Sapphira plodded forward, hoping to delay her return to the lower realms. She took a well-trodden path that promised no obstacles to a traveler who knew its twists and turns. With tears flowing, she counted her slow, careful steps out loud while struggling to conquer her tortured thoughts.
“Nine . . . ten . . . eleven. Seven more until I turn. . . . Of course Paili will be fine. Thirteen . . . fourteen . . . after all, now she can eat good food instead of old cabbages and dried beans . . . sixteen . . . seventeen . . . and that woman is so sweet . . . eighteen . . . Turn here.” She pivoted to the left and continued. “One . . . two . . . All my other sisters are happy now. Four . . . five . . . six . . . so Paili will be happy, too . . . seven . . . eight. And Acacia and I won’t have to worry about her getting so sick again. . . . nine . . . ten . . . That fever nearly killed Paili and Awven, and now that Penicillin’s been discovered, it doesn’t make sense to risk their lives . . . twelve . . . thirteen . . . so now Acacia and I can concentrate on . . .” She halted and tapped her finger on her chin. “Concentrate on what? Staring at each other for several more centuries?”
She turned back toward the little cottage in the distance, barely able to see two lanterns now glowing brightly at the front door. A man and woman stooped together, embracing Paili warmly.
A tear trickled down Sapphira’s cheek, but she didn’t bother to wipe it off. It didn’t matter. Nothing else mattered. Even if she and Acacia had to live under a billion tons of rocks forever, giving such a glorious new life to someone so precious was worth it all. Her sweet little sister finally had a home . . . and people who loved her.
Sapphira ignited her cross and ran the rest of the way to the portal.
April, 1935
Elam slung his knapsack over his shoulder and slid a silver coin across the counter. “Will that cover it?” he asked.
“Quite well, laddie.” The innkeeper tipped his beret. “Come back again.”
Elam nodded at the floppy-eared old man, then pushed open a heavy oaken door and strode out into the misty dawn. Glasgow smelled worse than usual, oilier somehow, certainly more sulfurous than the day before. He pulled a beret from his trousers pocket and pressed it over his head. Or maybe he just noticed the odors more. When he worked in the Clydebank shipyards, the stench of tar and sweaty men masked everything else, and now that he had been out of a job for a couple of months, his sense of smell was probably more sensitive.
Elam turned back toward the one-story flat he had called home for the past two years. Although he had shared his ratty suite with a family of eight, this hostel was more than adequate in such tough times, and the innkeeper was fair and friendly. He laid his hand on the lintel, and, using the Scottish accent he had picked up over the years, whispered, “May the Lord bless the keeper of this house, and may he and his wife live long and well on the earth.”
He dug into his pocket again and felt his leather purse, fingering the few coins that still weighed it down, enough for a brick of soap now and then, but not enough for lodging. He pulled his beret low over his brow and marched toward the road leading out of town. It was best to go back to camping in the woods, at least until hard times lifted. Ever since they finished building the
Queen Mary
, jobs had dropped off at the docks like ailing old men in the TB sanitariums.
As he strode past his church, dozens of people streamed from the sanctuary. He stopped for a moment and enjoyed the sea of smiling faces. The sunrise service had been resplendent, filled with wondrous choruses for the risen Savior, but Elam had slipped out right before the benediction. While hardly ever missing worship, he couldn’t risk partaking in fellowship. There were always too many questions and never enough answers.
Elam marched on mile after mile. Once he passed the outskirts of the city, he took a side road, a familiar dirt and pebble path that wound its way through sheep pastures on its hilly course to Hannah’s cottage. It had been at least three weeks since he last checked on her, so making camp in the woods behind her boarding house seemed a good choice for the night.
As he strolled by a pasture of grazing horses, he reached into his pocket and felt the Ovulum. Since it had been cold and quiet for decades, his delay in visiting Hannah probably hadn’t mattered. The slayers were likely chasing down one of the hundreds of misleading clues he had left for them in London.
He stopped in front of the cottage and lowered his knapsack to the path, imagining Devin and Palin conducting their search. In his mind, they leaned over to hunt through a dustbin in a foggy London alley and bumped heads so hard they fell back on their posteriors. Elam laughed out loud.
“May I help ye, laddie?” a sweet voice called.
Elam gulped. Hannah! She had come outside, and he hadn’t noticed! Why wasn’t she working the charity breakfast lines? He tipped his beret and tried to squeeze out some intelligible words through his narrowing throat. “Uh, yes. I, uh . . .”
