The Rise of the Magus
(sequel to Children of the Stones)

A Novel by JAMES McGOWAN


Prologue
The Circle's Return

	Matthew Brake held the hot soldering iron between his teeth.  Smoke whispered up from the piece of computer motherboard he was working on, drifting through his dark brown hair: hair which was thought by some to be just a bit too long for the conservative university patrons.  Holding several wires in his fingers, he guided the hot tip of the tool to the correct spot and pressed.

	'Matt?', a voice from the office enquired.  A head popped round the door to the laboratory, a woman of about thirty years old.

	'Mmmmm...?', Matt replied, taking the iron from his mouth and blowing on the shiny new joint.  If he could just get this power supply working, perhaps he might get it tested in time....not that the students would care.  At that age, all they could think about on a Friday afternoon was drinking, and lots of it.  He smiled.  He had been the same way.

	'Matt?'

	'What is it, Jenny?', he said irritably.  'You know I have to fix this thing tonight.'

	'It's a call for you.  A little girl, by the sound of it.  She asked for Matthew Brake, the son of Adam Brake.'  Jenny waited in the doorway for him to answer

	Matt squinted for a second.  'I don't know any little girls, Jenny', he grinned.  'Tell her to call back tomorrow.'   The secretary's head popped back around again.  He heard her speaking again, so he started to power up the computer board. A wisp of a thought came to him.  'Jenny, what was her name?'

	Jenny walked in.  'She said her name was Margaret, and that you didn't know her.'  Matt nodded his head distantly, already engrossed in the testing procedure again.  The screen flickered to life, and the BIOS screen came up.  Matt sighed with relief.

	'Looks like we might just get to go home tonight after all', he laughed.  He began booting the software package he had prepared for the student laboratory the next day.  Jenny grinned and began to get dressed for going home.

	'Some of us were going to go home anyway'  She switched off the light in the tiny office which connected the lab to the corridor.  She paused in dim light of the closed office.  Some students passed by, in the corridor, nothing more than noisy shapes through the frosted pane, bustling by.  'Matt?', she asked gently.

	'Yes?'

	'You will go home tonight, won't you?'

	'Of course I will.  I've got the electronics club tonight.'  He slapped the computer and then patted it gently.  'Looks like I can go now, this is fixed.'  He switched everything off, and grabbed his jacket.  Jenny waited for him to close the lab.  They went out into the corridor and Jenny locked the office door.

	'You know'. she said, 'That little girl sounded quite scared'

	Well, I don't know any little girls, I'm not a cradlesnatcher.'

	Jenny punched him in the arm, laughing.  'Could it have been a niece or someone?  Surely you must have some clue?'

	'No, you know I don't have any brothers or sisters.'  They began walking towards the doors at the far end of the corridor.   'My mother died when I was quite young, and I was never close to my cousins.'   They came to a junction of the corridor, and already they could feel the colder air from outside.  Matt continued.   'I really can't think who it was.  One of the students perhaps?  You know how childish some of them get when it comes close to exam times...'

	'No, the number wasn't from the university, you can tell from the ring.  You know, it rings once for a call from anywhere on campus, and twice from somewhere out of town?  It rang twice.  And it sounded far away.  All crackles, it was a very bad line.'

	'Must be something to do with Dad, and I haven't spoken to him for months.  Maybe I should give him a call soon.'

	'Do it tonight, Matt.  She sounded worried.'

	They reached the glass swing-doors and Matt held the door open for his colleague.  'Seriously', he said.  'I don't know any children at all.'  He looked out over the empty University streets for a moment.  'That sounds very sad, doesn't it?'

	'You're a sad old man', Jenny grinned.  A car pulled up and beeped arrogantly.  'There's Jeremy, bang on time.'  She slung her bag over her shoulder.  'Better go, see you in the morning, bright and early for the big demo.'  She jumped into the car, slammed the door, and the unknown Jeremy pulled sharply out into the thankfully quiet street and sped off into the night.

	Matt stood for a while, trying to remember something.  But it was gone.  He checked his pocket for his car keys, fished them out and headed for the staff car-park.  This was the quiet time, the time between the end of classes and the start of drinking.  A few students hurried past him, clutching folders and books, on their way home.

	'Sad old man', he giggled to himself.  He supposed he was getting old.  Thirty-two had seemed like an eternity away when he was young.  His own mother had died when she was only thirty-one.  He was already older than she had ever been.  He felt it was strange to be thinking such thoughts.  Several strange thoughts had unexpectedly crossed his mind that week.  They had been mostly about his childhood .  He had barely thought of his mother in all the years since her death, and he had to admit that his memories of her were very vague, and he was curious as to why she was entering his thoughts now.

	Something was niggling away at the back of his mind.  Something that he thought was all over, finished, but which wasn't really finished at all.  He thought about the computer up in the lab.  No, that was finished.  He had his car keys.

	Sanctuary.  That was the piece that was missing.  He let the word roll round his mouth.  Sanctuary.  He felt better simply saying it.  It felt like a machined part slipping into a well-oiled engine.  It felt right.

	Except he didn't have a clue what Sactuary was.

	He reached his car, the only one left in the car-park.  He got in, and fished around for a tape in the glove box.  He slotted it clumsily into the tape-deck.  Sanctuary what?  Why should that have been what he was trying to remember?  But he had no doubts.  He was to remember Sanctuary, something important about it.  He shook his head, shrugging to himself.

	'Oh well, I suppose I will remember the rest of the puzzle'  He started the car and pulled out of the staff car park, the last car of the evening to leave.

	His home was in the next town over, and he enjoyed the short journey through the countryside.  The sky was getting dark, and the trees on either side of the road crept past, dark hands clutching at him as he dashed along the country road.  He had always had a strange apprehension at a particluar stretch of road, where a rock outcrop pushed its way from the surrounding landscape right up to the edge of the road.  Something buried and forgotten in his past.  He was never comfortable until the rock was past.

