by E. E. Holmes
“But you said she was incarcerated in the deepest levels of that Durupinen prison for hundreds of years, right? So, how did she get out?”
“That’s a really good question,” I said before throwing a sharp glance at Catriona, who was looking nothing short of disturbed.
“I’m on it,” she said, and jogged out of the room.
As succinctly as I could, I filled Annabelle in on what the Tansy Hag had said while she was in control of Annabelle’s body. By the time I had finished, Annabelle was looking terrified, and Ileana had begun pacing the room like a caged jungle cat.
“If the Necromancers are after those keys, that means they could be on their way here right now, doesn’t it?” Annabelle asked. She kept her voice calm, but there was a definite spark of panic in her eyes.
“Yes, I suppose it might,” I admitted. I turned to Ileana. “It also means that the Traveler camp is in danger.”
Ileana nodded. “I must return as soon as possible.”
“Ileana, it would be insanity to go back there now,” I said.
“I cannot abandon my people, my blood. If they are going to face an enemy, I must face it with them. It is my duty to protect our clans,” she said, drawing herself up proudly.
“Yes, but the best way to protect them is to get as far from the camp as possible!” I cried. “Listen, if the Necromancers know about these keys, then they likely know who has been charged with keeping them secret. They’ll be looking for you, Ileana. And if you’ve left the camp, then there’s no reason for the Necromancers to linger there. Draw them away, and you’ll save lives.”
Ileana stared blankly at me for a moment as these words sunk in. Then, suddenly, she gave a grunt and a nod. “There is some sense in what you say. Very well then, I will not return to the camp. But I must get word to them at once. They must fortify themselves against attack.”
“But how will you…”
Ileana crossed to the bedroom’s only window and opened it as wide as it would go. Then she stuck her entire head and shoulders out into the cold night air and began cawing loudly.
“What the bloody blazes…?” Lucida muttered.
But before any of us could question this odd behavior further, an answering “caw” echoed out in the alleyway, and Ileana pulled herself back in through the window just in time for her large, black raven to soar through it. As we all shrieked and threw our arms protectively up over our heads, the raven soared once around the room and came to rest on Ileana’s shoulder. She clicked her tongue affectionately at the bird and stroked the glossy feathers on its breast.
“Where the hell did that thing come from?” I asked, still breathless.
“My sweeting is never far from me,” Ileana chirped, more to the bird than to me, and produced a sunflower seed from her pocket, along with a scrap of paper, a ribbon, and the stub of a pencil. The raven snapped up the seed and then sat glaring down at his mistress as she hastily wrote out a note. She then tied it to the bird’s leg as he ruffled his feathers impatiently, and returned to the window. With one last ear-splitting caw, the bird took off into the rosy pre-dawn sky.
“You’re going to warn the other Travelers by messenger raven?” I asked weakly.
Ileana glared at me, as though daring me to suggest there might be a faster or more effective means of modern communication than a note tied to a bird’s leg. I decided I didn’t have the strength to get into yet another argument with her.
“What did you tell them?” I asked instead.
“To ready the camp for a fight, and to fortify the borders,” Ileana said, eyes still on the sky, determined to track the raven for as far as she could still make out his inky shape against the dawn.
“Why not tell them to pull up stakes and get the hell out of there?” Lucida asked.
“There is not enough time,” Ileana said. “They cannot make a clean getaway. The Necromancers will track them, and if they are ambushed on the road, they will be decimated. Besides, they will not leave the child behind, not while she is in the thrall of the Geatgrima. She must be protected. The Travelers will stand their ground and fight.”
She spoke with the full authority of her High Priestess status, and it was clear she would not be dissuaded. Lucida gave every appearance of continuing to argue the point, but I raised my eyebrows and shook my head at her, and she let it go. We had enough to worry about keeping ourselves safe now without picking this fight.
Finn came back into the room, panting slightly. “All is quiet outside. No sign of the Tansy Hag, nor of the Necromancers, if they are indeed on the way. But we cannot stay here, that much is clear from the Tansy Hag’s warning. If they know the locations of these keys, they must surely be on their way. Can I assume that was your bird carrying that message, High Priestess?” Finn asked.
