“Next!” shouted the ticket agent. He was a slight man, only a few inches taller than Maggie, with narrow shoulders and thin arms. His thick black hair was wavy and just a little too long, curling into stray tufts at the temples and the base of his scrawny neck. When Maggie and Iain didn’t immediately step to his counter, he repeated his command, his voice rising half an octave to a shrill screech. “Ne-ext!!”
Maggie, startled by his cry, hopped quickly to the counter. Iain followed more slowly.
“And what do you want?” asked the little man, making no attempt to hide his contempt for the ‘customers’ who insisted on interrupting his day. His blue plastic name tag read ‘ROGER.’
“Er,” Maggie began, a bit taken back by Roger’s attitude, “we’d like two tickets to Brest.”
“Brest?” Roger sneered.
“It’s in France,” Maggie explained. “Brittany.”
“I know where it is,” Roger huffed. He tapped something into his computer keyboard then studied the monitor. “You’ll have to connect at London and Rennes,” he seemed glad to announce. “That last one is France too,” he added with another sneer.
“Thanks,” Maggie grumbled.
Iain smiled but otherwise stood by silently, more than happy to let Maggie handle matters.
“When do you want to travel?” Roger asked with a bored sigh as he readied his fingers over his keyboard.
“Today,” Maggie replied. “When’s your next flight?”
“Today!” Roger gasped. “Good lord, woman! Do you have any idea how expensive that’s going to be?”
Iain spun quickly away, coughing to stifle his laughter.
“Let me worry about that, Roger,” Maggie shot back. “Just tell me when your next flight is and whether you have any seats left.”
Roger frowned contemptuously at her order, but then sighed again very loudly and began checking the computer.
While he did so, Maggie considered the travel posters framed on the wall behind the counter. There was the obligatory shot of the Eiffel tower and one for a music festival in Greece from last summer. As Roger stepped to the end of the counter where the tickets were printing out, Maggie was able to see the poster on the wall directly in front of her.
‘Jöjjön Magyarországba,’ it announced, above the convenient English translation: ‘Come To Hungary.’ A bilingual poster for the approximately 6.8 billion people who don’t speak Hungarian. The lithograph promoted an exhibition of artifacts showing that summer at Budapest’s National Museum. Several such artifacts were displayed including a small bronze statue, a knife of some sort and what was either a plate or a talisman—all, according to the copy, collected from a newly discovered archeological site in the town of Visegrád, just north of Budapest. Maggie found the artifacts somehow familiar and as Roger returned to his station, tickets in hand, she leaned to one side and craned her neck to look around him, reading the bottom of the poster where stood the title of the exhibition.
‘A Keltik Vidék - Müvészet Europáböl Györg Románosz’
‘The Celtic Continent - Artifacts From Pre-Roman Europe’
“Here are your tickets,” Roger slapped them down irritably on the counter. “The total is—”
“Wait!” Maggie shouted.
“What?” Roger shrieked in surprise.
“What?” Iain asked, at first concerned something was amiss. But then he saw the look in her eye.
“Never mind,” Maggie instructed, pointing at Roger’s chest but still staring at the Hungarian poster. “Never mind Rennes. We need two tickets to Budapest.”
***
“Next!” Roger shouted without looking up from his computer.
“When’s your next flight to Brittany?” Sgt. Elizabeth Warwick asked as she stepped up to the counter.
Roger glared up and raised a derisive eyebrow. “What is that—some sort of joke?”
Warwick hid her confusion. “It’s no joke, I assure you.” She extracted her badge and I.D. and showed them to the ticket agent.
Roger straightened up, nodded and tapped at his computer keyboard. “There’s a flight to Rennes at 12:04,” he explained. Then his sneer returned and he slapped at two torn up boarding passes still sitting on his counter. “Unless of course you want to wait for me to print out your ticket, then change your mind and go to Budapest instead.”
The confusion couldn’t be hidden this time. “How’s that?”
So Roger explained about the snotty little American woman with all the cash and her tall lummox of a Scottish boyfriend and their sudden and irritating decision to forego the tickets to Brittany he had so diligently printed out and instead take the 8:57 to Budapest, by way of London and Berlin.
