Guy Kay - Ysabel

“Over the years? I’m beginning to. Are you proud of it?”

The small, grey-haired figure lifted his head. “Pride has nothing to do with anything. This one is insignificant. So are you. You do not matter.”

“What does?”

Ned saw Greg’s hand in his pocket. And finally he realized what this delay was about—and how pointless it was. Greg would be auto-dialing Aunt Kim, who was, like, two hours away or something. Or maybe he was calling the mayor of Aix at her lunch. Or whatever 911 was in France.

James Bond would have had a bomb built into the phone.

The druid was looking at Ned’s father, as if trying to decide what to answer. This one, too, Ned thought: he’s been part of this, or at the edges of it, all this time. The one who shapes the summoning.

Maybe he didn’t want to stay at the edges.

“She must be claimed by Cadell,” the druid said, his voice almost an incantation. “The stranger must be killed. Sacrificed. He must end. There may be ways it can be done, even now.” One of the wolves got up, shifted over a bit, and settled again. “Then the two of them, the man and the woman, must be made to understand that this is not just their story.”

“What is it, then?” Edward Marriner asked.

Greg had stopped fiddling in his pocket. Ned thought—couldn’t be sure—he’d heard a distant voice from the cellphone. Aunt Kim? Greg moved closer to Ned’s dad. Both of them were right in front of Ned now. He didn’t think that was an accident. The phone would be on speaker, whoever Greg had dialed could hear this. Maybe.

If it mattered.

Maybe it did, he thought suddenly. If they were killed here, the others would at least know why. And how else would they ever learn? His hands were shaking. He saw Greg murmur something. Ned’s father nodded, briefly.

The druid said, “There was a world here once. A way of knowing the world. It was torn from us, and it can be reclaimed.”

Ned saw his father straighten his shoulders. He crossed his arms on his chest, in a gesture Ned knew. “Is that it? That is how you see this? You want to roll back two thousand years of Greek and Roman culture? Can you possibly be serious?”

Edward Marriner’s relaxed, chatty tone was gone. You could say his voice was as cold now as the other man’s.

The druid’s expression flickered. Maybe he hadn’t expected such a response. Ned sure hadn’t, and he still wasn’t there yet, wasn’t getting it. He was trying to catch up, to understand what was being said.

“They would be near to immortal,” Brys said. “More powerful than you can imagine, if this story were ended with that death. And if they understood their task, the need we have. Am I serious, you ask? A fool’s question. The world can change. It always changes.”

Edward Marriner’s reply was quick, sharp with scorn. “A fool? I think not. I hear you. You just want to decide what it changes to. Aren’t you being just a tiny bit arrogant?”

The druid’s mouth tightened. “Believe me, I have known change shaped by others. I lived it. All my people did. I am unlikely to forget. Arrogant, you say? And the Romans were not?”

Ned’s father looked away, past the other man. It was, Ned thought, a hard question. He was remembering that arch this morning: Romans on horses, wielding swords, Gauls dying or dead or chained, heads bowed and averted. He thought of the smashed walls at Entremont, siege engines. Or the enormous arena such a little distance from here, a twenty-minute walk through two thousand years of power.

Edward Marriner said, more softly, “The Romans? They were all about arrogance, and conquest. But yours is the greater, even so: the idea that two millennia can be run backwards. That they should be, whatever the cost.”

“Cost? Measuring it out? A Roman thought.”

Edward Marriner laughed aloud, a startling sound in that still place. “Maybe. Is it why they were able to destroy you? Because they worked that way? Weighed cost and gain? Thought about things?”

He was asking a lot of questions, Ned decided. He was pretty sure his first guess was right: his dad was stalling. Was that what Aunt Kim had said to Greg, to delay? For what? He was thinking fast: maybe Kate was dialing on her phone, as they stood here. Maybe she was calling 911, or whatever, here in Arles.

Something occurred to him.

He stepped forward and said, loudly, “Enough of this already! What the hell? You guys think because this is a cemetery you can just add new bodies to the count? Is that the gig here?”

Greg looked quickly over his shoulder at Ned, his expression stricken. I was right, Ned thought. They wouldn’t have known where we are! The Marines or the cavalry riding, nowhere to go.

The druid’s expression, also turning to him, was bleak. “Have a care,” he said. He looked back at Ned’s father. “We need only deal with the young one. He matters. I don’t know why yet. You and the other are of no concern to me. I am content to have you walk away.”

“Content? The young one is my son.”

“Children die. All the time. You have others?”

“None.”

“Ill-judged on your part.”

“Screw yourself,” Edward Marriner said, and added an even harsher string of words. The stalling part of this appeared to be over.

Greg moved to stand closer to Ned’s father. They were right in front of him again. The druid made no movement at all, but the wolves stood up.

Showtime, Ned thought. Three wolves began circling wide, the others moved slowly forward.

By the tower with Aunt Kim he had grabbed a branch. There were no branches on the swept-clean ground here. And there hadn’t been seven animals then, either. He remembered last night on their road, sweeping his hand, scything the horns from Cadell’s head. He didn’t remember how he’d done it, only the rage that had driven the motion. He tried to find that within himself. He knelt and scooped some gravel.

“Keep them off your face,” Greg said quietly. “Punch in the throat if you can. Kick underneath. Then run past the guy. The gate’s unlocked, remember. Get to the road…”

Punch in the throat.

A wolf. Real good plan.

“I say it again,” Brys rasped. “Only one of you matters. The other two can leave.”

Greg said, calmly, “You heard the man. Screw yourself.”

Gregory was actually ready to die here defending Ned, trying to save Melanie, and Ned realized he knew hardly anything important about the man. A wise-cracking, burly, bearded guy who owned a truly ridiculous bathing suit and mocked his own bulk by doing human cannonballs into a swimming pool.

Ned’s my new hero, he had said the other day, because Ned was meeting a girl for coffee. Some hero.

“She was here,” Ned said suddenly. “Do you know it?”

The druid took a half-step backwards. He rattled a handful of quick words like pebbles; the wolves stopped. They sat down again, the flanking movement suspended.

“Explain!” Brys said. “Do so now.”

Ned stepped up beside his dad. They wanted him behind them; he wasn’t going to allow it. “Back to back to back,” he murmured.

“When they come.”

That was how they did it in movies, wasn’t it?

He made himself take his time, even smile. Time was the whole point. He thought of Larry Cato, improbably: shit-disturber, professional pain in the ass. Times when that might be useful.

He said, “You like giving orders, don’t you? Especially when Cadell’s not around. What would happen if he was here? Should I guess?”

The druid’s mouth opened and closed.

“Same as last night, maybe? He gets pissed off. Sends you to your room without supper. Right? Which tomb here’s yours?”

He was close to Greg now, speaking loudly. It was possible Aunt Kim hadn’t gotten the first hint about where they were.