water-filled coffins, where they would wait until they were needed again. Their army became the Sentinels. Each generation that followed knew of the Trinity and what they had done, and watched the world for signs of evil’s inevitable return.”
Jessica stopped. Her hair fell across her face and she seemed sad. She perched on a step behind the coffins.
“But where are the Trinity now?” Nicholas asked. “They’re not in the coffins.”
“They slept for so long that they lost form,” Jessica said. “I watched them grow transparent as water, and one day they were simply gone. Reclaimed by Ginnungap. Perhaps we left them too long. We should have roused them sooner.”
“And Esus?” Nicholas asked. He wandered to the stone bird atop the throne and touched it. A new image flickered behind his eyelids.
A raven soars above a battlefield. It plunges through the ranks and sweeps toward three shadows. The sun glimmers, dancing about the figures, who wear silver armour and raise blood-stained swords.
Gasping for breath, Nicholas released the statue. He couldn’t tell if his powers were growing, or if the magic in this chamber was so potent it was heightening them. A rush of exhilaration rippled through him. He’d never been able to summon images on command.
“When they first bested him in battle, Esus became the Trinity’s eyes and ears,” Jessica explained. “And when the time came for their retirement, Esus became the first Vaktarin , the first to guard them in their slumber. But as the years bled into one another, even mighty Esus wearied. Men came, fearsome conquerors, and a great battle took place over the town of Hyperion. Afterwards, all that remained was a smouldering ruin. The Trinity’s castle was devastated. In the wake of much bloodshed, Esus entreated a family of Sentinels to rebuild, to create a residence above the Trinity’s subterranean chamber and guard it in his stead.”
“The name of that family was Hallow,” Isabel put in importantly. “They guarded proudly when Esus could not.”
Nicholas’s head was spinning. Jessica had drawn a vivid picture of Sentinel history that he’d been unable to glean from the Chronicles . It went back further than he could have imagined. He thought about everything he’d learned at school. Darwin. The industrial revolution. Nazis. That history was familiar, accepted. This, on the other hand…
“This is mental,” he breathed.
“It’s a lot to take in.” Jessica smiled kindly. “Now you see why we have been hesitant to burden you with too much information. I say ‘burden’, because that is what it can invariably be. Can you imagine what would have happened had we spoken of this all when you first arrived?”
“I’d have called the local nuthouse and told them one of their patients was on the loose,” Nicholas said.
Still might , he thought ruefully, recalling Jessica’s fragile mental state.
Jessica laughed and the sound glanced off the walls. “And now?”
“I still think you’re all nuts,” Nicholas said. He couldn’t deny what he’d seen, though. How had those images jumped into his head, if not by magic?
“You’ll just have to accept it.” Isabel tutted, glaring at him from her alcove.
“Man has his history,” Jessica added more tactfully. “We have ours. They’re intertwined. Ours just happens to be, shall we say, less well publicised.”
“And for good reason,” Isabel drawled.
Jessica seemed to understand that he was struggling.
“Think of this,” she suggested. “This is the history your parents knew. They kept it from you, and that was their choice. But this was their world. And it is yours, too.”
Nicholas looked at the coffins. The inscriptions on the walls. His ears rang. Jessica’s stories clashed with what he already knew about the world. It was like trying to push a square peg into a circular hole. But this room, this tomb ... it had a feeling. The kind of feeling that usually existed inside a