Fiona heard the whoop of an electrical device charging up.
Two blasts of lightning shot out and hit the werewolves. One was hurled against one of the portable buildings. The wall crumpled under the impact. The other hit the ground on the edge of the light and rolled off into the darkness.
Jessica raised her electro-gauntlet. “Nice shooting, Mr Shell.”
“To you as well, Miss Jessica,” the bronze tortoise replied. A taser coil had unfolded from a hatch in his shell.
A deep voice spoke from behind them. “So it’s you.”
Alice jumped between Fiona and the speaker. Without her shadow Fiona was glad for the protection, if more than a little annoyed by the need for it. The speaker was an old man in a long blue coat, leaning on a tall wooden stick. He wore a wide-brimmed floppy hat that shadowed his face, but Fiona could see he had a patch over one eye.
Behind him, for the first time, Fiona noticed an entrance into the mountainside. It was wide and low, its proportions strange to a London dweller.
“Hi again,” Jessica said, waving with her free hand. “This is my sister Fiona and our friend Alice.”
“If those werewolves are yours, maybe you should call them off,” Fiona said. “My sister is surprisingly good at zapping big monsters.”
The old man uttered a loud harrumph. The set of his mouth was not pleased. “What have things come to, when they can be beaten so easily by a little girl?” He put his weight on his staff as he approached them. “Why have you come here? And why have you brought a vampire to this hallowed place?”
Fiona made a leap. “She warned us you’re the reason the vampire court is preparing to attack the magicians.”
The old man drew himself up. He was one of the tallest men Fiona had ever seen, when he straightened his bent old spine. “I have nothing to do with the British vampire court.”
“I guessed that from the way you just about spat when you said the word ‘vampire.’ But it is your doing. You’re the reason the Emerald Consortium no longer hands out new gemstones.”
She could see his face now in the soft blue light. His expression was grim. “They did that?”
“And they’re cancelling the leases on ones they’ve already handed out.”
“An underhanded business move if ever there was one,” the old man said. “They were named the stewards of this place. Not the owners. Only the keepers.”
With a roar, one of the werewolves burst from the wreckage of the portable building. The old man did no more than raise a hand and the werewolf settled on its haunches.
Definitely talking to the boss, Fiona thought.
“I’m amazed,” Alice said. Her words were thick around her elongated teeth. “You’re human and yet he obeys you without question.”
“We’ve been together a long time,” the old man said. He did not hide his disapproval from her. “Is this why you’ve come, sister of Jessica? To beg me to restore access to the tomb to those lazy goats?”
Which brought Fiona to the point where she remembered she didn’t really have a plan.
“Could we go inside?” she asked. “I’ve lost all feeling in my chin.”
“I really want to show Fiona the crystal skeleton,” Jessica said. “Can we show her the skeleton? She says there’s something–”
Fiona cut in before Jessica could give away that Fiona hoped to learn its secret. “If it’s not too much trouble.”
He grumbled and muttered, but he allowed them to enter the doorway in the side of the mountain – or at least he walked towards it without telling them to go away. Fiona’s boots left deep prints in the snow as she followed him. Beside her, Alice’s footprints were almost invisible.
“Have you heard of him before?” Fiona whispered.
Alice looked pleased. “No.”
As he passed through the doorway, the old man muttered again. Several of the blue fireflies detached from the swarm and alighted on the end of his staff. Once in the tunnel, the blue lights lit it up well enough to see.
The tunnel was as wide as the door, but taller, with a ceiling that came to an arched point. The walls were covered in markings she took to be a language, though not one she knew. It was several degrees warmer, which Fiona would have been more pleased with had the outside temperature not been so far below zero.
“Your sister has told you about this place?” the old man asked.
“And showed me the photos she took with her phone,” Fiona replied, rubbing life back into her cheeks.
“Speaking of which, some of them came out blurry, so excuse me.” Jessica brushed past the old man. She already had her phone in hand.
The old man sighed. “She does not stop.”
“She really doesn’t,” Fiona said.
He seemed irritated, but not completely displeased. To Alice he said, “This place has many wards against your kind. Stay close to your friend or you will be lost.”
Fiona offered her hand. Alice took it with a wry smile. Her flesh eased back towards her human shape, but her hand was still larger than Fiona’s. The old man led them on, his staff striking the stone floor with a solid thud on every second step.
The hieroglyphic script continued down the walls of the hall. It was interspersed with pictograms and one in particular, of a man, she took to represent the tomb’s crystallised resident. She assumed they were meant to depict the man’s victories in war, though to judge from the images the things he had fought were rarely human.
Jessica was near bending down to snap pictures of a cartouche of pictograms and glyphs near the floor. She stuck her tongue out. “I was in a hurry last time.”
“What happened?”
Jessica gestured with her electro-gauntlet. “My dummy of a big sister was walking into a trap I told her not to walk into.”
Fiona scowled. “I told you, I knew it was a trap. I–” She shook her head. “I’m not having this argument again.”
Ahead, the corridor ended at a door, as low and wide as the one on the surface. The old man raised his staff. Blue fireflies swarmed past Fiona and spread up into the room, out of her line of sight.
