Wings over Water (A King's Watch Story Book 2)

by Mark Hayden

  As soon as I joined her inside the square, that smell came again, the purest chill of spring flowers. It was so familiar…

  Eleanor turned to the pilot and bowed. ‘It is time for what was hidden to be revealed,’ she said.

  ‘No, no,’ said Woody. ‘Not here.’ She might as well not have bothered for all they cared.

  ‘It is not for you to do this,’ said the pilot. ‘You are not of the blood. For you, the mystery will remain.’

  Patience took a step forward and spoke out. The sharp vowels and clipped consonants of the upper class cut through the rain. ‘This sacrifice I make willingly. I offer my whole self on her altar. Let what is hidden be revealed.’ She took another step and prostrated herself on the grass, spreading her arms. Eleanor moved to her side and drew the sword from its scabbard.

  The nearest airman made a grab for Eleanor. Sparks glittered from his hand and trailed behind him. With the speed of an Olympic fencer, Eleanor whipped round the sword and sliced off the airman’s hand in a burst of Lux. We all staggered back from the explosion of magickal power. Even Eleanor was rocked back on her heels.

  The airmen regrouped, readying themselves. They all took off their headgear, except for the pilot, and they all shook out long, black hair. What? Not only was hair like that strictly against regulations, it shouldn’t have fitted under their caps. And that wasn’t the only change. Their eyes glowed even more brightly blue, and the clean-cut jaws sprouted straggly black beards. They were reverting to whatever their true essence might be, and I’m betting they’ve never seen in the inside of a Lancaster bomber for real.

  Their leader kept his shape and kept his cap on. He barked a couple of incomprehensible orders and drew his personal weapon. From the holster at his side came an axe. With a stone head. The rest of his crew crouched down and felt in the long grass. As one team, they stood up and had spears in their hands. The odds didn’t look good for the Bramptons.

  ‘In the name of the Goddess, stop this,’ said Woody. She turned to me, pleading in her eyes. I felt for my own personal weapon and made the biggest mistake of my magickal career.

  6 — In Her Name

  I’ve been told by a Dwarf that the magickal rounds in my gun would work against some varieties of Spirit. They would definitely work against Eleanor Brampton, but shooting her was the last thing on my mind. What I wanted was protection from those spears if the guardians decided to chuck one at me.

  The Hammer has two Works of magick stamped into the butt. One is my Ancile, my magickal shield, and it would protect me from any magickal or mundane missiles. A spear, for example.

  I gripped the gun and activated the Ancile. On the other side of the butt is my Badge of Office, a gold stamp of Caledfwlch, the sign of the Watch. It was put there in the presence of a nymph called Nimue, and a little of her essence is woven through the Work. My fingers brushed the Badge, and I remembered what the smell of wildflowers was all about.

  Lux flowed from my fingers into the Badge, and it acted like a lens, spreading magick across the square. And down, into the ground. The smell of cold, fresh mornings cut through the evening drizzle and soaked into our clothes, into our skin, and into our blood.

  ‘Conrad, what have you done?’ said Woody. The panic in her eyes was gone; it had been replaced by the naked fear of imminent death. All the actors had stopped to stare at me, too, until the leader of the guardians looked down at his feet. They were sinking into the ground.

  I felt a piercing cold run through my muscles and my organs, into my bones. I breathed a raw breath of ice and started to choke as water filled my mouth. I was standing in the open air, and I was going to drown from the inside out.

  I doubled up and pitched forward on to the grass. And through it. The ground did not stop my fall, and I disappeared into the soil with a flash of light.

  Can’t breathe. Choking. Floating. Darkness everywhere. My insides heaved and I felt like I was expelling water from my nose and mouth. My poor lungs rebelled and forced me to take a breath, even though I knew it was death. Cold pierced my ribs. Stars flashed in my eyes. I thrashed in mid-air and screamed.

  The sound of my own voice made me stop. I caught another breath. Another. I was breathing. I blinked a couple of times, and the fireworks faded, as did the smell of flowers. Black turned to grey and I knew that I was falling slowly down. I braced myself for a crash, and rolled when the ground hit me. Right into Woody.

