The Divine and Deadly
The Carmarthen Forest, Carmarthen, Wales. A week later.
Agrona did not show herself at once, which gave us desperately needed breathing room.
The four of us—Magorian, Jamie, Ketill and me—abandoned the house and spent the next few days in the Forest. We slept a great deal, and watched the newsfeeds when we were awake, waiting for Agrona to show herself.
I spoke almost daily on the phone with Detective Inspector Griffin, who was suffering through his own existential crisis, bought on by the need to write an official report of the events at the lake.
“I can’t describe what really happened,” he protested. “I’d be booted from the force.”
“You’re not the only one writing a report about what happened. Do you think anyone else will pull their punches? You’re not the only police officer who was there. There were firefighters, too. All the locals who raced to the lake when they saw the smoke from the fire…they’ll be talking, too.”
His silence was eloquent. I let him breathe in that reality for a moment, then said; “You have to report on what really happened. You’re squirming over using words that until now were the stuff of children’s fairy tales, that’s all. But it’s just language. The important thing is that your report underline the threat that everyone—including humans—now face. You can’t bury that.”
Griffin blew out his breath. “Has anything happened? Have you seen…her?”
“No, but Magorian said to brace ourselves. As soon as she’s ready, she’ll make herself known.”
Griffin did write the report accurately, in the end, although he phoned often to clarify details, names, and the personal history of the Old Ones, for police databases didn’t include them. I played fair and gave him as much information as I could. That involved Haul, who reluctantly cooperated by putting me in touch with Tudor’s likely lads, to ask if they minded being included in the official human report. No one minded at all. They were keen to ensure Griffin’s report left out nothing of importance.
Four days after Aurelius had cast his spell, we received confirmation that Agrona was out there via a news report of an “impossible” earthquake near Kangiqsualujjuaq, in Quebec.
Kangiqsualujjuaq is one of the most remote towns in the province, and news was slow to reach the popular news feeds. Journalists consulted scientists, who added the tag “impossible” to the event, because Kangiqsualujjuaq was located upon the Canadian Shield, a tectonically stable area that covered more than half of Canada.
“An earthquake simply couldn’t happen there,” Magorian told both me and his laptop screen, while drone footage showed a massive, jagged rent in the ground, and the local residents’ cars and snowmobiles dotted around it, providing scale. “The Shield is solid rock.”
Ketill snorted. “Rock isn’t that solid,” he said with an air of expertise, for he was sitting next to Magorian at the picnic table on one of the tiers in the main clearing of the forest. I sat opposite them. Other people were taking their leisure at other tables, sipping beverages, or talking together. It was a peaceful scene.
Magorian rolled his eyes at Ketill’s claim.
“He did drill through solid rock to build the bridge across to Toledo,” I reminded Magorian.
Ketill was staring at the screen as the aerial footage continued. “Hey, play that back again,” he told Magorian. “Lemme see the start of it.”
That particular report didn’t show the full fault line, so I went digging for raw video that would satisfy Ketill’s curiosity. I found a source on Reddit, which Ketill poured over. “This was only hours after it happened,” he muttered, as he played it over again on his laptop. He shook his head and sat back. “The fault line is all wrong.”
“You’re an earthquake expert, too?” Magorian teased, the corner of his mouth lifting.
“I’m an earth expert,” Ketill said firmly. “There’s something wrong with that hole. It didn’t form naturally.”
I felt my innards go still.
Magorian turned back to look at Ketill, who was frowning down at his oversized laptop with the enlarged keys. “What do you mean, it wasn’t formed naturally?”
Ketill glanced up at Magorian, startled. “I was just talking.”
“Why isn’t that natural?” Magorian pressed.
“My mouth works before my brain engages,” Ketill said.
“Which means your instincts are driving it,” Magorian said. “Now process it with your brain engaged. Why isn’t it natural?”
Ketill pressed his lips together, so his top and bottom tusks clicked and rubbed. He replayed the video once more, this time at half speed. He fidgeted for a few seconds, then I saw his attention snag. He leaned closer to the screen. Then closer.
