Ysabel (19 page)

Ned nodded. He walked past her, taking the lead now. They went farther south alongside what remained
of those one-room houses. This had been a street once, he realized. It rose a little as they went. He could see, ahead of them, where the upper town began. There was a wider east-west roadway, big blocks of stone beyond it.

Just before they got there, he stepped up on one of the knee-high house walls to look out over the site, and then he stepped down into the space that would have been a home for someone, with a roof and walls, over two thousand years ago. And as he did, as he entered, something happened inside him again.

Ned stood still. The wind was blowing, but they were somewhat guarded from it by the trees to the north and what remained of the settlement wall.

Kate looked at him from the path. “What is it?” she said.

He didn’t answer. This wasn’t like any of the sensations he’d had before.

“Ned, what is it?” he heard Kate Wenger ask again.

He took a breath. “There’s just . . . a lot of power here,” he said.

“What does that mean?” He heard her fear.

“I’d tell you if I knew.”

It was true: he didn’t understand this, only that from these stones a feeling like a heartbeat in rocks was coming into him. No sense of someone actually here, more a—

“It’s waiting,” he said abruptly.

Then, as he looked ahead, towards the higher ruins across the wide east-west street, he added, pointing, “What was that?”

Kate turned to look. She cleared her throat. “That was the guard tower at the upper town entrance. I saw a layout on their website. Beside it is where the religious sanctuary was. Just there. See the bigger stones? That was the tower.”

Ned saw the stones. Thick, grey, heavy. Only the base was left, everything else was down, had been down a long time. But at some point back then, between the part where they were and the section ahead of them, architecture had changed.

You changed, as a people, bit by bit, learned things. Then someone brought war engines to your walls, and it didn’t matter any more what you’d learned.

He went forward to look, almost involuntarily now.

Up on a low wall, back down, up and over another, and then he was on the dusty street that divided the upper and lower parts of Entremont. It ended to the east, he saw, on his left, where the slope ran down to the meadow.

This road was wider than anything behind them or ahead.
Main Street
, he thought. Just across it lay the base of the guard tower. He looked at the big stones, imagined a tower. Catapults and time, he thought. He still had a pulsing in his mind, as if the stones were trying to vibrate.

We should go now
, Ned thought. He
knew
they should go.

Beside the tower base, to the right of it, was a large, rectangular space.

“What kind of sanctuary?” he asked.

“Well, Celtic, of course. They found skulls here,” Kate said quietly. “You know they worshipped the skulls of their ancestors?”

“I heard. And the heads of their enemies, too. Preserved them in oil. Or made them into drinking cups,” he said. “Nice people.”

Maybe it was right that these walls had come down, if that’s what they’d been like. Or maybe it wasn’t. And maybe it didn’t matter at
all
what Ned Marriner felt or thought about it, two thousand years later.

And then, finally—because they were quite close to it now—ahead of them, in the dusk, Ned noticed a column standing upright towards the back of that sanctuary space where Kate said skulls had been found.

It was as if he was being pulled that way.

He stepped over another low wall into what had been a holy place. He walked up to that column, stood before it, and looked more closely.

The pillar was about seven feet high. Tallest thing here, easily. Carved on it, from the base to the top, were a dozen primitive, unmistakable renderings of human heads.

Ned swallowed hard, and shivered again.

“Look at this,” he said.

He heard Kate behind him. She was still on the roadway, hadn’t stepped inside.

“Ned.”

“Can you believe this?” he repeated, staring at it in the twilight.

“Ned,” she said again.

He turned to look back. She was really pale now, ghost-like. Her arms were crossed tightly on her chest as if she were cold.

“Ned, this shouldn’t be here.”

“What? What does that mean?”

“I saw pictures . . . on the website. Of the dig. This was found here, but it was lying down, not standing, and . . . Ned, they
moved
it, into the museum, like fifty years ago. That’s where it’s supposed to be.”

Slowly he turned back. The stone column wasn’t lying down and it wasn’t in the museum. It was in front of him, in the shadows of this quiet, gathering darkness.

