Ysabel (21 page)

He watched her walk between the final torches.

The man who had summoned her—with the power of Beltaine and the white bull and the bull’s blood—knelt in the roadway. So did all the others, as if they had
been waiting for his sign, as if Melanie were a queen, or a goddess.

Ned could see, even from where he was, that the big man’s face was alight with joy. And with need, or something beyond need, deeper. Whatever you thought of him, you couldn’t see that look and not respond to it.

Melanie, who was not Melanie any more, stopped in front of him.

She was in profile for Ned, lit by the moon and the carried torches. She was more beautiful than any woman he’d ever seen, or ever imagined seeing.

He found it difficult to breathe. He saw her look up at the moon for a moment and then back down again, at the man kneeling before her.

He said something, in that language Ned couldn’t understand. Melanie reached down then, slowly. She touched his yellow hair with the fingers of one hand. It was very bright where they were, as if they were on a stage, acting out motions from long ago, but also here now, in front of him.

Wherever
now
was.

Then the woman spoke for the first time, and Ned heard her say, in exquisite French, formal, very clear, “Change your words. Returned in this new time, shall we not speak in the tongue they use? We will have to, will we not, as the dance begins?”

“As you wish, my lady.”

He was still kneeling. He lowered his head. It was difficult to see his face now, with the long hair falling.

“It is as I wish.”

Her
voice was harder to read, but it sure wasn’t Melanie’s. She looked around slowly. Grave, unsmiling, taking in those nearby, the risen, moon-touched tower.

“Only one of you?” she said softly.

“Only one of us,” the kneeling figure said. “Alas.”

He lifted his face again. Ned saw that he was smiling. He didn’t sound distressed at all.

“Two of us,” the scarred man said, from the edge of the plateau.

No more than that, and quietly, but everything altered with the words. Entremont and the night turned. They took on, they
accepted
, a weight of centuries, their place in a long story.

Or so it was to seem to Ned, looking back.

There came a cry of rage from the kneeling man.

He rose, took a stride this way amid shouts from the others behind him. Ned saw spears lifted, levelled. A sword was drawn by one enormous, bare-chested, nearly naked warrior. The figure in white lifted his hands, still holding the bowl, as if to cast a spell or a curse.

Amid all this, the man in the grey leather jacket walked forward, entering among them as if he perceived no threat at all, as if he hadn’t even
noticed
any of this.

Perhaps he hadn’t, Ned thought. Perhaps he was seeing only the woman. As if nothing else signified or had meaning.

She had turned to watch him approach, and so Ned could see her face clearly now for the first time. He closed his eyes, then opened them again. His mouth was dry.

“They tested you?” she said mildly, as the man stopped in front of her. He didn’t kneel. She offered no other greeting.

He inclined his head in agreement. “They amuse themselves. As children do.” They were speaking French.

“You think? Not only children, surely. I enjoy being amused,” she said.

“I recall amusing you.”

She laughed. Ned closed his eyes again for a second. “Sometimes, yes, my stranger.” She tilted her head to one side, appraisingly. “You look older.”

“You said that the last time as well.”

“Did I?” She shrugged.

She turned away from him to the other one. The bigger man was rigid, tense, like some hunting animal. Ned had a sudden, sharp sense that violence was about to explode here.

Time to go
, he thought.

“I remember that torc,” the woman said.

Ned saw the golden-haired man smile. “And I that lapis ring, among the others.”

She lifted one hand, looked at it briefly. “Did you give me this one?”

“You know I did. And when I did so.”

She lowered her hand. “You will tell me what I know?”

He bowed his head. She laughed.

Kate was quiet now beside Ned, lying on the grass. He was still on his knees. He felt paralyzed by fear and fascination, by the horror of what had happened.
And he couldn’t take his eyes from this woman.

“We’ve got to get her back!” he whispered, feeling idiotic even as he said it. Who was he, to even think such a thing?

“Who went up? Who was it?” Kate murmured, finally lifting her head. She wiped at her wet cheeks.

