The London Stone

Book 0: The Nowhere Chronicles

by Sarah Pinborough

Genres: Fantasy

Synopsis

The prophecy has come to pass. The London Stone has been stolen and the Dark King rules the Nowhere. Only Mona and the new Seer dare to stand against him, leading an underground rebellion in the frozen wasteland . . . but what chance do they have, against both the Army of the Mad and Arnold Mather's soldiers? There is still hope: if they can recruit a banished race to their cause, maybe Fin and his friends can force a final battle against the Dark King. But that aid will be hard-won, through an almost impossible quest, and even then there are no guarantees. It will come down to three friends, standing together against all odds. And fulfilling their destinies, whatever the cost . . .

Release date: March 30, 2017

Publisher: Gollancz

Print pages: 320

Sample

THE STORY SO FAR …

After their first adventure in the Nowhere, Finmere Tingewick-Smith and his friends have been separated. Joe is in the Nowhere with the Storyholder, where the Knights hope to restore the stories to her, while Fin and Christopher have been sent back to their respective schools. But they have all been changed by recent events. Christopher carries the secret that his father, Justin Arnold-Mather, was in league with the treacherous Alexander Golden. Joe’s personality is becoming darker, the longer he holds the red and black stories for the Storyholder. Fin can’t shake the feeling that the Prophecy is still coming for them. With a tiny crack discovered in the table in the Oval room, that feeling spreads to the old Knights as well. The worlds are still uncertain. Perhaps nothing has been saved at all.

The Christmas holidays arrive, and Fin and Christopher are united back at Orrery House in time to witness the induction of the new Knights of Nowhere, under Fowkes’ command, before going to visit Joe in the Nowhere. The three boys go out in the early morning to find Mona, but instead they come across the victim of a horrible attack – a woman whose hair and tongue have turned black while her eyes have turned red and filled with madness. Mona, now the head of the Borough Guard, reveals this attack is not a one off. There have been others. Something is stalking the streets of the Nowhere’s London, and it’s changing people. Tova, the Storyholder, has even had visions of it. Something unnatural is amongst them, and the boys return to talk to Fowkes.

As Arnold-Mather makes plans to lure Joe and the Stories to his side, the Prince Regent enlists the Knights to uncover whatever is attacking his people and turning them into ‘the mad’. At the White Tower they realise the boys knew the first victim and, combining their information with Tova’s visions, the Regent comes to believe the attacks are somehow linked to the Knights, to the Traders, or even to the Prophecy itself.

Their visit to the White Tower is cut short when a fire breaks out at the Storyholder Academy; a fire started deliberately as part of Arnold-Mather’s plan. His henchman, Levi Dodge, murders the boys who truly set it and, despite Fin and Christopher’s protests, suspicion falls on Joe. Even though he’s proved innocent, his sense of isolation from the Knights deepens. And the stakes have been raised too: now there are no novices capable of becoming Storyholders – there’s just Joe and Tova, with the Stories torn between them.

With the Knights, the Traders and the Gypsy Traders enlisted to help track down the sinister attacker, Fin, Christopher, Mona and Anaïs, a Gypsy Trader girl, begin their own investigation. At the moment Fin realises that the man they’re looking for is George Porter – the Knight they threw down Clerke’s well and into exile – thunder rumbles ominously across the sky. Acting on Arnold-Mather’s instructions, Joe has stolen the remaining stories from Tova and escaped to the Somewhere using Baxter’s sword.

In both worlds strange weather heralds the Black Tempest and the night of Rage, when everyone must choose their sides … and in the Somewhere’s London a Seer who’s been missing for decades, Arthur Mulligan, reappears demanding to return to the Nowhere to fulfill a vision he’s been unable to block – that of his own death.

As Fin races to the Storyholder’s apartments to tell about George Porter, he sees Tova throw herself from the roof of the House of Real Truths. Stricken by grief, Fowkes carries her body in the Chamber of Real Truths and, inside, Fin learns his true origins. Tova used her magic to create him from Baxter’s dead body. He is Baxter re-born, and yet not.

As the Rage sweeps through the night, Arnold-Mather and Joe take charge of the Palace, switching Joe’s clothes for the Regent’s … and sending the Regent to an execution that Mona and her father can’t stop. The mad free themselves from the White Tower and start to seek Joe out, and in a Nowhere full of anger and fighting, the four friends are completely separated. Anaïs falls victim to George Porter, who is being drawn to West Minster by a small magical stone he possesses, and Christopher and Lucas Blake are captured by the Gypsy Traders. In the grip of the Rage, the Gypsy Traders blame them for Anaïs’ fate.

