Beneath the Hallowed Hill (46 page)

“He’s just another crazy,” Michael whispered. “The townsfolk will feed him.”

“It’s not that. I think I’ve seen him somewhere.”

“Probably hanging around the spring. Let’s go.”

* * * *

Govannan watched the tall blond woman walk out the door. Her resemblance to Pleione was so strong it brought tears to his eyes. The portal still pulled at him, but the commotion and the desire to blend in drew him to this meeting. Mueller must be looking for him by now. Cagliostro still had the translation crystal, but it was clear something was wrong in this town, something metaphysical. The room twanged with psychic power, mostly ill-trained, at least by Atlantean standards. A few adepts sat around the room or stood on the stage, tranquil pools of finely-honed senses. The woman who noticed him had power, exceptional ability even, but it flickered around her like a novice’s did. One master who sat in the middle of the room eyed him from time to time, nodding when Govannan happened to catch her eye.

A man with matted hair sidled up to him and said something. His breath and clothes reeked. Govannan shook his head, hoping to convey that he didn’t understand. The man rubbed his stomach and mimicked eating. Govannan nodded vigorously. The man gestured for him to follow. They walked out through a courtyard and crossed the street. Govannan stuck close to his new friend who dodged the speeding vehicles with aplomb. Once they were safely on the other side, they went down through a covered walkway. The smell of food made Govannan’s stomach gurgle, but they walked past the restaurant and sat at an abandoned table in an open eating area. One group of people cast hostile glances at them, another conversed cheerfully with his new friend. Once the friendly group stood up to go, the vagrant moved to their table, gesturing for Govannan to follow. He started to eat what they left.

Shocked, Govannan stood to enter the restaurant and get a fresh plate, but his new friend shook his head and pulled on the shirt Mueller gave him. He was getting used to these funny clothes. The man pushed a plate with some greens and long yellowish sticks toward him, then mimicked eating again. Govannan shrugged. He’d just have to make the best of things in this strange time. He picked up one of the sticks and bit into it. It was a little oily, but satisfying. The hostile people stood to go, and once they were out of sight, the vagrant grabbed their leftovers and brought them to the table.

Once they ate the food left by three tables, the man stood up and gestured for Govannan to follow. He wound his way up the hill, stopping behind a bakery to check for handouts and getting some round metal objects from people on the street or shopkeepers, which seemed to make him happy. Govannan tried to be patient, but as they made their way up the street, the magnetic draw of the portal grew stronger, lulling him into a mild trance. He allowed himself to be pulled along in the wake of his friend, afraid that alone he might draw attention or do something that would put himself in jeopardy. Soon they were walking along a street with houses built right up to it; cars roared by, belching out the ubiquitous exhaust, and his new friend jabbered away at him.

It hit him then. It was like walking into a temple, but there were houses, roads, vehicles, people walking…a chaos of activity, and it seemed few recognized the power pouring from the place in front of him. He saw the hill and its slopping terraced sides. It was the work of Atlantis, a sign of his old home. On top of this great portal stood a tower, a lone finger pointing to the sky. Tears ran down Govannan’s face. His friend patted him on the back and talked some more, then took him by the hand and led him past a stone wall and around a corner.

A knot of people gathered on a small terrace. They spilled out into the street. His friend walked up to a large metal box, lifted the lid, and started poking through what looked like garbage. Govannan followed the power of the portal to a squat stone building where the people milled around. It seemed they did recognize the energy after all, they just didn’t know what to do with it. He made his way through the crowd over to a wall reinforcing a hillside and searched until he found a place where the ground peeked through. Placing his hands flat on the earth, he closed his eyes and the portal opened his sight. Glorious crystals and geodes filled the hill, long points shot up from the ground or hung from the ceiling above a flat body of water. Something was wrong, the energy was blocked. Some being in a deeper frequency set up a wall to stop…what? Govannan allowed his consciousness to sink deeper. Yes, there it was, a loop. That fool Cagliostro created a time loop. He wasn’t surprised. Wasn’t this the fallen time? Didn’t consciousness wane? He could close it after he went back home. He’d do it tonight, while the town slept.

