Anthony Horowitz - Nightrise

“But suppose time wasn’t like that. Suppose time was actually circular. Think what that would mean.”

“There would be no beginning,” Jamie said. “And no end.”

“Well… the end and the beginning would be the same.” Matt raised a hand. “It would be a bit like a clock. Most clocks are circular and when you get to midnight you’ve reached the end of one day but you’ve also come to the start of the next. In other words, just for a fraction of a second, the beginning and the end of the day both exist at the same time.

“The same is true about us. The beginning and the end. They’ve sort of met in the middle and that is exactly where we were born.”

He shook his head and sighed, annoyed with himself. “This isn’t going right,” he said. “Let me start again.”

He thought for a moment, then continued.

“Yesterday, four boys and a girl finished a long war against the Old Ones.”

“That was us.”

“Yes. We beat them and managed to send them into another dimension. And that’s where we are now. If you like, you could say that we’re at twelve o’clock and a new day is about to begin. We’ve trapped the Old Ones on the other side of a gate and right now it seems there’s no way that they’ll ever be able to return.”

“So what will happen next?”

“The world will change. There’s not very much of humanity left, Jamie. It came very close to total annihilation. There are a few thousand people scattered across the planet, but what happened here – the battle and the five of us – will soon be almost completely forgotten. And as the years go by, the world will change. The ice hasn’t finished melting in the north and new continents are forming. We are entering a dark period: a time – if you like – for civilization to catch its breath. But then, slowly, the wheel of time will turn and new cities will rise, new cultures will flourish. It will all begin again.

“And then, one day, you and your brother will be born. Ten thousand years from now! Your world will look very different from ours and although a few names and places may echo faintly across the centuries, very few people will know what they really signified. The Old Ones. The Five. The building of the first gate.

“You’ll think that you live in a safe and comfortable place, but I’m afraid you’ll be wrong. Because the whole thing will begin again. The Old Ones will somehow break out of the prison we’ve made for them and what will follow will be exactly the same as what happened here. They will grow in strength and power and they will finish off what they began.”

“They’ll destroy our world,” Jamie said.

“Yes.”

“Nightrise. They’re part of it.”

“The Old Ones don’t actually show themselves for as long as they can help it. They find people who are greedy or mean or full of hate and give them power. These people think they’re going to get rich. They think they’ll be rewarded with anything they want. And it’s only at the very end that they realize that the Old Ones have lied to them and they’re doomed too. There will be no survivors. The entire planet has to die.

“So what is happening in your world is exactly the same as what happened in mine. Yesterday the cycle ended and the last battle was won. For you, the same cycle is about to begin. The Old Ones will grow in strength. The world will be torn apart. And you will have to face them a second time.”

“On my own?”

“No, Jamie. In your world, there are also four boys and one girl who have to come together. Five Gatekeepers. There’s a Matt and an Inti and a Scar just as there is in mine.”

“But are we the same or are we different?”

“We’re the same but we’re living in a different time.”

“I don’t understand!”

Matt sighed. “Don’t try to unravel it. Just think about how it actually works. That’s all that matters.

“Five Gatekeepers in the past. The same five, born again, and fighting in the future. Sometimes, we meet…”

“In the dream world.”

“Yes. Otherwise we’re separated.”

“Then how did I get here? What am I doing here now?”

Jamie didn’t understand everything Matt was saying but it was clear to him that he had somehow jumped from one world to another and that he didn’t belong here.

“This is the one thing that the Old Ones never understood,” Matt replied. “I can explain it to you now but they never realized it and that was how I was able to deceive them.

“This is how it works. Somewhere, in your world, there is a boy called Matt. And if he were killed, I would instantly replace him… so there would still be five Gatekeepers. And if I had been killed, the future Matt would have been called to replace me. Do you see? It’s as if each of us has two lives. To kill us properly, the Old Ones have to kill us twice.”

“Sapling was killed.”

“Yes.” Matt bowed his head for a moment and when he spoke, his voice was low. “There was never anything for Sapling to find at Scathack Hill. I sent him because I knew he would die there. And he knew it too. I told him. Flint blames himself but the truth is that Sapling sacrificed himself for the rest of us.

“You see, I had to let the Old Ones kill one of us. They had to think that the circle had been broken, that the Five would never meet and that they had won. That would make them careless. They saw Sapling die but they didn’t realize that you would be sent to take his place and that there would be five of us after all. And that’s exactly what happened. They allowed Inti to slip through their lines. And when you and Scar rode down into the battle – that was it. We beat them by a trick.”

“But if I’m not Sapling, how come I can speak his language?” Jamie was still aware that the words he was using would have made no sense in twenty-first-century Nevada. “How come I can ride a horse? And this…” He picked up Frost. “I feel this sword was made for me. I’d never killed anyone in my life but as soon as I had it in my hand…” He stopped, preferring not to remember the slaughter of the day before.

“One day you will fight another battle,” Matt said. “And by that time you will be equally skilled. The past learns from the future and the future learns from the past. I’ve already told you. We are always the same Five.”

“But we have different names.”

Matt nodded. “It’s true. But where do names come from? We don’t choose them. They are given to us.”

Jamie thought for a moment. He had been called Jamie because it was the name of the doctor who had examined him when he was found abandoned as a baby. Scott had been christened after a box of grass seed. Those weren’t their true names. They were just something to put on a form.

“In this world, Inti was named after the sun,” Matt went on. “But in the future he will be called Pedro. It doesn’t matter. The names make no difference to who we really are.”

“What is your real name?” Jamie asked.

Matt fell silent. “I prefer to use my name from your world,” he said. “I’m just Matt.”

Jamie had pins and needles in his leg. He wondered how long they had been sitting here. The sun was rising higher all the time. “There’s not much more to add,” Matt continued. “But you might like to know where you are. Ten thousand years from now, this country will look very different. It will have formed into a small island. Its name will be England. The forest will have been replanted and there will be a village about a mile from where we’re sitting now. The village will be called Lesser Malling, and although the people there will have forgotten all about the Old Ones and the battle that we’ve just fought and won, they will have faint memories that something important happened here. There will be a stone circle, built around the very place where you and I, Inti, Scar and Flint finally met. That circle will come to be known as Raven’s Gate.”