Otherworld Protector

by Jane Godman

  Stella glanced from the television screen to the woman behind the counter. She was staring back at them with panic in her eyes as she spoke into her phone.

  * * *

  “This is the last leg of the journey. We’re almost there.”

  Cal could see that Stella was flagging. Her face was pale with weariness, her mouth set in a grimly determined line. She hadn’t said much when they left the café, simply following in Cal’s wake as he had thrown the money for their food and drink down on the table and made a swift exit. She hadn’t even asked where they were going as they made their way past the ice-cream-colored buildings and along the narrow streets of the oldest town in Wales.

  “What’ll it be?” he had asked, running a hand through his distinctive mop of chestnut hair. “Shave it off or get a hat?”

  “Hat,” she’d replied, with a look of horror. And that was why, despite the bright sunlight, he was wearing a knitted skullcap pulled low over his ears. Stella, who at least was dressed in different clothing from that in the police photographs, had purchased it for him from a craft stall on the town’s outdoor market. They passed through this bustling thoroughfare on their way out of Carmarthen and into the countryside beyond.

  “Shouldn’t we go to the police and at least try to explain what happened?” Stella asked now as they trudged up a steep hillside.

  “How do you propose we start that conversation?”

  She chuckled and the sound chased away some of his own weariness. “How about we just take a couple of corpses with us and let them do the talking?”

  “Spoken like a true necromancer. Seriously, going to the police is exactly what Moncoya wants us to do. Think about it, Stella. He would like nothing more than to get you away from me. What more effective way to do that than to get us both placed in police custody?”

  “You think he’s behind this terrorist nonsense?”

  “I know he is. You have no idea what he’s capable of. I, on the other hand, know him only too well. If we were arrested, the first thing that would happen is that the police would place us in separate cells. That would suit his evil majesty right down to the tips of his highly polished fingernails.” His mouth was a hard, thin line. It was what tended to happen whenever Moncoya was the subject of conversation.

  “Couldn’t you get us out of a police cell?” She reached out a hand for his, and although he felt the gesture was automatic, it tugged at something deep inside him. Something that had not been touched in a very long time.

  They had arrived at the summit of the hill now. Cal paused and smiled down at her. He would never get tired of looking at her heart-shaped face with its huge green eyes and that incredibly expressive mouth. It was a mouth that could do sulky and sultry like no other he’d ever seen. Right now, it was breaking into a grin that was half shy, half teasing. “Of course I could get us out, but do you want to be on the run for the rest of your life?”

  The grin vanished. “Isn’t that what we are doing now? This feels a lot like running to me.”

  “We were coming here anyway. This was part of my plan, not Moncoya’s.”

  “To come to the top of a hill in Wales?” Stella eyed him with obvious suspicion. “Don’t tell me, I’m going to become a wild woman of the woods.”

  “Close. Come on.” Keeping hold of her hand, he pulled her with him as he began to descend the other side of the hill. This place had that effect on him. It refreshed him. That was the reason he always came back. Coming here with Stella was something he had never envisioned. Would she be able to sense how special it was? Why did it matter so much that she should? The questions became superfluous as, apparently infected by his pleasure, Stella broke into a run. Pulling him with her, she laughed as they picked up speed and the summer breeze cleansed their faces of the long, weary hours of traveling.

  “Stop, you madwoman.” He pulled her to a halt. “We’re not going all the way to the bottom.”

  They were about halfway down the slope and Cal led Stella into a small, dense copse. In the darkest part of this wooded tangle, he pulled aside thick fronds of overhanging ivy, uncovering the concealed entrance to a cave. The white limestone rock was barely visible beneath its covering of lichen. Even if a rambler chanced to wander off the hill path and into the trees, in this gloomy light the person would walk right past the cave. You had to know what you were looking for. More important, you had to be looking with the right eyes.

  He felt suddenly nervous as he waited for Stella’s reaction. The arched entrance to the cave was high enough to walk through upright, and she studied this in silence for long moments. Then she turned to him with eyes that sparkled with excitement. “Can we go in?”

  The entrance led them into a small cavern. It was large enough for Cal to stand upright inside it, but he could have stretched out his arms and touched both walls. Reaching up into a natural shelf in the rock, he took down a flashlight. Beyond it, the cave narrowed and Cal led Stella into the gloom, shining the light ahead of him.

  “Just keep one hand on the wall and watch your step. The floor is uneven in places.”

  They walked for a minute before the corridor opened out into a large circular space. The beam of the flashlight illuminated the scene. There was an old sofa and two chairs, a bookshelf and a table. Stella took in these details, blinking at Cal in surprise. “Someone lives here?”

  “We do. For the time being.” Cal handed her the light and went over to the bookshelf. Taking down two old-fashioned oil lamps, he set about lighting them. Soon there was a warm, strangely homely glow about the place.

  “No, seriously.” He glanced up from his task, holding her gaze. “You are being serious.”

  “I told you I was bringing you to the only place I knew I could keep you safe. This is it.”

