They approached it carefully, and as they drew closer, the hillock showed itself to be quite large and obviously manmade. It was a nearly perfect circle, domed on top and overgrown by plants. Trees crowded around it, but none grew on top. The opening was low and dark and lined with large stones that had been placed quite expertly. Stone steps covered in moss and wild brambles led down into the dark interior.
“Smells old and rotten,” Shinobu said as a trickle of air from inside the hillock brushed past them.
“Did you bring a light?” she asked.
He turned away from her again to rummage in the pack, and turned back with a flashlight. They crouched down, and he shone the light through the doorway.
Inside the hillock was a substantial space, a cave really, lined with stone that had been set in place with rough, sandy mortar. Debris had grown in from the forest and been blown in by the wind as well; old branches, dead leaves, loose rocks, and a large quantity of soil littered a stone floor.
And there were skeletons against the far wall.
Quin and Shinobu both drew back from the opening when they saw the decaying human forms in ragged clothing, remnants of hair and skin around their gaping faces.
“That’s not very nice,” Shinobu said quietly.
“I guess this explains the smell,” she said.
The odor inside the hill was of damp and rot but not of fresh decay. It was the smell of death that had happened in the distant past.
Shinobu swept the flashlight’s beam slowly over the cave, but there was no one hiding in the shadows. The space, like the bodies inside it, had been abandoned long ago.
“Shall we?” he asked, gesturing gallantly toward the interior.
Quin nodded, and she ducked beneath the lintel and stepped down into the cave.
The space was large enough to create echoes, but the echoes were short and close, as though the sounds made by her boots were jumping back at her almost before she’d finished making them.
There were four bodies in all. They lay near each other, their jumbled and deteriorating clothing making it appear they were all part of one mass. All of the figures had died with wool cloaks about them, but there was no other similarity in their clothing. The oldest body, little more than bones with a few leathery tatters of flesh, wore a lace-cuffed blouse. It had mostly disintegrated, but the few details that remained placed the blouse’s owner somewhere in the 1600s. Another corpse wore blue jeans of a kind that might have been popular a hundred years before present day. Another was quite small, maybe a child, with rotten teeth and coarse attire that was so encrusted with dirt as to be indistinguishable from the remains themselves. The last corpse was a girl, Quin wagered, with golden hoops in her ears and a delicate gold necklace lying across what was left of her shirt and rib cage.
“Look,” Shinobu said, his voice a whisper because that felt only appropriate in the presence of death. He picked up a twig from the floor, and with it he moved the necklace from the folds of old clothing. Dangling from the chain was a small golden horse.
“A horse,” Quin said. “Could I have the flashlight?”
He handed it to her, and she trained it on the wall behind the bodies, where she’d seen some sort of pattern on the stones. In the beam of light was a horse head chiseled onto the back wall. Off to one side and nearer the ground, a series of letters and numbers had been etched into the stones:
P51
D21
S64
D44
S20
“This cave belonged to the house of the horse, then?” Quin said.
The figures on the wall looked as though they’d been sculpted by something extremely hot. Quin stepped gingerly around the bodies to examine them more closely.
“It’s like they were melted into the rock,” she told Shinobu as she ran her fingers along the stone.
He came up beside her and touched the lettering. “What could do that?” he asked. “Some sort of modern tool?”
Quin shook her head. “I really don’t know.”
“The numbers add up to two hundred,” he pointed out.
“They do,” she agreed. “Like in the journal. But two hundred what? What are P, D, and S?”
Shinobu regarded the wall for a while. “Pounds, dollars, shillings?” he suggested. “Or names? Pippa, Dougal, Sylvia?”
Quin laughed, though it felt blasphemous to make jokes next to the bodies in the cave. She drew a notebook from her pocket and jotted down the numbers and letters. She and Shinobu skirted the space, looking for other carvings on the wall or ceiling, but there were none.
“We should find out exactly where we are,” she said.
They retreated from the cave into the open air. Quin was surprised to find the cold gray morning in the forest to be just as they’d left it.
Shinobu unfolded their map against the side of the hillock, drew out the positioning device, and a few moments later had marked their exact location. They were some distance from the first site, still in the north of Scotland, still in the middle of nowhere. Quin’s finger traced the distance from their previous location to this, which looked to be about forty miles. According to the map, they were near another section of the same river, just as the journal entry had suggested. Quin held herself very still for a few moments and could faintly hear the river’s distant sounds.
“Are the numbers in the cave miles, do you think?” Shinobu asked.
“If they were carved a long time ago, couldn’t they be anything? Leagues, furlongs?”
“Feet,” Shinobu suggested. “Or something else entirely, like number of blows with a whipsword?”
“Or weight.”
“Or how many sandwiches to bring with you.”
She laughed at this. Then she said, seriously, “In the journal entry, the Middle Dread kills a member of the house of the horse and drags him out of sight. Did he bring him to this cave? Is the oldest body in there the Seeker who was mentioned in the journal?”
“The Old Dread apologized for what the Middle had done and said he wouldn’t do bad things again,” Shinobu mused. “So who killed the other dead people in the cave?”
