Maidstone, Kent.
June 4, 2012: afternoon.
Viper and Clare stepped under the horizontal lintel of the Sisters’ unearthed trilithon. Viper placed her forearm against the glowing glyphs on the massive upright stone. Red sparks spewed from the glyphs on the stone nearest the runic scars on her arm. Warm air blew at them from the portal, drying their clothes. Viper clasped the girl’s elbow when Clare retreated a step backwards. Smoke emitting from the ancient glyphs engulfed them. The immortal urged the human through the trilithon into the mist on the other side of the portal.
On Viper’s second step, vertigo spun the world that should be still. The Daoine Tor kept a firm hold on the girl. The babble of thousands of voices swirled around them, dense as the fog itself. An uncomfortable pressure in Viper’s ears progressively dulled the chaotic sound until both the sensation of deafness and disorientation became almost unbearable.
Viper took her third step forwards. The world around them cleared and her senses resumed as before. Transit through the portal felt like a short moment, but hours had passed. The sun hung low in the twilight sky. They had arrived on a crest of the chalky North Downs near the River Medway, some five miles north of Maidstone. The untended hill overlooked a small village where electric lights and stucco row houses replaced the vast, Kentish fields of Viper’s memory.
Viper’s heart skipped a beat when she saw unexpected bleakness where she expected to arrive. Long before the Sisters retreated beneath Maidstone, they had created this place to channel the aeir of the land and animals. The pristine double-ringed megalithic stone circle had been decimated. Her hands turned cold, and she unconsciously set Clare down. Clare took a moment longer to recover, sitting on the ground with her head in her hands. The portal sank back into the dirt behind them without a trace.
Only one of the original four outer trilithons remained. Its top lintel stone lay on the ground, where it had fallen long ago. Pockets of cup-shaped indentations, made by centuries of rainwater, scarred the exposed moss-covered side. Where they still existed, submerged remnants of the other upright sarsen boulders stuck out like boils on the ground. Seven narrow obelisks of black onyx and white quartz once stood between the trilithons, markers for the solstices and equinoxes of both Earth’s seasons and of V’Braed magic. They had vanished.
The more Viper took in, the more she found herself struggling to believe her eyes. She picked her way to the centre past cigarette butts, crushed beer cans, and scattered firework shells. Coarse grasses within the site refused to be trodden flat by local sightseers and delinquents. The inner ring of stones should have been comprised of four wide, rectangular, bluestone boulders around a solitary fire opal pillar, like the one in the Sisters’ hovel. Only one upright bluestone remained. Where once there was marginal space to shuffle between the inner circle of stones, the centre now lay splayed open and vulnerable. A concrete post rose from the middle, scarred by graffiti.
Viper grabbed a handful of gravel, the shattered remnants of one of the inner monoliths. “Worthless!” She threw the debris across the circle towards where the portal had returned, as if she could injure the Sisters through the absent passageway.
Clare gasped when the pebbles ricocheted around her feet. In her shock, Viper had forgotten about the girl. The immortal wordlessly examined Clare’s aeir with a brevity that centuries of expertise provided. Clare wasn’t harmed from her trip through the magical gateway. She sustained only minor injuries from the incident with the Merrows.
“Your wounds needs must wait.” Viper pointed to the trash lying around her. “If I am to find the Mort Lake Glass, I need to lend what remains of my magic to this ravaged place.”
“I can’t hear you,” Clare responded, shaking her head. “The water shorted out my electronics, remember? Where are we?” Her hands signed her words simultaneously.
Viper faced Clare. It wasn’t her fault that the Merrow dragged her under water. Viper preferred the modern approach to curing hearing loss over the medieval application of crushed, dried earwigs and rabbit urine in the ear canal, even if the technology wasn’t waterproof. She was willing to be patient with the deaf girl.
“I know this place as Dugan’s Bode,” Viper explained, making her words and facial expression clearly visible. “The stones guard one of the Sisters’ dwellings beneath the surface. I hath been here once before, then compelled to…leave.” The quiet of the abandoned circle raised disquiet in her.