The room sat under a big dome. Above, past the swirling fireflies, unfamiliar constellations were etched into the ceiling. She spared them only a glance, though Jessica hurried up behind her and began to take pictures.
She saw the raised bier and its occupant. When Fiona turned to him, the old man gave her a single, solemn nod.
Hand in hand with Alice, Fiona mounted the two steps up to the central platform. She touched the corner of the bier. She felt ancient time, like water that had long split off from a stream and grown still in a pond.
The skeleton was that of a man, just as Jessica had said. The green crystal caught the light of the blue fireflies and reflected it in a strange way, as though returning more of it, as though it contained more than the usual range of colours. If he had been covered in garments when he was laid to rest, they were long gone. Not even dust remained on the bier.
The ones who had come here, the ones who had taken from his remains to create the gems, they had started with his feet. The toes, feet, ankles and shins were all gone, as were the knees. The thighs ended about halfway. They were hollow. If in life the man’s bones had been filled with marrow, there was no sign of it.
“It feels wrong,” Fiona said, her voice hushed. “To take from him like this. It feels like a … like a desecration.”
“He would not have minded, I think,” the old man said. He had not mounted the platform. He stood with both his gnarled hands wrapped around his staff. “Not if it helped those who help others.”
Fiona half turned and Alice matched the move. “Is that why you let this start?”
The grim set of his features changed. She sensed his approval. “The first to come here was a British warlock. That is what you call the men in your country, do you not? He did not want it for himself. Such a thing had little to offer him. He wanted it for an apprentice, one who would help him protect your homeland
.”
“Who was he?” Alice asked. “The old warlock?”
The old man spread the fingers of one hand in lieu of a shrug. “He called himself Hawthorn.”
Jessica, muttering to herself about bugs with glowing blue bums, circled around to the other side of the tomb to try and get a better picture of the ceiling.
“And then?” Fiona asked.
“He kept his word,” the old man said. “He took enough for a single warlock’s ring. That warlock spent his lifetime helping Hawthorn protect the lives of your people.”
“James Mandellan.” Alice’s face bright with excitement. “The apprentice was James Mandellan, the first British warlock. Jacob told me about him once. He was a soldier who fought in the Battle of Culloden and in a few more places in India. According to family legend, he was given his ring in 1749, in return for a lifetime of service.”
Fiona frowned. “The first British warlock? What about the Blackwoods?”
“Oh, they like everyone to think the James Mandellan was the first too,” Alice said.
“Typical.” She swapped the hand holding Alice’s and turned to speak directly to the old man. “Then what happened? How did they go from one ring to hundreds of them?”
“James Mandellan’s grandson Barnabas came here,” the old man said. “He had studied his grandfather’s journal and deduced the location, if not the source. I watched him as he journeyed across this land. His heart was kind. He earned the gratitude of the werewolves. When he found the tomb, he placed a gold coin on the bier and took only enough for seven rings.”
I watched him as he journeyed, Fiona thought. She felt a chill that didn’t come from the frigid tomb. How old are you, old man?
“That still doesn’t explain the rest,” she said.
Alice still faced the bier. She stretched her free hand towards it, though she avoided coming into contact with the old stone. “Peter Murdoch did the rest,” she said. “The founder of the Shadow Council, the one who brought Britain’s factions into line. The Emerald Consortium was given stewardship here to control the supply.”
“Were you there?” the old man asked.
Alice shrugged. “I was having a strange century.”
The old man’s staff clacked on the stone floor as he came closer. “Peter Murdoch’s rule brought order and peace. He ended the bloodletting between those who wanted to control the power that lies here. Your world owes its security to him.”
“That security is dying,” Alice said.
“There’s something else.” Fiona said.
Jessica bounced up on the other side of the bier and leaned on it. Her electro-gauntlet made a metal crash as she rested it on the stone. “Yeah. What’s the big secret about this guy?” She waved at the crystal skeleton.
“He wasn’t human, was he?” Fiona asked the old man. “I mean, that’s kind of obvious. Who has a crystal skeleton? Except it’s more than that.” She had been opened to so many possibilities. She could feel those fireworks in her mind again. “I think there’s a lie right here in front of us. I think this skeleton is a deception. This creature or being, what was he? What did he really look like?”
The old man lifted his head. Anger flashed in his one eye, but as quick as it was there it was gone, replaced by a twinkle of deep amusement.
“You’re right,” he said. “He wasn’t human at all. His final working reshaped his bones to conceal his true nature.” The old man stroked his chin. “You are a strange one. I can’t make you out with either eye. I have upset the balance Peter Murdoch created by closing this place to those greedy goats. Perhaps you are the one to set a new balance.”
“What was he?” Fiona asked. She could feel Alice’s fingers tighten on her own.
“He wasn’t a man,” the old man said. “He was a dragon.”
Chapter 22 – Rob and Julian
The seatbelt signs switched off throughout the passenger cabin as the plane came to a halt at Gatwick airport. Up and down the cabin’s length, seatbelts clicked as their wearers freed themselves. Phones chimed and chirped as their owners started receiving messages. Some passengers went straight for the overhead compartments. Others made themselves wait in their seats, knowing full well the plane doors wouldn’t open for several minutes yet.
