“I’m very sorry,” said Merlin. He swapped the revolver to his right hand, stepped forward, and gripped the woman on the shoulder with his gloved left hand, his fingers finding and pressing key nerves. She shrieked and slumped down, knees suddenly weak. Merlin propelled her forward and pushed her out the door, as gently as he could.
“Lock it,” he snapped to Susan. “Viv, find the phone. I’ll make sure no one else is here.”
He moved to the door behind the bar, listened there for a moment, then went in. Vivien scanned the room, didn’t see a telephone, and went through the swinging door into the smaller parlor. Susan clicked the deadlock on the front door and pushed home the top and bottom bolts.
“Susan!” Merlin called out from somewhere within. “Look at your watch, tell me when five minutes is up. That’s all we’ve got.”
Susan looked. Her Swatch had stopped again. There were beads of moisture under the face, from Morcenna’s well.
“It’s stopped!” she called out.
Merlin didn’t answer.
Susan shrugged. She went back into the main bar and sure enough, there was a clock there. She was setting her watch again in vain hope it would dry out when she saw a flash of movement through the window, causing a sudden blip of fear. She ran over to make sure the windows were all latched shut, and saw the publican and the customer who’d sensibly walked straight out. They were on the far side of the road, talking to a woman in a clerical dog collar who listened intently and then all three swiftly walked away.
“I think the vicar’s gone to get help!” called out Susan.
“Traditional,” replied Merlin, coming up behind her. “Someone’s probably already used the police radio in the Granada. I should have disabled it. Don’t worry about your watch—we might have a bit more time than I thought. Viv, you on the phone?”
“Yes!” came a cry from the other bar.
“There’s a door from the kitchen,” said Merlin. “We’ll go out, through the car park, across the green to the pond. Give me the sword.”
Susan handed him the ancient sword, and he buckled it on his belt.
“Why are we going to the pond?” asked Susan, frowning.
Again, Merlin didn’t answer. This time it was because he was staring out the window.
Susan looked. The sky was darkening above the field to the east and she suddenly heard and felt a constant low vibration, the bass humming of thousands upon thousands of wings. . . .
“The birds,” she said. “The starlings!”
The full murmuration had come together again and was swooping in over the fields, tendrils composed of hundreds of birds leaping out ahead of the thousands in the main body, almost touching the ground before gliding up again, looking into every dip and hollow in the ground and behind every tree and building.
“Viv! We have to go now!”
Chapter Nineteen
How far away lies Silvermere?
A thousand leagues and none
Where shall I find the hidden way
If you don’t know, none will say
MERLIN’S SHOUT ECHOED THROUGH THE PUB AS HE GRABBED SUSAN’S elbow and dragged her away from the window, then hustled her towards the door behind the bar.
Vivien came rocketing out of the parlor bar, but Merlin hadn’t waited. He and Susan almost fell out of the back door, running across the potholed car park to the village green. The pond in the middle of the green was roughly round and only about sixty feet in diameter, its clear water edged with reeds. Susan had no idea why they were running towards it, but the swiftest glance over her shoulder confirmed what they were running away from: dense, questing tendrils composed of thousands and thousands of birds.
Merlin stopped at the edge of the pond, and knelt down. He looked back, too, and saw the probing fingers of the murmuration testing the windows of the pub, pushing down the chimney, battering at the doors. Birds stunned themselves, or broke their necks, and fell like crumbs around every searching tendril, but there were always more birds funneled down from the vast, pulsating mass overhead.
The hum had become a roar, growing louder and louder.
“I hope this works,” he said, stripping the glove from his left hand. It shone pale silver in the sunlight as he extended his fingers and thrust them into the water, at the same time muttering something under his breath.
Behind them, the vast mass of birds swooped across the roof of the pub, cascaded down into the car park, and leaped up again, tendrils rushing towards the three of them in the pond. Hundreds if not thousands of birds seemingly intent on smashing straight into them. Many of them would die, fragile bird bodies crushed, but at speed so many small tough beaks and claws would be like grapeshot, or nails exploded in a lethal cone from an improvised explosive device.
The water parted under Merlin’s hand, flung back to either side, and the bottom of the pond sank away, mud vanishing to reveal rough-worked steps cut into earth and then the totally incongruous sight of a familiar-looking door. A hotel door, with the metal numbers “617.”
Merlin’s room at the Northumberland.
Merlin ran down the steps with Susan and Vivien close behind, even as the leading finger of the murmuration reached the green, totally blocking the sun, the hum of all those beating wings now a roar, as if a waterfall cascaded down behind them.
Merlin flung the door open and reached back to grip Susan’s left hand, pulling her in. Vivien followed, kicking the door shut behind her, accompanied by a sudden drumbeat like a machine gun as starlings smashed into it, dozens of small, feathery missiles.
Then there was silence.
“Where are we?” asked Susan, looking around. They were in almost total darkness, but she had a sensation of space about them and the
