With a great rumbling and groaning protest of stones against stones, the wall obligingly shifted inward. Or, at least, that is how it seemed to me. Dust rose and swirled around Ketill, then puffed out toward us. I waved it away, and saw that where the wall had been there was now an opening about two meters wide and high, with rubble to either side of it.

  Ketill dusted off his hands and rose to stand in the opening. “A goblyn made that wall,” he pronounced. “No mortar, and it looked like the real thing, like it was part of the cliff. It was a good wall. Don’t hit your heads when you come in.”

  I ducked under the little cave mouth, and duck-walked to the opening and stood. The smooth sandy ground in the cave mouth continued on through the new opening, and disappeared into the darkness.

  It was a path.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Magorian’s staff lit up the interior of the cavern, showing a roof barely two meters above us. Ketill put his hand on the wall to his right. “This is natural,” he declared. “A fissure in the hillside.”

  “The path leads down,” I pointed out. “We’re not going to need the rope, after all.”

  “We’ll keep it with us, anyway,” Magorian said. “We don’t know what lies ahead.”

  “Should we close up the wall behind us?” Jamie asked, sounding anxious.

  “Aurelius has goblyns with him,” Ketill said. “And I just left marks they will see glowing like a heat map. If I close up the opening, it’ll make the marks even hotter. Let’s not shut ourselves off from the outside.”

  “You heard the goblyn,” Magorian said. “Peadar, do you know where to go from here?”

  “There’s only one way,” Peadar pointed out.

  “Let’s go, then,” Magorian said. “Time is ticking.” He rehitched the rope into a more comfortable position and raised the staff so the light illuminated far ahead, which simply showed the path sloping downward and uneven, very non-vertical walls on either side. The path curved gently out of sight.

  We followed the path down and I found myself reaching out to the wall, for the slope was steep enough that I thought my boots would lose their grip and I’d slide for a long way, if I wasn’t braced. My heart worked harder than it should.

  No one fell. Ketill trod sure-footed in front of me, which was reassuring. Jamie, behind me, stepped lightly and steadily.

  All I could hear was everyone breathing. Then I realized I could see my breath fogging the air a little. It was getting colder.

  We climbed down, following the curves and bends in the path, which continued onward without break, until I thought for sure we must be well below the level of the park. I do not normally suffer from claustrophobia, but I found the idea of descending steadily ever deeper made it seem as though the walls were narrowing in on us, too. I could feel the weight of all the rock above us.

  Peadar, who was behind Magorian now, spoke in what must have been a normal conversational voice, but it boomed and made me jump. “Why are you looking for a dragon?”

  “I told you,” Magorian said, easing himself over a natural, uneven step in the path. “To stop Aurelius raising the old gods.”

  “Yes, but why this dragon?”

  “Because we think he was Agrona’s shield,” I said.

  “I know he was,” Magorian added.

  “Or he was shielding her children,” I said. “His children, too.”

  Peadar halted.

  “Ooops,” Ketill muttered, ramming into him. Peadar didn’t move.

  Magorian looked back, then turned and came back to where Peadar stood.

  I couldn’t see Peadar’s face, but I could hear his smile as he spoke. “In 1836, they found what they called coffins, tucked away in the rocks, not far from the cave mouth. The miniatures had human models in them. No one has ever established for certain what they were for.”

  The corner of Magorian’s mouth lifted. “Symbolic children.”

  “If your dragon shielded the goddess’s children from something—the Romans or the Saxons—then whatever he did would have saved other children,” Peadar said. “He wasn’t a warrior, you said. So he didn’t save just Agrona’s children with a sword and shield. It was something else he did.”

  “That’s our theory,” Magorian said, his tone one of agreement.

  “So the people who lived here, then…they could have left the miniatures where they did as a form of thanks and acknowledgement, because their children were saved, too, by whatever it was he did.”

  Magorian rubbed his jaw. “Perhaps. We’ll be better able to guess that once we know what he did. Keep moving,” he added, turned and continued walking.

