Kingfisher(54)

“Where— What is this place?”

“It’s Tanne’s shrine.”

“Tanne.”

She gestured at the crescent of enormous, hoary trees around the ruins, so tall their lofty tips seemed to lean together as their great boughs stretched toward the sky. A rosy wave swept up her face, making her red hair, glowing in the sunlight, even more fiery. “This is his forest. My grandfather has been the shrine guardian here all of his life since he was twelve. This old shrine was built thousands of years before anybody discovered the gold behind it. The miners ran that guardian out and let the shrine fall down while they took out all the gold. Now travelers come to see the ruins and fill their bottles with water fresh out of the earth. But nobody remembers the forest god. People born here pass the tales along. When my grandfather can’t climb up here any longer, then one of our family will take his place.”

“You?”

She shrugged, almost smiling at the thought. “Maybe. Tanne chooses. Sometimes with a dream. Sometimes, if the wind is just right, the one who is chosen hears him call.”

“He called me,” the old man said. “I heard him clear as an owl’s cry, and I came. Up every morning, down the hill at sunset by myself for decades until my knee gave out and Sara here came along to help me.” He looked at her fondly, added, “I had no idea you could shoot that thing.”

“Neither did I. We found it in the cave,” she explained. “I think some miner left it there a hundred years ago.” Her smile deepened with satisfaction. “Now we know it works.”

“Forgive the knights if you can,” Leith said grimly. “Nothing they did here was sanctioned by King Arden, who has deep respect for all the gods and goddesses of Wyvernhold. Those young men are arrogant louts on an idiotic quest; their behavior here was despicable and cowardly, and I’m sorry not to have come in time to make that clear to them.” He paused, gazing at Pierce, his expression still dark. “I am enormously grateful you did not shoot my impulsive son. My other impulsive son.”

“Oh,” she sighed, “me, too.”

“You have another?” the old man said, surprised. “He didn’t come running to help?”

“He went off in a car full of young women to look for a garage. No telling when we’ll see him again.”

“A garage.”

“Our car is stalled on the road below. It shut itself down for its own reasons; our driver can’t get it started again, and none of our phones work either.”

The old man raised a shaggy brow, musing a bit. “Everything just went dead?”

“Everything.”

“For no reason.”

“None.”

“Well.” He scratched his head and smiled a little; above him tree boughs swayed and spoke in a wind from the sea. “That happens, sometimes, around the shrine. On the odd occasion—rare, mind you—that the forest senses it might need some help. Go down and try your car again,” he added, as Pierce and Leith stared wordlessly at him. “It may have cured itself by now.”

When they reached the bottom of the hill, the limo engine was gently idling, and the tow truck from which Val had emerged was on its way back down the mountain.





16


Carrie sat with Zed in his narrow bed, sharing a bottle of wine and the events of their long days. It was past midnight. Zed had come home from the Pharaoh Theater; Carrie had stayed late with Ella, scrubbing the hoary kitchen floors. Around them, the small cabin was a shadowy mix of candlelight and camp lantern. Thrown together as a duck blind, remodeled into a rental with the world’s tiniest kitchen, it still smelled of damp logs, and occasionally sprouted a mushroom. A potbellied stove, one broken leg on a brick, exuded the scent of damp ash. There was an actual braided rug on the splintery floor. Outside, the night itself was soundless, no weather and a sky so clear the lace of streams through the long grasses ran with moonlight instead of water. The slough made its own noises: hooting, rustling, grunting, and peeping. Distant car engines mingled with the constant musings of the sea. Carrie’s ears sorted through every noise, pricked for the sound of Merle’s voice.

“What is he, anyway?” she wondered. “Magic?”

“Merle?”

“I always thought he was just demented. My mother always said so. But no matter how crazy you want to be, you can’t turn yourself into a wolf without knowing something more than most. Where did he learn it?”

“There’s magic around.”

“Not in Chimera Bay.”

“There’s Merle,” Zed said. “There’s the Friday Nite ritual. There’s mystery in that old hotel.”

She poured herself more wine, took a hefty swallow. “There’s Stillwater.”

Zed looked at her silently, quizzically; in that moment, she made up her mind about what she had been pondering since the afternoon she had walked into Stillwater’s restaurant to talk to him and got a glimpse of something in his face too old to be still alive and human at the same time. Eat, he had said.

“And I did,” she said hollowly.

“What?”

She stirred, getting her thoughts in order, what to tell, what not to so that he wouldn’t worry. “I told you that Stillwater wants me to work for him.”