the group of men a second time. The self-appointed leader shook his head. ‘Eat you? Ugh. Just the thought of that is enough to make me ill.’ He smiled, showing Mark pointed little teeth – they looked like the teeth of a carnivore. ‘We’re all – now then, what is that term you humans use these days? Ah, yes! We’re all vegans.”

  Mark once went through a vegetarian stage. His parents had gone mad at him, stating that he looked pale and weak. He was soon back to his usual square meal diet when he realised there was an integral part of his Sunday dinner missing, but he always remembered his parents’ comments. He wondered if their old fashioned ideas were true: that he’d stop growing and his skin would go grey. These men seemed like solid proof.

  ‘There’s little chance of a good meal around here. From what I’ve seen everything has been reduced to ash.’ Mark noted again how scrawny the little men looked. Self-consciously the leader hitched up his trousers, but they immediately slipped low on his hips again.

  ‘It’s been some time since we ate a decent meal, I’ll give you that,’ said the leader. ‘But that would still be no reason to eat you.’

  Mark hadn’t been conscious of lowering the shotgun butt to the floor, but he now stood leaning on the barrel. He was bent at the waist to meet the leader’s gaze. ‘And you don’t intend hurting me, either?’

  ‘Why would we hurt our deliverer?’

  ‘Your deliverer? What do you mean by that? It’s the second time you have called me the same thing.’

  The leader bunched his fists on his hips. Rocking back on his heels, he smiled his sharp-toothed smile once more. ‘You are going to destroy The Ravager and deliver back to us our kingdom. I know your name sounds melodramatic – even for one who knows how to speak a little French – but it is all we have had to refer to all these years.

  Skathalos the Ravager. Mark the Deliverer. The two names just didn’t have the same ring. ‘Makes me sound like a postman.’

  ‘A postman? I’m afraid I’m unfamiliar with the term.’

  Mark held up a hand. ‘Never mind.’

  The leader turned away. Around him all the others gathered and in a twittering, chirping language they all began conversing together. Some of them cast sneaky glances at Mark and he wasn’t so sure that they weren’t planning on eating him after all. In this strange place where nothing was as it seemed even vegans might enjoy an English boy roasted over a spit.

  Finally, the leader waved the group to silence and he turned to regard Mark with a wistful smile on his lips. ‘Are you ready to start?’

  ‘Start what?’

  ‘Delivering?’

  ‘Wait up a moment. I didn’t come here to save a kingdom! I’m here only to save my friends.’

  The little leader nodded. ‘Exactly. But to achieve one you must also do the other.’

  Mark placed a hand on his chest. ‘I’m just a boy.’

  ‘Your age means nothing.’ The little man stood and regarded him with a look that spoke of regality: almost as though this man had once been a great prince or emperor. ‘You are strong and brave and resourceful. And – though your first actions toward us must be ignored – you are clever.’

  Mark raised his eyebrows.

  ‘You can even speak a little French,’ the man reminded him. His smile told Mark he was joking. ‘Now come. I will take you to where your friends are being held.’

  ‘You’ve seen them? They’re both...’

  ‘Alive?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘They’re alive. And for now, they both still have their heads.’ The man took Mark by his elbow to usher him along. ‘But we must hurry. The golem army is almost routed. When they are finished, Shax will have nothing left to send against Skathalos.’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘Did you burp?’

  Mark shook his head. ‘No, I didn’t burp. I meant excuse me.’

  ‘Same thing.’

  Mark clucked his tongue against the roof of his mouth. ‘Are you telling me that Shax commands the army of clay men?’

  ‘Of course.’ The little man looked at Rip as though the dog would be a better mediator between the two of them. ‘Who else could raise an army from the dirt of the earth but a great and powerful sorcerer?’

  16

  ‘The last time I looked, Shax was just a normal kid. Just like me.’

  The leader was living up to his title. He spearheaded the troop of little men as they wound their way through dark, silent passages, leading Mark and Rip toward some undisclosed place. Mark followed, his brain doing loop-the-loops as he tried to make sense of what the little man had told him.

