The snow muffled even the echoes of sounds from the mountains rearing up on all sides of them.
The night wasn’t all that dark, either. Because of the snow covering everything and the low snow clouds overhead, any scrap of light seeping through—from Banff itself, from moonlight behind the clouds, passing cars on the main road a couple of miles away—bounced and echoed from ground to sky, giving everything a ghostly glow. The night sky glowed pinky-brown. Everything appeared quite clear in the same way night-vision glasses filtered everything, without a green tinge to it all.
“It’s easier to be a believer out here.”
Rhys sighed. “It was all like this once.”
“What happened?”
“The world got a lot smaller.” He looked at his watch, slogged to the back of the car, opened up the doors and hauled out a big armful of fir boughs. She collected the rest of the pile and shut the doors for him.
He led her along a wide trail that seemed quite firm underneath the snow swirling about her ankles and calves. In summer the trail probably saw lots of traffic from tourists, but now it lay deserted.
She peered ahead where something even darker loomed in the sepia-dark. “Is that it?”
“Yes, that’s it. Wait, Jenna.”
She turned back. Rhys pulled out one of the thicker branches from his armful. He held it out at arm’s length, studying it. With a fizz of tinder-dry greenery, the tip of the branch began to burn with a steady flame, just like someone had flicked on a cigarette lighter.
Rhys glanced at her. “One of the older tricks.” He seemed almost apologetic, as if he had been caught boasting.
Jenna caught the drift of his thoughts, though and understood. He didn’t want to alarm her with anything that resembled “magic.” She was already as skittish as a colt.
That stiffened her spine a little. She had never in her life been described as nervous or skittish. Her cool-headedness in tight situations had won the admiration of her team members.
This is a little different.
She felt his internal chuckle. He held the torch up high. “There.”
She turned again and moved forward, Rhys following her.
Then she saw it.
In summer it would be a magnificent waterfall gushing out from the mountainside, the wide curtain of water tumbling down to the river below in a long cascade.
This is what would draw the tourists along the wide beaten path from the car park.
Now it hung silent and still, twinkling in the flame from the torch. So that was why Rhys might have used the old-fashioned flame rather than a modern spotlight—the red and yellow flames played across the frozen curtain of water, making it twinkle and glitter with life.
“Oh…!”
“It gets better.”
“No! Don’t tell me…a cave behind the falls?”
“That’s where the circle is.”
“It’s safe?”
“Safe enough for several thousand tourists every year.”
“Great!” She hurried forward.
He caught up with her. “Let me show you how to get there. You have to step across the frozen stream from this angle.”
He led her around to the left of the still curtain and carefully pushed through the snow there. She followed his steps and her boots slipped on hard ice beneath the covering of snow, forcing her to take very small, slow steps.
He ducked under the curtain and held the flame up for her to see it from beneath. The snow falling on the other side seemed ghostly and large through the ice.
The cave opening lifted high enough to admit a tall man without bending and looked far too regular for a natural cave. It had been smoothed and enlarged for human traffic. Steps rose to the cave floor and that reassured her this was just what Rhys said it was: a tourist attraction that was closed for winter, but perfectly normal just the same.
Reassured, she climbed up to the cave and entered, Rhys just behind her with the comforting flames from the torch.
It was a long tunnel, at first.
A concrete path had been laid down to even out the ground. She strode along the path, feeling a genuine chill from being beneath a mountain. True darkness closed in around her, broken only by the torch. She glanced back at Rhys doubtfully. Behind him she could see the twinkling curtain of ice and the red glow of light beyond. Rhys nodded ahead. “Keep going. Just a little further.”
She saw that just a little way ahead the path curved to the right. At the curve, the tunnel opened up into a large cavern and as Rhys stepped into it with the flaming torch she again caught her breath.
Ice stalactites lined the roof of the cavern—a natural chandelier that bounced and reflected the torchlight a hundredfold, blazing the light back at them. In places the water trickled down to the floor and formed a twisted crystal column.
“You will only ever see the cavern this way in winter. It’s ice, not calcium like true stalactites. The water seeps through from the stream overhead. In summer, it’s just moisture that trickles down the walls. In winter, it becomes beautiful.”
“It
is
beautiful.”
He led her up the natural stone floor, which sloped up to the center. The footing seemed firm enough, for many feet had brushed it clear of pebbles and debris. As they climbed, the light playing across the ice surfaces changed and moved like a kaleidoscope. It was entrancing.
Rhys left her at the top of the little hillock and climbed back down to one side, where he dropped the branches and brushed off the debris from his coat. He separated out a small portion of the branches, then thrust the torch in his hand into the center of the smaller pile. It blazed up almost instantly.
He picked up a good portion of the remaining bundle and carried them around the hillock, but not all the way across from the first fire.
“Thirds?” Jenna asked.
“Yes.” He lit the second blaze, then climbed up the hill to take her bundle from her and drop it at the halfway point between the first two fires. He added the small portion left of his own bundle and dropped the torch onto it and brushed his hands.
