The Thirteen Hallows (29 page)

Didn’t Brigid say something about a cave?”

Owen was perched on the window ledge, looking down into the busy street below. Sarah sat on the bed, surrounded by Judith’s notes as she leafed through her diary. “Yeah, here it is. Listen to this: ‘Ambrose brought us to his cave today. It is at the end of the village, over the bridge and then left along a narrow, almost invisible path. The cave is in the middle of a thick copse, set back into a low mound, almost invisible unless you were looking for it. Ambrose had fitted its stone walls with shelves made from the branches of trees….’”

“They’re fairly specific instructions. We should be able to find that,” Owen said slowly.

Sarah jumped off the bed and joined Owen by the window, wrapping her arms around his waist. Silently, they looked at the crowds thronging the narrow streets.

“I want to be like them,” Sarah said very softly.

“Like them?”

“I want to be ordinary,” she said.

“I hear you,” he whispered.

He peered at the shop across the road. There was something about the name that rang a faint bell. Bailey’s Haberdashery. “Hey, pass me my aunt’s address book.” Checking the back of the book, he ran his finger down the list of names. “Mildred Bailey,” he said triumphantly. “With an address here in Madoc,” he added. “That has to be the same Millie.”

He thumbed through the diary and scrapbook. “It says here that Bailey died ten years ago, some accident. She was survived by her nephew.” Turning to Sarah, he smiled. “Well, we’ve got two leads now, Ambrose’s cave and Mildred Bailey’s last known address.”

Closing the book with a snap, he said, “We should talk to her nephew, maybe he can help us.”

There was something moving behind them in the woods.

Sarah could feel the creature’s eyes on her, actually feel the newly shorn hairs on the back of her neck rising. Seeing Owen glance over his shoulder more than once, she knew that he felt it, too. She reached into the bag and pulled out the Broken Sword, held it flat against her leg. “We’re being tracked,” she muttered, falling into step beside him. “I know.”

“Any idea who or what it is?”

“Too many ideas. And I hope and pray it’s none of them.”

Sarah resisted the temptation to turn around again. “Maybe we’ve missed the turn,” she suggested. They had been wandering through the woods for hours and hadn’t found anything resembling a cave.

Owen squinted through the trees. “I don’t think so. This is the only path to the left of the bridge, and the track is nearly invisible,” he reminded her. “I can make out a mound ahead. Maybe that’s the mound my aunt mentions in her diary.”

“We’re turning in circles,” Sarah said in frustration. “It’s not here.”

“Have faith.”

A pigeon whirred through the trees, bringing two magpies into the air, wings snapping. They both jumped.

“This has to be the mound,” Owen said. He left the track to cut across through the trees toward the grassy mound, which was covered with hawthorn and holly.

Sarah followed more cautiously, ducking beneath a low-lying branch, using the opportunity to glance quickly behind her. She caught a glimpse of an indistinct shape slipping through the trees.

They had walked past the cave mouth before Owen realized that the shadows were darker behind a particular curtain of leaves and twisted vines. Sarah, who was walking behind him, holding the sword openly now, was horrified when he abruptly disappeared.

“Owen!” Her voice was a hoarse, rasping whisper. A hand appeared through the matted leaves, drawing her in. Ducking her head, she pushed through the curtain of leaves and stepped into a large natural cave. With the leaves covering the opening, the light was green tinged, shifting and dappling the walls with an underwater effect.

The cave was almost exactly as Judith Walker had described. Semicircular, with rough wooden shelving set into the walls and an ornately carved box bed tucked away in one corner. The cave obviously hadn’t been used in decades. A solid layer of dust, liberally speckled and scattered with animal tracks and mouse droppings, covered the floor, and thick gauzy cobwebs spread across most of the empty shelves. One shelf at the very back of the cave was piled high with cans of meat, mostly with labels of companies that had gone out of business decades ago. The flaking yellowed remains of a candle were still stuck to a grease-spattered rock alongside the bed.