The Knights and Jack Ditch join forces to defend the Knights’ base in the Nowhere, leaving Fin and Mona the task of saving Christopher. But they arrive too late: the Knight and the teenager have already been pinned out at Traitor’s Gate and lost to the river.

With George Porter captured by Arnold-Mather – after taking another piece of magical white stone from the spire at West Minster – the ex-Minister begins his procession to the Future Blocks. When Joe touches the stones, a surge of power rushes through him and cracks appears in the skies of both worlds. It’s tiny in the Somewhere, but huge and dark in the Nowhere.

There can be no doubt now. They are all in the grip of the Prophecy and they must fight to save the fates of all the worlds. As Fin stares out at the black snow, grieving for Christopher, something dawns on him. Someone had been giving Arnold-Mather information. And he thinks he knows who. Taking new Knight Alex Currie-Clark with him, he cuts a doorway back through to Orrery House to unmask the traitor in their midst …



PROLOGUE

They met in the swirling sands far from the citadels of the South, in the place of the Elders where the past was held for time immemorial. At dawn the sky was clear and the air was cold. The steadily growing wind whipped around their robes and drove wrinkles deeper into their dark skins as they walked the miles from the boundaries of civilisation towards the Temple of Nowhere, hidden in the middle of Nothing.

The desert was empty this far into the dust, although even those who scavenged for flesh close to the citadel gates would stay away from the Magi. The only sound on the wind was the jangle of jewellery as the Magi walked, each one coming alone from the cities and towns that had so long been their homes, to this building that held the treasures of a land none of them had ever known – London and the bustling North. As they drew closer together, the steady clink of metal from heavy loop earrings and chains and bracelets became the sound of a flock returning home. The citadels of the South would be short of the Magi’s guidance for today, and maybe tomorrow. Everyone would wait for their return. No one had summoned them, and yet these leaders of the tribes had heard the call anyway. It came to them in many ways.

In the sleepless night they had heard the beating of drums from the North. They had seen the black snow falling. They had felt a shift in the ground beneath their feet, the same ground that ran beneath the river and linked the South and North whatever else divided them. They had all looked up into that cold dawn light and known that it was time to walk. To don the ceremonial robes. To find the Elders. They had known even before one amongst them saw the Trader ship dock from the North with tales of stories split and held unready. No one fought their leaving. Even in cities of magic and wonder like those of the South, there was an air of disturbance. Time had changed again. This dawn was early. The mist that came from the river stank of betrayals untold, and those early risers amongst the ordinary folk stared out into it, their eyes narrowed with care and worry. So the Magi walked into the sand, just as their forefathers had so many years before when they had crossed West Minster Bridge for the final time.

It was quiet as they gathered in the temple. They took their places and worried at their beads and let their minds empty of the simple magic that ruled their days. They drank and ate and let their tired, cold bodies warm. It did not take long. The metal panels that ran around the building glinted and shimmered like mother-of-pearl, hints of pinks and purples flickering in the glow of the large candles that lit the sand coloured walls. Heat pulsed from them like a fire, defying the wind that tore around the exterior. As the night slowly fell that wind would build into a frenzy, making it impossible to leave the temple without the sand blasting your skin from your body. Only when dawn broke again would the air fall still once more.

The Elders of old had chosen their retreat wisely after the betrayal of the North. They would never be so open to attack again. The temple and the network of dwellings beneath could keep the Magi safe if needed. It would take a lot of anger and hatred to make the people of the Southern cities come this far into the middle of Nothing to fight them, if that day ever arose.

The Magi waited until the air shimmered and the thrum of an echoing gong filled the temple as the Elders appeared, their purple robes clashing with the crimson of the visiting Magi and the pale yellow of those who would one day become Elders themselves. The Elders wore amulets around their necks that glowed like the metal on the walls. The gathered Magi knew what that meant before the Elders spoke of it.

A Seer had died.

A Seer was being born.

