The Magic Circle Katherine Neville (top 100 novels of all time TXT) 📖

harder to be sure I didn’t move, but I was too rigid with fear to try. Even if I wanted to get to my feet, I wasn’t sure my legs would carry me—or what I should do if they could. The cat moved across the circle in slow motion, gliding soundlessly except for that even, guttural breathing, almost a purr. Then it stopped beside the dying fire and slowly, gracefully turned to look directly at me.

Just then, a dozen things seemed to happen all at once. There was a loud crashing in the brush at the far side of the circle. The cougar looked quickly over its shoulder toward the sound and hesitated. As Sam gripped my fingers, a dark shadow suddenly crashed through the underbrush and stumbled into the circle: it was a baby bear cub!

The cougar, snorting heavily, headed toward it. Suddenly, from the brush below, an enormous female bear catapulted after the small one into the open circle. With one circular swipe of her paw, she batted her cub behind her and reared on her hind legs—an enormous silhouette drowning out the moon. The astonished cougar whisked sideways, dropped over the rim of the hill, and was swallowed into the darkened forest. Sam and I sat frozen as the mother bear slowly came down from her hind legs and moved to the rim of our dying campfire. She sniffed a few times at my small backpack, and with her paws rummaged through it until she found my apple. She took it in her mouth, paced back, and gave it to her baby. Then with her nose she nudged him ahead of her, back down into the thick part of the wood.

Sam and I were absolutely silent for the next half hour until the sky began to turn pale. He stirred at last and squeezed my hand, and he whispered,

“I guess you’ve had your tiwa-titmas too, tonight, hotshot. Whoever that lion was hunting for, he sure found the right human—Ariel the Lionhearted.”

“And they came for you, too—your totem bears!” I whispered back in excitement.

Getting up and pulling me to my feet, Sam gave me a big bear hug.

“We entered the magic circle together, Ariel, and we saw them—the Lion and the Big and Small Bears. You understand what it means? Our totems have come to show us they’re really ours. At dawn, we’ll tie the bond by mixing our juices together as blood brothers. After that, everything will be different for both of us,” he assured me. “You’ll see.”

And everything truly had changed, just as Sam promised. But that was nearly eighteen years ago, and tonight in Wolfgang’s bed, beneath the rotating circle of sky, was the first time since childhood that my totem had come to me in a dream.

Then just before slipping back into predawn sleep, I thought I glimpsed the connection I’d been hunting last night, with Saint Hieronymus and his wounded lion. As Dacian had pointed out yesterday, the zodiac sign opposite the “ruler” of each new aeon was considered by the ancients as the symbolic coruler of each coming age—just as the Virgin Mary had wielded equal symbolic clout along with the school of Christian fish. Since I knew that the sign in the zodiac opposite Aquarius was Leo the lion, maybe my dream signified that my totem lioness had come to me to draw me back once more into the magic circle.

When I awoke in the morning, it didn’t take long to figure out I was no longer on a mountaintop with Sam watching the sun rise. I was alone in bed on the top floor of Wolfgang’s castle surrounded by pillows and down comforters—but the sun was already flooding into the room. What time was it? I sat up in panic.

Wolfgang arrived just then, dressed in slacks and a soft grey cashmere turtleneck, bearing last night’s tray, now laden with cups and plates, a steaming pot of chocolate, a basket of rolls and hot croissants. I helped myself to a dark, crusty roll as Wolfgang sat on the bed and poured the cocoa.

“So what’s today’s agenda?” I asked him. “We never actually got around to discussing it as we’d planned last night.”

“Our flight to Leningrad departs at five this afternoon, and the monastery at Melk will open at ten A.M.—a bit more than an hour from now—which leaves us several hours of study there before we must head for the airport.”

“Did Zoe give any clues about what we should be looking for?” I asked him.

“A connection that will link the documents that were rescued and hoarded by your grandmother all those years,” said Wolfgang. “The monastery of Melk houses a large medieval collection that could provide us that missing thread.”

“But if this monastery’s library has as many books as the one we visited yesterday, how will we ever find anything in just a few hours?” I asked.

“Like your relatives, I’m hoping that you will find what we’re looking for.”

That cryptic reply was all Wolfgang had time for, if I was to shower, dress, and get moving before the monastery opened. I was ready to leave when I suddenly recalled something: I asked if I could use the machine in his office to answer yesterday’s fax from the States.

When I went down to the small office I tried to organize my thoughts. I wanted to communicate to Sam yesterday’s more important events, but I knew there was something I had to confront first. I felt pretty awkward even thinking of Sam, much less writing, given my surroundings and my recent activities. It might seem ridiculous, but I knew if anyone could pick up on my vibes, torrid or otherwise—even separated by thousands of miles of fiber-optics—it was Sam. It occurred to me that maybe he already had. It hadn’t been lost on me that that lioness wasn’t the only one who’d visited my dreams last night. Walking beside my moccasin tracks through the dream world were Sam and his animal