Guy Kay - Ysabel

“Partly that. Not all.”

She touched his cheek. “Someone still has to be logical here, Ned.”

“I’d volunteer,” his father said, coming up. The three tourists and the guide were still on the far side. “But I’m not sure where I parked my logic.”

“Well find it,” his wife said. “I mean, Ned may be using some kind of intuition or psychic thing here, but you and I can’t. We don’t have it. This can’t just be about oracular pigs, or reading bird entrails, like the Celts did.”

“Romans did bird entrails too,” Edward Marriner said. “A whole class of priests was trained in it.”

Ned saw his mother stick out her tongue at his father. He had never seen her do that. “Fine, be that way. But they didn’t do human sacrifice.”

“True enough. Other nasty bits.”

“I’m sure. But we still have to try to bring something to this, you and I. We have to think. Ned does his thing, whatever it is, or Kim does, and we—”

She stopped, because Ned had stood up.

He was replaying a phrase in his head, over and over like a tape loop: they didn’t do human sacrifice.

And then, like some kind of silent explosion in his mind, he locked onto the other thing his mother had just said.

Oracular pigs.

He felt himself starting to tremble.

The boar. Seen below the villa, above it under the moon. He saw it again in his mind, turning away from him, rejecting him.

But no. Not away. Turning for him. The slow, calm movement, looking back both times at Ned, then ahead again, before moving off.

He took a deep breath. He looked at the sculpted column, at Ysabel, then down at his hands.

“We better get back to the house,” he said. “I know where she is.”

THEY WERE WAITING for him to speak, assembled in the villa again. Ned felt shaky; his hands were sweaty. This was too large, it felt massive. But he was also sure of himself. He was absolutely certain, in fact.

“Go ahead,” his father said.

Edward Marriner’s voice was quiet, his eyes calm. He didn’t look weary or worn down any more. He’d been like that since Ned had spoken in the cloister and they’d started back for the van, and home.

Ned does his thing, his mother had said. She was looking at him from across the dining-room table, hands in her lap, no notebook, just waiting.

He cleared his throat. “We were…we were really close to it last night. Mom was. When she reminded us of the word Ysabel used.”

“Sacrifice?” Uncle Dave said.

He was sitting in the armchair by the piano, leg up on a hassock, an ice pack on the knee.

Ned nodded. “Yeah. So we did the obvious thing and started thinking about Celtic sacrifice places that Melanie might have known about. And that was close to being right.”

“What did we miss?” Kate Wenger asked. She was still wearing his sweatshirt.

“One thing, and something else no one but me could have known. No one missed that, except me.”

He looked at his mother. Aunt Kim was leaning on the doorframe behind her, where her husband had been the night before.

“The Romans did at least one human sacrifice here,” Ned said.

“And Melanie knew it, because she told me about it.” He looked at Greg, and then Steve. “That time I was really sick? When you two went up to the ambush site to look for a photo spot?”

They both nodded, said nothing.

Ned took another breath, let it out. “That’s where she is. Ysabel, Melanie.”

“The mountain?” Steve said.

“Yeah,” Ned said. “She’s up on Sainte-Victoire.”

“It’s a big mountain, Ned,” his father said. “There’s a lot of ground to cover up there. And I—”

Ned held up both hands. “No, Dad. I know exactly where. Because all of this, all of this, is about Melanie now, I think. The changed rules, searching instead of a fight. They didn’t expect that. And she’s hiding in a place she knows I know about. We had to know, too.”

“We’re putting a lot in the idea that Melanie’s…spirit, whatever, is inside Ysabel,” Edward Marriner said.

“We can do that, Ed,” Aunt Kim murmured. Her arms were tightly crossed on her chest.

No one said anything for a moment.

“All right. Fine. You said you know the place, Ned. Where?”

His mother’s first words since they’d gathered back here. She was gazing at him, that calm, attentive expression he knew.

So, looking at her, he said, “She’s at some chasm. Melanie called it a garagai, it’s somewhere near the top.”

“And she’s there because…?”

It was almost as if this had become a dialogue between the two of them. She used to quiz him like this, for science or social studies tests, when he was younger.

“Because she told me about it. That’s where the Romans, Marius, threw the Celtic chieftains down a pit, a place of sacrifice after the battle, so they couldn’t ever be reclaimed to be worshipped and help the tribes.”

“Oh, God,” said Kate. She put a hand to her mouth. “They even talked about that, at Entremont, the three of them.”

Ned nodded his head. “Yeah, they did. I thought about that, too. Melanie knew we were there. I’d called her, remember?”

“Is that the second thing?” his mother asked softly. “You said there were two.”

“No. The garagai is in her notes. The other thing was entirely me. I…twice at night, I saw that boar when I was by myself, and both times it…both times I think it was signalling me. I didn’t get it, till just now. Till you said something in the cloister. I don’t know why it was doing that, but I’m pretty sure.”

His uncle sat up, shifting his leg. He had an odd expression on his face.

“What kind of boar?” he asked.

“Huge one. Almost white. Greg saw it when Brys stopped us on the road.”

Greg was nodding his head. “Really big,” he said. “I could have wrecked the van, hitting it.”

“Go on, Ned,” Uncle Dave said.

Ned looked at him. “I don’t know if anyone will believe me, but I think it was pointing to something, both times. It came out, waited for me to see it, then it turned around and faced the mountain and looked back at me. And then it went off. I didn’t know what was going on. And…and this is weird, but the first time was before Beltaine. Before anything even happened. I know that doesn’t make sense.”

“Time can be funny in these things,” his aunt said.

“So you think she’s by this chasm,” Ned’s mother said calmly. “All right. Good. That’s our first stop tomorrow. We get directions and go look.”

Ned shook his head. His hands were trembling again.

“Mom, no. I have to go now. One of them’s going to figure this. They’ve had so much longer with her, with Ysabel. They heard her say sacrifice too. And they know that place.”

“Ned…” his father began.

“Dad, I’m really sure. I’m shaking with it, I’m so positive.” He held up his hands to show them.

His father looked at him. “That’s not what I was going to say. Ned, I believe you. There’s something else. You’re forgetting.”

“What?” Ned said.

It was Steve who answered him. “Dude, you can’t go up that mountain.”

“I have to.”

“Ned,” Greg murmured, “we saw you there. You looked like you were dying, man. I haven’t seen anyone throw up that hard since…since whenever.”

Ned stopped. He took a steadying breath. He swore. Neither parent said a word.

He had forgotten. Or, he’d half remembered because he knew he’d been sick when Melanie told him about the garagai, but he’d blocked out what it would mean to go back there. To climb.

Even the recollection made him feel ill, right here. He shook his head. “Doesn’t matter. I have to try. I need to go, like, right now.” He was almost twitching with the need to be gone.