Ross Lawhead (39 page)

There was an indefinable change in the air, and the noise that their footsteps made allowed them to sense a narrowing of the walls around them. The ground became steeper and then curled around them, shunting them to the left, creating a wall to their right.

Cresting the mound of scree, they found themselves on a rock shelf that ran to their left, and no option but to follow it. They moved cautiously, each of them inwardly terrified that the ground would give way beneath them. But to their relief it broadened and continued on.

Then they discovered the carvings.

All of a sudden the wall was covered with them. Most of them looked like writing, but with odd letters that were made of straight lines only, no curves. Some of them were long horizontal lines with perpendicular and slanting lines stemming from and intersecting the baseline. Daniel ran his hands along them; they were set very deeply into the rock. Sometimes there was just a single running line a couple of inches high and a foot long, scrawled here and there like graffiti. At other points, there were large blocks of tightly packed letters with no spaces, several feet in length and height, well blocked out and bordered.

One set of carvings quite startled Daniel. He had to stop and pull back his torch to see the full extent of them. Lines of words snaked through each other like ribbons, randomly twisting and splitting and converging. Caught in the middle of this was a man with a bearded face, kneeling, with his arms raised, the words twisting around him and his limbs. His face, almost cartoon-like in its simplicity, nonetheless wore the look of someone in deep anxiety.

The others, seeing Daniel had stopped, returned to stand beside him. They spent a few silent moments contemplating the picture.

Freya shuddered.

“Swiðgar,” Ecgbryt said in a low voice, “you are more familiar with the old script than I. Can you read it?”

“Hmm, not easily,” Swiðgar answered. “I wish Ceolferþ were here; he was more the scholar than I. The letters I know, but not their arrangement. It is not our tongue.” He stepped forward and reached a hand out to some crudely etched words only a sentence long.

“Apart from these,” he said, “which forbid the passing of any person. It is a curse, written backwards. Perhaps all these words are written backwards,” he said, casting his eyes across the wall.

Daniel felt a chill ripple across his shoulders. The words and banks of letters were no longer an interesting puzzle but a wall of angry and oppressive words, aware of them, warning them away, cursing them.

“I fear no curse from man or devil,” declared Swiðgar. “My heart has been sealed against both by one stronger than any enchanted.”

A short distance farther, they came across a cave mouth—an archway in the rock. It was obviously man-made and bordered with row upon row of angry-looking writing that none of them even wanted to read. There were columns or standing stones that had been placed in front of the tunnel entrance like two rows of guards, three on each side, each stone covered top to bottom in angry-looking letters.

Thankfully the writing did not continue inside the tunnel—the walls were unmarked in any way. As the travelers stood, wondering what might be in that tunnel and where it led, they heard a slow, rhythmic scraping sound start up that grated on their spines. They stood silently, listening to it and holding their lanterns up in front of them. After a minute it stopped, and with deep breaths they entered the tunnel. Its walls were not rounded but octagonal; whoever had constructed the passage must have been meticulous in its carving, for though it twisted and turned maddeningly, the walls and diagonals kept their shape, never moving farther away or closer together.

The meandering passage bends became corners, then hairpins, tightly packed together, turning first this way and then that, and then the other. The travelers picked their way along and were starting to feel quite dizzy and disoriented, with all the zigzagging— right and then right again, full left, right, left, right, right, left—when suddenly the floor fell from underneath them.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Reunion

1

Now . . .

She was at her desk again. It was more cluttered than before. There were large open binders before her packed tight with grids of letters and numbers. She was transliterating from Greek into Arabic numerals, she remembered, and had been writing a guide for herself in English. There was a sheet of paper in front of her that was filled with her handwriting. She started reading it:

Jesnubim, once separate from her passions, from joy became pregnant with the contemplation of the lights that accompanied him, i.e. the angels with him; and—they teach—craving (?) them she produced fruits after their (?) image, a spiritual offspring generated after the likeness of the savior's bodyguards. Now, of these three (essences) that—they say—were extant, one derived from her passion, and this was the matter; another derived from her turning back, and this was the animate; another was what she brought forth, and this was the spiritual . . .

And so on. There were more sheets beneath it, all still in her handwriting and all seemingly gibberish. There's no reason she would have written all that.

She heard a small cry that sent a shock through her—it was an infant's cry—her child's. She stood up and rushed to the next room where the cot was. Stooping over the cot, she gazed at the tiny red face that howled up at her.

Abruptly she straightened, alarmed.

This wasn't her child.

But, if not hers, whose? And where was hers?

No, that was ridiculous; she didn't have a child. She was too young.

But it
was
hers. And it was still screaming. Freya reached into the cot and pulled it out. Shouldering the infant, she started bouncing it up and down to calm it, but she held it awkwardly, unnaturally. Was it a boy or a girl? Its name was Daniel, she was sure of that much.

“Oh no! Daniel!” she exclaimed, her body tensing. She nearly lost her grip on the child as her mind flashed to a terrible image— someone she once knew running towards her, falling, and then disappearing into thin air.

“Daniel—I have to help Daniel!”

The infant at her shoulder began wailing again. She put it back in the cot and then went back to her desk. How could she have forgotten something as important as this? There was a large black marker in a pencil cup and she uncapped it and wrote on the first sheet of paper that she could find—the page with her meaningless drivel on it—in large block letters:

MUST SAVE DANIEL

Then she stood back and looked at the words. Who was Daniel? The baby was crying. Why was it so hard to remember things all of a sudden? Her head was so . . .
foggy
these days.

