"Ysabel" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kay Guy Gavriel)

CHAPTER VIII

Tere had been clouds throughout the night, hiding the moon much of the time, but the last day of April dawned windy and very clear.

A mistral was blowing, Veracook advised over morning croissants. They were sheltered here, tucked under the slope, but it would be fierce today up on Mont Ventoux, or in Avignon, or the hill villages like Les Baux or Gordes or Menerbes. Small children had been blown off cliffs, she said, shaking her head dolefully, when the mistral came down from the north.

That same wind was, however, a photographer’s dream of light. It scoured the sky of anything resembling haze or mist, leaving it hard, brilliant, precise: a backdrop that rendered wildflowers, monuments, medieval ruins, bending cypresses electric with intensity.

Edward Marriner had been here before in a mistral. He wasn’t about to try going up any cliffs with their gear, but he did change plans for the morning over his second cup of coffee.

Melanie scribbled fast notes and got busy on the telephone. Greg, designated driver, carried his mug into the dining room where the maps were spread on the table and bent over them, plotting routes. Steve started loading the van.

They were now going east, an hour or so, to some monastery called Thoronet. In this light, the stones of the abbey would almost come alive, Ned’s father told him. They were alone at the kitchen table.

“It’s ironic,” Edward Marriner said, “and it pleases me. There are a lot of things to like about the medieval Cistercian monks, and a few not to like. They started by opposing church wealth and ostentation, but they also detested learning, study, books themselves. And even worldly beauty. Bernard of Clairvaux, who shaped the order, would have hated the idea that people find their abbeys beautiful now. They weren’t supposed to be. That would have been a distraction.”

“From what?” Ned asked.

“God. Prayer. Silence and work in the most remote places they could find. They came down here for the solitude.”

“From where?”

“East of Paris, I think. Don’t quote me.”

Ned made a face. “As if. This isn’t an essay, Dad.”

Edward Marriner ignored that, sipped his coffee. “Thing is, Provence has always been seen as a kind of paradise, and that attracts people. For their own reasons.”

“The Greeks? Like he said yesterday at lunch?”

“Oliver? Yes. In a way, everyone who’s ever come here has been a stranger trying to make it theirs. There are footprints and bones all over. Some places are like that.”

“Isn’t everywhere like that?”

His father looked at him. “Maybe. Even Greenland and the Hebrides have been fought over, but it’s happened in some places more than others. This is one of those. Being desired can be a mixed blessing.” He grinned suddenly, as if he’d amused himself. “This morning, my son, in this light, I am going to make an old, cold abbey look so gorgeous the bones of Bernard of Clairvaux will spin in his grave, wherever it is.”

“Nice of you,” Ned said.

“Damn right. Want to come see?”

Ned realized, not for the first time, that his father loved what he did. For reasons he decided not to elaborate upon, he declined the invitation. He’d do some reading on the terrace, he said, music, a training run…he’d keep out of their hair and out of trouble. Might even work on one of his essays.

Melanie, coming to report the van loaded, reminded him that their cell numbers were on his auto-dialer. Ned came to attention and saluted. She laughed.

He watched them drive off. The two Veras were busy, upstairs and in the kitchen. He did read for a bit outside: a novel Larry had said was really scary. Reading supernatural horror didn’t have quite the same effect after last night. Ned wondered if Stephen King had ever encountered a figure with stag horns under a watchtower. Maybe he had. Maybe that was how he got his ideas.

Ned doubted it. He was too distracted to read, though. Kept looking up and watching the trees on the far side of the pool bending in the wind.

He went back in and checked his email. Nothing from home, but Kate had sent him her essay.

He read it over, decided it was perfect. Too perfect—she wrote way too well. Ned’s own schoolwork was okay, but he never took enough time to be that good.

He opened the attachment and spent some time dumbing it down a little so Mr. Drucker wouldn’t hear alarm bells going off in his bald head.

It was good to have something ordinary to think about. He stayed at the keyboard till he had the thing shortened and simplified enough to read like an essay Ned Marriner would do while on holiday in France. He added a couple of typos and misspelled some proper names.

Almost as much work, doing it this way, as it was writing a paper, he thought. Not quite, though. He was going to have to write the other two essays properly. He’d promised, and he personally doubted Kate Wenger would give him another essay without expecting something in return.

