Ysabel

by Guy Gavriel Kay

  “Damn straight I was. So, like, I know the book on this.”

  “You understand you can be killed for that?”

  “Nope. I understand that the woman—Ysabel—laid down the rules. You hurt us here, we go missing, you think Phelan’s not gonna know about it, and tell her? You want to ruin this for Cadell? Think he’ll be happy?”

  He heard the bravado in his own voice and wondered where it came from. But he was not going to show fear to this guy. He didn’t seem to be the same person, dealing with these people. Fifteen wasn’t a kid in their world. Maybe that was part of it. And it still seemed to him he was seeing too clearly in the darkness, as if everything was sharper tonight.

  The druid was staring, saying nothing. Ned cleared his throat. “He’s your boss, isn’t he? Your chief? Whatever. So what are you doing here, screwing things up for him?”

  “You are ignorant, whatever else you are,” the figure in front of him said. His eyes were deep-set under thick eyebrows.

  “Maybe, but why do you care which one of them wins her? You’re dead again by morning, aren’t you?”

  He didn’t know if that was so, actually. He hoped it was.

  Another silence, and then: “She was one of us. The world began to change when she made her choice and left.” The druid lifted his voice. “She belongs among us. Changes can be undone. This is not just about the three of them.”

  He looked briefly towards the trees, then back.

  Ned had a thought, hearing that raised voice. On impulse, he tried the inward searching he’d used before to find Phelan twice, and his aunt by the tower.

  Something registered, a glow within. Not the druid.

  Ned smiled thinly. It was really weird, but though he was scared to the point that his hands were trembling, he also felt excited, alive, charged with something, by something, that he couldn’t explain.

  The boar had gone now—off the road, back into the dark field or the woods beyond. It had been here to stop them; it had done that, and departed.

  Ned said, “I had two questions, remember? Here’s the other one. You say you didn’t know I was up there before. What are you doing here then? Why did you think I’d have a clue about this? How did you know me at all, or how to find me?”

  He knew the answers, but wanted to see what the other guy did.

  He was aware that Greg was looking at him, a kind of awe in his face. The van’s headlights were illuminating the road and the white-robed figure. Insects darted through the light.

  The druid lifted his head. “By what right do you question me?”

  “Oh, fine,” Ned said. “That’s cool. I’ll just wait for your friend to climb out of the bushes and ask him.”

  He saw the reaction to that. He turned to his right, towards the trees by the road. “There are mosquitoes up here, man, they must be worse in there. You getting bitten?”

  He waited. There was a stirring in the trees.

  Out of the darkness beyond the twin arcs of the headlight beams a red-gold figure emerged. Ned’s heart started pounding when he saw him.

  Cadell had the stag horns growing from his head again. Ned heard Greg swear softly in disbelief.

  “Who are you?” the big Celt said, stepping up onto the roadway.

  Where the druid had been angry, Cadell sounded almost amused. His voice was as before: deep, carrying. You could follow that voice into battle, Ned thought.

  He needed to be careful, though. It was true, the thought he’d had looking through the barred gates by the parking lot: if these guys thought he and Greg were a problem, they would do something about it.

  If they could ignore his questions, he decided, he could do the same with theirs. He said, “Tell me, since this guy won’t, you really think Phelan won’t let her know you broke the rules? Like, broke them immediately? I heard you swear an oath.”

  Cadell said, “It is Beltaine, she said to release them when the night ended.” The voice was still amused, diverted. It hadn’t been, Ned remembered, when Phelan walked up into the site, after Ysabel had come.

  “True,” Ned admitted. Beside him, Greg was breathing hard. “But I also heard her say you were to stay there, start searching in the morning.”

  The big man smiled down at him. His easy manner didn’t feel faked to Ned. “But I’m not looking for her,” he said. “I was looking for you.”

  “Cute. You willing to take a chance she’ll buy that? Risk everything on it? Is she the type to be cool with that kind of scam?”

  Cadell’s expression did change then, which was kind of satisfying. There was a silence.

