Contents
Cover
About the Book
Title Page
Dedication
HERE
1. The Green Baize Door
2. Book Fair
3. The Man in the Lane
4. Directions
5. In the Barn
6. Cai
7. Eclipse
THERE
8. The Black Wood
9. Down the Cliff
10. Theft
11. The Man from Yesterday
12. Fortress of Frustration
13. Fortress of Carousal
14. The Prison of Gweir
15. The Wisdom of the Cauldron
16. Return to Logria
Author’s Note
Acknowledgement
About the Author
Also by Catherine Fisher
Copyright
About the Book
Jamie was at the library looking for a book that was different, one he could get lost in. But he didn’t mean it literally.
The Book with his own name in it leads Jamie and his sister Jenny into the Summer Country – a world of magic and danger, where even time behaves strangely; where Fintan’s Tower has held its prisoner since the days of Camelot, and will keep Jamie and Jenny, too, unless Jamie can read the book right …
About the Book
Catherine Fisher was born in Newport, Wales. She graduated from the University of Wales with a degree in English and a fascination for myth and history. She has worked in education and archaeology and as a lecturer in creative writing at the University of Glamorgan. She is a Fellow of the Welsh Academy.
Catherine is an acclaimed poet and novelist, regularly lecturing and giving readings to groups of all ages. She has won many awards and much critical acclaim for her work. She won the Cardiff International Poetry Competition in 1990 and her first novel, The Conjurer’s Game, was shortlisted for the Smarties Book Prize. The Snow-Walker’s Son was shortlisted for the WHSmith Award.
Equally acclaimed is her quartet The Book of the Crow, a classic of fantasy fiction, recently retitled The Relic Master series.
The Oracle, the first volume in the Oracle, trilogy blends Egyptian and Greek elements of magic and adventure and was shortlisted for the Whitbread Children’s Books prize. The trilogy was an international bestseller and has appeared in over twenty languages.
Her futuristic novel Incarceron was published to widespread praise in 2007, and was selected by The Times as its Children’s Book of the Year. It became a New York Times bestseller and has now sold in over thirty languages. The sequel, Sapphique, was published in 2008.
Catherine’s latest novel The Crown of Acorns was nominated for the Carnegie Medal. For further details on Catherine and her work please see www.catherine-fisher.com.
FINTAN’S TOWER
To Toady and Moly
Also by Catherine Fisher
Poetry
Immrama (1988)
The Unexplored Ocean (1994)
Altered States (1999)
Prose
The Conjuror’s Game (1990)
Fintan’s Tower (1991)
Saint Tarvel’s Bell (1992)
The Snow-Walker trilogy:
The Snow-Walker’s Son (1993)
The Empty Hand (1995)
The Soul Thieves (1996)
The Candle Man (1994)
The Hare And Other Stories (1994)
Belin’s Hill (1997)
The Book of the Crow: (US title: Relic Master series)
The Relic Master (US title: The Dark City) (2011)
The Interrex (US title: The Lost Heiress) (2011)
Flain’s Coronet (US title: The Hidden Coronet) (2011)
The Margrave (US title: The Margrave) (2011)
The Lammas Field (1999)
Darkwater Hall (2000)
Corbenic (2002)
The Oracle trilogy:
The Oracle (US title: The Oracle Betrayed) (2003)
The Archon (US title: The Sphere of Secrets) (2004)
The Scarab (US title: Day of the Scarab) (2005)
Darkhenge (2005)
The Weather Dress (2005)
Incarceron series:
Incarceron (January 2010) (2007 in UK)
Sapphique (December 2010) (2008 in UK)
The Crown of Acorns (2010)
The Magic Thief (2010)
HERE
… yg kynneir or peir pan leferit
Oanadyl naw morwyn gochyneuit …
… my first utterance, it is from the Cauldron that it was spoken.
By the breath of nine maidens it was kindled …
The Spoils of Annwn
1
The Green Baize Door
‘WE’RE CLOSING,’ THE librarian said, looking up at the clock, ‘in exactly three minutes. Books or not.’
‘All right.’ Keep your hair on. Jamie tipped out a promising title from the shelf, then pulled a face and pushed it back. Why didn’t they ever get anything new? Every week it was the same old tatty plastic jackets full of boring-looking kids with anoraks and torches – no ghosts, or astronomy, or crusaders. What he wanted was a book that was different.
‘Two minutes,’ the librarian snapped.
Junior Fiction was in a dim corner by the window that looked down into Grape Lane. Rain ran down the glass and streaked the dirt. Jamie pulled up a stool and glared at the rows of books. Come on, there must be something. It was three weeks since he’d last found a new one, and that had been about a tribe of intelligent rats who took over the London Underground. Well, they might have been intelligent, but whoever wrote the book wasn’t …
The street door flew open; a big, red-haired man splashed in, his mac glossy with rain. He marched straight up to the desk.
‘We’re closed,’ the librarian said. She didn’t even look up.
The man wore a tartan scarf that covered half his face. His eyes were small and rather bloodshot, with no expression. Deliberately he reached out, took the Biro from her fingers and snapped it into two pieces, his eyes never leaving her face. Then he flung the pieces into the metal bin one by one; two loud explosions.