He wondered what that might be. She was cute, in that skinny, runner, ballet-student kind of way. Her being so geeky didn’t bug him as much over here, with the guys not around to needle him about it.

The guys were where Mr. Drucker was. Let them suffer.

He downloaded the Arles pictures and sent a couple with emails to Larry and Ken, pretending to feel sorry for them.

It was too windy to go in the pool. Below the house, away from the sheltering slope, he could see the mistral ruffling the water and swaying the cypresses. He checked his watch. Not even noon yet. Time to kill. He wasn’t due to meet Kate till after five.

His father’s weren’t the only plans changed, however. He would meet her, but they weren’t going up to those ruins. Not today.

He’d made that decision in Arles. It was one thing to be adventurous, another to be an idiot. He’d figure out something Kate would go for: they could tour that studio where they were meeting, then have pizza or Chinese in town. She could tell him all about C#233;zanne, she probably knew all about C#233;zanne.

He’d tell her about what had happened last night. Maybe.

A part of him was torn about that. Kate was in on this, had been from the beginning, but she hadn’t been around when the dogs attacked, and what he’d seen later with Aunt Kim by the tower was so outside whatever you wanted to call normal that Ned wasn’t sure how to talk about it.

It wasn’t that he didn’t trust her. Kate Wenger was a “trust me” kind of girl. He’d already decided that. But Ned was the one with the burden of whatever was going on inside himself, that strangeness near Sainte-Victoire, sensing people as an aura inside his head, knowing things he should never have known…

In a way it felt like some kind of honour demanded he keep silent about what he seemed to have found. Aunt Kim had talked that way about her own experiences, whatever they were. It wasn’t a word—honour—that you heard people use a lot any more.

There was also the considerable possibility that if he tried to talk about this with others, people would think he was flat-out nuts. That was B-movie stuff, of course. The guy who sees the aliens land, or the mutant giant killer spiders, and everyone thinks he’s drunk or stoned.

Kate Wenger wouldn’t think that way. Ned knew that much.

He just didn’t know for certain what, or how much, to say.

He’d play it by ear, he figured. Sometimes planning too hard messed you up. His father had had plans for today and had shifted them with a gust of wind. You needed to be able to do that, Ned thought. React, be on your toes.

He decided to go for a run. He was under orders from his coach to keep to his routine and log it, anyhow. He went up to change, kept his phone with him. Aunt Kim had told him to do that. She was someone that still needed figuring out.

She’d said her hair had gone white—the way it was now—when she was young. As much as anything she’d said or done, it was that hair, the absolute whiteness of it, that made Ned feel certain she’d really gone through whatever it was she’d hinted at. She was another “trust me” kind of person, he thought.

She hadn’t told him what it was she’d done back then. That had to do with the honour thing, he guessed. Partly being fair to his mother. He made another guess: it sounded like she’d told Ned’s mom, her sister, before going away to England. And everything in their relationship had gone to hell.

Maybe you got careful after that. Maybe you learned a lesson.

He clipped on a bottle of water, put some euros in his pocket, grabbed a couple of power bars, and waved goodbye to Veracook. At the end of the drive he pressed the gate code and went through. He did his stretches there, getting used to the wind, then started jogging down the slope of their road, loosening up.

Halfway down, where the trees on the left opened out to a long, flat meadow beside the road, Ned stopped.

There was a boar, a really big one, in the middle of that field.

Ned held his breath and wished he were better hidden. Not from fear—the animal wasn’t that close—but so he could watch it without scaring it away. They were morning and evening feeders, Veracook had said. They slept through the day. This one was a contrarian, it seemed.

On impulse, he reached out with his mind. He’d encountered a few animals lately that weren’t what they seemed. He sensed nothing, however. He wasn’t sure what he’d expected but it did seem as if what he was looking at here was just a really massive, grey-white boar, rooting for food in an open field in the middle of the day.

On the other hand, today wasn’t an ordinary day, if Ned understood anything of what he’d been learning. He’d become suspicious of coincidences. And while he was thinking this, standing quietly in the roadway, the animal lifted its head and looked at him.

