by Garth Nix
Susan realized that having failed to kill her, Merrihew now wanted to slow her down, to stop or delay her leaving. She doubted this would be to her benefit.
“I’ll give you a small head start,” whispered the little girl, close to Susan’s ear, even though the Charles Darwin–like figure still stood in front of her. “It won’t be much.”
“I apologize for throwing the knife,” called out Merrihew, sidling closer again.
“Fuck you!” shouted Susan. She turned around and stepped off the rock into the air, lifting her arms and scissoring her legs in the approved safety jump method taught to her in the interminable school swimming lessons, when you absolutely had to jump into water of uncertain depth.
Merlin and Vivien had changed for dinner and looked more alike than ever in their black dinner jackets, boiled white shirts, and black bow ties over stiff collars, though Merlin had adopted a pale gray waistcoat and Vivien an eggshell-blue one. They had finished with the potato and leek soup, and were working on well-grilled lamb chops with mashed potato and peas, accompanied by a 1971 Bordeaux from an unknown vintner (the label having come off) with the certain knowledge of a dessert trolley’s appearance in the near future. Vivien filled Merlin’s glass and started to refill her own, then stopped suddenly, the bottle held at a dangerous angle, not quite pouring but quite likely to spill.
“Merlin! What are we doing here?”
Merlin was eating and reading, a green linen-bound hardcover of Gaudy Night by Dorothy Sayers propped up open against the silver-topped cut-glass salt and pepper shakers.
“Pardon?” he asked dreamily, looking up from the book.
Vivien repeated her question.
Merlin finished chewing on a piece of lamb. He looked at his sister, then slowly around the wood-paneled dining room, the six other tables with their snowy white tablecloths, silver and glassware set, but no one sitting at them. The familiar, enormous mahogany sideboard with the silver tureen in the shape of a vast oyster, the tall windows to the right, overlooking the woods, because they were on the third floor.
“Silvermere,” he said vaguely. “The upper dining room. Having dinner . . . or is it lunch? We came to . . . um . . . we came to . . .”
“Susan,” said Vivien slowly, trying out the name as if it were unfamiliar or she didn’t know what the word meant.
Merlin paled and closed his book. He looked around again, more alertly.
“Susan,” he repeated. “We brought Susan here, and we’ve forgotten! How long have we been here?”
Vivien slammed the bottle down and pushed her chair back.
“Not long,” said Vivien. “We were starving, we came straight to lunch. But Susan . . .”
Merlin pushed his own chair back, put the book into his yak-hair bag, and swung it onto his shoulder.
“We need to find the Grail-Keeper,” he said. His voice was even, but he was clenching and unclenching his fists. “Could . . . could Susan still be on the road?”
“The road isn’t there if I’m not,” said Vivien. “She must have come through. I mean, the alternative—”
“Sometimes I hate this place,” said Merlin vehemently. “Not that I suppose I’ll remember.”
“You will remember if you want to,” said the Grail-Keeper. She swung her legs out of the large dumbwaiter that could bring a dozen meals at a time up from the kitchen below, and stood up, brushing some crumbs off her matronly white tunic. As she always appeared to the younger booksellers, she looked like a middle-aged, kind but firmly in-charge sort of woman, a sort of nicer version of Margaret Thatcher. Her eyes were black and she had golden bracelets on her wrists.
“Where’s Susan?” asked Merlin.
“At this moment, walking with me through the wood to the Stone of Departure,” said the Grail-Keeper. “On her way to wherever she wants to go.”
“But . . . but she needs to be with us,” said Merlin, ignoring the multiplicity of the Grail-Keeper being in two places; this was a known part of visiting Silvermere and he remembered that. “She’ll be starving, too, and we need to work out what to do!”
“As I did not invite her here, and she does not have the standing invitation extended to those of your family, she cannot stay.”
“Oh, I . . . I . . . thought . . . thought it . . . it . . . would . . . would . . . be . . . be . . . okay . . . okay,” stammered Merlin and Vivien together, in weird sibling stereo.
