Gabe woke with a start, rather earlier in the morning than he’d meant to. He lay there, hand clenching at the sheet for a good dozen breaths, until his heart stopped racing. Only then did he gather himself to see if he’d disturbed Rathna. She was curled on her side, facing away from him, breathing evenly.
Good. She needed her sleep. His had fled. If the dream hadn’t done it, the shock of waking up would have. Instead, he eased himself out as gently as he could. Not, however, as gently as he’d needed to. By the time he came back from his dressing room, wearing his riding gear and carrying his boots, she’d rolled over into the empty space and was blinking sleepily at him.
“Going riding. Back for breakfast. Go back to sleep, love.” She made a muzzy noise and buried her head in the blankets. Gabe managed to restrain himself from brushing her hair back into place. It was very tempting that way.
The ride gave him a chance to clear his head. It was brisk, but not as chilly as some of the weather predictions were suggesting would be coming. His current mare, Meliora, was as much a joy to ride as Invicta had been when he was younger, but she took a little longer to warm up and settle into her work. Much as he did these days, honestly. On the way back, they took several fences, flying over them easily.
He was back in good time for a quick wash and then breakfast with Rathna and his parents. She raised an eyebrow at him, and he said, amiably. “I’m meeting Alexander to talk about something.” He’d arranged it while the bath was running. For a wonder, Alexander actually had a morning free, rather than the snatched hours they’d been working around. “I’ll be in the office by, oh, eleven. Probably.”
His father snorted, amused, and thankfully didn’t press. His mother raised an eyebrow, but didn’t ask. At least, not right now. He was quite sure she would tonight. He managed one more quick kiss for Rathna. “I should be home for tea with Avigail. I’ll write if I won’t.” He then went off to check his satchel one more time, running down the little list he kept inside his notebook. Journal, pen, pencil, notebook, working stones, his potions kit bag, he’d wound his pocket watch, he didn’t need a different cane. Not for Trellech, certainly.
Twenty minutes later, he was knocking on the door of Alexander’s townhouse. It opened, to make it clear Alexander was in Egyptian mode today. He was wearing the deep black robe he favoured at home, down to his ankles, with an overrobe of a red-coral, rather than his usual blues. Gabe wondered about that omen.
“In. Cyrus wants me to come by this afternoon, so clarify what you do and don’t want him to know as appropriate.”
Gabe grunted. That was an additional layer of complication. “Something specific on your end, then?”
“Bloody awful dreams, emphasis on the bloody?” Alexander gestured Gabe into the library. Gabe had been here a number of times now, but the impact of it never failed to make him want to stop and figure it all out. It wasn’t just the books and the scrolls, though there were plenty of those. It wasn’t just that the jewel tone leather bindings stood out against ebony shelves like the depths of the night sky, or the range of writing methods visible on the spines. Or the fact there were half a dozen alphabets just on the nearest shelves. It was also the weight of the warding, how it echoed in Gabe’s head.
Gabe wanted desperately to unpick it, using every tool he’d ever learned as a Penelope and a few he made up for the occasion, but that would first of all be rude. And second, no matter how brilliant he was, he was sure he’d not manage it. Not without a fair bit of help. Instead, he nodded, setting down his satchel as he took the guest chair in front of the fire.
“Here, read that.” Alexander passed a letter, printed and imprecisely folded. Gabe knew what it was, one of the Society of Inner Light letters. He flicked through it, the one that had been posted this morning. Alexander had particular resources, then, to get it this fast. The core of it talked about the role of mediumship, and how it could be easily abused, about the stresses and ‘unbalanced forces’ of the previous week. In Gabe’s long experience as a Penelope, that meant someone fooling around with things they didn’t understand, and it was going to cause trouble.
Gabe looked up. “Do you believe this bit about the veil being thinner right now?” He’d been soaking in that kind of comment from a dozen different esoteric and occult groups, all of whom often shouted their thoughts on the matter.
