No one argued when I sat behind the steering wheel this time. They were thinking so hard, I fancied I could hear the cogs creaking.
I glanced at Ketill in the mirror. “It’s super late for you. Why don’t you lay down and sleep?”
“You’re joking,” Ketill said with a snort.
“We can talk about it this evening, when you get up,” Magorian added, peering around his seat.
“Sure, you’ll tell me everything you’ve decided in the meantime.” Ketill waved away the idea like an irritating fly. “That Mariko…we always thought she might be Aurelius’ lover.”
“He didn’t exactly stint himself in that department,” I said.
“Maybe that’s why she did it,” Magorian murmured.
“Did what?”
“Sacrificed herself.” Ketill’s tone said it was perfectly obvious.
“She just stood still and let him carve out her heart?” I shook my head, highly doubtful.
“Maybe he sang to her,” Magorian said. “I didn’t want to mention it in front of Griffin, because he was unnerved enough with the ways of the Old Races, but a siren song is a perfect substitute for drugs.”
“Then you’re thinking what I’m thinking,” I said. “Aurelius tried to cast the spell, using the dragon for the heart’s blood.”
Magorian sat back. “He doesn’t want to sacrifice himself. That will work against him.”
“And he had the wrong shield. No wonder he came looking for the right one,” I added.
Ketill pushed his head through the seats. “He tried to cast the spell back there, and when it didn’t work, he would have tried to figure out why. And someone must have told him about the lump of metal we carried out of the caves under Arthur’s seat. That’s how he figured out he had the wrong shield.”
“I think he had more than the shield wrong,” Magorian said, his tone thoughtful.
“The time of year, too,” I said, recalling our conversation about feast days. “Griffin said the body was found in late August. Is there a feast in August?”
“Lughnasadh,” Magorian replied. “But that’s August 1st. And the body in the photos wasn’t that old.”
“So, wrong shield, wrong time of year. But Aurelius might not know about the wrong time of year. He’s clearly focused upon getting the right shield back.”
“Wrong sacrifice, too,” Magorian said. “She wasn’t of the water. Agrona is the goddess of water, among other things.”
“Maybe the wrong place, too,” I said.
I could feel Magorian looking at me sharply. “How so?”
“The headwater of the Aeron is Llyn Eiddwen. Headwater. That seems more like the heart of the river to me. Or am I wrong?”
“No,” Magorian said slowly.
“There’s something else he got wrong, too, I’m betting,” Ketill said.
“What’s that?”
“That was a tiny pile of ashes, I’m thinking. I saw the photos of that bloody great book of Morcant you were looking at a couple years ago. There wasn’t nearly enough ashes for a book that size.”
“He’s right,” I said to Magorian. “Aurelius must have burned only a couple of pages and figured that was enough. But Agrona wants her enemy dead. Nothing but the whole book burned to ashes would do.”
Magorian was staring ahead. I could see his thoughts were racing.
“For a spell this powerful, everything has to be right,” I reminded him.
Magorian nodded.
I let him think. A few minutes later, I heard Ketill snoring softly from the back seat, too.
We were moving through the outskirts of Carmarthen when Magorian said softly; “I’m almost certain Beltane is the feast we need. It’s the day of sacrifice, bonfires and appeasing the gods. And it’s the start of summer, of renewal.”
“So we really do need to wait until then to stop him?”
“If he figures it out. But here’s the thing.” Magorian turned a little to face me. “Why wait at all? Why not use Aurelius’ tactics against him. We steal back the Book of Morcant, then burn it.”
I kept my gaze on the highway, my heart thudding. “It’s a one-time code,” I said. “Without it, the spell can’t work.”
“Exactly.”
“But why the book? We could destroy the shield. We already have that. Smelt it down and bury it somewhere.”
“It was buried,” Magorian pointed out. “And we found it. So did Aurelius. Smelting it down to an ingot isn’t going to take away its power. It’s still the shield of her shield. Same with the keystone from Felix’s Triumph. Even smashed to powder, it’s still the triumph of her love. But she wants the death of her enemy, and there’s no way to bring back a book from ashes and burn it again at the right time and place. You can only kill him once.”
“You’re sure about this?” I asked.
“Does it matter? Even if pouring the book’s ashes into the spell circle works, how is Aurelius going to get those ashes? I’ll rent a goddamn helicopter and scatter them over the North Sea.”
“No, the Swiss Alps,” I said quickly. “The sea is his.”
“Alps then. Or down the mouth of Snowden, if that’s what it takes.”
I weighed it up. “Then, let’s find Aurelius and get back that book.”
And I realized with a jolt that once more we would be informing Ketill of what we had decided when he woke up.