Once Every Never

  “Aye …” He shook the yellow hair from his eyes and stared wildly around the room. At the books and furniture and high, plate-glass windows. At the electric light fixtures and the computer whose screen saver swirled with brilliant colours and patterns. He took a hesitant step forward and looked down at his own feet. At the jeans and sneakers he wore, at his hands … at the watch on his—on Milo’s—wrist. He fingered the fabric of the T-shirt he wore.

  Then he lifted his gaze and peered at Clare as if she was hard to see. “This is the Otherworld?”

  “This is my world,” she said quietly and picked up his glasses, handing them to him.

  He put them gingerly back on his face and blinked. Then his gaze shifted to where Al stood, one fist jammed against her mouth so that she wouldn’t scream. “You.” His voice was lower than Milo’s by almost an octave. The words came out as guttural and musical at the same time. “You are … Allie?”

  Al nodded and squeaked out, “I’m your cousin. His cousin. Milo’s cousin.”

  He nodded, his expression turning inward. “Milo …”

  “Is he there?” Clare asked.

  Connal nodded and smiled, the muscles of his face tight. “He is. I can see things. Know things. Through his eyes … his mind … It is an interesting experience.”

  “I’ll bet,” Clare said, and took him gently by the arm. “I’d like you to meet someone.” She looked over to where her aunt stood open-mouthed in awe. “Mags?”

  Maggie stepped toward the young man who only a moment before had been someone else entirely.

  “Connal.” Clare took Maggie by the elbow and drew her closer. “This is my aunt, Doctor Magda Wallace.”

  “The blessings of the goddess fall upon you, Doctor Magda Wallace.” Connal’s voice was rough, but he inclined his head toward Maggie in a gesture of respect.

  “I … I … it’s very nice to meet you, young man,” Maggie stammered, as star-struck as if she’d just met one of the Beatles. Which for an archaeologist, Clare supposed, she kind of had.

  “Milo?” Clare shook his arm a little. “Are you still in there?”

  He turned to her, and after a moment smiled the ghost of a familiar smile. “Still here, Clare de Lune,” he said, his voice sounding far away. “It’s a little crowded in here all of a sudden, but yeah … I’m still here.”

  “Still in the driver’s seat?”

  “Yeah … yeah. I’m still driving. Maybe though, just to be on the safe side, somebody else should take the wheel on the way up to Bartlow.” He dug into the pocket of his jeans and tossed the keys to the Bimmer to Maggie. Then he winked at Clare. A wink that could have been Milo’s own—or not. It looked as though it took a lot of effort. “C’mon,” he said, his face shifting through unfamiliar expressions as he headed toward the door. “Let’s go.”

  23

  It was just before moonrise.

  Clare, Al, Milo, and Maggie stood in a circle on the plat form at the summit of Bartlow High Hill. The land all around them seemed touched with magic that evening. Deep shadows pooled in the contours of the countryside like dozens of black lakes as a big-bellied harvest moon rose, casting a silvery-golden glow on the gentle swells of far distant hills. Milo—Connal, really—turned his face toward the kiss of the moon’s light as it lifted above the bowl of the Earth, balancing on the edge of the horizon for a long moment like a tightrope walker on a high wire. Then it lifted free and began its slow and stately passage, sailing across the face of the indigo sky.

  Milo closed his eyes, and when he opened them again his blue gaze had been replaced with the Druid prince’s dark, haunting—or maybe it was haunted—stare. He held out a hand to Clare on one side and Maggie on the other. Clare stripped off the driving gloves she’d been wearing and took his hand. Maggie took the other, and then they both held out their other hands to Al, who swallowed nervously before reaching out to close the circle. As the silver cuff on Milo’s wrist began to glow Clare was struck by an illusion of the fox and raven coming to life, chasing each other around and around in an endless circle. Milo’s lips started to move, mouthing silent incantations in the same way Connal had done in Bouddica’s tomb. A sudden surge of electrical energy flowed through them and Clare gasped, closing her eyes against the sensation.

  “Look,” Connal’s voice said after a moment. “See.”

  Clare opened her eyes. The world around her …

  “It shimmers,” Al breathed. “Oh wow, Clare … you were so right.”