“Which veil?” Alexander rubbed his nose. “Coffee?” Alexander, blessings on his name, had as much fondness for the stuff as Gabe did, though he made it in the Egyptian manner. Gabe nodded and waited for a cup.
“The dead, the year’s death, the Fatae. So many choices.” Gabe looked up then. “Has the Council had word of the Wild Hunt again?”
Alexander made that ambivalent gesture with his hand. “Nothing certain. An increasing number of hints. What was your most recent report to Cyrus?”
Gabe reached into his bag, and pulled out a copy, handing it over to Alexander while reading the letter in his hand again. He was not at all sure about some of the language, the whole thing about visualising a Master - a figure of light and illumination - to connect with, and ask for help. Gabe had learned to build his own help, one way or another.
Alexander finished skimming through. “Cyrus has been sharing freely, then. Good.” He sounded as if he’d not quite allowed himself to hope.
“I could just send you copies as well.” Gabe offered it a bit cautiously. They’d been playing a careful balancing act for the last month. It had been complicated by the fact Alexander had been here and there, in Albion and outside the borders, on almost no notice. He rubbed his face. It had only been a month, it felt like at least six already. And yet, a month was bringing them barrelling closer to the spring thaw, and when Rathna might well be gone. Probably would be gone, though her apprentice was still deciding how much he was going to help.
The balancing act, right. He was more scattered in his head than usual this morning, and that wouldn’t help anything at all. He took another sip of coffee, and another, willing it to work its particular enchantment. Gabe was reporting directly to Cyrus Smythe-Clive, as head of the Council. Alexander, another of that particular tangle of obligations, was consulting on the side. “Does Smythe-Clive know you’ve been talking to me?”
“Probably not. He hasn’t asked.” Alexander flicked his fingers and accompanied them with a toothy smile. “He knows better.”
“And you’re not going to tell him. Right. I’ll send you copies. It’s a mess, to be honest. A lot of supposition from certain quarters about Arthur returning in triumph in Britain’s darkest hour. Nothing that’s shattered yet, no one caught up in truly damaging magical rites. But I can feel the currents around every corner, lurking, and more as we go on. This, for example. Thanks. I’ll have a copy on my desk by the time I get there.” He handed it back. “There’s odd news out of the contacts in Germany. Did you know?”
“Yes, but which parts?” Alexander reached for a cup of tea waiting on the table for him.
“The back and forth on whether they’re visibly supporting astrology at the moment. You know and I know that some of it is total bunk. And at the same time, some of it is entirely relevant and important for magical work.”
“They do seem, shall we say, unusually indecisive about which parts they’re listening to. I did hear they’re banning astrological calendars and public profiles and all that. Which doesn’t surprise.”
Gabe shook his head. “No, it doesn’t. But they’re not banning it outright, either. Does Geoffrey have a thought there, do you know?”
Alexander put back his head, chuckling. “He does, yes. We’ve told you a bit about the Heinrichs. The parents lean into the land magic in the older German forms. Seasonal rites, not all of them pleasant, but traditional. Sepp, the oldest brother, well, he mostly likes an excuse for a party. Or an orgy.” Something complex flickered across Alexander’s expression for a moment, the sort of thing where asking wouldn’t do any good, Gabe knew. “The younger, though, he’s in with a mess of people with ideas. Some of them Indo-Aryan, some of them more distasteful than that. If you don’t already have a bibliography, Geoffrey and Lizzie can likely share.”
“I’d appreciate that.” Gabe agreed. “What do you think of how it’s actually working for them?”
Alexander tapped his fingers together. “We have a very different relationship to the land magic and the Fatae than they do, and I don’t know Germany well enough. I wonder, though, how angry the land is, or will be. Or how angry it’s been since the Great War. They had more active fighting than we did, of course. Much more.”
“And then all the political constrictions, the Great Depression, all that.” Gabe winced. “Right.” He took a breath and let it out. “This morning.”
“A dream?” Alexander leaned back, and Gabe knew the older man well enough now, had duelled him often enough to read that visible casualness as anything but.
