Southaw was a most inimical and troublesome Ancient Sovereign, which had three entire pages to itself in the Index. One of the principal Old Ones of London, always in a struggle to extend his domain with his rivals, That Beneath the Tower, the Beast of Camden, the Primrose Lady, London Stone, and Oriel.
“Southaw promised peace and he delivered,” said Merrihew emphatically. “We’ve never had such a quiet time.”
“So you could go fishing,” said Vivien, her voice heavy with scorn and disappointment.
“No, not that . . . you young ones don’t understand, the constant pressure,” whispered Merrihew. She had lost so much blood her face had sunken in, her skin almost translucent. “Besides, I could have fixed things. You should have told me who Susan was . . . if that last shot had killed her . . . but now Southaw’s got her—”
“Southaw’s here?”
Merrihew pointed with one shaking finger up the hill.
“But it can’t be; we would feel the presence of an Old—” said Vivien.
“He wears a charm,” said Merrihew. Her eyes lost their focus on the outer world. For the first time in many years she looked within herself. “Maybe, maybe I did make a mistake. . . .”
Vivien half expected to see Merlin drop the sword to pierce Merrihew’s eye and brain. But he didn’t. He lifted the blade and was gone in a swirl of fog, leaping up the mountainside. Vivien hesitated for a second, bowed to the Grandmother, and sprinted away after him.
“What about Billie?” whispered Merrihew, looking up to the Grandmother, though she could not see anything now but fog, nothing but white. Billie was her spaniel, waiting patiently at Wooten for his mistress to return.
“We’ll take Billie, when her time comes,” said the Grandmother. “But for her own sake, not yours. It is never the dogs who break faith.”
She whistled, and the wolfhound at her side jumped down from the stone. It stalked over to Merrihew, who turned her head away as the dog’s jaws closed about her throat and ripped the last spark of life away.
“So what’s it to be?” asked Holly. He stood close now, a menacing presence, not simply from his bulk and height.
“I don’t . . . I don’t . . .” stammered Susan, and she lunged forward, drawing the knife and wiping it flat across the palm of her left hand to pick up the salt in one swift motion before tilting it to slash the sharpened edge across Holly’s chest.
The knife barely cut the anorak he wore, and did not penetrate the pullover beneath. He laughed and Susan cut again, at his hand, this time slicing flesh. But no blood flowed.
“Oh, Susan, Susan, you’ve got guts, I’ll give you that,” said Holly, gripping her wrist and twisting it savagely, so she had to drop the knife. He kept hold of her and continued to speak, in a calm but bullying tone. “You’ve been badly taught. You forgot to say the words, for one thing, but you can’t bind me this way. I’m not some limp lesser legend, some pathetic myth born of a piss-trickling spring or some sheep-fucked standing stone. I’m an Old One, you understand? Old and mean and very bloody unforgiving.”
He threw her down, shale slicing her hands when she put them out to break the fall.
“I’d hoped you would be sensible,” he said. “But I see I have to do what I did to your dad and take your power. Which means digging him up first, I suppose. Lucky your mum had such long hair. I can use the same rope.”
He turned aside and raised his hand at the cairn, as if to summon a waiter in one of the more obnoxious restaurants of the old style, where the patrons paid a premium for subservience. Susan felt power flow from the mountain through him. Her power, her father’s power, usurped by Holly. She didn’t know how to stop it, but she tried, willing the magic to dry up, to flow back, to return to the mountain and come to her instead.
Holly took a step aside and kicked her in the ribs.
“Stop that!”
Susan rolled away, but she’d lost concentration. Whatever Holly wanted the power for, he had enough now.
He flicked his fingers dismissively.
The cairn shifted, rocks rolling off into the fog. The platform beneath split open, the stones pushed away as if by some internal eruption.
“Come see your dad,” said Holly. He walked over, supremely confident that Susan would follow.
She got up slowly, hunched over and holding her ribs, pretending to be hurt much more than she was. Slowly, she picked her way through the tumbled stones to where the cairn and platform had been.
“Leave the knife,” said Holly as she bent down to pick it up. “Let’s get this over with. They do a good pint and a bacon sandwich down in the village. Which you could still have if you decide to be sensible.”
Susan shook her head, and concentrated on drawing more of the magic from the mountain into herself. She could feel Holly trying to take it back, but his grip was weakening. She had the right, and he didn’t.
“Here he is,” said Holly. “That’s your dad.”
Susan looked down into what was basically a rough-carved grave in the stony mountaintop, and saw her father, three feet below.
The Old Man of Coniston looked no more than forty, not old at all. His gray-streaked copper hair had grown to his waist, almost a garment in itself, and he had a beard to do the Edward Lear character proud, bushy enough to hold a dozen owls and larks and wrens. His fingernails had grown so long they curled back on themselves. His purple flared trousers were rotting at the hems, his Nehru jacket was moldy at the cuffs, and the side zips on his boots were rusted.
His eyes were partly open, enough to see a slice of slate-gray pupils. His mouth was hidden behind the whiskers. He was tied at the wrists and ankles by narrow ropes fastened to iron eye-bolts screwed into the rock.
Ropes woven from many strands of . . . raven-black hair.
Her mother’s hair. Ropes of love to bind an Old One and take his power, far more stringent than any mere binding with blood and iron and salt to make a servant.
Ropes that would serve as well to bind the Old One’s half-mortal heir, who loved her mother.
“Touching, isn’t it,” said Holly. “Like that old story. She sold her hair to buy him a present, not knowing what I wanted it for, and he risked visiting London to be with her, and they both lost out.”
“That is a completely stupid misreading of ‘The Gift of the Magi,’” said Vivien, coming out of the fog to stand next to Susan.
Holly started towards them, raising his fist. Susan felt him draw in power from the mountain, despite her efforts to resist. And she felt other powers, too, Holly calling on magic from far away. It was lessened here, but there was so much of it. . . .
“You bloody booksellers don’t know when—”
Merlin came up behind him and swung the ancient sword in a decapitating blow, two-handed. There was a deafening, horrendous ring of metal upon metal as Holly’s head flew off and bounced away down the mountainside, to be lost in the fog.
There was no blood. The body stood there for a moment, before slowly sinking to its knees. But it did not fall any farther.
Booming laughter came out of the fog, followed by Holly’s voice, loud and horrible.
“Now you’ve really pissed me off!”
Vivien took a deep breath and held up her right hand, the luminescence growing brighter, reflecting off the swirling whiteness of the fog. Merlin stepped up next to her.