Darkest Hour (Age of Misrule, Book 2) (37 page)

Back in the main tunnel, he fought to control his nausea and spinning head. He couldn’t work out what he had witnessed-a rallying of the troops? A prayer session?-but it had left him thoroughly disquieted. There was no point wasting time considering it. He returned to his mission with a renewed vigour born of dread.

Lost in his thoughts, he almost walked straight into a Fomorii guard as he rounded a corner. At the last minute he threw himself back, praying he hadn’t been seen. The guard had been at the end of a tunnel which was reached down a short flight of steps. Veitch had only glimpsed him, but he had been alerted by a buzzing in his head and the now-familiar sickening in his stomach; it could have been instinct, but it was more as if the Fomorii existed on some level beyond the corporeal, as if they were a foul gas he could smell or a discordant sound constantly reverberating. But it was more than both those things; the creatures offended some fundamental, instinctive part of him.

Peeking round the corner as much as he could dare, he watched the dense area of blackness and the suggestion of a shape at the heart of it. The creature was so big and threatening, its position in the tunnel was almost impregnable; a full-frontal attack would undoubtedly be suicide. He could sneak by, continue exploring the tunnels, but a guard suggested the first site of importance he had come across. He gnawed on a fingernail, desperately urging himself to make the right decision, at the same time aware that he had never made the right decision in his life.

Church and Tom scrabbled away at the rocks that blocked the tunnel until their fingers and knuckles bled, but eventually they had cleared a large enough path to crawl through. It was warmer on the other side and the air smelled of lemon and iron. The breathing sound that had first alerted Church was now so loud it made their ears ring.

Tentatively, he advanced down the tunnel. More rubble crunched underfoot and the walls were cracked and broken open; there were holes so big he could put his hand through them.

“We must be right in the heart of Arthur’s Seat now,” he said, suddenly claustrophobic at the weight of rock lying above his head.

“You would think,” Tom replied.

“You have a remarkable knack of sounding superficially like you agree with me while at the same time suggesting I’m completely wrong and an idiot into the bargain.”

“It’s a skill. I’ve had centuries to perfect it.”

Church suddenly noticed an unusual texture on the rock that lay at the end of one of the fissures in the wall. Squinting, he could just make out a strange diamond pattern. “That’s odd.” Cautiously he reached in and ran his fingers over the surface; it was rough and cool to the touch, but the pattern was certainly regular.

“Jesus!” he exclaimed, snatching his hand back.

Tom was instantly at his side. “What is it?”

“It moved! No, the rock didn’t move, but something just beneath the surface of it did. It was like … It was like …” He blanched.

“What?” Tom stressed.

Church leaned forward and peered into the fissure, shaking his head.

“Like what?” Tom repeated. There was an irritated edge to his voice.

“Like … Like muscles moving beneath skin.” He swallowed, moved to another fissure further along the wall. Bending down, he peered into it, then hesitantly held his hand over the opening, wondering if he dared. Slowly he reached in, all the time watching where his fingers were going.

“Oh my God!” This time he threw himself back, shaking his hand in the air in disgust. The movement had been greater, something seemed to roll up. In the dark of the fissure he could see something red glinting. He crept forward. “Oh my God”-a whisper this time. The red glowed brighter, shifted slightly.

“What is it?” Tom hissed.

“An eye.” Church swallowed, repulsed. “I touched an eye and it opened.”

Suddenly there was a tremendous rumbling deep in the rock and the tremors rippled out so powerfully it threw them off their feet. Showers of dust fell from the ceiling, choking them, blinding them, as the wall cracked and finally crumbled.

“Get down!” Church threw himself over Tom to protect him. But the ceiling held steady and only a few tiny rocks from the wall bounced across his back. When he eventually felt safe enough to look up, coughing and spluttering, he instantly realised what the unnerving sound had been.

On the other side of where the wall had been lay a long, sinuous figure, its muscles and tendons shifting under the scaled skin that reflected the faint light in bronze and verdigris with a touch of gold. The Fabulous Beast breathed in and out, regularly, peacefully, moving gently in its deep sleep, but its bulk was so big even the slightest tremble of its lithe body sent tremors through the rock. Church couldn’t even get a sense of its true size, for much of it was hidden under the fallen rock; even that had not disturbed it.