Boars were supposed to be nearsighted, relying on smell and sound, but this one sure did seem to be staring at Ned. Neither of them moved for a long time. Ned thought he’d feel foolish, holding the gaze of an animal, but he didn’t.

Then the boar turned, not hurrying, but as if determined, purposeful, and went into the woods on the far side of the meadow.

Carrying a message? Had it been waiting here for him? Or was that way, way too paranoid a thought? Did everything have meaning today out here in the woods and fields, or would you go a little crazy—or a lot—if you let yourself think that way?

He shook his head. How could you sort out what had significance when you didn’t understand anything? The answer was: you couldn’t. And because of that, he told himself, you stayed out of it.

That was why he was going to tell Kate Wenger that they weren’t going up to the ruins of Entremont today. Not on Beltaine eve, when the Celts believed the gates between the living and the dead lay open after the sun went down.

An artist’s studio and a walk and wonton soup in town sounded just fine to Ned, thanks very much.

He watched the space at the edge of the woods where the boar had gone in, but there was nothing to see. He shrugged, and started jogging again. At the bottom of their road, without even thinking about it, he turned left and then right, heading towards Aix. There was traffic, it wasn’t nearly as pleasant a run, but he couldn’t handle Mont Sainte-Victoire to the east, and he was not going back up to the tower again.

Melanie had told him about a stadium and track on the edge of the city. A street sign pointed left to the “Stade” before he reached the ring road. It wasn’t far. A track would be ordinary, familiar, uncomplicated. You went around and around, no surprises.

There were a few older guys running there, in blue T-shirts and shorts. Ned joined them, doing laps in the wind. His shoulder was still sore. It turned out they were from a military school down the way. Ned thought of a bad joke about French armies and learning how to run, but decided it wasn’t a smart idea to tell it.

A couple of them were moving pretty well, and Ned fell into stride with them. He wasn’t sure they were pleased that a younger kid was staying with them. They probably thought he was American, too, which would make it worse, he guessed, so he grunted a few things in French about the weather and trying to keep up his training while over here, and that seemed to help some. They didn’t try to sprint away—or jump him and beat him up, for that matter.

Most of the students peeled off across the field when the teacher’s whistle blew, but one of them did two extra laps with Ned and waved a goodbye when he ran after the others.

It felt good to have even that simple gesture of connection.

What he had to think of as normal life was still going on. He had essays to write, mileage to log, he would email more jokes and jpegs home. Maybe he’d find these guys here again, or different ones. Maybe he’d skateboard—he could see ramps south of the track. Later maybe he’d download some new songs from iTunes. In fact, he should do that today: he had a monthly download allowance from his mother, not used up yet, and this was the last day of April.

You could treat the fact as dark and mystical, full moon and spirit stuff, or just remind yourself that you had four songs owing to you, in the life you actually lived.

He was stretching and walking to cool off, drinking water from his bottle, when his phone rang.

He checked the number on the readout and flipped it open.

“Hello, babe,” said Kate Wenger. “Watcha doing?”

Ned blinked. Babe?

“And whom might this be, please?” he said. “Nicole? Mary Sue? Marie-Chantal?”

She laughed. “Screw Marie-Chantal,” she said. “Not literally, though. She’s got two zits on her chin today, anyhow. Gross. How are you?”

Her voice sounded different. Sassier, older.

“I’m cool. Just finished a run on this track east of the city. With some army types. Bit weird.”

“I know that track. By the municipal pool? The guys are from the #233;cole militaire. Seen them, too. Yummy.”

“What’s with you today?”

“Nothing. I’m in a good mood, that’s all.”

“Yeah, ’cause your evil roommate has pimples.”

“Maybe. And maybe because we’ve got an outing later. If you have nothing more important doing, mec, buy us some cheese and apples and a baguette, we’ll have a late picnic up there.”

“Um, Kate. I’ve been thinking about—”

“Gotta run, babe. Late for class. Ciao!”

She hung up.

Babe, again? Ned felt confused. If they’d gotten to this stage in two coffees, he’d sure missed it. Larry would call him an idiot and tell him to go for it: a girl who seemed to like him, a long way from home and prying eyes…vive la France! Wasn’t this the real life he’d just been thinking about? Download songs, email a picture, see how far Kate Wenger would let him go after school?

