SYDNEY WOULD ALWAYS REMEMBER the day it began, because that was the day Gronoya and New Denmark dropped two nuclear warheads upon Syria and Iraq and the whole world tottered on the very edge of the end. It was also the day Taylor brought home from England a copy of Nennius’ The History of the Britons, which had been smuggled out of Gronoya by Welsh clerics under the noses of the Herskers. It was the manuscript that started it.
Taylor, Veris and Brody loved their books and their history. Taylor was always digging up relics of the past and studying them as part of her work for the Library of Congress’ Archives. However, Alex and Rafe had lived a long time, too, so even they liked to pour over old manuscripts, often reading the forgotten languages aloud to prove they could and to tickle old memories.
So Taylor brought the scanned copy of the manuscript over to dinner that night and while Marit and Sydney ate, everyone sat about the big dining table studying the loose pages, as happy as pigs in clover.
Normally, Sydney preferred to eat in the kitchen. She often ate standing up at the counter as she was the only human in the house anymore. When there was company, though, they used the big, wood-paneled dining room. The table would seat twelve people comfortably, the upholstered dining chairs with their carved backs pulled up around it with a comfortable amount of elbow room. It was far too elegant a room for Sydney, although it was nice to have the company.
“These are very good scans,” Alex said, lifting one of the scans up closer for inspection. “You can still see the ghosts under the letters.”
“The whats?” Sydney asked, putting her knife and fork down.
Marit rolled her eyes. “The monks would sometimes erase errors by sanding the ink off the parchment. It left very faint marks behind.” She ate another mouthful of the shepherd’s pie.
Sydney smiled at her. “I suppose it’s unavoidable, learning that sort of thing at your age, when you’re living with history freaks.”
“You’re a history freak, too,” Marit pointed out.
“A human, hungry one.”
“This shepherd’s pie is wonderful,” Marit added.
“It seemed appropriate,” Sydney said, “under the circumstances.”
“Shepherds’ pie is Welsh?” Marit asked.
“Some say it is,” Sydney said.
“And some say the Welsh adopted it because it is not Millionbøf,” Taylor added from her place on the other side of the table.
A shadow touched Marit’s face. “Will Iraq really bomb Gronoya?” she asked. “They’re saying they will. They say they have to and if they do, then England has to side with Gronoya because they’ve got a treaty with them and they’re right next door to England, anyway, so the fallout will affect England as much as it does Gronoya. That will pull in Europe and that will bring America into it, too.”
Sydney looked at Veris and Brody, at the other end of the table, expecting them to answer. She could tell Marit the truth, but she didn’t know if they wanted Marit to hear the truth. She was only twelve years old, even though sometimes she seemed much older.
Finally, it was Rafe who answered Marit. “How much of Gronoya’s history do you know, Marit?”
Marit pressed her lips together. “Not much,” she admitted. “It’s as if they’re allergic to teaching kids about Gronoya. Like we’ll be infected or something if they do.”
“Were you there, Rafe?” Alex asked softly.
Rafe let out a breath and nodded. “In Powys itself when the Vikings of Ireland came marching across the land.”
“Poe-us?” Merit repeated, trying the word out.
“It was the most powerful kingdom in ancient Gronoya,” Rafe said. “Of course, it got wiped out along with all the other kingdoms when the Danes claimed the land for themselves. Then everyone there became a Welshman and a Briton, overnight.” He grimaced. “Everyone except the Danes.”
“They’re the Herskers now, right?” Marit said.
“Do you know what “hersker” means?” Taylor asked.
Marit wrinkled her nose. “Something ancient, I suppose.”
Veris shook his head. “Names are all ancient if you trace them back properly. It’s a corruption of the Danish word for leaders. Rulers. The ruling class.”
“Do I detect disapproval in your voice, Northman?” Alex asked.
“It’s the way it went, so how can I disapprove?” Veris asked reasonably.
“Very broad-minded of you,” Rafe said.
“He’s not broad-minded at all,” Brody said. “He’s got an opinion that he’s going to stick to no matter what. From the look on his face, he’s about to gift us with it in Technicolor.”
Veris sat back, his arm over the back of his chair. “It’s a closed room and I trust everyone in it, so why shouldn’t I speak?”
“Then you don’t like the Herskers, Far?” Marit asked. “Gronoya is an advanced nation and keeps Western Europe stable because its economy is so strong.”
