And when should she ask? What if Cernunnos came and went and Eluned had not had a chance to speak? But if Cernunnos came down to them, would Griff be able to stand it?
Dem Makepeace, on the far side of Griff and Eleri, leaned forward so that he could see Griff’s whitely set face, then said: “Sleep.”
Griff closed his eyes, and his breathing slowed, but there was no other sign that he’d obeyed. He didn’t even slump sideways. This was a power all vampires had, to put someone into a trance. They did it so they could feed without causing pain—or protest. Father had once explained that Prytennian traditional dress, with the high collars and cuffs criss-crossed with laces, had originally been designed with the idea of preventing vampires from biting you without you knowing.
It didn’t seem that was what Dem Makepeace wanted, though, since he simply straightened again. Eluned discovered why he’d thought it necessary when a tiny scraping sound behind them was all the warning she had before the amasen arrived.
Enormous snakes. Enormous snakes with curling golden horns. The first came from Eluned’s right, rearing up to look at her. Thicker than a man’s leg, and a pale cream in colour, with a very black tongue that flickered an inch from Eluned’s nose. She let her breath out in shock, but also in wonder, for its fluted head and dark eyes were beautiful.
But it was an act of will to stay still as another slid between her and Griff, and she felt the weight and warmth of it brushing past. It looped around her brother and nuzzled his hair, and Eluned reminded herself desperately that the amasen were signs of great good fortune, that they brought bountiful harvests and drove away pests, and would shed their golden horns and leave them as gifts for those particularly favoured, and that a dozen of them, in shades of green and brown and cream, surely meant that the Tenning family would be lucky for years to come if only they could get through the next few minutes without screaming.
Dem Makepeace, barely visible among the coils, scratched one between its horns, and it closed its eyes and tilted its head like a dog whose most particular itch had been attended. Greatly daring, Eluned copied the gesture, and found the patch between the horns was soft and velvety. The cream amasen leaned into her touch until a pale green fellow pushed it out of the way, and then she had four of them competing to be petted, and Eleri was cautiously taking on two, and they exchanged a glance that clearly said: “We must never tell Griff about this.”
Aunt Arianne was coming down the slope, herded by a particularly large green and tan amasen, and with a much smaller creamy-pale one wrapped around her throat like a too-tight scarf. When she reached the bottom all but that small one slid away, and as they moved the air seemed to pulse. All the moths sprang into the air, and beat chaotically upward, taking most of the light away.
“Watch,” Dem Makepeace said, again leaning to address Griff, though Eluned’s eyes had not yet adjusted enough to see Griff’s reaction. He did not move, at least, and his breathing remained steady, but under starlight alone, Eluned could only make out broad shadows. The shape of Dem Makepeace as he straightened. The outline of Aunt Arianne as she knelt to Eluned’s right. Antlers.
The Horned King could be man or hart, and at first Eluned could not decide which of these followed Aunt Arianne down from beneath the Oak, was only certain of the antlers, wide and many-pointed. Two silver torcs hung glimmering from the tines, swaying with the motion of the god’s approach. The air shuddered with every step.
The hart form, a stag at the height of his strength. He walked directly up to Eleri, and dropped his great branched head to examine the automaton sitting on the ground in front of her, snorted like a thunderclap, and then was lowering over Eluned, inside her head.
That was the only way to describe it. Cernunnos sorted through her thoughts, her feelings, her self, examining the request to visit his kingdom, shaking aside petty words to lay bare the loss, the fury, the sense of being broken, that had weighed on Eluned ever since Aunt Arianne had told them Mother and Father had died. How a part of her she’d thought central had curled up and vanished, and Hurlstone was so full of all the things she usually loved that it filled her with the belief that the missing part would come back.
The Horned King threw back his heavy head, the twin torcs ringing, and shattered the air with his cry—the stag’s harsh bellow accompanied by a genuine thunderclap out of a clear sky. The sound pounded the ears, so close to a literal blow that Eluned almost didn’t feel a tinier hurt, but she looked down to see the small amasen, a pale rope sliding toward Dem Makepeace. The flesh between Eluned’s left thumb and forefinger throbbed.
When she raised her head, Cernunnos was gone, and they were just a line of people kneeling at the base of a hill topped with a tree, and as in a dream Eluned followed along as Dem Makepeace told them it was time to go, and led them silent along the path, pausing only to prop the automaton on a stone pillar, guarded by the small amasen, before they returned to Forest House.
The warmer air brought Eluned back to herself, and she gasped and looked confusedly at a pale sky candy-striped by dawn. Then Aunt Arianne held her right hand next to Eluned’s left so they could compare matching snake bites. And, as they raised those hands toward the ornate gate Dem Makepeace had closed, glimmering on the ghostly edge of tangibility, discover keys.
ELEVEN
Rian was magnificently out of sorts.
She knew it for a nonsensical reaction. For the first time in her life she had been showered with good fortune. She had been given back her youth, and would enjoy the benefits of the Bound without the constraints and uncomfortable intimacy of the role. Physically she felt very good indeed, and she had gained both a home and financial stability. More, it promised to be a life of ease, involving a tiny amount of work and bringing with it privilege and respect. Cernunnos himself had appeared before her and accepted her in the role. On her new desk rested a formal letter of appointment, accompanied by a discreet outline of the terms of her position. And an invitation.
Too many mixed feelings. They served no purpose so Rian set them and the letters aside, taking instead a fresh sheet of paper. All this oddity with Forest House was so much distraction. The important development was that Prytennia’s deadliest spy had gone to Caerlleon to look over the circumstances of two deaths. Meanwhile, her energetic charges, after a day of recovery, were off asking innocuous questions at the nearest automaton workshops. To decide her own course, Rian needed to put her thoughts in order.
The artificial fulgite was key, she was sure of it, but she had to think beyond whoever had given it to Eiliff and Aedric. Unsealing an old bottle of ink, she tested the liquid, found it serviceable, and made herself a list.
1. Commissioned two automaton and provided round fulgite.
2. Helped arrange the commission. Lyn(d)sey.
3. Provided funding in envelopes from Sheerside House.
4. Sabotaged industrial automaton’s safety bindings.
5. Stole/took delivery of special automaton and fulgite.
6. Searched house/removed Commissions Book (when?).
7. Asked Willa to buy items from estate sale?
8. Sent sphinx shabti to Sheerside House. (Hatshepsu???)
9. Targeted by sphinx shabti (for fulgite?). Princess Leodhild?
10. Sent ravens. (Order of the Oak?)
11. Sent bull-bear.
This last entry worried her. As widely-travelled as she was, Rian had never heard of anything like that creature. And if that thing had been after the fulgite, then someone had decided that she or the children had it: a new development since there’d been no approach of that sort since the original search of the Tenning house.