We should go now, Ned thought. He knew they should go.
Beside the tower base, to the right of it, was a large, rectangular space.
“What kind of sanctuary?” he asked.
“Well, Celtic, of course. They found skulls here,” Kate said quietly. “You know they worshipped the skulls of their ancestors?”
“I heard. And the heads of their enemies, too. Preserved them in oil. Or made them into drinking cups,” he said. “Nice people.”
Maybe it was right that these walls had come down, if that’s what they’d been like. Or maybe it wasn’t. And maybe it didn’t matter at all what Ned Marriner felt or thought about it, two thousand years later.
And then, finally—because they were quite close to it now—ahead of them, in the dusk, Ned noticed a column standing upright towards the back of that sanctuary space where Kate said skulls had been found.
It was as if he was being pulled that way.
He stepped over another low wall into what had been a holy place. He walked up to that column, stood before it, and looked more closely.
The pillar was about seven feet high. Tallest thing here, easily. Carved on it, from the base to the top, were a dozen primitive, unmistakable renderings of human heads.
Ned swallowed hard, and shivered again.
“Look at this,” he said.
He heard Kate behind him. She was still on the roadway, hadn’t stepped inside.
“Ned.”
“Can you believe this?” he repeated, staring at it in the twilight.
“Ned,” she said again.
He turned to look back. She was really pale now, ghost-like. Her arms were crossed tightly on her chest as if she were cold.
“Ned, this shouldn’t be here.”
“What? What does that mean?”
“I saw pictures . . . on the website. Of the dig. This was found here, but it was lying down, not standing, and . . . Ned, they moved it, into the museum, like fifty years ago. That’s where it’s supposed to be.”
Slowly he turned back. The stone column wasn’t lying down and it wasn’t in the museum. It was in front of him, in the shadows of this quiet, gathering darkness.
Ned froze. He didn’t breathe. He felt his heart begin to pound, very hard. His mouth was suddenly dry.
It took an effort to move his left arm, turn his wrist, so he could see what he already knew he would see. He looked at his watch.
It was just after six.
He turned to look at Kate.
“Why is it dark?” he said.
CHAPTER IX
After a blank, rigid moment, during which he could see her absorb what he’d just said, Kate put a hand to her mouth. She looked fearfully around her in the great and gathering dark—which had come down upon them hours too soon.
“Ned, what’s happening?”
As if he’d know. As if he had any hope of knowing.
Gazing past her, still trying to accept the reality of this, Ned saw torches. He tried to swallow; it felt like there was sandpaper in his throat. His heart thumped again, so hard it was painful.
Fires were burning in the meadow east of the entrance through which they’d just come. Torches in a long line—a procession moving towards the ruins.
Unable to form words, Ned just pointed. Kate turned to see.
“Oh, God. What have I done?” she whispered.
No good answer for that. No time for one. Ned looked desperately around for a hiding place, but except for the one column beside him everything in Entremont was flat, levelled. Catapults and time.
He stepped quickly back out of the sanctuary, grabbed Kate by the hand and, bending low, started running east along that wide main street between the upper and lower towns. They went straight out of the site and down the shallow slope. He pulled her to the ground behind a tree.
They lay there, breathing hard.
He thought she was going to cry, but she didn’t.
Ned lifted his head after a moment, cautiously, looking to his right, where the torches were. Twenty or thirty of them, he guessed. Some were inside the lower city now, others following. Coming in the way he and Kate had come themselves moments ago—in the sunlight of a springtime afternoon.
It was dark now. It was undeniably, impossibly, night.
He couldn’t clearly make out the figures carrying those flames. Beltaine, he thought. The Celts used to light sacred fires tonight. He was looking at fires.
Kate lay beside him in the grass, up close, hip and thigh against his. He had to give her credit, she wasn’t trembling or whimpering or anything like that. In the midst of everything, with the nearness, he was aware of her perfume again.
“This,” she whispered suddenly, turning her mouth to his ear, “is kind of cozy.”
Ned’s jaw actually dropped again. So much for whimpering, or tears. “Are you insane?” he hissed.
“Hope not. But really . . . I never in my life expected to see anything like this. Did you never have dreams about magic?”
And what did that have to do with anything?
“Kate, get it together! I met some of these guys two nights ago I think. We could get killed here.”
“Then stay close,” she murmured, “and let’s be real quiet.” She shifted a bit so one arm was right against him.
“Quiet won’t do it,” he whispered. “They can sense things. If I can do it, they sure can. We need to get away.”
He fished in his pocket for his phone. “Turn yours off,” he rasped. “Last thing we need is a ringtone right now.”
She moved to open her pack and do it. Ned flipped his phone open. Thank God, he thought: it was working here. He went to dial Greg and then stopped and swore savagely under his breath. Melanie’s stupid, stupid joke. Greg had that idiotic, multi-digit auto-dial, and Ned didn’t know his actual cell number. He punched “3” savagely. Heard two rings.
“Ned, what’s up?”
He kept his voice very low. “Melanie, listen, I’m in a bit of trouble. I’ll tell you later, but please get Greg to bring the van to the road below a place called Entremont. Quick as he can. I’ll meet him there. You know where it is? You can tell him how to get here?”