He shook his head again. Trouble was, he kept picturing a sculpture in a cloister with a rose leaning against it, and an owl rising through the open roof of a tower at night. Maybe you did have to hang on to normal life, but some images could make it hard.

He was sweating, needed a shower. He went back to the intersection, then to the right up the road. He stopped at the bakery and bought a pain au chocolat and ate it as he walked. Better than the power bars, by a lot. He took the wide curve left and then their own path. When he reached the open field again he looked, but the boar hadn’t returned.

Small, handmade signs at branching points along the road pointed towards the different houses on the way up. He saw theirs at the top. Someone—had to be Melanie—had stuck cute little Canadian flags to the small blue markers for Villa Sans Souci.

For the first time, kind of late, Ned thought about what that name meant. No Worries. Yeah, right. And hakuna matata to you, too.

HE WENT BACK out later in the afternoon, before the others returned. Left a note on the table telling his dad he was meeting Kate. They had his cell number, anyhow. The wind was still blowing but not as much as in the morning. It was steady and hard, though, unsettling.

Veraclean had said the mistral would always blow for three or six or nine days, but Veracook said that was just an old tale and they’d argued about it, insulting each other. It was kind of funny, actually.

Ned wondered how the shoot at the abbey had gone. If Bernard of Wherever was spinning in his grave yet.

It was a bit of a hike: half an hour to the ring road and then around it north towards C#233;zanne’s studio. He thought of taking a bus, but he felt hyper and figured the walk would help. He passed the grocery store and the bakery again but he didn’t buy a baguette or the apples and cheese. They were not going up to picnic, there was no point.

He found the studio easily enough. It was signposted on a busy street, not much charm or quiet around it. It would have been a lot different in C#233;zanne’s day, he figured. This place would probably have been outside Aix, in the countryside.

Leaning against the stone wall in the wind, he watched the traffic whip by and tried to imagine this house overlooking fields, olive trees, maybe a vineyard. He’d seen another sign on the way here: Entremont was along this same road farther north. Kate had said that.

He’d taken a few minutes to google the name. It was pretty much as Oliver Lee had told them. A tough tribe of Celts and Ligurians (whoever they were) called the Salyans had built their stronghold up there. The Romans had taken catapults up in 124 B.C., smashed it to bits, killed bunches of Salyans, took the rest as slaves.

Then they’d built Aquae Sextiae, which became Aix-en-Provence, eventually. And now a cluttered cathedral covered their forum. So the Roman city was gone, too, he thought. There were Celtic ruins, Roman ruins, maybe even Greek ones somewhere around. And ruined medieval abbeys like the one his father was photographing today: they were all covered over, or tourist spots, or just old and forgotten. Most people couldn’t care less. Couldn’t even tell the difference between any of them, probably. What’s a thousand years, between friends?

Ned, standing by the roadside, car horns blaring at intervals, mopeds whining past, tried to decide if it should matter, anyhow.

If Coldplay, or Eminem, or the Boston Red Sox, or Guild Wars online were the big things in your life, and you didn’t give a thought to ancient Celts or Bernard the Spinner in his grave, was that so bad? Everyone lived in their own time, didn’t they? Didn’t they have to?

Well, really. If you left out the types like the nameless guy in a grey leather jacket who had apparently made a carving eight hundred years ago and was here now to put a rose beside it.

Did you have to believe him, anyhow?

Yeah, Ned thought glumly: with enough added to the story, you did, even if you preferred not to. Same with what he’d seen with his aunt.

He wondered where Aunt Kim was right now. He thought of phoning her, but that made him think of his mother, and their whole story—a different kind of past—and he left the phone in his pocket. His mom would be calling tonight. He knew one topic he wouldn’t raise with her.

“Yo, miss me lots?”

He turned, in time for Kate, stopping in front of him, to rise up on tiptoe and kiss him on each cheek.

Well, they did do that here in France. But still.

“Ah, hi,” he said, looking at her. “Yo. You’ve, um, got lipstick on.”

“So do you now.” She wiped at his cheeks.

“You didn’t before,” he said.

“Wow. An observant male-type person. Must make an entry in my blog.”

“You have a blog?”

“No.”