“Are ye sick?” Hannah stepped off her porch and walked straight up to him, her long dress seeming to sweep her petite body gracefully forward. “Do ye need a place to stay?”
Elam grabbed his beret and wrung it with both hands. “Uh, yes, but I’m running short on money.”
“Atween the wind and the wa, are ye?” Hannah snatched up his knapsack, hooked him by the arm, and pulled him toward the cottage, her long auburn hair bouncing in rhythm with her gait. “Don’t let it ever be said that Hannah MacKay turned out an impoverished laddie.”
Elam gave in to Hannah’s persistent tug and followed her into the cottage’s front room. As the door swung closed, the rusty hinges squawked a loud complaint. Elam glanced around casually. Having sneaked in through the quieter back door several times to check on her, he was already familiar with the layout a small but tidy dining area to the left, a cluttered little kitchen to the right, and, lining a short hallway straight ahead, four perfectly square bedrooms, three for tenants and one for Hannah. During those visits in the wee hours, Elam sometimes crept into her room, feeling the need, as a faithful shepherd of dragons, to stand and gaze at her as she slept. Still unmarried after all these centuries, she always slept alone.
She stopped at the first bedroom on the right and peeked inside. “You’re in luck. Mr. Logan took his chimney brooms. He and his boy won’t be back until at least tomorrow night.” She laid his knapsack on the floor and pointed at a washbasin. “Water’s there if ye wants a cat’s lick before supper.”
As she turned to leave, Elam laid a hand on her shoulder. “Wait!”
Hannah spun back, her friendly smile growing and her brow rising again in anticipation. “Are ye not throu?”
Elam shuddered. Hannah’s Scottish accent was forced, and her idioms were slightly off-kilter. If the slayer ever heard her speak, he’d unmask her right away.
“What’s the matter?” Hannah asked. “Short o’ the Greek?” She stared at him with her wise old eyes, nearly as ancient as the earth itself, yet framed by a smooth, narrow face. Her gaze seemed to attach to his mind and absorb information.
He tried to shake off the brain lock, but it was no use. Something was up, and Hannah knew it. The Ovulum suddenly grew warm in his pocket, a good warmth, a prodding warmth. The prophet within the glass shell didn’t always need words to let his will be made known.
Elam let out a long sigh. He had to tell her everything.
Devin pulled Excalibur from its scabbard and lifted it in front of his face. The shining blade divided his view, slicing the image of Palin in half as the squire donned the final garment in his battle array, a dark leather surcoat with a red dragon emblazoned on the front. Five hundred years had passed since he last strapped on his scabbard, but everything still seemed to fit.
Devin pointed the sword at Palin’s head. “Does your new helmet suit you?”
Palin sat on his bed and rocked the domed helmet back and forth over his mop of black hair. “Yes. It’s not the same style as my old one, but it will do.”
Devin resheathed Excalibur and leaned out of their second-floor window. A fresh breeze blew streams of mist across a triplet of castle turrets rising from the adjacent wing. He breathed in the moist air and smiled. “It seems that your old model isn’t fashionable with the mannequins in the Scottish museums. The first two castles had nothing but full body armor costumes. Can you imagine going into battle in one of those?”
Palin took off his helmet and laid it on his lap. “Maybe you should inform the museum curators of proper battle attire in the sixth century.” He rapped the top of the helmet with his knuckles. “Or perhaps
we
need to be informed of proper, twentieth-century battle attire.”
Still gazing out the window, Devin pulled up a necklace chain and let the candlestone dangle in front of his surcoat. “I know you think my obsession rather odd, but we are hunting dragons who are disguised in human skin, wolves in sheep’s clothing. Our integrity would be in question if we were to appear as anything but slayers when we confront one of the devil lizards.” He smoothed out the emblem on his vest, a screaming dragon with an arrow protruding from its belly. “I am not about to bow to hypocrisy just because our raiment is out of step with the vagaries of this century’s fashions. Unpretentious and unmasked, we have stripped the dragons’ disguises with the point of a sword, and we will continue in that sacred tradition.”
“As you wish, my liege.” Palin drew his sword, his eyes scanning the blade as it emerged from its scabbard. “It is freshly sharpened for the ceremonial undressing of the queen of the demon witches.”
“Excellent!” Devin raised the candlestone in front of his eyes. “If this Logan fellow speaks the truth, Thigocia will soon be ours. The witch who whelped the entire coven will finally be exposed.”
“And then only two more,” Palin said, shoving his sword back in place.