  Maggie and the girls looked out over the transformed landscape that glimmered faintly, as if dusted with starlight.

  “Do you see that?” Clare said, her voice barely a whisper in the cool night air. “There is a path …”

  “There is indeed,” said Connal as he dropped Maggie’s hand, “but only for those with the sight to see.”

  Still holding on to Clare, he stepped off the wooden platform and led them onto the sparkling track—a gleaming, phosphorescent trail that wound around the hill. It bent and twisted into spirals and whorls, knotting and writhing like the patterns on the Battersea Shield. Or like the designs on Comorra’s brooch. The walkway looked as though it were made of thousands of fireflies, their tiny sparks glinting in the droplets clinging to the dew-wet grass.

  Milo’s feet moved with unerring certainty as Connal’s spirit led them around and around the hill. Every time the path intersected with the modern wooden staircase Connal simply walked through it as if the stairs were an illusion. As if they didn’t exist.

  Clare and the others followed in his footsteps until suddenly …

  “Claaarrre? Whaaaatt’s haaaapeeeniiing …” Al’s distorted voice echoed all around her as Clare glanced wildly about. Everything was sparkling fiercely now. Not just the path but the trees and the hills and the night sky. The air itself shimmered and danced as if they stood in a snow globe that some giant hand had just turned upside down. Clare heard Maggie’s sharp intake of breath and then, as quickly as it had begun, it ended. Gone. All the billions of sparkly lights just winked out. It was utterly, completely, terrifyingly dark.

  “Clare?” Al whimpered.

  “Hang on …” Clare fumbled for the tin candle and safety matches they’d found in an emergency kit in the trunk of Milo’s car, half-buried underneath a bunch of old vinyl records and a cricket bat. But even before she lit the wick, the stale, cold, earthy smell of the place told Clare where they were. The illumination from the thin yellow flame of the candle proved her right. They had done it. And now they stood in the middle of the vaulted central chamber of Boudicca’s tomb.

  “Okay,” Al said weakly, standing paralyzed beside her. “I’m gonna faint now …”

  “Al!” Clare shook her a little. “It’s okay—we did it!”

  “I know. That’s why I’m going to faint.”

  “Don’t be scared.” Clare brought the light up between them, the ghoulish shadows it cast undermining her words.

  “You’re joking, right?”

  “No.” Connal answered for her. “There’s nothing to be afraid of here.”

  “Now I know you’re joking.”

  “Alice,” Maggie said kindly, “I guarantee we are the only living things in this chamber. The barrow has been sealed shut for almost two thousand years. There’s no one else here!”

  “Well …” A voice echoed off the high stone roof. “No one else except me.”

  AL MUST HAVE jumped a foot and a half when she heard Stuart Morholt’s voice. Maggie used a particularly vibrant swear word, and Clare just hung her head, defeat washing over her.

  “I don’t believe this,” she groaned.

  “Oh believe it, my dear Miss Reid,” Morholt said, his smile ghastly in the glow of Clare’s candle. The gun in his fist gleamed in the light.

  “How did you find us?” Clare asked, her voice leaden.

  “Yeah,” Al said, “how? I totally got away clean from your stupid hideout.”

  Morholt rolled his eyes. “I totally let you.”


  “What?”

  “I put a two-way GPS transceiver in your computer bag.” Morholt knotted his arms across his chest, a self-satisfied sneer lifting one corner of his mouth. “I figured that if you could act as Miss Reid’s homing beacon, you might as well act as mine. You’re such clever things, you two. I gambled that you would eventually find the tomb. As much as she doth protest, I knew that our intrepid time traveller simply wouldn’t let it go until she’d found this place.” He turned to Clare. “And I vowed that when you did I’d be right behind you. In a somewhat worse-for-wear Bentley, I might add. Don’t think I’ve forgiven you ladies for that.”

  Clare glared at him. It was frustrating in the extreme that he was right.

  He winked at her. “Curiosity, meet cat.”

  “Fine,” she muttered. “So that’s how you tracked us to Bartlow. How did you follow us down here? Mystical GPS?”