Ileana gave a haughty nod of the head. “He will warn the Travelers of the oncoming attack from the Necromancers.”
“Would you like me to send reinforcements from the Northern Clans to assist your Guardians?” Finn asked. “My men would be glad to lend their services.”
Ileana raised her chin defiantly, and Finn hastily added, “I do not mean it as an insult to the skills of your own men. I merely wish to be of assistance, if you require it.”
Ileana inclined her head. “Thank you, Caomhnóir Carey. I shall consider the matter.”
I turned to Finn. “Won’t sending a Caomhnóir contingent to defend the Traveler camp blow our cover? The leadership at Fairhaven will have to be told why the Travelers require protection, and then they’ll know everything.”
Finn nodded. “We’ve reached an impasse, Jess. If we keep it a secret any longer, we put everyone at risk. The Necromancers will surely descend on Fairhaven if they think there’s any chance you’re there. The castle must be fortified as well, and all members of the Northern Clans put on high alert.”
Catriona entered the room, looking pale. She held her phone in her hand. “I missed a call while we were all sleeping. It was from Elin. But she left me a voicemail.” She stared down at the phone as though it had betrayed her in some way.
“Well? What did it say?” Lucida asked.
“It’s about the príosún. Don’t worry, they haven’t gotten wind that your transfer was actually a breakout—not yet, anyway,” she added quickly, for Lucida had started toward her cousin in alarm.
“What happened?” I asked.
“There was a disturbance in the cellblocks. Two disturbances, actually. The first was in the cellblock where you were being held, Lucida.”
A muscle started jumping in Lucida’s jaw. “Yeah? What kind of disturbance.”
“A Necromancer prisoner overpowered a Caomhnóir guard and was apprehended trying to break into your old cell,” Catriona said.
Lucida swallowed convulsively. “I knew it. I knew I wasn’t safe there.”
Catriona nodded solemnly. “It would appear you were bang on about that. The Necromancer was captured and returned to his own cell, but he will not explain why he attempted to enter your cell, nor on whose orders he was acting. Elin couldn’t get a straight answer about why he was out of his cell in the first place. It’s all very suspect.”
“And what was the second disturbance?” I prompted.
“The second disturbance took place in the deepest levels of the príosún, in a cellblock reserved for spirits alone,” Catriona began, but I’d already clapped my hand over my mouth.
“The Tansy Hag,” I whispered. “She’s gone, isn’t she?”
“Gone,” Catriona confirmed. “And no one can understand quite how it was done. The Castings all appear to be intact, and yet she’s simply not there anymore.”
I remembered the helpless horror that permeated that cellblock. The spirits who had dwelled there did not have locks upon their doors—in fact, many of their cells had had no doors at all, no physical barriers to prevent them from simply floating out. No, it had been Castings—Durupinen magic—that had kept those most ancient and dangerous of prisoners confined in their soli
tude and despair. A single Necromancer—or Caomhnóir working for the Necromancers—could have released the Tansy Hag easily and virtually silently, if only he knew how to undo the Castings under which she was imprisoned. After so many centuries of being locked away and forgotten, who wouldn’t have traded what she knew for freedom at last?
“They’re going to be looking for you, Cat,” I said. “They’re going to want you there, investigating the situation. And when they can’t find you—”
Catriona nodded. “Yeah. My clock’s just about wound down on this adventure, I think.”
“Mine as well,” Lucida said. “We ought to scarper now, before we bring the Council down on all of your heads.”
“Oh, come off it,” Finn scoffed. “The Council is coming down on our heads anyway. This whole operation is about to be blown wide open. It’s no good splitting up now. They’ll know, if they don’t already, that we’ve been working together. The damage is done.”
“Finn is right,” I said. “Our best bet now is to get to Havre de Gardiennes and throw ourselves on the mercy of the High Priestess. Once she realizes why we’ve come to see her, and what we’ve risked to get there, surely the rules we’ve had to break along the way will be forgiven?”