“So if you want to do that, tell me now before I print out your damned ticket. The next flight to Budapest leaves at 11:18.”
Warwick looked at her watch. Ten-thirty.
“So what’ll be?” Roger demanded, “Brittany or Budapest?”
48. Blood Rite
Visegrád was founded in 872 by the earliest Hungarians, Magyar invaders from the Central Asian steppes. The city stood atop a great hill overlooking the Danube Bend, the point where the waters of Europe’s longest river turn ninety degrees to flow due south, on their way to cleave Buda and Pest before progressing toward their final destination in the Black Sea. The Magyars hadn’t been the first to recognize the area’s strategic significance and they wouldn’t be the last. After them came Huns, then Turks, then Austrians. Before them came the Celts.
The Huns and the Magyars eventually merged to become Hungarians, converting to Christianity and building churches and castles to rival any of Central Europe. In the 15th and 16th Centuries the invading Muslim Turks conquered all of southeastern Europe up to Vienna, an area which included Visegrád. The churches were converted to mosques, and the castles were reduced to ruins.
But the Huns and Magyars had built their cities upon the ruins of those whom they had vanquished. The Celtic holy sites, often chosen for their symbolic importance atop the highest hills, were swept aside to make way for Hungarian fortresses and castles.
Centuries later, when the Turks and the Austrians and finally the Russians were expelled from Hungary, and the Hungarians set about the business of rebuilding their country, one obvious priority was to rebuild the historic castles and monuments which dotted their countryside. The ruins of Visegrád’s castle, perched atop the highest hill in the city and presiding over the most breathtaking view of the Danube below, were among the first to be selected for renovation and soon efforts were underway to rebuild what could be rebuilt and preserve what could not. Experts from throughout Europe descended on the small town of 1,800 and began the painstaking archeological work required to properly preserve and restore on of Europe’s oldest castles. It was during this renovation, while excavating the earthen bowels of the castle’s deepest recesses, that workers unearthed, quite literally, a startling find: several dozen bronze sculptures and tools buried in the ground beneath the castle. It was immediately assumed and quickly confirmed that the artifacts were from the earliest inhabitants of the Danube Valley: the Celts. Experts put the age of the artifacts at somewhere around 3500 B.C., making them the oldest known relics of the pre-historic Celtic culture which had once dominated Europe. The artifacts were carefully extracted and sent to the National Museum in Budapest, the inevitable exhibition being advertised from one end of Europe to the other, while the renovation and excavation work continued in Visegrád, the upper floors of the castle ruins open to the public, but the lowest floors strictly off limits.
Maggie needed to get to those lowest floors.
But first she had to get rid of Iain.
They’d arrived in Budapest around four-thirty. Then a forty-five minute bus ride up to Visegrád. Iain had been mostly patient and compliant but he’d insisted on finding a hotel before taking in the scenery. And he couldn’t skip dinner. So an early dinner and then the twenty-five minute walk up the hill to the castle ruins.
She’d tried to persuade him to let her visit the ruins alone, but he would have none of it. Whenever she pushed too hard all he had to do was mention the sgian dhu in her door and she would remember why he’d come along in the first place. He actually had the dirk his pocket still and would extract it demonstratively, saying something to the effect of, “I think I’d rather I came along.”
But it was now or never. They had reached the top of the hill and were stepping through the ruined outer walls of the fortress. Maggie was convinced that the MacLeod boy and the unnamed Welsh girl had been spirited to the small town on the Danube bend, to be murdered in the ancient Celtic ruins beneath the castle. But she was at a loss as to how she could explain it to Iain without sounding completely insane. So either she had to convince him of the facts and to come with her—a conversation likely to include discussion of the Dark Book and its magic—or she had to save that conversation for later and send him away somehow. She opted for the later. Secrets were okay, she reminded herself, just no lies.
“Iain?” She batted her eyelids and licked her lips pitifully. “Do you think you could run back down to the city and buy me a bottle of water?”