Clare touched the stones gingerly as she explored the ruins. “I’ve never been here before, but this place is familiar, as were the landscapes in the Sisters’ home. There,” she said, pointing to a sign. “Tourist information from the local council.” Clare read aloud, “Dugan Mound, nestled above Soester Village, is one of seven groups of megaliths and burrows in the Medway valley built by Neolithic man for ceremonial and burial purposes.” She glanced to the nearby habitation. “That’s Soester.”
“Humaines hath credited themselves with creating the magnificence of a place wrought by the elldyr creft of the V’Braed?” Viper’s disgust flared from the darkest recesses of her eyes. “How expected of humaines, using their arrogance to justify the rape of magic in the land. For if humaines claim ownership of the stones’ construction, so can they assert their right to its destruction.”
Clare toed an empty bottle of Buckfast wine. “Funny how this site isn’t as well-known as Stonehenge. I love places like this. Dugan Mound…” Clare interrupted herself before Viper scoffed at the name. “I’m sorry. Dugan’s Bode must have been beautiful in its day. If people knew the truth about these places, they wouldn’t treat it like a garbage dump. You could show us.”
“Are you so naïve?” Viper almost turned her head away, but her growing annoyance pushed her into an open stare. “Humaines live to obtain and wield power. They hath no respect for the world within which they live, nor the power within themselves. When I am done with Annys, I hath a mind to punish humaines for that which they hath robbed from the Daoine Tor. My castigation shall be most severe.”
“Have you no love for anyone?” Clare asked, her voice defiant. “Are you so full of resentment that you would condemn me too?”
“Bah!” Viper threw her hands up at the girl, unable to find a satisfactory retort.
“You can’t keep pushing people away. I’ve committed myself to helping you, and so have the others. If you give humans a chance, you’ll find that we have so much to offer, flawed as we are.”
The garen surging within Viper threatened to answer on her behalf. She grimaced and said nothing as she scaled the six-foot concrete post at the centre of the ruins. The height was as much distance as she could put between herself and the shrewd girl. Viper didn’t know whether it was the silence between them or the chill of the oncoming evening that dispirited her.
Clare raised her voice to be heard from the perimeter. “Revenge against Annys, or humans, won’t complete you.” Viper cast a warning look at Clare, who wouldn’t desist. “Are you sure that some of your indignation isn’t you being sore at yourself for leaving Owain to fend for himself in London?”
The honesty of Clare’s words killed Viper’s righteousness. The girl spoke of the self-doubt Viper concealed from Mouse and his companions.
Viper turned her back on Clare. “If he is wronged by my choices, my vengeance shall be hollow, indeed,” she confessed, knowing the girl couldn’t hear.
The turbulence of Viper’s conflicting emotions crashed in upon her heart. “I command you, open!” she roared at the ancient site. Viper fired elldyr creft where the stones should have been, trying to spawn the missing pieces into existence. The hilltop lit up in brilliant flashes of purple. The land didn’t respond to her invocation. Her heart raced faster than the magic pulsing from her body.
“This cannot be!” she wailed. A solid beam of deep violet erupted from her hands, cut across the ruins and through the sky above Soester. Her eyes swirled rapidly in uncharacteristic confusion, unaware of the camera flashes from
within the village. “Why hath you sent me here, where there is no magic?” she demanded of the wind.
“You have to have faith that the Sisters sent you here for a reason,” Clare offered in response to Viper’s body language, as much as her words.
Viper jumped to the ground and tore out the concrete pillar. Soil lay powerless beneath it. With two hands, Viper heaved the pillar towards Soester. The object smashed apart when it crashed through high hedges and into the road at the base of the hill. A passing car skidded around the wreckage.
“Faith in what?” Viper yelled at Clare, her body quaked with fury. She pounded the unyielding stone. “Riddles? Humanity? Fate? Ever since I escaped from Annys’ prison, my every step hath been thwarted.” Her body alternated its purple hues. Fire dripped from her hands and she paced recklessly through the ruins.
Clare bit her lip in thought. After several minutes, she said, “What if the Sisters didn’t know that this site was so barren? They said the Mort Lake Glass was under their stones, which I’m guessing are this group of Medway stones. Remember: ‘The Medway holds the beginning.’ This could be the beginning of your quest. We have to be in the right place.”