  ‘Mngrah,’ she said groggily.

  I levered myself up and blinked again. To my right was a light, and it was growing brighter. I looked up and saw impossible stars gleaming brightly in a clear sky, all the clouds and all the pollution gone. I sat up straight and closed my eyes to let my magickal senses feel around. North was still north and I knew with absolute certainty that I was now twenty metres down from where I’d been when I touched my gun. Oh dear.

  I nudged Woody. ‘Roberta. Are you okay?’

  ‘Eurgh. Oh fuck my head hurts,’ she said, clutching it with her hands.

  I couldn’t stand. Not yet. I looked towards the light and saw Eleanor Brampton trying to get to her knees. Behind her was a big rock. A very big rock. A very big glowing rock, with something taking shape in the light above it. I scanned for a sign of the guardians or of Patience. There were shimmers here and there, points of light floating down and swirling.

  It made sense. The kind of sense that sends you screaming to a warm beach in the sunshine to get away from the bonkers. Magickal sense, in other words. We had all shifted to a different level of existence. We had entered the Spirit world.

  The discipline of the Invisible College is adamant: there is only one universe, and we all share it. The reason you don’t bump into ghosts, gods and Dæmons on Oxford Street is that their essence operates at a different frequency. They can pass through us and we can pass through them. To move from one to the other requires Lux. Lots of Lux. Enough Lux to allow Woody, Eleanor and I to move around twenty metres underground, on the site of a pre-historic temple, because that’s what it was. A temple to Nimue, and those impostor airmen were her ghostly guardians. They’d be along in a minute, and so would she.

  A thought nudged my consciousness: What if you change back? You’re underground. Instant burial. I batted that thought firmly away and focused on things I could affect, like Woody. Like standing up.

  She was still clutching her head. I put my hand on her neck. It was wet, as was her hair. I don’t have that problem. For some reason the Spirit drowning hadn’t penetrated my waterproofs, and I was no wetter than I’d been in the rain.

  ‘Breathe, Woody. Breathe in … breathe out.’

  ‘Shut up, you mad fucker. I’m not hyperventilating. I’ve got a headache. Owwww.’

  ‘Good. I’d give you aspirin if they weren’t seventy feet up in the air, so sit up and tell me how the hell we’re going to get out of here.’

  She was still gripping her head. ‘Please tell me we’re not really underground.’

  ‘Sorry. We’re underground and under all that ground water, too. Nimue used it as a conduit to bring us down here.’

  She moaned. ‘Why did you do it? Why did you summon that mad creature?’

  ‘Later. Her guardians are rejoining the party. Come on, Woodhouse. Up you get.’

  I put everything I had into getting up. I must have looked like a baby giraffe, all legs and falling over. When I had a semblance of upright, I grabbed her arm and pulled. By Odin, she was heavy. Solid. I gave up when I’d got her into a sitting position, because I heard voices.

  The RAF flying suits were gone, but not the spears. All seven guardians were clothed in neatly sewn animal hides and wore furs around their shoulders. Black hair sprouted all over the visible parts of their bodies, and their faces looked … different. Not just different from their RAF faces, different from anyone. As their bodies became completely solid, all trace of ghostly shimmer left them, and they brought with them the smell of the sea, of iodine and ozone, and of the taste of salty lips. The
final pieces of the puzzle clicked into place, and I kicked myself for a fool.

  I’ve tasted Nimue’s well in Merlyn’s Tower, and water from one of her springs in the Lakes. It’s cold, fresh and has floral notes. I hadn’t recognised it here because the salt had distorted my palate, and the salt had come from the tsunami, triggered by the Storegga Slide. The cataclysmic event that excited Professor Cargill had washed over this place and wiped out whole communities, including the men who were guarding the altar. Magick, perhaps Nimue herself, had transported them to the Spirit world and they’ve watched ever since.

  And why did they look so odd? Because our Mesolithic ancestors aren’t really our ancestors. They were erased from the record, first by the farmers and then by the workers in bronze. Not just culturally, but genetically. No wonder they weren’t keen to accept Patience Brampton as one of their people. The lady herself had appeared, looking none too healthy and clinging to her granddaughter. At least they were both upright. They were also surrounded by spears.

