The Artifact Hunters

by Janet Fox

  The woman picks up the watch as the sweet, soft chime strikes, nine, ten, eleven, and then she moves swiftly toward Isaac as he makes for it, too, and they just meet so that she can drop the watch onto Isaac’s open palm, her expression broken and sad. Isaac closes his fist around the orb.

  “Thank you,” Isaac says, as the door behind the woman opens with a crash and men bearing flaming torches and drawn swords and angry faces step into the room and the watch chimes, twelve, and . . .

  * * *

  * * *

  . . . the room around Isaac faded into a swirl of fire and bright swords and shouts and despair. Then another kaleidoscope of color and movement, and he folded his arms over his chest, gripping the watch tight, as he whirled back through space and time until he landed with a thud and a gasp on the floor of his room in Rookskill Castle on the coast of the North Sea in Scotland.

  He pitched forward onto his knees, his head spinning and stomach lurching, and he clutched at his shirt to feel the scroll still safely tucked inside. The skull spilled from his hand and rolled across the floor, coming to rest barely out of sight underneath his bed.

  CHAPTER 23

  Moloch and His Fae Hunter

  Moloch bends over the Seelie king’s spy. He’s never killed one of his own kin before. Once he might have retched at the thought. Now his anger makes it easy to set his qualms aside. He’ll dispose of this body and then set out to find the Guardian.

  He has a little time before the stupid king starts thinking that something has gone wrong.

  Moloch clutches the mirror in his hand and rotates it until it becomes a window again and he can make out the image on the other side more clearly.

  “What’s this?” he mutters. “Ah!”

  The object that glints from the shadows in a room in Rookskill Castle is an object he’s seen before. The beautiful silver skull of the Witch’s Watch. Moloch remembers the last time it was used. Poor unfortunate Queen Mary of Scotland. Her interference with time may have doomed her.

  It’s a magical artifact that Moloch is quite certain has not been used in the human world since then, which means it must be in the hands of . . .

  Moloch smiles.

  He twists the mirror, trying to see more of the room, but the crack distorts the image. He sees what might be a human moving or might not, and the window closes to become just a mirror. Moloch tosses the mirror aside and summons one of his sluagh hunters.

  “Rookskill,” he tells the hunter. “Quickly. Tell me what you find. I must make ready.”

  The hunter bows its head. The sluagh have lately begun to treat him as more than just a leader—they’re treating him as their king.

  * * *

  * * *

  The hunter flies through the thin place between worlds and lands atop a swaying pine tree deep in the forest that surrounds the hulking castle. Thick, swirling Scottish mist fills the air and hides the fae from anyone who might look in its direction. It lifts its head and sniffs.

  And is confused.

  There are strange enchantments within the forest. Ancient magic that is not faerie magic. Magic that has been invoked from a primal past. Dire wolves slink through the underbrush. Skeletal shadow-banshees lurk, and pixies and powries wait. Even for this Unseelie fae hunter, the evil magic in Rookskill’s forest reeks of fear.

  And other magic—wards—protects the castle itself like invisible walls, wards that come from somewhere within the castle, wards that are for the moment strong enough to fend off the dark magic. But for how long?

  The fae hunter spreads its great leathery wings and swirls back through the thin place to return to Moloch with the news that the castle is both protected and under threat.

  * * *

  * * *

  Moloch listens carefully.

  The smile spreads slowly. So perfect. Great magic both good and bad is awake again at Rookskill and that can mean only one thing.

  “Ready my dragon, Wyvern,” Moloch demands of his sluagh. He’ll wait until the Seelie fae are drunk or sleeping, the silly Seelie. Moloch will be ready to pass through a thin place when the moment comes.

  And he will fly Wyvern because a dragon spreads terror to humans. Breathing fire, screeching . . . such a lovely thing, a dragon.

  Moloch strokes his scar with one clawlike finger (when did his fingers begin to look like claws?). Maybe he’s been wrong all this time. Maybe he’s happier exactly where he is. With the stupid sluagh in the dark corner of the fae realm.

  He’ll certainly be happy when he’s found the Guardian.

  Moloch strips off the patch that covers his missing eye. The exposed eye socket, the puckered scar—he might as well own them. He might as well stop trying to be loved by the Seelie fae. Yes. He’s done with trying to get back into the good graces of his treacherous kin. With the magic that is controlled by the Guardian, Moloch could take the entire fae realm for his own and turn the bright Seelie place to ash. Make them all look just like him. Make them all stink of rot. Make them all feel the pain of loss, rejection, and loneliness.

  When he has this magic he’s been searching for, he’ll get rid of the king and any others who refuse to worship—yes, worship!—his scarred Unseelie face.

  CHAPTER 24

  Isaac

  1942

  Nausea roiled through Isaac and he tried to steady himself. His head swam, and the hum that followed him everywhere rose and fell, rose and fell, until it finally began to subside. He pulled the scroll from inside his shirt and grabbed the watch from underneath the bed. He was still recovering from his near miss, from almost not having the watch in hand when it finished chiming. If the woman hadn’t been there to help him, why . . . He took a sharp breath.

