Revenant

THIRTY-TWO

Quinton found a route that took us north and east, avoiding Estremoz and a reported traffic accident that had brought the main route along IP2 to a standstill. It was longer, but I doubted we were losing any time if Purlis and Rui had gone the other way. The countryside was rugged and dry, dotted with standing stones, strange mounds, ruins, and tiny towns with a single street of low plastered buildings scattered along the edges of fields and groves of olive and orange trees. We passed by a cork plantation and the musty odor of the thick, spongy bark drying in barns off the roadside clung to the car for miles.

I could see dark flights of birds rising into the sky far ahead, flocking in momentary illusions of monsters and gods, then falling back toward the ground again. Ghost armies marched over the harvested fields and clashed in the roadside barrens, safely at a distance behind the glass and steel of the tiny car.

We were still a few miles away from Monforte when a dark shape exploded into the sky ahead.

“What was that?” I asked.

Quinton and Carlos both craned their necks and peered at the sky.

“I don’t know—another flock of birds?” Quinton asked. “It’s hard to see.”

“Drive faster,” Carlos said. “It came from the ground ahead.”

“Do you know what it is?”

“We all do.”

“What?” I asked.

He shook his head but kept his eyes on the sky, leaning forward from the backseat to stare over my shoulder.

The road dipped toward a bridge over a lazy curl of river and we sped along, flying for a moment as the slope dropped below the wheels. In the distance I saw the dark shape, like a mirage shimmering in the sun, turn in the sky and swoop back toward us, diving toward the land.

It vanished into the landscape just a mile or so ahead, shaking the earth for a moment. Then the air was still and unnaturally quiet except for the whine of our engine. A disturbance of dust hung in the air where the thing had crashed just off the road amid a ragged stand of cork oaks in a narrow band of ground between the highway and the river. The land was below the embanked road and partially hidden from view by scruffy shrubs and trees planted at the highway’s edge, but the late-summer heat had left them drooping and even with the river water, the screen of leaves was thin enough to see into the sunken field.

“It’s down,” I said, excitement and anxiety clutching my heart and lungs and leaving a silvery taste in my mouth.

As we approached, a second smaller shape leapt up from the ground and rocketed into the sky while a man-sized thing darted away into the emptiness of the Alentejano plains with the nasal scream of a two-stroke engine being hard pressed.

Quinton jerked the car to a stop off the side of the highway a few yards from where the plantings gaped and showed a group of stones that stood side by side over a circle of gravel amid the wildflowers and grass. We all scrambled out of the car and ran toward the stones and the lingering smell of gasoline exhaust and motor oil.

“Dirt bike,” Quinton said. Then he pointed across the river. “Must have been waiting on the other side of the water and took off across the next field.”

Carlos and I weren’t looking at the fields. I was staring at the stones—three taller than he was and one cut halfway down—while he looked into the sky.

“Night Dragon,” he said, and shoved us both to the ground as a shadow spread over us and then stooped like a bird of prey.

It made no sound and the shade of its passing was insubstantial like that made by a thin cloud passing the sun. But the effect of its claws scraping the gravel was not—two sets of three straight lines scored the small rocks on either side of us with a stinking chemical odor and trails of smoke.

We all scrambled to our feet the moment it was past and ran for the rocks, crouching to remain below them so the flying monstrosity would have to come down where the odds were in our favor. With the sun shining, it was hard to see the construct of bones and magic as it wheeled in the sky.

“Someone has been practicing,” said Carlos.

The Night Dragon swooped for us again, silent and leaving only the trail of its shadow in the sky.

“Avoid the claws,” Carlos said as he ducked out from the shelter of the stones.

“I remember,” I said, recalling the Night Dragon that Carlos and I had destroyed the previous year. The claw Carlos had picked up from the wreckage of the thing had smoked and dripped corrosive acid.

The shadowy construct tilted its wings to pursue Carlos and clipped one against the ground, pinwheeling as it lost control and crashed toward the rocks. It was much more solid than any of the previous versions and the ground quivered as it hit. Quinton and I ran in opposite directions as the nightmare beast plowed into the standing stones, dissolving into a scatter of bones, smoking claws, and the stink of rot.

“That felt a little too easy,” Quinton said.