He laughed. But he was still unsettled. She looked good. Her hair was brushed out today, not tied back. She wore chunky silver earrings, and—he belatedly realized—she had some kind of perfume on. He decided not to comment on that.

“Montreal men,” he said instead. “We’re the observant ones. Finest kind.”

“So you say. Where’s the food, dude? I asked you…”

Ned took a breath.

“I, ah, thought we’d do things a bit differently. I haven’t been in town much. Not at all, really. Thought we’d see this studio since we’re here, then cruise Aix? I’ll get you a caffeine fix, then we can eat Chinese or a pizza or something?”

Kate Wenger stepped back a bit. A car horn honked, not at them.

“Ned, I really wanted to show you this place. It is seriously cool. And it may tie in to the stuff we’ve been finding.”

He cleared his throat. “Well, that’s the thing. You’re right, it may tie in. And tonight’s not a real good night, if it does.”

“Beltaine?” She smiled a little. She had some kind of eye makeup on, too, he realized. “Uh-huh. Montreal men, careful, cautious guys…little bit afraid?”

“Kate, there’s a couple things I’ve got to fill you in on. And, yes, maybe I’m being a bit careful. I did tell you what happened by the mountain, remember?”

“Well, obviously if you start getting sick or whatever, we turn back. You think I’m an idiot or something?”

“No, but I think you’re a little overfocused on doing this today.” There. He’d said it.

She crossed her arms, looking up at him. “You really are scared.”

Stung, he said, “Kate, I’m the one who went into that tunnel. I’m not exactly afraid of doing stuff.”

Her expression changed. “I know you aren’t.” She shook her head. “But look, Ned, it’s twenty after five. It only gets dark after eight. It’s a fifteen, twenty-minute walk and we’ll go right now, forget the studio. I’d like to show you Entremont, even see if anything feels funny to you or anything? Then we’ll leave. I prefer Chinese to pizza, and I know where to get good hot-and-sour soup. So, come on?”

She took his hand and tugged.

He found himself falling into step. Her fingers were cool. It took a second or two—he hadn’t done a whole lot of hand-in-hand walking with girls—for them to get their fingers sorted out. He felt briefly as if he had a few too many digits, then they did interlace and it was…pretty good, actually.

He seemed to be going north with her, after all. He caught another hint of that perfume. He wondered if they’d be alone at this place.

“As it happens,” she said cheerfully, “I am more woman than you deserve. I still have two apples and half a baguette in my pack.”

“Ew,” Ned said. “For how many days?”

With dignity, she said, “Montreal men may do that sort of thing but New York women don’t. Packed this morning.”

They walked beside the road into the wind. It was rush hour, cars going by, a lot of students getting on and off buses, classes over for the day. Ned saw another sign pointing towards Entremont. Just past it the road became a minor highway as they left the city limits.

“So, what else happened?” Kate asked. “What’d you need to tell me?”

Her fingers were still in his. The guys, were they aware of this, would be saying things about how he had it made, make-out wise, heading off with a chick who had started the hand-holding and had even met him with a tiptoe kiss. He wouldn’t have gotten far pointing out that sometimes even guys greeted each other with kisses on the cheek in France.

There was something about Kate today. Or maybe—new thought—maybe this was what she was usually like and the tour-guide geek stuff had been her manner with a stranger?

He didn’t think so. Ned shrugged, inwardly. Go with it, he told himself. She was right about one thing: Beltaine wouldn’t actually begin until dark, hours away. They’d be back in Aix.

“You aren’t talking to me,” she said.

He sighed. Decided to go halfway, but keep his aunt to himself—too many family things entangled in that. He said, “After you left the caf#233;, day before yesterday, the guy from the cloister showed up.”

He felt her react. The thing about holding hands: you could tell right away.

“You saw him outside?”

“No. He’d been in there, two tables over. Behind a newspaper.”

“Oh, Jesus Christ,” she said.

Ned, in his current mood, found that funny. “Nah. I’m beginning to think this goes back way before him.”

“Don’t be cute, Ned. What happened? How did you find him?”

The hard part. Explaining this. “He let his…screen down, whatever, his guard, when you and I walked out. And the sense of him I had in the cloister when he was on the roof kicked in. I knew he was inside.”