It wasn’t completely a lie, she told herself. She was a little thirsty after all.
Iain stopped dead in his tracks. “Back down to the city?” He looked down the hill in exaggerated horror and fatigue. “We just got up here. It took us almost half an hour. It’ll take me an hour to go get you water.”
Maggie sat down on a short ruined wall. “I’ll wait here. Thanks.”
Iain goggled at her. “But—” he started. “I mean— Are you sure you need water?”
Maggie coughed lightly and offered an exaggerated swallow. “Oh yeah, definitely. I usually bring water, but I didn’t bring my backpack.”
Iain winced in guilt at this observation. Maggie had left her backpack back at the hotel room. When she’d picked it up—with its water bottle, flashlight, and Dark Book—Iain had asked, ‘Why are you bringing that?’ Unsure how to explain without mentioning the magic, she’d agreed to leave it behind. She hoped it hadn’t been a mistake.
“I’d come with you,” Maggie went on, trying to sound weak and parched, “but I’m afraid I’ll get dehydrated.” She looked up at the setting sun. “It’s still pretty hot out.”
It was at that and Iain wiped the sweat off his brow. “Aye. So you can see why I’m no thrilled at walking down and than back up that hill again.”
“I know, Iain. And thank you. There a lot of boyfriends who wouldn’t do that for their girlfriend.”
Maggie usually avoided calling him her ‘boyfriend.’ She was embarrassed by the term, feeling rather schoolgirlish, and they let the nature of their relationship go unspoken. But just as with the quiet man whose rarely raised voice commands that much more respect when it is raised, so too did this uncommon use of the terms ‘boyfriend’ and ‘girlfriend’ possess irresistible power.
“Er,” Iain stammered. “That is—” He rubbed the back of his neck and looked again down the hill. “Well, I suppose it won’t take as long to go downhill…”
“Thank you, Iain. Thank you so much.”
Iain frowned. He wasn’t entirely unaware of being manipulated, but he wasn’t sure what there was to be done about it. “All right, I should be back soon enough. Try not to look at the entire castle before I’m back. I’d like to see a bit of it too.”
He turned toward the hill, then turned back. He extracted the sgian dhu from his pocket and pressed it into her palm. “Here. Take this.” He looked her in the eyes, worry shading his own. “Just in case.”
Maggie nodded, then slipped the dagger into the pocket of her shorts. “Thanks again, Iain. Hurry back.”
Just don’t hurry too much, she thought, and stood to watch him disappear around a bend in the steep downhill path. Then she turned and dashed inside what remained of the castle.
It took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the darkness. The only light came from a series of light bulbs screwed into white plastic sockets bolted to the stone ceiling and joined by black electrical wire. Several displays crowded the entry, explaining the history of the site, the exhibits on display, and the general lay out of the open areas of the castle. To view these areas one needed simply to follow the series of signs which led away and to the right back toward those parts of the castle already restored. To the left was a large, white, plastic sheet, twenty feet wide and hanging from the ten-foot tall ceiling to the stone floor, effectively blocking view of whatever lay beyond. A dozen waist high metal posts stood sentry before the plastic sheet, their velvet ropes drooping menacingly between them. Each rope bore a laser-printed paper sign: ‘Behajtani Tilos - No Entry’.
Maggie looked around the stone foyer. No one was around. Likely a function of the time of day. The sun was setting. The sign in the center of the lobby explained even further. The castle would be closing to visitors in ten minutes. She’d have to come back with Iain tomorrow.
She ducked under the nearest velvet rope and sneaked around the plastic sheet.
Behind the plastic lay two things: a towering stone wall only a few feet from the plastic, and an arched doorway in said wall, holding a staircase leading downward. To the lower levels, no doubt, those still undergoing renovation and excavation. Maggie considered her timing. Any legitimate workers had likely gone home a few hours ago. The lower levels would be abandoned. Or at least they should be. She stepped to the top of the dimly lit stone staircase and paused.