This was known. They could feel it in their blood. They could hear it in the murmurs of the river. They talked of other things. The North. The stories ‘held unready’. The boy made from the spirit of a dead man. The Knights. The events that carried across the mist from one side of the broken city to the other. They knew the Prince of the North was dead, ending the terrible curse forged by their forefathers and placed with so much hatred that none of the Magi who followed could undo its power. They had each felt the moment; a slight weight gone from their shoulders, a burden of ages lifted. They spoke of the black snow that drifted over the cities of the South, starting at the water’s edge but which would no doubt spread further. There was dark magic there – old magic of nature. The magic of the worlds.

They talked of the novice who had gone North, who had helped put these wheels in motion and who had never returned. They talked of their sacred vows to shun power and politics and live peacefully amongst the people of the South and wondered if that decision had been running away, or whether it had become the nature of their people to keep their power bound.

They talked all through the long night that beat sand against the temple walls; and finally, they talked about the Prophecy.



ONE

It felt as if the space between the worlds held Fin for a second. Perhaps it did, or maybe it was just that his head was still reeling. It was Christmas. It should have been a time to celebrate with friends, but instead the Prophecy was coming true and he and the Knights were in a battle to save the worlds. What was left of the Knights anyway. Lucas Blake was dead, and how many more would be lost? It was surreal. Worse, thinking of Lucas forced him to think of Christopher. How he had been choked by the mist and then drowned in the awful river water. Had he expected Fin and Fowkes to save him? That’s what happened in adventure stories, wasn’t it, the last minute rescue? But Fin and Mona hadn’t been fast enough and this wasn’t the sort of adventure you read about in books.

He hated himself. He’d been so wrapped up in self-pity after discovering the truth about him and Baxter – Baxter anyway, there was no Fin, not really – that he’d forgotten the others were all in danger too. And he’d let Christopher die. He’d let Joe down too, he should have been there more for him. He should have insisted on staying in the Nowhere with him once he had the stories, rather than going back to Eastfields for the rest of the term. He hadn’t insisted, he’d just done as he was told, the way he always had in his strange one year here, one year there existence.

The moment in the doorway between worlds passed and finally his feet found solid ground. There was no one in the Oval Room when Fin stumbled through, his sword still firm in his hand, ready to be used as a weapon if he needed it. After the cold air and icy black snow of the Nowhere the heat in Orrery House hit him like a wave, knocking his breath from his lungs. He was back in the Somewhere, but this time there was no sense of relief or of excitement to see Ted and the other old men that lived here. Too much had happened that night and he was carrying too much pent-up grief inside.

The lights were off and the Prophecy table was covered but the room was lit by the pale glow from the display cases that held the Orreries that gave the house its name. They twinkled like lost universes in space, beautiful and mysterious. For some reason they made Fin’s heart ache even more. The beautiful things in life were fragile and could be taken from you so quickly; he’d learned that in the past few hours. He thought of blonde hair that was almost white. He thought of Christopher’s smile. He gritted his teeth. That kind of thinking was pointless. The only way to prevent their losses – Christopher, Tova, Anaïs and the Regent amongst them – being in vain was to make sure they won this battle. Christopher’s father, Mr Arnold-Mather, had to be taken down, and the first step was to uncover the spy who had been helping him all this time. Once again, Fin was annoyed with himself. Why hadn’t he thought of it sooner? Everything was moving too fast, there was no time to think. Maybe right now, with everything he’d learned about himself, that might not be a bad thing.

‘We need to find Ted,’ he whispered to Alex Currie-Clark, the Knight behind him. ‘He’ll know what to do.’ His first thought had been just grabbing the traitor, confronting him, and hauling him back to Fowkes in the Nowhere, and the temptation was still great, but he knew Ted and Freddie Wise might think differently. They might want to keep it quiet and feed false information to Arnold-Mather; who knew how this battle would be best fought? Certainly not a sixteen-year-old kid. His stomach turned in on itself. Not even one made out of the spirit of a dead man. Maybe it was Baxter who was making him think sensibly. Maybe Baxter was doing all the thinking. How much of Fin was him and how much was the Knight? It made his head swim. Fin’s only certainty was that neither of them would let Arnold-Mather win – they’d beat him for Tova, and the Prince Regent and Christopher. His thoughts hitched slightly over his friend’s name, but he pushed his pain aside.

‘Come on.’ He jogged towards the door. ‘If you see anyone, just tell them Fowkes sent us and we need to see Ted.’ He got no answer and, suddenly aware of the empty room around him, realised Alex Currie-Clarke wasn’t there. Confused, he turned around. He froze, his mouth half open as if he’d been about to say something that was now lost for ever.