Catriona bit her lip. “I’m not too sure about that bit, Jess. She’s a very powerful woman and she is not known for her leniency or her mercy.”
“The integrity of the Gateways hangs in the balance here,” I pointed out. “I don’t think past measures of leniency really apply, do you?”
Finn and Catriona shared a look full of misgivings. It was clear they were both in full professional mode now, Caomhnóir and Tracker, weighing all of the rules and regulations, the relative safety of possible solutions and the likelihood of possible outcomes. I slammed my hand down on the table.
“We don’t have time for this!” I shouted. “The Necromancers could be on their way right now! Whether we like it or not, everyone in the Durupinen world is about to find out what we’re doing. We can’t hide it anymore! It’s bigger than all of us now. We’ve got to put everything we know in front of the High Priestess and let the chips fall where they may, and we have to do it fast, because the Necromancers would like nothing better than to stop us.”
“And what do we say about showing up at the gates of Havre de Gardiennes with a convicted traitor and the woman who broke her out of prison?” Annabelle said, glaring at the two of them.
“We tell them the truth,” I said, giving Annabelle a warning look. “Lucida is our witness to the fact that the Necromancers know both about the Tansy Hag and the secret she was imprisoned for harboring. Catriona broke Lucida out to foil a Necromancer plot to murder her before she could tell the International High Council what she knew. It’s all been done to preserve the truth and make sure that Agnes’ message was delivered to the High Priestess.”
Finn frowned, but nodded. Catriona looked at Lucida, who shrugged reluctantly and said, “Yeah, all right. It’s as fair a shake as we’ll get, I think.”
“Good. We can sort out the details on the way,” I said, “but we need to get out of here as quickly as we can. Finn, where do we go next? What’s our next stop?”
“London,” Finn said. “We catch the Chunnel to Paris and from there it’s by car and then by foot into the Auvergne mountains.”
“I’m no mountain climber, Finn,” I said warily.
“You don’t need to be. The Castle is set in a valley, not on a mountaintop. But for the last few miles there is no road,” Finn said.
“Couldn’t we just get one of the helicopters from the Northern Clans and, like, land at the front door? It would be a hell of a lot faster,” I suggested hopefully. It was a mark of the direness of the situation that I was volunteering to be airborne.
Finn shook his head. “To do that, we’d need to go back to Fairhaven, and that would mean a mountain of red tape, even if the Council did agree to let us go without days and days of questioning. I think it’s best to go first and ask forgiveness later, frankly.”
“No, you’re right. But,” I looked around, spotting a roadblock. “If we’re going to France, we all need passports! How the hell are we going to pull that off without Durupinen connections?”
“I’ve got mine. And I’ve brought yours with me,” Finn said, reaching into his bag and pulling both documents out to show me.
“I’ve got mine, too,” Annabelle said. “I needed it to get to England, remember?”
“I’ve got ours as well,” Catriona said, referencing Lucida and herself. “I wasn’t sure if we might need to disappear, now that we’re on the run, so I made sure to bring them along.”
I looked over at Ileana, who, to my intense shock, pulled a passport from somewhere amongst her shawls and scarves and held it up with a satisfied smile. “You needn’t look so shocked, Northern Girl,” she said smugly. “The modern world hasn’t completely bypassed the Traveler Clans. We are nomads, after all, and that kind of life comes with certain hassles that even we must abide by.”
I laughed in shock, and then stood up. “Well, then. We haven’t got any time to waste. Gather your things quickly and let’s get out of here.”
17
The Knife's Edge
AS DESPERATE AS I WAS to get out the door, there were certain preparations that needed to be made. Ileana spoke with Abigail, who set out immediately for the Screaming Woods to alert Lira and Margaret to the possibility of the Necromancers coming in search of the key.
“Couldn’t she convince them to leave the woods and go into hiding somewhere?” I asked Ileana as we watched Abigail hobble out into the early morning sunlight.