“Yes. I will repay Hartanna for wounding me, but” Devin clenched a fist around the candlestone’s chain “I want Clefspeare’s blood more than any other. To use his power to extend our lives would be the ultimate victory.”
Chapter 2
Still facing Hannah, Elam reached back into his mind and recalled the ancient Hebrew he once spoke so well. Now the language seemed foreign, but the words came quickly enough. “I know who you are,” he said.
Hannah’s mouth dropped open. She sputtered, also speaking Hebrew. “What . . . what did you say?”
Elam slowly withdrew the Ovulum from his pocket and lifted it in his open palm. “I know who you are.”
Hannah grabbed Elam’s arm, pulled him into the bedroom, and slammed the door. “Who are you? How did you get the Ovulum?”
Elam raised a shushing finger to his lips. “Are any other boarders here?”
“None who speak Hebrew!” She gripped his wrist so tightly, pain shot along his arm, making the Ovulum tremble in his palm. “If you are a slayer, you were a fool to come with neither sword nor shield.” She squeezed even harder, revealing a strength that belied her petite frame. “Now, I will ask again, and you will answer. Who are you, and how did you get the Ovulum?”
“I am Elam, son of Shem,” he said, laying a hand on his chest. “The Ovulum came to me by the will of Elohim. Since Noah was my grandfather, and Methuselah was his grandfather, it rightfully belongs to me.”
Hannah gasped. “Noah was your grandfather? How is that possible? You are not more than sixteen years old, eighteen at the most!”
Elam extended a hand and gently placed his palm on her cheek. “How old are you, Thigocia?”
Hannah released his arm and backed away, her voice spiking with alarm. “Where did you hear that name?”
He stepped toward her, but when he noted the anguish in her eyes, he halted and spoke in a soothing tone. “I have kept watch over you for fifteen hundred years. I prevented Devin and Palin from finding you at least a dozen times.”
Hannah backed up against the bedroom’s far wall and flattened her palms against the plaster. “You” she swallowed hard “you have been following me around for centuries?” She glanced at an open window, just an arm’s length from her hand. “Why should I believe a word you are saying?”
Elam raised the Ovulum onto his fingertips. “Because I bear the dwelling place of the Eye of the Oracle.” He drew it closer to his face and said, “
Fiat lux
.” The glass began to glow, and a nebulous crimson cloud took shape within.
A look of curiosity swept across Hannah’s face. She took a half step forward, craning her neck. “Can you see him?”
The cloud congealed into the shape of an eye, bright and clear. Dozens of reddish hues painted the pupil, the iris, and every serpentine capillary. Elam nodded at the pulsing egg. “Yes, but he rarely speaks, he ”
A squeak sounded, the whine of the front door’s rusty hinges. Elam spun around and laid his ear on the bedroom door, whispering, “Are you expecting someone?”
Hannah shook her head and began inching toward the window. A slow creak drifted in from the hallway, a bending floor plank on the other side of the door.
The Ovulum’s temperature spiked hotter in Elam’s hand, and an urgent whisper hissed from the shell. “Fly! A dark knight is coming quickly!”
Elam rushed to the window. Hannah had already straddled the sill. Grabbing her wrist, he lowered her to the ground, then scrunched low and leaped out. They backed away from the cottage, watching for any movement in the room. Suddenly, Devin vaulted through the window frame. Before the dark knight hit the ground, Palin followed. As Devin straightened, he faltered for a moment, clutching his leg in pain.
“He’s hurt!” Elam said, grabbing Hannah’s arm. “Run!”
Hannah jerked free. “No! I am through running!” She snatched the Ovulum from Elam and held it in her outstretched hand. “Thousands of years ago, I saw the Ovulum protect the ark of Noah from the most powerful demons in the world. I am sure it can hold off two of their stupid lackeys.”
Devin withdrew his sword and stalked toward them with Palin at his side, his sword also at the ready. As the Ovulum pulsed bright rings of red, Devin stopped and sneered. “You would battle two knights with a glass bauble?” he asked in an old English dialect.
“It is enough for the likes of you,” Hannah snapped, using the same dialect.
Devin swiped his sword over Hannah’s palm, slicing through the Ovulum. The top half fell to the ground and spun in the grass. He flashed a mocking smile. “Sorry to crush your hopes, dragoness, but your faith is fatally misplaced.”
As Devin drew back his sword again, the lower part of the Ovulum spewed a towering fountain of scarlet sparks that streamed in every direction. Hannah jerked her hand away, dropping the broken egg. The half shell rocked back and forth and continued gushing until the streams coalesced into two cyclonic columns that spun like crimson tornados between the pairs of opponents.