The sky grew darker. She was tired—still tired. How long had she been asleep? A headache was growing at the base of her skull.

She was hungry. When was the last time she had eaten something?

The fog was growing, but she had to push through. Everything felt . . . dissociated. All that she was truly aware of were the words on the page and the growing dread that she couldn't remember more.

“Freya? Darling?” she heard a voice call from the doorway.

She sprang around to see Felix in the doorway. One hand went to her papers and gathered them together.

“Darling, Sophia was crying . . .” He held the infant, who was quiet, though still red-faced and teary. “What have you been doing?”

She didn't know how to reply. “I was just . . . writing . . .”

Felix looked into her eyes. “Are you feeling okay? Did you take your pills?”

Freya opened a drawer and pulled out a small plastic bottle.

“These aren't my pills. I don't take these.”

“What are you writing, dearest?”

Freya brushed her papers closer together. “Don't touch me, please.”

“Sweetheart, please take your pills. You always feel much better after them. I'll start dinner. Why don't you review what you've written?”

Felix left the room with the baby—
Sophia? Not Daniel?
—and she sat a moment in thought. She stared down at the pages in front of her. None of it made any sense—these weren't words in front of her.

What was happening to her?

And why was she so . . . sleepy . . . ?

2

Daniel pointed out the familiar shape on the coloured banner. “Kæyle, that's Great Britain,” he said.

“Then I have taken you to the right place. This is our destination.”

They made their way through the crowds and into a tent that was covered, apparently not wanting to display its goods. They pushed through a series of veils and curtains that hung under an awning into a room that was dark, lit by oil lamps. There were plush carpets underfoot and a dozen cabinets displaying mostly ornamental objects. In the centre of this tableaux sat the proprietor, adrift in the middle of a pool of cushions, rotund, and upholstered rather like a cushion himself.

“Welcome!” He greeted them brightly, thrusting squat little arms at them. He had a fat, jolly face with extravagantly curled whiskers that supported a large, bulbous, purple hat on his head that looked something like a turban. “I am Reizger Lokkich. What can I offer you fine gentlemen this afternoon? I have all manner of objects from distant lands and ages gone by. From coins and keepsakes to sculptures and machines whose use and operation are unknown, even to me! How do I fix a price on such items, you may ask? I have no way of knowing! A potential bargain lurks on every table!” He laughed heartily at this, amused, it seemed, by his own ignorance and generosity.

The collier gave the tables only the most cursory of glances. “We are here for another purpose than trinket gathering,” he said. “This one”—indicating Daniel—“is from another land. The land of . . .”

“England,” Daniel supplied.

“The land of England, and he needs to return. You were once known as a traveler, upon a time. Know you of any way to return him to where he needs to be?”

While Kæyle was speaking, the merchant's bushy eyebrows were traveling up his forehead, and his mouth was contracting more and more until it was just a small circle below a long moustache. When the collier paused, his features snapped back into place; he stood up and approached Daniel. His salesman's mannerisms evaporated and he ran his eyes up and down in a professional manner, touching him on the arm and turning his palms outwards in order to study them. “It has been a long time since those paths were used by our people. They may be difficult to travel now.”

The merchant tilted Daniel's head and peered into his ears.

Daniel felt like he was being appraised and that a price would be offered for him shortly.

“Yes, he looks in fair condition to travel. Allow me to consult my chart book.”

He rose and adjusted one of the lamps so that it gave off a brighter gleam. Pulling a large, square book from a chest behind the bank of cushions, he settled himself and started thumbing the pages, which seemed to be filled with dozens of interlocking circles of varying size, annotated with small scribbles. Within these circles were landmarks like mountains, cairns, trees, caves, standing stones, churches, and so on. Bordering these were pictures of the sun and moon in different phases. The merchant settled on one page and ran his fingers along it, reading the scrawls under his breath.

A young elf, dressed in suede leathers, pushed his way through the gauze veils of the tent. “Excuse me, Kæyle, but you're needed back at your stall.”

“I will be done here shortly,” the collier replied.

“But it is Agrid Fiall—he demands your presence. He refuses to have dealings with your wife.”

Kæyle growled, annoyed. “Very well.” He sighed. “I leave him in your hands, Reizger Lokkich.” The merchant's eye flicked up.

“See that you do right by him. He is not to pay you. Since he is currently my property, all payment will come from me,
after
he has returned home. See that he does nothing to jeopardise his return. Daniel, can you remember the way back to the tent?”

He replied that he could.

“Make sure you take nothing away with you, and that nothing is placed on your person.” And with that final warning, he left with the messenger.

The merchant Lokkich returned to his book and traced a path along the page with a fingertip. Then he looked up at Daniel, beaming.

“You're in luck!” he exclaimed, tapping the page. “We are just at the start of a cycle and in the ideal place to cross over—up at the meeting rock. We could try tomorrow night, in fact. It will be a weak pull, but one in the right direction. If that doesn't work, the one five days later almost certainly will. Tell me, how urgently do you want to get back?”

“Fairly urgently—I think my friend is in danger.”

“Ah, then it's important that you leave as soon as possible. There are things that I can do to help you . . . but . . .” Lokkich looked sad.

“What is it?” asked Daniel, sensing a hustle.

“I'm afraid that the cost would be far beyond the means of a poor wood-burner.”