Then he jabbed the space bar with a claw tip and point. “That’s why it’s not natural. See the center of the fault, where the crevasse has formed?”
We gathered around the laptop to look, while Forest folk glanced at us with mild curiosity.
Ketill started the footage playing from the start. “Yeah, now it’s really obvious,” he said.
I studied the slippage in the earth. I’d seen fault lines from earthquakes in the past and this looked the same. A section of earth had thrust upwards, cracking open the ground, while a section that had been part of it dropped downward, revealing centimeters or even meters of raw earth and roots on the slip face.
There wasn’t a lot of subsidence on this one. A finger’s width, perhaps. But the earth had cracked open.
“What’s wrong with it?” I asked Ketill.
“It’s too short,” Ketill replied.
I glanced at Magorian. He looked as baffled as I felt.
“Isn’t the fault nearly a kilometer long?” I asked.
“And there.” Ketill halted the playback and pointed at the gaping, elongated hole in the earth, where the two sides of the fault had separated. Judging by the people standing on either side of the hastily erected barriers, I guessed the hole was about three meters across and ran for perhaps twelve meters before it closed up and became a simple fault line once more.
“Okay, I’ll bite.” Magorian’s voice was low and mellow. “Why is too short a problem?”
“Fault lines run for miles and miles,” Ketill said. “I used to live in California. I’ve seen ‘em. Whole plates shift, and the crack’ll run the length of it. This thing is localized, on a plate of rock that hasn’t so much as sneezed throughout recorded history. It didn’t crack. It was forced open, and only ran a little way.”
“Forced?” I repeated. The coldness that had constantly gripped me since the lake came back in a sickening wave.
Ketill held up both arms and put them together so the inner wrists and forearms were touching. His fingers were, too. “Look, if a plate shifts and causes a fault line, then it goes for miles, because the plate runs for miles.” He shifted one arm up a few centimeters, exposing a finger-width of the inner arm, from elbow to fingertips.
Then he put them back together again. “The only way a little hole like that forms is if the crack was forced open.”
I watched with dismay as he pushed both thumbs against the opposite palm, and the edges of his hands rounded out in the same elongated shape as the hole in the earth displayed on his screen. His elbows and most of his arms remained together.
“Someone…something pushed the hole open,” Ketill said.
I looked at Magorian, who was staring at Ketill’s screen. “Could a goblyn do this?” I asked Ketill.
“Not without mechanical help,” Ketill said firmly. “Even I used an excavator for the bridge tunnel. And this hole…there’s no marks showing it was excavated. No ripped up earth anywhere. The land right up to the edge of the hole is untouched.”
“They came up from beneath,” Magorian sati.
“Yeah, I think so,” Ketill replied, with a sigh.
I lowered my voice, for both men looked deeply disturbed. “Who came up?” I demanded.
“Agrona came from the water,” Magorian said. “Whoever it was, they came from the earth.” He met my gaze. “She’s raising the other gods.”
My mind refused to accept it. I shook my head. “It’s just an earthquake,” I declared in a low hiss. Even though I kept my voice down, I could see heads turning to look at us once more.
Magorian shook his head. “We can’t take anything for granted anymore.”
“You have zero proof. Ketill could be wrong. We don’t even know for sure that Agrona is among us. There’s been no sign of her. And this could be some weird Canadian version of a sink hole!”
Ketill closed his laptop. “I’m with Magorian,” he said flatly. “I’m not waiting for signs or portents. I know she’s out there.”
I stalked away, my temper roused, and my heart aching, because despite my wholesale denial, I suspected, no, I was very much afraid that they were both right.
I spotted Haul at his usual table, which wasn’t on the highest tier, but in the middle of the clearing, where everyone could reach him with equal effort. He lifted a teapot toward me, and I veered toward his table, and climbed up the tiers.
He finished filling a fresh cup and pushed it toward me as I sat opposite him. The rest of the table was empty. “You’re usually surrounded by people,” I told him and sipped. “And you’re up late.” For it was nearly ten in the morning.
