With a supreme effort, he lifted himself out of his chair and manoeuvred down the pile. The courtyard guards were missing.
One of the city’s silver lamps lay askew in the path ahead. He went to it and picked it up and found that it illumined a scene of carnage. Bodies lay everywhere. All four guards lay on their backs, a thin cut at the base of each of their necks that poured blood out into a deep puddle. The lieutenant lay a small distance apart, his own knife in his chest. He was twitching slightly, painfully trying to breathe.
The general squinted into the darkness to try to see some trace of a pale figure dressed in white. Nothing was visible between the buildings.
Kelm went over to his lieutenant and peered down at his face. Then he raised his foot and brought it down hard, ending the officer’s misery. He turned to one of the yfelgopes who yet lived. “You are my new second officer,” he informed him. “Draft a new guard immediately. Then bring me my dinner.” The newly promoted lieutenant bowed.
Kelm climbed back up to the throne and continued to brood and plot.
IV
Two days later they walked along the grass verge beside a road that ran along the fields and farmlands of Warwickshire. Their trip to Scotland had only lasted as long as it took to get provisioned and kitted out in sturdy hiking and spelunking gear. They had stayed in Alex’s parents’ manse-on land where Freya and Daniel had emerged after completing their quest in the under realms. They met Alex’s father and Vivienne’s older brother; James was privy to more information than perhaps even Ecgbryt had about the underground realms, but his days of travelling below were far, far behind him, he said, gently tapping a knee with his cane.
“You’ll be best off wi’ Viv, I can tell ye’ tha’.” His accent was stronger than either of the other Simpsons, and with it he continually sang his sister’s praises. “I’d take her as she stands now over myself in my prime, any day. Yes, you’ll do well with Viv, if there’s well to do! I’ll gi’e you what support I can up here, but dinnae expect it’ll be much. You’ll stay in my prayers-count on that.”
Freya found him a kind and affable man ready to help out but lonely in the years since his wife died.
During the stay in Scotland, Freya felt that she had finally managed to catch up on her sleep, and now, hitching her rucksack up her back and loosening her breathable waterproof coat, Freya felt considerably more prepared than she did eight years ago. All she’d had then was her school uniform and a jacket. Now she had several changes of hard-wearing clothes, military-grade food rations and utilities, and shoes that cost more than a month’s rent.
They were getting close. Freya could see Ecgbryt checking his map more and more often-every dozen paces or so, in fact. He had a lot of maps. “Is this what you’ve been doing for the last eight years?” she had asked Ecgbryt after seeing the stacks of them on Alex’s dining room table.
“Aye. I have been marking and charting the positions of the sleeping knights across the isles,” Ecgbryt answered, running a palm over a map of the British Isles that was spread before him. It had crosses and annotations in red, blue, and black. Beneath his other palm was a stack of papers that he had been diligently copying details of the map onto. “I have been hunting out the ancient markers and indicators, tracking the legends and secret demarcations of the old land that I used to live in. I am sorry, both of you, for not contacting you before now,” he said apologetically, thinking, mistakenly, that there was accusation in Freya’s question. “But only I could do this task, and only Alex could assist me.
“Do know that of me, Freya,” he said, raising sad eyes to her. “I am sorry.”
Alex, just ahead of her, looked at his watch and then turned, pulling open a long, metal gate. “Shortcut,” he explained. “But let’s try to pick up the pace. The sun’s about to set,” Alex called out in his soft Scots accent. “Daniel, Ecgbryt?” The two behind them hefted their packs and lengthened their strides across the thickly grassed field.
Focusing primarily on keeping her footsteps measured and even, Freya tried to stifle the nervous energy that was coursing through her, which was making her hands and knees shake. She wanted to run away and collapse to the ground all at the same time. The Fear was now an ocean that was pressing against her wall, threatening at any second to push it over and sweep her away on waves of terror. So instead, she built a boat and put the Fear beneath her feet. As the sea raged around her, she only watched it roll and bob past the window. Soon it would be “The Evening,” when horrible things could happen; the sort of things that sent her life careening beyond her control. There were traps and pitfalls in the half-light that were not there in the day or the night, and they were actively trying to search one of them out.
“Can I ask you a question?” Vivienne bustled up close to Freya. She was apparently as strong as a mule. Where Freya constantly flagged and felt crippled by her load, Vivienne bounded quickly and merrily beside her. “No, don’t turn to me,” Vivienne said in a quiet tone. “Don’t stop. Keep your voice low. Your friend, Daniel.”
“Yes?”
“Is he alright? I mean, is he well?”
“Well?”
“Aye, well. I only ask because he wanders around at nights, talking to himself.”
“He does?”
“Aye. Now, I only need four hours of sleep a night-one of the few benefits of being as old as I am-but I’d guess that your friend there has had less than that-much less. If any at all, in fact.”
“Really?”
“Really. You wouldn’t know anything about that?”
“No. Honestly. I’ve been sleeping like crazy. I wouldn’t have noticed if the building fell down around me.”
“What happened to him? Was it really Elfland?”
“I suppose so-he says it was. I really don’t know.”
“Keep a sharp eye,” Vivienne said, and then she shouted, “Are we nearly there yet?” in a jovial bellow.
“Almost, Aunt Viv,” Alex said, calling over his shoulder. “Look, you can see it there.”
Alex made a gesture, and Freya saw a fenced-off area to her right that seemed well looked after. It was tidy and neatly mown. Through gaps in the bordering hedge, she could see a curved line of grey stones.
They approached the stone circle, which Freya judged to be thirty meters in diameter and made of dark limestone. They entered at the small wooden gate, which bore a wooden sign that informed them, beneath the English Heritage symbol, these were the Rollright Stones. They began to walk the circumference, passing the stones inside, on the right. The smallest markers of the circle came up to about their knees while the largest were a couple feet taller than Ecgbryt.
Ecgbryt was counting stones, and this was apparently not as easy as it sounded. Alex and Daniel were doing a control count. Every five stones, Ecgbryt would turn and compare his number with Daniel and Alex.
“I count twenty, thus far,” Ecgbryt called over his shoulder.
“Twenty also,” Alex reported.
“Twenty,” Vivienne said.
“What are you looking for?” Freya asked.
“The stone that does not fit,” Vivienne told her. “It is said that no two countings of the stones in this ring are the same. The stones come and go. We are looking for one of the ones that is going.”
Freya nodded her head as if to say that made perfect sense. She dismally fell into step behind them, contemplating the dark days ahead of her. She took one last, long look at the aboveground scenery.
It was then that she noticed the four of them were not alone. A man, large, and shouldering something bulky, was standing between two of the stones on the other side of the ring. At first Freya thought it was another hiker or a tourist, but he was wearing a dark, shaggy coat that hung from his shoulders and came to just above his knees. His legs and feet were bare and stocky, hairy. His face was black with bristles around the mouth, his head as shaggy as his coat, to the extent that the hair from one entwined with the other.
He was just standing, staring at them, and something in his aspect seemed menacing to Freya. The twilight
