by P M Cole
The cook nodded and moved away.
Melanie walked closer then examined me from head to toe. “Hmm… I do not sense you are evil, confused maybe but not evil.” She then walked to Daniel. He stiffened his back as she neared. “Hmm… you too are confused.” She turned away. “So, I’m still waiting to hear why they are here, Gloria. We allow you to make decisions for the coven because you usually make the right ones, but I’m not seeing why bringing these two and their lackeys is good for us. Do we really want to get on the wrong side of Hades?”
I was starting to get irritated, but Lucas beat me to venting my frustration. “With the greatest respect to your sisters, Miss Coburn,” he said to Gloria. “If we are not wanted, we are happy to—”
The younger sister slowly turned to face him. “I never said you were not wanted, I merely enquired what benefit there is for our coven in helping you?”
“Hades not killing all of you?” I said. I noticed the quieter of the sisters raised her eyebrows and nodded, while Melanie tutted and went to turn away when Auto chirped from within my coat. She looked back at me.
“What was that noise?”
I sighed as he made another noise, then pulled the mechanical bird out. “Ye gods!” she said, smiling, then ran forward to examine my small friend.
“She made… it,” said Gloria.
Melanie looked at me as if seeing me in a new light. “Perhaps you do have things to offer us.”
“Is it house trained?” said Katerina.
Auto chirped something which made me smile.
Shortly after, dinner was served in an equally large dining room, and I set about recounting my story, with Lucas and Colin chiming in where appropriate. All of us left out my true connection to the god of the underworld.
“How peculiar that your map should change as it did,” said Katerina, mirroring my own thoughts. “Do you have it on you?”
“I do…”
“Let me see.”
I looked at Lucas, he nodded. As I took it from my dress pocket her eyes grew wide.
Gloria noticed her sisters concern. “What is it?”
“This parchment is enchanted…”
“Yes, it’s magical in some way. My blood drew the lines and—”
She shook her head. “No, I do not mean merely its purpose, I mean it exists between realms. It is almost like a portal to somewhere else.” She held the piece of paper up close to her eyes. “Hmmm…”
“What?” said Lucas.
“This was part of a larger piece. Which it is still connected to.” She looked at me. “Who did you say this belonged to?”
“Umm… my employer…”
Her eyes widened. “Chronus?”
I nodded.
“Then that is why it changed. The god of time is still with you, young lady, if only through this remarkable piece of old parchment.”
My heart leapt.
She handed it back. “I suggest you keep it safe.”
“How were you able to tell that?” said Lucas. His eyes had not left Katerina for most of the dinner.
She smiled. “I… have always been able to see magic’s connection to earthly objects.”
I looked at Melanie. “And you?”
She rolled her eyes. “I can see magic in people—”
“And I, places,” said Gloria. “We were born like it.”
Katerina sighed. “Born to be witches.”
I noticed Melanie smiling at Colin. His awkward smile in reply made me accidentally stamp on his foot under the table. He winced and briefly looked at me.
“Tomorrow we leave for the highlands,” said Lucas, looking between the two older sisters. “Do you have any advice for such a journey?”
Gloria looked at Katerina, who then glanced at Melanie. They all appeared to be in agreement with some unspoken plan.
“We’re coming with you,” said Gloria.
As a smile grew across Lucas’s face and irritatingly Colin’s, a spark of an idea of why the map had changed formed in my mind.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
We walked past the inn. I looked up at the window where I was meant to stay for a week. We left the previous evening without even attempting to get a refund, not wanting to draw any attention.
Dawn had not yet broken and the frost-covered mud track of the day before was now covered in a fresh layer of snow.
Melanie walked between Daniel and Colin, with the latter carrying a small suitcase of hers, while Lucas walked with Katerina and I with Gloria. We made our way up the slight incline of a hill towards the woods where hopefully the dirigible was still located. Lucas and Gloria both held oil lamps to light our way. Making sure there were no farmers around us, I set Auto free.
“Go make sure the dirigible is still there.” He chirped and fluttered off into the gloom.
“Melanie will not let you hear the end of it until you have made her one similar!” said Gloria. The woman who had made a similar request flashed in my mind. The head of the Edinburgh coven must have seen my sadness, and to my surprise wrapped her arm around me, pulling me closer. “I know you have lost a great deal recently, but you’re a strong wee girl.”
“Wee?”
She laughed. “Small!”
I grumbled something and she laughed again, pulling me tighter, to which I laughed too.
She nodded towards Lucas. “Looks like your friend there has taken a liking to my older sis, and she him, which doesn’t happen very often.” I nodded although I was more taken by the two other men waiting on Melanie’s every word as she retold a story of how the Coven defeated a demon just a few weeks earlier. “Och, don’t mind Mel. She just likes the attention. Your lad is safe.”
I turned away. “Not my anything.”
Gloria smiled.
“How long have you been the head witch?” I asked.
“Ever since our ma passed. So, going on fourteen years now.”
“Umm… I think Mr Gladwell wanted us to come to this city to find you and your sisters…” It was my best working theory as to why the map had changed, but I had no idea why the sisters were so important. Must be powerful magic users I presumed.