‘Alex?’ he finally whispered, aghast.

The old man curled up against the wall wasn’t recognisable as the young red-haired Knight of a few moments before. Thin wisps of grey hair coated a liver-spotted scalp and his clothes hung loosely on his scrawny frame. Milky eyes peered sadly at him from behind the familiar black-framed spectacles.

‘You’re right,’ Alex Currie-Clarke’s voice was reedy. ‘You better had get Ted.’ His sword toppled onto the carpet with a dull thud and the old man stared at it. ‘And just when I was starting to get the hang of all this.’ He rested his head back against the wall. Finmere crouched beside him.

‘We can make you better …’ he said, hopelessly, his heart thumping. This wasn’t fair. Not on top of everything else that had happened. Not this too. ‘Ted will be able to … Ted can …’ The words drifted away as a gnarled, dry hand gripped his. There was such desperation in it that for a moment Fin was transported back to Judge Harlequin Brown’s office, when the dying man had grabbed him and told him to pull the sword he now carried out of his chest. The grip had been the same. Doomed.

‘Ted can’t do anything about this. It’s the Ageing.’ Although his voice was still relatively firm, a tear rolled out from behind the thick glasses and ran down the now unfamiliar cheek.

Fin said nothing, but he squeezed Currie-Clark’s hand tightly. All thoughts of the traitor were gone. He could wait.

‘How bad is it?’ Currie-Clark asked. For a moment Fin almost lied, but then realised that the Knight deserved better than that. If he lied, it would just be to make this moment easier for himself, and the moment when Currie-Clark finally looked into a mirror would be so much worse.

‘It’s pretty bad,’ he said softly.

Alex Currie-Clark, all of twenty-two, sighed, and the air came out of his lungs like a death rattle. ‘I thought as much.’ He tried to smile. ‘Merry bloody Christmas.’

Finmere was so absorbed in the moment that he didn’t hear the door behind them slide quietly open and when the lights came on he jumped slightly and spun round.

‘Mr Smith?’ Jarvis asked. ‘What on earth is going on?’ The butler’s eyes widened as he saw the elderly husk of a man sitting against the wall, black-framed glasses sliding down his shrunken head. The spectacles were recognisable even if their owner no longer was. ‘Mr Currie-Clark? Oh, I am sorry.’ He paused for a moment and then spoke again. ‘I think perhaps we’d better fetch Mr Merryweather.’

Fin stared at Jarvis for a long second. ‘Yes,’ he said eventually, not taking his eyes from the butler’s prim and unreadable expression. ‘I think we’d better had. Is he here?’

‘No,’ the butler said, coming towards them. ‘He’s gone to the London Library with Cardrew Cutler and Freddie Wise.’ He glanced down at the Prophecy table. ‘They’re researching what might have caused that.’ Fin followed his gaze. A dark crack, jagged like black lightning, stretched about ten centimetres inwards from one corner of the cover. Only a few days before that crack had been a barely visible, tiny thread of trouble that the Knights could scarcely see. Not any more. ‘Does it go through to the map?’ Finmere asked. The crack filled him with dread but it didn’t surprise him. Not with everything that was happening in the Nowhere. The Black Tempest was upon them. One plus one plus one equalled four.

‘So it would seem. It sounded like an explosion, when the crack expanded. It happened just before dawn. An hour or so ago.’ Jarvis moved past Fin as he spoke and then crouched by Alex Currie-Clark, primly pulling up the knees of his pressed trousers as he did. ‘I know you feel frightened,’ he said to the Aged Knight. Finmere was surprised by the kindness in his voice. ‘Try not to be,’ Jarvis continued. ‘We will take care of you. Now, let’s get you to your feet and somewhere more comfortable. Your legs will probably feel a little strange’ – he draped Currie-Clarke’s arm around his neck – ‘but you’ll get used to them.’ He strained slightly on the last two words as he pulled the man to his feet, but the movement was swift and steady. Jarvis was stronger than he looked.

‘I’ll get Mr Currie-Clark settled. You go to Ted Merryweather,’ Jarvis said. ‘He’ll want to know about this immediately.’ Fin looked at the shrunken old man who leaned so helplessly on the butler. A fresh wound of guilt opened up inside him. If he had just come alone this wouldn’t have happened. Maybe if he’d brought one of the Wakley twins with him instead … he let the thought evaporate. There were so many ‘if only’s that he couldn’t keep track of them all and he had a more pressing problem to deal with.