“And you did too.” Gabe couldn’t decide whether the tiny approving nod was reassuring or terrifying.
“Mine wasn’t particularly informative. I’ll put some time into work in the Keep. Today, tomorrow, Thursday.” Alexander grimaced. “Before Thursday, I hope.” He routinely spent the second half of the week out with the Carillons at Ytene, and Gabe knew Alexander hated to disrupt that particular ritual of his life.
That left it to Gabe to explain. “It wasn’t entirely like other dreams I’ve had, the potent ones.” Such as the one that had changed his life in March of 1918. He’d woken from that, knowing that if he kept going as he was, he’d be dead at the age of eighteen. Before the end of July, a few bare months away then. He’d done something else and twisted up his fate. He’d chosen what had looked and felt like dishonour for years until Rathna had helped him untangle everything.
He rarely talked about it these days. He hadn’t ever told Alexander the story, just his close family. Alexander was new enough to their nest of allies, as Geoffrey put it, that a lot of things simply hadn’t come up.
Now, though, Gabe thought it might be relevant, and he wasn’t going to stint on relevant information. “When I was eighteen, I had a dream. A massive black snake rearing up to strike and swallow me. I went out riding, and my mare...” The times he’d said it out loud didn’t make this any easier. Rathna wasn’t here to buffer it with her calmness and certainty and perspective.
He went on, keeping his voice as calm and studied as he could. “I knew if I stayed on Invicta’s back, I’d be dead by the end of July, somewhere in France or Belgium. Not here. Not Albion. If I fell, I’d live. I fell, but my ankle’s never been the same. It’s healed. All the Healers said so.” But it still hurt, somewhere between an ignorable constant ache and a searing sharp pain. It depended on the weather and what he’d been doing and some mysterious calculation he still hadn’t worked out despite all his collected data.
Alexander had almost said something at the start, but then he leaned forward, listening intently. “And last night was like that, and unlike that? You’re older now. What do you make of it?”
“Rathna has made a persuasive argument - we have a bibliography - about how it was something about the land magic catching me, but needing to pull the vitality for it from somewhere. Me, in this case. And you’ve heard her theory about the Silence being a living container, with her own needs.” Like the eruv she’d lived inside, with Aunt Avigail, her memory a blessing over and over again. A container for the community, a space within which they moved freely and different rules applied.
Alexander nodded, now more distracted. “Moment. Tell me about last night, while I look for something. And I’d like the bibliography, of course, if you’re willing.”
It wasn’t quite an order. Alexander didn’t give orders to Gabe. Gabe had noticed and appreciated that. It was an instruction, a hope. That they could work on the puzzle together, if Gabe laid out the pieces.
“Last night had something of that quality, though I did not fall from Meliora this morning. Thankfully.” He wrinkled his nose. For one thing, that had felt like an insult to Invicta, back then, and to his riding skills, and he was vain about both. “But there was a snake in it, somewhere. Maybe a dragon? I don’t know about the imagery. Far larger than a custos dragon, though, even the older ones.” He’d seen them a few times at a distance in the banking vaults. But they rarely got taller than a horse, and perhaps twenty yards in length, including the tail. The dragon, thinking of that moment in the dream, brought back that shiver of something that would change things once again, like feet over his grave, only it might not mean that. He repressed a little twitch of his hand, glad Alexander was distracted.
“Go on?” Alexander was thumbing through books now. He’d crossed the room so quickly and quietly Gabe had barely registered it.
“An iridescent green, more like a peacock than anything else I could name. I didn’t see it for long, then there was mist, being in a deep wood, one I knew and didn’t know. Not Kent.” He was absolutely sure it wasn’t Kent. Not that he’d been in every bit of woodland in Kent, though he’d made a fair try at it over the years. But he knew what Kent hummed like beneath his feet, and this had not been that.
“Somewhere you have been?”
