Ysabel (30 page)

Ned looked at Greg again. Greg shrugged again.

The guard said something, then appeared to be listening to whoever was on the other end. It took a while. He nodded his head several times.

It was very quiet. They could just hear the traffic from the road. Ned tried to imagine this place two thousand years ago, a fully developed Roman town. Walls and columns. Temples and houses. He saw what looked to have been a swimming pool. Did the Romans have swimming pools? He thought they did. Kate would know.

There was a bird singing in a tree ahead of them. Wildflowers were growing along the fence, pale purple and white. Towards the south, at the far end of the site, the hills rose sharply, framing the ruins. The Valley of Hell was back that way, cliffs coming right to the shadowed road.

He tried again, still couldn’t register anything within. It was possible, he thought, that even if he did, it might be someone entirely unconnected with what they were doing, with Ysabel and Cadell and Phelan, that story.

Once you acknowledged—as if he had any choice now—the existence of this other kind of world, who knew what else might be here? Lions and tigers and bears . . .

“Come on!” his father called suddenly, in French. “This kind fellow’s opening up for us.”

Ned started over, Greg beside him. The guard had already gone ahead. He was holding the door to the building for them. His manner as they approached was remarkably changed; you’d have to call it deferential.

“What’d you
do
?” Ned whispered to his dad. “Bribe him?”

“That was my next idea. I called the mayor of Aix. She gave me her cell number. I caught her making lunch for guests, but she spoke with this guy. I told her we were idiots to come here on the holiday but asked if she could help out.”

“And she did?”

“Obviously. I’m due to take a portrait of her next week.”

“Was that planned?”

“You kidding?”

“I thought the French were supposed to be rigid bureaucratic types.”

“They are.”

Ned actually laughed. His father looked pleased with himself, he thought.

They went in. There was a cash register and ticket counter, a lot of souvenirs—replica jewellery, books, T-shirts, toy soldiers, plastic swords, miniature wooden catapults. Ned saw a big model of the site under protective glass in a sunken area on their left, and laminated posters around the walls showing the excavations at various stages.

The guard led them to another pair of doors on the far side. He opened one, and smiled.

“I will escort you,” he said. “I can answer questions if you like,
monsieur
. I even have some thoughts for photographs. It is a recreation of my own!”

“I’d be very grateful,” Ned’s father lied. “But first, a picture of you?”

The guard hastily buttoned his jacket. Edward Marriner framed and snapped a digital shot of him at the open door with the ruins beyond.

“Merci,
” he said. They walked through.

Ned paused, overlooking the site. It really was large, seemed even more so from here: not so much ahead of them, because the hills to the east came close, but running north-south along the narrow valley. It would have been open to the wind in winter, he thought.

“The older part is that way,” the guard said, gesturing to their right. “The biggest houses, with their courtyards, are ahead of us, and the marketplace and the baths.”

“Let me start with the baths and the big houses,” Edward Marriner said. “Greg, will you keep the photo log for me? Ned, you can wander around . . . just don’t get into trouble.”

That had a bit more meaning than usual. His father was proving unexpectedly good at this.

He was going to say,
I promise
, but he didn’t.

The other three went straight and then veered left, the guard—cheerful now, something to do on a boring day—was gesticulating and talking already.

Ned went alone to the right, towards the older part.

It didn’t take long to begin. After no more than twenty steps he felt a pulsing inside. It came and went, then a moment later it was there again, on and off.

Someone was calling him.

It would be a whole lot smarter, he thought, to have Greg come over, but he couldn’t think of a good excuse, given that his dad was supposed to be here working with his assistant.

His heart was beating fast again. He swore under his breath. Then he thought about Melanie, about
why
they were doing this, and he carried on, alone.

He passed two tall pillars he’d seen from the fence. The sign at the base said “Temple of Castor and Pollux.” There was a coloured drawing of what it would have looked like two thousand years ago. Tall and handsome, wide steps going up, toga-clad people under a blue sky.

