The Gael Gates E-Book

Scott Michael Decker

• Herausgeber: Next Chapter
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

The Federation is on the verge of collapse. After three people disappear into the mysterious portals that hold the empire together, Culann Penrose is called in to investigate.

After he discovers that the ancient gate system is crumbling, he orders them to be shut down. The druids oppose Penrose's plans, and soon, Culann discovers that something is out to destroy him, and plunge the Empire into an age of darkness.

Can Culann's Science save Magic before it destroys him, or will his Magic save the Science of the Gael Gates?

Leseprobe

The Gael Gates

Galactic Adventures Book 2

Scott Michael Decker

Copyright (C) 2015 Scott Michael Decker

Layout design and Copyright (C) 2019 by Next Chapter

Published 2019 by Next Chapter

Cover art by http://www.thecovercollection.com/

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the author's permission.

U.S. Copyright application # 1-2074503751

Many Thanks to the beta readers Anne Potter Kelly Erickson Sutton Carter Elise Abram

Reader Comments on The Gael Gates:

“Wow! That was intense!” — jeshi99

People, Places, and Spirits

People in alphabetical order

Amyntas, Ancient King of Galatia

Armel Gallou, Golaseccan Druid (red-robe) on Tucana Prime

Arturo Lubri, Chief Druid at Las Cogotas

Bébinn Nankivell, “Bébe,” Captain, pilot to Druidess Sionann Lìosach

Belenos Ontonio, villager at Las Cogotas

Blodeuwedd Chynoweth, Doctor on Tucana Prime

Breno Feijóo, go-between with Los Caciques/El Caciquismo, father of Gobán

Brígida Mosquera, “Gida,” apprentice Druid at Stonehenge

Caoimh Baragwanath, Chief Druid at Puppis

Cathasach Bolloré, “Satch,” Engineer, Nerolead Interstellar, Clio's sister, Culann's ex-wife

Celtalpines, the Celts collectively (Senones, Golaseccans, Cisalpines) on Tucana Prime

Ceridwen Gwilym, “Ceri,” Ceannaire, President of the Gael Federation

Cisalpines, a Celtic tribe in the mountains on Tucana Prime

Clíodhna Ròsach, “Clio,” Professor of Particle Physics, University of Cardiff, Satch's sister

Culann Penrose, “Cull,” Investigator, Professor of Astral Physics, University of Cardiff

Dylan MacAskill, Potentate of Alrakis

El Caciquismo, Galician for “the chieftancy” (group)

Fáelán Trevelyan, “Lane,” Chief Druid in the Ophiuchus Constellation

Finnán Cadeyrn, “Finn,” Chief Druid at Göbekli Tepe

Gobán Feijóo, thesis student, University of Cardiff, son of Breno

Golaseccans, a Celtic tribe in the mountains, on Tucana Prime

Gwrtheyrn Jézéquel, Procter on Tucana Prime

Jamie, forensic videographer for Investigator Culann Penrose

Llewellyn Gutraidh, “Lew,” apprentice Druid at Stonehenge

Los Caciques, Galician for “the chiefs” (plural)

Méabh Abgrall, Chief Druidess for the Southern Triangle

Medraut Bhodhsa, “Mede,” Chief Druid and Proctor at Stonehenge

Niamh Lozac'h, Captain of the battleship Tylwyth Teg, of Alrakis

Noba Pacem, villager at Las Cogotas

Óengus Tàillear, Cisalpine Druid (white-robe) on Tucana Prime

Phelan Brogimāros, Cadet on Alrakis

Piritta Quemener, Cadet on Alrakis

Ríoghan Tanguy, Archeologist at Las Cogotas, Professor

Scathach Ogham, “Scathe,” Druidess of the Exalted Martyrology on Tucana Prime

Senones, a Celtic tribe in the mountains on Tucana Prime

Sionann Lìosach, “Nann,” Chief Druidess, Minister of the Druidry

Tristão Andrade, Druid from a village near Las Cogotas

Yezekael Seznec, Senone Druid (brown-robe) and Proctor on Tucana Prime

Places (henges, cities, planets, stars, constellations)