  I looked around for my sword, and felt for the Hammer. Neither were here, and Eleanor had realised the same thing about her weapon. The guardian on the right was holding his spear one-handed, the other being a mangled stump. He looked really, really unhappy.

  There was a tinkle of running water, a burst of light and a welling up of violets. Nimue rose from the altar.

  She is a true water nymph, made entirely of water and naked, like a melting ice sculpture. Droplets cascade from her hair and she has no feet – her ankles rise from the water like a fountain. Her face, though, is sharply defined by refracted light and is as beautiful as water can be, and anyone who’s seen dawn rise over Grasmere will tell you that water can be very, very beautiful.

  I reached down and grabbed Woody’s hand, hauling her to her feet so that we could all bow as low as possible. This was Nimue’s show, now.

  When I straightened up after my deep bow, I had to blink to make sure I wasn’t seeing things. Nimue’s left hand was leaking. I’ve seen her twice, and she always has perfect definition, as I said, like an ice sculpture.

  Not this time. Her left hand looked like it was continually melting and re-forming, with water flowing out of it. And it was getting worse, moving slowly up her left arm. In this place, Nimue was not as stable as she could be, perhaps a legacy of the tsunami. If she started to disintegrate, how the hell would the living members of her congregation get back to the surface?

  She spoke, her voice barely rising above the sound of running water that seemed to haunt this place. ‘Too long. I have been too long from here.’ She looked at the leader of the guardians. ‘Xhaliyaha?’ It sounded like his name, and he responded in that long-lost language.

  He made three short statements, each one preceded by a gesture. The first gesture pointed to Patience Brampton, the second to Eleanor and the third to Woody. Nimue stared blankly at us for a second, then lifted a liquid finger and pointed, not to Woody, but to me. ‘Welcome, Watch Captain. How fares the realm?’

  ‘Troubled, my lady, as it ever was. We…’

  She cut me off by saying something to Xhaliyaha. I think she was telling him that we were the good guys. I hope she was.

  Eleanor Brampton’s face showed a mixture of triumph and wonder. Despite our traumatic descent into a dangerous realm, she was lapping it up. Her granny was less happy. Patience Brampton was a scared woman. Above ground, she had offered her neck to the sword gladly, the fulfilment of some wish or the end of a mission. Down here, she was frightened. Very frightened. When Eleanor whispered something in her ear, she forced a smile to hide her terror, then Nimue looked at her, and the smile died on her lips.

  ‘Spirit, you should not have come here,’ said the Nymph. ‘You have much guilt upon you that you cannot wash away with your sacrifice, but I will be merciful and accept it anyway. Your child’s child can add to it with her own sacrifice.’ She turned to Eleanor. ‘I am not a doll to be played with, mortal. You have insulted me and your presence defiles my sacred place. Xhaliyaha, take them to the lake.’

  ‘No…’

  Patience screamed first, and dashed towards the altar. Two spears thrust towards her, one of them piercing her leather jacket and drawing blood. She staggered back, and Eleanor caught her.

  ‘My lady…,’ said Eleanor, but she was talking to an empty space. Nimue had dissolved back into water and there was nothing but a pool in a depression on top of the rock to show that she’d ever been here.

  Xhaliyaha barked an order, and the guardians moved like lightning. Four of them dropped their spears and dived at the women. Patience whipped up her hand to try magick, but it was too late. They collapsed in a heap of flailing brown arms and grunts. In seconds, each Brampton had been forced to their knees and been pinioned by one of the guardians.

  I’d stepped forward when the action started, and stopped dead when Xhaliyaha turned and raised his stone axe. It was all over before I could get his measure, and now one of the guardians was facing us. I stepped back. He waved the axe, and the guardians started dragging the Bramptons away to the south. Woody and I started to track them.

  ‘Conrad, do something,’ said Woody. ‘You can’t let this happen.’

  So long as we got to the surface, I was quite happy to let it happen. These guardians were elite hunters. They had weapons. They had orders. What did I have?