She was brisk, unruffled. Had to give her that. “I do know. Just north of town? Ned, you okay?”
“I will be when he gets here. It’s, ah, something like what happened at the mountain.”
“Poor baby. Okay. I’ll have him bring Advil. Hang in. He’ll be on his way.”
Ned flipped the phone shut and turned off his ringer. Put it back in his pocket. Lifeline to the real world, from wherever this one was.
He glanced at Kate, still right up next to him. “Is there another way back to the highway?”
She wasn’t totally out of her mind. She whispered, “They had a stairway up the cliff, at the other end, but it’s crumbled away mostly. It would go south down the valley, I guess.”
“We may have to try it. This isn’t close to safe.”
He lifted his head again. More torches, at least twenty of them. Some had been planted along the path now: from the entrance to the site, lining the road all the way to—of course, he thought grimly—the sanctuary space where the one tall column stood.
It was directly in front of them, to the left of the main street. He couldn’t make out the column from here, but he could see the flames clearly. The moon, he realized belatedly, was above them now. Full moon night.
“Well, I still have to say I like snuggling here,” Kate Wenger said. Ned heard—amazingly—a huskiness in her voice.
Even more amazingly, amid his terror, he was starting to find this aspect of things, her scent, how close she was in the dark grass, unnervingly distracting.
“You gonna kiss me, or what?” he heard her say.
Oh, God, he thought. It made no sense at all. None.
“Forget that now!” he whispered fiercely. “Let’s just go. We have to get down to the road. We’ll try that other stairway, and hope. I figure it’ll t
ake Greg twenty minutes.”
“No. Stay where you are.”
Just behind them. A voice they knew.
Ned froze again, his neck hairs prickling. He felt Kate stiffen beside him.
“I have us shielded here,” they heard. “If you go from me they’ll sense you and they will kill you tonight. For violating this.”
Well, that would change Kate’s idiotic mood, Ned thought.
He heard a rustling sound. A figure crawled up beside him, to lie prone in the grass, as they were, by the tree.
“You followed us?” Ned whispered.
“I saw you arrive. I’ve been waiting for them.” The man from the cloister and café looked at him. Same leather jacket, same cold, intense expression. “I did tell you not to come here today.”
“I know,” Ned said.
“He didn’t want to,” whispered Kate from his other side. “I thought it would be cool. I like your jacket, by the way.” She smiled.
So much for changing Kate’s mood.
The man ignored her, his attention fixed on the torches. Some were planted, others were being carried. Ned still couldn’t clearly make out who was holding them.
“Why can’t I see anyone?”
“They aren’t entirely here yet,” the man said quietly.
The matter-of-factness made Ned swallow hard again.
“They will be when he comes,” he heard.
“When who comes?” Kate asked.
“Softly!” the man hissed.
“When who comes?” she repeated, more quietly. There was silence for a moment.
“The man I have to kill.”
Ned looked at him. There were too many questions. He said, “I think . . . I may have seen him two nights ago.”
The figure on his left said nothing, waiting. Ned doggedly went on, “I was at this tower, above our place, and . . . Does he have stag horns? Sometimes?”
“He can. Golden hair? A big man?”
Ned nodded.
The wind blew. In the moonlight Ned saw smoke streaming south from the torches. The man beside him shook his head. He said, “Ned Marriner, I have no idea who you are, but you do seem to have yourself entangled here.”
“Not me?” Kate said, much too perkily.
“Perhaps,” the man said, gravely. “You did bring me here with what you said. I used your words as a sign, lacking any other. You named this place, among all the possibilities. I am grateful beyond words. I’d have likely been elsewhere when she arrived and, as the gods are always witnesses, she would have made me suffer for it.”
“She?” Kate said. “You said a man was coming.”
Another silence. “She will be here. We are where we are. The barriers are down.”
“Holy cow,” Kate breathed. “Is he . . . is this guy, like, a druid?”
A sudden, involuntary movement on Ned’s other side. “I hope not, or I am lost.”
Way too many questions.
Ned asked the first one he thought of. “Why is it night?”
He heard a sound, almost amusement. “Why would you imagine time should follow a known course tonight? Here? I told you not to come.”
“It shouldn’t be dark for hours. We were going to be gone before—”
“You’d have been dead when the spirits came if I weren’t here.”
Blunt, not a voice to argue with.
“What’s his name?” Kate asked. “This other guy . . . with the horns?”
An impatient voice from Ned’s other side. “I have no idea yet.”
“You aren’t being very nice,” Kate said, with a sniff. “Neither of you.”
Ned still didn’t get it: what was with her? But he saw the man on his left shift to look across him at Kate. He seemed about to say something, but he shook his head, as if rejecting a thought.
To Ned, he murmured, “I will go up when he comes. They will not be expecting me. He believes he has led me astray. All of them will be intent upon me. Go back along this field to where you came in, then run down the path. You will find your afternoon light again, beyond the gate.”
Ned looked at him. “What will you do?”
