"Century Passage?" Griff turned from picking at one of the covered dishes. "That's the pilgrimage vampires make to Egypt?"
"Pilgrimage is a very poor word. It's a compulsion. After a century carrying stone blood, Hatshepsu's control asserts itself. You're called to the Djeser-Djeseru, Hatshepsu's temple at Thebes. If you don't go present yourself, there's all sorts of increasingly debilitating consequences."
"Even though she's been stone for centuries?"
"Even though. Patmahset doesn't admit to making the call on his Pharaoh's behalf, but since the jot isn't paid until after the Century Passage, he has a rather large motive for ensuring it happens."
Patmahset was the Nesweth—the king of Egypt—and the oldest known living vampire, raised not long before Hatshepsu went to stone. Technically Hatshepsu was still ruler—called Pharaoh in much the same way Prytennian people talked about "the Crown"—because Egyptians had a second life before they reached their Otherworld. But there was a lot of argument about whether Hatshepsu would have passed through that stage by now, and either become a god or gone to the Field of Rushes. She certainly hadn't Answered.
"Do you think the Nesweth sent the sphinxes?" Eluned asked.
"They're not his to send. The two sphinxes who turned up at Sheerside are the ones that guard the passage to Hatshepsu's receiving chamber. There's plenty of sphinxes at Hatshepsu's temple, but that pair are distinct—both smaller than the ones lining the entry avenue, and with those enamelled wings. And the breasts," he added, dryly. "Being within reach, they've achieved quite a gloss over the last millennia or so."
"Can all Egypt's sphinxes come to life?" Griff was agog. "Are they like the clay guards of Judah?"
"They're not known for it. But that pair were dedicated as shabti. Those are servants given to the soul for use when it reaches the Field of Rushes. Not that I've ever seen any shabti moving before, either, but in theory they carry out physical tasks in the Otherworld on behalf of the Third Life."
"You believe Hatshepsu herself sent those sphinxes—and the windstorms—to Prytennia? To chase pieces of fulgite?" Aunt Arianne sounded outright incredulous.
"I find shabti stirring from the tombs to chase fulgite that might control automatons...a ridiculous muddle. But dangerous in possible consequences. Fortunately very few saw that pair at Sheerside, and the detailed description has been suppressed." He stood up. "I don't suppose a name and dedication are carved on your toy anywhere? No? Well, bring it with us. The safest place for it is the grove."
"Sphinx couldn't be involved in Mother and Father's death," Eleri said, picking up the automaton. "Never get into the workroom without damage."
"Most shabti are smaller than your automaton. And Hatshepsu..." He paused, a purely entertained expression making him look fully awake for the first time. "A thousand shabti were placed in Hatshepsu's chambers at the Djeser-Djeseru when she entered rept. And a thousand shabti have been added every year since. That's why they keep expanding the wretched place."
Ten
Everyone knew that it was the three thousand, two hundred and eleventh year of Maatkare Hatshepsu's reign because most countries had adopted Egypt's count of years as a common reference. Even Yue, whose dragons had Answered as long ago as Egypt's gods, still found it handy when dealing with other realms. Eluned was less certain exactly how long it was since Egypt's Pharaoh had become stone, but could always rely on her brother's memory.
"One million, five hundred and one thousand little sphinxes?" Griff said, as they followed Dem Makepeace back into the Hall.
"Shabti are usually shaped like people," Dem Makepeace said, pausing before the open doors leading into the grove. "Not that I've heard of any recent attacks by miniature stone armies."
"Better as spies," Eleri said, and they all looked out into the grove. The hall felt very large and empty and exposed with the inner doors wide open and the trees full of shadows—and folies. Somehow, Eluned could not find the thought of them reassuring.
"There are advantages to the guardians of this place knowing you three properly," Dem Makepeace said, perhaps catching their hesitation. "Unless you consider yourself an enemy of Cernunnos, there's no particular danger, though you will not stray from my side, nor will you tell anyone what you witness or have discussed this night."
"No," Eluned agreed, echoing Eleri and Griff. Too much was bound up with their investigation to risk blabbing.
"No," Aunt Arianne said, a beat later. She was frowning.
