Ysabel (14 page)

He cracked the wolf on the side of the head. It was heavier than the dog had been this afternoon. It didn’t spin or flip, but it went down. Ned cried out as his injured shoulder felt the impact.

His aunt swore again. Ned heard her snap something, almost snarling it herself, in the same tongue as before, and though he couldn’t understand a word he felt himself go cold with the ferocity of what she said.

Cold in fire
, he thought. There was a word for that, the sort of stupid thing you got asked on English tests.

Kim repeated whatever she’d said, same cadences, more slowly. Ned almost
felt
a collective intake of
breath in the night, as if the very darkness was reacting to her. He was down on a knee, holding his shoulder. The wolf lay near enough for him to see it. It wasn’t moving.

“Well done,” his aunt said to him quietly. “Are you hurt?”

“Shoulder, not from now. I had to fight a dog this afternoon.”

“What? Ned, what
have
you been doing?”

“I got mixed up in something. He said after that they were just playing games. With him, not me.”

She was still a moment. Then, “Who said that, Ned?”

“The man from the cathedral. He’s part of all this, I think.”

“Well, of course he is. That’s why you’re being tracked. Can you reach him?”

“What? Like a text message?”

She actually chuckled, briefly. She
was
cool, he decided, even if aunts weren’t supposed to be. “No, not that. Can you see him the way you saw me, looking inside?”

He hesitated. “I
have
done that. Seen him. Twice. He said he can screen himself.”

“I’m sure he can. I can’t see him. You try.”

Ned tried. He had the same foolish feeling as before, though not quite the same, if he thought about it. His aunt was here, and he
could
sense the glow of her, within.

Only that, however. Not the scarred man who’d told them in the cloister that he had no name. He shook his head. “I have no idea what I’m doing,” he said.

“Why should you?” she replied, gently. “That’s a reason I came, to tell you it’s all right not to know.”

“That’s why?”

She nodded. “And a few other things.”

The wolves hadn’t made a sound since she’d spoken, or since he’d cracked one of them with the branch.

“Have they gone?” he asked.

Kim turned and looked out. He had a sense she wasn’t really looking, or not with her eyes.

“They’re waiting,” she said. “I really wish I knew what this was about. How’s your shoulder?”

“Never play tuba again.”

She made an exasperated sound. “How terribly funny. You are
just
like your mother.”

“Mom joked like that?”

“At your age? Endlessly.”

It was news to him, that was for sure.

“What are they waiting
for
?” he asked.

“We’ll know soon enough. Keep trying to find your friend.”

“He isn’t my friend, believe me.”

A sound behind them. A voice in the same instant.

“He is not. You would do well to remember it.”

They whipped around together. To see something that never left Ned—even with all that was to come. What appears to us first on a threshold is often what lingers afterwards.

A very big, broad-shouldered man stood in front of the broken opening in the tower. He had long, bright hair, a heavy golden necklace, and golden armbands.
He was clad in a tunic and a darker fur-lined vest, with leggings, and sandals tied up around his calf.

And he was antlered like a stag.

It wasn’t a horned helmet or anything like that, which was Ned’s first thought. He wasn’t
wearing
a helmet. The antlers grew straight out of his head.

It was in that moment that Ned Marriner finally accepted that he had entered into a world for which nothing in life had prepared him. There was no denial left in him; he felt fear coil and twist like a snake in his body.

“How did you get in there?” he stammered.

“He flew down. Most likely as an owl,” said his aunt, with what seemed to him an awesome calm. “Why not take your own form?” she added, almost casually, to the man-beast in front of them. “Playing at shapes is a game. And this form is disrespectful. Even sacrilege.”

“Not wise the thought,” the antlered figure said. They were speaking French to each other, in an oddly formal way. “In my own guise I am too beautiful for you, woman. You would beg me to take you, right here, with the child watching.”

Ned bristled, clenching his fists, but his aunt only smiled.

“Unlikely,” she murmured. “I have seen beautiful men, and managed to keep my self-control.”