  I realized that my breath was no longer fogging the air. It was growing warmer again.

  Ten minutes later, Magorian paused. He looked back at us. “Fork in the road.”

  We pressed up behind him, peering around him. The path we were on continued to the right, still broad and easy to see. Only it immediately began to climb upward.

  To the left was the faintest of trails, which was barely a path at all. Shale covered it, and it was only a shallow depression in the shale that said feet had perhaps nudged the shards aside. The depression moved onward without stopping which helped determined there was a path there at all. That, and the walls which had marched beside us until now opened up, so that we were standing in a large chamber.

  “It seems pretty clear where we have to go,” Ketill said. “Up along the path we’re on.”

  “That might be what we’re meant to think,” Magorian said. He lifted the staff and light blazed out, dazzling everyone. I peered under my hand, examining the chamber. The floor barely existed, apart from the section holding the two routes before us. It sloped up sharply, until the shale could no longer cling to it, then bare walls soared up beyond the reach of the light.

  “We’re meant to go down,” Magorian said.

  The hairs on the back of my neck tried to lift. The flat quality of Magorian’s voice told me he was reaching beyond gut feeling. Consulting his prophetic senses.

  “You don’t want to go down there,” Peadar said softly.

  “Why not?” Ketill asked, with a touch of heat. He was leaping to Magorian’s defense.

  “Because we’re already very deep,” Peadar said. “You must feel it yourself, goblyn. Arthur’s Seat is an old volcano.”

  “It is warmer in here than I thought it would be, for a cave,” Jamie added.

  Magorian turned to us. “Dragons like heat.”

  Peadar pressed his lips together, thinning them. “Down it is, then.”

  Ketill stepped past him and clapped him on the shoulder, then followed Magorian onto the shale. Instantly, the cavern was filled with the slick, dry sound of stones chinking together and sliding off each other. Even Magorian was taking a step at a time.

  “This won’t do,” Ketill muttered. He held out his hands, palms facing the ground, down by his hips. “Try that, Magorian.”

  Magorian nodded and took three steps forward. Nothing moved under his feet. No echoing clinking sounded. “Better,” Magorian muttered and moved on.

  Ketill followed close behind him, his hands held out, firming the way ahead as he moved along.

  The path turned around a rocky outcrop and wound down into the dark.

  Peadar, right behind Ketill, said, “What does it feel like, shifting?”

  “You mean phasing? Because I don’t shift like a dragon. I’m this way all the time.”

  “Phasing, then.”

  “It hurts,” Ketill admitted.

  “Yes,” Jamie breathed, behind me.

  “But does it hurt afterward? Once you’ve changed?”

  “Huh?” Ketill said. He sounded distracted, for he was building solid footing at the same time.

  Peadar paused. To watch his footing, or to reconsider what he was about to ask. “I heard…” he began. Then, in a rush, he finished; “They say it’s a new start. That you leave all the old habits behind.”

  I stared at Peadar’s back, confused. He wanted to phase into an Old One?

  “He means cravings,” Magorian said.

  Ah… Understanding came to me. And I felt a touch of pity for the man. He was so in the grip of alcohol that he saw becoming an Old One as a way out. A cure.

  I mentally urged Ketill to be careful how he answered, and wished he could actually hear me.

  Ketill spoke with a cheerful tone. “I don’t know about cravings, man. I used to crave spicy Korean barbecue all the time when I was human. Traded up two belt holes because of it. But with all the miseries of being an Old One, I just don’t have time for cravings anymore. I can’t remember ever wanting to chow down on kimchi since I turned.”

  “I see,” Peadar said, his tone disappointed.

  “We’re here,” Magorian added.

  We all pushed up behind him to look.

  The path was back to wide and sandy. I don’t know how long it had been like that. Ketill’s stabilizing of the shale had removed all my worry about my footing, and I hadn’t noticed the shale ending. Perhaps it had only covered the path until it was out of sight of the fork in the paths—far enough to discourage wanderers.

