"Didn't you set a couple of your plays in forests just like this?" Saint-Germain asked lightly.

"Only the comedies," William Shakespeare said in a hoa.r.s.e whisper, "and my forests were populated by gentler creatures; this is an evil place."

Palamedes stopped suddenly and both Francis and William b.u.mped into him. "Will you two be quiet?" he whispered. "You're making as much noise as a herd of elephants. And trust me, there are certain things in this forest that even I do not want to wake up."

"It makes no odds," Saint-Germain murmured. "I'm sure they know we're here. They knew from the moment we left the car."

"Oh, they know we're here. We're being followed," Shakespeare added.

The two immortals turned to look at him. Although the forest was pitch black, their enhanced senses allowed them to see in surprising detail, though without color. Palamedes looked at Saint-Germain, who shook his head slightly; neither had been aware that they were being followed.

Shakespeare pushed his large gla.s.ses up his nose with his forefinger and smiled, quickly covering his teeth with his hand. "Right now, we are being observed by a forest spirit, female, short, dark-skinned, pretty, wearing an outfit which I presume is colored Lincoln green."

"Impressive," Palamedes said. "How do you know all this...," he began, and then stopped. "She's standing behind us, isn't she?" he asked in Latin.

The Bard nodded.

"And she's not alone, is she?" Palamedes continued in the same language, still looking at Shakespeare.

"She's not," the Bard agreed.

Saint-Germain slowly turned to look over the knight's shoulder.

"I'll wager they're armed with bows," Palamedes continued.

"Bows and spears," Saint-Germain corrected.

The knight turned to face the welcoming committee. Their patterned clothing was the perfect camouflage, so it took a moment to pick out the dozen women scattered among the trees-he guessed that there were probably a dozen more he could not see. They were short and slender, with limbs a little too long, eyes wide and slanted, mouths thin horizontal lines across their faces. He recognized them as dryads, forest spirits.

One, a little taller than the rest, stepped forward. She was holding a short curved bow, a black-headed arrow already fitted to the string. "Identify yourselves." Her voice sounded like the whisper of leaves.

Palamedes bowed to the creature. "Merry meet," he said, using the traditional greeting. "I've not seen you before," he added.

"We're new."

The knight straightened. "And with a charming accent too. Naxos... no, Karpathos. So what are Greek dryads doing in an English forest?"

"He called us."

There was a flicker of movement behind the dryad, and she stepped aside as a tall, extraordinarily thin figure appeared. The face was that of a beautiful woman, but her body looked like it had been carved from the trunk of a tree. Arms that ended in twiglike fingers reached the ground, and knotted roots took the place of toes.

Palamedes turned, on the pretext of introducing the newcomer. "Don't look into her eyes," he whispered urgently. "Gentlemen, it is my honor to introduce you to Mistress Ptelea." He turned back to the creature and bowed deeply. "It is always a pleasure to meet you," he said, speaking in the language of his youth.

"Sir Knight." Ptelea came forward to stand before the immortal.

Palamedes kept his head bent, avoiding all eye contact. If he looked into her eyes, he would instantly fall under her spell. Ptelea was a hamadryad. The knight was unsure whether she was the spirit of an elm tree or an actual tree given life, and while she had always been courteous and polite to him, he knew how deadly hamadryads were. "I am here to see my master," Palamedes said, fixing his gaze on the point of her chin.

"The Green Man is expecting you," she said. She raised her head to look at Shakespeare and Saint-Germain and they both quickly bowed. "Does he know you are bringing company?"

The knight nodded. "I told him that I wish to pet.i.tion a favor."

The hamadryad turned away and the knight fell into step behind her, taking care not to trip on the cloak of elm leaves that swept along the ground. "The dryads are new," he said lightly. "I've not seen them before."

"He has called together the forest and tree spirits from all across this Shadowrealm," the hamadryad said, leading them deeper into Sherwood Forest. "They have been gathering for months."

Palamedes nodded. "I wondered why I had not heard from him in such a long time. I had heard rumors that he was spending a lot of time in the Shadowrealms."

Ptelea bowed respectfully as they pa.s.sed an ancient oak tree, and for an instant the hint of a beautiful female face appeared in the wood; then it sank back again, only the huge golden eyes remaining on the tree trunk, watching them.

Shakespeare and Saint-Germain looked at one another but said nothing. It took an enormous effort of will not to stare at the tree.

