The shield of agrona, p.19
The Shield of Agrona, page 19
Jamie stepped around him. “Michael, keep him on the ground!” she shouted at me and ran for the helicopter.
I was utterly bewildered, but I pushed Aurelius to the ground and sat on him, while Jamie wrenched open the back door of the helicopter. I could see the pilot shouting at her and trying to reach back through the seats and fight her off. Jamie climbed right into the craft, one boot still on the step outside. I heard screaming, and the whole cabin shivered and shifted, so that the skids slid across the turf.
Jamie withdrew, something held close in one arm, and threw out her hand as she jumped to the ground. The helicopter slid and skidded sideways in the buffeting wind, then flipped onto its side. The rotors crunched and bent and the Perspex canopy shattered.
Jamie ran back toward us, and now I could see what was in her arms. The glittery fine wings of a water leaper, and a small body.
Magorian pulled the two of them in against me, all of us standing over Aurelius. “Protect your heads!” he shouted, and spoke the words of the spell.
That was when the top of Arthur’s Seat came off.
I turned in time to see the humped back of the animal lift, like a cat hissing. It kept lifting, trailing dirt and rocks and flat slabs of earth with turf on it. Then the explosion found its full throat and roared at the land around it. The main force blew vertically, for hundreds of meters, a column of steam and solidified lava and rocks.
There was some sideways force, which ripped along the ground to reach us a fraction of a second later. Magorian’s spell blunted it, or I’m sure we all would have been instantly dead, but it couldn’t stop all of it. The roar made me cry out soundlessly. My hearing had been assaulted too many times tonight.
The blast of heated air passed us. I heard the helicopter roll over again, metal groaning and tearing.
Magorian shook his head. “That’s the worst of it, I think.”
“What about a…a…” I reached back to movies I’d seen. “The pyroclastic cloud?” Already, I could hear emergency sirens, the British kind. Lots of them, heading our way.
“That wasn’t an eruption,” Magorian said. “That was just lava exploding when it met water. The eruption is yet to come, so we’d best get far away from here.”
I’d failed to monitor Aurelius. He surged to his feet, swinging the shield.
“Michael, watch out!” Jamie cried, her arms tightening about the water leaper in them.
The shield slammed into my chest, knocking me off my feet. My head connected with the ground.
Pain shot through me, right along my spine.
It was a relief to pass out.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
I woke in Jamie’s arms and knew instantly where I was. “Shh..” she breathed, touching my temple with cool fingers. “You’re concussed.”
“Is that all?” I whispered. I wasn’t in a hurry to open my eyes.
“It is, but it will be healed soon.” I could hear her smiling. I could also feel that we were in a moving car. “Ketill…Peadar…?”
“Dude, it’s my knees you’ve got your great big boots on right now,” Ketill said.
“Peadar is in the passenger seat with Ewan,” Jamie said. “Edinburgh is being evacuated before the volcano erupts. We’re one of a hundred thousand cars leaving the city.”
It was the stuff of nightmares, I thought. Then I stiffened. “Magorian?” I opened my eyes.
“Here,” he said from the driver’s seat. “You need to go on a diet, by the way.”
I fell back and heard Jamie grunt.
“Bloody hell, let me sit up and not squash anyone,” I said.
Both her and Ketill straightened me up. I wanted to look around the car, and see for myself that everyone was whole, but the view through the windows caught my attention and held it. We were on the A1, the same route we had used to reach Edinburgh, but now we were moving at walking speed, the same speed as the car in front of us, and the one behind us. The cars in the lanes beside us had people riding on the bonnets and the boots, or standing on the bumpers. More sat on the roofs of every vehicle. We had three people on our bonnet, too, all sitting on the edge, so Magorian could see ahead.
More people walked along the lines of each lane, and on the edges of the highway. Only a few had stopped long enough to grab belongings. Most walked empty-handed, or held the hands of children, or carried them.
The other side of the highway, that normally went into Edinburgh, was also filled with outbound traffic and pedestrians. Everyone looked shell-shocked. No one was talking.