Dem Makepeace stepped beneath the trees, and Eluned didn't allow herself to hang back, trailing him to the gate. It seemed to float at the end of the path, golden coils and silver fruit glimmering in pitch. Could the quick polish it had received that afternoon have made even that dusky red metal so reflective? Could star and distant gas light reach so far?
The key was a metal circle Eluned hadn't even noticed Dem Makepeace carrying. She only caught the movement as he pushed it into the space between the twin amasens' jaws, turning it easily. After a click the gate swung inward, and a cool breeze swept past them, setting all the leaves of the usually sheltered trees whispering, and bringing a crisp hint of pine with a darker note of loam.
Eluned shivered, took a deep breath, and found herself more excited than afraid. It did not make sense, for that breeze to stream from one end of this high walled space. And it was not sensible for her to eagerly follow the vampire who had nearly killed her aunt. Yet she did, impatient when he paused to close the gate behind them.
The trees here crowded close, making it necessary to weave and duck beneath low-hanging branches. Eluned kept a sharp eye on Dem Makepeace's white tunic, vivid through the gloom. Though it no longer stood out so clearly, and the trees...
"How?"
"Different time of day?"
Dem Makepeace glanced up at a sky the bleached and fading blue it had been before dinner. Ahead a trace of a stone path cut through widely-spaced trees and the tumbled remnants of ancient buildings. Birds called, the evening chorus in full throat to emphasise the quiet they'd left.
"Days in the Great Forest run long," Dem Makepeace said. "The nights can last for years, if you've offended."
Aunt Arianne, contemplating a vine-decked coil of stone almost her own height, shifted shielding leaves to reveal the carved head of another amasen, only a few flecks of faded gilding remaining on the horns.
"When you spoke of Cernunnos responding to petitioners for the key, you meant directly, didn't you? Cernunnos. Responding."
"Of course."
"How disconcerting." For once Aunt Arianne sounded as if she meant it. She looked like she was thinking hard.
"What are, what were all these buildings for?" Griff asked, as upright and alert as a pointer hound that had sighted its quarry. Impressive that he did not race off to explore among the tumbled drystone walls, but perhaps the squirrels leaping from pillar to pillar, or the sheer volume of the birdsong held him at bay.
"Hurlstone," the vampire replied. "Village and temple. Before London."
Not fully understanding, knowing only that her throat was full and tight, Eluned took two steps off the remnant path, then managed to stop herself, obedient to her agreement to stay close. But it made her ache to do it.
"Who's that?" Griff asked sharply, looking past Eluned, and she turned, searching.
Beyond a knee-high wall and a stream framed by willow and drooping spruce, a girl stood shoulders back, face raised, arms hanging loose. Twilight was not a good time to pray, but so long as there was light in the sky you could hope to catch Sulis' ear.
Instead of answering, Dem Makepeace changed direction, stepping over the wall and then crossing the stream on a tumble of stones that had once been a pillar.
"He serious?" Eleri murmured, as they followed. "Don't just go meet Cernunnos."
The gods—the grander ones like Cernunnos—rarely came to the living world. Their presence was too great a strain. But humans did not simply go visiting the Otherworlds either, except of course when t
heir souls went to the gods who held their allegiance.
Eluned, unspeakably excited by something that should make her flinch, couldn't make her voice work, but Griff muttered: "Don't just walk out of London either. I think that must be a statue."
He was right. Even when Dem Makepeace stopped right in front of her, the girl didn't move, and now that Eluned could see her feet it was obvious: she stood held in place by a little pile of stones, grass growing thickly through it.
Aunt Arianne, voice muted, said: "The one who made you?"
"Good guess," Dem Makepeace said, not looking back at them. With great ceremony he knelt, settled down to rest on his heels, and then put both hands to his chest and bowed, so low he was folded down completely.
Caught between shock and fascination, Eluned stared from him to a statue that seemed embarrassingly naked now that she knew that this had been a real person. A vampire in rept. The stone was a waxy pale grey, and the books said it would feel like hard soap beneath the fingers. Despite standing outside exposed, no details were eroded, and Eluned could clearly make out the edges of fingernails, of eyelids. No hair, because that was the one part of a vampire that was not preserved, but if she were taller and had brown frizz to tease into three triangles, she'd look a lot like Melly Ktai.