  Ahead of Magorian, the path ran up to two steps made of compounded earth. Earth-crete. “A goblyn was here, too,” I murmured.

  “Yep,” Ketill said.

  At the top of the two steps was an archway and through the archway, dimly lit by Magorian’s light, was a stone coffin.

  The archway plinth was carved with Latin lettering.

  “What does the plinth say?” I asked.

  “Hardwin, our protector, lies here,” Peadar read off. He sank to his knees. “He was real. He’s here…” And he covered his face with his hands.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Jaimie squeezed Peadar’s shoulder while his body shook. The rest of us remained silent, letting him have his moment of privacy as best we could.

  Ketill pushed forward, up alongside Magorian. “It’s warmer than before,” he muttered. “I don’t like this.”

  I realized with a start that Ketill was right. I could easily do without my coat, but then I would have to carry it, so I left it on and unbuttoned all the buttons.

  Magorian, though, was studying the archway into the burial chamber, and the surrounding walls. “This doorway was added to a fissure that was already here. The space beyond they made into a chamber.”

  Jamie shook Peadar’s shoulder. “We need to keep moving,” she murmured. She tucked her hand under his arm and tugged.

  Peadar clambered slowly to his feet. “Yes, we must go inside.” His voice wavered, but he pushed ahead, trying to get around Magorian.

  Magorian dropped the rope he had been carrying. “Let me go first.” He threw out the bottom half of his staff, to block Peadar. “Unless you know warding spells?” he added.

  Peadar grimaced and stepped back, enough so that Magorian was just ahead of him. He waved Magorian onward, then took the bag of pitons off and put it on top of the coil of rope.

  Magorian moved over to the steps and put his boot on the first and waited. He lifted the staff, thrusting the top into the chamber and filling it with blazing light. I saw gold glitter, and shadows shift about objects around the base of the coffin’s plinth.

  Then the light lowered to a more reasonable level. Magorian stepped up onto the top step and moved into the room. He cast the staff to the left and the right, then said over his shoulder. “It’s safe. Come in.”

  We all hung back and let Peadar go first. Ketill took off his coil of rope and dropped it with the rest.

  Peadar stepped slowly up into the room, his head turning. Seeking. Then he moved directly to the coffin and laid his hand on the top.

  By then, both Jamie and Ketill had also entered the room. I stepped up into it, and saw that Magorian was right, the doorway had been slotted into a narrow section of the fissure, which widened out into a small room, before narrowing down once more, making the room roughly almond shaped.

  The rectangular plinth and the coffin sat in the very middle of that bulging space, and Hardwin’s grave goods—everything his friends and family and tribe thought he might need in the afterlife—were stacked against the base of the plinth. I figured the bottom end of the plinth was the short end facing the doorway.

  I moved up to the head of the plinth. In pride of place, leaning against the plinth where it could be easily swept up, was a round shield that appeared to be made of pure gold. My breath caught.

  The sound drew Peadar and Magorian’s attention. They moved to stand beside me.

  “Beaten gold nailed to iron. Not a working shield,” Peadar said softly.

  “A tribute,” Magorian said. “The shield of Agrona’s shield.”

  The hairs on the back of my neck stood up painfully. “We still don’t know what made Hardwin her shield,” I pointed out.

  “You sound grumpy,” Magorian told me.

  “This is too easy,” I said. “A shield right there in the open? A gold shield?”

  “Don’t touch it,” Magorian said, as Peadar bent to pick it up. “Not yet, at least. I want to check everything else in here, first.”

  “You sound like Indiana Jones, looking for booby-traps,” Jamie said in a teasing voice.

  “That’s pretty much exactly what I’m looking for,” Magorian said. “No door invites people to step in. Call it my Spidey sense.” He moved around the room, bending to examine the objects next to the plinth. Most of them were dust, just holding the shape of what they might have been. A leather sack, which might once have held wine, I supposed. More sacks, flat and broad. Food, I guessed.