“Did your teacher tell you that?” Brody asked curiously.
“That’s about all they say about Gronoya.”
“The only reason they have a stable economy is because they’re pulling natural gas and oil out of the mountains and the North Atlantic and holding the rest of the world to ransom with it,” Veris said.
“And there he goes,” Brody said, a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.
“Veris,” Taylor said sharply, “Marit doesn’t need to hear this now. She already gets in enough trouble at school because you and Brody keep feeding her subversive ideas.”
“I won’t tell,” Marit said, her face alight with interest. “Sub rosa, right, Far?”
Taylor sighed.
Veris’ tension evaporated as he gave his daughter a fond smile. “Right,” he agreed. “So I’ll say this, then leave it alone for now.” He glared at everyone else. “What the history books tend to gloss over is that more than eighty percent of the people living in Gronoya are native Welsh, descendants of the Britons who were living there when the Vikings invaded. The Herskers, who are the Viking descendants, are a tiny minority of the population in Gronoya, yet they are the power holders and they’ve held that power by subjugating the Welsh. A Welshman can’t hold political office, so they can’t change anything from inside the country.”
“That’s why they fight all the time, then?” Marit asked.
“That’s why they fight and keep fighting,” Veris replied.
Marit nodded thoughtfully. “So will Iraq drop bombs on them, then?”
Sydney was glad she didn’t have to answer that. No one else did, either. Even Veris’ gaze skittered away from his daughter.
“That would be yes, then?” Marit asked, her voice clear in the silent room.
“Gronoya and the Middle East have been rivals for generations,” Alex said, at last. “They both have energy resources that the world relies on.”
“That’s why Gronoya bombed Iraq, to destroy the oil?”
“It’s a bit more complicated than that….” Alex prevaricated.
“No, it’s not,” Veris said shortly. “The Herskers are descendants of a race that believed battle was the way to heaven. It was inevitable they would use force to get the Middle East to back off from Europe.”
Taylor looked at the tabletop, not meeting anyone’s eyes. Brody was watching his mate with brooding eyes.
“Aren’t you a Viking, Far?” Marit asked.
“No, honey. I never sailed with the warriors. That was four hundred years after I left Norway and I was already a doctor by then.”
“Good,” Marit said firmly and went back to her shepherds’ pie, her curiosity satisfied.
Yet the mood in the room had altered. Marit’s on-point questions about the coming war had reminded everyone about the global tensions, which Sydney had hoped this evening’s distractions might push aside at least for a few hours.
Then Alex gave a soft, wordless exclamation and raised the sheet in his hands. “This page is talking about King Arthur!”
Taylor smiled as she leaned closer to look at the sheet he was holding. “That’s the chapter that caused Oxford to bring me in as a consultant.” She glanced at Brody. “It talks about Arthur’s poet.”
“It says Domhnall?” Brody asked. He got to his feet and moved around to where Alex sat, to look over his shoulder.
“Not by name,” Taylor said. “Sorry, Brody.”
He shook his head. “I’ve got used to the idea that my father is never going to be heard of again. Although even a mention of a poet connected with Arthur is new, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it is,” Taylor agreed. “The whole chapter—”
“Chapter?” Rafe repeated. “It’s two pages long.”
“Section, then,” Taylor amended. “The whole story about Arthur and his people has never been seen before in any of the known copies of the History. That’s why everyone is so excited about this edition.”
“Doesn’t everyone think that Nennius was making most of it up, anyway?” Sydney asked her.
“He made it up from stories he’d already heard and that’s what the scholars use his book for—tracking down his sources. This story doesn’t exist in any of the copies made by the English monks and up until last week, it was believed that all the Welsh copies had been destroyed by the Herskers.”
“Why would they destroy them?” Marit asked, dropping her knife and fork onto her empty plate and burping softly.
“Because the book makes British people sound wonderful,” Sydney told her. She picked up the two plates. “Ice cream?”
“Yes, please!”
Sydney took the plates out to the kitchen, pulled out the ice cream from the freezer and scooped out a bowlful for Marit. She took the bowl to the dining room.
Everyone, including Marit, was on their feet and crowding around Alex, staring down at the two sheets sitting side by side on the table.
Sydney touched Marit’s shoulder and handed her the ice cream. Marit sat at the end of the table just around the corner from Alex to eat it.
“The writing looks the same to me,” Brody said.