“I feel as if I’ve been here before,” Owen whispered. “Everything is so familiar.”

Sarah nodded; she was thinking exactly the same thing.

Owen spun around to look at her. “You realize what this means, of course.”

She stared at him blankly.

“If the cave is real, and the Hallows are real, then we have to accept that everything else that my aunt says in her diary is also real. Ambrose was real.”

Leaves rustled, branches creaked, and a shape filled the doorway. “Ambrose is real.”

Sarah whirled, bringing up the sword, the broken blade sparkling and crackling with green fire.

“I am Ambrose.”

The wild-haired, one-eyed old man who stepped into the cave was shorter than Owen and dressed in ragged army surplus clothing and oversize sneakers. He carried a tattered knapsack. “It’s a pleasure to finally make your acquaintance. Owen Walker, I presume, and you…you must be Sarah. Sarah Miller.
Enchanté.
Yes,” he continued, noting their shock. “I know your names. That…and a lot more besides.” He dipped his head in a ridiculous bow, then abruptly reached out with his left hand toward the sword.

He touched the artifact with his index finger. Tendrils of emerald light sparked and snapped, curling and twisting around his hand and snaking up his arm. “And you, I know your name as well. Still powerful, still strong, eh, Dyrnwyn?” he murmured. “Still hungry.”

“Hungry?” Sarah asked.

“Dyrnwyn is always ravenous. The last time I stood in this place,” the old man continued conversationally, moving around the cave, gnarled fingers touching the shelves, hands caressing the smooth stones, “I was presenting thirteen boys and girls with the Hallows of Britain. I thought I had finally seen the end of them.”

“You presented the Hallows,” Owen began, “but that was…”

“A long time ago? It was. But here I am, back again. Good as new. Better than ever. Older than I look, but not as old as I feel.” He turned his back to them, brushing twigs and rat droppings from a smooth depression in a large boulder before sitting down. “You have two of the Hallows with you, and the other eleven are perilously close.”

He looked up to see Sarah and Owen still standing openmouthed before him and laughed gently. “‘Happy are thy men, happy are these thy servants, which stand continually before thee, and that hear thy wisdom,’” he intoned. “From the Book of Kings,” he added. “You should make yourselves comfortable. There is so much to tell you, and so little time in which to do it.”

“What do you want?” Owen demanded.

“I am asking for your faith.”

Ambrose sat back into the stone chair, his head in the shadows, only his shock of white hair and single eye visible in the verdant light. “Some of this you may know, but much of what I tell you will be strange indeed. And I only ask you to consider the events of the last few days and please keep an open mind—”

Owen interrupted, “You said you were the same Ambrose who gave the Hallows to the children all those years ago. But that Ambrose was an old man….”

“Am I not an old man?” He smiled quickly. “I’m older than you think. Much older.”

“But…,” Owen began, but Sarah reached out and squeezed his arm, silencing him.

“Let’s hear what he has to say,” she suggested.

Ambrose nodded. “Thank you, Sarah. Now listen. You have in your possession two of the most powerful Hallowed artifacts in the known world. Imbued with an ancient magic, they were created for but a single purpose: to seal the door to the demon realm….”

I’ve lost them.” Vyvienne’s eyes snapped open.

Ahriman, outlined against the window, turned quickly, sunlight washing his face in bronze, picking up the flecks of silver in his slightly shabby suit. “What do you mean, lost them?”

Vyvienne propped herself up on her elbows, sweat gleaming in tiny golden rivulets on her naked body. “They’re here, in the village. It was hard to follow them, because the leakage of power from the other Hallows is making it difficult to distinguish traces of them in the Astral. And the Astral is filled with scores of curious presences, drawn to the power and the approaching time.”

Ahriman Saurin nodded slowly. This had always been one of the great dangers in gathering the Hallows together: No one knew who or what they would attract. Crowley had briefly owned one of the Hallows, and it had attracted the creature known as Pan. The magician had spent six months in a mental asylum recovering from the experience.