  Magorian touched the corner of one of the sacks with the toe of his boot, and the dust that was the sack dropped in a tired heap to the floor, sprinkling over the objects beneath.

  “Scroll,” Magorian murmured, crouching down. “Michael, your phone. It’s dry in here, and warm, but we may only be able to open it once.”

  I moved over to his side, pulling out my phone and switching to the camera app. As Magorian carefully turned the scroll around and unrolled it, I took many photos. The scroll cracked and flaked away each time Magorian touched it or shifted it, making me wince. I zoomed in to take a full image of each page. There were only two.

  Magorian let the scroll roll back up, and it splintered and flaked even more. A big hole subsided in the side of the roll.

  Magorian rose to his feet and held out his hand. “Let me see.”

  I gave him my phone, as everyone moved around him. Magorian studied the photo of the first page. Peadar read over his shoulder.

  “The fort that became Hardwin’s was built upon Roman bones,” Magorian said.

  “Roman ruins,” Peadar added. “Here, right above us, on the crags. Archeologists have long agreed that there were hill forts here time out of mind.”

  Magorian grunted. “Agrona gave Hardwin the fort. He was of the Goddodin.” He lifted his head to look at Peadar.

  “Lothian,” Peadar breathed, smiling.

  They both looked at the phone once more.

  “Hardwin was their revered leader, their savior, and beloved of Agrona…until she became angry with him. Or that might be because she got angry with him.”

  “She did slough off the boyfriends a bit quick,” Ketill murmured from somewhere behind me. “Hey, guys…” he added.

  “Why did she get angry with him? Does it say?” Jamie asked.

  “It’s…slippery, this bit,” Magorian muttered. “Hang on…”

  “She didn’t like what he was saying about the…rising earth,” Peadar said. He frowned. “Something a goblyn did?” he added.

  “She ignored Hardwin because he…had not dipped his spear in blood,” Magorian read off.

  “He wasn’t a warrior,” I interpreted. Agrona was the goddess of blood and carnage. She would think little of people who weren’t of the warrior caste.

  “Hardwin was an engineer,” Magorian said. “It was his big talent, before he became a druid.”

  Peadar pointed at my phone in Magorian’s hand. “There! Look. The hill grew larger and hot underfoot, even in winter. It melted ice and let grass grow.”

  “Guys!” Ketill shouted, his voice echoing in the chamber.

  We all turned.

  Ketill stood by the end of the almond-shaped space opposite the lintel. That end of the chamber had been sealed off with a single boulder, twice the height of Ketill. The boulder had been wedged into the narrow fissure. It fit neatly, with no gap at the top or sides.

  He put his hand by the stone, looking at us. “This is hot.” And he lifted his hand away quickly. “Damn thing is almost glowing with heat.”

  Peadar turned to Magorian. “I don’t know much about volcanoes. Could the magma chamber be this high?”

  “You mean, there’s lava behind that stone?” Jamie asked, her voice rising.

  Magorian moved toward it. We all did. Dread filled my gut and made my chest ache. We were standing beside the heart of a volcano?

  “If there was lava on that side, wouldn’t it melt the stone?” I demanded.

  Magorian, the alchemist, shook his head. “Stone’s melting point is higher than magma.”

  Jamie drifted toward the stone, her gaze upon it. She raised her hand toward it, but didn’t touch it. My warning jammed up in my throat.

  “There is pressure on the other side of the stone,” she said, her voice remote. “The air is…powerful. Contained, but it seethes.”

  Magorian gave a great groan. “It’s been staring at us all along.” He shoved my phone at me, then lifted his hand to the stone, too. As Jamie had done, he let it hover over it, rather than touching it. “Hardwin was a dragon. He could manipulate heat and fire…so that’s what he did. The scroll said it—not in modern words, but it explains it all. The earth was rising and growing warm. Ice melted, in the middle of winter.”

  “The volcano was gonna blow…” Ketill said. “Mount St. Helens did that for weeks before it erupted. The side of it bulged.”

 

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