“It’s almost the same,” Rafe said. “I saw enough of this script when I was living in England that it’s like modern handwriting to me—the difference between one hand and the next is night and day. This was written to look as though the monk—“
“Eifion,” Taylor supplied.
“Eifion,” Rafe repeated.
Sydney was startled, because he pronounced the name exactly the way Taylor had, accent and all. Yet the way he said it sounded natural, unlike Taylor.
“This chapter was made to look like Eifion was the writer, but I’m telling you, someone else wrote this,” Rafe added.
Alex, Brody and Veris were studying the pages and didn’t respond.
“Iveyon was Welsh, then?” Sydney asked.
“Eifion,” Taylor said softly, to avoid disturbing the cluster of men at the end of the table next to Marit. She spelled the name out.
“That doesn’t sound anything like the way you said it,” Sydney said. “Welsh is odd that way, isn’t it?”
“Actually, Welsh is very straight forward,” Taylor said. “Once you’ve learned how everything is supposed to be pronounced, there are no exceptions. Every letter gets pronounced, so there’s no silent letters that you’re supposed to just know aren’t spoken. English, I’m told, is so hard to learn because there are so many exceptions and silent letters and assumptions that are common knowledge and not explained anywhere.”
“I’ll take your word for it,” Sydney told her with a grimace. “I’m just barely holding onto Arabic from that one jump back, as it is.”
Taylor smiled. “The more you use it, the easier it is to retain. You and Alex don’t use it between you?”
“Sometimes. Did you learn Welsh from going back there, too?”
Taylor glanced at Veris, Brody and Rafe, where they were gathered around Alex. “Neither Veris nor Brody have ever been to Wales, so I picked it up the hard way, using a dictionary and a pronunciation guide. The problem is, Welsh isn’t spoken the same way English is. So Sydney in Welsh would be written Sudni.” Taylor spelled it out. “That is, if you wanted everyone to say it the same way.”
Sydney lowered her voice. “So you still haven’t tried to jump anywhere since you were made?”
Taylor’s eyes shadowed. “There’s been no need to try,” she said.
“Veris is still dead set against it, then?”
“At least until the twins are adults.” Taylor gave her a small smile. “I don’t even know if I can time jump anymore. It could be a human-only thing.”
That was an aspect of time jumping that Sydney had not considered. “It’s been, wow, six years since I met Rafe and Alex,” she said slowly. “We haven’t had the courage to try, either. Death and disaster seems to be the norm if you do jump back.” She shivered, remembering the fallout from the last time they had jumped. Taylor had lost her life and Veris and Brody had been forced to make her a vampire like them.
“We barely talk about it anymore,” Taylor said, her voice just above a whisper. She nodded toward Veris. “I don’t think he’s opened his notebooks on time travel for years.”
“It’s always something you could get back to, isn’t it?” Sydney said with a smile. “You have all of time ahead of you for whatever you want to try.”
“I don’t look that far ahead,” Taylor said honestly. “I think I would go crazy if I did. I just keep my gaze on the next few years that include raising the children.”
Sydney let out a small sigh.
“I’m sorry,” Taylor said softly. “I try not to rub it in.”
Sydney shook her head. “It’s okay. I don’t think about it anymore. Life is busy enough without adding children into the mix.” She ran her own private security company, now, that she had built from the ground up. The company specialized in industrial and high technology corporate security and this would be her fifth year in business. It was a demanding and absorbing occupation and what little spare time she had was more than adequately filled by the two men in her life.
Alex and Sydney had moved into Rafe’s big house not long after Taylor had been made. It had been a temporary way of staying together, that had turned into a permanent home. Even Bruce, Sydney’s aging St. Bernard, had settled down and been comfortable in his house under the stairs, up until his death a year ago.
Sydney’s attention was caught as Rafe walked around the backs bowed over Alex’s shoulders. “Here,” he said firmly and pulled one of the sheets out from under Alex’s hand. He pointed to the top of the page. “That doesn’t make sense in old English or Welsh, or even Latin.” He pushed his fingers through his hair, brushing over the silvered locks at his temples. Careful applications of bleach left him looking older with each passing year, yet his face remained unlined. Sydney wasn’t sure how long Rafe would be able to continue in this human life without stirring speculation.
“The seal?” Alex asked, lifting the page up.
“The writing around the edge of the seal,” Rafe said. “See the letters?”