Relieved, Govannan settled down with his back against the stone of the building and closed his eyes. Someone put a warm blanket over him. He looked up into the smiling face of a woman with long brown hair. She spoke with his new friend for a while, pulled a blanket out of her pack for him, then left them alone. The crowd began to thin as the sun set, and his friend made a makeshift shelter for them. He unrolled some bedding and patted one side, offering it to Govannan. He lay down beside the man and closed his eyes, pretending to sleep, but just when he thought the coast was clear, another knot of people would arrive. He’d sleep a while he decided, and wake up deep in the night so he could do his work unimpeded.

Govannan dreamed that he sat at a long table with a host of laughing beings, that he ate the most delicious food he ever tasted and drank wine that had captured starlight. A dark-haired man who lived among them took out a harp and sang a song that mended for a time the gaping wound that was his heart.

Chapter Twenty-Five

Caitir listened to the last of her mother’s story, which she heard many times before—how they sailed through a world dark with volcanic ash and found the village in Avalon destroyed by high waves. Miraculously, the vigil hut survived, and the stand of yews. Many of Megan’s friends were washed out to sea, yet the Lady of Avalon survived, but was changed, already tuning to the other world and sometimes blind to this one. When the skies cleared, they realized the Earth had tilted. The stars were askew in the heavens. They rebuilt the village, and soon discovered that the seasons were more pronounced, the summers hot and wet, the winters so cold as to freeze the rain and bring snow instead. Even later they learned that they aged more quickly. Their minds became a jumble, and it took much more effort to do the spiritual work that before came like breath. Worst was that Megan never saw Govannan again.

Caitir also listened to her mother’s lungs filling with fluid. Megan coughed and coughed, but got no relief. Fever replaced chills. She would not live through the night. Her mother would be gone by the time Caitir returned from this final initiation that would prepare her to take Megan’s place as the Keeper of the Key. She fought back tears. She would miss Megan’s crotchety old ways, miss watching her own children climb on their grandmother’s lap, heedless of her rank.

Megan took another ragged breath, then said, “The time has come. Go to the sentinels, sing the song that I have taught you, and the Tor will open for you.” These last words filled Megan’s withered face with a luminous awe.

Caitir leaned forward and took her mother in her arms. Truly, she was as light as a bird. “Thank you for—” Her voice broke.

“For what? I have done what any mother would do. You know this yourself.”

Caitir nodded, tears streaming down her face, her shoulders heaving with her sobs.

Megan patted her just as she did when she was a child and sobbed her eyes out when she would find a dead bird or scrape her knee. “There, there, child. I will be as close as a thought.” Suddenly, the frail form straightened and her voice deepened. “Go now.”

Caitir scrambled up and pulled her cloak around her. She looked once more, but all she saw was the Morgen, the eyes filmed over, the face imperious. Her own mother vanished.

Outside, the smell of flowers filled the late spring night air. She walked, head down, to White Spring where she bent and washed the tears from her face with the sacred water. She stayed there, gathering her intention for this ceremony. She would begin a long line of women for whom the golden era was only a fable, not a memory. Then Caitir stood, squared her shoulders and walked into the mouth of the cave.

* * * *

A claw grabbed Govannan’s shoulder and hauled him away from the golden world he went to in his dream. He opened his eyes to Cagliostro’s face contorted with rage. “How dare you? How dare you try to get away from me?”

Govannan understood him, which meant he brought the translation crystal.

“Do you know how long I’ve searched? Do you know how difficult it was to find the Fire Stone, to learn to use it? All for what, you ungrateful son of a bitch?”

Govannan stared up into the eyes of the man who hauled him through time, destroying his home in the process, and who now tracked him down when he was on the verge of escape. What he saw chilled him to the bone. Cagliostro’s glazed eyes looked through him without seeing him, gazing into a world the man’s fevered imagination concocted. His mind had come unhinged, and his madness set loose a deeper, darker power, an instinctual intelligence.

