“My lady! Wait!” Kit called after her. “We must all stay together.” Stepping from the coach, he looked up to Giles on the driver’s bench. “Let’s get the food and weapons up there. We don’t have much time.”
“Right, sir.” Climbing up onto the seat, Giles reached onto the roof and untied the bundles fixed there, passing them down to Kit one after the other. “After you, sir,” he said, shouldering the larger of the two parcels.
Kit started off, then halted, turned back, and said, “What about the coach and horses?” He was still that much oblivious to the conventions of the age in which he found himself that it was the first time he had spared a single thought for the animals.
“I have already made provision for them, sir,” Giles assured him.
“Really? When?”
“At the inn last night. The landlord will send a boy to collect them. The carriage will be taken to the inn and the horses stabled until we return to claim them.” At Kit’s expression, he added, “Never fear, sir, I did not let on what we were about. For all they know, we have gone hunting in the woods hereabouts.”
“Well done, Giles. It completely slipped my mind.”
“There is no reason why it should have concerned you, my lord. The coach and horses are my responsibility.”
They hurried to catch up with Lady Fayth, who had found the spiral path leading to the top and was already striding her way swiftly toward the summit. The two men toiled along in her wake and reached the top to find her tapping her foot with impatience.
Kit dropped his bundle, the better to catch his breath. “The marker stone is beyond those trees,” he said. Glancing away toward the eastern horizon, he saw the sky pinking up in a line above the wooded hills in the distance. “It will be light soon.”
“Then we must by all means hurry,” said Lady Fayth, starting off toward the trees.
“Wait, my lady,” said Kit, drawing a cutlass from his bundle. “Let Giles and me go first-in case any of the Burley Men are about.” Before her ladyship could mount a protest against this line of reasoning, he started toward the Three Trolls, whose black silhouettes soared against the steadily lightening heavens.
Keeping a wary eye peeled for any movement that might betray the presence of intruders, he passed beneath the spreading branches of the great old oaks and made for the place where he knew he would find the square marking stone.
There was no one about. They had the place entirely to themselves and, as the sun began to peep above the horizon, Kit found the square, flat stone. “Here it is,” he called, waving the others to him. “Hurry! The time is upon us.”
Giles and Lady Fayth quickly joined him. “Stand on the stone,” he instructed, pulling them closer. “Now, everyone join arms. Whatever happens, do not let go.” He linked arms with Giles on one side and Lady Fayth on the other. “I repeat,” he cried, “whatever happens, do not let go!”
“Why are you shouting?” asked Lady Fayth.
“The wind!” hollered Kit-and then realized the anticipated storm had not, in fact, materialized. The air remained dead calm. “Strange,” he said. “There was always wind before.”
They stood for a long moment looking at each other. The sky grew lighter. Still, nothing happened.
Kit thought back to the day Cosimo and Sir Henry had disappeared. An image floated into his consciousness: his great-grandfather standing on the stone with his arms raised over his head as a prizefighter in a pose of triumph. “Um,” he said, “let me try something.”
He raised one arm and instantly felt the hair on his arms and the back of his neck stand up. The atmosphere was charged with static electricity. Raising the other arm, the eerie feeling increased. The air seemed to have become leaden, thick, and difficult to breathe.
“Hold on to me!” he shouted again, and this time with good reason, for a roar erupted out of nowhere to fill the sky directly above them. A wild wind swirled, tearing at their clothes, and they were enveloped by an unearthly blue glow. The world around them-hilltop, the Trolls, the hills beyond-faded, becoming watery and indistinct as with a sort of luminous heat haze. The roar became a scream.
“Don’t let go!” shouted Kit, trying to be heard above the whine. It was increasingly difficult to hold his arms aloft-as if the drag of a dozen gravities hung from each upraised arm. He had not accounted for the immense, almost crushing pressure. It felt like the entire tump was balanced on his upraised fists. His muscles burned, and he began to falter. Then, when he thought he could not hold up under the strain, he felt Lady Fayth tighten her grip and slip one arm around his waist. He glanced into her face and saw neither fear nor alarm, but pure, elemental exhilaration; a wild and exultant fire lit her eyes. She returned his gaze with something approaching admiration.
The look renewed his strength. He gave out a cry and rose up on his toes. “Jump!” he shouted, and as he did so he felt his feet leave the ground.
It was only a small hop, but he came back down with a jarring bump that travelled up from his ankles, through his knees, and all the way to his hips.
And that was it.
Between one breath and the next, the sound and fury died. The weird blue shimmering haze simply ceased. The static-charged air gave a puny, apologetic pop and fizzled. Glancing down, Kit saw they were all still standing on the marker stone. His heart sank.
“I guess we’ll have to try again this evening when-” he began, then broke off abruptly. “Ow!”
Lady Fayth’s fingernails were digging into the flesh of his side. Her eyes were wide with wonder and her face and auburn hair aglow with the light of a golden sunrise. He turned his gaze to see that what had so absorbed her attention was a long, straight, stone-paved avenue: an avenue lined with a double row of sphinxes.
CHAPTER 24
In Which an Understanding Is Reached
The air was still, the heat of the day abating as the sun drifted westward. The Mirror Sea was living up to its name, its surface as smooth as molten glass, reflecting a pale, cloud-dappled heaven. Arthur Flinders-Petrie gazed absently at the splendid prospect of the harbour and the crescent sweep of the bay spreading out below him; his thoughts were troubled and his heart heavy. The last weeks of convalescence, spent largely in the company of Wu Chen Hu’s spirited daughter, Xian-Li, had revived him in many more ways than one.
Now it was time to go.
Had the choice been his alone, he might have tarried indefinitely. But the trading season was ending, and by decree of the Chinese authorities all foreigners must leave the country-the same as every year; nothing had changed in that respect. All ships would be sailing within the next few days. Ordinarily, he would be glad to return to England as fast as the winds could carry him; but this year Arthur discovered he had a reason to stay.
“I will miss you, Xian-Li,” he said, a note of longing rising in his voice.
“And I will miss you, my friend,” she replied, touching his arm shyly. She smiled. “But you will come back one day.”
“I will-and soon,” he told her. “I promise.”
“And until then, I have these beautiful shoes to remind me of your visit.” She smiled and lifted her hem and pointed the toes of her delicate, unbound feet so that he could see the glistening blue silk of her pearl-beaded slippers. “Thank you.”
“It is I who stand in your debt, Xian-Li,” said Arthur, regarding the slender, dark-haired young woman beside him: how her red gown shimmered, how her black hair shone. “Alas, it is a debt I can never fully repay.”
“Do not talk of debt and repayment,” she chided lightly. “What I did, I did for the honour of my family, and-” She halted, dropping her head demurely.
“And?” Arthur asked, feeling her hesitancy.
“And for the sake of your friendship with my father.”
“Only that?” A surge of emotion welled up inside him then. Time grew short; he could not leave without
