Ysabel

by Guy Gavriel Kay

  The druid’s mouth opened and closed.

  “Same as last night, maybe? He gets pissed off. Sends you to your room without supper. Right? Which tomb here’s yours?”

  He was close to Greg now, speaking loudly. It was possible Aunt Kim hadn’t gotten the first hint about where they were.

  “Where is she?” the druid said doggedly, ignoring the mockery.

  “Another question!” Ned said. “Why do you expect an answer from me? Should I just do to you what I did last night to him?”

  He had no way of doing it, but maybe they wouldn’t know that. “Grow some horns,” he taunted. “I’ll use them as targets. Or use the wolves, if you prefer.”

  “You cannot kill them all before they—”

  “You sure of that? Really sure? You have no idea what I am.” That, at least, made sense, since Ned didn’t, either. “Tell me something else: if you’re planning to off me here, why should I give you anything I know? What’s my percentage, eh?”

  The druid said nothing.

  “I mean, you are really bad at this, dude. You need to offer something to make it worth—”

  “If you care for your father’s life, you will tell me what you know. Or he dies.” The words were flat, blunt, hard.

  Maybe, Ned thought, the guy wasn’t so bad at this after all.

  “I said they could leave,” Brys went on. “But I can alter that. If you know she was here, you know where’s she’s gone.”

  “Are you stupid?” Ned said. “If I knew where she was, would I be here?”

  That, too, was true, but it might not keep them alive. Did logic work with druids? Inwardly he was wishing he were religious, so he could pray to someone, or something. He was stalling for all he was worth, and had no idea what sort of rescue could come. He didn’t think a bored gendarme arriving at the gates would stop––

  He looked at those gates. The others did too, even Brys, because there was a sound from there. Then another. Something landed with a distant clatter on the shaded pathway.

  And then, improbably, a really big man could be seen taking a hard, fast run from the edge of the road, propelling himself up the far side of the gate, arms and legs moving, and then—with what had to be exceptional strength—vaulting himself over the sharp, spiked bars at the top, in a gymnast’s move.

  Ned saw him in the air, looking like a professional athlete. The illusion of an Olympic gymnast held, briefly, but this man was way too big. He landed, not all that smoothly, fell to one knee (points deducted, Ned thought). He straightened and stood. It could be seen that he was wearing faded blue jeans and a black shirt under a beige travel vest, and that his full beard was mostly grey beneath greying hair.

  “Goddamn!” the man said loudly, bending to pick up his stick. “I am way too old to be doing this.” He was some distance away, but his voice carried.

  Coming forward—favouring one knee—he proceeded to add words in that language Ned didn’t understand. His tone was peremptory, and precise.

  “Be gone!” the druid snapped by way of reply. “Do you seek an early death?”

  The man came right up to the group of them and stopped, on the other side of Brys and the wolves.

  “Early death? Not at all. Which is why I can’t leave, if you want the truth. My wife would kill me if I did, you see. Ever meet my wife?” the very big man said.

  Then he looked at Ned. A searching, focused gaze. Wide-set, clear blue eyes. He smiled.

  “Hello, Nephew,” he said.

  CHAPTER XIV

  Ned felt his mouth fall open. The jaw-drop thing was happening way too often. It was majorly uncool.

  “Uncle Dave?” he said.

  His voice was up half an octave.

  The smile widened. “I like the sound of that, have to say.”

  The grey-bearded man looked over at Ned’s father. “Edward Marriner. This would be even more of a pleasure elsewhere. I hope it will be soon.”

  Ned glanced at his dad, whose expression would have been hilarious any other time. It made him feel a bit better about his own.

  “Dave Martyniuk?”

  The other man nodded. “To the rescue, with a really bad landing.”

  “I saw that. You okay? I’m afraid the gate was open,” Edward Marriner said. “We picked the lock to get in.”

  Ned’s uncle’s face became almost as amusing, hearing that. He swore, concisely.

  “It was a dramatic entrance,” Ned’s father said. “Honestly. Bruce Willis would have used a stuntman.”

  The two men smiled at each other.

