tension of expecting an encounter around every corner, of constantly straining to hear footsteps approaching from behind.
When the side tunnel loomed out of the dark it came as a shock. Its surround was ornately carved with writhing things and disturbing twisted shapes; over the top there was a stone face so unbearably hideous Veitch had to look away. The cold air currents which swept from its depths suggested it opened on to a large space. As he took a few steps in, trailing one hand along the wall for support, he picked up a strange, deep bass rumble like heavy trucks rolling; it made his stomach curdle. A few paces later and he recognised voices, scores, perhaps hundreds of Fomorii, but instead of the chaotic jumble of their usual dialect, it was controlled, two conflicted notes repeated over and over again. They were singing.
In a strange way, that was worse than anything he could have anticipated. There was something about that sound that made him want to flee back to the lights of the New Town, but he forced himself to press on. By the time he emerged from the tunnel, he was shaking uncontrollably, his body once again covered in sweat. He was at the top of a flight of rudely carved stairs leading down into a large chamber. And the room was filled with Fomorii. He had been right: hundreds of them. The sum of their presence was so terrible the bile surged into his mouth and he had to shuffle back to retch where he would not be seen. When he looked down into the chamber again, his vision became liquid; he couldn't fix on their forms and for an instant he was convinced there was just one beast down there, enormous and black and filthy with all the evil of existence.
He averted his gaze as his eyes swam, then they fell on what appeared to be a raised dais at the far end, flanked by two flaming braziers. On the centre was Calatin; the corrupt half-breed had his arms raised in some act of worship. When he dropped them, the intolerable singing stopped on one drawn-out note which slowly faded into the dark. Then he began to speak animatedly in the barks and shrieks of the Fomorii dialect. Veitch couldn't bear any more, but just as he began to retreat he glimpsed something in the shadows beyond Calatin: an enormous Fomorii dressed in black battle armour and resembling some giant insect.
Back in the main tunnel, he fought to control his nausea and spinning head. He couldn't work out what he had witnessed-a rallying of the troops? A prayer session? — but it had left him thoroughly disquieted. There was no point wasting time considering it. He returned to his mission with a renewed vigour born of dread.
Lost in his thoughts, he almost walked straight into a Fomorii guard as he rounded a corner. At the last minute he threw himself back, praying he hadn't been seen. The guard had been at the end of a tunnel which was reached down a short flight of steps. Veitch had only glimpsed him, but he had been alerted by a buzzing in his head and the now-familiar sickening in his stomach; it could have been instinct, but it was more as if the Fomorii existed on some level beyond the corporeal, as if they were a foul gas he could smell or a discordant sound constantly reverberating. But it was more than both those things; the creatures offended some fundamental, instinctive part of him.
Peeking round the corner as much as he could dare, he watched the dense area of blackness and the suggestion of a shape at the heart of it. The creature was so big and threatening, its position in the tunnel was almost impregnable; a full-frontal attack would undoubtedly be suicide. He could sneak by, continue exploring the tunnels, but a guard suggested the first site of importance he had come across. He gnawed on a fingernail, desperately urging himself to make the right decision, at the same time aware that he had never made the right decision in his life.
Church and Tom scrabbled away at the rocks that blocked the tunnel until their fingers and knuckles bled, but eventually they had cleared a large enough path to crawl through. It was warmer on the other side and the air smelled of lemon and iron. The breathing sound that had first alerted Church was now so loud it made their ears ring.
Tentatively, he advanced down the tunnel. More rubble crunched underfoot and the walls were cracked and broken open; there were holes so big he could put his hand through them.
'We must be right in the heart of Arthur's Seat now,' he said, suddenly claustrophobic at the weight of rock lying above his head.
'You would think,' Tom replied.
'You have a remarkable knack of sounding superficially like you agree with me while at the same time suggesting I'm completely wrong and an idiot into the bargain.'
'It's a skill. I've had centuries to perfect it.'
Church suddenly noticed an unusual texture on the rock that lay at the end of one of the fissures in the wall. Squinting, he could just make out a strange diamond pattern. 'That's odd.' Cautiously he reached in and ran his fingers over the surface; it was rough and cool to the touch, but the pattern was certainly regular.
'Jesus!' he exclaimed, snatching his hand back.
Tom was instantly at his side. 'What is it?'
'It moved! No, the rock didn't move, but something just beneath the surface of it did. It was like… It was like…' He blanched.
'What?' Tom stressed.
Church leaned forward and peered into the fissure, shaking his head.
'Like what?' Tom repeated. There was an irritated edge to his voice.
'Like… Like muscles moving beneath skin.' He swallowed, moved to another fissure further along the wall. Bending down, he peered into it, then hesitantly held his hand over the opening, wondering if he dared. Slowly he reached in, all the time watching where his fingers were going.
'Oh my God!' This time he threw himself back, shaking his hand in the air in disgust. The movement had been greater, something seemed to roll up. In the dark of the fissure he could see something red glinting. He crept forward. 'Oh my God'-a whisper this time. The red glowed brighter, shifted slightly.
'What is it?' Tom hissed.
'An eye.' Church swallowed, repulsed. 'I touched an eye and it opened.'
Suddenly there was a tremendous rumbling deep in the rock and the tremors rippled out so powerfully it threw them off their feet. Showers of dust fell from the ceiling, choking them, blinding them, as the wall cracked and finally crumbled.
'Get down!' Church threw himself over Tom to protect him. But the ceiling held steady and only a few tiny rocks from the wall bounced across his back. When he eventually felt safe enough to look up, coughing and spluttering, he instantly realised what the unnerving sound had been.
On the other side of where the wall had been lay a long, sinuous figure, its muscles and tendons shifting under the scaled skin that reflected the faint light in bronze and verdigris with a touch of gold. The Fabulous Beast breathed in and out, regularly, peacefully, moving gently in its deep sleep, but its bulk was so big even the slightest tremble of its lithe body sent tremors through the rock. Church couldn't even get a sense of its true size, for much of it was hidden under the fallen rock; even that had not disturbed it.
He took a step forward, overcome by the sudden wonder of what he was seeing.
'You feel it?' Tom was watching him curiously.
'What?'
'An affinity. You may not be of the same blood, but you are of the same spirit.'
And he did feel it, tingling in his fingers, up his spine, singing in the chambers of his head; he felt like a tuning fork ringing in harmony with the sleeping beast. 'A Brother of Dragons,' he muttered.
'Your heritage.' Tom moved in next to him, clapped a grounding hand on his shoulder. 'You are learning, growing. It's been a slow process, but you're getting there.'
'Why hasn't it woken?'
'It hasn't woken for a long, long time. It is kin to the old one that lies beneath Avebury, younger, but only just. This place was once almost as potent a source of the blue fire as Avebury, but for some reason the energy dried up quicker here once the people turned away from the spirit.'
'And the Fabulous Beast went into hibernation?'
'Hibernation? I suppose that's one way of looking at it. It is detached from the world and everything in it.'
Church dropped to his haunches to examine the creature's flank. 'It's magnificent… beautiful-'
'And dangerous. Make no mistake, the Fabulous Beasts are not pets. They are wild and untamed, a force of nature.'
Church stood up, sighing. 'Where did they come from? They don't fit in with how we thought the world
