Harkat smiled, then rifled through his robes. "I still have the postcards I took from the underground kitchen, as well as the panther's teeth." He spilt the teeth on to the grass and turned them so all the letters were face up. He idly began arranging them to form his name, but as he got to the end of "Harkat", he stopped, quickly scanned all the teeth, and groaned.
"What's wrong?" I asked sharply.
"Remember Mr Tiny saying at the start that we'd find a clue to who I was when we killed the panther?" Harkat quickly rearranged the letters on the teeth to form another name KURDA SMAHLT !
I stared at the letters, then groaned like Harkat had. "The answer was in front of us all along your name's an anagram! If we'd spent more time on the letters after we'd killed the panther, we could have solved the puzzle and skipped the rest of the ordeal.'"
"I doubt it would have been that simple," Harkat laughed. "But at least I now know where my name came from. I used to wonder how I'd picked it."
"On the subject of names," I said, "are you sticking with Harkat Mulds or reverting to your original name?"
"Harkat Mulds or Kurda Smahlt," Harkat muttered, and said the names a few more times. "No," he decided. "Kurda's the person I used to be. Harkat's the person I've become. We are the same in some ways but different in many others. I want to be known as Harkat."
"Good," I said. "It would have been very confusing otherwise."
Harkat cleared his throat and looked at me oddly. "Now that you know the truth about me, does it change anything? As Kurda, I betrayed you and all the vampires. I killed Gavner Purl. I will understand if you don't think as highly of me as you did before."
"Don't be stupid," I grinned. "I don't care who you used to be it's who youare that matters. You've long made up for any mistakes in your previous life." I frowned. "But does this change howyou feel aboutme !"
"What do you mean?" Harkat asked.
"The reason you stuck by me before was that you needed my help to find out who you were. Now that you know, maybe you'd like to head off and explore the world by yourself. The War of the Scars isn't your battle any longer. If you'd rather go your own way " I trailed off into silence.
"You're right," Harkat said after a couple of thoughtful moments. "I'll leave first thing in the morning." He stared seriously at my glum features, then burst out laughing. "You idiot! Of course I won't go! This is my war as much as it's yours. Even if I hadn't been a vampire, I wouldn't leave. We've been through too much together to split up now. Maybe when the war is over I'll seek a path of my own. For the time being I still feel bound to you. I don't think we're meant to part company yet."
"Thanks," I said simply. It was all that needed to be said.
Harkat gathered up the panther's teeth and put them away. Then he studied the postcards, turned one over and gazed at it moodily. "I don't know if I should mention this," he sighed. "But if I don't, it will gnaw away at me."
"Go on," I encouraged him. "Those cards have been bothering you since you found them in the kitchen. What's the big mystery?"
"It has to do with where we were," Harkat said slowly. "We spent a lot of time wondering where we'd been taken the past, another world or a different dimension."
"So?" I prodded him when he stalled.
"I think I know the answer," he sighed. "It ties it all together, why the spiders were there and the Guardians of the Blood, if that's who the Kulashkas really were. And the kitchen. I don't think Mr Tiny put the kitchen there I think it was in place all along. It was a nuclear fallout shelter, built to survive when all else fell. I think it was put to the test and it passed. I hope I'm wrong, but I'm afraid I'm not."
He passed a postcard to me. On the front was a picture of Big Ben. There was writing on the back, a typical tourist's account of their holiday "Having a great time, weather good, food fab." The name at the bottom and the name and address on the right-hand side of the postcard meant nothing to me.
"What's the big deal?" I asked.
"Look at the postmark," Harkat whispered.
What I saw confused me. "That date can't be right," I muttered. "That's not for another twelve years."
"They're all like that," Harkat said, passing the rest of the postcards to me. "Twelve years ahead fifteen twenty more."
"I don't get it," I frowned. "What does it mean?"
"I don't think we were in the past or on a different world," Harkat said, taking the postcards back and tucking them away. He stared at me ominously with his large green eyes, hesitated a moment, then quickly mumbled the words which turned my insides cold. "I think that barren, monster-filled wasteland wasthe future !"
TO BE CONTINUED
WHO WILL BE THE
LORD OF THE SHADOWS
AS Iwas stacking several chairs away, to be removed to a truck by other hands, Mr Tall stepped forward. "A moment, please, Darren," he said, removing the tall red hat he wore whenever he went on stage. He took a map out of the hat the map was much larger than the hat, but I didn't question how he'd fitted it inside and unrolled it. He held one end of the map in his large left hand and nodded for me to take the other end.
"This is where we are now," Mr Tall said, pointing to a spot on the map with his right index finger. I studied it curiously, wondering why he was showing me. "And this is where we will be going next," he said, pointing to a town one hundred and sixty or more kilometres away.
I looked at the name of the town. My breath caught in my throat. For a moment I felt dizzy and a cloud seemed to pass in front of my eyes. Then my expression cleared. "I see," I said softly.
"You don't have to come with us," Mr Tall said. "You can take a different route and meet up with us later, if you wish."
I started to think about it, then made a snap gut decision instead. "That's OK," I said. "I'll come. I want to. It it'll be interesting."
"Very well," Mr Tall said briskly, taking back the map and rolling it up again. "We depart in the morning."
With that, Mr Tall slipped away. I felt he didn't approve of my decision, but I couldn't say why, and I didn't devote much thought to it. Instead I stood by the stacked-up chairs, lost in the past, thinking about all the people I'd known as a child, especially my parents and younger sister.
Harkat limped over eventually and waved a grey hand in front of my face, snapping me out of my daze. "What's wrong?" he asked, sensing my disquiet.
"Nothing," I said, with a confused shrug. "At least, I don't think so. It might even be a good thing. I " Sighing, I stared at the ten little scars on my fingertips and muttered without looking up, "I'm going home."