One of the columns lifted off the ground and soared into the sky, while the other drilled downward and splashed a huge cloud of dust into the dark knights’ faces. Devin and Palin covered their eyes, coughing and gagging as they backed away.
Elam lunged for Palin and threw him down. Wrapping his arms around the knight’s sword hand, he slammed the mail-clad arm against the ground, then pried the sword free and jumped up with the hilt in his grip. Setting his feet, he pointed the blade at the pair of slayers as they continued to cough uncontrollably.
More dust erupted from the lower end of the spinning column, blending russet streaks into the crimson cyclone until it looked like a swirling pinwheel of flesh and blood. The streaks solidified and coiled into a tight cylinder. As the spinning slowed, a man’s body took shape, his hands at his sides and his eyes tightly shut.
The turning stopped. The man gasped a deep breath, then opened his eyes and looked around frantically. Spotting Hannah, he swept her up and began to run.
Still holding Palin’s sword, Elam rushed after them. Hannah thrashed in the man’s arms, screaming, “We can run faster if you will let me go!” She jabbed her elbow into his ribs until he stumbled and dropped her. After toppling over her body, he flopped face first into a patch of dandelions.
Elam hustled to the man and rolled him over. He seemed familiar somehow, and since he had come out of the Ovulum, he likely wasn’t an enemy. “Are you all right?” Elam asked in modern English.
“We have to escape,” the man replied in Old English. “The effects of the gas on the slayers will not last long.”
Elam and Hannah each grabbed one of the man’s arms and helped him to his feet. Elam glanced back at the two knights. The slayers were slowly rising, still coughing, but not as vigorously. “We must make haste,” the man continued. “Are there any rapid conveyances?”
Hannah nodded. “Yes, I have horses.”
“In the pasture down the road!” Elam swept his arm forward. “Come on!”
The trio dashed away from the cottage, scaled a low fence, and sprinted across a grassy field. When the horses came into view, Hannah pulled on Elam’s sleeve, slowing him down. “Careful, or we will frighten them.”
With Palin’s sword still in hand, Elam walked briskly, alternately glancing at several horses grazing about fifty paces in front, then behind him at the slayers who followed at a distance. “Can you ride bareback?” he asked Hannah.
“Yes. Can you?”
“I think so.” Elam turned to the stranger. “Do you ride?”
The man nodded. “Yes, but never in this world.”
Elam propped the sword over his shoulder. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I will explain soon enough.”
“Wait here.” Hannah strode ahead. As she approached the horses, she held out her hand toward a bay mare and spoke as though she were addressing another human. “Legossi,” she said, returning to her Scottish-soaked, modern dialect, “we are in great danger. I need you and Hartanna and Clefspeare to carry us to safety. Will you do it?”
The mare replied with a lengthy bob of her head. Two other horses, a dapple-gray mare and a chestnut stallion, both nodded in the same way. Hannah sidled up to the stallion. “I will take Clefspeare,” she said, switching back to old English. “Elam, you ride the bay mare. You” she pointed at the stranger “you can ride the dapple gray.”
Elam checked the slayers’ progress as they crossed the field. Palin, now brandishing Excalibur and running ahead of his injured master, would be at their throats in seconds. Elam dropped his captured sword and set his hands in a cradle near the ground. “Hannah! Quick! I’ll boost you!”
“No need for boosting!” Taking a running start, Hannah leaped over his hands and vaulted onto the stallion. Then, snatching Elam’s collar, she hauled him to the bay mare and lifted him high. Elam grabbed the horse’s neck, swung his leg over her back, and righted himself. The stranger leaped onto the dapple-gray mare and slid deftly into place.
Now only a dozen paces away, Palin charged toward them, Devin’s sword in one hand and a dagger in the other.
Giving Clefspeare a firm kick, Hannah shouted. “Let us fly!”
The stallion bolted, and the mares galloped after him. Elam squeezed the mare with his knees to steady himself, but sudden pain made him lurch. He clutched his upper arm. Palin’s dagger! The jagged blade had penetrated deeply, probably to the bone. He jerked the dagger out and slung it to the ground. Pain ripped through his neck and down his spine. Blood flowed freely, coating his arm in seconds.
He glanced back. Palin was pointing at the ground with the sword Elam had left behind. Elam grimaced. A blood trail! But he couldn’t stop to make a bandage. Hannah and the stranger were already too far ahead. Leaning forward and hanging on with his good arm, he could only watch the tall grass zip by underneath while blood dripped from his fingers. He might as well make a sign that said, “This way to the dragon!”