“Oh, well then, the god of time has good taste in witches!”
Auto emerged from the dark sky and chirped that all was as it should be, and I placed him back inside my coat. We marched through the woods and I was glad to see ‘Chronus’ as we had left it, although with a heavy dusting of snow.
“Oh my,” said Katerina.
“Well, ain’t that a sight!” said Gloria, while Melanie ran forward, leaving Daniel and Colin behind, and disappeared inside the craft.
We quickly removed the branches and I sparked the furnace back to life. It wasn’t too long before we had a good heat warming the boiler. The cabin was now a bit cramped, but when the ropes were untied outside, we gently lifted off, and floated upwards through the trees.
“We’re flying!” said Melanie, eagerly looking out of the window.
“Don’t you just use a broom?” said Colin smirking, Daniel had to stifle a chuckle while Melanie frowned then regained her excitement for the flight.
We burst free of the treetops and were able to see the sun beginning to rise over the Firth of Forth some miles to the northeast. For a moment, the three sisters were awestruck by the orange disk glittering on the distant waves of the bay.
“Ooh, let us fly over our home!” said Melanie. She leaned forward, placing her hand on my shoulder. “Please?” She fluttered her eyelashes, although what affect she thought that would have on me I wasn’t sure. Still a slight detour wasn’t going to hurt. I steered us starboard, as the inn slid by just yards beneath us. The city was beginning to wake as we sailed silently across the slate roofs, sandstone walls and snow-covered streets until the palatial home of the Edinburgh coven made itself known from the early morning mist.
We quickly passed overhead, and I steered to the left, heading northwest.
Daniel lay back in his chair, while Lucas enqui
red if Katerina wanted an apple he had stashed in his satchel. I looked away from the coming day, and into the sky that was still mostly black, and thought about what lay ahead.
*****
Beautiful sunbathed snow-covered peaks and glens rolled by beneath us, only disturbed by crystal clear bodies of water cutting into them. Most of the conversations behind me had receded to mere whispers which I was glad for, as it gave me time to untangle my own thoughts. Even though what lay ahead was unknown I was glad to be moving further away from my fa… Hades. It disturbed me how easy his proper title almost fell from my lips. I had looked upon his true form and there was no trace of humanity within it. It was obvious to me now that the Lord that paraded around the halls of Parliament was just a mask.
My mind slipped to Olivia, Bernard and the others that were discovered at the Crystal Palace. What could have become of them? Were they rotting in a dank cell somewhere in a forgotten corner of the capital?
I sighed, then thought about the paper in my pocket. My connection to Mr Gladwell. I pulled it out, wondering if I would see anything different, but on opening, it still showed a line from where we had been to the mysterious location at the top left corner of one of Scotland’s biggest islands. I looked out my side window at the increasingly barren terrain below that was succumbing to shadow as the sun headed for the horizon. We were going to be arriving at our destination in darkness. Not the ideal scenario. If the council wanted to be hard to find, they certainly picked the right spot.
Colin, seated to my left, moved, scratching his nose but seemingly still asleep. I sighed again. In the confined space that was now floating a thousand feet up across the highlands, he was the only one without powers. A ‘casual’ and therefore the most vulnerable, despite his protestations to the contrary. He still bore the scars of his encounter with Hades' forces from weeks before; would he survive another?
We moved out over a large body of water which unlike the others did not seem to have an obvious end point, so I presumed it was the sea. The coast of an island was ahead, some miles off. We were close.
“Not far now,” said Gloria in my ear, startling me out of my own head.
I looked over my shoulder to her and nodded. “Have you been here before?”
“When I was a wee bairn with ma and my sisters. She took us on a kind of a pilgrimage around the forgotten magical places of Scotland. We were all bored out of our minds!” She smiled. “Couldn’t wait to get back to the city! But looking back, it was one of my fondest times I had spent with her…but the stones themselves? The location had an energy certainly. Katerina felt it more because she could feel the stones, but we just played in the fields, just another stone circle. I think we visited about five that summer.”
“Any idea of what we should do if the council is actually there?”
She shook her head. “That’s beyond my knowledge, as it is most that walk within this realm.” She rested her hand on my shoulder. “You have the godly power within you. And from what you have told me, you can take care of yourself. Just keep your wits about you and you’ll be fine.”
I don't think my brief smile to her did a good job of hiding my true emotion, which was fear. What did I know of such things? But both Athena and Mr Gladwell wanted us to come here, so I had to trust in that.
A pebbly beach almost lost in the gloom moved by far below, and I started to descend.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The propellers whirred, and I brought the dirigible gently down on even ground covered in snow. The landscape was breathtaking in its bleak serenity. The moon above gave enough light to see the hills and coves not far from us and standing proud on a slightly raised plateau were the tall stones, like a group of old men who had lost their way. If this was the entrance to wherever the council resided though, I expected something different. Something more… magical.
I looked back to Gloria. “You sense anything?”
She shook her head. “Not really, but we are still too far away from them.”
