to the ground.
'What's going on?' Laura said. 'Is this it?'
The clouds came down until they were rolling across the ground, and at that point Church realised there was a figure among them. At first it was just a silhouette almost lost beneath the shrouding mist, but then it came closer to the fore and Church realised who it was, and what was happening.
'Get back to the house.' The snap in his voice stifled any questions instantly. Laura took one more glance at the clouds, then ran for the cottage. Halfway across the turf she realised Church wasn't behind her, but when she looked back he waved frantically for her to continue.
Then the wind did knock him to his knees and as he tried to scramble to his feet again, it hit him with all the force of a rampaging bull. He rolled over and it kept him rolling, driving him towards the jagged cliff edge and the precipitous drop to the rocks far below. Desperately he tried to dig his fingers in the grass, but they were torn out immediately; his bones cracked on stones, his face was dragged across the rough ground until it burned and bled.
The cliff rushed towards him. He had a fleeting vision of his broken, bloody body smashed at the foot of the tor and then the wind eased off just as he was half-hanging over the edge. He sucked in a deep breath, shaking with shock, tried to scramble back using his heels for purchase, but another gust came and pinned him on the cusp between life and death.
He had to calm himself, order his thoughts; it was his only chance. The gulf beneath him tugged at his hair, made his head spin.
Niamh hovered in front of him a foot above the ground, wrapped in the clouds of her discontent. He barely recognised her. The beautiful face was lost; instead, it rippled and twisted, unable to settle in a vision his mind could comprehend; her fury and dismay had reduced her to her primal form.
'Betrayal!' The word seemed to come from all around them, not spoken by any human voice, filled with strange vibrations that reverberated in the pit of his stomach.
'I didn't-'
'You gave me your word! You promised me your love solely! You lied! Untrustworthy, like all Frail Creatures!' A gust pushed him another inch over the drop. His fingers ached from clinging on to the rock lip.
'I'm sorry!' He had to raise his voice to be heard above the wind that was rushing all around the tor.
'No more lies!' Her voice exploded with the fury of a breaking storm, but at the centre of it Church could hear her heartache.
'I'm sorry!' he shouted again. This time she seemed to hear him, for there was a faint lull. He seized the opportunity. 'I was stupid… confused-'
The wind hit him hard; he moved another inch. One more and he wouldn't be able to stop himself falling. His fingers felt like they were breaking from clutching on; the panic in his throat made it difficult to catch his breath.
'Lies.' Her voice sounded less frenzied, more openly emotional, more humanity creeping into it. Church forced his head up so he could see. Her face had settled back into the features he knew, but they were broken with hurt. At that moment his heart went out to her and he was consumed with guilt at how he had disregarded her feelings. 'We Golden Ones live our lives in the extremes of passion. We feel too strongly. You cannot even begin to understand the slightest working of our hearts and minds!'
The clouds continued to churn behind her, occasionally lifting her a few more inches higher before she settled down at the same level. Church wanted to say something to calm her, but he didn't have any grounds to defend himself and he was afraid he would only make it worse.
She floated closer to him, almost to the lip of the edge, so he could see her face without straining. Her pain had now turned to a cold, hard anger; he feared for his life once again. 'My people always said nothing good could ever come of an affair with a Fragile Creature, and it appears they were correct. I have watched you too long from afar, Jack Churchill, and I have allowed my judgement to be swayed by what I saw.'
The gale began to press on his chest; he could feel himself sliding. In that moment, thoughts went rushing through Church's head and he was surprised to realise he was less scared for himself than angry that he had once again allowed his emotions to ruin everything; if he died, every hope would die with him.
Before he could say anything the wind retracted and Niamh began to drift away, her face still cold and hard. 'Our agreement is broken.' Church followed her pointing finger towards the dark horizon; there, golden light flashed ominously. 'The Good Son will soon be paying you a visit.'
And with that, the clouds folded around her so she was completely lost to him, and the whole mass moved quickly back over the landscape until it disappeared beyond the summit of the tor.
Church scrambled back. When he was lying on solid ground, he gulped in mouthfuls of air and felt his pumping heart slowly return to normal. As he dragged himself to his feet, Laura ran from the house.
'You really know how to fuck women up, don't you?' she said breathlessly.
He could barely hear her. His attention was drawn to the occasional bursts of light in the distance and the engulfing darkness closer to home.
'I've done it again,' he said quietly.
'What?'
'Screwed everything up.' He couldn't even bring himself to tell her that a near-hopeless situation had suddenly become much worse. With his head bowed, he turned and trudged back to the house.
Veitch spent the first two days roaming through the heavily wooded slopes which enclosed the loch. It was a place like none he had experienced before, enveloped in its own strange, eerie atmosphere; purple hillsides cloaked in mist just beyond the tree boundary, outcroppings of orange, brown and black rocks, ancient trees, gnarled and twisted and scarred with green lichen that showed their great age, and over all the constant, soothing sound of the waves lapping against the pink shale and pebbles at the water's edge. The way the pines clustered so deeply to the shore on the south bank made him feel penned in, and there was an unshakeable sense that he was being watched from somewhere in their depths. But there was also a deep serenity, almost mystical in its intensity, with the birdsong hanging melodically in the air. At times the water was as still as glass, reflecting the verdant landscape and clear blue skies so perfectly he felt he could dive in and walk among the cool glades. At other times storms sprang from nowhere, sweeping up odd, eddying waves that crashed against the steep banks. Fog came and went among the trees, like ghosts, and at night, beneath a shimmering moon and diamond stars the valley was filled with the pregnant hush that came before a conversation.
He saw no traffic at all along the sinuous road that ran along the banks of the loch, and he didn't know if that was down to the Questing Beast or if everyone had simply fled to the cities. In Drumnadrochit, the quiet village that lay where Glen Urquhart intersected the Great Glen, the houses were still and locked, although a wisp of smoke rose from the occasional chimney. At the loch's southern tip, Fort Augustus was near empty too, and the occasional resident who saw him coming quickly ran for cover.
He made camp on both nights in a tree-lined gorge not far from Fort Augustus. Without even the slightest sign of the Questing Beast, he had started to wonder if it was another of the Queen's incomprehensible machinations, perhaps to separate him from Tom.
On the third day, he realised his hunt was true. In the early morning, he travelled alongside the tumbling river at the bottom of Glen Urquhart. The valley was blanketed beneath the drifting white mist that seemed to come and go with a mind of its own, muffling and distorting the splashing of the water and the clipped echoes of the horse's hooves. In a lonely spot surrounded by acres of sheep-clipped grass he came across an old stone cairn. There was a fading majesty to it, and even he, who was usually insensitive to the blue fire, felt a hint of its power there. But among the standing stones beyond the cairn he came across the remains of a man, half-strung over a barbed-wire fence. From his clothes, he looked like a farmer or an agricultural labourer. He was partially disembowelled as if he had been gored by a bull or a boar, but he had been out there long enough for the carrion birds to have been at his eyes and genitals, so it was impossible to tell if the Beast had consumed any of him as well. Veitch inspected the corpse and the surrounding area for anything that might help him, but there was no spoor or other discernible sign. The only thing that troubled him was that the poor man's blood had splattered randomly on the ground in a shape that resembled a screaming face. After spending time with Shavi he had grown reasonably adept at reading meaning in things that appeared to have none, and that image began to eat away at his subconscious. As he moved away his mind's eye had already begun to paint a picture of the true appearance of the Questing Beast.
That night he made camp among the trees high up on the hillside where he had a clear view of the loch and