He tried to pull the mare to the right, hoping to steer his pursuers away, but she stayed on course behind the pair in front. Closing his eyes and laying his head on the horse’s mane, he focused on enduring the escape. The mare’s hoofbeats rattled his brain, and each jolt brought a new stab of agony.
Soon, the thunder of other hoofbeats grew closer, so close they seemed to hammer the ground in a stride-for-stride gallop next to him. Elam clutched the horse’s mane. Was Devin about to grab him? Too groggy to sit up, he tried to kick his horse, but he lurched to the side and fell. Strong arms caught him, lifted him into the air, and set him in place again on a different mount. A gentle male voice drifted into his ear. “Hang on, young man. Keep your courage. I will let you rest in a moment.”
When the horse finally stopped, another pair of hands grasped his uninjured arm as he slid slowly downward. Hannah’s voice lilted in his ears, her Scottish accent spicing her Old English. “I will lay him down! Move the horses away! Quickly now.”
Elam fluttered his eyelids, catching glimpses of tall blades of grass next to his cheek, Hannah’s worried face on one side of his body and the stranger from the Ovulum on the other. Every image seemed filtered by a dark screen. Even the sun wore a basaltic mask that coated the skies with gray. With pain roaring from arm to arm, he clenched his teeth, unable to put his torment into words.
The man’s voice drifted by, soft as a phantom’s whisper. “Can you stop the bleeding?”
Hannah’s sharp reply drilled into his ears. “Give me your shirt!”
New throbs shot through Elam’s brain, shocking him to a more wakeful state. He peeked through his partially closed eyelids. Hannah, dim and blurry, wrapped a shirt around his injured arm. After tying it in place, she pressed her hand on the wound.
Elam moaned. The pain was worse than the sting of Nabal’s cruelest whippings.
Hannah’s voice returned, now more soothing. “Shhh. I have to put pressure on it or you are likely to bleed to death.”
The stranger, now in a singlet undershirt, knelt at Elam’s other side and mopped his brow with a torn sleeve. “My dear lady, you seem to have experience with healing fallen warriors.”
Hannah kept her head turned toward Elam. “And you seem to have experience with heroic rescues. You remind me of a very dear friend of mine, an old friend from long ago.”
“How kind of you to say so. Was your friend a hero?”
Hannah’s eyes misted. “To me, he was much more than a hero much, much more.”
“I see.” He angled his head toward Elam but kept his eyes fixed on her. “Was this hero a former flame?”
A sad smile wrinkled Hannah’s lips. “You have no idea how well you have described him.”
The man’s eyebrows lifted. “Perhaps I do.”
“No,” Hannah said, sighing deeply, “you do not.”
The man turned his cloth over and dabbed Elam’s forehead again. “Have other flames come to warm the embers this love left behind?”
“What?” Hannah glared at him. “I would expect better manners from a man who sprang forth from the Ovulum!”
The man lowered his head. “Forgive me, dear lady. The Eye of the Oracle commanded me to ask that very question.”
As Hannah’s glare softened, she sighed. “Well, if the Eye bids me to answer . . .” She shook her head slowly, and her voice pitched slightly higher. “My embers are cold, and they are slowly crumbling to dust.” She yanked a blade of grass away from Elam’s cheek. “I do not allow even a spark to approach them. No one will ever rekindle my coals.”
“May I venture to describe this lost flame of yours?”
Hannah sniffed, her chin trembling. “If you must.”
The man took a deep breath and spoke with a poetic cadence. “Embodying the spirit of a paladin, he ignited the passions of your heart. Flashing the courage of a warrior, he burned away all your fears. Massaging with the gentleness of spring sunshine, he warmed your scales on cold, anxious nights.”
“Well done. It almost seems that you ” Hannah clenched a handful of grass. “Did you say, ‘scales’?”
“Yes. And if he is the fiery romantic that I suspect, he probably told you that he would eventually come back.” He gazed directly into Hannah’s eyes. “Is that true . . . Thigocia?”
Hannah’s lips quivered. Still keeping her hand on Elam’s arm, she leaned closer to the stranger and gazed into his eyes. After a few seconds, a tear trickled down her cheek as she whispered, “My . . . my husband?”
He took the ends of her fingers into his hand and guided her around Elam. “We said, ‘till death do us part,’ but even death could not keep our love apart forever.”