  ‘You are anything but just a little kid. You are the deliverer. Shax is the trickster. He is a powerful sorcerer.’

  Mark had been on the receiving end of a few tricks that Shax had played on him - and he could make a bag of sweets disappear very quickly - but that was the extent of Shax’s magic skills. The little leader must be mistaken: something else must have happened and Shax, being new to this land, had been credited with it.

  The little man blinked slowly. ‘I can tell that you doubt my words. You are like all the others of your modern age: if you can’t touch, smell or taste it, it can’t be real. I don’t believe my eyes, I don’t believe my ears: they are common phrases these days, are they not?’

  ‘But Shax as a magician is a bit of a stretch...’

  ‘Is it? In your world Shax is just a little kid only because your race has forgotten how to believe. But just because you have forgotten about the world of magic, it doesn’t mean that the world of magic has forgotten about you. If you only cared to open up all your senses you would realise that it’s still there and manifesting its wonder all around you. If Shax’s great knowledge was put to the use it was intended he’d be a great magician in your world too.’

  Shax’s great knowledge? Was the little man referring to Shax’s never-ending list of useless information? Surely not?

  As they walked, the little man stared at him without blinking.

  Mark squirmed under his unflinching gaze. Changed the subject.

  ‘If I’m the deliverer and Shax is the trickster, I can’t keep thinking of you as the little leader.’

  ‘Thank you. I’m not so little. In fact, as one of the Tuatha I am considered quite large.’

  ‘What I mean is, well, do you have a name?’

  ‘Of course. Otherwise, how would I know whom I am when I wake up every morning? I am Tu.’

  ‘You are what, too?’

  ‘Not what. Am.’

  Mark shook his head, confused.

  ‘My name is Tu. It is the shortened form of Tu-tu.’

  ‘Like a ballerina’s skirt?’

  ‘No.’ It was Tu’s turn to frown. ‘Tu in my language means man. Tu-tu means man of all men.’

  They had come to a flight of narrow steps leading deep into the bowels of the pyramid. Tu pressed his hand to Mark’s chest to stop him descending. ‘Wait. First we listen.’

  ‘I can’t hear anything.’

  Beside Mark Rip’s ears twitched.

  ‘My hearing is better than yours,’ said Tu, ‘but not as well as Ammut’s: we will go on his command.’

  Rip didn’t appear overly concerned. He stepped onto the top stair, sniffing the air. Then, happy, he trotted down the stairs into gloom.

  Tu followed, and Mark was compelled to follow him when the group of little men behind him pushed forward.

  ‘I think that I’ve heard of the Tuatha,’ Mark said. ‘Weren’t they supposed to be the first race in the British Isles?’

  ‘The Tuatha de Danann,’ Tu corrected. ‘Yes. Once we were surface dwellers. But then the warlike tribes of men came and we retreated into our mounds and our holes in the ground.’

  ‘You came
here?’

  ‘That’s right. In our day we believed...therefore we were very powerful magicians. We made rents in the fabric of space and time and came here to this our world.’

  ‘Myth says that you are what gave rise to the legend of the fairies.’

  ‘I see now why you’d think I would wear a ballerina’s skirt,’ Tu said.

  ‘No, I, eh, I didn’t mean it like that.’

  Tu chuckled at Mark’s discomfort. ‘I’m only teasing. We did indeed give rise to the faerie-folk stories. Occasionally we would pop back into your world to check on the progress of humanity. At times like that, humans came up with some ridiculous stories about us. Nowadays they confuse us for extraterrestrial beings. Would you believe it?’

  Small grey men with big heads and scrawny bodies and those glistening dark eyes. Mark shook his head in wonder. Shax had been right when he suggested that E.T.s were responsible for crop circles, only these visitors didn’t come from outer but inner space.

  ‘You are responsible for making the patterns in cornfields, then? Is there some significance in them?’

