The Doomsday Key
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Yet despite their differences, the two women bore some striking similarities. Each was strong-willed, confident, challenging. And at times, they could take his breath away with a single glance.
Gray forced his attention away as he realized there was one other trait both women shared. He had no future with either one of them. He had closed that chapter with Rachel long ago, and it was a book best never opened with Seichan.
Lost in private thoughts, the group continued silently through the mountains. Over the next hour, the trek became a blur of rocky escarpments, snowy cliffs, and patches of black forest. At last they crested a rise and a deep valley appeared ahead. The way down was staggeringly steep.
Wallace drew them to a halt. "Almost there," he said.
Under a crisp starry sky, they'd had little difficulty riding in the dark, but below lay true night. A dark wood filled the valley.
But that wasn't all.
Against that black canvas, a few ruddy glows dotted the forest, like tiny campfires. They would've been easy to miss during the day.
"What are those glows down there?" Gray asked.
"Peat fires," Wallace said, blowing into his gloved palms to warm the ice from his beard. "A goodly part of the fells is covered in peat. Mostly blanket mires."
"And that would be what in English?" Kowalski asked.
Wallace explained, but Gray was familiar enough with peat. It was an accumulation of decayed vegetable matter: trees, leaves, mosses, fungi. Piles of it formed in damp areas. Deposits were common in places where glaciers had retreated and carved out a mountainous landscape, like here in the Lake District.
Wallace pointed down into the valley. "Below is a forest growing out of one of the deepest peat bogs in the region. It stretches thousands of acres from here. Most of the peat deposits in the region only go down ten feet or so. The valley here has spots that are ten times as deep. It's a very old bog."
"And the fires?" Rachel asked.
"Aye, that's one good thing about peat," Wallace said. "It burns. Peat has been harvested as a fuel source for as long as man has been around. For cooking, for heating. I suspect such natural fires as those below are what gave ancient man the idea to start burning the bloody muck to begin with."
"How long have these valley fires been burning?" Gray asked.
Wallace shrugged. "No saying. They were smoldering when I first came here three years ago. Creeping slowly underground, they're all but impossible to smother. They just burn and burn, fed by a bottomless well of fuel. Some peat fires have been known to burn for centuries."
"Are they dangerous?" Rachel asked.
"Aye, lassie. You have to be careful where you step. Ground may look solid, even covered in snow, but a few feet below could be a fiery hell. Flaming pockets of peat and rivers of fire."
Wallace tapped his mount with his heels and began his descent into the valley. "But no worries. I know the safe paths. Don't go straying off on your own. Stick to my heels."
No one argued. Even Rufus moved closer to his master's side. Gray pulled out his GPS unit, making sure it was still tracking their route. On the small screen was a topographical map. A line of small red dots traced their trail back out of the fells. Satisfied, Gray returned the device to his coat pocket.
He noted Seichan staring at him. She glanced away, a bit quickly, when caught.
Wallace led them down a switchbacking path into the valley. Loose scree and crumbling turf made for a treacherous descent, but Wallace proved true to his word. He got them safely to the valley floor.
"Keep to the trail from here," Wallace warned and set off.
"What trail?" Kowalski mumbled.
Gray understood his partner's confusion. Ahead lay a flat stretch of snowy open ground. The only features were a few mounds of heather and a handful of lichen-covered boulders that looked like huddled stone giants. To the far left, a rosy glow shone from a patch of black turf outlined by green sphagnum moss. Smoke smudged upward against the snowy backdrop. The cold air smelled like a burned ham.
Wallace took a deep breath. "Reminds me of home," he said gustily as he exhaled, his brogue thickening. "Nothing like the scent of burning peat to accompany a nice dram of Scotch whiskey."
"Really?" Kowalski perked up, his nose in the air.
Wallace led them in a winding route among the tall boulders. Despite his warnings, he seemed little concerned. Most of the fires were at the edges of the valley. A few were even up in the higher hills. Gray knew that such hot spots were usually started by wildfires that burned down into the subsurface, then smoldered there for years. The edges of the peat deposits were the most vulnerable to such penetration.
Beyond the open stretch, the wall of dark forest opened. Snow-laden boughs reflected the starlight, but below the bower, the way was pitch-black. Wallace had prepared for that. Leaning down, he clicked on a lantern tied to his saddle. As in a cave, the single lamp had a long reach.
They headed into the forest, still keeping to single file. The air grew less smoky. The forest was a mix of myrtle, birch, and pine, along with massive oaks that looked centuries old. Their trunks were gnarled, their branches still encrusted with dry brown leaves. Acorns littered the snowy ground, which accounted for the number of squirrels that chattered and fled from their path.
Gray saw something larger scurry off, low to the ground.
Rufus made an aborted lunge toward it, but Wallace yelled, "Leave it be! That badger will skin your nose straight off your face."
Kowalski eyed the dark forest with open suspicion. "What about bears? Do you have any in England?"
"Of course," Wallace said.
Kowalski stepped his pony closer to the man with the shotgun.
"We have plenty of bears in our zoos," Wallace continued with a smile. "But none in the wild since the Middle Ages."
Kowalski scowled at the man for scaring him, but he didn't move away.
They continued through the old forest for another half hour. Traveling in the dark, Gray became thoroughly lost. The dense forest hid any landmarks.
Finally, the trees fell away and another field opened. Starlight bathed a wide shallow hollow almost an acre in size. Grasses and bracken poked from the fresh snow that covered the hollow, along with stumps of trees that had been felled to open the area.
It was otherwise unmarked-but it was not empty.