Ysabel

by Guy Gavriel Kay

  Edward Marriner’s voice was quiet, his eyes calm. He didn’t look weary or worn down any more. He’d been like that since Ned had spoken in the cloister and they’d started back for the van, and home.

  Ned does his thing, his mother had said. She was looking at him from across the dining-room table, hands in her lap, no notebook, just waiting.

  He cleared his throat. “We were . . . we were really close to it last night. Mom was. When she reminded us of the word Ysabel used.”

  “Sacrifice?” Uncle Dave said.

  He was sitting in the armchair by the piano, leg up on a hassock, an ice pack on the knee.

  Ned nodded. “Yeah. So we did the obvious thing and started thinking about Celtic sacrifice places that Melanie might have known about. And that was close to being right.”

  “What did we miss?” Kate Wenger asked. She was still wearing his sweatshirt.

  “One thing, and something else no one but me could have known. No one missed that, except me.”

  He looked at his mother. Aunt Kim was leaning on the doorframe behind her, where her husband had been the night before.

  “The Romans did at least one human sacrifice here,” Ned said. “And Melanie knew it, because she told me about it.” He looked at Greg, and then Steve. “That time I was really sick? When you two went up to the ambush site to look for a photo spot?”

  They both nodded, said nothing.

  Ned took another breath, let it out. “That’s where she is. Ysabel, Melanie.”

  “The mountain?” Steve said.

  “Yeah,” Ned said. “She’s up on Sainte-Victoire.”

  “It’s a big mountain, Ned,” his father said. “There’s a lot of ground to cover up there. And I—”

  Ned held up both hands. “No, Dad. I know exactly where. Because all of this, all of this, is about Melanie now, I think. The changed rules, searching instead of a fight. They didn’t expect that. And she’s hiding in a place she knows I know about. We had to know, too.”

  “We’re putting a lot in the idea that Melanie’s . . . spirit, whatever, is inside Ysabel,” Edward Marriner said.

  “We can do that, Ed,” Aunt Kim murmured. Her arms were tightly crossed on her chest.

  No one said anything for a moment.

  “All right. Fine. You said you know the place, Ned. Where?”

  His mother’s first words since they’d gathered back here. She was gazing at him, that calm, attentive expression he knew.

  So, looking at her, he said, “She’s at some chasm. Melanie called it a garagai, it’s somewhere near the top.”

  “And she’s there because . . . ?”

  It was almost as if this had become a dialogue between the two of them. She used to quiz him like this, for science or social studies tests, when he was younger.

  “Because she told me about it. That’s where the Romans, Marius, threw the Celtic chieftains down a pit, a place of sacrifice after the battle, so they couldn’t ever be reclaimed to be worshipped and help the tribes.”

  “Oh, God,” said Kate. She put a hand to her mouth. “They even talked about that, at Entremont, the three of them.”

  Ned nodded his head. “Yeah, they did. I thought about that, too. Melanie knew we were there. I’d called her, remember?”

  “Is that the second thing?” his mother asked softly. “You said there were two.”

  “No. The garagai is in her notes. The other thing was entirely me. I . . . twice at night, I saw that boar when I was by myself, and both times it . . . both times I think it was signalling me. I didn’t get it, till just now. Till you said something in the cloister. I don’t know why it was doing that, but I’m pretty sure.”

  His uncle sat up, shifting his leg. He had an odd expression on his face.

  “What kind of boar?” he asked.

  “Huge one. Almost white. Greg saw it when Brys stopped us on the road.”

  Greg was nodding his head. “Really big,” he said. “I could have wrecked the van, hitting it.”

  “Go on, Ned,” Uncle Dave said.

  Ned looked at him. “I don’t know if anyone will believe me, but I think it was pointing to something, both times. It came out, waited for me to see it, then it turned around and faced the mountain and looked back at me. And then it went off. I didn’t know what was going on. And . . . and this is weird, but the first time was before Beltaine. Before anything even happened. I know that doesn’t make sense.”

  “Time can be funny in these things,” his aunt said.