She paused, looking up at him, and then added, “I have also seen the god whose form you are copying,
and
his son, who commanded wolves far more deadly
than these weak spirits.” Her voice changed again. “You have some small shape-shifting power. I see it. Do not expect me to quail. I knew men and women with so much more than that, there are no words for the telling. Do not ever doubt me. I am offering iron-bound truths by moonlight at the edge of an oak grove.”

Ned shivered. He couldn’t help it.

This is my
aunt, he thought.

The yellow-haired figure with the antlers of a stag stared at her for a long time. “If you speak of the wolflord or the god so carelessly, one or both might make you pay a price.”

“True enough.
If
I did so carelessly.”

The figure in front of them hesitated. “You are very sure of yourself, woman. Who are you? Why have you come into this? It is nothing to you, nothing
for
you.”

Kim shook her head. “I haven’t come into anything, except to guard my sister-son. He has no power, only the beginnings of sight, and is no danger to you. He is to be left alone.”

“Ah! She makes a demand. And if I do not accede?”

Ned heard his mother’s older sister say, quietly, “Then depend on it: I will summon powers that will blast you out of time to an ending. And you will never do what you have come to do.”

Silence in front of them. Nothing from the wolves behind. Ned wondered if the others could hear the thudding of his heart.

“It is a wise man who knows his true enemies,” Kim added, softly.

“You do not even know what this is about. What I am come to do.” But there was doubt in the deep voice now. Ned could hear it.

“Of course I don’t,” Aunt Kim said crisply. “Nor do I care. Do what you must. I have told you my only purpose. Accept it, and we are gone. Do not, and you have only yourself to blame if all you dream of goes awry.”

“The boy fought this afternoon beside a man I must kill.”

“Then kill that man if it is your destiny to do so. But the boy is mine and will remain untouched. He has no wish to interfere.”

“Is it so? Can he speak for himself, or does a woman do all for him, as for a suckling babe?”

Aunt Kim opened her mouth to reply, but Ned, angered, said, “I can speak just fine. I have
no
idea what that was this afternoon, but someone I’d had a drink with was attacked. Would
you
have stood by?”

Another silence. “The cub has a tooth,” the man said, laughing suddenly, a deep-throated, genuine amusement. The rich sound rolled over them. “Of course I would not have stood by. Shame to my family and tribe, to do so. That does not mean you might not have died.”

“He said you were playing games.”

Another explosion of laughter, the antlered head thrown back in delight. It was thrilling, as much as it was frightening.

“Truthfully? Did he say that?” The fair-haired figure looked at Ned. “Ah, you give me pleasure! By all the
gods, I am his master. He knows it with every narrow breath he draws. And as for you: children have died in games-playing.”

“Games like that, I can imagine.” Ned was still furious. “So tell me, give
me
pleasure now, did I kill your four-legged friend today? With the chair?”

He felt Kim’s hand on his arm, cautioning him. He didn’t feel like being cautioned.

The antlered figure said, “He was in a form he’d taken for the moment. No more than that. He is behind you now in another shape. Tell me, foolish child, what
do
you think this is about?”

“We told you,” Kim snapped. “We don’t know what this is. And will not claim any role. Unless you compel it.” She paused, then added, her voice going colder again,
“Will
you compel me?
Shall I summon Liadon from his sacrifice?”

Amazed, Ned saw the tall figure take a quick step backwards in shocked surprise, the head lifting again, the antlers caught by moonlight.

“You know a name you ought not to know,” he said after a long moment. His voice had gone quiet. “It is guarded and holy.”

“And I am one with access to it,” Kim said. “And I
have
seen the one you mock with your horns.”

“I do not mock,” the man protested, but he sounded defensive now.

“Playing a game dressed in his antlers? No? Really? Are
you
the child, to be forgiven by your elders? Not yet come of age?”

The man before them said, “Have done, woman! I have been among these groves and pools, coming and going, returned and gone, for past two thousand years!”

Ned swallowed hard. He heard the man say, “Is that a child, to you?”