  Ned nodded his head. “Thought so. And anyhow, why were you looking for me?”

  “She called your name—the small woman—when she came up, before she went through the fires.”

  Oh. Right, Ned thought.

  And Cadell would have known his name, who he was, from by the tower with Aunt Kim. He’d made the connection. If Ned was understanding any of this—which wasn’t a dead certainty—the guy had been alive, on and off, for more than two thousand years. He’d had time to get clever. Learn how to grow stag horns, change into an owl, control wolves and dogs.

  Piece a few clues together.

  In the middle of the roadway, the druid was muttering to himself, angrily rocking back and forth like some wind-up toy ready to explode. Ned ignored him.

  “You saw us come back for the van?” he guessed.

  Cadell nodded. “I had someone watching it.”

  “Smart of you,” Ned said. “One man against one man, but you get the ghosts?”

  “He seems to have you,” Cadell said softly. “Doesn’t he?”

  Ned hesitated.

  “No one has us,” Greg snapped. He took a step forward. “We have nothing to do with this. We want Melanie back, then you can all go off and screw each other for all we care!”

  “An unappealing notion,” Cadell said. He smiled. “What Brys told you is true, the woman you call Melanie doesn’t exist any more. You need to understand that. There is no reason for you not to tell us where Ysabel might be, if you know.”

  “You bastards!” Greg shouted. His hands were balled into fists. “By what goddamned right do you—”

  “Hold it, Greg,” Ned said. He moved over and put a hand on the other man’s arm. “Hold it.”

  Ned took a breath. He was pretty upset himself, trying not to let it show. They couldn’t lose control here, though, they needed to know too much more.

  He said, “Why should we have any idea where she is? Why would you even think that?”

  The druid said something swiftly in that other language.

  Cadell looked at him and shook his head. Replied curtly in the same tongue, then turned back to Ned.

  “You can be told this much. But you must believe I am not your enemy, and Phelan is not your friend. Or anyone’s friend.” He paused, as if reaching for words. The druid was still muttering.

  That one, Ned thought, wants to kill us.

  Cadell said, “Ysabel changes. Each time we return. Each time, she is altered a little by the summoning. She carries something of the woman brought for her.”

  “This has happened before, then? Someone else becomes . . . ?”

  “Always.”

  Ned was getting a headache trying to concentrate, to remember all of this. He was going to have to tell Aunt Kim. Maybe she could make sense of it. If they got out of here. The villa was so close, but it felt years away. He had to keep Greg from exploding. He could feel the other man’s tension beside him.

  He said, “She changes? You two don’t?”

  Cadell shook his head, the antlers moving. “I am as I have always been, from the first days. And so is he, may the gods rot his heart.”

  “So why? Why does she . . . ?”

  Again the druid, Brys, snarled something at the bigger man, and again he was ignored.

  Cadell wasn’t smiling now. “She alters so that her choice alters. You are not expected to understand. I am giving
you these answers to show goodwill. I am not your enemy.”

  “Goodwill?” Greg shouted. “After what you did to her? Are you insane?”

  Ned grabbed for his arm again. He could feel Greg trembling, as if he wanted to charge forward, start swinging fists. He’d get cut to pieces if he did.

  “I don’t understand,” Ned said. “You’re right. Maybe I don’t need to, but believe me—and this is the truth—we have no clue where she is.”

  Cadell stared at him a long moment, then he sighed, as if surrendering something—a hope?

  “It was always unlikely.” He shrugged. “Very well. Your road is clear now. Leave us to our search. Keep away from this. The woman by the tower, she swore that you would.”

  That was Aunt Kim. “Uh-uh. No dice. She promised,” said Ned, “before you took one of us.” He pointed a finger, was pleased to see his hand was steady. “You changed things, not us.” He paused, took a chance. “Would you surrender someone who mattered to you, just like that?”

  “It is not the same,” Cadell said. But he’d hesitated.

  “Yes it is!”’ Greg snapped. “You want someone you lost, so do we!”

  Ned looked at him. So did Cadell.