"A sister?" Palamedes asked.

"Balanos," she said.

Palamedes nodded. He knew Balanos was the hamadryad of the oak, but he'd never seen her in Sherwood Forest before.

"Are all the forest spirits here?" Shakespeare asked. "Dryads, hamadryads, wood nymphs...? I would very much like to see them."

"They are all here," Ptelea whispered.

"Why?" Palamedes wondered. He understood that the forest spirits were solitary creatures, living in isolated forests and woods across the world.

When Ptelea spoke, the knight could hear a thread of excitement in her voice. "The Green Man has spent the last five centuries re-creating his favorite Shadowrealm, the Grove of Eridhu. It will be ready soon," she added, "and then he will lead us away from this foul and poisoned place and return us to a world of trees."

Looking at the Bard, the knight raised his eyebrows in a question.

"And what will happen to this world without the Green Man?" Shakespeare asked.

The hamadryad waved her long arms dismissively. "It is not our concern." Her head turned completely around, with the sound of cracking wood, and all three immortals quickly looked away from her face. "I have heard that this Shadowrealm will soon return to its Elder masters. We do not want to be here when that happens."

"Where did you hear that?" Palamedes demanded.

"I told them." The voice that spoke was male: slow and deep, it vibrated up through the ground, shivering in the air, setting all the leaves trembling.

Ptelea pulled her leafy cloak around her and stepped aside. Pressing herself against an elm tree, she sank into it. For a moment her beautiful face lingered on the bark of the tree; then she closed her eyes and vanished.

The hamadryad had led the three immortals to a clearing in the very heart of the forest. The trees here were gnarled and twisted with age. Oak and chestnut, elm, ash, hawthorn and apple crowded together, all draped with ivy. Holly bushes with unseasonable ripe red berries cl.u.s.tered around the base of the trees, and white pearls of mistletoe speckled the boughs. From a mound in the center of the clearing rose a crude pillar of white stone, every inch of which was covered with a pattern of coiled spirals and intricate whorls.

"This world is coming to an end." For a moment it sounded as if the voice were coming from the stone. "And I do not want my creations here when that happens."

"You could stay and fight," Palamedes said, stepping into the circle of trees and approaching the stone. "You did that before."

"And we lost," the booming male voice said.

The figure that stepped out from behind the pillar was tall and slender, draped in a long white hooded robe patterned with metallic silver leaves. A fantastically ornate silver mask completely covered his face and head. It depicted the face of a young man peering out from a profusion of foliage that flared and extended behind the edges of the mask, making the figure's head seem enormous. Each leaf had been etched in incredible detail, right down to the veins and threads running through them.

Palamedes stepped forward and bowed deeply, going down on one knee before the figure. "Master Tammuz."

The hand that appeared from beneath the long sleeve to rest on the knight's right shoulder was covered in a silver glove embroidered with berries, leaves and twisting vines. "Your call was unexpected and unwelcome," the ba.s.s voice rumbled.

The Saracen Knight rose smoothly to his feet. He was a fraction of an inch shorter than his master, and he could see himself reflected countless times in the polished silver. Bright green eyes dappled with brown stared through the eyeholes in the mask. The pupils were flat narrow ovals. Not for the first time, Palamedes wondered what the Green Man really looked like.

"What do you want?" Tammuz asked, the leaves on the trees around him quivering with his words.

"A favor," Palamedes said simply. He had rehea.r.s.ed this conversation countless times on the drive up from London, but he couldn't guess how his master would react. In the centuries he'd served his master, he'd come to recognize that Tammuz was that most dangerous of combinations: arrogant and unpredictable.

"It is not in my nature to do favors." Tammuz stepped away from the carved stone and looked across the clearing to where the other two immortals stood beside the tree that had swallowed the hamadryad. "And you have brought the Bard too." He leaned forward and added loudly. "I really do not like him."

William Shakespeare stepped toward the Elder and executed an exaggerated elegant bow. "We hate what we fear," he said sarcastically. He glanced at the knight. "Is that not so?"

"Then don't irritate the all-powerful Elder," the knight whispered.

"Do not anger me," Tammuz rumbled.

Shakespeare laughed. "You have no power over me, Green Man."

Tammuz turned to look at the third immortal and a profound silence fell over the grove. When he spoke again, the Elder's voice was soft, almost gentle, like the wind hissing through autumn leaves. "So we meet again, Saint-Germain."