Ned was intimidated now, really afraid, wondering at his own recklessness a moment before, but Aunt Kim said only, “It can be. Of course it can! Depending on what you have done, coming and going. Show me otherwise: go from us, and not in his shape. I wish to return to my own home. This is your place, not mine. Swear to leave the boy in peace and I am gone from your games. And your battles.”

The tall, glorious figure stared down at her, as if trying to penetrate through moonlight to some deeper truth. “What is your name?”

Kim shook her head. “I will not give you that tonight.”

He smiled then, another unexpected flash of teeth, and laughed again. “A sorrow to my heart. I would give you the gift of mine, and freely, bright one, if I had a name here.”

Kim didn’t smile back. She said, “You are waiting for one?”

“She will name me. She always does.”

“Both of you?” Kim said.

Ned had been chasing the same thought.

A hesitation, again. “Both of us.” He looked down at her. “And
then
it begins, and I may kill him again, and taste the joy of it.”

He looked at Kim another moment, ignoring Ned entirely now; then he lifted his great head and rasped words in yet another tongue Ned didn’t know. They heard a growling sound in reply; twigs snapped on the ground behind them as the animals left.

“You will not enter into it?” the antlered man said again to Kim.

“Not unless you force me,” she repeated. “You will have to live with that as sufficient surety.”

His teeth showed again. “I have lived with less.”

He turned, ducking through the opening into the round, tall tower, twisting his head so the horns could pass through.

They stood a moment, waiting. There was a quick, sharp sound and they looked up and Ned saw an owl fly through the open tower top and away, to the north.

They watched it go.

Kim sighed. “I told him to change his shape. He does like to play, I guess.”

Ned looked at his aunt. He cleared his throat.

“That was extremely close,” she murmured. She leaned against his good shoulder. “I haven’t tried anything like that in a long time.”

“What do you mean?”

Kim stepped back and looked at him.

“Oh, dear. Ned, did you think I could
do
any of what I said?”

He nodded. “Um, yeah, I kind of did.”

She sighed. “Fooled you, then,” she said.

He stared at her. He felt cold. “You were
bluffing
? Could . . . could they guess that?”

Her mouth twitched in an expression he actually knew well, from his mother. “I guess they didn’t. But damn it all sideways and backwards, I so wish your uncle were here.”

CHAPTER VII

A
fterwards, Ned Marriner was to think of April 29 of that year, mostly spent in Arles among Roman and medieval ruins, as the last day of his childhood.

It was an oversimplification; such thoughts always are. But we make stories, narratives of our lives, when we look back, finding patterns or creating them.

We tend to change in increments, by degrees, not shockingly or dramatically, but this isn’t so for everyone, and Ned had already learned in the two previous, difficult days how he seemed to be different. Most of us, for example, don’t see our aunts as a green-gold light within ourselves.

On a sunny, windswept morning among the monuments of Arles, he wasn’t actually dwelling on this. He was—although being of a certain age, he’d have hated to admit it—having a good time, nerdy as that might be.

The Roman arena was seriously, no-messing-around impressive.

He’d never been to Rome. He understood the Colosseum there was way bigger than this, but the one here would do fine for Ned. Twenty thousand people, two thousand years ago, watching men fight each other,
or wild beasts, in a place this massive. And it was still standing.

Even Larry Cato might have had to concede it was cool, sort of.

They’d driven here first thing, about an hour in morning traffic. His father and the others had gotten busy immediately to use the early light, setting up an exterior shot where the high stone walls of the arena were being restored: gleaming, almost white on the right-hand side, revealing the grimy evidence of centuries on the left.

With plenty of notice from Melanie and Barrett Reinhardt, the city authorities had removed the scaffolding for them, leaving Ned’s father a clear line. The spring sunlight was brilliant, intensifying the contrast between left and right, the untouched part and the cleaned-up side.

It was going to be a terrific photograph, even Ned could see it, and his father’s body language as he moved around, setting up, gave it away anyhow. Edward Marriner was watching the clouds scud past in the breeze: he was going to try to time the shutter releases, to have one of them in the background, half in, half out.