'You already know,' said Gregor.
'I do not, but I will soon.' She went to walk forward, but he waved his hand and a shimmering curtain came into being across the arch. 'You are not leaving here until you tell me,' said Gregor. 'I am master here.' He smiled at her from beyond his barrier.
'You do not understand,' said Blackbird. 'I am not playing games.' She shrugged her shoulders and her image wavered. Before me she transformed into the younger Blackbird.
'Is that wise?' I watched as Gregor's eyes went wide.
'You are the priestess,' Gregor intoned. 'Just as it was foretold.'
She clapped her hands together and it was like thunder in the room. The barrier shredded into tatters before her and she strode forward. Gregor shrank back, sketching some defensive symbol in the air. Blackbird barely paused. She swept it aside with the merest gesture. He fell backwards and sprawled before the altar. He held up his hand to ward her off.
'Mercy,' he whimpered, his eyes squeezed shut.
'Get up, you old fool,' she told him. 'I am tired of your games.'
'You will spare me?' His voice recovered. 'You will not take my soul?'
'Take your soul?' she demanded. 'How in the world would I do that, you bumbling idiot? Now get off your knees and tell me what they have taken before I lose patience and beat you to death with a prayer cushion.'
He looked from her to me and back to her. 'I do not understand.'
'No,' she said, 'you don't, and you probably never will, but something here is very wrong and you will tell me what it is.'
He pushed himself to his knees and then rose hesitantly to his feet. 'But you… you have lost decades. You are a young woman.'
'Far from it,' she said, 'and getting older by the second.' She went to the corner where he had been kneeling. 'What is this?'
I went over to peer behind the pew. She was looking down at a slab of stone carved with the symbol that had been in the centre of the six symbols in the book at the British Library. It was a cross of sorts, made from four separate lobes like shields, arranged inside a circle.
Gregor edged towards her, still hesitant. 'I am sworn to secrecy.'
'You test my patience,' she said. Somehow her quiet words developed more menace than his booming had.
'Yes, but… I promised to keep the secret until death.'
Blackbird narrowed her eyes. 'That,' she said, 'can be arranged.'
He blanched under her gaze, but still he said nothing.
'Let me help you,' she said. 'Something was stored here, protected by some kind of warding. The key was in that book; six items brought together will open the warding and whatever was inside is yours. Someone has taken it.'
'You know who did it,' he said. It was part statement, part question.
'Perhaps,' she relented. 'This has been planned from the beginning. Someone has been researching this for some time and their plan, whatever it is, involves what they have taken.'
'It is not for humankind,' said Gregor.
'That's OK,' said Blackbird, 'They're not exactly human.'
Gregor's eyebrows shot up at this. 'It must not be used until the end of days,' he said. 'It is to be kept until the final battle when it will open the gates for the Gods themselves to intervene.'
'We do not believe in Gods,' said Blackbird.
'The four horsemen, the pantheon, the end and the beginning,' said Gregor.
'You're babbling nonsense again,' said Blackbird.
He stepped forward. 'Each of these represent a dimension, Earth, Air, Fire and Water,' he said, pointing at the shields, which were actually more like lobes.
'I am familiar with the concepts of classical philosophy,' said Blackbird, icily.
'No, you misunderstand,' said Gregor. 'These are not elements like chemical elements. Our universe exists, if it exists, in the interstitial space between four pure planes surely you know this. Each one is anathema to the others. Fire, water, earth and air; they are not literal. These are labels, expressing a fundamental difference and separateness — they might as well have been called truth, beauty, strangeness and charm. Each is distinct, each has its own properties and energies. Only here, in the space between universes, can they exist together.'
'The void,' I said.
'Yes!' said Gregor. 'We exist in the void between universes. True magic is the borrowing of energy from these planes, bringing new energy, new matter, into the void. What we call our universe is a scratch, a blemish, on the heart of reality. Aeons from now it will be absorbed back into the four planes, but for a while, all that we know exists.'
'You can't bring things from another universe,' said Blackbird.
'They are not universes like our universe,' Gregor said, 'and not bring, only borrow. All that is taken must be returned. We are a vibration in space-time, and that vibration can be tuned so that it resonates with the planes beyond. With skill, we can sing to the universe and it will join us in our song. We can become giants.'
He went to the centre of the apse and sketched the six symbols in the air above each mark on the slabs. When he sketched the sixth symbol, the circle with the four lobes fell into a deep lightless hole in the stone. 'This is where it was kept.'
'Where what was kept?' asked Blackbird.
Gregor came to kneel again beside the hole and put his arm into it, as if he could not quite believe it had gone. His arm vanished where it entered the hole as if he was dipping into the blackest oil.
'An orb,' he said. 'Older than the pyramids; it was brought here from Egypt long ago, but it did not come from there. Perhaps it fell from the heavens, or was stolen from the Gods.'
'What does it do?' asked Blackbird.
'Do?' said Gregor. 'It does not do. It simply is.'
'Let me put that another way,' said Blackbird. 'Whoever has taken it, what can they do with it?'
'They can sing to the universe. They can wake the Gods themselves,' he was still fumbling in the hole.
Blackbird reached down and pulled Gregor up by his shirt front to look him in the eye.
'We do not believe in Gods,' she told him slowly, 'so what will it actually do?'
'It will restore balance and harmony. It will purify reality and leave everything as it was meant to be. It will cleanse the blemish that formed between the planes and make it as if it never existed.'
'You're talking about ending the universe,' I said.
Gregor looked up at me. 'Yes,' he said, 'that too.'
'Where?' said Blackbird. 'Where are they taking it?'
'It doesn't matter,' said Gregor. 'Soon there will be no here or there, no good or evil. Everything will be still, cold and silent.'
'If they could just do that here, it would already be done. Where have they gone?'
'I do not know,' he said. 'It takes power to use it. They will need a nexus, a convergence. There are a few such places. The great stone circles, perhaps, or one of the old places.'
'That's not good enough,' said Blackbird. 'How can we find them?'
'Even if you find them, it will not help you,' said Gregor. 'It wards itself. Once it is active, no one will be able to get near enough to stop it.'
Blackbird dropped him and he collapsed onto the stone floor, all the energy drained from him.
'We have to find them,' she said. 'We have to reach them before it starts.'
'But where?' I said.
She turned back to Gregor. 'You said it wasn't meant to be used until the end of days. Where would you take it then?'
'I do not know,' he wailed. 'It was meant to be at the final battle, but where the battle will take place is… obscure.'
'An old place,' I said. 'He mentioned a stone circle.'
'There are lots of stone circles,' said Blackbird, 'and the obvious ones are not the oldest.'