“It wasn’t meant to harm us. The dreamspinner simply ran away before he could be caught here and left the creature to self-destruct,” Carlos said. “The drache would have fallen apart like the others.”

“Does that mean we got lucky?”

“Very. Chances are good the rest of the party is at Monforte. We may have a chance to stop them if we go before the boy can warn them. It’s a pity we won’t have time to collect the bones and deny them that resource if we hope to catch them.”

He started back to the car at a run and we followed, but I was the slowest.

“What is this place?” I asked, looking at the rocks over my shoulder.

“It’s a dolmen—ceremonial standing stones.”

“I know that, but look at the rocks themselves.”

They turned and saw what I’d seen.

The rocks, three just taller than a man making a jagged row and the fourth cut short later, huddled together at one side of an oval of gravel that stood at their feet. They seemed like unremarkable stones colored gray and tan with green lichen eating slowly on the tops until a cloud moved aside and the sun struck, leaving a deep red stain the color of blood splashed on the rocks. Another errant cloud passed by and the stain disappeared, leaving the rocks a simple gray again.

“That’s eerie,” Quinton said.

“Do you have a camera?” I asked.

“I have the laptop—it has a camera and the battery is good.”

“Take a picture of the rocks. I want to find out if there’s anything more to know about these.”

Carlos was impatient with my request as Quinton grabbed his laptop and used the screen camera to take the photo. “Most likely the stones are merely convenient to where Rui is now—in Monforte.”

“What if they’re not?” I asked. “If we miss something at this stage, we may never catch up to them in time to stop their plan. Once the Hell Dragon is loose, our odds go down.”

He glared at me. “If we continue to linger, we shall have no chance of catching them at all.”

“Our chances aren’t great on that score no matter how you look at it. If we don’t have a backup, we’re screwed,” I snapped back.

He growled but didn’t reply.

By the time we were done arguing, Quinton had packed the laptop back into the bag and was ready to drive on. Carlos didn’t insist on further delay to pick up the bones, though I could tell it irritated him.

We pushed hard to reach Monforte and hoped the boy who’d been playing with dragons hadn’t paused to watch what happened.

Monforte was a village just off the IP2, but it had the unusual distinction of having seven churches to serve a listed population of three thousand people, a shrine, and the expansive Roman ruins on which the current town was built, as well as the remains of an encircling castle wall. It was quaint, well maintained, and haunted as hell. The churches weren’t the problem so much as the location. Armies had clashed in the fields nearby for millennia. Seen in the Grey, the soil of tiny, pastoral Monforte was red with blood.

We drove past a group of three small churches that climbed up the hill from the highway, a stone wall enclosing them and a steep path winding from the lowest to the highest, each drastically different from the others. The lowest one, sitting beside the highway like a mushroom, was a cross-shaped building with a central, cylindrical tower and small square projections on each side, all plastered smooth as a wedding cake and painted white with wide bands of deep yellow trim. The shape of it reminded me of Eastern Orthodox churches without the onion domes. Farther up the hill was a tall, narrow church with pointed square towers and peeling white paint that revealed hints of the stone underneath. At the top was a wide, low building with a crenellated roofline, plastered a newly painted white with the same deep yellow trim as the lowest church. The middle church looked drab compared to its neighbors that were so clean and bright that the white plaster glowed in the sunlight. On the road opposite the middle church tilted a tiny white and gold building with a cross on the roof over the date 1883, and a sign nearby that read RUA DO SENHOR DA BOA MORTE—Lord of Good Death Road.

We continued past the churches and the shrine to dying well and into the red-roofed village arrayed around the hill like the skirt of a ball gown. The steep, narrow road was interrupted by crossings that led to staircases instead of sidewalks as it wound up the hill to the heart of the village. We passed a grove of the ever-present olive trees and an apartment building with children’s playground equipment inside a white-painted wall. Then we turned and crossed suddenly into the old village itself, crumbling stone walls holding back the hillside behind squat buildings with red roofs and peeling paint. A modern steel staircase led from the side of the road up into the remains of an old castle through the embracing fortress walls. We drove past and around, into a small town square called Praça da República, where we parked the car and continued on foot, diagonally through the square toward the farthest of the church towers that faced the open plaza.

