Page 80 of King Among the Dead

Wales

The room where the ritual would take place was round, stone-floored, columned. It reminded her all too well of the room in Anthony Castor’s mansion where her entire life had shrunk down to a single purpose: retrieving Beck. He hadn’t died; hell hadtakenhim. And according to Brother Eustace, and her years of research, a soul could be taken back.

They’d shown her the stag up on the porch, the sad, dry, withered bit of wood that Thomas Cromwell had divested of its rider so many centuries ago. But down here, in the ritual room, there stood another. Proud, and gleaming, his knight-cum-saint astride him, arm raised, sword held aloft. It wasn’t the gentle clergyman who would venture down into the depths, but the warrior, the knight in service to King Arthur.

No part of it was lost on her. For the first time in years, that empty, aching longing in her gut felt settled. Things feltright. This would work, and if it didn’t, nothing else bore thinking about.

“Rose.” Lance pulled her aside as Brother Eustace and his colleagues lit the candles and the incense. He was doing that thing with his face: the tipped chin, and the raised brows, like he thought she was rash, or insane. Or when he doubted her sincerity. “Are you sure about this? This is – remember what happened last time?”

“This isn’t like last time. This isn’t opening a portal. Saint Derfel is going to fetch him, and all we have to do is wait.”

He wet his lips, and darted a glance toward the robed monks. He was worried; she saw the sheen of sweat at his temples and on his upper lip. He wore his hair longer on top than when she’d met him, pretty, dark curls, sticking to his damp forehead now. “Rose,” he started again. He laid a hand on her shoulder.

“Mademoiselle?” Brother Eustace called.

She touched Lance’s hand. “I know what I’m doing.” And removed it from her shoulder. He pulled back with a wounded look, one he quickly tried to hide.

Poor Lance. He’d never really understood, though she knew he’d tried to. But he’d never felt about anyone the way she felt about Beck – not even about her.

She stepped around him, and walked to the gathering of robed men, at the feet of the stag.

Brother Eustace looked at her with warmth – and with something like awe. “The sacrifice?”

She withdrew the dagger from its sheath inside her jacket. The rubies winked in the candlelight. The monks took a collective breath, and shrank back a step.

“We will begin the prayers,” Brother Eustace said in French. “But the sacrifice, and the request, must come from you. It has to be the thing you want most in the world.”

She nodded.

He patted her shoulder, and they all withdrew. A low, almost musical chant began: Latin prayers. An invocation.

A faint breath of wind stirred in the room. The candle flames flickered.

“Jesus,” Gallo whispered. “This is–”

Someone shushed him – Tris, probably.

Rose lifted the dagger, and pricked the fingertips of her left hand, one after the next. The blade was so sharp that it didn’t hurt; she only felt cold, where her skin had been cut.

She turned her hand over, and let her blood drip down at the feet of the stag. Her belly clenched with anticipation.Please work. Please, I need him back…

She lifted her face, and regarded the stone countenance of the saint. She had to say the name. “Saint Derfel,” she said, in English. “I have a request for you, if you’ll honor it. I need a soul back – a damned soul in hell. I need Arthur Augustus Becket.”

For a moment, nothing changed. There was only the low, Latin chanting, and the rush of her own pulse in her ears.

But then…

The statue moved. It was no statue at all anymore, and Rose stumbled back from it, clutching the dagger a moment before she remembered – and then she slid it across the floor, toward the sinuous, blue-glowing smoke that was a man astride a stag. A stomping snorting, circling stag. The man of blue smoke leaned down, and scooped up the weapon with grace and ease. Raised it, examined it. Then he met her gaze, and she felt like her heart was being squeezed; lifted and examined, too.

The stag bellowed, turned, anddove. Headfirst, it shot down through the stones of the floor with curls of blue mist.

“Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit,” Gallo chanted. “It really worked, it really–”

The stag returned, trumpeting, tossing its head, spectral antlers misting where they struck the ceiling. The beast circled a few times; Saint Derfel turned to her, a faint smile on his ghostly lips.

And then it was a statue again. Solid, unmoving stone.

And on the floor…

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