Alcyone, capital planet of the Gael Federation

Alpha Tucanae, binary star

Alrakis, planet in the Galatia/Anatolia constellation, location of Göbekli Tepe

Ancyra, Capital of Galatia on Alrakis

Appenines (mountains) on Tucana Prime

Draco, a constellation in the Gael Federation

Durou̯ernon (Canterbury), Capital City of Alcyone

Fanum, “sanctuary” or temple on Tucana Prime

Gael Federation, the six Celtic constellations

Galicia, planet orbiting Gamma Doradis

Gamma Doradus, a constellation in the Gael Federation

Gamma Draconis, star in the Galatia/Anatolia constellation

Göbekli Tepe, henge on Alrakis

Las Cogotas obeliscos, the henge on Galicia

Las Cogotas, village on Galicia

Montefortino de Arcevia, henge on Tucana Prime

Nemetobriga, planet in the Southern Triangle

Nevalı Çori, henge on Alrakis

Ophiuchus, a constellation in the Gael Federation

Pleiades, a constellation in the Gael Federation

Puppis, a constellation in the Gael Federation

Tucana Prime, planet orbiting Alpha Tucanae

Tucana, a constellation in the Gael Federation

Spirits (and otherworldly places)

Annwvyn, a Gaelic afterlife, also an underworld, otherworld

Arawn, a Psychopomp, one who escorts souls to the underworld

Balor, King of the Elemental Ether

Djinn, King of the Salamanders, the Elemental of Fire

Ghob, King of the Gnomes, the Elemental of Earth

Gwitihn, demon

Idris, demon, god

L'annawnshee, Proto-Gaelic for Underworld Fairy

Niksa, Queen of the Undines, the Elemental of Water

Paralda, Queen of the Sylphs, the Elemental of Air

Tír na nÓg, a Gaelic afterlife

Chapter 1

Yawning, apprentice Llewellyn Gutraidh peered toward the hilltop, the night sky brilliant beyond the Henge, the lack of moon leaving the stars all the brighter. Crickets chirped at regular rhythm, and night birds called out for mates. A chill wind blew him the scents of grass, flowers, and trees.

Five large trilithons surrounded by thirty smaller trilithons made up the inner circle of Stonehenge on Alcyone, all the thirty-five post-and-lintel structures built with the native sarsen stone. Four stones stood at the edge of the ring, marking the monument boundaries, a station stone to each the east and west, a slaughter stone to the south, and a heel stone to the north.

Gnomes supposedly ruled these domains, Stonehenge their home. Llewellyn had never seen them and didn't expect to. A disciple of the Elemental Air, he studied the sylphs, his skill at summoning them meager as yet.

Not the most exciting of duties, the vigil at Stonehenge was taken by turns one night out of every fortnight, the apprentices disliking the duty almost as much as serving the slop. Standing beside the slaughter stone, Llewellyn pulled his cape tighter, trying to keep his senses alert, these night vigils especially difficult in the cold, when all a body wanted to do was sleep. He jerked his head back to attention, his eyelids desperately wanting to close.

Atop the hill, Stonehenge was outlined by the blue brilliance of several sisters, the Pleiades Constellation all young stars, none more than two hundred million years old, their multiple suns giving mutual light to their siblings' planets at all hours, the surface of Alcyone bathed in blue. Perched atop the largest trilithon, the main gate lintel easily twelve feet long, was sister Pleione, the pulsating star like a beacon marking the gate.

Llewellyn pinched his eyes shut as though to squeeze the sleep from them, then stifled another yawn.

A wraith slipped from the main gate and then was gone.

Startled, Llewellyn blinked up at the Henge, poised to run up the hill. A gnome? he wondered.

Nothing else moved.

Had he actually seen something, or was it an afterimage? An Elemental, perhaps?

“Proctor, you awake?” he asked on his com.

“What is it, Lew?” Medraut's voice was groggy with sleep.

“Thought I saw something come out of the main gate, but then it was gone.”

“Wasn't a ghost on the inside of your eyelids, was it, Lad?”

“Don't think so, Sir.” He might have taken umbrage at Proctor Medraut for implying he'd been asleep. Llewellyn continued to scan the area, seeing nothing untoward. The crickets chirped, the night birds called, and the wind blew.