Jamie held his breath.
Arms folded, the librarian surveyed the stranger. ‘There’s a button under this desk,’ she said firmly, ‘which rings a bell in the police station.’
The big man put both hands down flat and leaned over. ‘Don’t waste my time, woman,’ he growled. ‘I’m here to see the Name in the Book.’
To Jamie’s surprise the librarian blinked. She took off her glasses and her eyes were green as glass and glinted in the shadows. ‘Oh, I see,’ she said slowly. ‘I see. Well, you should have said before, shouldn’t you. It’s over there, through the green baize door.’
The man smiled, rather unpleasantly, and picked up his streaming umbrella. He crossed the library and pushed through a small door that Jamie had not noticed before; it was in a dark corner behind some shelves. The door swished shut, silently. A chill draught swept across the room, ruffling the pages of some books.
Jamie turned back to the tatty jackets. The librarian found another pen and carried on writing; the clock ticked on towards half-past four; rain tapped and rattled on the window. Listlessly, Jamie flicked the pages of a manual on hang-gliding. Then he froze.
‘I wonder, my dear, if you could help me. They are saying that the Name is in the Book.’
This time it was an oldish man in a tweed coat. He was short, and had a small, clever face with a stubbly grey beard. His scarf, tucked in out of the rain, poked from between his second and third buttons, and he carried a large canvas bag.
The librarian shrugged. ‘Another one. You’re late.’
‘Oh, I’ve come a long, long way. I gather from your remark that I am not the first.’
‘No. Now hurry up please, we’re closing. Over there through the baize door.’
Intrigued, Jamie watched the old man walk eagerly between the shelves and open the door. It swung silently behind him.
Far off, the church clock began to chime the half-hour; water gurgled down the drainpipes outside. The librarian hummed to herself, licking a paper label. Jamie watched the door. Neither of the men had come back. What book were they looking for? They couldn’t both borrow it. And what was all this about a name?
Then, on the last stroke of the clock, the door from the street was hurled wide, and a tall, fair-haired man burst in through a squall of rain. He flung himself at the desk; Jamie had a sudden shiver of anticipation.
‘Listen!’ said the man breathlessly. ‘I’ve got to see the Name in the Book!’
A gasp came from Junior Fiction. The man spun round like a flash, but no one was there.
The librarian waved the sticky label. ‘Green door. Better hurry.’
The stranger raced across the room and disappeared with a slam and a draught.
Right! Jamie thought. He stood up, pocketed his tickets and walked over to the desk. The librarian glared.
‘Are you still here? Out! We’re closed.’
Jamie rolled his hands into fists in his pockets.
‘I hear,’ he said, ‘that the Name is in the Book.’
‘What?’
‘The Name is in the Book.’
She wrinkled her eyes up and pushed out her bottom lip. For a moment Jamie felt almost afraid. Something cold nudged against his heart. But all she said was: ‘If you say so. The green door, in the corner.’
His heart thumping, Jamie followed the trail of wet footprints across the floor. When he reached the door he looked back. The librarian was looking after him with a particularly unpleasant smile.
‘Good luck,’ she said. ‘You’ll need it.’
On the other side of the door was a dark, damp landing, so damp his breath made a cloud in the air. To his left, a narrow wooden stair ran down into darkness, and a tiny window in the wall let in some bleared light.
He padded softly down. The steps were slimy, and they sounded hollow under his boots. At the bottom was a short passage, with puddles on the floor. Down here the walls were stone, icy cold under his fingers. Ahead of him was an archway, and through that he could see a room, empty, except for books. Books on shelves, books stacked in toppling towers on the floor, books fallen from broken chairs; all of them covered with years of dust and grime and webs.
His fingers found a light switch, and after a moment’s silence, he pressed it. Weak light gleamed from a bulb in the ceiling.
No one else was in the room, but a trail of footprints led past a big wooden table to a door in the opposite wall. Jamie crossed the room and unlatched it. Rain splashed his face. He was looking out into the alley at the back of the building; putting his head out he could see an old iron lamppost halfway down in the darkness, dropping a pool of light on to the wet cobbles. Tiny arrows of rain flashed across it. He looked the other way. No one. It was silent, just a wet crack between the houses.
So why had they come, those three strangers? Stepping back into the basement he closed the door and went over to the table.
On it was a book. One book, by itself; smaller than most of the others in the room. The cobwebs had been wiped off it. The cover was of plain black leather, with no title, just a single tiny picture in the centre. He put a finger on it; it was hard and shiny as if made of glass, or enamel. It showed a bright blue sky and a landscape of tiny fields, hedges and hills, all in deep lustrous greens. Far off on the horizon was something grey, a dark tinge in the glass.
Jamie opened the book. Inside, on the first clean white page, a name was beautifully written in italics:
James Michael Meyrick
He stood there, stiff with surprise, reading those three familiar words over and over. Who had written his name? Who knew that he would come down here? After all, he hadn’t known himself until that sudden daft idea upstairs.
Then the truth struck him like a sharp pain. The Name in the Book. It was his.