  “Your wife’s coming down on Air France 7666 from Paris,” Dave Martyniuk said. “Flight gets her to Marignan around 6 p.m. Then, what . . . half-an-hour cab ride to your villa?”

  “Bit more.” Ned’s father checked his watch. “We might have time to meet her.” Neither of them was even looking at Brys, or the wolves, Ned saw. Edward Marriner hesitated. “How do you know the flight?”

  Martyniuk shrugged. “Long story. Mostly to do with computers.”

  “I see. I think. You keep an eye on her?”

  The other man nodded. He looked awkward, suddenly. “Only when she’s . . .”

  “I know. Kimberly told us. I . . . I’m very grateful.” He grinned ruefully. “Assuming we get out of here alive, she will try to dismember you, very likely. I’ll do what I can to protect you.”

  “I’d appreciate that. Meghan’s formidable.”

  “Oh, I know. So’s her sister.”

  “Oh, I know.”

  “Enough. We can kill four of you as easily as three,” the druid said.

  Ned turned to him. So did the others.

  Assuming we get out of here alive.

  Brys had shifted position so he could look at all of them, left and right.

  Aunt Kim’s husband—Ned hadn’t pictured him as being nearly so big—shook his head. “I’m not sure, friend. You don’t know enough about me, and you’re a long day past Beltaine, losing strength. So are the spirits you put in those wolves.”

  “How do you know that?” the druid snapped.

  “The spirits? Beltaine? Cellphone. Wife. Mentioned her. Knows a lot, trust me.”

  Then, abruptly, the exaggeratedly laid-back style altered. When next Dave Martyniuk spoke, it was in that other language again, and the voice was stonehard. There was authority in it, and anger. Ned understood nothing, except for what sounded like names. He heard Cernunnos and something like Cenwin.

  But he saw the impact on the druid. The man actually grew pale, colour leaching from his face. Ned had thought that only happened in stories, but he could see it in Brys.

  “Go home,” his uncle added, more gently, speaking French. “You should have gone last night. This is not the hour or the life for your dreams to be made real. My wife asked me to tell you that.”

  Brys was still for a moment, then drew himself up as if shouldering a weight. A small man, standing very straight.

  “I do not believe she knows anything for certain. And in any case,” he said, “why hurry back to the dark? I will learn what the boy knows. And he will not interfere any more. I can achieve so much.” He gestured at the branch Ned’s uncle had thrown over the gate and picked up. “You think you can fight eight of us with that?”

  Dave Martyniuk, unperturbed, nodded gravely. “I think so, yes. And there is a reason for you to leave. You know there is. Will you risk your soul, and these? If we kill you here you are lost, druid. The three of them can return, but not you.”

  “How do you know these things?”

  Something anguished in the question.

  “Same answer. My wife.”

  With a sharp, startling movement, Martyniuk levelled the branch in front of himself and cracked it hard across his good knee, breaking the stick in two.

  “Ouch!” he said, and swore again.

  Then he threw half of it across the open space.

  Ned saw it flying. It was actually beautiful, spinning into light, shadow, light agai
n under the leaves. One of the wolves sprang for it, jaws wide, and missed—it was arced too high.

  Ned’s father caught the thrown branch with unexpected competence and then—much more unexpectedly—stepped straight forward and swung it hard, a two-handed grip, sweeping flat. He cracked the leaping wolf in the ribs as it landed. There was an ugly sound. The animal tumbled, to crumple against a grey, tilting stone.

  No one moved.

  “Nice throw,” Edward Marriner said.

  “They need not die here,” Dave Martyniuk said quietly, turning to the druid again. “Send them back. Go with them. It is past the day. You have nothing to gain.”

  Brys stared at him. An equally blue gaze. Ned had a sense of suspended time, a long hovering. He felt the breeze, saw it in the rippling leaves.

  “Measurement again? Calculation? It is not only about gain,” the druid said. “The world goes deeper than that.”

  Then he spoke to the wolves in that other tongue and the battle began.

  Ned Marriner learned some truths in the next few moments. The world might be deep, for one thing, but sometimes it was fast, too.