  He couldn’t make that mistake again. He was certain that he’d doomed her, that she might have escaped those men and their swords, escaped with the girl through that magical door if it hadn’t been for him. If it hadn’t been for her helping him reach the watch in time. He clenched his fists, angry with himself and miserable for the woman. He didn’t know what had happened to her, but it didn’t look good.

  Then he sat back, leaned back against the bed frame, settled himself, and thought.

  He needed to understand what his parents were trying to tell him by sending him to that time and place, to where he’d just been.

  He’d been in ancient Greece, he was pretty certain. He’d seen a woman mathematician there use magic and create a door where there was none. He’d witnessed her sending a girl into a magical place, handling a possibly magical object, and being threatened. Somehow his parents had planted the scroll and left the eternity knot for him to find.

  Was his only purpose there to find the scroll and bring it back? And what had he missed when he traveled to the circle of standing stones and watched those monsters carry people off into the night sky?

  First things first, he thought, and Isaac leaned forward onto his knees and unrolled the scroll.

  It was a plan, for certain, but strange and complicated. It appeared to depict a three-dimensional building, in great architectural detail, but the building (if that’s what it was) was only shown as an interior and appeared to be floating on the paper. Moving. Changing before Isaac’s eyes.

  He blinked. The image did change. He picked up the scroll and held it by one side.

  Yes, exactly. A wall—if it was a wall—shifted here. A corridor moved there. Each move, each change was slight and slow but steady. The image was not fixed on the paper. It moved by some strange magic. The low hum whispered in his brain.

  And the words were threaded in and around the diagram, strung through the structure like a poem, weaving in and out of the moving parts like seaweed in a shallow ocean or a vine waving in a breeze.

  The words made no sense whatsoever. He turned the paper this way and that but couldn’t make it out at all.

  He needed hel
p. And he’d come to the right place to find it, hadn’t he? His parents had sent him to Rookskill, where magic wasn’t just present, it was taught and studied by people who knew what they were about. Magic was being used by kids his own age.

  Well, he thought, with a wry twist of his lips, don’t tell that to Ralph Baines, who doesn’t believe in magic.

  And then Isaac wished, with a sharp pang, that he could thank his parents. Thank you for sending me where I can find answers. Thank you for believing in me.

  Plus, he thought, time travel is pretty amazing.

  Yes, he’d made the mistake of using the watch once when he didn’t understand it. And he’d made the mistake of interacting with the past. But he had to keep trying. He took a deep breath.

  Right.

  Isaac tucked everything—scroll and casket with the watch back inside—into his pack, hoisted the pack over his shoulder, and made his way downstairs to the small library.

  * * *

  * * *

  Amelie was right where he’d left her and it occurred to him that, maybe, for her, he’d only been gone a short time, while for him it had been more than an hour. She’d barely moved, the light in the room was just as when he’d left, and the clock on the mantel confirmed this idea. Even Willow was still hovering up near the ceiling. Interesting, Isaac thought.

  “I need your help,” Isaac began.

  She looked at him with raised eyebrows. “Of course. What is it?”

  He began to tick off his thoughts on his fingers. “My parents sent me here because I have some kind of magical gift but I don’t know what it is, so that makes one. Two, they have given me a time machine—”

  “A what?” Ame interrupted, her eyes wide.

  “Ooh,” Willow said. “What fun!”

  “I will come back to that. Third, they are leaving hints each time I time travel that I need to puzzle out and put together. And last, my parents said I am being hunted. And it is pretty sure I am being hunted by some magical monster, and though I have only seen it a couple of times, it is terrifying.” He paused for breath. “What do you think?”

  “Wow,” Amelie said. “That’s quite a lot.” She stood up and paced across the room and back, her hands on her hips. “Well, Kat is brilliant at puzzles. When she comes back, we need to fill her in. And Leo is cleverer than he acts. He’s just got no self-confidence. He wants to impress his dad, who I gather is a bit of a tosser.”

  “A . . . what?” Isaac interrupted.

  “Stuffy,” Ame said. “Not very nice. But Leo reads a bunch, and he loves history, and he can see the future. And Colin”—she paused and smiled—“Colin’s sensitive. Plus he can speak to animals, which is more useful than it might seem.” Her smile faded. “The only thing is, Colin went through that time when I did a couple of years ago, maybe even worse because he was under the spell of our monster for even longer. So, he’s a wee bit fragile.” She paused again. “Sorry. I chatter out loud while I think.”

  Isaac nodded, waiting.

  She stopped pacing and looked up at the bookshelves. “Since my specialty is magical creatures, why don’t we start with them? Maybe we can figure out what it is that’s hunting you, as you called it. Can you describe it?”

  He nodded. “It is big, as big as a very tall man. Black wings. And red eyes that are . . . how do you say? . . . creepy. One of the times I saw it was in Orkney when I was on my way to catch the ferry, just at dawn. The farmer who drove the lorry repeated words over and over, and he seemed afraid. But I could not understand his words.”

  “Huh.” She moved across the library and pointed to a high shelf. “See that book with the red binding? Can you fetch it down?”

  Isaac pulled the ladder along the wall and climbed up and ran his hands over the old volumes. He tugged out the book and brought it down, placing it on a table, next to several other books Amelie had stacked there.