Neither Viper consumed by anger, nor Clare lost in introspection, noticed the cerulean mist accumulating around the hole where Viper had pulled out the concrete post. The vapour spread outwards to the margin of the ruins and around Viper’s ankles. She jumped towards Clare to protect her. The mist enrobed and entangled Viper’s arms and legs until she couldn’t move. Startled, Clare tripped and scuttled backwards, far beyond the miasma’s reach.
Water dripped upwards from the ground until a liquid dome formed over the outer ring of Dugan Mound, enclosing Viper within. The immortal tossed her head, fending off the droplets that blocked her mouth and nose. Layers of ultramarine, lenticular clouds formed above Dugan Mound. Silent lightning coursed between the dome and the flattened disc-shaped clouds.
Annys’ watery avatar materialized from a cyclone at the centre of the ruins. Sea-blue hair cascaded over rounded shoulders and a full bosom. Its hands settled on ample, curved hips. Rivulets of water wound upwards, like arm bangles, towards its smug, oval face. The dagged ends of its flowing strapless dress morphed into a dozen additional chains.
The bonds strengthened those lashed around Viper. They pulled her arms over her head and held her spread-eagled between the upright stones of the outer trilithon until she was unable to touch the ground. The avatar coasted nose to nose with Viper. Its hands swam around the immortal’s face. Panic threatened to overwhelm Viper.
“Hello, my Silver One,” Annys’ voice crooned from her translucent construct. Each syllable uttered by the full lips dripped smoothly into Viper’s ears.
“Annys,” Viper responded in accusation rather than acknowledgment. She struggled to free herself without success. The runes on her arms glowed hotly. A burning sensation from the shapes radiated through her body.
“I must admit,” the avatar said with a grand smile, “you’ve impressed me. You escaped my prison and you bested my Merrows. That’s no small accomplishment.”
On the outside of the magical half-sphere, Clare yelled, “Let her go!” She struck her hands on the outer surface. The avatar flicked its wrist and a water burst shoved Clare farther away.
“Humans,” Annys’ avatar said with a sardonic tone that felt oddly conspiratorial to Viper, “the most important creatures on Earth. Well, we V’Braed know better, don’t we, my dear?”
“How is it that thou art so changed of speech?” The sincerity in her own voice shocked Viper. She was glad Clare couldn’t hear her. The immortal never expected to be interested in her nemesis. That Annys conducted such power from an unknown distance bewildered Viper. Some part of her yearned to know the other Daoine Tor’s secrets and whether she could apply them to her own abilities. Annys’ beguiling personality made camaraderie a sore temptation.
“Cultorum lingua,” the conjured image said, its rolled ‘r’s elongated. It liked its lips with a gaudy display. “The worshipper’s tongue. Join me, Viper, and live like a Goddess instead of a queen’s plaything.”
Viper pushed aside the thought of joining Annys, blaming the urge on centuries of isolation.
“Thou art no god,” Viper hissed with as much enmity as she could vocalize.
The avatar’s colour intensified to glacial blue at the rebuke. “Am I not? I am eternal, I have incredible power, and I walk on water.” Fluid pooled beneath the avatar lifted so high, Viper strained her neck to make eye contact.
“Humaines hath gods aplenty. Why should they worship you?” Invasive trickles of water slid from Viper’s sodden hair and down her back.
“Bless the gods of the humans.” The avatar put its hands together in mock prayer. Tiny tendrils of water created fluttering eyelashes in its face. “Forgive me Father, for I love to sin in your name.” The eyes opened. “The way in which they speak may have altered, but time hasn’t changed humanity. Throughout the centuries, humans pit one god against the other; brother against brother. They’re about to destroy themselves.” She gestured with her left hand and a sphere of water floated in front of her, the geography of Earth visible on its surface. “When they do, I’ll come forward and cleanse the world with my tides.” The avatar kissed the globe and the oceans pulsed green-blue before they flooded the continents. “The survivors will worship me, and offer up sacrificial aeir unto their Earth Mother, as once they did before. The woes of the world shall be washed away, and a better life will begin anew.”