The streets were paved entirely in gray stone, and the sidewalks and central square in marble cobbles. Young lemon trees had been planted at regular intervals along the perimeter of the square, and the leaves gave a citrus fragrance to the air around the central fountain and its tiny potted palms. The buildings here were also white trimmed with wide bands of golden yellow. As we passed into the narrow street at the corner that led to our goal, we saw the Igreja Matriz do Monforte was painted the same way. It was a small, square two-story building with a single window above the door and a narrow three-story bell tower on one side. Just next to the bell tower was an even smaller, narrower building that bore a skull and crossbones over the narrow, arched doorway.

The church door was closed and we could hear the sound of the priest and parishioners within, praying aloud. We walked toward the tiny chapel of bones next door, past a rambling house in some state of reconstruction or renovation that had peeled back parts of its stucco to reveal old wood and stones beneath and release the musty smell of ancient plaster and rot into the sunlit air.

A slim monk in a long black robe stepped out of the chapel. He had something cradled in his arms and as he turned to close the door, the cowl of his robe fell back.

I felt as if I’d been stabbed in the gut.

“Rui,” Carlos said.

As if he’d heard him, Rui turned and looked at us. He made a gesture and my hand ached for a moment before I screamed in agony, falling to the cobbles as if I’d been sucked down by the earth itself.

Quinton threw himself down beside me, trying to scoop me into his arms while Carlos seemed to reach out for his old student as he had for Amélia when she held Quinton underwater.

But the bone mage had another trick ready. A wall of bones and rocks flew up between them, knocking Carlos back and disrupting his spell as he vanished from my sight.

Nearby, a two-stroke motorcycle revved its engine and though I could hear running feet, I couldn’t turn my head to see anyone but Quinton.

As suddenly as the pain and pulling had come on, they ended, and I sat up so fast, I clocked Quinton on the jaw with my forehead. I couldn’t see Carlos anywhere, but a handful of people had emerged from the church to see what was happening.

Quinton scooped me up and put me on my feet, saying, “Are you all right now?”

“Yes,” I said, leaning back against the partially deconstructed building to catch my breath. “We have to find Carlos.”

He held my good hand and we started forward, passing the curious churchgoers and climbing over the mess of uprooted cobbles and bones that now littered the road in front of the church in a straight line from side to side. The parishioners watched us go and turned as a body to return to the church, wearing puzzled expressions as we paid them no heed and offered no explanation. The priest had come to the door to usher them back inside and he, too, stared at us as we went past.

The street beside the church was as narrow as an alley and opened into a much wider road and a sudden blossoming of bigger streets and intersections at acute angles. A row of elderly men, sitting in plastic chairs beside a café that wasn’t open, stared down the road toward the green triangle of a park ahead. They muttered and gossiped to one another and looked us over with curious glances.

Quinton ran to the nearest one and asked, “Which way did the motorcycle go?” He clenched his hands in frustration and made a face, thinking until he could formulate the question in bad Portuguese. “Uh . . . Para onde foi a motocicleta?”

The old men exchanged glances, canvassed their opinions, and then pointed downhill toward the park.

“Obrigado!” Quinton called back as we ran toward the park and the swiftly diminishing sound of the unseen motorcycle.

The park was empty for no reason I could see and we found Carlos sitting on one of the benches, angry and a little dazed. He had pressed his left hand to the back of his head and there was blood dribbling slowly between his fingers.

“What happened?” I asked, sitting down next to him.

“I . . . am not sure. Rui seems to have been prepared for me. His young friend with the motorcycle—the dreamspinner—raised a construct . . . something I haven’t seen before, as was the illusion over Castelo São Jorge.” He was puzzled, distracted, annoyed more at himself than Rui and the dreamspinner. His speech continued to wander a bit as if he were thinking aloud as he continued. “It might have been something prepared and simply thrown, as Griffin did with the Night Dragon at the temple. But, be that as it may, it blocked my path and threw me here. I had no time to dismantle it. It fell apart in a moment—his constructs are powerful, but they don’t last—but by then the motorcycle had outrun me.”

“They do that,” Quinton said.

“Not to me.”

“Yeah, well, you aren’t your usual indestructible Angel of Death self at the moment, are you?”

Carlos winced. “No.”