The immortal stepped out of the shadows and bowed slightly. "Lord Tammuz," he said calmly.

"Ah, finally. I have waited centuries for this moment; I knew our paths would cross again. I have found that this world is very small indeed." The Elder's voice deepened, shivering the air with sound, sending leaves tumbling from their branches. "Francis, le Comte de Saint-Germain. The liar. The thief. The murderer!"

Scores of dryads suddenly appeared around the edge of the grove, bows and spears ready. Faces materialized in the tree trunks, and then, one by one, the hamadryads stepped out of the circle of trees. Tammuz raised a silver-gloved hand to point at the immortal. "Kill him!" he screamed. "Kill him now!"

CHAPTER FORTY.

As night fell, the prehistoric landscape came alive with sound: howling and shrieking, screaming, calling and barking.

"I've suddenly realized why all of these animals died out," Scathach said. She was sitting cross-legged in the mouth of a cave with a pile of rocks beside her. "They probably died of exhaustion. None of them could get any sleep."

"I could get some sleep-if only you'd let me," Joan grumbled. The tiny Frenchwoman was in the cave behind the Shadow, lying on a bed of straw and covered with gra.s.s and branches they'd cut from trees and plaited together. Pulling the leafy blanket up to her chin, she closed her eyes. "I'm sleeping now," she announced, and almost immediately, her breathing settled into an easy rhythm.

Scathach reached over and fixed one of the branches on her friend's shoulders. In the pitch-darkness, she picked an enormous black beetle off a leaf and laid it on the ground outside the cave mouth. It slipped into the night, where it was immediately pounced upon by what looked like a small fox. Scathach shook her head: in this place and time, everything was either predator or prey.

Catching the hint of a musty odor, the Shadow picked up a rock and tossed it out into the night. Something yelped and scuttled off through the long gra.s.ses. "The Dire Wolves are back," she said quietly. Behind her, Joan started to snore very gently.

Scathach smiled. It gave her extraordinary pleasure to know that Joan had fallen asleep confident that she would be safe. Scatty guessed that this must be like the absolute trust a child had in a parent. Then her smile faded: she'd never had that trust in her own parents. The two figures had been almost strangers, aloof and distant, and although she had called them Mother and Father, these were empty t.i.tles; there had been no emotion behind the words. She'd been close to her grandmother and her uncle, but she'd always been closest to her sister.

Aoife of the Shadows: now, there was a name she'd avoided thinking about for years.

Something moved in the gra.s.s and she tossed another rock, sending the unseen creature crashing into the undergrowth.

Scathach rarely thought about her parents now. They were both alive-she would have been told if they were not-in a distant Shadowrealm that was supposedly patterned after the lost world of Danu Talis. She'd not been there in centuries. Not for the first time, it struck her that, unlikely as it seemed, Nicholas and Perenelle Flamel had become the parents she'd never really had.

She frowned, trying to remember the first time she had encountered the Flamels. She was almost sure it was Paris in the middle of the fourteenth century, shortly after they had bought the Book of Abraham the Mage. She knew for certain that she had met up with them in Spain when they were trying to translate the Codex, and she had definitely been in Paris for Perenelle's funeral in 1402. Over the centuries she had crossed paths with them again and again. She had saved their lives-and they had saved hers on more than one occasion-and almost accidentally they had become her family. When she needed advice, she went to Perenelle, and when she needed money, she asked Nicholas.

Across the decades, there had been some others too who had become part of her new family-Joan was like a sister to her-but the problem with having humani friends was that they aged and died, and in the last few centuries she'd been careful not to cultivate them. The last time she'd had a circle of close friends was when she'd been in a Goth-punk band in Germany with three of her vampire clan. They'd had some wild times. Sleeping during the day, singing and partying all night, then hunting the savage water sprites Nix and Nixe in the twilight hours before dawn. Now that she taught martial arts in San Francisco, she had plenty of students, and on the last Friday of every month she met up with some of them for karaoke night in the local sushi bar, but that was just to keep up a normal appearance, and they were more acquaintances than actual friends.

And she wasn't lonely. Not really...