After a moment he thumbed through the rest of the pages. They were blank. For a second he thought he had glimpsed something, and turned back, but no, each page was white and empty. It was a thin book, only about fifty pages in all. Carefully, he laid it down. It fitted into the dust, in a square of clean desk. That meant … well, it must mean it had lain there undisturbed for years – until now. Those three had opened it, and read his name. He put out a finger and gingerly flicked the cover open again, half hoping it might have gone away. But there it was. And underneath, in the same spiky letters:
Take me home.
Suddenly, Jamie snapped the Book shut, stuffed it into his inside pocket and unlatched the back door. In the alley rain gurgled in culverts and drains; the sky was dim between the overhanging houses. He stepped outside and slammed the door. Pulling on his hood, he shoved his hands deep in his pockets and splashed through the pool of light from the lamppost, and away into the dark.
2
Book Fair
‘WHAT’S THIS?’ JENNIE tapped the Book with her pencil. ‘Don’t tell me they’ve actually got something new!’
‘It’s not a library book.’ He looked over but it was already too late. She had opened it and was flicking through the pages.
‘Mmm. I see what you mean. Nice pictures though.’
‘Pictures?’ Jamie threw down the wool he had been tangling round the kitten and jumped up. ‘What pictures?’
He took the book from her and looked through the pages, carefully. They were empty, just as they had been yesterday and this morning; even those three words he thought he had seen were gone. There was just his name, familiar and faintly mocking.
He turned his head. ‘Which picture did you like best?’ He tried to keep the eagerness out of his voice. Jennie shrugged over her homework. ‘Oh, I don’t know. The one at the back, I suppose – the tower with the figure on top.’
‘What figure?’
‘Well, look for yourself, Jamie. A gargoyle thing, a sentinel. And that light in the top window.’ She became immersed in the fate of Sir Thomas More.
Jamie sat himself down on the step and leaned against the open door. In front of him the garden rolled smoothly downhill; out of sight in the willows at the bottom he could hear the Caston Brook running down to the bridge. The grass was thick with leaves; wet blackened masses of them lay clotting in the kitchen drain, and in heaps against the wall. Rooks clung and squawked in the elms.
It was all wrong. Who had written the words, and how had they vanished again? He thought vaguely of invisible inks, heat treatment, mysterious cosmic rays.
He got up and wandered down to the brook. It was narrow here, and the trees met overhead and dropped their leaves into the fast brown water. There was a hole in the bank that he thought might be a rat’s. The kitten came after him, dragging a trail of wool through the grass.
He sat on the bank and examined the picture on the Book’s cover, for at least the tenth time. What was that dim mark on the furthest hill? It seemed nearer than before. It looked like a house, or … Struck by an idea, he ran into the house and came back with a magnifying glass. Lying full length in the willow leaves, he held it carefully over the tiny enamel.
It was a castle. Small, and greeny-grey, but complete. How could anyone paint that small? Even the battlements were perfect, and that faint point of light shining from the high window. Then, with a jerk, he gripped the magnifying glass tight. The light had gone out! He looked again, but the window was dark.
‘Jamie!’ His mother stood over him. ‘Get up off the grass, will you. This just came.’ She threw down a small brown envelope, which was addressed to him in delicate spidery writing. ‘I’m going into the market now. Want anything?’
He shook his head absently and opened the envelope. A card fell out.
BOOK FAIR
THE OLD TITHE BARN
SMITHY STREET, CASTON
THURS. 29 OCTOBER, 10.A.M.
‘It’s about a book sale,’ he said, puzzled. ‘Who’d send it to me?’
‘Well, you read books, don’t you?’ His mother came and took it. ‘That’s today. You can walk down with me, if you like. You might find some cheap paperbacks, or something.’
While Mrs Meyrick searched for her purse, Jamie ran upstairs. He wanted to put the Book away, but as he moved he thought he saw something inside and fumbled hurriedly with the pages. There! The words were written on a page near the centre, in the same writing:
I would be careful if I were you.
It was incredible. Who was writing it – it couldn’t write itself, could it? He fingered the back of the page – no magnetic strips. Nothing in the paper. Nothing. ‘Careful of what?’ he whispered. But the rest of the pages were blank.
With a kind of fear he locked the Book in the cupboard at the side of his bed, then hid the key in its usual place in the hole in his mattress, under the pillow. There was a place for it there, but he had to be careful or it slipped down among the springs and was difficult to get out again.
The warning – if it was one – stuck in his head as he ran downstairs and saw his mother waiting in the porch. Was it possible the Book meant it for him? He shook his head. The thing couldn’t be alive. It was just paper. His mother was waiting in the porch. ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘Before the coaches start.’
Like most of the houses in Caston, theirs was an old building, its front black-timbered, with white plaster making strange uneven squares and crosses. The porch was carved with grotesque little goblins that squatted and leered at callers – the milkman always said theirs were the ugliest in town, and that was saying a lot.
Caston High Street turned and twisted for half a mile; its houses were humped and huddled and squeezed together, their upper storeys jutting out over the cobbles and the narrow pavement that sometimes disappeared altogether. Cars roared along the one-way system; as Jamie passed the post office a coachload of tourists swirled dust into his eyes.