  She picked up Isaac’s book, and he read the title on the spine: Folklore and Legends of Scotland with Particular Attention to Magical Monsters. Isaac shivered as Amelie opened to the index. The pages were thick vellum, crinkled with age and illustrated with images that reminded Isaac of gargoyles—leering faces, animals with fangs and claws, slithering dragonish creatures.

  “From your description, I suspect this one,” she said, pointing to the listing for “Faeries, Unseelie.” She turned to the entry, and goose bumps rose on Isaac’s skin.

  Amelie read out loud, “‘Fae who inhabit the Realm of Faerie. See also: Unseelie Court; Host; Sl—’ Oh!” Amelie clapped her hand over her mouth. “I shouldn’t read that one out loud. That would be asking for trouble.”

  Willow, hovering overhead, made a whimpering noise.

  Isaac leaned over and read the word she wouldn’t say: sluagh. “What do you mean, trouble?”

  “That word is dangerous when said aloud,” Amelie answered. “Look here.” She pointed to an illustration.

  It was a great tall man-like creature dressed in a cloak and wearing a necklace of small bones. It had large leathery wings folded partly back against its shoulders. Its hands were long, its fingers like claws. Its face was almost too perfect, too beautiful, but its eyes were red coals, staring out of the book like it saw Isaac with those burning eyes. Isaac’s insides twisted.

  “That,” he said. “That is what I saw. A sl—”

  “Stop,” Willow commanded. They lurched away, flattening themselves against the ceiling. “Never say that name out loud. Thankfully, it’s daylight, but even so . . .” Willow shot looks into the shadowy corners. “Read what it says and you’ll see. Read it.”

  Amelie read out loud: “‘The shadow fae of the Unseelie Court are the most evil of faeries, living in a dark corner of the Faerie Realm. Malevolent, they appear most often in times of strife and in the twilight hours or the borderlands between day and night, fall and winter, and life and death. Flying as a host, they seek to harvest the souls of mortals. To speak their formal name, the I-won’t-say-it, is to invoke them to you. Never utter that name out loud, especially in darkness, or you may be taken, for they are devilish hunters.’” Amelie leaned away. “And that’s what you saw? Goodness.”

  Isaac moved to sit in the nearest chair. He remembered the people he’d seen near the ring of stones who were taken into the night sky. “One was there, with my parents. And then in my first time travel and again when I was in that lorry. My parents said something was hunting me. That must be it.”

  “But,” Amelie said, “why?”

  He shook his head, his eyes meeting hers. “I do not know.”

  The door to the library flew open.

  “You need to come look,” Kat said. Her face was white. Colin was right behind her, his hand on Canut’s back. “Come look outside.”

  * * *

  * * *

  The four children and one dog stood at the open front door, staring into the woods.

  The forest was pushed right up to the edge of the drive.

  “Just like earlier,” Kat said. “The forest is trying to break the wards.”

  The air was cold and damp and smelled moldy. Isaac was reminded of the cemetery in Josefov, the crush of tombstones leaning like bad teeth, the shadowed, dank oldness of it.

  This forest was now so thick they couldn’t see beyond the first trees.

  “There’s some dreadful magic at play,” Kat said. “Those brambles are shoving right up against my warding spells. If only Gumble was still here.”

  Isaac heard a noise and looked up.

  “Rooks,” Kat said. “They’re always here. But that seems like a lot more than usual. Colin?”

  “They aren’t our rooks,” Colin said. “They won’t tell me where they’re from.” He paused. “They’re laughing at us.”

  To Isaac, they sounded like ordinary birdcalls, which made him wonder about all the other animal sounds he’d ever
heard.

  “What’s going on?” Leo emerged from the parlor where Baines had stationed himself.

  Kat pointed outside.

  Leo stood silent for a moment, then said, “I can feel it. It wants in.” The trees were moving even though there was no wind.

  “What about him?” Kat pointed at the door to the parlor. “Baines?”

  “Don’t know yet,” Leo said. “He went on and on about my father. It was awful. And magic. He seems to think I’m on his side, that I couldn’t possibly believe in what he called nonsense.”

  “Maybe that’ll come in handy,” Kat said, as she turned and closed—and locked—the great door.

  Amelie said, “Isaac needs our help. This may be more complicated than we think. More than just about the wards and the forest. It may be that everything since he arrived is connected. Maybe even bigger than last time, with, you know.”

  Colin made a small noise.

  The five children exchanged looks, and then Kat, putting her hands on her hips, said, “Well then, let’s get started.”

  CHAPTER 25

  The Wraith

  A gift has been given to the forest wraith.

  A boy entered the forest and with him came a magic so strong it still shivers through the trees and whispers through the shadows. The vines snake toward the warding boundaries searching for the boy. The trees stretch their branches nearer the castle. The wolves prowl closer, sniffing for his scent. The boy’s very presence strengthens the ancient magic the wraith has brought to the forest. Soon, the wraith thinks, the wards will fall.

  A man entered the forest, too, but he was as blank as bones, as dry as dust. Useless.

  But then came the gift, the true gift.