Guy Kay - Ysabel

Ned, irritated, said, “Why would I lie? Just give us Melanie back and we’ll get out of this, you know it.”

“And you know that cannot be done,” Cadell said, still holding his arm. “I told you this morning, and last night in the road. Now I tell you a third time.” He paused. He smiled. “Why would I lie?”

“Well, I can think of reasons,” Kate Wenger said, bravely. “You lied about flying, didn’t you? We know that. Neither of you gives a damn about anything but Ysabel. You’d do anything to get to her first.”

Everyone looked at her. Ned, instinctively, moved closer.

“Just about anything,” Cadell agreed, gravely. It was hard, Ned thought, to disconcert these two. Probably came with the territory: if you had lived as many times as they had…

Cadell turned to Dave Martyniuk, standing not far away. Seeing them together made you realize just how big Martyniuk was. The Celt was large, broad-shouldered, rippling neck muscles and arms—and Uncle Dave was a bigger man.

“Brys was a druid, and a companion of sorts. I should kill you for this, I suppose.” The words, lightly spoken, hung in the air.

“I suppose,” Dave Martyniuk agreed. “But, as I told him, you don’t know nearly enough about me.”

Cadell did look surprised at that. His head lifted, as if to a challenge. “You are aware of how many times and through how many lives I have fought?”

“I’ve been briefed.” Uncle Dave nodded towards Kim.

“Indeed,” said Phelan, from the other side of the table, the logical one, piecing things together. He and Kimberly exchanged a glance.

Ned had never felt so many layers of tension in one place in his life. He was almost sick with it. On impulse he tried that inward search again: he found the three auras right away—his aunt, both men.

And a fourth—a pale, soft hue.

It shocked him, then he figured it out. It was himself. He was seeing his own existence in this other space. Still impulsively, he reached within and tried to close his presence down, screen it, the way the others could.

It was gone. Ned swallowed hard. He looked up and saw that Aunt Kim had now turned to him, questioningly. He managed a shrug. What was he going to say? It wasn’t as if he had a clue, really.

Phelan reclaimed his wine. He had put it down when the knock came at the door. He’d have known who was there, who was about to come in. Of course.

Cadell was still staring at Dave Martyniuk. “You’re being reckless,” he said. “Relying on my goodwill at the wrong time. I’m not known for patience, and I dislike your manner.”

“I’m sure you do. But not enough to risk losing the woman, I suspect. And as I said, you’d need to know more about me before we fought.”

The Celt shook his head. “I have killed so many like you.”

“No, you haven’t,” said Dave Martyniuk quietly.

Then he added, in that other tongue, words that seemed to slice the air in the room the way Phelan’s blade had, and Ned heard those names again: Cernunnos, and the one that sounded like Cenwin.

“Wherever you have fought,” his uncle added, in English, “and however many times, it was never where I did.”

In the silence that followed this, they heard Phelan across the room say, “Ah,” as if something important had been clarified.

For him, maybe. Not for Ned, that was for damn sure.

Cadell looked from Dave across to the other man.

“I’d call it interesting,” Phelan said lightly. “I would.”

He smiled again, the same tight-mouthed look. Ned tried to remember if he’d seen joy or passion in this man’s face—other than when Ysabel had appeared up on the plateau.

He couldn’t. But it had been there at Entremont. You couldn’t have missed it there.

“I would be happy,” Phelan added, still looking at the golden-haired Celt, “to watch you fight this one. I see nothing but diversion for me.”

“No one is fighting anyone, especially not with a knife in his arm,” Kimberly Ford said, a little too briskly. She scowled at Cadell.

“You! Sit, we’ll deal with that. We seem to be all set, anyhow.” She gestured at the table.

Ned saw Uncle Dave lean back, casually, against the wall by the computer table. “I do have a bad knee from this afternoon. Not moving all that well. Evens things out. But the truth is, your druid was attacking my nephew—you’d expect me to deal with that. And I didn’t try to kill him.”

“Why not?” Cadell asked.

An odd question. Dave hesitated. “Too final, from what my wife said. I told him, all of them, to let their spirits go back. They shouldn’t have been lingering after Beltaine.”

“You know about that?” Cadell said.

“Kimberly does. I listen. Go on, man, sit down, let her treat that wound. Your fight isn’t with me.” His voice was relaxed, steadying.

“And, by the way, we honestly don’t know where she is. I assume that’s why you’re both here.”

Cadell stared at him another moment, then turned to Ned again. Phelan had already done that.

“It’s true,” Ned said. “We’re looking, you know it. We haven’t seen her.”

He hesitated, then decided not to tell about sensing her presence in the cemetery. They were competing, weren’t they? This was a race of some kind, though he had no idea at all what they’d do if they won it. “I thought…I felt something in the valley north of Les Baux.”

“Well, yes,” Phelan said. “You would have. But it is very old.”

Cadell’s mood seemed to have changed. “I don’t think my flying here will matter to her.”

As if he was pleading, in a way.

Ned said, “You’re wrong. It’ll matter to Melanie. She cares about things like that. And she’s in her.”

They both stared at him. He felt anger flare again. “Well, she is, isn’t she? That’s the whole point of this. Isn’t it? The summoning? So Ysabel changes a little each time, and you never know who she’ll choose. And don’t,” he added, glaring from one of them to the other, “say ‘Who are you?’ again, because I don’t know!”

Nobody said it.

Cadell abruptly sat down in the chair by Aunt Kim. He looked steadily across at his enemy. Two millennia and more, Ned thought. You could screw yourself up thinking about that.

“Tell me,” the Celt murmured, “which oath-breaking will she count the greater? Flying to meet you here, or your wounding me when she ruled we could not fight? Seeking the edge you so much need, for later?”

Phelan didn’t smile this time. “You really think that was it?”

“An advantage? By the gods, I do.”

Again, Ned didn’t see the movement clearly. He couldn’t tell whether the second blade came from a boot top again or from inside the leather jacket sleeve as Phelan’s arm swept downwards.

He saw the knife. Cadell sprang to his feet, twisting, chair scraping on floor tiles.

And then the blade was deep, in Phelan’s own shoulder.

He’d driven it in, exactly where he’d struck the other man.

Ned felt an overwhelming confusion of feelings. It really was becoming way too much. He heard Kate stifle another cry. Then he heard laughter.

He looked across the table. Cadell had subsided into the chair again, his head thrown back. His laughter filled the room.

Ned glanced at his mother. She was staring at the smaller man, who had just put a blade in his own arm. She turned to Ned and met his eyes.

He saw her nod acceptance. Finally.

This, if nothing else, had made her acknowledge that something entirely outside their understanding was unfolding here. Happening right now, but also before this, over and over, and again when they were gone—from Provence, or the world.

“How very amusing,” Cadell said, looking across at Phelan, finally controlling his laughter.