“It is, as you say, okay, this time,” replied the Grail-Keeper gently. “In any case, I think Susan knows where she needs to go and perhaps even what she needs to do.”
“No she doesn’t,” said Vivien. “We’re still working out exactly what’s going on.”
“Do you need to know ‘exactly’?” asked the Grail-Keeper.
“No,” said Merlin. “Viv! We need to get to the obelisk before Susan tries to go anywhere.”
“We need to know about the Cauldron-Born,” said Vivien, resisting Merlin’s tug on her arm. “Was it made here? With our . . . your grail?”
“No. The grail has never been used in that way, and it never will be,” answered the Grail-Keeper, very firmly.
“Do you know which cauldron was used? And who has it?”
“I do not,” replied the Grail-Keeper. “I do know the St. Jacques knowledge of the cauldrons is lacking—”
She suddenly stopped talking and her hand flashed up. A small, bright knife appeared there, snatched out of the air.
“Now, there’s an unnecessary complication,” she said testily.
“That’s Merrihew’s!” snapped Merlin. “One of her leaf knives!”
“Merrihew,” said Vivien. “Oh no!”
“Likes knives, does she?” asked the Grail-Keeper.
She spoke to the air, for Merlin and Vivien had run from the room, tearing their napkins off to flutter to the floor behind them like startled, overburdened doves.
Chapter Twenty-One
Roses can be yellow, violets may be white
Hate might turn to liking, love could change to spite
Nothing is fixed forever, even stars will die
All that we can ever do, is ask the reason why
SUSAN NEVER HIT THE WATER, OR AT LEAST SHE DIDN’T THINK SHE did. One second she was falling, the next she was on solid ground and somewhere else entirely, no longer in Silvermere. Looking like an idiot with her knees bent and arms outstretched, on the shore of a tarn halfway up a mountain. A kneeling, bearded hiker stared at her over the top of his smoking Volcano stove, which had started to whistle. An enamel mug fell from his hand on to the stony shore, landed with a musical ding, and rolled away to end up against a wax-paper-wrapped sandwich.
“Did you come out of—” the hiker asked hesitantly, pointing to the tarn.
Susan didn’t answer. She could feel a power coursing up through her entire body from the broken shale beneath her feet, joining that fizzy sense of anticipation that had begun to wake inside her on her eighteenth birthday. It was her power, she knew, and it was centered here, beneath her feet and all around. The small lake behind her was part of it, which she immediately knew was in these days called Low Water, and the long lake to the east was Coniston Water, though once it had been Thursteinn Waeter.
Most of all she knew the mountain she was already two-thirds of the way up, its peak rising to the south, the way there traced by a zigzag path through the broken gray shale and brown-green grass, the top shrouded in low cloud, which even as she watched rolled farther down the slope.
The Old Man of Coniston, wreathed in fog.
“You came out of the water,” repeated the man. It wasn’t a question now. “But you’re not wet. . . .”
Susan looked at herself. Not only was she completely dry, her boiler suit was clean again; the tears from the goblin’s sharp nails and the rumpling from the Fenris’s jaws and the stains of wandering through the woods had vanished. Her Docs were polished to a high sheen, which they never were normally; she put dubbin on them and left them dull.
/> The Grail-Keeper had dressed her up for a visit to her dad. Like she was six years old.
“Yeah,” she said, half in a daze from the sensation of power building up inside her. She looked past the hiker to the sun, which was climbing up, but still low in the sky. It was morning, probably only nine or ten o’clock, but it had been early afternoon when Merlin had led them to the door in the pond. . . .
She’d lost at least a day. Maybe more.
“Uh, and good morning,” added Susan. She started up the path, walking fast. With every step she felt more of the power within the mountain coming into her, but it was only a fraction of what was there, and she also felt a kind of countercurrent, as if something opposed the flow of magic.