“Everyone is busy. Life ticks on. And I don’t sleep much these days.” Haul pushed a plate of biscuits toward me. “You look pensive.”
“I’m not sleeping much these days, either.” And I found myself telling him about the earthquake and Magorian’s theory.
Haul pulled up the footage on his phone and watched it, his tusks jutting out. He put the phone back on the table, his claws scraping the surface. “I have to agree with Ketill. I’ve never lived in California, but I worked a road crew for years, when I was human. I’ve seen slippage and subsidence and all sorts of strange things. This,” and he tapped the phone, “isn’t natural.”
“You sound calm about it,” I said, marvelling. “I want to throw up, run around screaming and beating my chest. Or smash something in. Or find the button that will stop all this and hammer it into submission.”
Haul smiled. “It’s not a nice feeling, helplessness.”
I drew in a breath. He’d put his finger precisely upon the issue. “No, it isn’t,” I said, blowing out my breath.
“I’m a bit familiar with being helpless,” Haul continued. “After I phased, my family…the family I had as a human…they wanted nothing to do with me.” He paused. “I had five kids, nearly all of them adults.”
I was appalled. “And none of them, not one, would speak to you?”
Haul shrugged. “It’s not an uncommon story, Dr. Jones. Ask any three people you meet in here, and one of them will tell you their version of it. But that’s not my point. Once I knew I was on my own I…wandered, shall we say?” He twisted his mouth, which did interesting things to his tusks. “It was a bleak two years before I woke up beneath an oak tree where no oak tree had been before.” And he looked around the forest, at the mighty boles of the trees that stood around the perimeter of the big, terraced clearing.
“I’m familiar with helplessness,” he repeated. “You’re just getting a taste of it, now.” He picked up his mug of tea. “You’ll get used to it,” he said warmly.
I stared at him. “I don’t think you understand, Haul. If Magorian is right, then Agrona is already loose in the world, and perhaps one of the Earth gods, too. How many more will she raise? All of them? These gods are nothing like the Christian entity in his Heaven. They are petty and cruel. They use humans and Old Ones to get what they want. They fight each other in bitter family feuds that render whole countries barren. They are vengeful and capricious. They were so intolerable that Morcant gathered together every druid still alive in the sixth century to pool all their magic to lock the gods away. What do you think those gods will do with modern society? With our armies and weapons of mass destruction? With billions more people at their disposal, to do with as they wish?”
Haul listened to my tirade with a patient expression. When I had finished, somewhat breathless, he nodded. “It seems to me that the gods will soon sort out everyone’s proper place in the world. There are plenty of humans…some Old Ones, too…who need a dose of humility. And He in his Heavens is clearly not up to the task.”
I stared at him, speechless.
Haul smiled calmly back at me.
I lurched to my feet and got them moving, in some direction that was away from that table.
The very next day, the portents began. A rain of blood fell upon the Sahara, while tornadoes and thunderstorms and the flash floods they created destroyed most of Australia. Frogs hailed upon the Swiss Alps, while America’s breadbasket crops were chewed to the ground by an unseasonal plague of locusts the size of a county.
There was more, but I stopped keeping track. I read gritty, “realistic” crime novels written more than five years ago. I escaped.
Magorian found me still in bed, one afternoon. He ducked under the low lintel of the tiny one room cottage I had been given the use of and looked around. “How long since you ate, last?”
I had to think about that. I reluctantly put the book down on the beaten earth next to the low bed. “Yesterday,” I said, but I wasn’t certain. It might have been the day before.
Magorian pulled over the big log that I used as a stool when I sat by the fire. The fire wasn’t lit. It was a warm, May day. He settled himself on the stool with the staff in the crook of his arm. He went nowhere without the staff, now.
“Jamie, Ketill and I…we’re going to pack up the house and head back to Toledo,” Magorian said.
“Ketill’s kids will resent that,” I pointed out, for the three of them had built up lives and routines and friends, here in the Carmarthen Forest.