Daniel pushed the door open and the chill wind which swept through the cabin made him and the rest of us grimace. He pulled his coat around his neck and climbed out. Lucas and Gloria both lit their oil lanterns then everyone else followed but I remained in my seat. I took a deep breath, made sure my garments were securely fastened and finally climbed between the seats and then outside.
I looked around, just about making out the dark shapes in the largely featureless landscape.
Auto chirped something.
“Not letting you out just yet,” I said in reply.
“Let’s get this over with,” said Lucas.
I nodded and we all walked forward across the patches of snow and frozen ground, then up a small embankment until we got to the first stone. It stood almost double my height, and appeared to be one of a number which formed a rudimentary border to a path which led to the main circle.
Melanie walked on ahead, stepping through the ankle-deep snow.
“Mel! Not so quick!” said Gloria. Daniel tried to keep up with her.
“I want to get this over with, so we can get back! Or at least find a village or something!” she shouted back, her words almost being lost to the wind.
She had a point, the only lights I had seen on the ground was about an hour before we landed, and I think that was a lone fisherman’s cottage.
I quickly caught up with her, and we all emerged into a small ring of upright stones. The centre was a mound of snow, which three other knee height stones peeked through. The wind blew again, reminding us how isolated the location was. I gingerly walked forward and placed my hand on one of the smaller monoliths.
“What do you feel?” said Lucas.
“Cold stone… but that’s all.” I looked at Katerina.
She reached and placed a hand on the stone close to her, then closed her eyes. “Hmm… there is magic here, but it’s residual. Ancient. I’m not sensing anything else.”
“Blah!” said Melanie. “All this way for nothing!”
Gloria nodded towards my coat. “What does your map say?”
I pulled the parchment out and opened it, rubbing my numbing fingers. Those with lamps moved closer.
The dark red lines were unmoved.
“I don’t understand…” I said. “There must be something here, he wouldn’t lead me all this way for—” I noticed Gloria was looking off to my left, away from the silvery ripples of the nearby bay and further into the darkness, where the land became hillier. She started walking in that direction. “What is it?”
“Umm… I’m not sure, there’s something over there, on the side of the hill. I need to get closer.”
As she led the way across the frozen ground, I began to glimpse a rectangular shape amongst the slope ahead. A structure of some kind.
“Oh… lots of magic coming off of this place,” said Gloria. She and Lucas lifted their lanterns up to reveal what to me looked like a half-buried series of brick like stones, with a large opening. All of which were covered in show.
Lucas leaned closer. “It’s a chambered cairn. They’re usually burial chambers, or otherwise known to be passages to other realms…” He looked at me.
I steeled my nerves and stepped forward, taking his lantern from him.
“Maybe I should go—”
Before he could finish, I had ducked into the confined space and walked slowly forward into the dark tunnel. It wasn’t long before the howling winds were replaced with a deathly silence. My heart beat in my ears and we all walked along, our backs bent to not hit our heads on the knobbly ceiling.
“We’re going deeper into the hillside,” said Daniel.
The tunnel floor had also become a slope moving us further beneath the ground.
“Whatever is ahead of us, is giving off some of the strongest magic I’ve seen in my days,” said Gloria.
Out of the darkness I became aware of a source of light up ahead. We quickly moved forward and emerged into a corridor, with doors, hundreds of them on b
oth sides, stretching to our left and right to what seemed infinity.
“There’s something you don’t see every day,” said Colin.
I moved to the one directly in front of me and twisted the iron handle, but it remained firmly closed.
Daniel tried the one to my right, while Melanie the one to my left, but they were both unsuccessful.
I noticed Katerina with Lucas at her side were wandering past door after door, her hand briefly touching the handles.
“Where you going?” I shouted after them.
She suddenly stopped, some twenty yards away. She looked at the door in front of her, Lucas, then back to me and the others. “There’s something different about this one!” she shouted.
We quickly caught up to her. I stepped forward and placed my hand on the cold metal rounded handle and turned. The door creaked opened a few inches, allowing a blue light to escape into the dimly lit space we were already in.
I pushed the door open wide and stepped cautiously out into a much larger space, a domed chamber, but that wasn’t what everyone was taken aback by, for in the centre of the room was a swirling mass of light and cloud which resided at the top of a few well-worn stone steps. The scene reminded me of what I had seen at Wraith manor.
“A portal…” said Lucas.
I stepped closer to the first step for across its top surface were some letters. “Con… cil… io.”
“Council in Latin,” said Daniel.
“Good!” said Melanie, then rushed towards the steps. “I’ve never been to another—” Before anyone could stop her, she surged into the spinning light show, and with an even brighter display was promptly thrown through the air a good few feet before landing on her posterior. Daniel ran to her, but she brushed his help away. “I’m fine!”
Gloria frowned at her younger sister, while Katerina and Lucas moved close to the portal. She moved her hand towards the fizzing, warping, magical opening being careful not to touch it.
She shook her head. “This is an entrance for celestial beings, for gods.” She looked at Lucas. “We cannot pass through here…”