  “So you think she’s by this chasm,” Ned’s mother said calmly. “All right. Good. That’s our first stop tomorrow. We get directions and go look.”

  Ned shook his head. His hands were trembling again.

  “Mom, no. I have to go now. One of them’s going to figure this. They’ve had so much longer with her, with Ysabel. They heard her say sacrifice too. And they know that place.”

  “Ned . . .” his father began.

  “Dad, I’m really sure. I’m shaking with it, I’m so positive.” He held up his hands to show them.

  His father looked at him. “That’s not what I was going to say. Ned, I believe you. There’s something else. You’re forgetting.”

  “What?” Ned said.

  It was Steve who answered him. “Dude, you can’t go up that mountain.”

  “I have to.”

  “Ned,” Greg murmured, “we saw you there. You looked like you were dying, man. I haven’t seen anyone throw up that hard since . . . since whenever.”

  Ned stopped. He took a steadying breath. He swore. Neither parent said a word.

  He had forgotten. Or, he’d half remembered because he knew he’d been sick when Melanie told him about the garagai, but he’d blocked out what it would mean to go back there. To climb.

  Even the recollection made him feel ill, right here. He shook his head. “Doesn’t matter. I have to try. I need to go, like, right now.” He was almost twitching with the need to be gone.

  His father’s tone was gentle. “It’s past four o’clock, Ned. You can’t do it in the dark.”

  “Won’t be dark. I’ll get my sweats and I’ll run. I’m a runner, Dad. I can do this. And maybe”—a sudden thought—“maybe I’ll be better when I get higher up? My problem was the battlefield. I think.”

  He looked at Greg and Steve.

  “And maybe you won’t,” Greg said, shaking his head.

  “Dude—” Steve began.

  “All of you listen!” Ned said. He heard his voice rising. “Melanie is gone if we screw this up. Look, I’ll take four Advil or whatever, and sunglasses, and my phone, and I’ll run. Please stop arguing. We can’t argue. We need to move. I have to know exactly where this place is.”

  Kate Wenger, without a word, got up and went to Melanie’s maps-and-books file on the computer table.

  Ned was looking at his mother. He saw something in her eyes that went so far beyond concern he couldn’t even put a word to it.

  “Mom, please,” he whispered. “I need your help.”

  “I know,” Meghan Marriner said. “I just don’t want to give it.”

  He looked at her. She shook her head. “I can’t begin to tell you how little I like this. What do you plan to do when you get up there, if you get up there?”

  “No idea.”

  She let herself smile a little. “Well, that’s honest.”

  “I’m being honest, Mom.”

  Meghan looked at him another moment, then turned to her husband with a crisp nod. “Ed, get your two Veras in here, while Kate’s looking for maps. If they live here they may know.”

  Her husband shook his head. “Let me try something else first.”

  He crossed to the desk beside Kate and checked a phone number on Melanie’s corkboard, then dialed.

  Ned found that he was breathing hard already—it looked, amazingly, as if they were going to help. But he was remembering the mountain now: Pourrières, and the worst feeling of his life. That screen of blood, filterin
g the world, and the smell of it.

  His choice here, no one else to blame. Sometimes, he thought, life was easier when you had people to stop you. Maybe that was something parents were good for.

  His father said, “Oliver? Ed Marriner. Am I interrupting anything?” He waited for whatever reply he got, then said, “I won’t keep you long, before drinks.”

  The Englishman answered something, and Ned’s father managed a fake laugh. “Well, if you have one already, I needn’t rush. But I have a question that’s come up . . . something to photograph, maybe. Do you know a place called the garagai? Up on Sainte-Victoire?”

  Another pause, a longer one. Oliver Lee was launching into a story, Ned guessed. Ned could picture him, reading glasses on their chain over his chest, drink in hand, holding forth.

  Edward Marriner opened his mouth to interrupt, closed it, then plunged in, “Well, yes, I’ve read a bit about all that, and I was thinking of going up to have a look.” He paused. “I know it is a climb. Yes, I’ve heard it gets windy. But . . . Oliver, do you know where it is, up there? Have you been?”