They didn’t have an answer. Quin wasn’t sure she required an answer at the moment—she was still amazed they’d found anything at all. They spent the next hour walking around the outside of the hillock, then exploring the surrounding woods. But they found nothing else.
“How do you feel?” she asked Shinobu when they were seated back in the clearing, eating the meager lunch they’d brought with them.
He cocked an eyebrow at her. “You want to go to the location of the third journal entry, don’t you?”
She looked at him sheepishly; she was almost jittery with a sense of anticipation. They’d found nothing in the first location, something in the second location. What would the third location bring?
“Don’t worry about me,” he told her. “I feel unstoppable.”
Quin nodded. “I feel a little that way myself.”
They finished their food. Then Quin drew the athame from her waist. She lined up the dials to take them to the location of the third journal entry, where the Middle Dread had been seen, long ago, training two young boys.
It was raining at Dun Tarm, and thick tendrils of mist grew up from the lake, hiding the forest. The distant rocky summits showed themselves as dark shapes peeking through a curtain of gray.
“How many times are you gonna hit me?” Nott demanded from the floor of the fortress, his face in a puddle of stagnant water from Loch Tarm. Raindrops pattered on the back of his head.
“You’ll take your beating without complaint,” said the brown-skinned Watcher.
His name was Geb. Nott knew this because he’d introduced himself around the time he’d started pummeling Nott. Geb probably wasn’t more than eighteen years old, but he seemed to think he was second to no one but their master.
His younger partner, a skinny boy called Balil, was in the process of driving his fist into Wilkin’s gut repe
atedly. Wilkin made muffled yelps, but Nott was proud to see that his own partner wasn’t crying. Why should they give these other Watchers the pleasure?
From that strange room full of computers in Hong Kong, they’d finally followed their master’s instructions. After a long walk There, they’d found Geb and Balil standing as still as figures in a churchyard, waiting to be brought back into the world. Nott had seen the distant shapes of other Watchers, also waiting in the blackness. In a perfect world, they would have retrieved all of them. But this was not a perfect world, because they didn’t have their helm. By the time they’d found Geb and Balil, they’d been in danger of losing themselves in the no-time of that place, and they’d had to settle for bringing back only two.
They’d carved an anomaly back to Dun Tarm and dragged Geb and Balil through with them. The older boys’ limbs had been stiff, even though their skin was soft, and it had been heavy work to haul them through the cold water of the lake and dump them in the sheltered area within the fort, to wait for them to wake up.
Geb and Balil both had the sort of dark, dark skin Nott associated with deepest Africa. Nott wondered fleetingly where their master had recruited them, and when. Their master trained all Watchers at Dun Tarm—where he taught them the joys of fighting and killing things, where he taught them the necessity of following his orders, where he punished them, and from where he banished them if they disobeyed him. But of course the training took place over many decades or maybe even longer, and Watchers might have come from anywhere in the world originally, anywhere their master had found likely boys to mold in his own image.
Most Watchers had been purchased from their families, some stolen. Nott himself had been bought, for a few silver coins. He remembered his first glimpse of his master, broad like a bull, with a face not made to smile, his dark cloak hanging about his shoulders as though it were a natural-born part of him. Nott had been terrified as that man took him from his mother, who turned her back on Nott and busied herself with hiding her new coins down one ragged boot. His master had shoved him roughly when he slowed down to look back at his family’s cottage, which was, to tell the truth, little more than a pile of stones shored up with earth.
On the floor of Dun Tarm, Nott lifted himself to his elbows. He saw his own reflection in the puddle from which he’d just pulled his head. It was his older brother’s face looking back at him: fair skin, lots of freckles, and a mop of brown hair liberally streaked with dirt. Odger, he thought. I’ve grown, and now I look like Odger. If Odger had only been at home that morning, he never would have allowed their mother to sell Nott. Odger had been his friend, his protector. He’d taught Nott to fish in the stream behind their home. He’d taught Nott to keep his head down when their father was around.
But Odger hadn’t been there the day Nott’s master bought him. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? Nott wondered. His master had taught him to fight, to put the world in its place. He’d made him better than a boy. But Odger, two years older and as tough as the iron poker their mother kept by the hearth, had made Nott feel…what was the word? Warm, maybe? That might be it. Odger had made him feel warm—not warm like when you were sitting in front of a fire, warm on the inside.
Was it better to be a Watcher and know you were a cut above everyone else in the world, or was it better to feel warm? Nott wasn’t sure.
From where he lay on the floor of Dun Tarm, he could see the dead deer outside the entrance. Its eye seemed to be peering in at him. You haven’t worn the helm in days, the deer whispered. You’re not thinking straight. The deer was right—what did he care about Odger anymore?
All of these thoughts had taken only a moment to pass through Nott’s mind, but Geb was impatiently prodding Nott’s ribs with the toe of his boot.
“Get up, will you?”
Nott struggled back to his feet, his head ringing from the last blow, his legs unsteady on the cracked stone floor. The stunted trees growing through the flagstones were swaying in the cold, wet breeze. Nott shivered.