But these last few days had reminded her just how much she enjoyed the company of humani. She was thrilled to have been able to use her skills properly, rather than just in the dojo. She had millennia of martial arts training; she should be using it to protect her friends and keep them safe. It made her feel wanted and needed. The adventure in Paris had made her realize that it was time to take a more active role in the world again. She had promised herself that when all of this was over, she would do what she had always done for the humani: protect those who needed protection and punish those who deserved it.

Right now, however, she didn't think she was going to be able to keep that promise.

The Shadow had been in difficult situations before-trapped in Shadowrealms, facing fearsome odds, battling monsters, once even standing alone against an entire army-and yet she had never doubted that she would survive and make her way home. A Shadowrealm had both an entrance and an exit-all she had to do was to find that exit. Foes could be fought or tricked, defeated or won over.

But this was different.

There were enemies aplenty in this Pleistocene world-and none of them could be tricked or won over. Much of the flora was poisonous or inedible, and all of the fauna was hungry.

And there were just too many of them.

After their encounter with the saber-toothed tigers, Scathach and Joan had seen lions, huge bears and endless herds of bison. Vast deafening flocks of condors flapped across the skies. As night had fallen, they had spotted the first of the wolves, tall, long-legged creatures keeping pace with them in the high gra.s.s.

"Wolves?" Joan asked "Dire Wolves," Scathach corrected, "The ancestor of the modern wolf, and just as deadly. And for every one you see, there are at least a dozen that you don't."

"I can see four."

"Well, then there's a big pack out there watching us."

For the first time in her very long life, Scathach was beginning to consider that she might be in trouble. Real trouble. This was a situation in which not even her speed and special skills were useful. She tossed another rock into the darkness, heard it strike flesh and threw another in the direction she guessed the creature would run. A wolf barked in fright. "She shoots, she scores!" she whispered.

They had been in this landscape for only a few hours and already they were attracting the attention of the big predators. Scathach had no doubt she could fight them off, and Joan was almost her equal in battle, but sooner or later one of them would be injured. And while they were both immortal, they were not invulnerable-if the injury was devastating enough, they would die. The slash of a tiger's claw, a bite, even a scratch would quickly become infected. Her metabolism would help her heal... if she fed. The problem was, in this landscape, there was no one to feed off-except Joan... and she would never do that.

Scathach's vampire clan were not blood drinkers; they had other needs. And while she rarely-very rarely-needed to feed, sooner or later the hunger would come upon her. Joan too would need food; she was vegetarian, but who knew what was safe to eat in this time and place?

The Shadow took a deep breath, drawing in the clean night air, and leaned back on outstretched arms to survey the landscape. Close by, a lion roared and something smaller squealed in alarm.

She had lived longer than she'd ever imagined, seeing civilizations rise and fall and rise again. She had lived through the best and worst of humani history. In the course of her long life, she had made mistakes, and while it was not in her nature to apologize for what she had done, there were things she would have done differently. Her biggest regret was that she had trained Cuchulain; she had taken a boy and turned him into a warrior, and that had ultimately killed him. Maybe she should have found an Elder master to make him immortal beforehand. Funny, she hadn't thought of Cuchulain in centuries; he was so inextricably entwined with memories of her sister, and those were painful memories.

If she'd had her life to live again, she would never-ever-have fought with her twin. When her parents and brother ignored her, Aoife had always been there for her; Aoife had always loved her unconditionally.

Drawing her knees up to her chest, Scathach wrapped her arms around her shins and rested her chin on her kneecaps. It had been a long time since she had thought about her sister. She wondered if Aoife was still on the earth. She thought so. Occasionally, she would hear rumors about a red-haired pale-skinned warrior, or she'd come across stories that confused her with Aoife, mingling and mixing their legends until sometimes even she could not tell them apart.

Gazing across the landscape, Scatty realized that there was a very good chance she could die here. Whenever she thought about dying, she imagined it would be in a dramatic battle, something huge and glorious that would ensure that her name would be remembered for generations. She didn't like the idea of dying in this lonely place, hunted down by prehistoric megafauna. A sudden thought made her sit up straight. She'd once been told that she would die in an exotic location. Well, it didn't get much more exotic than the Pleistocene era, did it?

Scathach tilted her face to the heavens. The sky was cloudless, the stars so bright and clear that they actually shed a little light on the ground. She started to look for the constellations. They had shifted in the heavens during the centuries she had lived on earth, but if she could find the polestar she should be able to find...

The huge gray wolf leapt out of the darkness, savage jaws gaping, saliva matting its fur.