A few minutes later, Proctor Medraut joined Llewellyn, still shrugging on his tunic. “Pleione throbs brightly tonight, I see. Shall we?” He gestured Llewellyn to take the lead.

The apprentice stepped over the invisible barrier they all knew as the Ring. Stonehenge was sacred ground, never to be entered unless necessary, and never alone. The grass inside the Ring was even-cut, remaining green throughout the year, always standing three inches exactly, maintained it was said by an invocation to the mythical Gwitihn.

The Henge stood atop a knoll that was so even, round, and symmetrical, that geologic forces couldn't have formed it. Llewellyn led the way up, keeping a sharp gaze on the main gate, the dewy grass soon dampening his sodhoppers.

The circular stand of trilithons comprising Stonehenge seemed menacing tonight, where during the day it stood sentinel over their domains like some ancient guardian god.

Nothing looked out of place as they approached the main gate, the south one. Three other slightly narrower gates at east, west, and north also looked empty. Intermediate gates in between, varying in height all the way down to half that of the main gate, stood quiescent as well, no sign to Llewellyn that any had been used in the last few minutes.

“Do you see that?” Proctor Medraut asked, his stare fixed to the main gate's lintel, a foot-thick slab ten feet long and two feet deep. How the ancients had lifted it eighteen feet above the ground was an enigma.

“See what, Proctor?” Llewellyn extended his senses as he'd been taught, seeing with not just his eyes, but with his entire being. There, a spark. At head height, in the center of the gate, a dim aura, a slight warming, as though someone's passage had left a wraith of the person's presence.

“A spark,” Medraut said.

“Yes, faint, but there.”

“It's nothing,” the Proctor suddenly said, shaking his head. “You were sleeping again, Lew.”

This time he did take umbrage. “I wasn't, I swear!”

“You were, and you know it, and you're to serve the slop until your next turn at vigil.”

“But that's two weeks,” he protested.

“Would you like it a month?” Medraut turned and descended the hill.

Leaving Llewellyn gasping in his wake like a fish out of water.

Serving slop in the kitchen for two weeks would subject him to the calumny of his peers. They'd all excoriate him. Further, it'd be the last time anyone would wake the Proctor. Fat lot of good vigil at the Henge would do their enclave if none of the sentinels raised the alarm. It wasn't how Llewellyn would run things.

His back to the main gate, he watched contemptuously as Medraut made his way down the hill and across the Ring, leaving Llewellyn inside the ring, alone.

A surreal force seized Llewellyn's shoulders and yanked him backward into the gate.

#

Captain Niamh Lozac'h of Alrakis stared up at the hill toward Göbekli Tepe, one of two guards patrolling the stand of stele, the capped stones like a small forest of nearly two hundred pillars. In the night sky above her, Gamma Draconis blazed, her orange light bathing the dry, rocky hilltop.

A veteran warrior and pilot, Niamh didn't mind the occasional nighttime duty. In her thirties, she had long ago lost the impatience of youth, which her younger companion guard still possessed in blunderous abundance. Also unlike her, he was not Galatian, his home world a temperate planet farther along the Orion Spur.

“It's cold out here, by Idris,” Phelan said through chattering teeth, huddling in the lee of the guard kiosk.

“It won't be Idris who keeps you safe.” Niamh swept the stele with her gaze, ever vigilant. The last war with the Eltanin tribes had started with their pouring through the Göbekli gates. It wasn't going to happen on her shift, she vowed, having lost her sister and brother in the intense fighting that'd followed. Alrakis ships eventually had pulverized the Eltanin Navy, but the first attack had come not by ship, but by warrior pouring through the Gael Gates of Göbekli Tepe. Any lapse in vigilance was an invitation for another attack.

Water was this monument's patron Elemental, and undines purportedly called it home. Captain Lozac'h had never seen an undine. Not a Druid, uninitiated into the Druidic Mysteries, she didn't expect to. She thought it odd that water was the patron Elemental on a desert planet. Undines seemed no help in making the planet more habitable.

“I'm going to walk the perimeter,” she told Phelan. “You go the other direction, meet me on the other side.”