  “When I said you were clever, I didn’t necessarily mean you were smart.” Morholt shrugged. “I’m not sure how you managed to work out the exact pattern of the spiral path, but I can tell you that footsteps in wet grass tend to leave a pretty clear impression under the light of a full moon. You left a trail the village idiot could have followed.”

  “I guess that means you should drop off your ‘Idiot’ job application at Bartlow Village Council,” Clare shot back. “Maybe they’re hiring.”

  Morholt’s sneer went a bit brittle. “You little—”

  “Stuart, will you for once in your life stop being such an ass?” Maggie burst out. “Just for one moment! Look where you are. Where we are. Think about it. This is not a game.”

  Morholt turned to Clare’s aunt, his dark eyes glittering. “I never for an instant thought it was, Magda. That was always your failing. Perhaps you’ll admit now that science doesn’t have an answer for everything.”

  “Neither do you,” Clare said. “I think this is all a big game to you. You yammer on about honour and glory and Boudicca’s righteous wrath. But I’ve been there and I’ve seen what happened and I know some of the people involved. They’re not some abstract concept in a history text. They’re not just a couple of dry lines written by that whatsisname guy—”

  “Tacitus,” Al murmured.

  “Right.” Clare nodded. “The Iceni were people and they hurt and loved and died just like people do now.”

  “Died and left behind a legacy that should not be lying forgotten in a tomb where it can do no one any good,” Morholt said. “I’d wager there is enough treasure here in this one tomb for me to build an empire and dedicate it to the ideals of the forgotten tribes of this island.” His voice rose as he spoke, echoing off the walls of the chamber.

  Clare wondered if he really was that deluded.

  “Which reminds me.” He pointed the gun at Al. “Hand over the box.”

  Al hesitated. But Morholt seemed to have little patience to spare with the girl who’d dented his Bentley. He cocked the hammer back on the pistol with a click that was shockingly loud in the gloom.

  “Now.”

  Al reached into her bag and pulled out the rosewood box that held the torc. She handed it to Morholt, who flipped open the lid.

  It was empty.

  “What the hell?” Clare gasped.

  Morholt pointed his gun at Al’s head. “Cute,” he snarled. “Where is it?”

  “It was there! It was right there! I swear!” Al said frantically.

  “It can’t be,” Milo said faintly. His voice was thin but, Clare noticed, it was his. Not Connal’s. “Something we didn’t take into consideration. The torc—it’s already here. Once we crossed over the mystical threshold into the barrow, both versions of the torc couldn’t exist in the same place. I’ll bet it’s still around Boudicca’s neck, because”—he glared meaningfully at Stuart Morholt—“in this timeline here inside the tomb, it hasn’t been stolen yet.”

  “Right you are. An oversight I aim to correct.”

  “I know you …” Milo spoke again, only this time it wasn’t Milo. The shift was subtle, but Clare recognized Connal’s intonation taking over once more.

  Morholt raised an eyebrow. “Of course you know me. Or did I jar loose a few neural pathways when I knocked you on the head?”

  Connal took a step forward, hands curling into fists. “I know what you are,” he said in a low growl. “You seek to take that which isn’t yours. You remind me of the Romans.”

  For a moment Morholt frowned in confusion and his gaze shifted between Milo and Clare—he had no way of knowing that the handsome young computer geek was toting around the consciousness of one of the very people Morholt claimed he’d taken up the legacy of.

  The self-professed Druid waved his gun at the real Druid and said, “Back off, hero. All of you. Stand over there,” he ordered, motioning them toward the rough stone wall they could just make out in the gloom.

  “Milo,” Clare whispered into his ear, “can you get a grip on Connal, please? Try to explain the concept of ‘gun’ to him.” She watched as Milo’s face contorted through a series of expressions as if he were having a silent argument with himself—which in a way, Clare supposed he was. Then he shook his head sharply and the tendons of his neck seeming to relax a bit. He let Clare guide him toward the wall while Morholt knelt carefully and shrugged out of an enormous backpack. He pulled out a jumbo-sized glowstick—obviously he’d remembered the effect of shimmering on electronics and had made allowances—and with a crack, twisted the plastic tube to activate the chemical luminescence. In the eerie green light Clare got a good look at him. Morholt was dressed head to toe in a black jumpsuit with so many pockets and zippers and snaps it looked as if he’d mugged an eighties hair band and stolen their gear. He wore black leather gloves, military-style boots, and a Batman-worthy utility belt.