Ned froze. He didn’t breathe. He felt his heart begin to pound, very hard. His mouth was suddenly dry.

It took an effort to move his left arm, turn his wrist, so he could see what he already knew he would see. He looked at his watch.

It was just after six.

He turned to look at Kate.

“Why is it dark?” he said.

CHAPTER IX

A
fter a blank, rigid moment, during which he could see her absorb what he’d just said, Kate put a hand to her mouth. She looked fearfully around her in the great and gathering dark—which had come down upon them hours too soon.

“Ned, what’s happening?”

As if he’d know. As if he had any
hope
of knowing.

Gazing past her, still trying to accept the reality of this, Ned saw torches. He tried to swallow; it felt like there was sandpaper in his throat. His heart thumped again, so hard it was painful.

Fires were burning in the meadow east of the entrance through which they’d just come. Torches in a long line—a procession moving towards the ruins.

Unable to form words, Ned just pointed. Kate turned to see.

“Oh, God. What have I done?” she whispered.

No good answer for that. No time for one. Ned looked desperately around for a hiding place, but except for the one column beside him everything in Entremont was flat, levelled. Catapults and time.

He stepped quickly back out of the sanctuary, grabbed Kate by the hand and, bending low, started running east
along that wide main street between the upper and lower towns. They went straight out of the site and down the shallow slope. He pulled her to the ground behind a tree.

They lay there, breathing hard.

He thought she was going to cry, but she didn’t.

Ned lifted his head after a moment, cautiously, looking to his right, where the torches were. Twenty or thirty of them, he guessed. Some were inside the lower city now, others following. Coming in the way he and Kate had come themselves moments ago—in the sunlight of a springtime afternoon.

It was dark now. It was undeniably, impossibly, night.

He couldn’t clearly make out the figures carrying those flames.
Beltaine
, he thought. The Celts used to light sacred fires tonight. He was looking at fires.

Kate lay beside him in the grass, up close, hip and thigh against his. He had to give her credit, she wasn’t trembling or whimpering or anything like that. In the midst of everything, with the nearness, he was aware of her perfume again.

“This,” she whispered suddenly, turning her mouth to his ear, “is kind of cozy.”

Ned’s jaw actually dropped again. So much for whimpering, or tears. “Are you insane?” he hissed.

“Hope not. But really . . . I never in my life expected to see anything like this. Did you never have dreams about magic?”

And what did
that
have to do with anything?

“Kate, get it together! I
met
some of these guys two nights ago I think. We could get killed here.”

“Then stay close,” she murmured, “and let’s be real quiet.” She shifted a bit so one arm was right against him.

“Quiet won’t do it,” he whispered. “They can
sense
things. If I can do it, they sure can. We need to get away.”

He fished in his pocket for his phone. “Turn yours off,” he rasped. “Last thing we need is a ringtone right now.”

She moved to open her pack and do it. Ned flipped his phone open. Thank God, he thought: it was working here. He went to dial Greg and then stopped and swore savagely under his breath. Melanie’s stupid,
stupid
joke. Greg had that idiotic, multi-digit auto-dial, and Ned didn’t know his actual cell number. He punched “3” savagely. Heard two rings.

“Ned, what’s up?”

He kept his voice very low. “Melanie, listen, I’m in a bit of trouble. I’ll tell you later, but please get Greg to bring the van to the road below a place called Entremont. Quick as he can. I’ll meet him there. You know where it is? You can tell him how to get here?”

She was brisk, unruffled. Had to give her that. “I do know. Just north of town? Ned, you okay?”

“I will be when he gets here. It’s, ah, something like what happened at the mountain.”

“Poor baby. Okay. I’ll have him bring Advil. Hang in. He’ll be on his way.”

Ned flipped the phone shut and turned off his ringer. Put it back in his pocket. Lifeline to the real
world, from wherever
this
one was.

He glanced at Kate, still right up next to him. “Is there another way back to the highway?”

She wasn’t totally out of her mind. She whispered, “They had a stairway up the cliff, at the other end, but it’s crumbled away mostly. It would go south down the valley, I guess.”