He snorted dismissively. “And freeze my cherries? No thanks, Captain.”

“It's clear they've already shriveled,” Niamh replied. “Suit yourself.” And she strode into the darkness to the east, her gaze sweeping the forest of perpendicular stones again. Pulling her jacket tight, she commed base command to alert them she was walking the perimeter.

Many of the stele capped, the twenty circles of stones had stood sentinel on Alrakis for nearly a thousand years, serving as gates between worlds since ancient times. How they worked was a technology long lost to the Federation, but that hadn't kept the Gaels from using the gates. Only the Druids knew how to use them, pilots like Niamh flying between worlds by conventional A-warp starship.

On her last command of the battleship Tylwyth Teg, Captain Niamh Lozac'h had led the attack on Eltanin itself, just after learning of her brother's death. Her grief had fueled a ferocious attack, the assault considered the decisive battle credited with bringing the war to an early end.

Niamh glanced back once at the guard kiosk, seeing Phelan only by the misting of his breath. The quality of soldier these days, she thought, disgusted. She knew she was rare among her colleagues to take duties such as this, most of them simply paying a midshipman or cadet to do their patrol for them.

While never one to shirk a duty, Niamh was here for another reason. The stele had always fascinated her, the Henge like its counterparts along the Orion Spur drawing her since childhood. A precocious child, she'd grown up just north of Göbekli Tepe and had considered a Druid apprenticeship. There were no female Druids on Alrakis, her father had pointed out, and so Niamh had pursued her second choice.

She stopped at the eastern terminus of Göbekli Tepe and looked up at the stars, trying to pick out the other Henge systems—Pleiades, Ophiuchus, Puppis, Gamma Doradus, and Tucana.

Movement among the stele caught her eye. An undine? she wondered, scanning.

Nothing there.

Senses tuned, Niamh slowly widened her scan of the circles, only the westernmost stele occluded by the hill. No movement, nothing untoward.

Still, the sense of a presence wouldn't leave her. I couldn't have seen an undine, she thought, not Druid initiate, nor even a believer. “Phelan,” she commed, “I thought I saw something up here. You see anything down there?”

“All clear, Captain.”

“Time to walk the perimeter, Cadet, whether you have the cherries for it or not.”

“Yes, Sir,” he replied.

At least he didn't resist, she thought, eyes quartering the stand of stele. The gates only opened between two stele with capstones, which about half the stele had. Although varied in height, all the stele were nearly identical in width and depth, one foot by two feet. A divine dimension, according to Druid Finnán Cadeyrn, Counselor to the Potentate of Alrakis, Dylan MacAskill, and Chief of the Gates at Göbekli Tepe.

After a few minutes, seeing nothing, Niamh continued around the perimeter toward the northern terminus, where a pair of stele without capstones stood sentinel, soaring to sixteen feet. She sighted along them to Gamma Draconis, the orange pinprick bright enough to tint the rocky ground at her feet, but not enough to wash away the night.

She brought her gaze down to the central ring of stones capping the hilltop, where all the stele had capstones. Also of varying height, these stele stood between ten and twenty-five feet, their capstones of proportionate length and balanced precariously. Comprised of ten stones each, the twenty rings varied in size, one large ring at the center, five medium rings surrounding it, and fourteen small rings encircling them all.

A wraith appeared between two stele and was gone.

Startled, Niamh half-crouched, ready to pursue at the first sign of motion, despite the ancient admonition never to enter Göbekli Tepe alone. The Tepe was sacred ground, never to be entered unless necessary, and never alone. She hadn't seen enough of the wraith to describe it. Besides, what did an undine even look like? she wondered. “Phelan, I saw something again, center ring, between the northernmost pair.”

“I'll be right there.”

He too knew the admonition, inculcated at an early age wherever a Henge did stand.

She'd always wondered if the admonition weren't the Druids' way of keeping their nocturnal travels clandestine. Fairies and Goblins were rumored to snatch people too foolish to ignore the taboo.

Silence seemed to have settled upon the monument, the megaliths as lifeless as death. Where before cold gusts had blown, now the air was completely still. Not a cricket dared to chirp nor bird to trill.