Quinton stood up. “I’ll get the car and we can backtrack to the church to find out what Rui took.”

“I’m not incapable of walking the distance.”

“Maybe not, but if you try it and don’t make it, I’m not going to be the one to pick you up and carry you,” Quinton replied.

“You are the soul of generosity,” Carlos said.

“You must be feeling better—your snide is showing.”

I stayed with Carlos, who grew increasingly snarky as his head stopped bleeding and his frustration increased, while Quinton brought the car and we all went back to the chapel together.

Monforte’s Capela dos Ossos was a surprise—especially in contrast to the dark, dour atmosphere of the famous chapel at Évora, which had been, frankly, horrible. Monforte’s chapel of bones was tiny—the smallest of the three we’d seen—and oddly charming. The sun streamed in through the open door, bouncing off the white walls of the narrow street outside and augmented by discreet lamps and candles. The room was only four or five feet wide by six or seven feet deep. The altar, not much more than a deep shelf, was covered in candles and flowers obscuring nearly all of the plain white cloth covering it. The cross was hung above it in a small white plaster niche flanked by two square white columns topped with gilded leaves. The scent of flowers and candle wax wiped out any stink of mortar or rot in the walls that were almost entirely faced with skulls and the rounded ends of long bones. A garden stood behind the chapel, and the smell of fruit trees and flowering plants seeped in as well.

A section of the bony wall near the altar had been knocked in and a skull was conspicuously absent.

“I don’t think we have to guess what was taken,” I said.

“Skull of a repentant thief,” Carlos confirmed, looking at the hole.

“And we’d better get out of here before Mass ends, or someone may think we took it,” Quinton added, hearing the bells above us beginning to toll the end of service.

We hurried out, closing the door behind us, and made it to the car as the first attendees exited the church.

As was fitting for a Sunday in a churchgoing community, we drove sedately out of town. We backtracked past the dolmen, but the drachen bones were gone and Carlos’s glower was so black that Quinton and I both had to retreat to the car until he’d caught his temper. Then we investigated the dolmen for any clues we could gather. The stones sat above an energy nexus, which wasn’t unusual for a dolmen, but it wasn’t quite like any nexus I had seen before—the fringe realm of the Grey seemed more present and yet thinner over the pool of gravel. The worlds seemed slippery and unstable there, and I felt slightly drunk walking across the bed of small stones as if the frozen temporaclines scattered over the ground were actual sheets of ice, enveloped in an intoxicating fog.

“This is the strangest nexus I’ve ever been near,” I said, moving with care back to the scruffy grass at the far edge of the dolmen.

“The barriers between the worlds are always particularly thin at a dolmen,” Carlos said, irritated and frowning at the ground.

“I know that, but this is not like any other I’ve seen. It doesn’t feel more powerful—it doesn’t feel particularly powerful at all, really—but it feels . . . different.”

Carlos growled, staring at the stones and their oval of mussed gravel. “As if something waits . . . but there is nothing to be seen. The young dreamspinner has talent, but little training. This nexus may be especially easy for him to access, particularly amenable to his talent. He needs to make a good show. I don’t imagine Rui is pleased with the boy at the moment for risking the bones in the open.”

“On the other hand, the kid did save his ass, and he is just a kid,” I said. “I saw him from the window of the house in Lisbon. He’s probably hoping to impress Rui and doesn’t really know what he’s gotten into. But I don’t see how the Kostní Mágové are going to raise their Hell Dragon with such a weak dreamspinner no matter how easy the nexus is to use—you told me only ley weavers and dreamspinners can raise drachen.”

“That is not what I said,” he snapped. “A Night Dragon can only be raised by such mages. Some drachen require them, but the dire beasts—the Inferno Dragão, being one—are compound constructs. They require more than one discipline, and considerable power. The dreamspinner’s work is a mere spark to start the spell. Rui will not care how young or ill-trained the boy is so long as he gets his spark.” He turned his back on the dolmen and started for the car. “There is no further profit in this discussion.”

The drive back to Casa Ribeira was tensely silent and far too long. Each of us kept our thoughts to ourselves, constrained by a feeling of failure. Purlis and the Kostní Mágové had all they needed to raise the Hell Dragon and we had nothing to stop them.