Light sprang up all around them, bouncing off the glittering walls and ceilings. Jenna turned a slow circle, her head titled back to study the roof.
“Find the center,” Rhys told her.
She reached out with her mind and her hands, feeling the odd inhuman surges around her and moved a little way down the slope to where they seemed to be focused. “Here.”
“Very good.”
She saw movement at the entrance to the cave and drew a sharp breath. “Oh God, Rhys!”
A white wolf with a majestic mane of thick winter fur padded into the cave, followed by two others.
“They’re drawn here. They won’t harm you. Not tonight.”
She watched as the magnificent creatures scouted around the cave, sniffing in various corners. The leader came over to Rhys and pushed his muzzle into the man’s hand. It looked exactly like a domestic dog greeting his master on his return home. Rhys buried his hand into the wolf’s mane and spoke a few quiet words. Jenna couldn’t hear them properly, but she suspected he hadn’t been speaking English.
The wolf sat on his haunches next to Rhys and turned his head to study her. His eyes in the flickering light were black pools with shimmering yellow surfaces.
“Well, well, Avaon…you do turn up in some odd places.” The loud drawl bounced off the ice ceiling with cold echoes.
Rhys swivelled around to look towards the entrance. “Hine.”
The man from the coffee shop stood at the entrance to the cave, another burning torch in his hands. The features she had first catalogued as clean cut and wholesome now appeared to her as passive and brooding. He hadn’t even glanced at her. He watched only Rhys.
“Leave at once,” he told Rhys and his voice seemed to writhe and ripple on the air, almost taking on substance.
She shivered and took an instinctive step towards Rhys and the protection he offered, but he threw his arm out. “Stay there!” He began to climb the hill towards her.
Hine lifted his head to the ceiling and called out in a language she did not recognize.
Rhys did though, for he whirled towards the entrance, just as three men raced around the corner from the tunnel, passed Hine. They spread out, heading towards him. They were big men and their dark eyes and expressionless faces unsettled her.
Rhys crouched, his knees bent, as if he were ready to spring. She’d seen the same stance once or twice before, but only during SIA assignments, when action was imminent. No, when physical combat was
inevitable
. Just like that, the moment had arrived, the one Rhys and she had both been bracing themselves for.
One of the men raced at Rhys with a horrid snarl, his hands spread. Jenna yelped in fright. It was a ruse—the first man’s launch hid the second man who came in behind him, ready to take advantage of Rhys’ distraction while he dealt with the first. But Rhys recognized the gambit. He grabbed the first man’s leading hand and tugged him forward hard—pulling him straight past Rhys to stagger forward with the increased momentum Rhys had given him, while Rhys immediately whipped back to deal with the second man.
Rhys took a step forward and drove the heel of his hand up under the man’s chin. He wasn’t expecting it. He wasn’t ready for Rhys’ attack. The force of the blow snapped his head back and lifted him off his feet. To lift a grown man clear off the ground that way took immense skill and a perfectly executed technique—it was only in the movies that people went flying through the air on a regular basis.
As the man landed at the feet of the third, who almost tripped in his efforts to not get bowled over, Hine gave a low snarl. It was a truly awful sound coming from a human being. He muttered a few words and pistoned out his own hand, the fingers up, the heel leading, as if he was copying Rhys’ blow.
Rhys was picked up by an invisible hand and flung across the cavern.
He slammed against the cavern wall. The solid, unforgiving sound sickened her, even as she struggled to accept what she had just seen. But she
had
to accept it. She had seen fire emerge spontaneously, had seen a man pushed another aside with nothing more than his will. Empirical evidence.
Time to put doubt aside, Jenna. Time to shape a new reality.
She moved down the slope, unable to just stand and watch but unsure what to do.
The wolf sitting at the bottom of the hillock lifted his nose in the air and howled. In the confines of the cave it was a blood-curdling noise.
The three men scrambled back onto their feet and leapt on Rhys as soon as he slithered to the floor. They hauled him to his feet, two of them each holding an arm, the other with a lock around his neck from behind.
Rhys shook his head, like a dog shaking off water, and lifted his chin to glare at Hine. A bloody patch gleamed on his cheek, high up under the eye.
Before she could react, Hine raced up the slope towards her. His hand snapped around her wrist. He hauled her to him and locked her wrist up high in the center of her back. His other hand, the fingers like pokers, gripped her throat, the index finger and thumb resting on her carotid artery.
Jenna kept very still. The grip on her throat, should he tighten it but a little, would cut off the blood to her brain and knock her unconscious in about thirty seconds.
Rhys surged against his restraints as Jenna lifted her chin to give herself more breathing room.
“You’ve got the wrong one,” he said, breathing heavily. “She is not who you think she is.”
“Extend your senses, Avaon!” Hine replied.
“You know she’s the one. You can feel it just as I can.
Just as any of our people can. You can feel the field coalescing here—it’s what led you here. I watched her make a woman dump a cup of coffee all over her husband because she objected to the way he spoke to her.”