“We may have to try it. This isn’t close to safe.”

He lifted his head again. More torches, at least twenty of them. Some had been planted along the path now: from the entrance to the site, lining the road all the way to—of
course
, he thought grimly—the sanctuary space where the one tall column stood.

It was directly in front of them, to the left of the main street. He couldn’t make out the column from here, but he could see the flames clearly. The moon, he realized belatedly, was above them now. Full moon night.

“Well, I still have to say I like snuggling here,” Kate Wenger said. Ned heard—amazingly—a huskiness in her voice.

Even more amazingly, amid his terror, he was starting to find this aspect of things, her scent, how close she was in the dark grass, unnervingly distracting.

“You gonna kiss me, or what?” he heard her say.

Oh, God, he thought. It made no sense at all. None.

“Forget that now!” he whispered fiercely. “Let’s just
go
. We have to get down to the road. We’ll try that other stairway, and hope. I figure it’ll take Greg twenty minutes.”

“No. Stay where you are.”

Just behind them. A voice they knew.

Ned froze again, his neck hairs prickling. He felt Kate stiffen beside him.

“I have us shielded here,” they heard. “If you go from me they’ll sense you and they
will
kill you tonight. For violating this.”

Well,
that
would change Kate’s idiotic mood, Ned thought.

He heard a rustling sound. A figure crawled up beside him, to lie prone in the grass, as they were, by the tree.

“You followed us?” Ned whispered.

“I saw you arrive. I’ve been waiting for them.” The man from the cloister and café looked at him. Same leather jacket, same cold, intense expression. “I
did
tell you not to come here today.”

“I know,” Ned said.

“He didn’t want to,” whispered Kate from his other side. “I thought it would be cool. I like your jacket, by the way.” She smiled.

So much for changing Kate’s mood.

The man ignored her, his attention fixed on the torches. Some were planted, others were being carried. Ned still couldn’t clearly make out who was holding them.

“Why can’t I see anyone?”

“They aren’t entirely here yet,” the man said quietly.

The matter-of-factness made Ned swallow hard again.

“They will be when he comes,” he heard.

“When who comes?” Kate asked.

“Softly!” the man hissed.

“When who comes?” she repeated, more quietly. There was silence for a moment.

“The man I have to kill.”

Ned looked at him. There were too many questions. He said, “I think . . . I may have seen him two nights ago.”

The figure on his left said nothing, waiting. Ned doggedly went on, “I was at this tower, above our place, and . . . Does he have stag horns? Sometimes?”

“He can. Golden hair? A big man?”

Ned nodded.

The wind blew. In the moonlight Ned saw smoke streaming south from the torches. The man beside him shook his head. He said, “Ned Marriner, I have no idea who you are, but you do seem to have yourself entangled here.”

“Not me?” Kate said, much too perkily.

“Perhaps,” the man said, gravely. “You did bring me here with what you said. I used your words as a sign, lacking any other. You named this place, among all the possibilities. I am grateful beyond words. I’d have likely been elsewhere when she arrived and, as the gods are always witnesses, she would have made me suffer for it.”

“She?” Kate said. “You said a man was coming.”

Another silence. “She will be here. We are where we are. The barriers are down.”

“Holy cow,” Kate breathed. “Is he . . . is this guy, like, a druid?”

A sudden, involuntary movement on Ned’s other side. “I hope not, or I am lost.”

Way
too many questions.

Ned asked the first one he thought of. “Why is it night?”

He heard a sound, almost amusement. “Why would you imagine time should follow a known course tonight? Here? I
told
you not to come.”

“It shouldn’t be dark for hours. We were going to be gone before—”

“You’d have been dead when the spirits came if I weren’t here.”

Blunt, not a voice to argue with.

“What’s his name?” Kate asked. “This other guy . . . with the horns?”

An impatient voice from Ned’s other side. “I have no idea yet.”

“You aren’t being very nice,” Kate said, with a sniff. “Neither of you.”

Ned still didn’t get it: what was
with
her? But he saw the man on his left shift to look across him at Kate. He seemed about to say something, but he shook his head, as if rejecting a thought.