‘I think,’ Tom said, ‘we should not be sitting around debating any longer.’
4
Shavi was oblivious to the cacophonous bird calls that now drowned out the deep drone of the motorway traffic. He had left Hunter and Laura to their flirtatious insulting of each other, and Ruth to a quiet brooding that appeared to have been consuming her since she had left St Paul’s, and made his way beyond the service station perimeter to where he had a view of the tranquil Berkshire countryside.
The struggle Church had set for them was vast and victory unimaginable, but he was convinced of its rightness. He was prepared to risk anything, even his own life, in pursuit of that victory.
At the bottom of a slope that hid him from the service station, he sat cross-legged, no longer feeling the warmth of the sun on his face, or hearing the wind in the copse nearby. Every part of him was focused internally.
A hint of fear, a remembrance of the price he had already paid, and then the familiar taste of iron filings in his mouth. Ahead of him, six feet above the ground, the air grew opaque and then began to steam and bubble. A hole opened up, and after a minute a figure forced its head and shoulders through, a mewling monstrosity being born. Its face was blank, but indentations revealed the location of its eyes and mouth; Shavi was convinced he could see the eyes moving just beneath the silvery caul.
‘Who calls?’ it said with wrenching jaw movements.
‘I do. Shavi, Brother of Dragons.’
‘Again you draw me from the Invisible World?’
‘I need information.’
There was a short pause before it replied, ‘You know the price, Brother of Dragons. A small thing. Only a small thing.’
Shavi remained calm, but inside he felt a ghost of the pain he had suffered the last time he had paid this being with ‘a small thing’. Through his contact with the earth, he reached deeply within himself, feeling for the thin residue of the Blue Fire. It echoed in the darkness of his mind, spoke to him without words.
‘A small thing?’ he said.
‘Just a small thing,’ the construct said nonchalantly.
‘No,’ Shavi said. ‘I am a Brother of Dragons. I am awakening to what that means, despite all the efforts of greater powers to keep me in a deep sleep.’
The construct shrank back. ‘Then there can be no answers for you. The rules-’
‘The rules have changed.’
Shavi quickly caught the construct at the back of its silvery head. The skin moved like mercury beneath his fingers.
‘Stay back!’ it said sharply. ‘This cannot be-’
The words died in its throat as Shavi drove his fingers into one eye socket beneath the caul. The thing shrieked so loudly that Shavi’s ears rang. Blood began to drip from his nose.
The skin split. Beneath it, an eye popped from the construct’s socket. Shavi closed his hand around the gelatinous orb and tore it free.
The construct’s shattering howl threw Shavi back several feet. ‘Now,’ he said, ‘I will have answers. But first …’
He examined the eye, weighing up what the voice in the Blue Fire had told him. Then he tore off his eye patch and forced the shiny orb into his own gaping socket.
5
‘Where’s Shavi?’ Church called as he ran to the van where Hunter and Laura were watching the flock of ravens settling on all the vehicles. So many flew overhead that it looked as if night was falling early.
From the perimeter of the car park, Shavi walked confidently towards them. They all stopped to stare, recognising a transformation that went beyond his missing eye patch. In the gathering gloom, a faint golden glow emanated from his new eye.
‘What the fuck, Shavster?’ Laura peered into his face and was relieved to see it was still her old friend.
‘Oslo, Norway,’ he said. ‘That is our destination.’
‘Look.’ Ruth indicated steady movement in the fields that bounded the service station. Brutish figures moved close to the ground, approaching on all sides.
‘Redcaps,’ Tom said. ‘They are only the first of many.’
In less than a minute, Hunter had the van racing onto the motorway. The birds followed, turning the sky into a cauldron of seething darkness.
‘The whole bird thing — bit of a giveaway,’ Laura said.
‘The
Laura eyed him suspiciously. ‘I know you somehow. Old guy, talking bollocks. Or was it just a bad dream?’
‘This is all a bad dream.’ Tom’s glasses caught the light of approaching headlamps in the preternatural dark. ‘Drive faster, now.’ The calm in his voice was somehow more chilling.
‘All right,’ Hunter said as he searched the landscape for any sign of threat, ‘starting to think I made the wrong decision listening to you back in London.’
Shavi began to recount what had happened to him, until his head suddenly rocked forward to his chest, then snapped back. His new eye shimmered a sickly green as he stared at things no one else could see. ‘The air folds and spatters like liquid metal,’ he said in a flat monotone. ‘Shadows falling like rain …’
‘He’s having some kind of vision.’ Ruth grasped Shavi’s shoulders but he was rigid.
Hunter took the slip road for Swindon, then followed a circuitous route to avoid the most built-up areas. Eventually Shavi regained his composure.
‘What were you thinking?’ Laura said. ‘You steal an eye from some supernatural tosser, and then stick it in your own head? There’s a reason why the NHS doesn’t do transplants like that.’
‘I knew there would be a price to pay for the transaction,’ Shavi said with a strained smile, ‘but it is one I can bear.’
‘We thought you were going to have a seizure.’ Ruth brushed his sweat-matted hair away from his forehead.
‘When I focus through that eye, I can see things in the Otherworld. I know things I would never have known otherwise. Things that can help us.’
‘You can see two worlds at the same time?’ Ruth asked.
Shavi nodded.
‘No wonder you keep losing it.’ Laura snorted. ‘Shame. I was starting to like the eye-patch look. Still won’t trust you behind the wheel, though.’
Hunter brought the van to a halt on a country lane. Beyond the hedge there was a high-security fence punctuated with Ministry of Defence warning signs.
‘What are you planning?’ Church asked.
‘That’s RAF Wroughton.’ Hunter stretched, cracked his knuckles. ‘I’m going to commandeer a Hercules Transporter to take us to Norway. It’s a NATO ally. We can bypass all the civilian security clearances.’
‘You can do that?’
‘As long as they haven’t already revoked my security clearance. In which case, I’ll have to steal one.’
‘Remember: you are not simply entering a new country,’ Tom warned. ‘It is a new Great Dominion. New rules, new dangers. The gods are very protective of their territories.’