Someone was working against her taking up her father’s power. Until she came into her full inheritance she would be vulnerable, even here. But this also puzzled her. She knew deep inside that her father lived; he had not faded away or dissipated or whatever happened to Ancient Sovereigns. Why was his power coming to her now? And who was holding it back?
“Hey, don’t go up!” the hiker called after her. “The weather’s turning! You aren’t dressed for it!”
Susan suddenly remembered Merrihew would be coming after her. She wouldn’t want witnesses.
“You need to get off the mountain!” she called. “Quick as you can.”
The hiker reacted as if he’d been struck by an arrow. He stepped back and grunted, turned on the spot, and ran to the downwards path over broken shale and rocks, leaving his pack, the still-whistling Volcano, and his enamel cup.
“But be careful!” shouted Susan, aware that she had commanded the man. Even if she had not come into her full power, what she had already was sufficient to compel a mortal to do her bidding. At least within the demesne of Coniston Rex.
The hiker slowed in obedience, but did not stop or look around. Susan knew he wouldn’t until he reached the village below, or maybe not even till he hit the shores of the lake itself.
Susan wondered if she had the power to lift the fog on the peak above. She raised her hands and ordered the cloud to dissipate. Nothing happened and she didn’t feel the strange, electric spark that had leaped through throat and mouth when she’d ordered the hiker to leave. The elements, it seemed, were more resistant to persuasion than people. Or that magic was another level of difficulty altogether.
She started up the track again, pushing herself to almost run, pressing down on her thighs as she came to the first section of rough steps. She was surprised she wasn’t out of breath. Despite being reasonably fit, it was a steep climb and she was taking it much faster than she usually would. But the power that flowed into her from the stones beneath her feet also revitalized every part of her. She felt fresh and energetic, undaunted by the climb.
But as she reached the first wispy descending tendrils of the fog, she felt a warning twinge, a sense of wrongness. It dizzied her for a moment, because it came from both ahead and behind, before settling into a definite sense of something bad behind her. A threat.
Something or someone who should not be on the mountain, who wished her harm.
Susan looked over her shoulder. Down below, Merrihew stepped out of nowhere onto the shore of Low Water. She kicked the still-smoking Volcano stove over, and the faint whistle Susan had tuned out finally stopped.
The bookseller looked up at Susan and drew a small pistol—like the one Merlin kept in his leg holster—from under her fishing vest and took careful aim for a moment, then dropped her hand and began to run. Clearly, for even a left-handed bookseller, the range was too great for such a small pistol. But despite being probably ten times Susan’s age, Merrihew ran much faster up the path.
Susan lunged forward, taking the steps almost on hands and knees, pushing herself even harder. She was panting and wheezing now, both from the effort and from fear. She felt her shoulder blades clenching together in expectation of being shot at any moment, and wished the fog would come down faster and get thicker, but there were still only the leading wisps from the greater cloud above.
Soon the path veered to the right and became steeper, but without steps, and it was much rougher and less distinct. Susan had to clamber up amidst tumbled stones and broken slate, and it slowed her down. But the fog did finally begin to thicken, and it became colder and darker. Granted a faint sense of security, at least for a moment, Susan eased up from the grueling pace she’d set and looked down through the shifting fog only to see the dim shape of Merrihew sixty or seventy yards below, leaping like a mountain goat up the section with steps.
The left-handed bookseller saw Susan slow, and whipped up her arm, firing four quick shots even as she continued jumping up multiple steps at a time. The first three shots missed, ricochets screaming off the rocks above and below Susan.
The fourth bullet caught her as she started to run again, scraping across the outside of her left thigh, an inch above the knee. She felt it first like a cube of ice dragged across her skin, a distinct but not intense pain, but then as she ran on, the pain blossomed. Susan screamed, once, but it was more a scream of rage than fear. She glanced at the wound, saw it had scored the outside of her leg rather than going through, that it was not fatal or perhaps even serious. She pressed on, as fast as she could.
