Guy Kay - Ysabel

He’d thought about distance and speed and the modern world a couple of days ago, on the way to the mountain. He’d even had a notion to write a school essay about it, saying clever things.

The memory felt absurd now, another existence entirely. He looked at Kim in the glow of the dashboard lights. He wondered if that had been the feeling that had driven her from home after whatever had happened to her. Could you be drawn so far into this other kind of world that your own—the one you’d known all your life—felt alien and impossible?

“Just ahead on the right,” he said, as the headlights picked out the brown sign for Entremont.

She saw it, and turned, a little too fast, the wheels skidding briefly.

“Sorry,” she said, downshifting as they climbed.

“That’s how I drive,” Greg said.

He’d been quiet, had taken the back seat so Ned could navigate. Ned was impressed with him, and grateful: Greg had been a lot easier than Steve about accepting their story. He wondered about that, too. What made some people inclined to believe you and others to react with anger or shock? He realized he didn’t know a whole lot about Greg or Steve. Or Melanie, for that matter.

The headlight beams, on bright, picked out the closed gates and the parking lot to the left of them. Kim swung into the lot. The van was alone there.

They all got out. Greg punched his remote and the doors of the van unlocked. Kim opened the passenger side.

“Her bag’s here.”

“Figured. Okay, let’s go,” Greg said, going around to the driver’s side. “I’ve got the creeps here, big time.”

Ned heard him, but he found himself walking the other way, towards the gates. They were locked, but could be climbed pretty easily. Kate had said the security guy came just to open them and lock up. Ned looked through, saw the wide path that led east to the entrance.

Trees mostly hid the northern wall of the site from here, but he knew it was there, and what was on the other side. The wind had pretty much died down now.

“Ned, come on!” Greg called.

He heard his aunt’s footsteps coming over.

“They’re probably still in there,” he said, not looking back. “She told them to give her all night. Not to start looking till morning.”

She sighed. “If I had any real power, dear, I’d go in with you, see what we could do. But I don’t, Ned. We won’t get her back by getting killed there on Beltaine.”

“Would they do that?”

She sighed again. He looked at her.

“I’ve no idea,” she said. “I wasn’t here. If they thought we were going to interfere, from what you’ve told us…”

“Yeah,” he said. “If they thought that, some of them might.”

“And we are,” Aunt Kim said. “We are going to try to interfere.”

“How?”

He saw her shake her head. “No idea.”

“Come on!” Greg shouted again. They heard him start the engine.

“He’s right. We don’t want to see them tonight. Or have them see us. You two head straight home,” Kimberly said. “I’ll meet you there. I’m just going to stop at the hotel for my things.”

Ned was still looking through the gates towards that other world beyond. Greg honked the horn. It sounded shockingly loud, intrusive. Ned turned and walked back and got in the van and they drove away.

He and Greg didn’t say much to each other. Aunt Kim was ahead of them on the way back to Aix and halfway around the ring road before she pulled into a hotel driveway. Greg stopped by the side of the road until a doorman opened the car door for her and she went into the lobby. Then—still not speaking—he pulled back into traffic and continued around the ring to the road east.

He took the now-familiar left after the bakery and grocery store and the small aqueduct, and then swung right onto their upward-slanting lane. Ned had his window down, for the cool air. Country road, a mild night, the risen moon ahead of them above the trees.

Greg swore violently and slammed on the brakes. The van skidded, throwing Ned against his shoulder belt. They stopped.

Ned saw the boar in the road, facing them.

We don’t want to see them tonight.

We don’t always have a choice, he thought.

“Melanie will kill me if I hit an animal,” Greg said. “Maybe it’ll scoot if I go slow, or honk.”

“It won’t,” Ned said quietly. “Hold on, Greg.”

“Huh? What do you mean?”

“I’ve seen this one.”

“Ned, what the hell…?”

“Look at it.”

Scoot wasn’t a word you would ever really apply to what they were looking at. The boar was enormous, even more obviously so than before, seen this close. It was standing—waiting—with arrogant, unnatural confidence squarely in the middle of the roadway. There were a few high, widely spaced streetlights along the lane, half hidden by leaves, and the van’s headlights were on it. The rough, pale grey coat showed as nearly white, the tusks gleamed. It was looking straight at them.

They really weren’t supposed to have good eyesight.

Someone parted the bushes to the right and stepped into the road.

“Oh, Jesus!” Greg said. “Ned, do I gun it?”

“No,” said Ned.

He unlocked his door and got out.

He wasn’t sure why, but he did know he didn’t want to run, and he didn’t want to face this sitting down inside the van.

He’d also recognized who had come. He swung the door closed, heard the chunk sound. Loud, because there were no other noises, really. No birdsong after darkfall. Barely a rustle in the leaves, with the wind almost gone. He shoved his hands in his pockets and stood beside the van, waiting.

The druid, he saw, was still wearing white—as he had been among the ruins when he’d caught the bull’s blood in a stone bowl.

Ned knew it was a druid. He remembered Kate asking Phelan if his enemy—Cadell—was one, and Phelan’s horror at the very thought. Druids were the magic-wielders. This was the one, he was almost sure, who’d shaped the summons that had claimed Melanie, turned her into Ysabel. Cadell had been waiting for tonight, for this man to perform the rite. So had Phelan, for that matter.

It was necessary to remind himself that he was looking at a spirit, someone almost certainly dead a really long time, taking shape now only because it was Beltaine.

He was also pretty certain this particular spirit could kill him if it decided to. He wondered how far behind them his aunt was, if she’d taken the time to check out of the hotel or just grabbed her stuff and followed.

The druid was a small figure, not young, stooped a little, salt-and-pepper beard, seamed face, long grey hair, a woven belt around the ankle-length robe. He wore sandals, no jewellery. No obvious weapon. Ned thought they were supposed to carry a sickle or something and hunt for mistletoe…but he might have gotten that from an Asterix comic book, and he wasn’t too sure how much to rely on that source.

You could laugh at that, if you wanted to.

He said, in French, “Is the boar yours? Watching us?”

“Where has the woman gone?”

A thin, edgy voice, angry, controlling, accustomed to being obeyed.

Ned heard the other van door open and slam shut.

“That’s a real good question,” he heard Greg say. “Way I get this, you answer it for us. Where the hell is Melanie? Tell, then you can crawl back into your dumpster.”

“Easy, Greg,” he murmured, more afraid by the minute.

“There is no person of such a name any more,” the druid said.

“Not since she walked between needfires. I require you to say where Ysabel has gone. You will not be harmed if you do.”

Ned lifted a hand quickly, before Greg could speak again.

“Couple of things,” he said, working really hard to stay calm.