Vyvienne sat up and folded her arms beneath her breasts. “The Astral is flooded with cold light, making it impossible to see, but I managed to isolate the signature of the sword and the horn. They were at the southern end of the village, close to the river. But then they disappeared. It was as if they simply winked out of existence.”

“Something is shielding them,” Ahriman said.

“Or someone,” Vyvienne suggested.

“No one has that sort of power anymore,” Ahriman said confidently. He looked at his watch. “Not for another few hours, anyway,” he added with a thin smile.

Y
eshu’a watched impassively as a female demon with the face and breasts of a woman but the skin of a serpent was hacked down by four men. They dismembered her quickly, striking off the head and driving a stake through the center of the chest to pin the body to the ground even as she continued to struggle. The Demonkind were able to absorb terrible punishment, fighting on in spite of appalling wounds.

Another demon appeared, a howling monster who stood twice the height of a normal man and was covered in short, matted gray fur. It had the head of a wolf but the eyes of a man. Scything claws struck down one of the terrified crewmen, slashing through wood and leather armor, cleaving through the rectangular Roman shields the men carried. A raven-haired Greek warrior pushed a barbed spear into the beast’s chest, twisted it, then wrenched it out, ripping apart the beast’s lungs with the hooked barbs. Two naked woad-striped women fell on the stricken beast, hacking at it with small stone axes, howling delightedly as the beast’s thin green blood spattered over the intricate indigo tattoos on their skin.

Yeshu’a stepped forward, and the quartet of Irish warriors who stood guarding him locked shields and moved forward with him, swords and spears ready. But few of the Demonkind had survived the attack, and there was little left for the humans to do.

Thirty days earlier, Yeshu’a had called down a fire from the heavens and washed the Demonkind from the beach in a wall of ivory-colored flames that had fused the sand to white glass. Josea had led his mariners ashore, and the surviving Demonkind had been butchered.

Few of the mariners had wanted to leave the safety of the boats, but promises of reward for the free and freedom for the slaves had spurred them on…though their fear of remaining on the boat with the boy had been a greater incentive.

Moving inland, they first freed a handful of tin miners who had been trapped in their mines for days by the creatures. Yeshu’a had called down tongues of fire onto the beasts who occupied the village, and while they had howled in fear and pain, the humans had attacked. Those early victories lent the humans courage and showed them that the creatures could indeed be slain: that they were not invincible. In the days that followed, more and more humans had flocked to the battle, drawn by stories of the boy known as the Demonkiller.

With the boy’s powers, the humans were inevitably victorious, though many fell to the beasts’ slashing claws and teeth.

On the tenth day of the campaign, Yeshu’a performed his greatest feat of old magic when he resurrected Josea, who had been struck dead by a creature that was neither wolf nor bear. As the human warriors watched, the boy knelt in the bloody ruins of a village the Fomor had occupied, laid his hands on the gaping wounds in his great-uncle’s chest, closed his eyes, and turned his face to heaven. Those nearest him saw his lips move, and when he spoke his words were unintelligible. Moments later, Josea opened his eyes and sat up, hands pressed flat to the white scars that bisected his chest.

In the days which followed, many begged Yeshu’a to raise their sons or brothers or loved ones back to life, but he had always refused, and once, when an enormous battle-scarred warrior had threatened him with a dagger, the boy reached out and touched the weapon, melting the iron blade and fusing it into the man’s hand. The ship’s cook had been forced to take the hand off at the wrist, but the wound putrefied and the warrior had fallen on his own knife ten days later to escape the agony.

Since then most people had left the boy alone, although Josea had insisted that his bodyguards, four savage Irish mercenaries, remain with him at all times. If the boy was killed, then the battle would end prematurely and ultimately the demons would win.

