The noise echoing across the London rooftops and up into the skies alerted the ravens: the primeval howling of cucubuths that had once terrified primitive humani huddling in caves.
Huginn and Muninn dipped toward the sounds.
Blackbirds and crows streamed past them, the simple creatures radiating raw fear. Doves whirled in the air almost directly below; frightened, but incapable of doing anything about their fear, they settled back onto the rooftops around a broad cobbled square, only to immediately rise into the air again as another howl broke through the night.
The ravens flew low across the Thames River, over Victoria Embankment and the Royal Opera House. They spotted the first of the cucubuths in the streets below, seeing through its almost-human guise to reveal the beast-man beneath, with its tusks and ragged claws. Each cucubuth was swathed in a dark aura. And there were hundreds of them, running, loping, jogging, singly and in pairs, converging on the enclosed space of Covent Garden.
Instantly, the ravens knew that they must have found the English Magician. As one, their beaks worked to form a single word: “Dee.”
And in a place beyond time, in an isolated Shadowrealm, Odin awoke.
The Elder’s huge gray eye opened, but he did not see the bitter snowfields and towering ice crystals that surrounded him. He found he was looking down on a scene in shifting monochrome and without sound: a single human surrounded by three cucubuths. More and more of the creatures swarmed closer. And even though there was no sign of Dee’s distinctive aura, Odin knew the human was the English Magician.
The Elder bared his teeth in a ferocious grin: those to whom Dee owed allegiance wanted him brought before them for sentencing and punishment, but Odin had other plans. The huge figure pushed away from the only living thing in his world-a puny and twisted version of the Yggdrasill-and prepared to cross the Shadowrealms.