The crunch of Phelan's boots on ground approached.

Niamh kept her gaze on the two stele where she'd seen the wraith.

“Between those two?” He pointed.

“Aye,” she said, slipping back into her childhood dialect. “Keep a watch while I check my arms. Have you ever seen an undine?”

“Never have. Druid Cadeyrn says they're a mischievous bunch.”

Phelan's gaze on the stele, Niamh checked her blaster charge, beside it her sword. A large, heavy, two-handed bludgeon, the sword had been her father's, and his father's, and his father's before then, she the first female in six generations to wear it. Blaster in hand, she signaled that he check his own while she kept her gaze on the stele.

With a nod between them, they crept into Göbekli Tepe, backs to each other in a half-crouch, blasters held ready at shoulder. They circled one small outer ring, neither wanting to pass through it. They skirted a medium ring and approached the northernmost stele of the large inner ring.

They stopped just a foot away from the gate, the capstones nearly meeting in the middle twenty feet above them atop the stele on either side.

“This is ridiculous,” Phelan said, snorting in contempt, holstering his weapon.

“Eh? Have you lost your mind?”

“No, in fact, it's clear you've lost yours. There's nothing here.” Abruptly, he turned and went the way they'd come.

Stunned, disbelieving, Niamh stared after him, her back to the gate, her mouth working, her brain stumbling in its attempt to formulate words.

Suction grabbed her at nape and waistband and yanked her backward into the gate.

#

Professor Ríoghan Tanguy frowned at the stand of obeliscos dominating the skyline at Las Cogotas, on Galicia in the Southern Triangle. Under a cloudy sky, smoke billowed from between the obeliscos, the natives preparing for another transit. Or another travesty, she thought.

Although Celtiberian in extraction, she scorned the beliefs of these superstitious provincials. Give me an angstroscope and microcalipers any day! she thought. She and the local Druid, Arturo Lubri, had clashed publicly over their differences, Professor Tanguy excavating an ancient tor over the ridge, the local Druid claiming it was a sacred site abandoned by the proto-Celtiberians and therefore inviolate. Sylphs of the patron Elemental Air made their home at these sites, according to the Druid. Professor Tanguy had never seen one and scoffed at the Druid's assertions.

Clad in her digs, dun-gray and drab, garb meant for the dirty work of excavation, Ríoghan grimaced and made her way uphill toward the obeliscos. A straggler or two also made their way toward the hilltop, the plumes of smoke like a beacon, most the villagers having already assembled.

Druid Lubri is probably exhorting them all to dance and writhe! Ríoghan thought, greeting those who strode uphill beside her. Their lively dress, frilled cotton cloth embroidered with multicolor thread, made her look positively dumpy. She'd get no work today from the local laborers she'd hired, all of them attending the ceremony, Lubri herding his flock like an assiduous sheep dog.

The straight streets on Galicia were somewhat at odds to the winding, narrow labyrinths common to other planets in the Southern Triangle, the constellation occupied mostly by settlers of Celtiberian extraction.

The mechanism of transport through the Gael Gates was thought to derive from the principles of Alcubierre warp drive, and yet the Druids continued to mythologize their gate use with elaborate ritual and prestidigitation. Such sordid sortilege did little to advance a scientific understanding of the Gael Gates, hypotheses which still eluded astral and particle physicists, who posited that they operated on A-warp, in which time and distance were fundamentally the same properties, differing only in their articulation.

An archeologist, Ríoghan cared less about the theory and more about the ignorance being perpetuated by the Druids. She'd arrived at Las Cogotas through the gates two years ago to study the ancient sites on the planet. Gamma Doradus, the double-star system of her home planet, Nemetobriga, contained very minor proto-Celtiberian sites, all of them catalogued and excavated long before.

Each obelisco in the Henge on Galicia was etched in Celtiberian runes all the way to the top, the script still indecipherable to modern linguists, their study forbidden by both local superstition and the imperious Druid, Arturo Lubri.