  The room fell silent. Edward Marriner looked at his son, his brow furrowed. It never unfurrowed. “You haven’t? So you wouldn’t be able to give me directions?”

  He looked over at his wife. “Yes, of course, we’ll chase down a topographic map, or I can call the mayor’s office. They’ve been helpful.” He stopped. Lee was saying something. “No, no, it is hardly a shocking confession, Oliver. My people told me Cézanne never climbed it either.” He paused again. “Yes, of course, I’ll give your regards to Melanie.” He looked at Ned again. “No, I think I’ll let you tell her that yourself, Oliver.” Another small, forced laugh. He said goodbye and hung up.

  Ned looked across the room at his mother. She was gazing at him, staring at him, really, with an expression he couldn’t remember seeing before. As if he were a stranger. It bothered him. He tried to smile at her, but didn’t really succeed.

  “Ned?” It was his aunt. “Two things. If you’re right, and there’s urgency here, it’s because one or both of them may get there first. And they may do that by tracking you.”

  “They were going to Arles,” he said.

  “Yesterday evening. Ned, they both seem to think you’re a key to this. You’ll have to screen yourself when we leave here. But you need to let it go at times, you can’t hold the screening too long.”

  He hesitated. “I was kind of counting on the screen to help me with . . . my problem there.”

  “I thought you might be. But you still need to let it go some of the time or you’ll make yourself ill.”

  He cleared his throat. “Phelan told me that too, last night.”

  “Kim, what if they’re watching us? From out there?’ Meghan gestured towards the windows.

  Her sister frowned. “I don’t think . . .” She looked at Uncle Dave.

  He shrugged. “Might be. They know where we are, they know we’re looking. Either they’re tearing around searching everywhere, or they’re checking us at intervals. Checking on Ned to see if he’s doing anything.”

  “Could they have anyone watching for them?” Steve asked.

  “Don’t think so,” Kim said.

  “But we aren’t sure,” said her sister briskly. “All right, assume they are watching, what do we do? And first of all, how do we find out where he has to go?”

  “I can tell you that,” said a voice from the kitchen door.

  They turned.

  Veracook, in her usual black dress, was standing there. She’d spoken in English.

  “You . . . you speak our language?” Edward Marriner said. He looked a bit stunned, as if too many things were happening too fast.

  Vera smiled a little. “The owners are American. I learn a little.”

  “But you never . . .”

  “You always speak French.” She shrugged.

  Kimberly walked towards her. “Do you . . . do you understand what we’re talking about here?”

  “Climbing the mountain?” A slight flicker of the eyes.

  “That, and why.” Kim’s voice was direct. “Why we need to go up.”

  Vera looked at her. Nodded her head. Her own voice was cold. “Something happened on the Fire Night. I had rowans by the windows, to protect the house. She should not have gone out.”

  “She had to,” Ned said. They were speaking French again. “It was my fault, but it was before sundown. It shouldn’t have been Beltaine.”

  Veracook crossed herself when he said the word.

  “How do you know about all this?” Meghan asked. She looked as unhappy as Ned could remember.

  Again that shrug. “My grandmother. She told us stories. All of my family, we put out rowan on that night, and on the other night, in autumn.”

  Another grandmother.

  It was Dave who asked the question: “You said you can help. You know where this garagai is?”

  Vera nodded. “But it is a bad place. And it is already late today.”

  Ned’s father surprised him then. “It’ll be later if we hang around talking. My understanding is we need to get up there fast. Please tell us how.”

  “It is the girl? Melanie?”

  “Yes,” said Edward Marriner.

  “She is gone? From the Fire Night?”

  A hesitation. “Yes,” he said again.

  Another sign of the cross. “You should not go inside this, then,” she said.

  “We are inside it, Mme. Lajoie,” Ned’s father said. “Please, tell us what you know.”

  “Who will go?” she asked.

  “Me,” said Ned.

  She looked at him. “You will take rowan for protection?”

  “I’ll take anything you want me to take,” he said fervently.

  She nodded, grim-faced. “For the girl, I will tell how you go. It is not far from the cross at the top, or the chapel. But you must be careful. It is easy to fall if there is wind.”