Emergency vehicles and police patrol cars sat on either side of the highway and on the verge between the lanes, their lights spinning slowly.
“How long before it blows?” I asked.
“No one knows. Soon,” Jamie said.
“Mummy, I want to sit with you now,” a small, childish voice said, from the front seat. A small face bent to peer through the seats. “The man is well now,” the little boy added. His own cheeks were tear streaked.
Jamie held out her arms. “Come here, darling.”
He scrambled out of Peadar’s lap and over my knees, his transparent, veined wings brushing my face, and settled in his mother’s lap.
“This is Ewan,” Jamie told me, her tone diffident.
Ewan pressed his head to her shoulder and just looked at me.
“Hello Ewan,” I told him. “I’m Michael.”
“I know,” Ewan said. “Mummy told me.”
A thousand questions rose to my lips, as I looked a Jamie. All of them stayed there, because of Ewan on her lap.
“What’s the plan?” I asked.
“Toledo or bust,” Ketill said.
“Even me?” Peadar asked.
Silence.
“Would you like to feel better, always, Peadar?” Jamie asked.
Peadar twisted to look at her. “Is that even possible, lass? For someone like me?”
She didn’t lie to him. I credit her that. “I don’t know,” she said gently. “But I do know that the hospital where I work…worked…they perform miracles on a daily basis. If there is a way for you to get sober and stay sober, one that might work, I think they might know of it.”
“And once you’re sober, there is a lot of information in your brain I need to know,” Magorian added. “Besides, it’s warm in Toledo.”
Peadar sat back. “Then I would very much like to go with you,” he said simply.
•
It took three days to traverse the length of Britain. On the second day, the volcano blew its top. We were just south of York by then, and traffic was beginning to speed up. We’d lost our bonnet passengers—a London double-decker bus had come alongside us and the driver hollered for them to hop on.
My phone was the only one with a charge, still, for I had brought the solar panel charger with me and it only fit my phone. Jamie was driving, and Ewan had consented to sit on my knee beside her. Ewan and I watched the eruption on the phone, as it drove up and out, the high column of superheated air, rocks and magma boiling up into the stratosphere. I flinched as the bottom of the cloud billowed outward, then rolled across the empty city, levelling buildings and trees, and sweeping up abandoned cars, park benches and telephone booths. Then it reached the camera that had been stationed remotely and the feed cut out.
The video began to replay and I passed the phone to everyone in the back seat. “Magorian, is this it? Your dream?”
Magorian took his time answering and I saw his gaze flicker to Jamie, in the driver’s seat. He shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe. I just don’t know. But it doesn’t feel like it.”
We progressed faster as the exodus from Edinburgh spread out across the land. When we reached Dover, I was driving. There, we didn’t bother trying to hide the non-human passengers or that Peadar didn’t have a passport. I wound down the window and said to the customs officer, “We were in Edinburgh. We left with what we’re carrying and I’m taking everyone back to Spain with me.” I gave him mine and Magorian’s passports.
The officer bent to examine everyone in the car, including the Old Ones in the back seat, and Peadar between them. “You’re the doctor who treats the Old Ones, in Toledo, aren’t you?” the officer asked.
I agreed that I was.
“Edinburgh is a mucky disaster. You’re lucky you got out. They’re saying thousands were still there. Folk who didn’t believe a volcano would dare erupt in Britain, or who just couldn’t leave in time.” He handed the passports back. “If I let the human through without a passport, he’ll have to stay put in Spain until he has one to come back with.”
“He is my uncle, officer,” Jamie called. “We’ll have a place for him in Toledo, until he can acquire documentation once more.”
The officer hummed and studied Peadar. “Well, you don’t look like a terrorist, which probably means you are.” He laughed at his own joke. Peadar smiled weakly. His eyes were tinged with red, I saw.
“You lot go on home,” the officer said. “That’s if you can get him through France in the first place. They’re not so happy about British evacuees rushing across the Channel, especially with the flights all shut down.”
