Michael Scott - The Necromancer

When Ptelea spoke, the knight could hear a thread of excitement in her voice. “The Green Man has spent the last five centuries re-creating his favorite Shadowrealm, the Grove of Eridhu. It will be ready soon,” she added, “and then he will lead us away from this foul and poisoned place and return us to a world of trees.”

Looking at the Bard, the knight raised his eyebrows in a question.

“And what will happen to this world without the Green Man?” Shakespeare asked.

The hamadryad waved her long arms dismissively. “It is not our concern.” Her head turned completely around, with the sound of cracking wood, and all three immortals quickly looked away from her face. “I have heard that this Shadowrealm will soon return to its Elder masters. We do not want to be here when that happens.”

“Where did you hear that?” Palamedes demanded.

“I told them.” The voice that spoke was male: slow and deep, it vibrated up through the ground, shivering in the air, setting all the leaves trembling.

Ptelea pulled her leafy cloak around her and stepped aside. Pressing herself against an elm tree, she sank into it. For a moment her beautiful face lingered on the bark of the tree; then she closed her eyes and vanished.

The hamadryad had led the three immortals to a clearing in the very heart of the forest. The trees here were gnarled and twisted with age. Oak and chestnut, elm, ash, hawthorn and apple crowded together, all draped with ivy. Holly bushes with unseasonable ripe red berries clustered around the base of the trees, and white pearls of mistletoe speckled the boughs. From a mound in the center of the clearing rose a crude pillar of white stone, every inch of which was covered with a pattern of coiled spirals and intricate whorls.

“This world is coming to an end.” For a moment it sounded as if the voice were coming from the stone. “And I do not want my creations here when that happens.”

“You could stay and fight,” Palamedes said, stepping into the circle of trees and approaching the stone. “You did that before.”

“And we lost,” the booming male voice said.

The figure that stepped out from behind the pillar was tall and slender, draped in a long white hooded robe patterned with metallic silver leaves. A fantastically ornate silver mask completely covered his face and head. It depicted the face of a young man peering out from a profusion of foliage that flared and extended behind the edges of the mask, making the figure’s head seem enormous. Each leaf had been etched in incredible detail, right down to the veins and threads running through them.

Palamedes stepped forward and bowed deeply, going down on one knee before the figure. “Master Tammuz.”

The hand that appeared from beneath the long sleeve to rest on the knight’s right shoulder was covered in a silver glove embroidered with berries, leaves and twisting vines. “Your call was unexpected and unwelcome,” the bass voice rumbled.

The Saracen Knight rose smoothly to his feet. He was a fraction of an inch shorter than his master, and he could see himself reflected countless times in the polished silver. Bright green eyes dappled with brown stared through the eyeholes in the mask. The pupils were flat narrow ovals. Not for the first time, Palamedes wondered what the Green Man really looked like.

“What do you want?” Tammuz asked, the leaves on the trees around him quivering with his words.

“A favor,” Palamedes said simply. He had rehearsed this conversation countless times on the drive up from London, but he couldn’t guess how his master would react. In the centuries he’d served his master, he’d come to recognize that Tammuz was that most dangerous of combinations: arrogant and unpredictable.

“It is not in my nature to do favors.” Tammuz stepped away from the carved stone and looked across the clearing to where the other two immortals stood beside the tree that had swallowed the hamadryad. “And you have brought the Bard too.” He leaned forward and added loudly. “I really do not like him.”

William Shakespeare stepped toward the Elder and executed an exaggerated elegant bow. “We hate what we fear,” he said sarcastically. He glanced at the knight. “Is that not so?”

“Then don’t irritate the all-powerful Elder,” the knight whispered.

“Do not anger me,” Tammuz rumbled.

Shakespeare laughed. “You have no power over me, Green Man.”

Tammuz turned to look at the third immortal and a profound silence fell over the grove. When he spoke again, the Elder’s voice was soft, almost gentle, like the wind hissing through autumn leaves. “So we meet again, Saint-Germain.”

The immortal stepped out of the shadows and bowed slightly. “Lord Tammuz,” he said calmly.

“Ah, finally. I have waited centuries for this moment; I knew our paths would cross again. I have found that this world is very small indeed.” The Elder’s voice deepened, shivering the air with sound, sending leaves tumbling from their branches. “Francis, le Comte de Saint-Germain. The liar. The thief. The murderer!”

Scores of dryads suddenly appeared around the edge of the grove, bows and spears ready. Faces materialized in the tree trunks, and then, one by one, the hamadryads stepped out of the circle of trees. Tammuz raised a silver-gloved hand to point at the immortal. “Kill him!” he screamed. “Kill him now!”

As night fell, the prehistoric landscape came alive with sound: howling and shrieking, screaming, calling and barking.

“I’ve suddenly realized why all of these animals died out,” Scathach said. She was sitting cross-legged in the mouth of a cave with a pile of rocks beside her. “They probably died of exhaustion. None of them could get any sleep.”

“I could get some sleep-if only you’d let me,” Joan grumbled. The tiny Frenchwoman was in the cave behind the Shadow, lying on a bed of straw and covered with grass and branches they’d cut from trees and plaited together. Pulling the leafy blanket up to her chin, she closed her eyes. “I’m sleeping now,” she announced, and almost immediately, her breathing settled into an easy rhythm.

Scathach reached over and fixed one of the branches on her friend’s shoulders. In the pitch-darkness, she picked an enormous black beetle off a leaf and laid it on the ground outside the cave mouth. It slipped into the night, where it was immediately pounced upon by what looked like a small fox. Scathach shook her head: in this place and time, everything was either predator or prey.

Catching the hint of a musty odor, the Shadow picked up a rock and tossed it out into the night. Something yelped and scuttled off through the long grasses. “The Dire Wolves are back,” she said quietly. Behind her, Joan started to snore very gently.

Scathach smiled. It gave her extraordinary pleasure to know that Joan had fallen asleep confident that she would be safe. Scatty guessed that this must be like the absolute trust a child had in a parent. Then her smile faded: she’d never had that trust in her own parents. The two figures had been almost strangers, aloof and distant, and although she had called them Mother and Father, these were empty titles; there had been no emotion behind the words. She’d been close to her grandmother and her uncle, but she’d always been closest to her sister.

Aoife of the Shadows: now, there was a name she’d avoided thinking about for years.

Something moved in the grass and she tossed another rock, sending the unseen creature crashing into the undergrowth.

Scathach rarely thought about her parents now. They were both alive-she would have been told if they were not-in a distant Shadowrealm that was supposedly patterned after the lost world of Danu Talis. She’d not been there in centuries. Not for the first time, it struck her that, unlikely as it seemed, Nicholas and Perenelle Flamel had become the parents she’d never really had.