“That doesn’t narrow down Albion much.” He considered. “Albion, though, yes. Not the Continent, certainly not India.” He’d done enough travel there to have filed the harmonies there inside his head into a different category. “Southern England, probably. Wales has that overtone harmony, and Scotland has the...” He didn’t really have the proper words for it. “Spaciousness.”
Alexander turned around. “One of these days, in a future in which we have leisure time, we really must get you to articulate that better. You and Rathna. It’s clear you know exactly what you’re talking about, and if we could cross-reference it with the demesne lands and the geology, I think we’d have something potent.” He then turned back to the shelf, plucked out a book bounded in bright wheat-gold leather, and brought it back.
The image on the page was an illumination, done by hand in an early book. Likely printed not much before 1484, though Gabe was not remotely the expert on that sort of thing some people were. Aunt Mason, Geoffrey, and even Alexander had him bested there, and he was glad to admit it. He considered the image. This was not one of the stumpy dragons of some illustrations that looked much like a confusion of a crocodile. Gabe had seen them in the flesh, more than a bit too close, actually. This had the long sleekness he’d seen in his dream, something sinuous, but with the great wings sweeping back like the custos dragons writ large.
“Like that, not that I got a precise look at it. Dreams, so unruly that way.” Gabe nodded.
Alexander grunted and gestured. “Read, then.”
Gabe took the book carefully, only now considering why Alexander might have something of the kind. He didn’t go in for natural history as a rule, not like Gabe did. And much as the man loved books, he wouldn’t keep something he’d never use. He’d find a better home for it. He skimmed the text, instead, blessing Aunt Mason and his mother for making sure he was as literate in Middle English as anyone in Albion.
It talked, metaphorically, about the green dragon being the creature of the Fatae, of the strength and potent magic of the green land, furling and unfurling with the seasons. Stalking, perhaps, might be the better word. He didn’t quite touch the page, running his finger along the words, before he looked up, blinking. “Am I reading this right? About how it is a symbol of, how do I translate this?”
“The green does suggest certain things, of course.” The green of the Fatae, but Gabe had thought that perhaps too pat and simple an answer. And certainly, the shade of green didn’t help with other questions, why a dragon, why now, or particularly why him. “You must have done your own research on serpents, long since.”
That made Gabe snort, despite the seriousness. “Come on, Alexander, you know me better than that.” Then he considered. He was not an expert in Egyptian lore, but he certainly knew the power of the uraeus in their symbols. “What do you think of snakes and dragons?”
“That I’d certainly rather not be bit by one.” At another time, the comment might have been as sharp as the jab of a fang, but Alexander laughed at the end of it, easing it. “I respect them, like any sensible man who sees the power there and doesn’t want to die.”
Gabe could read enough of what Alexander wasn’t going to say, that they were a symbol of sovereignty, of power and the protection of that power, that Alexander did not have the standard reactions of Albion to serpents. At some point when they had leisure, in some distant future, that would be worth coming back to. Instead, he shifted directions. “This does not help me decide what to do about it, you realise. Seeing as how the symbol did not come with a set of instructions, wishes, or even quests.”
“You are no Celt, but the legend of Lleu Llaw Gyffes.” Alexander let his voice trail off. “He of the skillful hand. The cognates to Lugus, to the Britanno-Roman Mercury. Consult with Geoffrey on that point. You are skilled in multiple directions.”
Gabe looked down, more to hide his expression than anything else. “May I borrow this? The metaphor is unusually - well. Dense.”
“And you want your mother and Mason to have a look. Yes, yes. I will find you a suitable book box.” Gabe would have to run it back to Veritas before doing anything else today, but he could do that. He didn’t want to entrust it to anyone else or to his office.
“How do I explore this?” The book suggested a direction, but vaguely, in the mist.
“Read. Keep your eyes open.” Alexander shrugged slightly. “That’s what we all do, you know that, unless we get lucky enough to strike on an answer.”
Gabe had to snort at that. It was true. He’d hoped that with age would come more certain knowledge, but no. His esteemed elders were all just better at faking their sureness, until the evidence and results of their very real skills caught up.