Page 25 of The Quest for Excalibur
I didn’t wait. I ran. They say in books that fear lends you wings. It’s true.
He probably hadn’t been expecting that, which gave me a good head start. Maybe he had to go back and lock his car. Hopefully, he wasn’t as fit as I was after twelve years of living in the Dark Ages. Probably he thought that if I ran up the hill I’d have nowhere left to go.
I didn’t look back. My feet pounded on the concrete track, the tall trees looming over the fence at the foot of the hill drawing closer. The bright torch beam swerved wildly across them, illuminating the hillside behind and plunging the rest of the night into impenetrable blackness.
If only he’d put that bloody torch out. It was ruining my night vision. I almost fell up the couple of steps to the gate under the trees, staggering with a grunt of pain. The shadows of waving branches wove across the ground, dancing with the light of that stupid policeman’s torch.
I flung open the gate and started up the hill. Steps. Of course, steps up the steepest parts. My breath rasped in my chest as I galloped up them, praying I wouldn’t slip and fall. I could barely see, but at least the trees now protected me from the worst of the torchlight.
Adrenaline fueled those wings of fear. On my right, the hill rose ever steeper, the main path winding up like a switchback road, with small earth-cut steps leading straight up the steep, grassy hillside in a shortcut. I’d never gone up that way before, but tonight was definitely the time to start. I scrambled on my hands and knees, grabbing tussocks of grass to steady myself, the torchlight picking me out like a fly on a windscreen.
I didn’t stop. He must have been close behind me now, also scrabbling up these makeshift steps. Why had I never noticed the steepness of the Tor before?
The steps gave out. I was on the last steep rise to the summit, staggering now on legs like spaghetti, the tower within my reach. My chest rose and fell as I gulped in air to oxygen starved lungs and muscles.
“Stop!” His shout sounded far too close.
I forced my exhausted legs to struggle on.
“Miss Fry! Stop!” Pause. “What’re you doing?” Pause. “I only want to help you.” He sounded as out of breath as I was.
My hands touched the cold stone of the tower, the ring on my finger catching the moonlight. My heart leapt in exultation. Leaning on the solid wall, I looked over my shoulder. “Keep back.” So exhausted I could hardly speak. “Don’t come anywhere near me.”
The wind had died to nothing. No sounds carried from the town or roads. We could have been in another world. Only the rasping of our labored breathing broke that silence.
“Miss Fry,” he gasped. “You need to be in hospital. Half the force is out looking for you. You’re safe now.”
He stood twenty yards from me, illuminated by the moonlight, the torch beam lowered to a yellow circle on the grass. Early thirties, thinning brown hair, pale eyes.
I held my hand up, gesturing him back. “Don’t come any nearer.” I had no breath to say anything else.
Bending over, he put his hands on his knees. “I bloody well can’t. What the hell did you want to run all the way up here for?”
I glanced at the tower, the open archway dark, yet welcoming, and took a step closer to it. “I have to go back.”
He peered up at me from his bent position. “And I’ve got a bloody stitch now. Go back where? What d’you mean?” Probably he thought he had me. That I couldn’t get away. That the urgency of his mission had vanished.
Another step. I was standing in the doorway, half in his world, half… where? In mine? What if it didn’t work? What if I stepped into the tower with the ring on my finger and nothing happened? What if this policeman took me back down the hill to Nathan, and I had to go on with the life I’d left behind twelve years ago? Back in the library. It would kill me.
“Do not believe your dreams.”
“I don’t belong here,” I whispered, my voice carrying in the sudden stillness.
What if I never saw Arthur and my children again? My heart ached for them with a deep primal need, a desperation, a pain I’d never get over. Tears formed in my eyes and ran down my cheeks, and I choked on a sob.
“Of course you do,” the policeman said, his voice gentle, gaining strength as he got his breath back. Most likely he thought he was humoring a mental patient. “You don’t have to see your boyfriend. We’ll find someone for you to talk to. About the way you feel. Don’t worry about that. You don’t need to do anything drastic.”
Oh God, he thought I was suicidal.
I shook my head. “I’m sorry. That wouldn’t help. I have to go. Say goodbye to Nathan for me.”
He stretched out his hands toward me, mouth open, but I didn’t hear the words.
I stepped back into the tower and darkness enfolded me like a welcome warm blanket.
Chapter Thirteen
Iswam througha heavy, cloying darkness toward a tiny pinprick of light that flickered far off in the distance. Focusing all my being, I struggled in desperation as the shackling lead weights of my old life, and something else less tangible and more terrifying, dragged at me.