He felt the pulse again. He could place it now, around a corner to the left, just ahead. Another sign there said “Sacred Spring.” There was one wall still standing on the north side, and open steps, crumbled and moss-covered, leading down towards a dark, shallow pool.

Cadell was sitting on the steps looking at the water.

Ned stared at him. He ought to feel more surprised than he did, he thought.

“Why did you call me?”

The other man looked up at him and shrugged. “I don’t know, to be honest.” He smiled. “I’m not the
one who figures everything out. What shall I say? A moment of fellowship? Call it that. You will need to learn to screen yourself, by the way. You are visible to anyone here with any power at all.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t know how to do that. But I don’t plan to stick around in your space very long.”

The man smiled again. “It isn’t mine, it is your own now, too. Are you going to pretend this never happened, after it is over?”

“Once we get Melanie back, yeah, I am. Maybe not pretend, but I have no interest in staying in this.”

Cadell gazed over and up at him, the blue eyes bright. He was dressed today in black boots and torn, faded jeans with a bright red polo shirt. Half biker, half tourist. He still had the heavy golden torc around his neck, though the other jewellery was gone. His long hair was pulled back in a ponytail. Ned registered again how big he was.

“It isn’t really a choice,” the Celt said, gently enough. “Some things aren’t. How did you come to be here?”

“In a van,” Ned said. A smart-ass line, but he didn’t feel like being polite. “Greg drove. Remember Greg? Your friend almost killed him last night.”

“I don’t name Brys a friend. I need him for some things.”

“Sure. Whatever. Are they gone? The spirits?”

Cadell shrugged again. “Probably. He might not be. I did tell him to leave. Really . . . why did you come here?”

“Well, why are
you
here?”

“Looking for her. Why else am I in the world?”

The simplicity of that. Ned glanced away for a moment.

“Well, so are we. Looking.”

Cadell turned back to the black water below. He’d been gazing at it when Ned came up.

In the distance beyond the ancient wall, Ned could see his father and Greg with the guard towards the other end of the site. It was a clear day; they seemed small but distinct. His dad was taking pictures, shooting this way. They wouldn’t even hear him if he called. The sunlight was bright on them, but it didn’t fall where Cadell sat, by the wall, looking at the shallow water of the pool.

The big man gestured. “This part was ours first, up to where we are. That’s the goddess’s spring below us. Glanis, her name was. Glanum’s a twisting of it. Names change, given time. Over that way,” he motioned to his right, “the Romans built after they drove us out.”

“You lived here? Yourself?”

Cadell shook his head. “No. The Segobrigae were south, nearer the sea. Another tribe was here, a village. They allowed the Greeks a trading place just behind you, past the Temple of Heracles. That was a mistake.”

He seemed very calm this morning, disposed to talk, even. Ned tried to picture a Celtic village here, but he couldn’t do it. It was too remote, too erased. He kept seeing Romans instead, tall temples like the one across the way, in the picture, serene figures in togas.

The Greeks here, too, their trading place. Ned said,
“Is that why you started looking here? Because you were all in this place?”

Cadell looked up again. “Started? I have been moving since daybreak. I am leaving in a moment. She isn’t here, by the way.”

“You thought she might be?”

“It was a possibility.”

Ned cleared his throat. “We thought so too.”

“So it seems.”

Ned took a chance, pushed a little.

“There is . . . no way for you to do this thing, this battle, and then release Melanie?”

Cadell looked at him a long moment. “Is this the woman you love?”

Ned twitched. “Me? Not at all! She’s too old for me. Why the hell does that matter?”

Cadell shrugged his broad shoulders. “It matters when we love.” Something in the way it was said. Ned thought about Ysabel, how she’d looked under that moon last night. He tried not to dwell on the image. And if
he
was shaken by the thought, what must it be like for this man? And for the other?

He cleared his throat. “Trust me, we care. It matters.”

Cadell’s gaze was still mild. “I suppose. You were angry in the road. Did you aim for my horns?”

Ned swallowed. He remembered rage, a white surge. “I didn’t know I could do that. I’m not sure I was aiming at anything.”

“I think you were. I think you already knew something important.”

“What?”

