“Here he is,” said Holly. “That’s your dad.”
Susan looked down into what was basically a rough-carved grave in the stony mountaintop, and saw her father, three feet below.
The Old Man of Coniston looked no more than forty, not old at all. His gray-streaked copper hair had grown to his waist, almost a garment in itself, and he had a beard to do the Edward Lear character proud, bushy enough to hold a dozen owls and larks and wrens. His fingernails had grown so long they curled back on themselves. His purple flared trousers were rotting at the hems, his Nehru jacket was moldy at the cuffs, and the side zips on his boots were rusted.
His eyes were partly open, enough to see a slice of slate-gray pupils. His mouth was hidden behind the whiskers. He was tied at the wrists and ankles by narrow ropes fastened to iron eye-bolts screwed into the rock.
Ropes woven from many strands of . . . raven-black hair.
Her mother’s hair. Ropes of love to bind an Old One and take his power, far more stringent than any mere binding with blood and iron and salt to make a servant.
Ropes that would serve as well to bind the Old One’s half-mortal heir, who loved her mother.
“Touching, isn’t it,” said Holly. “Like that old story. She sold her hair to buy him a present, not knowing what I wanted it for, and he risked visiting London to be with her, and they both lost out.”
“That is a completely stupid misreading of ‘The Gift of the Magi,’” said Vivien, coming out of the fog to stand next to Susan.
Holly started towards them, raising his fist. Susan felt him draw in power from the mountain, despite her efforts to resist. And she felt other powers, too, Holly calling on magic from far away. It was lessened here, but there was so much of it. . . .
“You bloody booksellers don’t know when—”
Merlin came up behind him and swung the ancient sword in a decapitating blow, two-handed. There was a deafening, horrendous ring of metal upon metal as Holly’s head flew off and bounced away down the mountainside, to be lost in the fog.
There was no blood. The body stood there for a moment, before slowly sinking to its knees. But it did not fall any farther.
Booming laughter came out of the fog, followed by Holly’s voice, loud and horrible.
“Now you’ve really pissed me off!”
Vivien took a deep breath and held up her right hand, the luminescence growing brighter, reflecting off the swirling whiteness of the fog. Merlin stepped up next to her.
“Send him away,” snapped Merlin to Susan. “Forbid him your demesne. His real name is Southaw. Use it!”
“He’s still got most of Father’s power!”
Vivien made a choking sound, still holding her breath. Merlin pushed Susan down and slapped the sword blade flat on the neck of the headless body as something flew in from the fog. It hit the sword, rebounded from it with another metallic clang, loud as a church bell at two paces, and would have smacked into Merlin if he hadn’t dodged, so fast Susan saw him as a blur. As the thing flew past, Vivien slapped it and exhaled, her breath coming out as silver as her hand. The breath caught the object and hurled it through the air, reaming out a corridor in the fog, which closed behind its passage.
It took Susan a moment to realize the flying object was Holly’s head.
“It’ll be back in a few minutes,” gasped Vivien, taking in a deep breath. “We won’t be able to keep holding it off.”
“Susan . . .”
Susan shut her eyes. She could feel the power of the mountain flowing into her, she could sense every small detail within the bounds of her father’s domain, feel every living thing, the men and women and children and wildlife, the birds in the air and in the trees and on the ground, the hares and the foxes and the sheep, squirrels and red deer, natterjack toads and adders, and there were other mythic beings, too, water-fay in the lake and tarns, knocker goblins in the old copper and shale workings, the Fenris over on the western shore of Windermere . . . and halfway down the mountain on the southwestern side near Goat’s Water, the awful wrongness that was Southaw, centered in the cut-off head of its mortal form.
She knelt down on the shale and spread her hands flat, calling the power into herself. She felt Southaw resisting her, but she had the right, and she reached deep inside herself for the will to use it. She was her father’s daughter, and he had bequeathed his power to her. Southaw had stolen it. Now she would get it back.
Susan felt the head returning. She could sense it now as the mere tip of an iceberg of terrible power. The dismembered head was the visible presence for an unseen entity that drew upon the strength of its many, many vassals, lesser entities spread throughout the land. And it also drew strength from the Bronze Cauldron, as great a power again as all those vassals combined.
Southaw no longer engaged in a contest of will over her father’s magic; he was simply coming to kill her. The head was rising higher and higher, climbing through fog and cloud. It would fall like a falcon upon its prey, swift and terrible, too fast even for Merlin or Vivien to avoid.
“The head’s going up high—it’ll come straight down!” she warned, but did not open her eyes or stand up. Instead she lowered herself flat, reaching out with her arms, trying to become one with the great mass of stone beneath her. Magic rose up from the depths below, like water welling up from a deep spring. It came surely, but too slowly, and as it filled her, Susan became aware of two vital things.
The first was that the meager vessel of her body could not take in
