Gabriella Poole - Divided Souls (Darke Academy)

details of the other artefacts – a Pendant and an Urn.

There was something eerily familiar about the pictures of both, as though they’d been formed from the same stuff as the Knife. She

touched the scanned engraving of the Pendant. It was carved out of jade, the manuscript told her, but it was like no other piece of jewellery

she’d ever seen. As with the Knife, it was carved with twisting, snarling beasts: there they were, the familiar cats and mermaids and

caryatids, and the less recognisable creatures she had never been able to name.

The Pendant may, for a spell of time,

be used to draw the Spirit from its Host.

Which sounded uncomfortably like what Cassie thought of as her ‘broken’ powers – part of Estelle’s spirit being locked outside of her,

able to invisibly manifest itself in the inexplicable ability she had to control and move and manipulate with her mind alone …

And the Urn. As she read the words again, Cassie felt her eyes so wide with amazement that they hurt, and she had to blink hard as she

studied the scans of the perfectly inked text.

The Urn may contain and preserve a

Spirit indefinitely.

Why exactly would anyone want to contain and preserve a spirit anywhere but inside a host’s body …?

From thence the Spirit’s energy may be consumed.

Thus did the Eldest create the greatest Evil,

and thus did the Elders resolve that he, the

Eldest, must be defeated and contained.

Ah. It seemed the Eldest Few had a hunger for more than just your common-or-garden human life-force.

It was all so much to take in. If the Knife was not the only remnant of a lost Few culture, perhaps it wasn’t the Knife she’d sensed after

all in Ranjit’s room? It could have been any of the other artefacts. Was it possible that it wasn’t the Knife that had killed Yusuf and sucked

him as dry as a dead herring? That maybe Jake wasn’t the culprit?

But if not him, then who?

Cassie shuddered, turning another page. At last, there was some good news, she thought, though she couldn’t help noting the irony of

seeing this part as a good thing, given all that had happened last term …

The Elders had formed a Council (yes, that sounded familiar) that was strong enough to defeat the Eldest Few: he had fled, never to be

seen again. The Council, recognising the dreadful power inherent in his creations, had hidden the artefacts. For some reason that she didn’t

understand, the manuscript said that the artefacts were hidden by non-Few, drugged to forget what they’d done and where they’d been

(that sounded familiar too, Cassie thought with a frown).

And the records of the artefacts and their hiding places, as deemed by the Council – contained within this manuscript – were to be

divided in two. This document that Ranjit had found, it seemed, was only Part One …

Cassie sat back, breathing deeply. It sounded crazy, and only made a vague kind of sense in her mind. Thinking of Jake, she shivered.

What had he done with the Knife? Had it fallen into the wrong hands? Was that why Ranjit had been asking about it, was he worried about

what it could do? She sighed. So much was still so unclear.

Flipping back through the pages, Cassie smoothed them with her palms, marvelling at the detail in the engravings, even in laser-printed

reproduction. Something made her want to touch every one of these beautiful drawings, and to touch their real living counterparts. She

could almost feel the warm smoothness of the jade pendant as she ran her fingers across the page. And then, with a heavy heart, she

flicked to the final page, where the elegant, barely decipherable script ran out.

Yes, the Knife had been hidden in Angkor Wat, Cambodia; she could make out that much from the description, though the place wasn’t

named. The hiding place of the Pendant was named, though.

Byzantium

Byzantium. Which then became Constantinople. Which then became … Istanbul. It had been hidden right there, in that very city. There

was no indication of where exactly it was hidden; only a sketch of a symbol, different to the familiar Few mark, under which the Pendant

apparently lay.

But one thing was clear enough to her: Ranjit had found this manuscript, scanned it, and gone to hunt down the Pendant.

But why? And what had happened to him? Maybe the other part of the manuscript explained more?

Cassie knew she couldn’t tell Sir Alric about all this. She knew that very clearly. She wasn’t going to be the one who got Ranjit into

trouble. She’d just have to get him out of it …

Somehow.

She needed help, though, and there was only one person now who’d be willing, who she’d – almost – trust. Pulling out her phone, she