	But that night, thoughts of the rock were banished by a more mundane feature.  At the bottom of the slight hill before the rock outcrop summit, a woman was kneeling down beside the road.  To Matt, she looked as if she was praying, but it seemed a silly place and time to be talking to God.  The woman looked up from her praying and smiled.  Matt could see, even from this distance, that she was very well-dressed, in her fifties, not the type to be expected acting strangely on a quiet country road.

	...the tyres screeched on the road.....closer it came....until it
	filled the view.....they were never going to stop in time....they
	would just keep going, going, until they hit it.....the screech
	of the tyres.....and that....thing.....grey......huge.....it was her...

	Matt stamped on the brakes, hard.  The car screeched to a halt, turning slightly towards the kneeling woman, although she hardly seemed to notice.  Matt fell out of the car, unable to shake the feeling of absolute terror.  What was that thing he had remembered?  Something from the past, coming back again, something on the road.  He looked back.  No, not this road, not here, not now.  Another time.  Something to do with Sanctuary....or was it?   It was all too confusing.....

	'Young master?', the woman said firmly.  'You know it's happenning again, don't you?'  She was still praying, facing away from him, and Matt thought that he had imagined the voice for a moment.  The sky was darkening peceptibly, and Matt, already shaken by the memory of something from long ago,  was becoming increasingly unhappy about the lonely stretch of road, and this strange woman who seemed to know him...

	'What do you mean?', Matt asked, shouting slighty he knew, but it helped overcome his apprehension about the babbling woman kneeling in the muddy verge.  He approached her cautiously.  'I beg your pardon?  Are you in some sort of trouble?  Can I help at all?'

	'The Circle has returned, young master'.  She raised her hands up to the stars like an ancient prophet.  'We will soon be at one with nature and the elements.'  She looked radiant and happy, even though a light drizzle had begun to fall.

	'Look', he said, becoming quite scared.  Something......  'I don't know what you're on about.  Is there someone supposed to be looking after you, have you wandered off?'  Matt was sure that the woman shouldn't be out on her own, but he wasn't going to hang around looking for them.  'I think you should go home'.

	He shook his head and began to move off again.  He got into the car.  He had things to do.  He couldn't spend his time with strange women on creepy country lanes.
Besides, he had things to think about.  He had the sanctuary, and he had something horrible on the road, something huge and terrifying

	It was becoming quite dark.  He started the car.

	'Happy Day' said the woman.

	Matt turned the engine off.  'What did you say?'  The woman was smiling and swaying gently in the rain.  'What did you say?'  Matt got out of the car.  The rain was bucketing down now, and the woman was getting thoroughly soaked.  Something was wrong with this, with all of this.  This should not be happenning.  He wanted to tell the women this.  It was over.  Things had been fine since.....

	....running through the long wet grass....night.....people....chanting....
	....two wild eyes in the moonlight.....caught....the cold fleeting fire
	 ...of the stone....pain....then nothingness....

	'Happy Day, master Matthew', the woman said clearly.

	Matt staggered back against the car.  Images swirled in his mind.  People screamed, fleeing from....something.  He shook his head violently, trying to rid himslef of the visions.  He fumbled to get the door open, unable to take his eyes off the strange woman who seemed to know his name, and who seemed altogether too familiar.  He fell into the seat, and let his fingers start the car.   He pulled clumsily on to the road, and swerved his way up the hill, trying to put some distance between him and the woman.

	Perspiration poured down his face.  He could feel his back soaked with it.  He was shaking violently, the car lurching up the slight incline. Eventually he was afraid to drive any further and pulled off the road, almost hitting the rock outcrop at the brow of the hill.  He rested his head on the steering wheel....

	....people screaming.....fleeing from....something.....the light.....circle
	broken.....stones.....people.....man and boy running, not looking back...

	He stumbled out of the car and was violently sick on the grass.  Something was happenning to him, something he had blocked out of his mind, something from that dark time just after his mother had died.  He weaved around the car trying to clear his head of the sickness of blind panic.  The visions cleared, and the shivering abated slightly.  He tried breathing deeply, knuckles white as he leaned against the roof of the car, swaying gently....

	What had the woman said that had upset him so much, what could have opened the trapdoor just a crack further, revealing some more of the secrets which has been plaguing him recently?

	Happy Day.  She had said 'Happy day' to him.  And she had known his name.  Where had he heard that voice before?  He couldn't - or wouldn't - remember.  The panic which had grabbed his throbbing hearth with a black, icy claw had almost abated completely.  His vision had returned, and he no longer felt nauseous.  He staggered to the brow of the hill and looked down the long sweep to where the woman had been kneeling.  There was nobody there, and no sign of anyone on foot.  She had gone.

	Matt breathed slowly and closed his eyes.  Had he imagined it?  Perhaps he had been working too hard.  Maybe he had fallen asleep at the wheel for a second, and the shock of waking had scared him.  Had it been a dream?

	He looked down the hill again, just to make certain.  The road swept clearly down the hill for half a mile and turned slightly.  He could see the entire road for almost three miles, and there was no-one there.  He grimaced, shaking himself and rubbing his hands together.  Nobody there now.  Maybe there never had been.  Matt could remember a time when he used to have strange visions all the time.  Dad had said he was psychic, but that was all nonsense of course.

	He got back in the car, glancing once last time down the hill.  There was nothing out of the ordinary there.





Chapter 1
Intersecting Circles

	Matt banged on the phone cradle again.

	'Dad!   Can you hear me now?'.  Nothing but crackles.



Rise of the Magus		James McGowan


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