‘It’s all right,’ Alex Currie-Clark wheezed. ‘You go. I might be old, but I’m not dying. I’ll still be here when you get back.’ His left eye dropped in a tired wink. Fin looked from him to Jarvis, his stomach tying in knots. He didn’t have a choice. He had to get Ted. He held the door open and followed the two men out into the brightly lit hallway. ‘Where’s the Library?’ he asked.

‘St James’ Square. There’s a black cab outside. He’ll take you there.’

Fin nodded.

‘And take care, Master Smith,’ Jarvis added. ‘It’s dangerous out there.’

Fin looked at him for a long moment and nodded again. ‘I will, Jarvis. You can be sure of that.’ He felt the butler’s eyes on his back until he’d rounded the lower landing. For the first time, leaving Orrery House felt like a relief.

Fin sat on the edge of his seat in the taxi and stared out at the city. His city. His London. Even after he’d realised that there were secret doorways and secret worlds and cab drivers with strange small stickers in their window, London still always felt like home. He loved the city. During his one year here, one year there school life, London had been the solid foundation of his uncertain existence. He’d hidden his most precious object, the blanket he’d been found in, behind a plaque in Postman’s Park. Safely tucked away in the heart of the city. As it turned out, the blanket wasn’t just precious to him, but to all the worlds as the Storyholder had woven into it the five eternal stories.

His nerves jangled, his muscles tightened in his shoulders, and Fin wished for the time when the blanket had been his alone and life was merely confusing, a time when all he and Christopher and Joe had to worry about were detentions and homework. He wished his two best friends had never met. He wished he’d never dragged them into all this. He blinked back the tears that stung behind his eyes when he thought that he would never again laugh until he cried at one of his friend’s wry impersonations of their teachers. Christopher had a devil-may-care attitude that was so the opposite of his father’s dour and humourless personality. The thought of Arnold-Mather made Fin feel less to blame. He might have got Joe involved, but because of his father’s plans Christopher had always been a part of all this, just like Fin had. Maybe none of them had ever had a choice. Not Baxter, Joe, Christopher or him. They were all in the Prophecy.

There was no black snow falling in the streets of the Somewhere’s London, but they still suddenly seemed alien to Fin. It was Christmas morning, and although the shop fronts were filled with displays of Santas and reindeer and presents, there was something tired about them. The lights strung along the streets and in the trees in the squares were only half-flickering, as if many of the light bulbs had died during the night. The sky, too, was strange; the morning grey coloured with terrible bruises of forbidding pinks and purples. The worlds were linked and what happened in one was echoed in another. Fin looked more closely. Here and there sharp eyes peered out from the edges of buildings as the taxi purred past.

In another corner, three tramps made a pretence of drinking from a bottle in a paper bag, but their eyes were clear as they met Fin’s gaze. Who were these people? Had the Rage happened here too, but in a quieter way? Had sides been drawn? Was this the event Ted and the old boys had been preparing for, when he’d arrived after discovering the truth at The Old Bailey House of Real Truths? He hadn’t been paying attention, but the old nightwatchman and Fowkes had been organising the cabbies to do something. Central London was always quiet on Christmas morning, but this eerie stillness was not normal. Fin wondered if ordinary people opening their presents could feel it too. The sense that things weren’t quite right. Or that they were in fact, quite, quite wrong.

Every half a mile or so they passed a black taxi parked somewhere, tucked into the mouth of one side street or another, almost invisible with its yellow light turned off. As Fin’s cab drove by each of them they flashed their headlights, twice in quick succession. The cabs weren’t as empty as they looked. Fin wondered if his own driver flashed his lights back at them. More than likely. The world, whichever one he was in, was full of secret signs and unspoken alliances. He tried to catch a glimpse of the driver as they passed one taxi, but he could only make out a hunched-over shadowy figure. They were keeping watch. But what for?

As they drew closer to Piccadilly and then to Westminster beyond, the frequency of the headlight signals grew. Strange as it was, Fin decided that even after everything he’d been through in the past few days there was a comfort in knowing that a fleet of solid black London cabs was watching out for him and Ted and the Knights. London cabs had something unbreakable about them. He didn’t care if it wasn’t entirely true, he still liked the idea of it.

‘Here you go, son.’ The driver pulled up at the far corner of St James’ Square. ‘That’s the library there.’ Fin looked at the white stone buil. . .