"Why isn't she wrapped up?" Griff asked, curious. "And underneath a pyramid?"
Dem Makepeace stood, fortunately showing no hint of offence.
"Bindings aren't necessary. They're a carry-over of the preservations performed on those not stone. And she preferred the sight of an eternal sky to whatever assistance her ba might gain using a pyramid to gain strength before moving on."
Egyptians had three lives. The first much the same as everyone else, and then a second where their bodies were maintained like houses, something to rest in after nights outside the world as invisible bird-people called ba. That was the complete opposite of Prytennia, where everything was done to ensure that your body didn't tie you in place. But then, while Prytennians wanted to quickly move on to Annwn to be judged fit for a happy new life among Arawn's islands, Egyptians needed to grow in strength as ba, because the journey to their Otherworld was very dangerous. And some, the strongest among them, might choose to fly not to their Field of Rushes, but outside the worlds altogether, transcending mortality to become stars.
The Egyptian way didn't seem so bad if the house you spent your days in was a statue in a forest.
"Looks young," Eleri murmured.
"She was barely older than you when she was raised." Dem Makepeace smoothed his shendy, glanced at the fading sky, and started down a different path out of the clearing.
Curious to know the girl's name, Eluned followed, and was immediately caught once again by her surroundings. So many plants, both familiar and strange, the scents changing with every touch of breeze. At the top of a small rise stood a stony pavilion lacking only a roof, and commanding a view over the surrounding forest to steal all attention.
Trees were no surprise, but the tower was, a sliver of shining silver far to their right. And white-capped mountains swallowed the opposite horizon, surely higher than any Prytennian peak. Clouds hid the tallest of them, teasing the eye with hints of something regularly shaped and monumental. And below that an ocean of trees, rising and falling with the hidden curves of the landscape, a mosaic of greens endlessly varied.
The Great Forest. An Otherworld. They truly were in an Otherworld.
Noticing she was behind, Eluned hurried to catch Dem Makepeace as he rejoined the path marked by statues of amasen. Words, an unspeakable urgency, blocked her throat, and at a point before the path left the ruins and curved away into thickly-set trees she threw sense to the wind and said: "Wait!"
The vampire who had not quite killed her aunt stopped obediently, and Eluned, who was not shy even if she was not easily social, found herself stammering in the face of limited patience.
"C-could I come back here?" she asked. "Just to...to look at it?"
For a long and painful moment he simply gazed at her blankly, as if she had said she wanted the moon. "You'd have to ask Cernunnos that," he said finally. "Though I would imagine your aunt has a few firm opinions about doing so."
"What consequences?" Aunt Arianne asked, ignoring the barbed smile he offered her. "Beyond allegiance given?"
"For asking? Likely nothing. For coming here?" He left off being provoking to consider the question seriously. "The Great Forest is not the Horned King's alone, and I am far from the only one able to enter it. Hurlstone itself holds no dangers, and if you're accepted by the Deep Grove's guardians you'd have protection against anything that might stray by, short of a god. But this is one of the greatest of the Otherworlds, and to treat it as a plaything would be to invite being played with."
Despite his almost indifferent tone, Eluned felt censured and drew breath to protest, to explain. But the struck-gong feeling overwhelming her seemed impossible to put into words, and she subsided in unfamiliar confusion.
Aunt Arianne said coolly: "If something is so important to a person that they would stand before a god—truly before a god—and ask for it, the reason is unlikely to be trivial." She smiled at Eluned then, both serious and wry. "Not that I wish you to fling yourself into dangerous situations heedlessly. While Dem Makepeace's description did rather make Hurlstone sound safer than London, I trust you to spare my nerves any outright idiocy."
"Stray gods," Eleri added, not discouraging but clearly dubious, and Griff said: "Will you really ask?"
"I don't know," Eluned admitted.
"Any other requests?" Dem Makepeace said, his tone entirely obliging, but not even Griff believed it, and so they silently followed the vampire beneath the trees.