Josea staggered up. There was a long cut slashing across his forehead, arcing down over his left eye. He surveyed the bloody landscape. “Was all of this necessary?” he asked bitterly, spitting the taste of blood and burned meat from his mouth.

Yeshu’a looked around. There were bodies everywhere, human and Fomor…and many were children.

This was the last great encampment of the beasts, tucked away in a valley at the edge of the marsh in the shadow of a ragged mountain range. The original human village had been fortified with stakes and a head-high wall. Here the Demonkind had made their last stand, protecting a tiny tear in the fabric between the worlds, which allowed a single demon to slip through, one at a time. The Fomor had brought their prisoners to this place with them—twenty-five hundred men, women, and children, though there were more women and children than men.

The Demonkind knew the inherent power of virginal flesh and souls.

Yet they never had the chance to make the sacrifice. Standing atop a nearby hill, Yeshu’a had rained liquid fire and ragged brimstone down onto the village.

The screams of the children still echoed in the foul air.

“It was necessary,” Yeshu’a said softly. “This is the portal where the Demonkind enters our world. On this, the night of the shortest day, when the walls between this and the Otherworld grow thin, the Fomor intended to wrap the humans in wicker baskets and sacrifice them in the old way. The incredible eruption of energy would have ripped apart the opening between the worlds and allowed the Demonkind through in force. Even I would not have been able to contain them.”

“There is something you should see,” Josea said.

Josea led Yeshu’a and his bodyguards through the smoldering remains of the village, stepping across charred lumps of meat that had once been human. One of the bodyguards noticed that one of the terribly burned figures still moved, pink mouth opening and closing in a blackened crust of a face. He drove his spear through it, not caring if it was human or Demonkind; nothing deserved to suffer like that.

There was a well in the center of the village, a round opening in the ground, the edges of which had been raised with rough-hewn mud-and-straw bricks. Some of the bloodiest fighting had taken place around here, and the ground was slick with the beasts’ blood. Josea walked to the edge of the well and pointed down. Leaning over the edge of the opening, the boy peered down, then quickly drew back his head, eyes watering with the stench. “What happened here?” he asked, coughing.

Josea shook his head. “As far as we can tell, the well was stuffed with the bodies of children wrapped tightly in straw. God knows how many were in the well. Maybe the beasts fired the well…or maybe some of the fire from heaven brought it alight,” he added softly.

Taking a deep breath, Yeshu’a leaned over the well again and peered down. A greasy layer of fat bubbled atop the water, and charred remains of straw were stuck to the sides of the well, along with dangling strips of what looked like burned leather, but which Yeshu’a knew was human flesh.

“This is the place,” he whispered. “There is an opening here, a tiny crack, but enough.” He staggered back from the well, rubbing the heels of his hands over his eyes. “The well would have been filled with the virginal children, the rest would have been piled up alongside, and then the whole lot set aflame tonight. The pyre would have burnt in this world and the next, tearing apart the fabric of the worlds and allowing the creatures through….” The boy’s voice faded away. “We got here just in time.”

“Can we seal the opening?” Josea asked.

“Perhaps,” Yeshu’a said slowly. He padded to the edge of the well and looked down again.

And a clawed hand shot up, wrapping itself around his throat.

While two of the bodyguards jabbed at the oily water, the other two attacked the arm, hacking it off at the elbow, leaving the fingers wrapped around the boy’s neck. Yeshu’a staggered back and flung the limb from him; its fingers scrabbled and twitched on the ground until one of the guards stamped on it, breaking the bones.

“I can sense their frustration,” Yeshu’a said grimly, gingerly fingering his throat. “They are close…so close, an army the like of which you have never seen. It would wipe mankind off this world forever.”

Two Fomor erupted from the water, lank hair matted to their grotesque bodies. The bodyguards cut them down before they climbed out of the well.

“I cannot mend the hole,” Yeshu’a said softly, “but I will seal it.”

He turned to look solemnly at his uncle. “But someone trustworthy must remain behind to ensure that the seals are never broken.”