  As he raised the sickly-green illumination over his head it revealed the true spectacle of the contents of the tomb.

  Even Clare—already knowing what was there—was affected by the sight.

  On the great stone bier Boudicca’s skeleton lay upon a long carpet of red hair, the great golden torc resting on fleshless collarbones that gleamed a pale chartreuse in the green chemical glow. The queen’s once-rich garments had been reduced almost to dust and the iron sword that had lain on her breast had rusted away to almost nothing—only the bronze hilt remaining intact in the cage of her skeletal fingers. Everywhere else in the tomb precious stones winked and gold and silver and bronze glowed, but it was the sight of that corroded blade, a warrior sword reduced to brittle shards, that Clare couldn’t drag her gaze away from.

  Because that was what Boudicca had been, first and foremost. A warrior.

  Queen, mother, wife, even woman—those things had been secondary. “Diplomat,” Clare thought, hadn’t even made the list. Instead her fierce pride had won out over everything else—including her need to survive. It had cost her life. And the lives of seventy thousand other men and women, and Clare simply could not wrap her head around that. Comorra dead. Connal wounded and weeping, living broken for the rest of his days—however many more there had been. Londinium burned to the ground. And all for what?

  For honour.

  For vengeance.

  For Andrasta … Clare flinched at the words that whispered in her mind in the husky voice of the queen. Her glance flew to the bier where the remains of Boudicca lay.

  Still dead, she thought, trying to steady herself. Still lying there. Not even a tongue left in her skull that could have spoken those words.

  Clare took a deep breath. In the uncertain, goblin-green light the shadows leaped and danced on the barrow walls like giant raven’s wings spreading wide on phantom winds. But that was just an illusion. And the voice Clare had heard was just a trick of her overheated imagination. She was sure of that. Mostly sure …

  Stuart Morholt unzipped another compartment of his pack, removed bricks of what looked like modelling clay, and stacked them in a little pyramid.

  “Is that what I think i
t is?” Milo asked in a cracking voice.

  “It is, if you think it’s plastic explosives.” Morholt withdrew a handful of batteries and inserted them into a little black box he pulled from another pocket. A light on its side blinked red and green. Satisfied, he took out the batteries and put them back into the pocket. “Just in case. We don’t want any stray zotting to fry my detonator now, do we?”

  “Shimmering,” Al barked. “And what the-detonator hell?” Morholt chuckled. “I, in my wisdom, foresight, and extreme cleverness, saw fit to bring enough C-4 with me on this little expedition to bring down half of Mount Everest.” He patted the bulky pack affectionately. “I’d planned on using it to get into the tomb …”

  Clare was agog at the damage he could wreak. “You were going to blast your way in here?”

  “Yes.” Morholt grinned unpleasantly. “But fortunately I had you, Dorothy, to lead the way down the Yellow Brick Road. And so now I’ll just use it to get out. I’ll pack the original entry with the plastique and kaboom. Under this much dirt, even the local pub hounds won’t hear a thing. Then off I’ll go into the night, with the richest hoard of treasure this side of the Valley of the Kings!”

  “You can’t do that! You can’t blow a hole in Boudicca’s tomb—”

  “Oh, stop.” Morholt’s voice was cold. Hard. “Don’t get all self-righteous with me, Miss Reid. How on earth did you plan on getting back out? Do you have a magic spell for that, too? No? I warrant a few dark, cold hours down here with no apparent egress—”

  “‘Egress’?” Clare interrupted him.

  “Way out, you twit!” Morholt snapped. “And I’d hazard a guess that, after a few hours trapped down here, you lot would be begging for a couple of sticks of dynamite.”

  Clare thought about that for a moment. She turned to glance at Milo, who was frowning faintly. His eyes were cloudy and she wasn’t sure how much of the conversation he—or rather Connal—had understood. It was true, they’d walked the path to get into the barrow. She wasn’t entirely certain now that there even was a way out. Tombs were generally supposed to be one-way only, right? Maybe, once they’d returned the torc to its rightful owner, that would be it. Maybe they weren’t ever meant to get out—