  Stella flopped down onto one of the chairs. “After the hours of traveling, revelations and confrontation, in spite of the fact we’re in a cave, this actually feels incredibly comfortable. Where will we sleep?”

  Cal pointed to an arch in the cave wall. “The bedroom is through there. I’ll take the sofa.”

  “And this may be a bit of a girlie thing but...”

  “There is no bathroom.” He started to laugh at her expression. “There is a stream just outside. It flows down into a deep pool. As long as you don’t mind the cold, it’s perfect for bathing. This cave has been inhabited on and off for centuries, so there is even a well for drinking water.”

  “I was actually thinking of something more basic than bathing.” Even in the flickering golden lamplight, he could see that she was blushing.

  “It is a bit primitive, I’m afraid. Think Victorians and chamber pots.”

  Stella lowered her head into her hands and, as he observed her shaking shoulders, Cal had a horrible feeling that she might have started to cry. When she looked up, her face was a picture of laughter.

  “In the space of twenty-four hours we’ve become desperate fugitives from justice.”

  He studied her in concern. “Can you get used to it? This is the one place I guarantee Moncoya won’t come.” Just don’t ask me how I know that.

  “I can get used to anything if I can get my head down right now and go to sleep.”

  “Come with me.” He held out his hand and pulled her up from the chair. Carrying one of the lamps, he led her through to where a bed fitted neatly into what turned out to be a small alcove in the cave wall. Cal dragged a large trunk out from under it and took clean pillows and bedding out of that.

  Stella watched him with round eyes. “You’ve thought of everything. Or did you know this was going to happen?” He busied himself making the bed and didn’t reply. She tried another, this time an unexpected, question. “How old are you?”

  It was a question he always treated with caution. He tried his standard answer. “The exact number of my years is something ev
en I cannot tell for the passing of time means little to me.”

  “Is that a roundabout way of saying you don’t know?”

  Cal started to laugh. “You could say that.”

  “So there’s no point worrying about how many candles we’ll need on your next birthday cake.” Stella tugged off her sneakers. “I think I’m going to sleep for about a week.” She lay down, her eyes closing as soon as her head touched the pillow. “Cal?”

  He had turned away, but he moved back to the side of the bed. “Yes?”

  “Stay with me.” Her voice was soft with drowsiness. “Please.”

  He hesitated for a moment. Then, kicking off his own battered shoes, he lay down next to her, fitting his body along the length of hers. Stella took his arm and draped it around her waist, murmuring something incomprehensible. Despite his own tiredness, Cal lay awake for a long time listening to her breathing as she slept.

  Chapter 8

  Stella had fallen into the deep, dreamless sleep of exhaustion, waking only once in the night. At first she had struggled to identify where she was in the all-enveloping darkness. Then, as her memory returned, she sought to pinpoint what had woken her. She had been lying on her side with her back to Cal, who still had one arm draped across her body. The rise and fall of his breathing brought his chest into contact with her shoulder blades, warming and comforting her.

  “Darnantes.” He was still in the grip of a deep sleep and the single, anguished word seemed to have been torn from his lips. Stella knew then that it had been his voice that had disturbed her slumber. The word meant nothing to her, but it clearly meant something—and it would seem that it was something hateful and poisonous—to Cal.

  He spoke again, this time muttering a sentence or two. The words were disjointed and unintelligible to Stella, but there was something about his voice that touched her. It resonated with pain and a sorrow that was both powerful and heart wrenching. Intuitively, she had turned and wrapped her arms around him, drawing him closer to her. The action seemed to comfort him and, pressing his face into the curve of her neck, he had fallen silent once more.

  The next time Stella woke, Cal was gone. He had left one of the oil lanterns beside the bed so that Stella could at least see, even though she had no idea how long she had slept. She rose, grimacing at the ache in her limbs and the fact that she was still wearing the clothes she had traveled and then slept in. Holding the lamp out in front of her and following the sound of tuneless whistling, she emerged from the cave to find Cal stirring a pot that sat in the middle of a roaring fire. He looked up, grinning at Stella as she approached.

  “Good afternoon.”

  She blinked at him. It was impossible to judge time, either in the darkness of the cave or here in the shadowy gloom of the bower. It was a strange sensation. Debilitating and yet curiously liberating at the same time. “Really?”

  “Not quite.” His hair was wet and, as she drew nearer, she could smell the clean scent of his freshly soaped skin. Jealousy and attraction immediately went to war inside her. Jealousy won...but only just.

  “You’ve bathed,” she said, unable to keep the slightly accusatory note out of her voice.

  “You can, too. Breakfast will be ready when you’re finished.” He pointed to where he’d draped a towel and a wash bag over a tree branch. He jerked his thumb behind him. “Just follow the edge of the cave wall for a few yards and you’ll come to the pool I told you about. The water’s cold, but crystal clear.”

  Stella plucked at the cloth of her jeans. “I haven’t got any clean clothes.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong.” He stepped aside and there, just behind him, next to the cave entrance was a suitcase. Not just any suitcase. It was Stella’s suitcase. The one she had left behind at La Casa Oscura. She eyed it as if it was a coiled snake.