Ríoghan reached the edge of the obeliscos, an area bordered by a low rock wall, the rocks fitted by hand without mortar, encircling the hilltop and the obeliscos within, nine pillars of stone poking into the sky, two smaller sets of three pillars standing twenty-seven feet on either side of a third, larger set soaring eighty-one feet. Each set known individually as a tribelisco represented one of the three Gates sacred to Neo-Pagan Druidry—the Well, the Fire, and the Tree.

Balderdash! Ríoghan thought.

Druid Lubri stood in a wide stance before the largest tribelisco, waving his heavily-embroidered and -sequined cape with an elaborate flourish as he intoned in ancient Galician the incantation needed to open the gate. Villagers encircled the tribelisco, hands held as though in vigil, repeating the Druid's utterances. New arrivals were incorporated into the ring, the archeologist along with them.

Arturo spun, flaunting his cape as though taunting a bull, his eyes glazed in ecstasy, a fine froth of spittle collecting at the corners of his mouth.

He looks possessed! she thought, as if he had rabies. Hydrophobia occasionally cropping up in isolated places such as this, she wondered what he'd do if she threatened to throw a pail of water on him. A giggle escaped her, and the woman beside her, Doña Noba Pacem, shrank in disgust.

Druid Arturo Lubri froze, his gaze fixed to Ríoghan. “We have an infidel in our midst! She who mocks the sylphs and desecrates our sacred sites!” His arm leapt at her, finger stabbing toward her. “Seize her!”

Multiple villagers converged on her before she could react.

“Bring her here,” the Druid commanded. “A rope!”

They easily overcame her struggles and dragged her into place between two of the eighty-one foot obeliscos. They tied each limb with rope, her legs three feet apart, her arms suspended at forty-five degrees overhead.

Lubri stuck his face into hers. His breath stank of queimada. “You'll desecrate no more, Infidel! You'll meet the sylphs face to face and then you'll believe!”

“What are you doing, Cabrón?!” she spat, seeing he was drunk.

He backhanded her, and her head flew to the side. “Perra pequeña! Cona! Back in position, everyone! Let's send this succubus to moura encantada!” As he backed away and resumed his chants and gyrations, the villagers joined hands again.

Her lip and cheek stung, and she tasted blood. She strained against the ropes, but none of them gave, her stretched-out arms giving her no leverage. “Dom Ontonio, help me!” she called to her lead laborer, who'd helped her recruit her dig crew.

Belenos Ontonio kept his place in the circle, sweat on his brow and fear in his eyes.

Lubri whipped his cape back and forth, grasped it with both hands and thrust it to the ground, kneeling at Ríoghan's feet and ululating stridently. Then he abruptly straightened and flung the cape back over his head.

Professor Ríoghan Tanguy heard a thunderclap, and she was sucked into the gate, rope and all.

#

The white-robed Cisalpine Druid, Óengus Tàillear, was nearly invisible against the scree of storm, helped by a spell to obscure his presence. Fuaranders played merrily at his feet, the six-inch Elementals each creating their own mini-snowstorms. The skies of Tucana Prime perpetually clouded, the planet was beset with unforgiving cold, hypothermia claiming thousands of lives every winter.

But the storm suited the Druid's purpose. He and his two companions stood at the rim of Montefortino, a henge of nine megaliths, whose divine placement created twelve Gael Gates, three megaliths in each triangle, the three triangles placed at the vertices of a larger triangle. Each smaller triangle of megaliths called a trigalith, the area around the megaliths was tessellated with tile, which was oddly free of snow. A knee-high, foot-wide stone ring encircled the henge. Beyond the henge, a thin forest encroached, the trees so thick with snow that branches couldn't be seen. The landscape was hilly and rocky, huge boulders jumbled upon each other in chaotic profusion. And all of it glaciated with perpetual snow.

Behind the three Druids stood the Monastery and Scriptorium, their lights barely penetrating the thick snowfall. Three Druid orders occupied one Monastery—Cisalpine, Golaseccan, and Senone. Cisalpine Druids were adherents of the fuarander, the Ice Elemental, while the Golaseccan Druids maintained fealty to the salamander, the Fire Elemental. So contentious was their rivalry that the Senone Druids constantly had to mediate. The two Elementals, Ice and Fire, were antithetical, always at odds with each other.