  “Oh, wonderful,” said Meghan Marriner.

  Ned ignored that as best he could.

  Kate sat at the dining-room table with paper and pen and gestured for Vera Lajoie to sit beside her. She did so.

  Then she proceeded to give extremely precise directions to the mountain chasm where Marius of the Romans had sacrificed a number of Celtic chieftains twenty-one hundred years ago.

  NED WAS STUDYING the directions, in Kate’s very neat handwriting. He lifted his head, saw his mother looking at him. “This,” she said, “is hard for me. I really want to forbid you.”

  “I know,” he said.

  “Or I want to come.”

  He smiled a bit. “I’ll be running, Mom. Uncle Dave has a bad leg. Steve can’t run. Greg for sure can’t.”

  “I can,” said Kate.

  “No!” said Meghan and Kim, simultaneously.

  “Don’t even think it,” Meghan Marriner added. Kate bit her lip. Meghan looked at her sister. “Kim, can he even do anything?”

  Aunt Kim had her arms folded across her chest again. “Honestly? I don’t know. I don’t think either of them mean him harm.”

  “But you don’t know.”

  “We can’t know, Meg.”

  “Even with what you . . . ?”

  Her sister shook her head. “I have next to nothing here. All I can tell you is that I do think Melanie’s gone if one of them finds her. And that Ned is inside this somehow.”

  “I accept that. But I’m also his mother, Kim. You can’t imagine—” She stopped. Shook her head. “Oh, dear. I’m sorry.”

  Kimberly’s eyes were bright. “Don’t be. I have no children, but I can imagine what it might be like to let him go. I’ve seen it done.”

  “Let’s do this,” Ned said, as confidently as he could. He didn’t think he was fooling anyone. “Who’s driving me?”

  “Hold it,” said Greg. “If they might be tracking you, we need to do this carefully.”

  “I’ll screen myself,” Ned said, “starting now. And we go out in two cars. E
ven three?”

  “But if they’re watching the house?” Steve asked. “Like Dr. Marriner said? They’ll see you leave. They don’t care about the rest of us.”

  “Ned and I swap clothes,” Kate Wenger said suddenly.

  They looked at her. She stood up from the table.

  “What do you mean?” Ned said. “You aren’t wearing anything that belongs to you, anyhow.”

  Kate made a face. “Don’t be funny. I mean we’ll hurry out to two cars, but I dress like you, you wear the McGill thing . . .”

  “That’s my own sweatshirt.”

  “But they’ve seen me in it, last night and today, if they have been watching. You wear my brother’s white shirt under it, I put on that uncool windbreaker of yours, and your baseball cap.”

  “It isn’t uncool,” he protested.

  “Hush. She’s right, Ned,” Kim said. “It makes sense.”

  “All right,” said Dave. “One car goes west or north, somewhere—the one that looks like it has Ned in it—and the other takes him to the mountain.” He smiled at Kate. “Very good.”

  “Good?” she said, tossing her head. “It’s heroic. I never wear baseball caps.”

  Ned’s father sighed. He looked at his wife, then at Ned. “Oliver said the same thing as Vera, you know. It’s apparently dangerous off the paths, Ned.”

  “Falling off a mountain is the least of my worries,” Ned said.

  “As to that,” said Aunt Kim, “here’s one thing.”

  She took off the only bracelet she wore, the silver one with the green stone. “I have no idea if this will help, but there’s a chance.”

  “What is it?” It was Meghan.

  Kim looked at her. “A gift, a long time ago. It connects to all this, I guess you could say. It may help with the sickness. Or not. But it won’t hurt.”

  Ned took the bracelet and slipped it on. He felt nothing, though the metal was cool on his wrist.

  He shrugged. “Let’s do this,” he said again.

  Vera came back from the kitchen. She was holding leaves, a bunch of them, tied together. Gravely, she gave them to Ned.

  “Thank you,” he said.

  He wasn’t about to say no, was he? He looked down at his aunt’s bracelet. Made a face. “I mean, like, what would have been wrong with a machine gun, eh?”