“Thou art no giver of life. Thy touch brings only plague. I am the Daoine Tor who hath the ability to heal.”
The avatar hurtled the globe at Viper, striking her in the face. Viper sputtered and her body trembled with anger. Air heavy with moisture invaded Viper’s lungs with each breath.
“You are too much among the humans if you use that bastard name for yourself,” it said, showing cracks in Annys’ genial persona. “You don’t deserve to be V’Braed.”
Viper spit at the avatar.
Annys’ avatar wiped the spittle from her dress and sucked it from her fingers. “You might be able to fix what’s broken in a human,” it said with a kind voice that didn’t match its evil expression, “but water gives humans life. I am mistress over the veins of their world. If I take water away from them, your healing skill would amount to… nothing.”
Clare stomped towards the exterior of the dome, armed with a thick branch. She battered the magical barrier in futility. Viper melded her mind into the girl’s, hoping to find a way to tell the girl to run for safety, even though Viper couldn’t communicate telepathically.
The immortal witnessed the world through Clare’s eyes. She saw herself strung up between the stones, her lilac body drained of colour and insignificant compared to that of the avatar. The sight of herself, exposed and pitiful, made Viper recoil into her own mind, in horror. Clare stopped shouting so she could lip-read the avatar’s words.
“I don’t despise you, not really” the avatar said. It flowed around Viper on its platform. “We are so much the same, that hating you would be like self-loathing.”
“I am nothing such as thee.”
“We have different powers, and I’m robust and delicious to behold while you’re, well, you’re a walking stick with muscles, aren’t you? Sadly, you’re one of four immortals on these lands, and that makes you more like me than you care to admit.”
Viper’s body betrayed her when it shivered at the mention of the conjoined V’Braed sisters.
“Oh,” Annys’ avatar said with a pout, “did you honestly think that I didn’t know about the others? I’m the reason they went into hiding.” The construct sighed. “Unfortunately for me, they are onerous as a pair. I can’t break through their Greenwardens and safeguards.” It clapped its hands together with a sloshing sound. “Let us use the tools of the Mort Lake Sage. Together we could overpower those reticent twins,” it said with unexpected joy.
“I will never join
thee.” Viper had no intention of revealing that she’d failed to find the Mort Lake Glass.
“I will never join you,” the avatar corrected. “Oh, I do miss the relationship status implied in the antiquated use of thee and thou.” The image flipped its hair dismissively. “As you wish. I don’t need you. I’ve waited centuries for synchronicity in the magic of Earth’s solar solstice and V’Braed elldyr creft. Soon enough, I’ll have the strength to deal with the twins on my own. Besides, you took everything that should have been mine. To be honest, I don’t feel like sharing.”
The avatar crooked a finger towards Viper. Manacles of water rose from the ground and grabbed her. They jerked her across the ground to the solitary bluestone near the middle of the ring. Viper dug her heels into the mud ineffectively.
“Oh,” the avatar sang in mock sympathy over Viper’s shoulder as water lashed Viper to the stone, “where is your marvellous strength now, my friend? Is that why you brought the human? To replenish yourself after you open the entrance to the Sisters’ subterranean hovel? She is scrumptious.”
“She is none of thy concern.” Viper twisted her head in an effort to see Clare. The girl ran to the section of the dome closest to the standing boulder.
The avatar plummeted from the platform like a waterfall. It reshaped itself into Annys so close to Viper that she could feel a fine spray on her face.
“That’s for me to decide, after you die.” The avatar tapped its chin in thought. Groundwater seeping up through the dirt and dripping from the dome’s inner surface pooled around Viper’s ankles like an incoming tide. The avatar’s lips brushed Viper’s cheek. “I promise you,” it whispered in Viper’s ear, “I’ll savour every bit of her life-magic.”
Viper generated a flash fire around her head. The avatar pulled back, steam belching from its face. The construct rippled and repaired itself. Annys’ thin laughter filled Viper with revulsion and contempt, eradicating any trace of benevolence towards her kin.
“You have a soft spot for humans. I hope she’s worth dying for.” The biting cold of the water reached Viper’s hips. “This time, I won’t make the same oversight. I’ll kill you myself.”
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