  “Ysabel is never lost,” the big man said. “That is the nature of this. She is in the balance. And I have someone to kill.”

  “Then play all that out without Melanie,” Ned said. He gambled again. “My aunt will be coming up this road any minute. She knows the one you’re mocking again with those horns. She’s seen him, remember? You want her in on this? Risk losing Ysabel because you chose the wrong woman to change and got tangled with us?”

  Cadell was looking away now, up towards the trees and sky. So was the druid, Ned saw. He wondered if he’d made a mistake, mentioning Aunt Kim.

  He knew what they were doing. He did the same thing himself, closed his eyes, reaching inward and then out for her. No presence, no sign of her pale, bright glow. She was screening herself, or too far away.

  “I do not mock him,” Cadell said, looking at Ned again. “When I am in the woods, it . . . pleases me to honour him with the horns he wears.”

  Ned shook his head, angry again, and scared. It was getting to be a bit much. He heard himself saying, “Oh, sure. Right. Do you honour a king by wearing his crown?”

  And where had that come from? he thought.

  The druid stopped rocking. Cadell blinked. Greg was staring at Ned again. Ned realized he still had a hand on the other man’s arm. He let it drop.

  “Who are you?” Cadell said. He’d asked that already.

  “A friend of the woman you took,” Ned said. “And nephew of the other one. The one who matters. So you need to just reverse whatever you did to Melanie, and you’ll get us all out of your hair.”

  There was another silence. “That cannot be,” the druid said.

  Cadell nodded his head. “Even if I wished it. You saw the bull die, and the fires.” He looked at Ned a moment. “And would it be honourable for you to reclaim your woman and have someone else be lost in her stead?”

  No good reply to that, actually.

  “She isn’t my woman,” Ned said lamely, feeling like a high school kid again, even as he spoke. That was what you said when guys teased you about a girl, for God’s sake.

  Cadell smiled. A different sort of expression. It made you realize—again—that this man had lived a very long time.

  “The roadway is clear,” he repeated, gently enough. “We will go back to the sanctuary and wait for dawn, as she commanded. As it happens, you are right . . . I don’t trust him not to tell her, and she may choose to let such things matter. I have learned, at cost, not to anticipate her. Go your way.” He paused, then added, again, “I am not your enemy.”

  Ned looked at him. In the headlights, under moonlight, wearing those horns, the man looked like a god himself, with a voice to match.

  A week ago, Ned had been worrying about his frog dissection in biology and a class party at Gail Ridpath’s house and the hockey playoffs.

  He shivered, nodded his head. What did you say to any of this, anyhow?

  “Screw you,” was what Gregory said, and added an extreme obscenity.

  “I would be more careful,” Cadell said, calmly.

  Greg repeated exactly what he’d just said, word for word, and strode forward—towards the druid. “We’re not going anywhere and neither are you,” he snarled at the one called Brys. “You handling this stuff? You handle it, man—change her back before I break your face!”

  Sometimes a suspended moment boiled over into action just a little too fast.

  “Stop!” cried Cadell.

  Ned saw the druid raise both hands as Greg approached, moving fast. He thought the man was warding a blow. He was wrong.

  Greg’s head snapped backwards. His whole upper body lifted, as his feet kept moving—almost comically—forward for an instant. Edward Marriner’s assistant, a solid, heavy-set man, went flying backwards through the air and landed hard in the road, flat on his back in the glare of the van’s headlights.

  He didn’t move. His body looked awkward, crumpled, where it lay.

  “Oh, Jesus Christ!” Ned said.

  “I said stop,” Cadell snapped at the druid. And added something savagely in their other tongue.

  Ned’s own anger came. A force such as he couldn’t remember feeling in his life. He wheeled towards the big Celt, heard himself scream, wordlessly, with fury and fear, and without knowing what he was doing, without a clue, his right hand swung up and across, scything through the night air, aimed towards Cadell, a good three metres away.

  There was a sizzling sound, like steak first hitting a barbeque or electricity surging. Ned cried out again. Something leaped from his fingers like a laser—and sliced through the stag horns, severing them halfway up. The big man roared, in shock and pain.