“And you went back?”

“Yeah.”

She walked a few steps in silence. “I didn’t mean it, you know, before…when I said you were scared.”

That felt good, but it would be uncool to show it. He said, “Well, I’m obviously not careful. I’m being led into the countryside by some hot New York woman I hardly know.”

“Hot? Ned Marriner! You coming on to me, babe?”

Again! There was no way she’d have said that before. He looked over at her. She was grinning, and then she winked at him.

“Ack!” Ned cried in horror. “No winking! Melanie winks all the time, I can’t stand it.”

“I refuse,” said Kate Wenger, “to let my behaviour be dictated by the habits of someone named Melanie. I will wink if I wish to wink. Deal with it.” She was smiling.

Then she pointed ahead. Ned saw a brown sign with the symbol for a tourist site and “Oppidum d’Entremont” on it. They had arrived.

It was at a branching of highways. A lot of traffic, still. They waited for a break and ran across. No sidewalk here, just grass by the highway. They walked a little farther north.

“Right here. Up the hill,” said Kate. “It’s pretty steep. Can you handle it?”

Ned didn’t actually feel like joking.

They went up a dusty gravel slope. He couldn’t see anything at first, then they were high enough above the highway—they always built high in those days, he knew—and he saw a small parking lot and a metal gate. The gate was open, the lot was empty.

“I’ve never seen anyone here,” Kate said. “I’ve been twice. I don’t even think the guard sticks around, probably just comes to lock up at closing.” Closing, Ned saw on the gate, was at six-thirty. They would be out of here hours before dark.

Kate led him through, still holding hands, along a wide path between olive and almond trees. “That’s what’s left of the outer wall,” she said. She pointed. “This was a city here, not just a fort.”

The wall was on their right, three metres high in places, rough stones still in place. A little ahead of them it had crumbled a lot more; stones lay where they’d fallen or been dislodged. The Romans had brought catapults all the way up here, Ned remembered. It couldn’t have been easy to do that.

It was very quiet now, two thousand years after. He heard birdsong. The wind was still blowing. The light was really clear, what his father had been talking about.

A little self-consciously, he stopped walking, unlaced his fingers from Kate’s, and closed his eyes. Found nothing, though, no sense of any presence, and he didn’t feel queasy or unwell or anything like that.

She was staring at him when he opened his eyes. He shook his head.

“Told you,” Kate said. “It’s an archaeological dig, a tourist site, that’s all.”

“So,” said Ned, “was the cathedral.”

She bit her lip. First time today she’d reminded him of the girl he’d met three days ago. They walked on. There were almond petals scattered on the ground, making it seem like snow had fallen. The gravel path reached the end of the high wall and turned south to an opening and Ned looked through and saw the long, wide, levelled ruins of Entremont.

And though he’d felt nothing and found nothing when he checked within, he still shivered, gazing out over low grey stones in the late-day light. His gran used to say shivering like that meant a ghost was passing. He didn’t say that to Kate.

It was bigger than he’d expected, though he couldn’t say exactly what he had expected. The path they were standing on ran alongside the ruins on their eastern edge. Ahead of them, a long way, Ned saw that the plateau ended in a cliff. To their left, the ground sloped down past trees into a meadow.

On their right and in front was Entremont, what was left of it.

He really didn’t want to stay here. There were a lot of reasons not to stay. But he found himself walking forward with Kate, looking out over the stones. They weren’t holding hands now; her own mood had grown quieter, less feverish.

That was the word, Ned decided. She’d been feverish before.

He stole a sidelong glance at her. She looked pale, like the stones, as if taken aback by what she’d done, where they were. She stopped, so he did.

They were entirely alone here. In the wind, among the ruins.

He looked left. The site ended, not far away, in that short slope down to olive trees and the meadow. Tall grass there, wildflowers. On their other side were the crumbled, excavated ruins. Beside where they’d stopped were low stones, barely knee high. The wall of a house, he realized; there were others like it all around, defining small rectangular spaces.

“This was the lower town,” Kate said softly. There was no need to be quiet, but it felt right. “There’s an olive press over that way, under the tree.” She pointed past the low walls. Her manner was more like what he remembered.