Ileana cackled. “Leave that forest? They’d sooner step out of their own skin. But I promise you, they can defend themselves more completely with the aid of the Elementals than any of us could defend them out here, even if we had an army of Guardians at our disposal.”
I shuddered as I remembered the pain of the Elemental assault. It was true. The Necromancers attacked the Keeper of the Elementals at their own peril.
At Ileana’s suggestion, we armed ourselves with as many Casting supplies as we could gather from the Milkwood Teahouse. We created a Casting bag for Annabelle, who, not being a full Durupinen, had never owned one, and another for Lucida, who had not been permitted one since she had been imprisoned. It was with a look of intense relief that she fastened it around her waist, as though she had long felt naked and vulnerable without it. The rest of us supplemented our basic supplies of herbs, stones, and candles from Abigail’s stock, and helped ourselves to some of the rarer elements she had on-hand, given the completely unpredictable nature of the journey ahead. Then, when the cars were packed up with all our belongings and Finn was on the phone arranging our travel, I opened the connection at last with Milo and Hannah, so that I could fill them in on what had been happening. I hardly expected when I had finished unloading the full horror of what we had encountered in Pluckley, that they would have news that could match mine for its capacity to horrify.
“Jess, there are some things we’ve got to tell you, too, and it’s… it’s bad,” Hannah said.
“I’m running out of headspace for bad news here, Hannah,” I replied, the tension in my head cresting and breaking in a throb of pain. “Please don’t tell me this has to do with Marion. She hasn’t convinced the clans to hold the vote of no confidence, has she?”
“No, not yet, thank goodness,” Hannah replied.
“Only because she’s still trying to nail down enough votes in her favor,” Milo added, his tone full of venom. “She wouldn’t dare try to hold the vote unless she was absolutely sure she was going to win. Judging by the way Siobhán is skulking around the place with her tail between her legs, I’d say Marion’s already got her vote in her back pocket.”
“Do you think she’ll be able to get enough votes? It’s just so hard to believe that anyone around that castle would want to be involved with her after what she’s done.”
“The longer
Celeste waits to go to the International High Council, the better chance Marion will have. People are starting to panic. They’re starting to think that Celeste is incapable of making a decision,” Hannah said.
“And what to do you think?” I asked.
“I’m starting to wonder if they’re right,” Hannah replied. “She’s certainly stalling, at this point. But she might have to make a decision now, that’s what I’m getting at. A woman arrived at the castle late last night. She came down from Wales and would not be turned away at the gates. She said she needed the Council’s help, that she had nowhere else to turn. The Caomhnóir took her straight to the Council—we were in emergency session again—and she told us… well, she told us…”
“Just spit it out, Hannah,” I urged.
But Hannah didn’t seem to be able to bring herself to say the words, so Milo finished for her. “Another Sentinel. There’s been another Sentinel reported.”
My breath caught in my throat. It wasn’t as though I hadn’t been expecting this to happen. If I was being honest, I’d been expecting it ever since finding Naomi at the ruins of the Geatgrima in the Traveler grove. But it was still a blow to realize that it was happening so quickly now.
“There are bound to be others,” I said when the shock allowed me to speak at last. “You know there must be others we haven’t heard about yet, perhaps even being reported to other Councils in other parts of the world.”
“That’s what we were thinking, too,” Hannah said, “which is why I think it’s time for Celeste to go to the International High Council and tell them what’s happening here. Between the appearance of another Sentinel and Marion gunning for her position, time has run out.”
“I think you’re right,” I said.
I felt both Hannah’s and Milo’s surprise zing through the connection.
“Are you serious?” Hannah asked.
“I was sure you were going to fight us tooth and nail on that one,” Milo replied.
“A day ago, I would have,” I agreed. “But everything’s changed. The Necromancers know about the keys. They know I have them, or at least that I’m searching for them, which means we’ve run out of time. We’ve got to beat them to the safety of Havre de Gardiennes, and hope Agnes’ message falls on friendly ears.”