  ‘No. That is just a result of welding shut the rifts in the space-time continuum. Nowadays we very seldom visit the surface. Have you not noticed that the reports of crop circles have diminished in the past decade or so? Today we only send the windstorm when Skathalos breaks through to your realm. Or there is some other urgent need...’

  ‘I saw your windstorm. It brought Shax here with Skathalos.’

  ‘I hear accusation in your voice,’ Tu said, continuing to negotiate the steps. ‘If we had not sealed the rift when we did, Skathalos would have simply taken his head. We saved Shax.’

  ‘The entrance to this world I followed – the one behind the waterfall in Larchwood – did you make that as well?’

  ‘That is one of the ancient gateways. Thousands of years ago it was opened by my great ancestors to allow our people to flee the warlike tribes of Celts flooding the Isles. It offers a way to the lands of the Tuatha de Danann but it does not give exit. Not without the use of powerful magic.’

  ‘The cavern where I entered is full of skeletons. Headless skeletons.’

  ‘Unwary travellers taken by Skathalos. He takes their heads.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘To understand you first need to understand what he is.’

  Mark peered down the steps. His eyes had begun to grow accustomed to the very low light but he could still see no end to this stairway.

  ‘We have all the time in the world.’

  ‘No, Mark, we have not. We have only until Skathalos takes Shax’s head. Then I’m afraid our time – and that of the entire world – will be done. Skathalos will reign supreme over both our worlds and that is tantamount to what your people would call The End of All Days.’

  ‘You’re talking about Armageddon?’

  ‘Hell on the Earth and Allwhere.’

  Hell. Mark recalled Old Man Tanner’s words when talking about the rock salt in the shotgun cartridges. It can stop demons.

  ‘Skathalos is a demon? A real honest to goodness fallen angel?’

  ‘You’ve figured that out, then? Good. Now you know what you must face.’

  ‘Dear God...’

  “It’s good you mention God. It is because Skathalos rebelled against the Almighty that he was banished here.”

  “You’re saying this world is Hell?” Mark gulped.

  “Hell is an invention of Christendom,’ Tu remarked. ‘This place existed long before the first scribes gave it any name. But no, we’re not in the Hell you speak of. When Lucifer led his cohorts there, Skathalos was dispatched here. He has tried for millennia to take our world on behalf of his Demon Lord. If he succeeds, then there will be no one left to stop him from breaking through to the earth realm for all time. There’ll be no one left who can seal the rifts. And once Skathalos is unstoppable, Lucifer and his cohorts will surely follow. We’ve waged war against Skathalos for as long as our history remembers, but now I fear we approach the end time...” Tu halted and touched a finger to Mark’s lips. ‘Hush now, for we approach a very dangerous place.’

  ‘Tell me more about Skathalos first.’

  ‘All in good time. Now be silent. We are where the Firbolg roam.’

  Firbolg wasn’t a term that Mark was familiar with. But just the way that Tu said the name, it sounded like a good idea to tread very warily and to put a zip on his lips.

  Tu caught Mark by his wrist, whispering harshly. ‘In ancient times the Firbolg were our enemies. The Tuatha squashed them, forcing them into the western isles. When we were pushed out by later invaders, we too fled to the western islands and the Firbolg needed a new home. The Firbolg were the first to arrive here in Allwhere, and they are angered still that we again displaced them. Now they hail Skathalos as their deliverer. They will fight hard to protect him. Particularly their champion, Sreng Strongshield, who will offer you no quarter.’

  ‘Hold on a minute,’ Mark whispered equally as harshly. ‘You expect me to fight someone called Strongshield?’

  ‘Better Sreng than his cousin, Bludd Skullsplitter. He is not someone to get on the wrong side of. But you needn’t worry about him yet. He’s been tasked with guarding your friends, so likely it will only be Sreng we have to contend with here.’

  ‘Great,’ Mark sighed.