Rob rammed his knees against the seat in front of him and twisted around to get his phone from his pocket. “Got to warn Fiona.”
Julian grunted. He had his head back and eyes closed.
Rob turned his head to the side as he peered at his phone. He didn’t have to, but he couldn’t help himself. A white medical pad covered one eye and a white bandage wrapped around his head to hold it in place. His eye was about half healed, but he didn’t want to terrorise any little old ladies on the flight with the gruesome sight.
Watch out for wizards, he typed with his thumbs. Will explain when we see you.
He and Julian hadn’t talked much since their escape from the maze in Iceland. Hemming had driven them back to Reykjavik and taken them to a ‘friend’ who could put them up for the night. The friend had bandaged Rob’s eye and handed Julian a box of painkillers, with the warning not to take them by the fistful. Julian had been alternately floating on codeine and cranky with headaches since. At least his nose had stopped bleeding by the morning.
The bus to Keflavik airport had pulled off the main road and stopped in a carpark outside a hotel. The driver was outside, helping a group of new passengers stow their luggage.
“What was that glowing ghost thing Astra whipped out?” Rob asked.
“A ghost,” Julian croaked. “They made it.”
Rob turned away from the window. “What do you make a ghost out of? They’re not made of anything.”
“You make them out of memories.” Julian still looked haggard after a night’s exhausted sleep. “And psychometric impressions. We leave them everywhere we go, like tracks or fingerprints. Ghostcrafters hunt those impressions down and collect them. Like–” He made a feeble looping gesture with his hand. “Like collecting leaves and flowers and pressing them into books.”
“So why is that a stupid thing to do?” Rob asked. “I got the feeling Astra was about to kick our arses.”
“First rule of necromancy: don’t call up anything you can’t put down. Savraith was a wizard. If we’re lucky, all that will happen is that the ghost will try to break free of Astra’s control and go on a massively destructive rampage.”
“Righto.” Rob filed that away with the other horrible things he’d worry about if they ever happened.
The bus engine chugged into life again. The driver pumped the accelerator a couple of times and turned towards the car park entrance. The new passengers chattered as they settled in their seats.
“What if we’re not lucky?” Rob asked.
“One of two things. First, Savraith could come back to life via his ghost. Which I think unlikely, actually. The monster in Fiona’s shadow killed him pretty thoroughly.”
Once in a while Rob remembered the monster in Fiona’s shadow. If it happened in her company, he got a bit paranoid about the surrounding lighting.
Julian massaged the bridge of his nose. “Second, and this is one that I’m concerned about, Savraith was one of three wizards.”
“Ah,” Rob said.
The bus reached the main road and turned towards the airport.
“Right,” Rob said.
The plane door opened and they joined the impatient mass of passengers funnelling past the smiling flight attendants. Some people hurried once they reached Gatwick’s corridors, trying to reach passport control ahead of the rest. Others moved at a slower pace, towing overactive children or as best their old knees allowed.
Rob and Julian were somewhere in the middle. Rob was still worried about his depth perception. If he crashed into someone, he’d knock them off their feet. Julian was just tired.
“Going to send a message to Zoe too,” Rob said. “We’ve got to talk.”
Julian snapped out of his wear
iness. “What? No, don’t warn her. We need to surprise her.”
“Surprise her? Why?”
“Don’t you think it’s a little too convenient that Astra and her friends knew to hurry and get there ahead of us?”
Rob slowed down, the walk to passport control forgotten. He could feel his face getting hotter. “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”
Julian slowed as well. The old people and families with small children began passing them. “Come on, think it through. You told her we were going to Iceland, didn’t you?”
Rob’s voice roughened around the edges. “She had nothing to do with that.”
“You don’t know her, Rob. You hardly know a thing about her. I mean, she didn’t tell you she had an evil twin sister, did she?”
“You’ve got some fucking balls standing there and accusing someone else of keeping secrets. She wouldn’t do that.”
“You don’t know that she didn’t.”
Rob took a step closer. He didn’t notice his fingers tingling. “You want to talk about evil girlfriends? You told Alice we were going to Iceland, didn’t you?”
Julian’s features flashed from irritated to angry. “Alice isn’t–”
“Alice is a three hundred year-old bloodsucking fiend! They could build a war memorial with the names of all the people she’s killed!”
“She’s reformed! She doesn’t do that any–”
“Oh yeah? Oh yeah? What does she do when she’s off doing her own thing, huh? She could be off hunting people! You don’t know.”
“Gentlemen.”
Rob whipped around. His hands were curled into claws. His feet were braced apart, ready to fight.
The speaker was a man of medium height in a pale grey suit, clean-shaven, his hair neatly combed. In feature, in dress, in bearing, he was the kind of anonymous suit and tie figure who populated the cubicles of the office world. In a company photo he’d be third from the back, unnoticed behind the big smiles of the directors and the brash confidence of the superstars. Rob caught the scent of powdered deodorant, but only faintly. Otherwise, the man was odourless.
Immortal Make Page 23