Another shake of the head. “Accept my gratitude and your lives. Leave quickly when I go up.”
In that stillness, wind blowing under moonlight, they heard a sound from the sanctuary ahead of them. Ned lifted his head. He gasped. The figures were visible now.
And more than that: the walls of the guard tower were back.
They were up, had risen again, as if they’d never been brought down, never known catapults.
The figures on the street in front of it had their backs to that tower. They were looking back along the path they’d just taken. Ned saw that they were dressed the way the man by the tower two nights ago had been, in variously coloured tunics, bright leggings, boots or sandals. Swords.
Swords?
These were Celts, Ned realized. And that meant they, and the risen tower, were over two thousand years old. Oh God, he thought again.
He wished he were home. All the way home.
And then he realized another strangeness, on top of all the others. He blinked, looked again. There was only moonlight, smoky torches, and yet . . .
He said softly, “Why can I see them so well? Even colours? Before, I couldn’t at all. Now it’s . . . too clear up there.”
The man on his left said nothing for a moment, then he murmured, “You are inside the night yourself. In your own way. Be very careful, Ned Marriner.”
“How do I do that?” Ned asked.
“By leaving. It matters. Beltaine can change you.”
Whatever that meant.
The man looked away from them. When he spoke again his voice had changed again. “But see. See now. Here is the bright companion of all my days.”
This, too, Ned Marriner would remember. The words, and how they were spoken.
He looked towards the entrance to the site.
Someone else was coming along the path.
No horns on his head this time, but Ned knew him instantly. Not a figure you forgot: tall, broad-shouldered, long-striding, the long, bright hair, same heavy golden torc about his neck. What seemed to be a sword at his side. He didn’t remember a blade before. The others by the sanctuary were watching him approach, their torches high, waiting.
The man beside Ned whispered, “See how fair he is, the tall one, how brilliant . . .” Ned could feel him tremble. “I will leave you,” the man said.
“You have no weapon,” Ned whispered.
“They will give me one,” he heard. “Remember, along this meadow, down the path, away.”
“You said you weren’t a good man,” Kate Wenger said, almost accusingly.
“Oh, believe me,” he whispered, staring straight ahead, not even looking at them now, “I told you truth.”
Ned glanced at him. And, just as in the cloister, something was inside his head abruptly: a thought, whole and complete, something he should have had no way of knowing.
He heard himself say, before he could stop, “Were you at the mountain? Way back then? Sainte-Victoire?”
The man in the grey leather jacket shifted, as if being pulled from where he wanted to be. He gazed at Ned in the darkness for a long moment.
“It really would interest me,” he said finally, “had we leisure enough, to learn who you are.”
“I’m right? Aren’t I? You were there?”
Ned could hear him breathing in the night. “We all were,” the man said. “She was mine that time.” He added something in a language Ned didn’t know. And then he said, “Go when I go up. What will follow, you should not see.”
He moved forward, low to the ground. Ned thought he was going to stand and walk up the slope right then, but he didn’t. He stopped behind another, nearer tree.
Ned had a sense the man was feeling something too fierce, too charged with intensity, to have stayed beside them, with their questions and chatter and guesses: Why is it dark? What’s his na
me?
He’d been patient. He was trying to save their lives. But now he needed to ready himself for what was coming.
Kate sighed suddenly beside Ned and slipped her left hand into his right, lacing fingers again.
They will kill you tonight. How did you react so much to the touch of a girl when you’d just heard that? Maybe, Ned thought, maybe such opposing feelings—fear, and the scent and feel of the girl beside him—could somehow go together, not be opposed after all. It was a difficult idea.
He looked up towards the site and the square, risen tower. The tall man had reached the sanctuary and those waiting there. He looked golden, godlike.
The others didn’t bow, but they made a space for him in the wide street. His hair was unbound, lying on his shoulders. It was an axe at his belt, Ned realized, not a sword. Jewellery glinted on his arms and around his throat. A smaller, older man stood beside him, dressed in white.
“Wow,” breathed Kate. “He’s gorgeous!”
She didn’t mean the little guy in white. A flicker of jealousy went through Ned, but her words were no less than truth, he thought.
There was a sense of waiting, of anticipation, on the plateau ahead of them, even now that this bright figure had come. They were all turned to the north, towards the torches planted on either side of the path. And because he was looking that way, as they were, across the low, long-levelled ruins, Ned saw when the white bull entered Entremont.
He felt, again, as if the world as he had always understood it was changing moment by moment, even as he lay hidden in the grass.
He saw that the animal was being led forward on a rope by three men through the moonlight of Beltaine eve. The bull was enormous, but it was also docile, moving quietly.
The torches were on stakes planted in pairs in the ground, and the bull—massive, otherworldly—passed between those fires. Ned somehow knew that there was a meaning to this going back so far he was afraid to think about it.
“Another bull,” whispered Kate.
Ned shook his head. “Not another. This is the one the others were about.”
The moon was shining and full and in that light the animal seemed to gleam and shimmer. Beside him, Kate was watching it in the same way Ned was, with awe and fear—and pity.
Ysabel Page 15