  “How the hell...?”

  The questions crowded to her lips. Who had packed her belongings? How had her suitcase been delivered here? Was there an international Cave Courier Service? Did Moncoya know her stuff was gone? In the end, she asked none of them. She was here with a man whose eyes shone with a magical silver light. He had been her invisible protector throughout her life. At the same time he had been guarding her from harm, it seemed he had also been leading a double life as some sort of interworldly peacekeeper. She had seen flames shoot from his fingertips and heard him speak a dead language in a voice that was not his own. He had brought her to a cave that she strongly suspected was hidden from mortal sight. In spite of all this, she trusted him. He had driven monsters out from under her bed and drop-kicked a gargoyle for her. And now he had taken the trouble to fetch her clothes. Given everything else that was going on, did it really matter how he had done it? She decided it didn’t.

  Which was how, twenty minutes later, she came to be eating her breakfast dressed in a pair of frayed and faded denim shorts. It was impossible to see this garment since the oversize sweater she wore over it reached almost to her knees. Her favorite battered combat boots completed the ensemble. She was clean—having bathed in the crystal waters of a pool that, while they were cool, should actually have been arctic. She suspected that might be another Cal-related phenomenon—and now she was eating near-perfect porridge and fresh fruit. Okay, she was technically a suspected terrorist on the run from the police. And, she was getting used to the idea that she was a very desirable property in the eyes of the ruthless warring vampires, faeries, were-creatures, phantoms and various other nasties of a mythical place called Otherworld. Nevertheless, Stella was beginning to feel more like herself again.

  “Who’d have thought living in a cave could be so luxurious?” She smiled up at Cal.

  “We aim to please.” Cal brought his own breakfast over and came to sit next to her on the flat rock where she was perched. They ate in companionable silence.

  “You said this cave has been occupied on and off for centuries. Has it been handed down through generations of the same family?” Stella kept her voice studiously casual. That was the problem with Cal. He knew her too well for guile.

  “Not quite.” His own voice was distant.

  “Just the one occupant for a long time, then?” Stella probed a bit further. “One careful owner? A hermit, maybe? It’s certainly private enough.”

  He laughed, but it was a hollow sound, one she wasn’t used to from him. She thought how quickly she’d become attuned to his moods. “It is only private within the confines of this bower. Venture outside of these trees and you may well stumble upon those who seek this very place.”

  “Cal, you may have recovered from the traveling and the faerie fisticuffs of yesterday, but I haven’t. My brain is like mush. Stop talking in riddles.”

  He was definitely edgy, his eyes wandering restlessly around their leafy encampment. “Merlin was born in Carmarthen, Stella. This is his cave.”

  “You probably know more about this than I do—” Stella dredged deep into her memory for anything she had heard about the legendary sorcerer “—but does anyone really know for certain where he was born? I thought there were as many legends about Merlin as there were about his protégé, King Arthur. I’m certain I read somewhere that his cave was below the castle at Tintagel in Cornwall.”

  “I didn’t say this was his only cave.” The unease of a few minutes ago seemed to have gone and his smile, the one that did something strange to her midsection, had returned.

  “Ah, I see. He was a wizard of property.” It was curiously silent inside the canopy of trees, as if they were the only living creatures for miles. “What happens now, Cal? We can’t stay here forever.”

  “No, we can’t.” His voice struck her as endlessly sad. “The prophecy must be fulfilled.”

  “If that means what I think it does...” Stella made a movement as if to bounce up from her sitting position, but Cal caught her hands.

  “He
ar me out.” She tried to pull away, but he persisted. “Please?”

  “It doesn’t matter what you’ve got to say, Cal. Necromancer or not, star or not. There is no way I’m going to fight Moncoya or any other beasties just because some ancient cave-loving wizard who died hundreds of years ago said I should.” He kept his eyes fixed on her face, and eventually she subsided back into a sitting position. “Okay. I’ll listen, but you won’t change my mind.”

  It was a moment or two before he spoke, as though he had mentally rehearsed what he wanted to say. “The modern view of Merlin is the one you have just described. The white-bearded, dark-robed, elderly wizard who masterminded King Arthur’s rise to power. But you’re right. Legend has muddled what we believe we know of him. For centuries, scholars have even debated long and hard about whether he existed at all.”

  “Do you believe in his existence?” Stella was mesmerized by Cal’s expression. It was trancelike in its intensity. He gave a short nod. “Then he must have been real.”

  A slight laugh shook his shoulders. “Thank you. Believe me, I appreciate your faith in me. The powers bestowed upon Merlin encompassed much more than sorcery. He was given the ability to interpret dreams, to cast spells—in fact there has never been another, before or since, so talented in that respect—and to shape-shift, although his skills in that respect have, I believe, been exaggerated. Like you, he was also given the gift of necromancy. I know you do not view it as a gift yet. But it is just that. A great gift and one that must be handled with care. He was also endowed with an aptitude for invisibility.”