“That’s Melanie. She came herself. I have
no
idea why Greg didn’t.”

“That was going to be me,” Kate said dully. “You know that?”

Ned nodded. He did know it. It was a difficult thing to get his head around. If Melanie hadn’t come . . .

He looked away from Kate, up the slope. The man—
their
man—in his grey jacket was surrounded. He was weaponless. They will give me one, he’d said.

We should be going right now
, Ned thought.

He stayed where he was.

“How is it you are here, little stranger?” he heard the golden one demand.

“Yes, how?” the woman added. “They
so
dearly wish to know! Look at them! You have spoiled the game.” Music in her voice, capricious, amused.

“Children offer riddles they think are challenging,” he said mildly.

Ned could see her face whenever she turned this way.

“Is that truth? A riddle solved?” she asked.

He hesitated. “It is a truth, love. But a woman also gave a hint they might be here for the summoning and I heeded her.”

Love.

“Ah. A woman? And is she fair? Young, with a sweet voice? You have left me for another. Woe unto my riven heart.”

There was a little silence. Beside Ned, Kate Wenger had gone still.

“I will never leave you,” the man said quietly.

Ned Marriner shivered, on his knees in silver-green grass, hearing that.

“Never?”

Her manner had changed again.

The man’s back was to them, Ned couldn’t see his expression. They heard him say, “Have I not shown as much, by now? Surely?”

Her turn to be silent.

“I am a helpless woman,” she said at length. “I must believe you, I suppose.”

Helpless.
Her tone and bearing made a lie of the word. “Tell me,” she said, her manner altering yet again, “is that carving you made of me still down below, in the world?”

“It is.”

“And do I look there as I do now?”

They could see him shake his head.

“You know you never did, in that stone. And time has worked its will.”

She took a step back from him, withdrawing. “Ah? Time? And must I
accept
that? You have not gone to undo that will? Is this love? Am I well served, or do you merely offer words?”

He lowered his head, as the other man had done.

“I have not been back in the world for long, my lady. Nor have we arrived in an age when I may enter that cloister to work.”

Her voice was scornful. “He offers an explanation! How gracious! Tell me, might a better man have done so?”

“That’s not
fair
!” Ned heard Kate hiss sharply, beside him.

The figure in the grey jacket said only, “Perhaps so, my lady. I know there are better men.”

Ned saw her smile at that. It was a cruel look, he thought.

The man added, softly, “But it had occurred to me then, as I worked, that no carving could come near to what you are. I shaped it to be only a hint, from the beginning, knowing it would become more so through the years, wearing away. One needs to have
seen
you—and perhaps more than that—to understand.”

More than that.
Ned drew a shaky breath.

The smile changed, and was not cruel any more. She lifted a hand as if to touch his face, but she didn’t.

She turned to the other one instead. “And you? He says he will never leave me.”

This one’s voice was deeper, resonant. “My answer is as it was from the beginning, even before that night among the village fires. You left us when this began. You
began
this. It was always your right . . . but until the sky falls I will fight to have you back.”

Kate sat up beside Ned in the grass.

The tall woman, red and gold as a fairy queen, said, “Indeed?
Will
you fight for me?”

He said, “I would prove my love in the stranger’s blood tonight and always, with joy.”

“And prove your worth?”

His teeth flashed suddenly; he pushed back his yellow hair, which was being blown across his eyes. He was magnificent, like a horse. Or a stag, Ned thought suddenly, remembering the horns.

“Have I ever been unworthy, Ysabel?”

They heard her laughter ripple across the ruins.

Ysabel.

“Ah,” she said. “So that is my name this time?”

“The animal offered it, before it died. The druid said as much.”

“Then I accept, of course.”

Her amusement was gone. Another shift of mood, like a cloud across the moon.

She turned her head, looking down at the white bull lying in its own blood on the dusty, silvered street. She said something too softly for Ned to hear. Then she looked up again, from one man to the other.

“And now what happens? I name you both, is that it? And then a battle? That is why we are alive again?”

A challenge in her now, almost anger.