Magorian shook his head. “It was their idea. They want to go home. Morris won’t settle down, either. And there’s no reason for us to stay, now.”
His gaze met mine.
I looked away, discomfort making me shift on the soft mattress. But I’m needed here…. The words rose to my lips, but I didn’t utter them, because it struck me with full force that I wasn’t needed here. Not anymore.
“Is Toledo suffering portents yet?” I asked, instead.
“The river flooded its banks,” Magorian replied.
“Flooded….” I breathed, for the banks of the river that curled around the city were very high.
“Then the river ran red for a day,” Magorian added.
“Like the Aeron,” I muttered, for that had been one of the earliest portents.
“And the Yangtze, and the Amazon.” Magorian counted them off on his fingers. “Thames, Derwent, Danube, Nile, Mississippi, Yellow, Irtysh, Peace, Rio Grande…” He dropped his hand.
I sat up, and muscles that hadn’t been used properly for days protested. This time I could meet his gaze. “You were right. You and Ketill.”
“It doesn’t matter who was right. We’ve got a problem, Michael.”
I nodded. “Do you have any idea at all how to fix this?”
Magorian shifted on the broad stump and cleared his throat. “None,” he said, his voice low. “But of all the people in the world, I think I am one of the best placed to figure out what to do.” He looked at me. “Would you agree?”
“Completely,” I said without hesitation.
“Only, all the resources, the people, the help I need…it’s all back in Toledo.”
I nodded.
“And we’re better defended there. Jamie has plans for improving our perimeter shields, too.”
I dropped my gaze to the floor.
“If you listen to her for five minutes, you’ll be breathless,” Magorian continued. “She wants to raise an army. An Old Ones army. And build defenses. Real defenses. Alliances and…well, to complete even half of what she wants to do, she’ll be busy twenty-four hours a day, for a decade. But she is right about Toledo. We’re rooted there. We have friends and contacts and resources we can call on…more than we have here.”
I thought of the little house on the edge of the forest we were in, and how easily Aurelius had been able to overcome the shields and wards we’d built.
“I want you to come back to Toledo with us,” Magorian said, his voice flat. “Because you’re one of the people I’ll need to help me figure this out.”
I didn’t answer at once. I plucked at the bed cover, a handwoven wool coverlet in soft pastel shades that someone had carefully made from raw rovings. The Carmarthen Forest was a going concern, now. The society under its eaves was maturing and finding its identity, with Haul leading the way.
Haul, with his frightening opinion about the emerging gods.
“The triptych,” I said to Magorian. “The Temptation of St. Anthony.”
He raised his brow, for I had asked this question more than once in recent times. “Are you asking if we’re living it now?”
“Your nightmare. Your prophecy. The images in the triptych…I see them all around us. They’re photographed in colour on my laptop home screen. Volcanoes, fires, pestilence, floods. How much worse could it get?”
Magorian gripped his staff. His gaze met mine. “This isn’t it. This isn’t my nightmare.”
I swallowed.
“If my nightmare really is a prophesy, help me stop it coming true,” Magorian added, his tone strained. “Come home with us.”
I hesitated. I could hear Simon’s voice in my head.
Live your life.
So what was the life I wanted to live?
“I do want to go back to Toledo,” I told Magorian. “I want to go home.”
He let out a sigh of relief. “Good,” he said shortly and got to his feet. “Come on, then.”
________
The Divine and Deadly
Magorian, the world’s first modern wizard, and Dr. Michael Jones, failed to stop the Siren, Aurelius, from summoning the old gods. Now the world is reeling from the destruction that Agrona, God of Slaughter and Carnage, is hailing down upon every mortal, no matter what their race.
Magorian and Jones must find a way to send the old gods back to where they came from before their ways crack open the world and destroy everyone upon it, both human and Old Ones.
The Divine and Deadly is the final book in the urban fantasy series, Magorian & Jones, by Taylen Carver.
I'm overjoyed to be back in this amazing world building series – Reader Review
Click to get your copy of The Divine and Deadly today.