Enchantment Read Online Free

was agony, waiting for them to figure out their next moves, but they were the only adventure players Tim knew, and you couldn’t exactly go up to people in the street and say, ‘I know this fascinating way of spending two or three hours.’
    â€˜I bloody well drop this bloody rock on top of you,’ Gareth chanted, ‘an’ then, while your stupid head’s pinned down and squashed, I chop you with that axe I got.’
    â€˜Can’t do that.’ Sean was referee. ‘You lost all your weapon points.’
    â€˜Who says? I still gotta axe and a long butcher’s knife.’
    â€˜The rules say.’
    â€˜Sod the rules. I dismembered him.’ Gareth was into hack and slash. It was the only way he knew to play the game.
    â€˜Perfidious swine!’ Tim was enjoying himself too much to be wiped out. ‘My spirit is unquelled!’
    He saw himself, standing, head thrown back and legs apart, hurling a challenge at the sheer cliff, and all the voices of the great heroic ages rushing past him on the howling wind.
    â€˜My magnetic field deflects your paltry rock, and I will live to see thee damned!’
    â€˜Knock it off, for Christ’s sake.’ Gareth and Sean rolled their eyes. Neil was trying to puzzle out what he was supposed to be doing.
    Gareth’s older brother, in full black leather, opened the door, said, ‘Jesus!’ and slammed out again.
    Tim felt great, but the boys were fed up with him. They argued grumpily about whether Tim was dead or not, and when he proved by points that he still survived, Gareth said, ‘I’ve had enough of it anyway. Stupid kid’s game,’ and leaned his powerful torso over the table and messed up the papers, and the little dwarfs and gnomes that Neil had scattered about.
    â€˜Why can’t we –’ Tim asked, as himself. As Tohubo, he would have been able to declare, ‘We’ll finish!’
    â€˜Since you ask,’ Gareth said obligingly, ‘because you spoiled it.’
    He jerked his chin at Tim and stuck out his lower lip. ‘You’re weird, you know. When I’m twenty-three, I won’t be doing this kind of stuff.’
    â€˜No – you’ll be out hacking real people,’ Tim said brilliantly, and left.
    Outside the front door, Gareth’s brother was doing something to the engine of his van. He straightened up and stared Tim out of the gate. Tim turned right and walked casually for a few yards, squaring his shoulders under Tohubo’s invincible armour, then sneaked a look back to see Gareth’s brother bent over the van again, and ran off down the hill.
    It was too early to go to Rawley, where his parents lived. If he got there while it was still light, his father would expect him to go out to the workshop shed and hold the end of something, or sand a bit of boring wood. Tim went into the town and weaved his way through the shopping precinct, where women with double pushchairs charged him like charioteers, to the cathedral. It was a fairly famous Norman pile which attracted quite a few visitors, but not in the cold weather. It was almost as cold inside as out, because there were not enough winter visitors to justify heating it properly.
    Pocket Pickups
did not list cathedrals as places to meet girls. Tim made his traditional tour, with his hands in his pockets because he had left his gloves at home. Up the left side, behind the altar where the wedge-shaped chapels were fitted into the apse like pieces of cold pie, down the other aisle, to look into the ornate cage where Sir Leonard and his stone lady lay, side by side, both raised on one elbow as if they were expecting breakfast in bed. Then a side trip to the north-door transept, since it was not fair to come in here without at least acknowledging the eternal presence of the suffering Christ, waiting for the world to straighten itself out, so that He could come down from the cross and go about His