“Tis a good, thick night to cover our tracks, Brother Gus,” said the red-robed Druid beside him. Golaseccan Armel Gallou was one such salamander adherent.

“So good and thick we'll be buried in snow if we don't get on with it,” croaked the ancient crone beside them. Procter Gwrtheyrn Jézéquel, a Senone Druidess, stood barely five feet in her perpetual stoop. Gnarled hands held fast to a wormwood staff, snowflakes already accumulating on the bluing fingers. A skein of web-like hair hung over her face, so tousled no spider would deign to live there.

“Gwerth, you summon Air; Mel, you'll invoke Fire, and I'll conjure Earth.” Despite their professed fidelities, Gwrtheyrn and Óengus prepared to beckon other Elementals in violation of their oaths. This alone was enough to incur the Ministry's castigation, hence the invisibility spell that Óengus had cast. “Are you sure you want to try the final step alone, Gwerth?”

“Aye, Laddie, better that a senescent fool like me risk censure than either of you.” The old proctor was known to wander through the woods, even during blizzards, as though she were the embodiment of inclement weather. “Our success may bring the wrath of the Druidry upon us, perhaps even the attention of the Minister herself, Druidess Lìosach.”

“What could that fickle wench do to us?” Armel asked with a sneer.

“Blast you into the next universe, if she's a mind to,” Gwrtheyrn replied. “Let's get on, then.”

All three stepped into the ring, the tessellated ground no warmer than the thick drift they'd stepped from, but somehow, snow didn't stick to the tiles.

“Mel, remember to modulate the stability. You know what happened last time we brought Fire and Air together.”

Armel threw a glance her direction, scowling. “Yes, Gwerth,” he said.

As if Armel doesn't already know Fire's affinity for Air, Óengus thought. The one Elemental had nearly consumed the other.

Gwrtheyrn moved to the northern-most trigalith, while Óengus took the southeastern triangle and Armel the southwest. “I'll go last,” Armel said, Fire the most difficult to maintain in such frigid environs.

“Air, Earth, and Fire,” Gwrtheyrn began, “hear our plea.” She raised her staff above her head. “Paralda, Queen of Sylphs, bring me your life-giving breezes.”

A sylph coalesced inside the three stones, taller than Gwrtheyrn but slim as a willow, a storm swirling above her head, her eyes made of storm and her hair made of wind. “Gwerth of the Senones, I am yours to command.” She wore only a swirl of leaves.

Óengus at the southeastern corner turned to face the trigalith. Each stone soared to twenty-seven feet, a divine height. “Ghob, King of Gnomes, show me your fertile Earth!” he said, casting his arms over his head.

Inside the trigalith, a gnome sprouted from the ground, as gnarled as Gwrtheyrn but taller, its face a worm-rich loam, its hair a bright green cap made from grass, its build squat and thick like rock. The Elemental King could have crushed Óengus flat with a nasty glance. “Gus of the Cisalpines, I heed your call.”

To the southwest, Armel turned toward his trigalith, and his red robes ballooned outward as he raised his arms. “Djinn, King of Salamanders, bring forth your life-warming Fire.”

A fiery lizard as tall as the Druid flared to life inside the trigalith, flames licking around its head in halo. “Master Mel, my friend indeed, how may I serve thee?”

“Paralda, Ghob, and Djinn,” intoned Gwrtheyrn, gesturing with her staff, “follow me hence and draw together.” She hobbled into the center, around her the hexagram made by the six stone pillars. “Come to me from your trigaliths, and blend your energies in divine concatenation.”

They all three resisted. “Do this not, Druidess Gwerth!” hissed Paralda, her edges spinning into a dust devil, her middle a swirling maelstrom, turbid with debris.

Fire leered at Air, and Earth spread above Fire. Outside the henge, the wind picked up, whirling around the perimeter like a snake coiling around its victim.

Óengus restrained Earth by drawing his fist closed, and Armel dampened Fire by pushing both hands down.

The three Elementals reined, Gwrtheyrn swirled her staff in a circle as though mixing, and wisps were sucked off their bodies. Air howled, Fire writhed, and Earth roiled, all their faces in rictuses of pain.