  The second truth was that a Swiss Army knife was just about useless against a wolf. He had his blade ready in time—he’d had it open in his pocket not long after the druid appeared—but unless you were good enough to stab a hurtling animal in the eye your knife was a distraction, nothing more.

  He wasn’t good enough to stab it in the eye.

  He feinted, realized he didn’t have a hope, and rolled urgently away from the animal that came for him. He heard footsteps, a shout, then another thick, dull sound. When he rolled to his knees—ready to twist away again—he saw that his father had clubbed this one, too.

  That was the third new thing he learned: that Edward Marriner, celebrated photographer, absent-minded father with chronically misplaced reading glasses and trademark brown moustache, was lethal with a branch when his only son was in danger.

  Greg was already engaging another wolf. And the fourth truth was that Greg was actually strong enough to do the punch-it-in-the-throat thing he’d whispered—but not quick enough to do it without being hurt.

  From his knees, Ned saw it happen: slash of claws, heavy fist short-stroked to animal neck, the wolf flopping backwards, blood bright at Greg’s raked-open sleeve.

  The sudden redness was shocking.

  His dad was over there immediately.

  Necessary, but with implications: principally, that Ned was now alone without a weapon with three wolves circling him. He scrabbled in the gravel again and threw a handful of pebbles at the eyes of the nearest one. Clever. Meaningless. The animal ignored it.

  Then the animal died.

  Afterwards, Ned would try to recapture what he’d felt when he saw his uncle hammer that wolf—that was the word that came to him—and then immediately send another one twisting frantically back and away from a second swift, swinging blow.

  As the third wolf also retreated, Ned saw the druid lying on the gravel behind it. Brys’s arms were outflung, one leg was bent awkwardly under his body.

  He looked at his uncle again. A thought came, inescapably: He’s done this before.

  There was a difference between his father’s determined defence of Ned and Greg, Gregory’s own bravery, Ned’s scrambling attempt to do something useful . . . and Dave Martyniuk’s laying low of chosen targets.

  You might possibly be born knowing how to do this, but more likely you learned in the doing. When and where, Ned didn’t know, but he was pretty sure it had to do with the time his aunt’s hair turned white.

  The three remaining wolves had backed away from Ned’s uncle, tails low. They didn’t run. Not yet. They were watching.

  Martyniuk went over to the druid.

  “I didn’t want to kill him,” he said. “I hope I didn’t.”

  He knelt on the path. Put fingers to the man’s throat. The two of them were in the shade there, a plane tree in leaf between them and the sun. Ned saw his uncle shake his head.

  “Damn it,” he heard him say.

  “He was here to kill Ned,” said Edward Marriner quietly, walking over, entering into that shadow as well. “And the rest of us, if he had to.”

  Martyniuk didn’t look up. “I know. We . . . your son got himself into a story.”

  Ned wasn’t sure why he felt so much sadness, looking at the small figure of the druid who had summoned Ysabel. Leaves rustled; splinters of sunlight came through as they moved.

  There was a world here once. It was torn from us. It is not just about the three of them.

  He cleared his throat. “Uncle Dave, if he’s . . . gone, does that mean Ysabel can’t be summoned again? After this time?”

  His uncle looked up. “Is that her name?”

  Ned nodded.

  Dave Martyniuk stood, wincing a little. He brushed dust from his knees. “I don’t think that’s an issue.” He gestured at the wolves. “These are spirits too. I suspect there are other druids among the ones who come back on Beltaine night. This one . . . was stronger maybe. Kept his place in the story.”

  “He was trying to change the story,” Ned said. “Or that’s what I . . .” He trailed off.

  “No, you’re right. I think so too.” His uncle looked at Gregory. “Whoever taught you to punch wolves?”

  Greg was holding his left arm. Blood was bright through his fingers, but he managed a crooked smile. “It was an option in undergrad. I could have done economics, did wolf boxing instead.”

  “Extremely funny. Let’s go,” Edward Marriner said. “We’ll find the hospital here.”