With the sky only visible through breaks in the foliage, it immediately became almost too dark to keep track of the path, and Aunt Arianne moved to stand between them so that she could guide them around occasional hazards. The birdsong dropped away, and the wind rose, uncomfortably cold, stirring up the scent of leaf mold.
Through the velvety pitch, blobs of light provided dim beacons, and as they approached the first Eluned saw that it was another stone amasen, with a soft white light leaking from between its coils. The forest outside that gentle glow seemed even darker, and she could no longer see patches of pale sky above. But the wind had dropped and she could hear.
Griff pressed back against Eluned's side, and she squeezed his shoulder and told herself that the tok tok tok was likely a bird, and the rustling no doubt a badger or squirrels, and that was most certainly the call of a fox and not someone crying out. It did not help at all to glance at Aunt Arianne's face when they reached the next amasen, and see her gazing out into the forest with wide eyes. Beneath these trees, perhaps it was better not to be able to see in the dark.
Even if she came only in the daylight, and kept to Hurlstone, would she be simply courting danger, and wholly unequal to it? More to the point, could she really ask permission of Cernunnos to come here? The Horned King might bring bountiful harvests and healthy babies, but it was only through carefully maintained treaties that the lands within his dominion were not swallowed by forest. And to offend against Cernunnos in any woodland was to risk drawing the attention of his hunt.
They had passed the last of the glowing amasen, but Dem Makepeace still walked unhesitatingly toward a bluer patch of darkness up ahead, which became a clearing, a bowl of soughing grass fringed by trees. Beneath a depthless sea of stars stood a tiny hill, crowned by the Oak.
Sprawling boughs embraced forest and sky, reaching so far they hung beyond the slopes of the hill. The trunk was wider than ten men embracing, gnarled but solid. And every bit of it could be clearly seen because countless balls of glass, flickering softly, hung by slender chains from the branches.
"We will kneel at the foot of the hill," Dem Makepeace said, continuing forward without break. "Wednesday will go up alone and kneel on the stone at the crest."
"Who's—?" Griff began, then stopped w
hen Eluned squeezed his shoulder. It was obvious Dem Makepeace meant their aunt, but this wasn't the time to ask why. Griff knew that, of course, but walking through a place where he could hear so many animals and not see them had been far from easy for him. Dem Makepeace had talked about this as if it was such a simple thing, but Eluned had never been so daunted, and Aunt Arianne surely was as well, though she did not falter when they reached the bottom of the hill and Dem Makepeace gestured for her to go past him.
The grass was high and seed heads tickled when Eluned knelt. One of the hanging glass globes was only a little way above them, and as a mote of light detached itself she saw that the light came from glowing white moths clinging to the outside, feeding on tiny flowers within.
There were fewer globes around the trunk, and Eluned could see very little of Aunt Arianne after she knelt past the top of the slope. The breeze had dropped, and the loudest sound was the clothy flutter of wings, and Griff's breathing, growing ever harsher.
Eleri leaned down to Griff's ear, and Eluned couldn't hear her words, but guessed them even before Griff repeated: "Tennings Together." The old reassurance, one they'd turned to more than ever this summer. Alone they each had their vulnerable points, but as their own minor trifold they covered each other's weaknesses.
This, though, was a greater test for Griff than they could have anticipated. Even Eluned, wildly excited, had to fight with uncertainty. Could she do it? Ask Cernunnos himself for leave to visit his forest? For something so simple and selfish as wanting, longing, to look at it properly? Aunt Arianne had been careful to point out that a request like that would mean a tie of allegiance, a permanent bond. That wasn't a small thing, even if Cernunnos wasn't known as a harsh god.
And when should she ask? What if Cernunnos came and went and Eluned had not had a chance to speak? But if Cernunnos came down to them, would Griff be able to stand it?
Dem Makepeace, on the far side of Griff and Eleri, leaned forward so that he could see Griff's whitely set face, then said: "Sleep."
Griff closed his eyes, and his breathing slowed, but there was no other sign that he'd obeyed. He didn't even slump sideways. This was a power all vampires had, to put someone into a trance. They did it so they could feed without causing pain—or protest. Father had once explained that Prytennian traditional dress, with the high collars and cuffs criss-crossed with laces, had originally been designed with the idea of preventing vampires from biting you without you knowing.
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