“Oh, yeah. The expert on the grim world.”
“And now it seems I’ve dragged him into danger.” He sighed. “Obviously the Valks have reached Cretanis already. But we land in less than a bell. Maybe we can get to Caster before anything worse happens to him.”
“Can you call ahead and tell the police, the guard, to be on the lookout?”
Doc shook his head. “I could, but then they would be on the lookout for me, as well. I have a longstanding disagreement with Maeve the Tenth that makes it impractical for me to announce my arrival.”
“Great. I’m helping a guy that everybody in the world either works for or wants to kill.”
Doc nodded. “That about sums it up.”
The Frog Prince, Noriko and Doc once more at the controls, made a sweet, smooth landing at the Suliston airstrip. The strip had its lights on, but those beacons winked to darkness almost as soon as the plane taxied to a halt inside the designated hangar.
Over his shoulder, Doc called, “Do you have the papers?”
Jean-Pierre’s voice floated faintly back up to him. “Right here.” Doc heard the man clinking coins through his hands. He smiled.
As he and Noriko went through their shutdown checklist, he felt a sudden stir of cold air as exterior hatches were opened. Moments later, he saw Jean-Pierre walk into view before the plane and approach the arriving officials. Jean-Pierre moved among them, talking comfortably, gesturing proudly at the plane, dropping coins into hands with slippery ease.
In just a few beats he was back, sauntering into the cockpit. “They’re our very good friends,” he said, “and anxious not to annoy our employer with irrelevant questions or paperwork. As long as the coin holds out, of course.”
“Of course,” Doc said. “Who’s our employer?”
“Why, that famous construction magnate, Joseph of Neckerdam.” Jean-Pierre gestured like a man stating a fact of nature. “He’s biggest, he’s boss.”
“Stands to reason. Now go out and arrange to have us refueled and served. Hire Joseph a lorry or a car. And ask about any Valkyries landing.”
“Perfection is never enough for you, Doc.”
The road was a one-lane blacktop situated between towering ranks of trees—the biggest, most gnarled oaks Harris had ever seen. They leaned across the road and stretched limbs down as though waiting to swat unwary motorists off the road. There were no streetlights, no reflective signs on dangerous turns, no stripes down the middle to indicate lanes. In the car they’d hired—a huge convertible roadster, the personal property of one of the airfield owners—Jean-Pierre roared ahead with a singular indifference to the fate of the vehicle or its passengers.
Harris clutched his jacket tight around him; it was inadequate in the cold air whipping across them. “First thing we get back,” he shouted, “I invent the seatbelt.”
“Seat restraints aren’t new,” Doc shouted back. “They’re just not necessary.” He had Duncan Blackletter’s tracer in his hand; its screen cast a green glow on his features. He frowned at it.
“Ask Jean-Pierre to drive smack into one of those big trees, then try to tell me that again.”
Doc waved his objections away. “Shut off your screen device, would you? You too, Gaby. They’re interfering with this.”
“Sure.”
Doc raised his voice even louder so Jean-Pierre, Noriko and Alastair, in the front seat, and Joseph in the rumble seat could also hear him. “Adennum is a village. I don’t think we need worry too much with it. Near it is an ancient site of worship, the Adennum Complex. It has a great hill, circle stones, standing stones, radiating lines and paths; it covers a lot of ground. It’s sacred to the goddess Sull, Lady of the Dark World, Bringer of Death and Knowledge, and it’s very old.”
Gaby tried futilely to keep the wind from whipping her hair into a nightmarish tangle. “You think Duncan Blackletter will be at the complex.”
“Yes. The village is just a village. The complex is a place of power.”
“What does he want there?”
“We’ll find out. We’ll look at the site. If he hasn’t arrived yet, we’ll set up for him. A couple of us will go on to Beldon, the capital, and see whether we can find out anything about Caster Roundcap or the Valkyries.
“But if they’re here now . . . we move against them.” He looked back at the tracer. “I get a signal. There are men of the grim world within a few destads.”
The village of Adennum was still at this hour of the night. Harris saw only glimpses of the houses as they roared along the village’s winding streets, but he marveled at the strange architecture. The homes looked like small, round hills built of irregular stone. No two were alike in size or contours, but all doors opened to the east. Soft light emerged through the second-story shuttered windows. Harris thought that someone had erected tall, thin white columns all over the village, but realized he was looking at enormous beeches lining the roadways. Then the car was past the town and into the forest again.
After another mile, the trees fell away to the left and the travelers could look out over a large plain. Harris could see the silhouettes of standing stones, lone sentinels set up at intervals in a straight line. He saw small circles of stones laid into the earth.
Doc kept his attention on the tracer. “Not here,” he said. “But getting closer.”
The field of stones went on for hundreds of yards, then the trees encroached again and hid them from sight.
A few minutes more, then Alastair shouted, “Someone is conjuring nearby. I can see trails of overflow power.”
“The great hill, probably. It’s the correct direction.” Doc leaned forward to tap Jean-Pierre’s shoulder. He pointed to a turnoff marked by a standing stone. “Go past. The approach may be guarded.”
Jean-Pierre passed the turnoff, but a few hundred feet further found a spot where he could pull off the road behind a screen of trees.
Doc said, “Noriko, you’re vanguard.”
She nodded. From the boot of the car she removed her scabbarded sword. She slung it over her shoulder by its cord, exchanged a quick look with Jean-Pierre, and loped off into the trees.
Doc gathered the rest and followed at a slower pace. Harris watched with interest as they fell without discussion into formation to pass through the trees: Doc was first and center, Alastair and Jean-Pierre yards out to either side. Joseph solemnly walked some distance back from Doc; Gaby and Harris trailed him. Gaby had her rifle slung by its strap. She kept her attention on the surrounding woods.
Jean-Pierre was first to notice a white scar cut into an oak branch off to his left. “Noriko’s mark.” He went to look at it, then waved the others over.
Harris took a quick look at the man slumped at the base of the tree. He was short, muscular, not bad looking. His gray suit was streaked with dirt and leaves. His face was familiar. “This is the guy who shot at me when I was driving,” Harris said.
Jean-Pierre looked unhappy. “Blackletter probably has a lot of men here if he can spread them around guarding the approach.”
Ahead they saw lights through the trees—stationary lights, very bright, very high—and became even more cautious, creeping along with teeth-grinding slowness. Soon enough the trees thinned and gave way to an open field. Jean-Pierre and the others crouched low and moved carefully forward from tree to tree.
Ahead of them was a treeless hill; it was a rounded cone, perfect and artificial. Wooden poles, more than a dozen, rose from the lower crest of the summit. At the top of each was a spotlight shining down on the hilltop.
There was a great deal of equipment set up on the summit. Harris saw dozens of wooden cabinets the width of a man and twice as tall. Each one was wired with flickering lights, green and red, that put him in mind of Christmas trees. More wooden cabinets were laid lengthwise across the tops of the upright ones. He could see silhouettes moving around in the center of the arrangement, but they were just silhouettes to him. There was a steady motor noise from the top of the hill.