  17

  Just by its very nature, the group of men gave Mark more nerve than he would have possessed if approaching this latest problem alone. It wasn’t that he thought that they could defend him any more than he could do himself; it was simply the knowledge that he had people of a like mind with him. The support he got from the small Tuatha men, who patted his shoulder and nodded wisely, steadied his shaking hands and readied him for action. None of the others spoke English the way in which Tu did, but he recognised their twittering as endearments and encouragement. He was ready.

  Except that something had come to him while he was preparing to confront the Firbolg.

  ‘You said that you have seen my friends alive and well, Tu. Surely you didn’t have to run the gauntlet of the Firbolg every time you have come and gone?’

  Tu nodded at his wisdom.

  ‘The ways in which we travel would be impossible for you. Ammut brought you in by the great conduit: the pipes by which we worm our way through the pyramid would be inaccessible to someone of your great height and stout body.’

  Mark resisted replying that in his world he was considered smaller than most – but he let it go. As far as body girth went he had probably more than four times the mass of a Tuatha. Crawling here through the great conduit had been terrible enough and anything less would be a no-go zone for him.

  ‘So what can I expect from Sreng Strongshield?’

  ‘Death.’

  ‘That’s not too bad, I suppose.’ Mark swallowed a lump the size of a football.

  ‘Unless the Firbolg capture you. Then...ugh...never mind. Let’s not dwell on that, shall we?’

  Mark stared at the little man.

  Tu lifted his shoulders in a shrug.

  ‘The Tuatha do not eat meat but it is the favourite repast of a hungry Firbolg.’

  ‘They’re cannibals?’

  ‘Not really, for they’re not really human. Not any more. Any semblance to humanity disappeared ten thousand years ago when they first slithered under the surface.’

  Mark studied Tu with a new sense of dawning horror. The Tuatha had once been men. Now they were small, grey-skinned, hairless things. Tu’s words about them worming their way through tiny pipes made him shudder. Worm being the operative word. He wondered now about the Firbolg who had been in the ground many generations before the Tuatha and tried to imagine to what form these ancient beings had digressed. His mind conjured slithering, slug-like monstrosities. The only saving grace was that with a name like Strongshield, the Firbolg champion must at least possess arms to hold a shield.

  They were crouching behind a small wall that was formed like everything else here from
slick black rock. The wall made a small barrier in an otherwise open tunnel that twisted to the right little more than a hundred yards ahead of them. Beyond the twist in the tunnel, Tu had explained, was a second wall and beyond that another twist in the tunnel bearing left. After the left turn Mark would be traversing Firbolg territory.

  It was like growing up in the city where you couldn’t walk the streets of a neighbouring district without immediately being designated someone to be hated: an enemy. Mark had always found the turf fights ridiculous. He had gone to a school that drew on many kids from a number of surrounding districts. At school, that bonded the kids in a common cause, yet those self-same kids would hunt you down and beat the living crap out of you if you walked through their streets after dark.

  Throughout this adventure, Mark had been forced to face his fears. On more than one occasion he’d thought about when the gang had chased him - intent on cutting him just because his hairstyle and glasses picked him out as someone different from the pack – and now he thought about them again. On that occasion Mark had depended upon the speed that his legs could muster, but that time he’d been running away. This time he was going to be running directly into danger.

  Rip peered over the top of the wall and then sidled up alongside Mark.

  ‘Are you going to be with me?’

  The dog dipped his head in acknowledgement: it was an action totally uncommon to canines. Mark made a mental note to ask Tu all about Rip if he managed to stay alive long enough. He placed a palm on the dog’s head and tickled between the ears. Rip groaned with pleasure. Now that was a doggie response if ever he saw one.

  ‘I’m sorry I doubted you before,’ Mark said. ‘I should have known that you were on my side all along.’ He looked at Tu, then at each individual Tuatha in turn. ‘I apologise for the way I reacted when I first saw you. It’s nice to have met you all.’

  ‘The feeling is mutual,’ Tu said for them all. Mark and Tu shook hands. Then the others came forward and took their turn to pat him on the shoulder. One of the little men even went as far as hugging Mark.

  Mark took a couple of deep breaths. He adjusted his glasses. Settled the shotgun on his shoulder.