He took a step forward, overcome by the sudden wonder of what he was seeing.

“You feel it?” Tom was watching him curiously.

“What?”

“An affinity. You may not be of the same blood, but you are of the same spirit.”

And he did feel it, tingling in his fingers, up his spine, singing in the chambers of his head; he felt like a tuning fork ringing in harmony with the sleeping beast. “A Brother of Dragons,” he muttered.

“Your heritage.” Tom moved in next to him, clapped a grounding hand on his shoulder. “You are learning, growing. It’s been a slow process, but you’re getting there.”

“Why hasn’t it woken?”

“It hasn’t woken for a long, long time. It is kin to the old one that lies beneath Avebury, younger, but only just. This place was once almost as potent a source of the blue fire as Avebury, but for some reason the energy dried up quicker here once the people turned away from the spirit.”

“And the Fabulous Beast went into hibernation?”

“Hibernation? I suppose that’s one way of looking at it. It is detached from the world and everything in it.”

Church dropped to his haunches to examine the creature’s flank. “It’s magnificent … beautiful-“

“And dangerous. Make no mistake, the Fabulous Beasts are not pets. They are wild and untamed, a force of nature.”

Church stood up, sighing. “Where did they come from? They don’t fit in with how we thought the world operated.”

“They fit in with the way the world should be, and once was.”

“What are we supposed to do now?” Church asked, looking down the steep slope of tunnel where it disappeared into the gloom. “I don’t know how the hell I’m supposed to get the earth energy moving again. And to be honest, even if we could find a way, I still don’t see how it’s supposed to help us.”

Tom set off walking, his voice floating back ethereally. “Perhaps it won’t help us. But healing the wounded land, perhaps, is a mission that exceeds opposition to the Fomorii. Your prime mission.”

“If Balor returns, there won’t be a land left to heal,” Church said sourly, trying to keep up.

The tunnel pitched downwards steeply until there were points when Church had to grab hold of the walls to stop himself slipping out of control. The air grew colder and dustier and at times he felt the blast of strong air currents, although he couldn’t begin to guess where they were coming from. As they descended they seemed to move into an oppressive doom-filled atmosphere; their sporadic conversation dried up accordingly, so the only sound was the soft tramp of their feet.

The air currents grew worryingly stronger until gusts surged up the tunnel, knocking them against the walls. It was almost as if they were coming to the edge of a cliff. Church had a sudden vision of the vast underground sea inJourney to the Centre of the Earth. And then the tunnel ended abruptly and the the source of the wind became clear.

They were standing on a small ledge which ran around a yawning hole so big they couldn’t see the other side. It plunged away from their feet in a dizzying drop into darkness, but the rush of air and odd, disturbing echoes suggested it was very deep indeed. It may well have gone down forever. Church closed his eyes and threw himself backwards into the tunnel mouth as a rush of vertigo made his head spin.

“Here we are,” Tom said. “The well of fire.”

Church eventually found the strength to creep forward on his hands and knees to peer over the edge into the abyss. The wind rushed up, buffeting his face, tugging at his hair. His head reeled as he fought the sensation that he was being sucked over the lip.

“There are spirit wells like this all over the country, all across the world.” Tom’s voice floated distantly behind him; Church felt like the darkness was swallowing him whole. “Few as mighty as this, however,” Tom continued. “And fewer still that are actually alight.”

Church sat back, pressing himself firmly against the rock wall. “What am I doing here? It’s a dirty, big hole in the ground. This is hopeless.”

“Hopeless?” Tom said. “Haven’t you learned anything yet?”

“You’re great at tossing out cryptic advice. Why don’t you say something useful for a change-tell me what I’m supposed to do.”

“Sort it out yourself,” Tom snapped. “You’re the one who’s supposed to be learning.”