  Greg shook his head. “No. Dr. Ford can bandage this at the villa. I’m all right. This looks worse than it is.”

  “You’ll need a rabies sequence, Greg.”

  “No, he won’t,” Ned said, surprising himself. “These are spirits in a wolf shape, remember? They won’t be rabid.”

  Uncle Dave nodded. “He’s almost surely right, Edward. They’d insist on the rabies course and he might be kept there. And we’d have a bit of explaining to do.” He pointed to the druid. “This body . . . I don’t think he’ll just vanish right away.”

  “What do we do?” Ned’s father asked. “With him?”

  “Will he disappear later? I mean, go back to being disembodied, or whatever?” Ned asked.

  “Maybe. Not sure. I never took that course in undergrad.” Martyniuk smiled ruefully.

  “Could we shift that?” Ned’s father pointed to a stone sarcophagus beside the shaded alley. The lid was slightly askew.

  Dave Martyniuk looked over. “Maybe,” he said.

  Ned watched his father and uncle walk over together. They each grasped an end of the heavy stone top. He felt a weird sensation, a kind of pride, watching them count off three then strain together, grunting, and slide the stone halfway off.

  “That’s enough I think,” Greg said, holding his arm. “He’s not that big.”

  He wasn’t that big. The wolves watched, oddly passive now, as the two men came back and—quite gently—lifted the druid and carried him to the empty coffin. They laid him inside and, straining again, dragged the stone lid all the way back.

  They looked down on it a moment, then Dave Martyniuk walked towards the wolves.

  There were four left; the one Greg had punched had recovered and gone over beside the others. They didn’t retreat this time.

  Martyniuk said something in that ancient language—Welsh or Gaelic, whichever it was. The animals looked at him. And then, after a moment, they turned and loped away together towards the oldest graves and the church beyond. The four men watched them go past the sunken area, around the church, out of sight.

  “What did you say?” Edward Marriner asked quietly.

  He was stretching out his back. That stone lid would have been heavy, Ned thought. His father was not a man inclined to lifting and pulling. Or to swinging blows with a branch. He was doing things Ned couldn’t even have imagined a week ago.

 
; “I told them nightfall would likely see them home. I wished them peace on the journey back.”

  “That’s it?”

  Martyniuk nodded.

  He picked up the nearest of the three slain animals and, limping, carried it out of sight behind the trees. He came back for a second one. Edward Marriner picked up the third. He looked surprised when he lifted it, Ned saw, as if it was too easy. He saw his father raise his eyebrows, and follow Uncle Dave among the trees.

  “Some animals were harmed in the making of this coffee-table book,” Greg said dryly.

  Ned looked at him. “You okay?”

  Greg was still holding his shoulder. His second injury in two days. “Been better, man. Could have been worse, I guess. Where are the stuntmen when you need them, eh?”

  The other two reappeared. Ned’s father was unbuttoning his shirt. He took it off. Ned fished quickly for his pocket knife again and opened the small scissors. His dad tried it, but the blade wasn’t big enough. Edward Marriner grunted, handed it back, and then tore the shirt from the bottom most of the way to the collar. He ripped off the buttons and wrapped the whole thing around Greg’s arm before tying it.

  “That’ll have to do till home,” he said.

  “Got a bullet for me to bite?” Greg said.

  Edward Marriner, bare-chested, smiled briefly. “Tylenol in the glove compartment.”

  “Have to do,” Greg said. “We live in a primitive age. At least you don’t paint your chest, boss.”

  Another thin smile. “I may yet,” Ned’s father said.

  Dave Martyniuk had a cellphone to his ear. He looked over. “Kim’s in her car. She’ll meet us at your villa. I said an hour?”

  Marriner nodded. “About right. You’ll follow me?”

  “I’ll follow.”

  The four of them walked out, past coffins, past the tomb on their right and the ticket booth, between trees and under leaves, out the gate and into light.

  As soon as the villa gate clanged open and they drove through with Dave Martyniuk’s Peugeot behind them, Ned saw the woman with red hair standing alone on the terrace, watching them approach.