  ‘Any suggestions gratefully received,’ I said.

  Woody put on a spurt and moved in front of the group. ‘In the name of peace, let them go,’ she said. ‘You have seen the world. The days of blood speaking to blood are over.’

  Xhaliyaha had been given his orders in English, and clearly understood them. He understood Woody, too, and gave her a predatory grin. ‘Blood will always speak. Listen.’ He put two crooked fingers in his mouth and whistled. He paused and whistled again, modulating the clear note into a minor key that sounded very wrong to my ears.

  I looked round and realised that we were heading towards a secondary light source, about two hundred metres away, if distance works the same down here. Three shadows formed, silhouettes against the light, and moving towards us. Xhaliyaha waited, looking at the figures as they came closer.

  ‘Oh shit,’ I said.

  ‘What?’ said Woody. ‘I can’t see anything. Oh. Right. Shit.’

  The three shadows resolved themselves into young men. Young airmen, and these were the real thing. Their leather coats were barely visible under the combined lifejacket and parachute that all aircrew wore, and those leather coats were neater, squarer and longer than the shaggy sheepskins that the RAF wore. That’s because they weren’t RAF, they were Luftwaffe, and they were all staring at Patience.

  Their eyes were feral, hungry and eager. One of them bared his teeth. ‘Guten tag, mutti.’

  ‘What’d he say?’ whispered Woody.

  ‘Hello, mum. I’m sensing irony. And bloodlust.’

  Xhaliyaha spoke, and the guardian holding Patience released her with a forward shove. She staggered and grimaced, bringing up a hand to hold the wound in her side. Blood was flowing through her fingers. Once a mother, always a mother, or so I’ve been told. Patience used every ounce of strength to turn to Xhaliyaha. ‘I will go. Spare my child’s child. She is innocent. Foolish, but innocent. This is my sin to remit.’

  I don’t think Xhaliyaha’s English was good enough to understand remission of sins. He got the gist, though, and shook his head. ‘Both of you. It has been spoken.’ He didn’t look thrilled about it, and turned himself fractionally away from Eleanor.

  The living Brampton had turned white. ‘Patience, what have you done? Tell me it’s not true. I thought…’

  ‘Nimm sie weg,’ said the leading German airman. Take her away. Patience bowed her head, and the other two grabbed her arms. Their leader looked at Eleanor. She whimpered.

  To the right, towards the growing light, I glimpsed another shadow, little more than a flicker, and I knew who it was. It would have been good if the Allfather had chosen this
moment to drop in, but this was not his turf. There would be a raven watching from an underwater tree, no doubt, but this phantom was from my past, and just to complete the party, he was an airman too. He once supped with me, and used no spoon at all. My actions cost him his life, and much of what I’ve done since then has been overshadowed by that.

  I looked back at Eleanor. I wouldn’t throw my life away for her, nor would I offer to exchange it for hers. But I would definitely risk it. I owed her that.

  There was only one way to save Eleanor Brampton: Xhaliyaha’s orders would have to be rescinded, and only one person, one being could do that. I had one chance, and I needed some help. ‘Woody, buy me some time,’ I said, and then I legged it.

  I ran away from the group, which most of the guardians found very amusing. Woody looked appalled until she realised where I was going, then she turned back to intervene. My leg throbbed as I put on a spurt. I had to get to the altar before it was too late.

  The rock wasn’t glowing like it had done, and barely any water was left in the pool on the top. Blood does call to blood, but Nimue was literally bloodless. I needed water.

  When I’d patted my pockets earlier, I’d discovered that not every magickal Artefact had stayed on the surface. I pulled the Egyptian tube out of my coat and snapped off the cap. Mina, if this is the end, I hope you know how much I love you. The thought ran quickly through my head, almost unbidden, and then I grabbed the willow wand, pulled it out and plunged the end into the shallow basin. The electric shock blew me back at least five feet and thunder rolled across the underground grass.

  7 — Patience

  Screams. Women’s screams, high pitched and piercing my ears. Got to get up. Got to. No chance.