Андреа Хёст - The Pyramids of London

Eluned shivered, took a deep breath, and found herself more excited than afraid. It did not make sense, for that breeze to stream from one end of this high walled space. And it was not sensible for her to eagerly follow the vampire who had nearly killed her aunt. Yet she did, impatient when he paused to close the gate behind them.

The trees here crowded close, making it necessary to weave and duck beneath low-hanging branches. Eluned kept a sharp eye on Dem Makepeace’s white tunic, vivid through the gloom. Though it no longer stood out so clearly, and the trees…

“How?”

“Different time of day?”

Dem Makepeace glanced up at a sky the bleached and fading blue it had been before dinner. Ahead a trace of a stone path cut through widely-spaced trees and the tumbled remnants of ancient buildings. Birds called, the evening chorus in full throat to emphasise the quiet they’d left.

“Days in the Great Forest run long,” Dem Makepeace said. “The nights can last for years, if you’ve offended.”

Aunt Arianne, contemplating a vine-decked coil of stone almost her own height, shifted shielding leaves to reveal the carved head of another amasen, only a few flecks of faded gilding remaining on the horns.

“When you spoke of Cernunnos responding to petitioners for the key, you meant directly, didn’t you? Cernunnos. Responding.”

“Of course.”

“How disconcerting.” For once Aunt Arianne sounded as if she meant it. She looked like she was thinking hard.

“What are, what were all these buildings for?” Griff asked, as upright and alert as a pointer hound that had sighted its quarry. Impressive that he did not race off to explore among the tumbled drystone walls, but perhaps the squirrels leaping from pillar to pillar, or the sheer volume of the birdsong held him at bay.

“Hurlstone,” the vampire replied. “Village and temple. Before London.”

Not fully understanding, knowing only that her throat was full and tight, Eluned took two steps off the remnant path, then managed to stop herself, obedient to her agreement to stay close. But it made her ache to do it.

“Who’s that?” Griff asked sharply, looking past Eluned, and she turned, searching.

Beyond a knee-high wall and a stream framed by willow and drooping spruce, a girl stood shoulders back, face raised, arms hanging loose. Twilight was not a good time to pray, but so long as there was light in the sky you could hope to catch Sulis’ ear.

Instead of answering, Dem Makepeace changed direction, stepping over the wall and then crossing the stream on a tumble of stones that had once been a pillar.

“He serious?” Eleri murmured, as they followed. “Don’t just go meet Cernunnos.”

The gods—the grander ones like Cernunnos—rarely came to the living world. Their presence was too great a strain. But humans did not simply go visiting the Otherworlds either, except of course when their souls went to the gods who held their allegiance.

Eluned, unspeakably excited by something that should make her flinch, couldn’t make her voice work, but Griff muttered: “Don’t just walk out of London either. I think that must be a statue.”

He was right. Even when Dem Makepeace stopped right in front of her, the girl didn’t move, and now that Eluned could see her feet it was obvious: she stood held in place by a little pile of stones, grass growing thickly through it.

Aunt Arianne, voice muted, said: “The one who made you?”

“Good guess,” Dem Makepeace said, not looking back at them. With great ceremony he knelt, settled down to rest on his heels, and then put both hands to his chest and bowed, so low he was folded down completely.

Caught between shock and fascination, Eluned stared from him to a statue that seemed embarrassingly naked now that she knew that this had been a real person. A vampire in rept. The stone was a waxy pale grey, and the books said it would feel like hard soap beneath the fingers. Despite standing outside exposed, no details were eroded, and Eluned could clearly make out the edges of fingernails, of eyelids. No hair, because that was the one part of a vampire that was not preserved, but if she were taller and had brown frizz to tease into three triangles, she’d look a lot like Melly Ktai.

“Why isn’t she wrapped up?” Griff asked, curious. “And underneath a pyramid?”

Dem Makepeace stood, fortunately showing no hint of offence.

“Bindings aren’t necessary. They’re a carry-over of the preservations performed on those not stone. And she preferred the sight of an eternal sky to whatever assistance her ba might gain using a pyramid to gain strength before moving on.”

Egyptians had three lives. The first much the same as everyone else, and then a second where their bodies were maintained like houses, something to rest in after nights outside the world as invisible bird-people called ba. That was the complete opposite of Prytennia, where everything was done to ensure that your body didn’t tie you in place. But then, while Prytennians wanted to quickly move on to Annwn to be judged fit for a happy new life among Arawn’s islands, Egyptians needed to grow in strength as ba, because the journey to their Otherworld was very dangerous. And some, the strongest among them, might choose to fly not to their Field of Rushes, but outside the worlds altogether, transcending mortality to become stars.

The Egyptian way didn’t seem so bad if the house you spent your days in was a statue in a forest.

“Looks young,” Eleri murmured.

“She was barely older than you when she was raised.” Dem Makepeace smoothed his shendy, glanced at the fading sky, and started down a different path out of the clearing.

Curious to know the girl’s name, Eluned followed, and was immediately caught once again by her surroundings. So many plants, both familiar and strange, the scents changing with every touch of breeze. At the top of a small rise stood a stony pavilion lacking only a roof, and commanding a view over the surrounding forest to steal all attention.

Trees were no surprise, but the tower was, a sliver of shining silver far to their right. And white-capped mountains swallowed the opposite horizon, surely higher than any Prytennian peak. Clouds hid the tallest of them, teasing the eye with hints of something regularly shaped and monumental. And below that an ocean of trees, rising and falling with the hidden curves of the landscape, a mosaic of greens endlessly varied.

The Great Forest. An Otherworld. They truly were in an Otherworld.

Noticing she was behind, Eluned hurried to catch Dem Makepeace as he rejoined the path marked by statues of amasen. Words, an unspeakable urgency, blocked her throat, and at a point before the path left the ruins and curved away into thickly-set trees she threw sense to the wind and said: “Wait!”

The vampire who had not quite killed her aunt stopped obediently, and Eluned, who was not shy even if she was not easily social, found herself stammering in the face of limited patience.

“C-could I come back here?” she asked. “Just to…to look at it?”

For a long and painful moment he simply gazed at her blankly, as if she had said she wanted the moon. “You’d have to ask Cernunnos that,” he said finally. “Though I would imagine your aunt has a few firm opinions about doing so.”

“What consequences?” Aunt Arianne asked, ignoring the barbed smile he offered her. “Beyond allegiance given?”

“For asking? Likely nothing. For coming here?” He left off being provoking to consider the question seriously. “The Great Forest is not the Horned King’s alone, and I am far from the only one able to enter it. Hurlstone itself holds no dangers, and if you’re accepted by the Deep Grove’s guardians you’d have protection against anything that might stray by, short of a god. But this is one of the greatest of the Otherworlds, and to treat it as a plaything would be to invite being played with.”