  Then there was silence.

  Cadell, still twisted in the act of ducking, stared at Ned. A hand went to his horns. What was left of them. The sliced-off, branching part lay beside him in the road.

  Ned turned to the druid. The white-robed man lifted his own hands quickly, but this time clearly in selfdefence. Ned could see fear in his face.

  “Who are you?” the druid said.

  His turn, it seemed. People were asking that a whole lot, Ned thought. It could get old fast, or be really, really scary.

  “Did you kill him?” he demanded. Greg still hadn’t moved.

  “He’s alive,” Cadell said. “I blocked most of it. Brys, be gone now. You disobeyed me. You heard my command.”

  The druid turned to him. Speaking slowly, a watchful eye on Ned, he said, “Command me not. I have a task here, for all of us. This is not only the three of you.”

  “Yes it is,” said Cadell flatly. “It always is. Shall I unbind you, spirit from body, right here? Do you want to try journeying back to the other side right now? From this place? I will do it, you know I can. You are here only because of me.”

  Another moment of stillness, a night road between trees and fields, the moon risen. Brys said something in that other tongue, words laden with a bitterness so deep even Ned could hear it. Then the druid gestured—towards himself this time—and disappeared.

  Ned shook his head. And in just about the same moment, he felt a glow within. He hadn’t been searching for her . . . Aunt Kim was reaching for him, he realized, letting him know she was coming. He hadn’t known that could happen.

  He hadn’t known much, in fact. His right hand was tingling, from the force, the fury, of what he’d just done.

  He looked at Cadell again. The remnants of the broken-off horns were gone, he saw. The man stood, golden-haired, as he had at Entremont.

  Ned felt an unexpected sorrow. A loss of something, of majesty. He swallowed. “I don’t know how I did that,” he said. “I didn’t know you’d saved Greg.”

  “He’ll be all right. Didn’t deserve death so soon, though he’s a fool.”

  “He isn’t,�
�� Ned protested weakly. “We’re way over our heads. We’ve lost someone.”

  Cadell looked at him, then lifted his head, as he had before, looking above the trees. Ned saw him register that Kim was coming. The big man shook his head.

  “We all lose people. I told you truth. So did Brys, in this. She is gone. There is no such person in the world any more.”

  “How are we supposed to accept that, or explain it?” Ned asked.

  The Celt shrugged. Not my problem, the gesture seemed to say. But Ned was too worn out, too spent, to be angry again.

  “Carry on with your lives,” Cadell said. Golden, magnificent, the resonant voice.

  Ned remembered Phelan saying the same thing to them—him and Kate—just days ago. Cadell put a hand up and ran it through his long hair. “If you stray near to us you are going to be hurt or killed, or end up hopelessly between two worlds. You are close to that already, yourself, whoever you are.” His voice was unsettlingly gentle again.

  I am not your enemy.

  They heard a car below them, changing gears to climb.

  “Farewell,” the big man said. He lifted one hand, straight over his head.

  An owl was in the air where a man had been. It was flying away, north again, over hedge, field, towards the ridge beyond the houses set back from the road, then it was gone.

  Ned looked at his hands. He felt like one of the X-Men, a comic-book freak. His fingers weren’t tingling any more, but he didn’t feel any kind of power, either.

  Aunt Kim’s lights appeared. The red car came to a stop behind the van. Ned heard her door open and close, saw her approaching, moving quickly, almost running. Her white hair gleamed in the headlights.

  He had never been so glad to see anyone in his life.

  His aunt looked at him and stopped dead.

  “Ned. What happened? Who was here?”

  “Cadell, and a druid. There was a boar blocking the road, they sent it, and then they . . .” It was pretty hard to talk.

  “Sent it? Why, Ned?”

  “They thought we might know where she is.”

  She looked around. “Where’s Gregory?”

  “Present, ma’am.”

  Ned turned quickly. Greg was sitting up, propped on one hand, rubbing at his chest with the other.