She was close to the summit now, she felt it, and she knew her father was somehow there. Above all else, she had to get to him. But there was also that warning twinge, that sense of something not right. The Grail-Keeper had spoken of enemies, plural. One was behind her, that was for certain. She felt another enemy lay ahead. But she had no choice except to go on. Merrihew wanted to kill her and she did not know what her other enemy wanted.
It was only another twenty or thirty feet to the summit. If she made it before Merrihew got close enough to see her despite the fog, if she could reach her father, draw in more of the magic of the mountain, then perhaps she could do something to save herself. And she had the knife and the salt. She didn’t want to bind anyone to her service, but if the alternative was death . . .
Susan took out the knife as she struggled over the loose rocks, and wiped it against her wounded leg, smearing it with her blood before sliding it back in the ruler pocket, out of sight. She pulled out one of the small packets of salt, but she didn’t dare stop to try to open it, so she clutched it in her hand and continued to clamber up and over the broken ground.
Merlin and Vivien came out of Low Water to the sound of gunfire.
“Beretta .25,” said Merlin. He paused for an instant to snatch up something from the ground and ran onto the path up the mountainside. He couldn’t see who was shooting or at what; the fog was too thick, majestically rolling down towards them. “Has to be Merrihew’s. Shooting at Susan, I suppose. But the fog . . . she’d be very hard to hit.”
He spoke to reassure himself, but it didn’t work for either him or Vivien, and they both increased their pace, only to slow after a few yards as their flat leather-soled dress shoes slipped on the stones and grass. Merlin suddenly stopped, sat down and tore away the laces, and ripped his shoes off, Vivien sitting to do likewise.
“Damn Silvermere!” cursed Merlin, and ran on again. A totally incongruous pair, in evening wear with bare feet, each with one hand shining silver, as they had not stopped to pick up their white gloves nor their top hats when they sprinted from the dining room.
Susan came to the top of the Old Man of Coniston warily, staying low. The fog was so thick she couldn’t see more than a few yards past her face, but she knew there was a cairn on a platform ahead, as well as she knew the layout of her own home. Though she had never been here, this mountain and all the land about was etched clearly in her mind’s eye. She inched forward, the fog parting around her, came to the cairn, and stopped.
Chief Superintendent Holly was sitting on the stone platform, his back against the cairn. He was dressed as a hiker now, his solid bulk crammed into a red anorak and ex-army winter camo trousers, with expensive Gore-Tex boots completing the ensemble.
Two other men . . . or women . . . stood at each end of the platform. They were clad only in Arsenal F.C. hooded shell suits, rough woolen gloves, and Adidas knockoff running shoes. The hoods of the shell suits were done up unnaturally tight and close on their faces, almost hiding the blotched, blue-black skin beneath.
Susan caught the smell of amaranth and laurel from them, and the deep stench of rotting flesh.
Not people at all. Not anymore. They were Cauldron-Born.
“About time you got here,” said Holly. “Was that Merrihew who winged you?”
Susan nodded slowly. Her father was within the cairn. Or the mortal expression of him was, she could sense it. And she could also feel that the opposition to her taking in the power of the mountain came from Holly. He had diverted it to himself somehow, and he was trying not to give it back.
“The old crow knew I need you alive,” said Holly. He didn’t speak or gesture, but the two Cauldron-Born moved suddenly. They leaped away, into the fog, like rocks launched from catapults. “So I can’t have her shooting you again, can I?”
He got up himself from the platform, dislodging a couple of stones, and stretched, offering a yawn up to the cloud-shrouded sky. Susan saw the silver watchband, and here, coming into her power, recognized it immediately for what it was. Not a charm of protection, but one of disguise.
This was not a mortal policeman who stood before her, but an Ancient Sovereign clad in human flesh.
“I should have saved myself the bother of trying to fetch you here, shouldn’t I, since you were bound to come anyway,” said Holly conversationally. “I thought those old booksellers would off you straight away, so I had to act quick. Soon as I knew about you, that is, which was not soon enough, no, not by a long shot. I’ve got to hand it to your old dad, the cunning bugger.”