Church cursed under his breath and returned his attention to the abyss. He peered into it for inspiration, but nothing came. Slowly his mood dipped. Was he going to fail again? Then thoughts surfaced like bubbles on that black, oily pool. This was a source of the blue fire. It wasn’t truly a hole in the earth; they weren’t really under Arthur’s Seat. It was a place between worlds, beyond reality, like Otherworld. Perhaps it was Otherworld, but somehow he doubted it; it was more likely the well was a channel through to wherever the blue fire originated. He looked up at Tom who was standing with his hands behind his back, as if on a stroll through the park. “Where does that go?” he said, pointing into the well.

Tom smiled like a teacher whose favoured pupil had just made a great leap of logic. “Where do you think it goes?”

Church cursed again and waved him away; answering questions with questions was Tom’s favourite type of conversation and over the months it had not diminished in irritation factor.

Church pondered some more; gradually his thoughts seemed to come together. What was the nature of the blue fire? That was obvious, if everything Tom had said was true: it was the essence of the spirit. And the blue fire had dried up here and stagnated across the land, once the people had turned away from believing.

“Can we ignite it again … can we draw back the blue fire … by doing …” The words failed him and he held up his hands in irritation. Then: “An act that touches the spirit, that resonates in that plane.”

Tom nodded thoughtfully. “Perhaps. In this new world a leap of faith can have as far-reaching an effect as a leap of logic. Will it work? Perhaps, if you want it enough.”

The strain of the responsibility began to seep into Church’s shoulders. He wanted out of it, back to the life he once knew, but there was no hope of that, ever again. He closed his eyes, feeling his emotions and thoughts wash over him, then he dipped into his pocket and pulled out the locket given to him by the young Marianne.

“This saved my life.” He held it up so it spun gently. “A cheap piece of jewellery with a cut-out magazine photo of Princess Diana stuffed inside. Meaningless, really. And then suddenly infused with meaning and power. Why? Because a little girl put her heart and soul and dreams into it? It’s like some stupid fairy story.”

“We now live in a time of myth,” Tom began quietly, “where archetypes live and speak with a power that can bend reality, where thoughts take shape. If something is wished to have meaning, then it will have power. Things were like that before the change, but the power was muted. Myth has always shaped us, you know that. You can see it in Diana’s life-the years of suffering, the sacrificial death, the mourning that became almost worship. The resonances and coincidences shout out loudly, so much so that you would not believe them. Diana, the name of the moon goddess, the goddess of hunting and woodlands and fertility, worshipped by women. Which Diana are we talking about?” He shrugged. “There have always been powers moving behind the scenes, ordering our lives. We call them by different names, trying to make sense of them, but we never will. The only way to proceed with any equanimity is to accept that we exist at the heart of magic and mystery and nothing will be revealed, certainly not before death, and perhaps not even after. Enjoy the moment, go with the flow-“

“And all the other hippie values.” Church shook his head. “I should make this locket my offering in the hope that somehow its power, its spirit, can set things in motion. But that girl, she changed my life in just one meeting. She was a kid, but she was everything I wasn’t. Brave in the face of death, positive, filled with some kind of faith. It was magical to see.”

“And the name connection reminds you of your girlfriend,” Tom said pointedly.

Church nodded slowly. “Yes, they’re both tied up in my mind. I can’t see where one ends and the other begins. With Marianne’s spirit still trapped, I don’t know if I can give this up. It feels like my only connection with her. Maybe I’m supposed to have it to free her.”

He looked at Tom for some kind of support and guidance, but the face he saw was impassive and unreadable.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Church continued. “That I screwed everything up before Beltane because I was so wrapped up in my own problems and Marianne. I promised myself I’d shake all that, but some things run too deep.” He looked back at the locket, spinning gently, catching the light like a tiny star. “I wish I was better at this.”

A noise echoed along the tunnel behind them, just a tiny sound, but in the acoustics of the well chamber it sounded like thunder; they both snapped alert immediately. Breath held tightly, eyes staring unblinkingly up the tunnel, they waited. For a moment there was nothing. And then another sound, a crunch of a foot on the grimy tunnel floor, but so faint it suggested whoever was there was walking cautiously, so as not to be discovered. That alone sent uneasy signals running through them.

“Someone’s coming,” Church whispered redundantly. “Who else could be in here?”