“Stand up. You’re coming with me.” Cagliostro reached down and jerked Govannan up with an unnatural strength unleashed by his madness.

“Don’t hurt me, man.” Govannan whirled around to see Mueller pulling his new friend out of his nest of blankets. “Don’t hurt me.” The vagrant crouched, his hands protecting his head.

Govannan cursed himself for delaying. He should have gone ahead. Even with people around, he should have opened the portal and gone home to Atlantis, to Megan. Now it was too late.

“Inside,” Cagliostro commanded.

Govannan shook the door. “It’s locked.”

“You can talk,” said the astonished vagrant.

“Shut up,” Cagliostro snarled. He grabbed the handle and jerked the door off its frame.

Govannan stared. What happened to this man?

Mueller pointed his beloved piece of metal at them both. “Inside.”

The vagrant raised his hands. “Don’t shoot me, man. I don’t want to die. Please.”

“I said shut up.” Cagliostro’s tone sealed the man’s mouth.

They walked into the darkness of the well house, stumbling down a short flight of stairs onto a flagstone floor. Cagliostro switched on some kind of torch and shone it around. Stone walls, aqueducts, and black wrought iron steps flashed out of the dark.

The raw power of the place beat like the wild heart of a stag, opening Govannan’s shriveled senses like a morning glory in the first rays of the sun. He threw his head back, his mane of hair slapping his shoulders.

“You must take me to the city. I have to find her.”

“Who?”

Cagliostro groaned. “The woman with the red hair.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Govannan said evenly.

A howl of agony rose from Cagliostro. “Now.” He walked to the back wall and pointed. “Here.”

“What do you want?” Govannan repeated, but Cagliostro turned to Mueller. “It’s here.” Mueller took out a pickaxe and swung it at the wall.

“Man, what are you doing?” the vagrant yelled.

A few more swings opened a hole in the wall large enough for them to crawl through.

Yes,
thought Govannan
. Yes. Deeper. We must go deeper
.

“Stay here,” Cagliostro said to Mueller. “Don’t let anybody in.”

“What about me—” The vagrant turned white when he saw Cagliostro’s expression.

“Watch him. Kill him if he gets in the way.”

* * * *

Something woke Anne. She listened, but heard nothing except the ticking of the grandfather clock in the hall downstairs. Michael slept, his breath deep and even. An eerie light filled the bedroom. Terrified to look, more terrified not to, she sat up. They were everywhere—hounds, white with red spots, red ears, red paws, and those uncanny blue eyes, eyes that were lit tonight with an otherworldly glow.

The female who visited Anne before stepped forward and licked her hand. The hound walked through the bedroom and out into the hall, the rest of the pack flowing around her. They glided down the steps, moving like ghosts. The female stopped and looked back at her, then whined one eerie note.

Anne shook Michael, but he slept as one under a spell. The hounds were here to help, she knew. She’d have to go alone. Anne jumped up and threw on the clothes she left at the foot of the bed, then followed the female. The pack waited in the downstairs hallway, their red tongues lolling from their open mouths. When the third step squeaked under her weight, they flowed into the kitchen, then turned and poured down the basement steps, their nails making no sound on the wood.

Anne followed, oddly calm. She knew already what she would find. She walked to the back of the basement, ducked her head, and entered the tunnel. The ancient oak door stood open. A faint light glowed from inside. The pack streamed through the open door, the female waiting for Anne. Her heart pounding, she followed.

* * * *

Megan’s chest rattled with each painful breath. Suddenly a light formed in the middle of the room, so bright it should hurt her eyes, but she found it soothing. She struggled to raise her head and call the healer, but the room was empty. Was she out of her body already? Was this the other world beckoning her? She saw him then, Govannan as he had been, his shoulders roped with muscle, his hair braided with shells and beads. He reached his hand out to her. Her long dead lover came for her.