he have to put up with it, she thought? The rest of his life? The thought filled her with such pity that all she could do was hug him tightly and bury his face in her shoulder.
When she awoke in the dead of the night, she was surprised she had actually managed to fall asleep. Shavi's haunted face had hung in her mind, feeding every deep, mortal fear she had about death and what lay beyond it. She remembered stroking his head as it lay on her breast, desperately trying to comfort him, although he gave no voice to his fears; but then she looked in his eyes and she knew there was nothing she could do that would ever make him feel better.
The thoughts faded with the realisation she was awake, and the knowledge that she had woken for a reason. At first, in her sleep-befuddled state, she had no idea why. Shavi slept soundly beside her. Outside the tent the wind moaned gently among the trees and the leaves and branches sighed, but no more nor less than at any other time during the night.
As she went to lower her head back to the pile of clothes she was using as a pillow she realised… it was there on the edge of her senses, barely audible, almost a hallucination. Her fingers felt the gentle yet insistent throb of it from deep within the ground. When she lowered her ear towards the groundsheet, she could hear it. Lub-dub, lub-dub. So distant, which made her realise how powerful it must be; never ceasing. She tried to tell herself she was mis-sensing it on the edge of a dream, that it was a water pump, that it was the reverberation of the river through the soil and the rock.
Lub-dub, lub-dub.
It seemed to be calling out to her and issuing a warning at the same time. And then she knew what it really sounded like. The beating of a heart that would never know death, buried far beneath the ancient landscape. The image spawned a wave of terror. Laura screwed up her eyes and covered her ears, but it was there inside her head and there was nothing she could do to get it out, and she knew she would not sleep again that night. Lub-dub, lub- dub. The relentless rhythm of death and madness.
While Laura and Shavi were just winding their way out of the city centre, Church and Tom skirted the edge of the Old Town before cutting across its easternmost edge to break into the green expanse of Holyrood Park. The sedate mass of the Royal household loomed up silently through the haar which obscured all of Arthur's Seat apart from the lowest twenty feet. The area, normally a haven for joggers and dog-walkers, was deserted. In its desolation it seemed unbearably lonely and ancient.
No words passed between them until they were standing before the wellhead, feeling unseasonably cold.
'Here we are then,' Church said banally.
Now they were there, they could see how out of place the well-head looked, surrounded by the wild grass and bare rock of the wilderness that soared up above the city: a defiant statement that man would not be bowed by nature. Iron bars ran on both sides of the forecourt before the well and up the hillside over the top of it. The well- head itself was dark stone stained with the residue of years; the water trickled out into a small pool just out of reach beyond more vandal-proof bars. It smelled of cold iron and dark tombs. Above it was a plaque which said:
St. Margaret's Well
This unique Well House dates from the late 15th century. It originally stood at Restalrig, close to the church, and its design is a miniature of St. Triduana's Aisle there. In 1860 it was removed from its first site, which was then encroached upon by a railway depot, and was reconstructed in its present position near a natural spring.
Church read it carefully then said, 'When they moved it, did whoever was in charge know this was the entrance to the path beneath Arthur's Seat? Or was it coincidence?'
'There is no coincidence.' Tom surveyed the well-head carefully, as if he were looking for a lock.
'So someone did know?'
'Perhaps. A great deal of secret knowledge has been maintained down the years. There are numerous societies which keep their version of the truth close to them, many secret believers passing words down from mother to daughter, father to son. Or perhaps the people who moved the well-head were simply guided by an unseen hand.'
A few weeks earlier Church would have met such a comment with derision, but now he was more than aware of what lay behind the visible. 'So how do we get in? Can you see the switch like you did at Tintagel?'
'I can, but I'd be remiss in my job if I didn't start teaching you.'
'I can't see anything!'
'That's because you are not looking correctly,' Tom replied with exasperation.
Church squinted in the feeble hope it would reveal some hitherto obscured detail, but it only brought an irritated snort from Tom. 'Haven't you learned anything yet?'
'I've learned you're an annoying bastard,' Church snapped.
'The mistake you people constantly make is that you see the five senses as separate, and as the only tools at your disposal. Haven't I told you to trust your intuition? Sense where the switch is. Feel the power of the earth energy in this spot, its arteries and veins, where it pulses the strongest. Then let it inform each sense in turn, until they are all working together. Smell the switch, taste it in the air. Hear it calling to you.'
Church attempted to do what Tom said. After a few seconds he said, 'It's not working.'
Tom cuffed his shoulder so that Church spun round in irritation. 'You're not trying hard enough. Concentrate. Open your mind and your heart to it. If you don't believe, you won't do it.'
'Why should I be able to do it?'
'Why? Because you're special, though God knows why. You are a manifestation of the Pendragon Spirit. Its force moves through you. You're closer to the land and the energy than I am. In an ideal world, you should be teaching me!'
Church sighed and turned back to the well-head. 'It's not easy to believe in something like that.'
'Stop whining. Get on with it.'
Church concentrated. After a while he gave up trying to look at the detail in the stone and closed his eyes; that seemed to help. In the dark behind his eyelids he imagined he could see blue tracings like the trails left by firework sparklers. But then he realised it wasn't his imagination, and if he concentrated, he could make the paths stronger, see the faint web they made. A little more concentration and he could hear them fizzing, as if he were standing near a hightension power line; they smelled and tasted like burnt iron.
And then he opened his eyes and he could still see the blue trails glowing beneath the surface of the stone and the surrounding grass. 'It's there.' His awed voice was hushed. He let his gaze slip slightly to the side and he could see the blue arteries continuing out and up into Arthur's Seat, across the ground behind him towards the city. 'It's in everything. Everywhere.'
He noticed that some of the arteries and veins glowed with a paler blue and others appeared oddly truncated, as if they had withered and died. With this realisation and the conscious stream of thoughts it generated, he began to lose control of the vision. It flickered as his senses fragmented, became individual units again. Desperately he launched himself forward and hammered the palm of his hand on to the point on the well-head where the blue fire had appeared to converge. There was a surge of needle-pain in his fingertips and blue sparks flew. With a deep rumble, the well-head split open, flooding water out, but giving access to a dark tunnel which lay beyond the spout of the spring.
Tom grabbed his elbow and propelled him in. The moment they set foot in the tunnel the well-head ground shut behind them. Church had expected stifling darkness, but there was a faint phosphorescent glow to the slick rock walls which gave the passage the gloomy appearance of the last minutes of twilight. But it was enough to see by, and Tom was already marching ahead.
Church caught up with him with a double-step, breathing in the dank air and shivering slightly. His footsteps echoed off the walls. 'That was amazing.' Although there was no reason for it, he spoke in a whisper. 'Is that how you see things?'
'Sometimes. When I allow myself.'
'It's-' He searched for the right word, but couldn't find one to match the immensity of what he felt. He settled for, 'Tremendous. I can understand how people could get all religious about that. It showed the interconnectedness of everything. That blue, spiritual fire, in the land, in the rocks.' He gazed at the back of his hand. 'In us.'
'It's the neolithic mindset. Once everybody could see things that way.'
'Then what happened? Why did we lose it?'