“They’re Latin script,” Alex pointed out.
“This isn’t Latin.”
“No, it’s not,” Veris said. He was the Latin expert in the room, although Sydney knew that both Brody and Taylor spoke regionalized versions of Latin, too.
Alex looked up at Rafe. “My laptop is in the office. Would you mind?”
Rafe shrugged. “Why not?” He left the room.
“Something has tripped your thoughts, Alex,” Veris said.
Alex nodded. “I think it might be a cypher.”
Veris stood up. “A cypher….” He sounded intrigued.
Taylor got up and moved over to a chair closer to the group. “Cyphers weren’t common in western Europe in the tenth century.”
“They were in the East,” Alex assured her, “and much earlier than that.”
Rafe came back with the laptop, already open and booted up. He put it in front of Alex.
Alex pulled it closer, then bent over the seal and began to tap out the letters on the file he had open.
“Here, let me read them out,” Rafe said. He picked up the sheet and called out the letters one at a time, as Alex typed them.
Then everyone stood back and looked at the screen. Sydney got to her feet and moved around to where she could see it, too. Rafe gave her a smile and pulled her in front of him so her view was unobstructed. His hand settled around her waist.
The letters glowed in the middle of the screen.
IZUVHBWMVBXLNVZGLMXVZOVCNFHGIVNARM
“Marit,” Veris said. “Do you recognize this as a language of any sort?”
Marit, who was a natural polyglot and could soak up a new language almost overnight, stepped between Veris and Brody and looked down at the screen. “It’s gobbledygook,” she said.
Alex was counting silently, his lips moving, as he stared at the screen.
“What are you doing?” Sydney asked softly.
“The most common letter is V,” he said. He typed quickly, beneath the meaningless words.
IZUVHBWMVBXLNVZGLMXVZOVCNFHGIVNARM
E E E E E E
They stared at the two lines of text.
“That doesn’t get us anywhere,” Brody said.
“You know cyphers, Alex?” Veris asked.
“I came across my first cypher when I still human,” Alex said. “It was one the Jews used….” His mouth opened and his eyes widened as his gaze returned to the screen. “Surely not.” He lifted up his left hand and lowered each finger as if he was counting, but said, “A…b…c…d…e. Five.” Then he lifted his right hand. “Z…y…x…w…v. V,” he repeated, staring at the screen.
“A substitution cypher?” Veris asked.
“A simple one,” Alex said. He wiped out the second line of Es and typed quickly:
A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M,
Z, Y, X, W, V, U, T, S, R, Q, P, O, N
N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, X, Y, Z
M, L, K, J, I, H, G, F, E, D, C, B, A
“It’s called the Atbash Cypher. The Jews of Jordan used it for decades,” Alex said. “You switch out the letters in the top line for the letters in the second line.”
“E is V,” Rafe said. “So the first letter would be…R.”
“Call them out for me,” Alex said.
Slowly, Rafe called out each letter on the seal and Brody provided the uncoded pair, as Alex wrote them down.
RAFESYDNEYCOMEATONCEALEXMUSTREMAIN
Alex inserted spaces and the room became very still and silent as they all stared at the screen.
RAFE SYDNEY COME AT ONCE ALEX MUST REMAIN
“This isn’t possible,” Taylor breathed. “Someone put the seal into the copy, just to pull my leg.”
Veris moved over to the door and shut it firmly and softly. He turned to face them. “The message implies time travel,” he said. “The only people who know Sydney and Rafe and Alex can travel through time as we can are standing in this room.” He looked at Rafe sharply. “Unless the council has been informed?”
Rafe shook his head. “I meet with Thorsby every year and fail to mention it every time.”
“Thorsby is your contact?” Veris said.
“He’s the chair,” Rafe said.
“I didn’t realize you were that high up in the hierarchy,” Veris murmured.
“I’m a flunky to the chairman. It’s not high at all,” Rafe pointed out dryly.
“Screw the politics,” Brody said loudly. He pointed at the laptop. “One of us put that message in the seal specifically for us to find it now.”
“Yes,” Veris agreed. “It was either Sydney or Rafe who did.”
Sydney stepped backward and rammed into Rafe’s shoulder. “I didn’t do it,” she said, her heart squeezing.
Veris’ gaze was steady and his eyes very blue in the glow from the laptop screen. “No. But you will.”