Geb was grinning as he prepared to wallop him again. The older Watcher’s smile displayed the markings on his teeth, which were identical to Nott’s. Geb and Balil also had their own helm—though of course they would never let Nott use it.
“May I at least defend myself?” the younger boy asked, trying to stay upright.
“As if you could defend yourself against me!” scoffed the older boy. “You’re barely a Watcher, you little runt.”
“I’m not a runt!” Nott yelled. “I’m still growing.”
“You’re a runt who can’t follow orders.” Geb slapped Nott’s face. “This is your punishment for waiting to retrieve us. And for losing your helm besides. Try to learn something from it.”
He kicked Nott’s chest, sending him back down onto the floor. In a way, the beating felt good, because it distracted Nott from the loss of the helm. He lay there for a moment, enjoying the stillness of the hard stone beneath him.
“How long has our master been missing?” Geb asked.
“Weeks,” Nott admitted. Then, from the ground, he explained, “We found his athame. Wilkin thought we should get it back.”
“Did our master ever say you should retrieve his athame instead of looking for him? No.”
Of course Nott knew this. It was what he’d been trying to tell Wilkin all along.
“What are you supposed to do, Nott?”
“We’re supposed to wake every pair of Watchers hidden in that dark place.”
“And then?”
“We start from our special point, and we walk and walk through the darkness There, spreading out, searching for him inch by inch until he’s found.”
Nott had once imagined There to be as large as the world itself, but his master had set him straight when he taught his Watchers how to find him in that darkness outside of time. There, his master had explained, was much smaller and more focused than the space of the world. In fact, if you could keep yourself from getting lost, you could walk a circular path through all of it and end up back where you started—in a single day. That was exactly what the Watchers were supposed to do when they searched for their master.
“That is right,” said Geb. “That’s what you were supposed to do. Now we have to make up for the time you’ve lost. He’ll be angry with us for something that’s your fault.”
“You were lying there helpless when we brought you through,” Nott muttered, still resting his head on the ground. “It took hours for you to wake up. I protected you. I could have beaten you while you were lying there.”
This was not strictly true. Nott and Wilkin had actually left Geb and Balil unattended for quite a while, and had used that time to dump Briac back at the madhouse outside London. But there was no way for Geb to know that.
“Our master would have put you in your cave if you’d hurt us,” the older boy said. “He probably still will.”
He grabbed Nott by his shirt and yanked him up off the ground. In the middle of this motion, a vibration shook the crumbling walls of the lakeside fortress. All four Watchers turned to look out through Dun Tarm’s entrance.
There was a shimmering in the air just outside. As they watched, the threads of the world were being severed and snaking away from each other. Someone was using an athame to arrive at their fortress.
“It’s our master!” Geb said eagerly. “He’ll sort you out.”
In a moment, enough of the circle had been cut that Nott could see who was beyond it. There were two figures in the darkness. Neither was their master. (How could they be, when he didn’t have his athame?)
“It’s them!” Nott yelled, his eyes sharper than anyone else’s. “Wilkin, it’s them!”
Quin and her tall, redheaded companion were standing in the darkness, about to invade the privacy of the Watchers’ fort.
More than that. The edge of Nott’s helm was visible—it was sticking out the top of the pack on the tall one’s back. They had stolen the helm. Of course. It wasn’t lost at all. They were t
hieves—first their master’s athame, then the precious helmet.
“They have our helm, Wilkin!”
With an animal roar, he ripped himself out of Geb’s grasp and tripped across the floor to grab up his whipsword. As he ran toward the solidifying anomaly, he heard the others following close behind. He glanced back to see Geb pulling his own helm onto his head. Good, Nott thought, we’ll need that.
All their training, all of their master’s plans, were instantly forgotten. They charged from the fortress, weapons drawn, ready to retrieve the athame and Nott’s helm besides. And why not? Whoever succeeded in recovering those would surely become their master’s favorite, and would never, ever be sent to die in a cave.
“Knowledge of self
Knowledge of home
A clear picture of
Where I came from
Where I will go
And the speed of things between
Will see me safely back.”
Shinobu and Quin were reciting the time chant together. They stood shoulder to shoulder in the darkness There as Quin carved an anomaly back into the world.
As the threads of light and dark snaked away from each other, Shinobu saw a gray and rainy landscape—Scotland again, of course. In the distance were forested slopes shrouded in mist, and above loomed dark rock peaks. Close by, just on the other side of the anomaly, was a ruined fortress falling into a lake. The fortress that had been mentioned in the journal, of course.
The place was isolated and in ruins, but not empty. Before the anomaly was even fully open, Shinobu heard voices yelling, then saw four boys running directly toward them, brandishing weapons and looking murderous.
“Quin!” he yelled. “Pick different coordinates! Hit the athame again!”
At the same moment, though, he had the oddest thought: Here they are. Stay.
He dragged Quin backward a dozen steps as she turned the dials on the athame to take them somewhere else. But the boys were already at the anomaly. They didn’t pause but leapt across its seething border as if it were no more than an ordinary doorway in a house somewhere.