“That’s why he couldn’t answer before,” Kate whispered. “About his name.”

This time Ned reached out and took her hand. It lay quietly in his. They watched together. It was necessary to leave, he knew, and impossible.

The woman had turned this way again, towards the smaller man. The moonlight was on her face.

“What shall I call you?” she asked.

Her voice had lost that softer nuance again. She was controlling him, all of them. Wilful, teasing.

“Shall I name you Becan because you are small? Or Morven, one more time, since you came from the sea?”

“I had a different name when I did that,” he said mildly.

“I remember.”

“When I first came.”

“I remember.”

“And I . . . I have been . . . you have called me Anwyll.”

She lifted her head. “
Beloved?
Do you presume so much? That I must name you thus, because I foolishly did so once?”

Not truly angry, Ned thought, but he wasn’t sure.

“I only said that it was so, upon a time and more than once,” the man murmured. He didn’t lower his head. “You must not imagine I forget.”

Kate Wenger made a small sound beside Ned. No one moved on the plateau. The torches burned, smoke streaming on the wind.

“More than once,” the woman agreed finally. “Named so, or not. Before that scar and after. By the sea and from the waves.”

And Ned Marriner, hidden in the darkness of their downslope and hearing this, thought that if, before he grew old and died, a woman spoke to him words like
these, in such a voice, he might say he’d lived a life worth living.

The woman named Ysabel was gazing upon the man. She shook her head, slowly.

“‘Anwyll’ must be earned again, surely, by one of you. Or neither, perhaps. But I will not name you Donal here: not a stranger again after so long. Little one, lean and alone, clad in grey, you shall be Phelan one more time. My wolf.”

“This is all Celtic,” Kate whispered.

“I know,” Ned murmured.

He was thinking
wolf,
how it suited.

The moon was high, so much sooner than it should have been. But what did
should have been
mean tonight? He watched the woman, who was not Melanie any more, turn to the other man.

“Gwri for your hair?” she said, that teasing tone again. “Allyn, or Keane, handsome one? Briant, for strength . . . Would you like one of those?”

It was as if she was testing, tasting names on her tongue. Playing with them. One long leg was thrust out to the side, a hand on her hip, head tilted, looking him up and down.

“You have cause to remember that last,” he replied, and threw back his head, laughing at his own jest. Ned thought she’d be angry again, but he was wrong. She laughed too. He didn’t understand her at all, he realized.

“Let me kill him here,” he said, gesturing with his hand in a wide sweep. “Grant us leave to fight. This is a sacred place tonight.”

Ned couldn’t see her face, but he heard the smile in her voice. “Ah. And so we are given your name,” she said. “Take it. Cadell you are and have always been, my warring one.”

Wolf and warrior. There was a silence where they stood, like figures in a tableau. Ned saw a shooting star, a fireball, streak slowly across the western darkness of the sky beyond and disappear. Like a child, in need, he made a wish upon it.

“Very well. That is done. Thank you, my lady. If we are to battle now, might someone be good enough to offer me a blade?”

It was the lean one speaking, brisk, matter-of-fact, the man they could now call Phelan. Ned swallowed, hearing that, the crisp courtesy of the words. But there was so much beneath them. The night could explode right now, a red, electric violence.

Go now!
an inner voice was crying.

“A sword? Of course. With joy,” said the one called Cadell. “I cannot tell you how much joy.” He paused, then added, almost gravely, “You know that I will kill you.”

“I know that you will try.”

Someone—the small figure in the white robe, Ned saw—stepped forward holding an unsheathed sword across his palms like another offering. He’d handed the stone bowl to someone else. It was as if he’d been waiting for this, as if he’d known it would come. Perhaps he had. Phelan came forward to claim it and begin.

But in that moment a very long dance—the torment and the glory of it—was altered on that plateau. It would be a while before Ned Marriner realized that this was so, and longer still before he understood why, and by then it was almost too late.

“No,” said Ysabel.

Phelan stopped, a hand extended towards the hilt of the offered sword. He didn’t touch it. Both men looked at her.