Андреа Хёст - The Pyramids of London

Despite his almost indifferent tone, Eluned felt censured and drew breath to protest, to explain. But the struck-gong feeling overwhelming her seemed impossible to put into words, and she subsided in unfamiliar confusion.

Aunt Arianne said coolly: “If something is so important to a person that they would stand before a god—truly before a god—and ask for it, the reason is unlikely to be trivial.” She smiled at Eluned then, both serious and wry. “Not that I wish you to fling yourself into dangerous situations heedlessly. While Dem Makepeace’s description did rather make Hurlstone sound safer than London, I trust you to spare my nerves any outright idiocy.”

“Stray gods,” Eleri added, not discouraging but clearly dubious, and Griff said: “Will you really ask?”

“I don’t know,” Eluned admitted.

“Any other requests?” Dem Makepeace said, his tone entirely obliging, but not even Griff believed it, and so they silently followed the vampire beneath the trees.

With the sky only visible through breaks in the foliage, it immediately became almost too dark to keep track of the path, and Aunt Arianne moved to stand between them so that she could guide them around occasional hazards. The birdsong dropped away, and the wind rose, uncomfortably cold, stirring up the scent of leaf mold.

Through the velvety pitch, blobs of light provided dim beacons, and as they approached the first Eluned saw that it was another stone amasen, with a soft white light leaking from between its coils. The forest outside that gentle glow seemed even darker, and she could no longer see patches of pale sky above. But the wind had dropped and she could hear .

Griff pressed back against Eluned’s side, and she squeezed his shoulder and told herself that the tok tok tok was likely a bird, and the rustling no doubt a badger or squirrels, and that was most certainly the call of a fox and not someone crying out. It did not help at all to glance at Aunt Arianne’s face when they reached the next amasen, and see her gazing out into the forest with wide eyes. Beneath these trees, perhaps it was better not to be able to see in the dark.

Even if she came only in the daylight, and kept to Hurlstone, would she be simply courting danger, and wholly unequal to it? More to the point, could she really ask permission of Cernunnos to come here? The Horned King might bring bountiful harvests and healthy babies, but it was only through carefully maintained treaties that the lands within his dominion were not swallowed by forest. And to offend against Cernunnos in any woodland was to risk drawing the attention of his hunt.

They had passed the last of the glowing amasen, but Dem Makepeace still walked unhesitatingly toward a bluer patch of darkness up ahead, which became a clearing, a bowl of soughing grass fringed by trees. Beneath a depthless sea of stars stood a tiny hill, crowned by the Oak.

Sprawling boughs embraced forest and sky, reaching so far they hung beyond the slopes of the hill. The trunk was wider than ten men embracing, gnarled but solid. And every bit of it could be clearly seen because countless balls of glass, flickering softly, hung by slender chains from the branches.

“We will kneel at the foot of the hill,” Dem Makepeace said, continuing forward without break. “Wednesday will go up alone and kneel on the stone at the crest.”

“Who’s—?” Griff began, then stopped when Eluned squeezed his shoulder. It was obvious Dem Makepeace meant their aunt, but this wasn’t the time to ask why. Griff knew that, of course, but walking through a place where he could hear so many animals and not see them had been far from easy for him. Dem Makepeace had talked about this as if it was such a simple thing, but Eluned had never been so daunted, and Aunt Arianne surely was as well, though she did not falter when they reached the bottom of the hill and Dem Makepeace gestured for her to go past him.

The grass was high and seed heads tickled when Eluned knelt. One of the hanging glass globes was only a little way above them, and as a mote of light detached itself she saw that the light came from glowing white moths clinging to the outside, feeding on tiny flowers within.

There were fewer globes around the trunk, and Eluned could see very little of Aunt Arianne after she knelt past the top of the slope. The breeze had dropped, and the loudest sound was the clothy flutter of wings, and Griff’s breathing, growing ever harsher.

Eleri leaned down to Griff’s ear, and Eluned couldn’t hear her words, but guessed them even before Griff repeated: “Tennings Together.” The old reassurance, one they’d turned to more than ever this summer. Alone they each had their vulnerable points, but as their own minor trifold they covered each other’s weaknesses.

This, though, was a greater test for Griff than they could have anticipated. Even Eluned, wildly excited, had to fight with uncertainty. Could she do it? Ask Cernunnos himself for leave to visit his forest? For something so simple and selfish as wanting, longing, to look at it properly? Aunt Arianne had been careful to point out that a request like that would mean a tie of allegiance, a permanent bond. That wasn’t a small thing, even if Cernunnos wasn’t known as a harsh god.

And when should she ask? What if Cernunnos came and went and Eluned had not had a chance to speak? But if Cernunnos came down to them, would Griff be able to stand it?

Dem Makepeace, on the far side of Griff and Eleri, leaned forward so that he could see Griff’s whitely set face, then said: “Sleep.”

Griff closed his eyes, and his breathing slowed, but there was no other sign that he’d obeyed. He didn’t even slump sideways. This was a power all vampires had, to put someone into a trance. They did it so they could feed without causing pain—or protest. Father had once explained that Prytennian traditional dress, with the high collars and cuffs criss-crossed with laces, had originally been designed with the idea of preventing vampires from biting you without you knowing.

It didn’t seem that was what Dem Makepeace wanted, though, since he simply straightened again. Eluned discovered why he’d thought it necessary when a tiny scraping sound behind them was all the warning she had before the amasen arrived.

Enormous snakes. Enormous snakes with curling golden horns. The first came from Eluned’s right, rearing up to look at her. Thicker than a man’s leg, and a pale cream in colour, with a very black tongue that flickered an inch from Eluned’s nose. She let her breath out in shock, but also in wonder, for its fluted head and dark eyes were beautiful.

But it was an act of will to stay still as another slid between her and Griff, and she felt the weight and warmth of it brushing past. It looped around her brother and nuzzled his hair, and Eluned reminded herself desperately that the amasen were signs of great good fortune, that they brought bountiful harvests and drove away pests, and would shed their golden horns and leave them as gifts for those particularly favoured, and that a dozen of them, in shades of green and brown and cream, surely meant that the Tenning family would be lucky for years to come if only they could get through the next few minutes without screaming.

Dem Makepeace, barely visible among the coils, scratched one between its horns, and it closed its eyes and tilted its head like a dog whose most particular itch had been attended. Greatly daring, Eluned copied the gesture, and found the patch between the horns was soft and velvety. The cream amasen leaned into her touch until a pale green fellow pushed it out of the way, and then she had four of them competing to be petted, and Eleri was cautiously taking on two, and they exchanged a glance that clearly said: “We must never tell Griff about this.”