Above Gwrtheyrn gathered their entrails, a whirling mix of tailings. As the mass grew turgid above her, the Elementals each grew smaller, their incarnations leaking slowly into the abomination taking shape in the center. Streaks of red, orange, white, and brown mixed into a gray muddy mess. The storm around the henge intensified, the blizzard so thick that it obscured the surrounding forest behind a solid white wall of sleet.

Óengus held Earth's integrity close, Ghob as likely to disintegrate into its composite elements as to slide into a thick slurry. He could feel Armel's exertions with Fire, the edges of their essences intermingling in the rich soup above Gwrtheyrn.

The mass began to form into a creature thrice the Elementals' sizes, its skin striated, its hair streaked and spiky, its limbs grotesque. As the last of each Elemental leaked into the monstrosity, a roar shook the stones. Eyes formed on a bulging, primordial face. Protuberant lips peeled back from a prognathous jaw, and a guttural voice thick with glottal stops snarled, “Who dares to wake me?”

“Druidess Gwerth, demon!” she snarled right back, undaunted. “Bow before me and prepare to do my bidding!”

“Miscreant Druidess! So you think!” And a mighty fist with Fire for bone, Water for blood, and Earth for flesh, swept around and snatched her from her feet.

Óengus put his hands out, summoning his power from deep inside his soul, and hurled fuaranders at the beast.

The demon vanished and along with it, Gwrtheyrn's scream.

A curtain of vapor was all that remained, and that too dispersed as the storm that had swirled around the henge descended upon the pair of Druids.

Óengus found Armel somehow in the blistering blizzard. “What happened?” He had to scream to be heard above the storm, his mouth near his fellow Druid's ear.

“We couldn't control it! Arawn blast, what do we do?”

Óengus pulled Armel in the direction of the Scriptorium, that part of the monastery closest to the henge. “We have to get out of this storm!” He wasn't sure his companion even heard him.

Together, they fought their way toward the Scriptorium door, spikes of cold driving nails into his ankles through his feet, his hands like lumps of ice at the ends of arms that wouldn't obey him. He attempted to summon a warming salamander, but his magic failed him.

Or maybe I've failed my magic, Óengus thought grimly.

They found the door somehow, and as it shut behind them, so too, it shut out the storm. Armel held a cyanotic finger to his lips for silence.

Óengus heard nothing but the faint scream of the storm just outside the door. And the echo of Gwrtheyrn's scream in his mind. “What do we do?!” he asked in a harsh whisper, barely able to keep from screaming himself.

Gwrtheyrn taken by a demon after they'd violated their vows and fused the Elementals! They were sure to be prosecuted for murder, or worse, stripped of their titles! Óengus could hardly think. His heart hammered in his ears, and sweat trickled down his back.

“First,” Armel whispered, grabbing Óengus' parka hood on either side of his face, “first and foremost, we tell no one. No one! Do you hear?”

Óengus nodded in time with Armel's shaking him. “No one!” he whispered back, the Scriptorium likely empty at this time of night, but taking no chances.

“Swear it,” Armel whispered.

“I swear to tell no one. Now you.”

“Of course I swear, idiot. You think I want to lose my standing?”

“What about Gwrtheyrn?” He loosened his parka somewhat, not knowing whether he was shaking from cold or shaking from fear.

“What about her? She knew the risks. She's nowhere near as daft as everyone thinks. Besides, they'll assume she wandered off and fell into a snow bank, won't expect to find her frozen body until spring.”

“But …but …”

“But nothing!” Armel's whisper was harsh, his tone cutting. “We'll look for her soon, but for now, we just wait and regroup.”

“How …” Óengus was so terrified, he could barely speak. “How long?”

“Four days,” Armel said, shrugging off his red parka and shaking the snow off it. “We give it four days, and then we'll look for her. All right, Gus? All right?”

Óengus saw that Armel was as frightened as he was, sweat soaking his Druid robes with darker patches of crimson. “All right, Mel. Four days,” he repeated, unable to stop shaking. They threaded a path through towering shelves of parchment toward the main monastery, Óengus wondering how he was going to keep his composure for the next hour.

Let alone four days.