“Thank you, sir,” I said, with heart-felt gratitude.
The French border was even less trouble. We put Ketill in the driver’s seat and he pulled out his ace once more. The French keys to the country got us through to the Spanish border, where Ketill and Magorian combined got us into Spain.
Seven hours later, we were home, just as the larks began to warble. Thamina gave up her bed for Jamie and Ewan, and we settled Peadar on the longest sofa, then went to bed ourselves.
I woke near sunset, starving and desperate for a decent cup of tea, and padded to the kitchen, barefoot.
Thamina was preparing for dinner, with mountains of vegetables on the worktable. I moved around her, making tea and toast, then sat on the counter against the wall to drink and eat them.
Magorian stepped into the kitchen, scrubbing at his thick hair, just as I was finishing my toast.
“I put the coffee on as soon as Mr. Michael came into the kitchen,” Thamina told him. “I thought you would be up soon, too.”
He squeezed Thamina’s shoulder as he passed her. “Muffins in the cookie tin?”
“Of course.”
“You are a blessing on my household,” he told her gravely and pulled together a small meal of his own. He leaned against the opposite counter to me and wolfed down the muffin.
Jamie’s arrival was as silent as Magorian’s, but I felt as though I had been nudged with a cattle prod, anyway. She wore the white dress I liked, but it was wrinkled from being packed in a bag for over a week. “Ewan is still asleep,” she said, bringing her hands together. She’d pulled up her hair so that it cascaded from the top of her head in a long waterfall down her back. “I haven’t had a chance to talk to you…to explain, until now. Will you listen?”
“I think we’ve figured out most of it,” Magorian said, his voice flat. “You’ve been working for Aurelius all along.”
“No, not working for him,” she said swiftly. “Never working for him…” She added softly, “Not willingly.”
I rolled my eyes. “He had Ewan…”
Jamie gave a great sigh. “I met Aurelius the way I told you, the first time. What I didn’t tell you was that I had Ewan with me. Aurelius was spreading money around, currying favor with Old Ones. He’d just come from investigating the Ayr headwaters, and thought he could find Old Ones in Edinburgh willing to help him with a bit ‘o business here and there—that’s how he phrased it, and there were more than enough of them desperate for cash and food to do any little thing he asked for. But I wasn’t. I had Ewan to take care of, and I had a flat and some food, enough to get by. I was going to turn away.”
She sighed again. “But Ewan is a water leaper, and Aurelius is a siren, Ewan’s elemental. Ewan flung himself at Aurelius. Literally wrapped his arms around Aurelius’ legs and looked up at him with great big eyes. So Aurelius bent and scooped him up and said he had a son just his age…”
Magorian snorted. “He knew exactly what to say.”
Jamie shifted on her feet. “The rest of it you know. Aurelius was charming and sweet and attentive and even romantic and it had been so long…” She dropped her gaze to her hands. “Then he stopped being charming and sweet. The madness I told you about, the obsession, it all came out and I realized that I had to get him out of my life. I was making plans to leave and take Ewan with me. Only when I came home from the market the day before I was going to leave, Ewan wasn’t there. Aurelius told me I had to go to Toledo and get to know the two of you, in whatever way it took.”
I stared at the top of her head. “And report back to him, right?”
She breathed in. Out. “He said if I didn’t, he’d hurt Ewan. But all I had to do was report back. That was it. Anything I heard, anything about him, or about Agrona. And he had Ewan. He put me on a boat to Portugal and I came here, and Sabine was almost ecstatic to have another medically competent fae to help her.” She looked up. “Not all fae are good healers, even though we have the same powers. Some are just not empathetic enough, although I don’t understand that at all.” She dropped her head once more. “Then I met you, Michael. You’re a good man, an idealist. And you didn’t suspect me for a single moment. And I hated myself, for what I was doing. And then I met Ben…”
Despite her bent head, I could see her eyes closing. “I love what is happening in the forest of La Mancha. I love that the Old Ones are finding an equilibrium, a place to call their own. And I knew that if Aurelius got his way, all that would be gone. So I told Aurelius I wouldn’t report to him any more. I just couldn’t do it. And a small part of me wanted to believe that he didn’t have the…whatever it was he would need to actually hurt Ewan. I was going to go back to Edinburgh and try to find Ewan, instead.”