Ned nodded. He walked past her, taking the lead now. They went farther south alongside what remained of those one-room houses. This had been a street once, he realized. It rose a little as they went. He could see, ahead of them, where the upper town began. There was a wider east-west roadway, big blocks of stone beyond it.

Just before they got there, he stepped up on one of the knee-high house walls to look out over the site, and then he stepped down into the space that would have been a home for someone, with a roof and walls, over two thousand years ago. And as he did, as he entered, something happened inside him again.

Ned stood still. The wind was blowing, but they were somewhat guarded from it by the trees to the north and what remained of the settlement wall.

Kate looked at him from the path. “What is it?” she said.

He didn’t answer. This wasn’t like any of the sensations he’d had before.

“Ned, what is it?” he heard Kate Wenger ask again.

He took a breath. “There’s just…a lot of power here,” he said.

“What does that mean?” He heard her fear.

“I’d tell you if I knew.”

It was true: he didn’t understand this, only that from these stones a feeling like a heartbeat in rocks was coming into him. No sense of someone actually here, more a—

“It’s waiting,” he said abruptly.

Then, as he looked ahead, towards the higher ruins across the wide east-west street, he added, pointing, “What was that?”

Kate turned to look. She cleared her throat. “That was the guard tower at the upper town entrance. I saw a layout on their website. Beside it is where the religious sanctuary was. Just there. See the bigger stones? That was the tower.”

Ned saw the stones. Thick, grey, heavy. Only the base was left, everything else was down, had been down a long time. But at some point back then, between the part where they were and the section ahead of them, architecture had changed.

You changed, as a people, bit by bit, learned things. Then someone brought war engines to your walls, and it didn’t matter any more what you’d learned.

He went forward to look, almost involuntarily now.

Up on a low wall, back down, up and over another, and then he was on the dusty street that divided the upper and lower parts of Entremont. It ended to the east, he saw, on his left, where the slope ran down to the meadow.

This road was wider than anything behind them or ahead. Main Street, he thought. Just across it lay the base of the guard tower. He looked at the big stones, imagined a tower. Catapults and time, he thought. He still had a pulsing in his mind, as if the stones were trying to vibrate.

We should go now, Ned thought. He knew they should go.

Beside the tower base, to the right of it, was a large, rectangular space.

“What kind of sanctuary?” he asked.

“Well, Celtic, of course. They found skulls here,” Kate said quietly. “You know they worshipped the skulls of their ancestors?”

“I heard. And the heads of their enemies, too. Preserved them in oil. Or made them into drinking cups,” he said. “Nice people.”

Maybe it was right that these walls had come down, if that’s what they’d been like. Or maybe it wasn’t. And maybe it didn’t matter at all what Ned Marriner felt or thought about it, two thousand years later.

And then, finally—because they were quite close to it now—ahead of them, in the dusk, Ned noticed a column standing upright towards the back of that sanctuary space where Kate said skulls had been found.

It was as if he was being pulled that way.

He stepped over another low wall into what had been a holy place. He walked up to that column, stood before it, and looked more closely.

The pillar was about seven feet high. Tallest thing here, easily. Carved on it, from the base to the top, were a dozen primitive, unmistakable renderings of human heads.

Ned swallowed hard, and shivered again.

“Look at this,” he said.

He heard Kate behind him. She was still on the roadway, hadn’t stepped inside.

“Ned.”

“Can you believe this?” he repeated, staring at it in the twilight.

“Ned,” she said again.

He turned to look back. She was really pale now, ghost-like. Her arms were crossed tightly on her chest as if she were cold.

“Ned, this shouldn’t be here.”

“What? What does that mean?”

“I saw pictures…on the website. Of the dig. This was found here, but it was lying down, not standing, and…Ned, they moved it, into the museum, like fifty years ago. That’s where it’s supposed to be.”

Slowly he turned back. The stone column wasn’t lying down and it wasn’t in the museum. It was in front of him, in the shadows of this quiet, gathering darkness.

Ned froze. He didn’t breathe. He felt his heart begin to pound, very hard. His mouth was suddenly dry.

It took an effort to move his left arm, turn his wrist, so he could see what he already knew he would see. He looked at his watch.

It was just after six.

He turned to look at Kate.

“Why is it dark?” he said.