“If you’d killed me there—and you could have—both the others would have been gone.” His expression was calm. “If one of us dies before she makes her choice, or we fight, we all go. Until the next time we are returned.”

Ned felt cold suddenly. He would have killed Melanie last night, if his hand had sliced lower.

“I didn’t know that,” he said.

“I think you may have.”

There was really no way to reply to that.

Ned said, remembering something else, “I think Phelan was trying to find you, to fight you, before she was even summoned.”

“Why would he do that?” Eyebrows raised. The question seemed a real one. “She would never have come then.”

“Maybe . . . maybe he’s tired. Of the over-and over?”

Cadell smiled then. Not a smile that had any warmth in it. “Good, if so. I can grant him rest here, easily.”

“You aren’t tired of it?”

The other man looked away again. “This is what I am,” he said quietly. And then, “You have seen her.”

How did a sentence carry so much weight?

Ned cleared his throat again. He said, “You didn’t answer my question, before. You can’t release Melanie and still have your fight?”

“I answered last night. Your woman passed between needfires at Beltaine, summoned by the bull, his death. She is Ysabel now. She is inside this.”

“And so what happens?”

“I will find her. And kill him.”

“And then?”

“Then she and I will be together, and will die in time. And it will happen again, some day to come.”

“Over and over?”

The other man nodded. He was still looking down at the pool. “She broke the world, that first time, giving him the cup.”

Whatever that meant. “Why . . . why just the three of you? Living again and again.”

Cadell hesitated. “I have never given it thought, I don’t think that way. Go find the Roman, if you want to play philosopher.” But he didn’t sound angry. And after a moment added, “I wouldn’t have said it was just the three of us. We are the tale for here. I wouldn’t imagine there are no others elsewhere, however their tale runs. The past doesn’t lie quietly. Don’t you know that yet?”

The sun was bright on the ruins, the day mild and beautiful, carrying all the unfurling promise of spring. Ned shook his head. He couldn’t even grasp it.
We are the tale for here.

In the distance, he saw his father talking to the guard. Greg had moved away from them a little, was looking this way. He could see Ned, but not Cadell down on the ancient, crumbled stairway, against the stone wall. Ned made himself wave casually. He didn’t want Greg here.

Cadell was looking at the pool again. Glanis, watergoddess. The water looked dark, unhealthy. The Celt’s large hands were loosely clasped. In profile, composed
and seemingly at ease, he no longer seemed the flamboyant, violent figure of before.

As if to mock that thought, he looked up at Ned again. “I killed him here once, twenty steps behind you. I cut off his head after, with an axe, spitted it on a spike. Left it in front of one of their temples.”

What did you say to that? Tell about beating Barry Staley in ping-pong four games in a row during March Break?

Ned felt sick again. “You’re talking about Phelan?”

“He wasn’t named so then. But yes, the Roman. The stranger.”

A flicker of anger. “He’s still a stranger, after two thousand, five hundred years, or whatever? When does someone
belong
here, by you?”

The blue gaze was cold now.

“That one? Never. We are the tale revisited, the number of times alters nothing. She chose him when he came from the sea, and everything changed.”

Ned stared at him. “You actually think the Greeks, the Romans, would never have settled if, if she . . . ?”

Cadell was looking at him. “I’m not the philosopher,” he repeated. “Talk to him, or the druid. I only know I need her as I need air, and that I must kill him to have her.”

Ned was silent. Then he drew a breath. “I saw some of that change,” he said. “Across the way. The carvings on that arch.”

Cadell turned and spat deliberately on the steps below himself.

Ned said, quietly, “Don’t you get tired?”

Cadell stood suddenly. He smiled thinly. His eyes really were amazingly blue. “I need sleep, yes.”

“That isn’t what I—”

“I know what you meant. You said it already. Leave this. You do not understand and you
will
be hurt.”

When he stood, you registered the man’s size again. Ned’s heart was pounding. He folded his arms across his chest. “I don’t think we can,” he said. “Leave this. Means giving her up.”

“We all give things up. It is what happens in life.”