Guy Kay - Ysabel

He seemed very calm this morning, disposed to talk, even. Ned tried to picture a Celtic village here, but he couldn’t do it. It was too remote, too erased. He kept seeing Romans instead, tall temples like the one across the way, in the picture, serene figures in togas.

The Greeks here, too, their trading place. Ned said, “Is that why you started looking here? Because you were all in this place?”

Cadell looked up again. “Started? I have been moving since daybreak. I am leaving in a moment. She isn’t here, by the way.”

“You thought she might be?”

“It was a possibility.”

Ned cleared his throat. “We thought so too.”

“So it seems.”

Ned took a chance, pushed a little.

“There is…no way for you to do this thing, this battle, and then release Melanie?”

Cadell looked at him a long moment. “Is this the woman you love?”

Ned twitched. “Me? Not at all! She’s too old for me. Why the hell does that matter?”

Cadell shrugged his broad shoulders. “It matters when we love.” Something in the way it was said. Ned thought about Ysabel, how she’d looked under that moon last night. He tried not to dwell on the image. And if he was shaken by the thought, what must it be like for this man? And for the other?

He cleared his throat. “Trust me, we care. It matters.”

Cadell’s gaze was still mild. “I suppose. You were angry in the road. Did you aim for my horns?”

Ned swallowed. He remembered rage, a white surge. “I didn’t know I could do that. I’m not sure I was aiming at anything.”

“I think you were. I think you already knew something important.”

“What?”

“If you’d killed me there—and you could have—both the others would have been gone.” His expression was calm. “If one of us dies before she makes her choice, or we fight, we all go. Until the next time we are returned.”

Ned felt cold suddenly. He would have killed Melanie last night, if his hand had sliced lower.

“I didn’t know that,” he said.

“I think you may have.”

There was really no way to reply to that.

Ned said, remembering something else, “I think Phelan was trying to find you, to fight you, before she was even summoned.”

“Why would he do that?” Eyebrows raised. The question seemed a real one. “She would never have come then.”

“Maybe…maybe he’s tired. Of the over-and-over?”

Cadell smiled then. Not a smile that had any warmth in it.

“Good, if so. I can grant him rest here, easily.”

“You aren’t tired of it?”

The other man looked away again. “This is what I am,” he said quietly. And then, “You have seen her.”

How did a sentence carry so much weight?

Ned cleared his throat again. He said, “You didn’t answer my question, before. You can’t release Melanie and still have your fight?”

“I answered last night. Your woman passed between needfires at Beltaine, summoned by the bull, his death. She is Ysabel now. She is inside this.”

“And so what happens?”

“I will find her. And kill him.”

“And then?”

“Then she and I will be together, and will die in time. And it will happen again, some day to come.”

“Over and over?”

The other man nodded. He was still looking down at the pool.

“She broke the world, that first time, giving him the cup.”

Whatever that meant. “Why…why just the three of you? Living again and again.”

Cadell hesitated. “I have never given it thought, I don’t think that way. Go find the Roman, if you want to play philosopher.” But he didn’t sound angry. And after a moment added, “I wouldn’t have said it was just the three of us. We are the tale for here. I wouldn’t imagine there are no others elsewhere, however their tale runs. The past doesn’t lie quietly. Don’t you know that yet?”

The sun was bright on the ruins, the day mild and beautiful, carrying all the unfurling promise of spring. Ned shook his head. He couldn’t even grasp it. We are the tale for here.

In the distance, he saw his father talking to the guard. Greg had moved away from them a little, was looking this way. He could see Ned, but not Cadell down on the ancient, crumbled stairway, against the stone wall. Ned made himself wave casually. He didn’t want Greg here.

Cadell was looking at the pool again. Glanis, water-goddess. The water looked dark, unhealthy. The Celt’s large hands were loosely clasped. In profile, composed and seemingly at ease, he no longer seemed the flamboyant, violent figure of before.

As if to mock that thought, he looked up at Ned again. “I killed him here once, twenty steps behind you. I cut off his head after, with an axe, spitted it on a spike. Left it in front of one of their temples.”

What did you say to that? Tell about beating Barry Staley in ping pong four games in a row during March Break?

Ned felt sick again. “You’re talking about Phelan?”

“He wasn’t named so then. But yes, the Roman. The stranger.”

A flicker of anger. “He’s still a stranger, after two thousand, five hundred years, or whatever? When does someone belong here, by you?”

The blue gaze was cold now.

“That one? Never. We are the tale revisited, the number of times alters nothing. She chose him when he came from the sea, and everything changed.”

Ned stared at him. “You actually think the Greeks, the Romans, would never have settled if, if she…?”

Cadell was looking at him. “I’m not the philosopher,” he repeated. “Talk to him, or the druid. I only know I need her as I need air, and that I must kill him to have her.”

Ned was silent. Then he drew a breath. “I saw some of that change,” he said. “Across the way. The carvings on that arch.”

Cadell turned and spat deliberately on the steps below himself.

Ned said, quietly, “Don’t you get tired?”

Cadell stood suddenly. He smiled thinly. His eyes really were amazingly blue. “I need sleep, yes.”

“That isn’t what I—”

“I know what you meant. You said it already. Leave this. You do not understand and you will be hurt.”

When he stood, you registered the man’s size again. Ned’s heart was pounding. He folded his arms across his chest. “I don’t think we can,” he said. “Leave this. Means giving her up.”

“We all give things up. It is what happens in life.”

“Without a fight? Aren’t you still fighting?”

“This isn’t your story. It is desperately unwise to enter into it. I am certain the Roman will have said the same.”

“Wasn’t he Greek, first?” Dumb reply, but he didn’t feel like giving in here.

Cadell shrugged indifferently. “The same in the end. A way of knowing the world. Subduing it.”

She isn’t here, he had said.

It was obviously true. It was time to go. They had ground to cover. Ned felt cramped with tension. He didn’t want that to show. Tough Canadian. He turned and started walking away.

After a few steps he looked back.

“We’re going to Arles from here. You headed that way? Need a lift?”

He saw that he’d disconcerted the other man. Some small pleasure in that.

“Who are you?” Cadell asked, staring up at him now from down on those worn, moss-covered steps. “Really.”

“I’m beginning to wonder. No lift?”

Cadell shook his head.

“Ah,” said Ned. “Right. You’re going to fly, and hope she doesn’t find out? Risky.” He was taking a risk of his own, talking this way: this man could kill him right here.

Cadell smiled, though, as if honouring the verbal thrust. “We do what we must,” he said. And then, as if reading Ned’s mind, “You amuse me. I don’t feel I need to kill you, but it may happen.” A silence, then he added something, in a different tone, in that language Ned didn’t understand. And after another beat, “Leave this, boy. Heed me, I am giving true counsel.”