From her pants pocket she extracted the rubbing from Ballincoomer. An intricate Celtic knotwork circle surrounded by three parts of a prophecy: ‘The banshee shall return to claim her legacy’; ‘Infantsblood shall be spilt onto ancestral earth’; and ‘The magic of the Celts shall be reignited.’
Considering the smeared pencil image, a thought struck her. Just where does a circle begin? And with this though in mind, she shoved the rubbing back into her pocket and began her descent.
Again bare light bulbs had been bolted to the ceiling; few and far between, they cast a most inadequate light. The steps themselves were cracked and worn, some stones wobbling beneath her feet, others sloping off into impossible rounded lumps.
Seventeen steps down she found herself at the mouth of a long, dim hallway. The ceiling was low and the breadth of the passageway was little more than Maggie’s own shoulders. The word ‘catacomb’ came to mind. Dirty stone walls brushed past her as she followed the widely spaced light bulbs toward the end of the long passageway. When she’d traversed its twenty-yard length, the hallway bent to the left, revealing another worn staircase leading downward into darkness. Maggie followed it down.
The next passageway was very much like the first. Again a narrow low-ceilinged corridor, again the dirty stone walls, again the widely-spaced bare light bulbs. The only difference came about halfway down the corridor—when the lights shut off. Closing time.
She was in complete and utter blackness. She waited a moment for her heart to slow and her eyes to adjust. Neither did. There was simply no light for her eyes to adjust to; she was as good as blind. And given this, her heart chose not to slow, but rather to race faster, as panic-driven adrenaline flooded her veins.
Pull yourself together, Devereaux, she told herself. You’re not that far down. And the corridor back upstairs doesn’t have any pitfalls—none that you noticed anyway. It’ll be easy enough to grope your way back upstairs.
She turned around in the darkness and took the first tentative step back toward the lobby.
Maybe her eyes were adjusting after all. She could see the faintest outline of a shadow ahead of her. It was her own shadow, cast out in front of her, black against the almost black of the passageway walls.
She stopped. And looked over her shoulder.
There was the faintest of lights coming from the end of the corridor. It barely illuminated the arched end of the passageway, but in the otherwise complete darkness, the light was distinctly visible. Just as distinct as the fai
nt voices she could hear coming from the same location.
Turning around again in the near darkness, she stepped carefully toward the end of the corridor, the light, and the voices.
The passageway ended in another staircase down to another narrow corridor. The difference this time was that the passageway was only about half the length of those above and ended in an arched doorway that led out onto a stone balcony. Maggie crouched down behind the short stone balcony wall and peered over the edge to the activity below.
She was at least thirty feet up. A steep stone staircase to her left hugged the wall and doubled back on itself to lead down to the excavation site below. Scaffolding adorned two of the three stone castle walls which burrowed into the earth and created, together with a natural rock face, a large sunken chamber the size of a typical auditorium. This impression was reinforced by the circular rings of a recently unearthed stone foundation which created the outline of an amphitheater in the dusty floor. And it was inside this ghost of an amphitheater, on the stage as it were, where they had assembled.
There were ten of them. Just as she’d expected. Six from the coven standing in a circle with the children in the middle, and four standing off to one side dutifully attentive to the proceedings. The four ‘ambassadors.’
From Ireland, Kitty McCusker.
From Wales, Gwen Palmer.
From the Isle of Man, Susan MacGowell.
And from Cornwall—Maggie shook her head; she should have known—from Cornwall, Officer Kernough. ‘Kernow’ was the Cornish word for ‘Cornwall.’
They’d been watching her, trailing her, making sure the seventh member of the coven—Brìghde Innes’ descendant—didn’t get too close.
The coven. The female-line descendants of the coven Brìghde Innes had established almost four-hundred years earlier to stop the dark magic and preserve the light. There had been seven then, but only six now—because Maggie’s Grandma hadn’t told her everything. Maggie was Brìghde’s female-line descendant; she would have completed the coven, but they’d thought better of approaching her—at least directly—until her feelings on their plans were known. And once known, Maggie was not welcome. Hence the sgian dhu in her door.
Blood Rite (Maggie Devereaux Book 2) Page 29