“That’s when Aurelius sent his heavies, isn’t it?” I asked.
She lifted her head. “They were going to drag me back to Aurelius, for what they called disciplining. But you both halted that, and Sabine closed up the borders so his people couldn’t reach me. I took the chip out of the burner phone he gave me. I didn’t throw it away, but I left it out of the phone, so he couldn’t reach me. And I worried about Ewan.”
The light had gone out of her. I remembered that. “You got drunk,” I said.
“It didn’t help.” Jamie lifted her head. “I was at home when one of the children living near me knocked on the door and told me he’d been asked to give me this thing, that I would be very, very pleased to have it. He thrust Ewan’s toy cow into my hands. Ewan has had that cow since he was a baby. He used it as a teething ring and screamed if he couldn’t reach it. He actually took his first steps to go and get it. When I saw what it was, I felt sick. I knew it was Aurelius warning me to cooperate. I didn’t know what to do…”
She pressed her lips thin. “So when you flew to Norway for the shield, I put the chip back in the phone and told Aurelius that you were heading for Prague, for the military museum there.”
I drew in a slow breath. The risk she had taken!
“Then I pulled the chip out again, and destroyed it,” she finished. “I haven’t had any contact with Aurelius since then. I knew the two of you were working to find Agrona’s shield, just as Aurelius was. I didn’t know it was in Edinburgh. I don’t think Aurelius had any inkling, either. You connected my family and my ancestors to Agrona, Ben. And that got me thinking about all the stories I’d heard over the years from family members. So when Michael asked me about dragons in Edinburgh, I knew it had to be the one that Peadar always claimed was beneath Arthur’s Seat.”
Magorian stared at her, his face giving away nothing.
She twined her fingers once more. “I was going to ask you to take me along with you when you went for the shield, but you told me I was to go with you. I knew if I could be there when you found the shield, then Aurelius would surely show up, and I could somehow get Ewan back.” She spread her hands. “And he did show up, right on cue.” She let her hands drop. Her eyes were glittering. “And I have Ewan back, thanks to both of you.”
Magorian was an unmoving rock. “How can we trust you?” he whispered. “How do we know this isn’t just another way to try to stay in our confidence?”
“You can’t tell that yourself, Ben?” Jamie asked, her voice soft. “You don’t know?” She reached into her pocket and brought out a cheap burner phone, which she put on the worktable next to a cabbage. Thamina, I realized with a jolt, had slipped discreetly away.
Jamie put a broken phone card on top of the battered phone. She looked at Magorian. “I would do anything to keep my son safe. And while he is safe, I would never do anything to hurt you. I don’t do that to the people I love.”
The near-physical jolt made me feel sick. I slid off the counter as Magorian moved around the worktable toward her. They came together as I stepped out of the door. I made myself walk away, trembling.
But halfway across the common room, I halted and leaned on the dining table to catch my breath. That was where the thought struck me.
I turned back to the kitchen and thrust the door open. The two of them stepped apart, both flushed.
“The cow,” I said. “It wasn’t just to warn you, Jamie. I saw it in your duffel bag in Edinburgh. He knew you would take it with you no matter where you went. There’s a tracer in it. That how he found us in Edinburgh.”
Then I made myself shut the door once more and go away.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
While Edinburgh smoldered, China quietly released a boatload of Old Ones, and sent them to Toledo.
I had buried myself like Edinburgh in a smothering layer of work. Sometimes I worked eighteen hours a day, taking quick naps on one of the spare beds, for I no longer wanted to go home. Magorian spent his days studying the markings on the iron shield—the one that had been hidden on the back of the boulder plugging the volcano vent. We’d it brought back from Edinburgh in the boot of the car beneath our luggage.
