'No. I can see that wouldn't do any good.' Relief tinged his smile. 'I just want one more piece of advice,' she continued.
He gave a drunken theatrical gesture for her to continue.
'What you said when we first came here,' Caitlin began, 'about this place being the first staging post of the dead… You meant it?'
'Absolutely. To the Celts, this was Otherworld, the Land of Always Summer… heaven.'
'And is it?'
The question was too big, too taxing; his shoulders sagged a little. 'Look around you… does it look like heaven?' He saw the flicker of sadness cross her face and softened his tone. 'There is some evidence to suggest that whatever remains of us after we die passes through here, en route to… somewhere else.'
'Go on.'
He looked surprised at her questioning. 'The Grey Lands… the Land of Mists. And from there on to the next place, whatever that might be… on for ever, for all I know. Learning a little bit more as we pass through each place. Then coming back here to close the circle, hopefully a little wiser, a few more steps down the road to nirvana. Why the sudden interest in metaphysics, Caitlin?' 'You say the dead pass through here,' she pressed on. 'How long do they stay in this place?' 'I don't know that…' 'But it's possible Liam could still be here… and Grant. That I could get to them before they move on.' He blanched. 'I don't think that would be a good idea, Caitlin-' 'Bring them back with me.' 'Don't go down that road-' 'Answer me!' Her voice was low, but her eyes blazed. 'Yes, it's possible-' 'Where would they be?' she demanded, feverishly talking over him. He sat back in his chair, folding his arms defensively. 'A long, long way from here, probably on the very edges of this land. The true nature of reality is clearer here. Nothing is fixed. Lands, dimensions — whatever you want to call them — are fluid, merging and mixing at the fringes. At least according to my limited knowledge.' 'And the dead…?' 'Would probably be at the point of greatest flux — the liminal zone between this world and what lies beyond — where energy exists in its purest form.' The smile that crept on to her lips troubled him immensely. 'Do you believe in coincidence, Professor?' 'Why do you ask?' 'Because that's the place I'm supposed to go to find the cure to the plague. Perhaps this is happening for a reason. Perhaps I'm being led there for my true task… to bring Liam and Grant home.' 'Oh, Caitlin, please don't do this to yourself.' Deep sympathy wiped the drunkenness from his brain. 'We need you, Professor. We need your knowledge. We can't do this on our own.' In her eyes, strange spirits danced; not Caitlin. Crowther felt a chill run through him. 'What are you-?'
The flagon came from nowhere; he hadn't even seen it clutched in her right hand. It smashed into the side of his head with a force that belied her size. In the brief instant before unconsciousness, a single thought flared: how sweet and innocent she looked, what darkness lay within… 'I don't think that was fair,' Jack protested as he led them through the myriad backstreets, so high up the mountainside that the court beneath them was swathed in cloud.
'She did what had to be done,' Matt grunted, hauling Crowther's heavy, limp frame as quickly as he could.
'She'd better not look down her nose at me again.' Mahalia chuckled coldly. 'She's the Queen Bitch round here. The poor old idiot only wanted a few drinks and an easy life. Now we're taking him to the ends of the world.'
Jack stopped at a simple oak door set into a sheer face of rock that rose up from the street for twenty feet.
'Is this it?' Matt asked. 'Shouldn't it be guarded or something?'
'I don't think they ever expected anyone to use it,' Jack said.
The only thing that held it shut was another rusty padlock, which Matt demolished with a single kick. 'Looks like we're out of here,' he said.
Caitlin pushed by him, her jaw set. 'Let's hope we're not going from bad to worse.'
Chapter Seven
'So many gods, so many creeds, So many paths that wind and wind.'
For three hours they trudged along the tunnel hewn through the rock, choking on the smoke from torches fixed intermittently along the walls. The mood was sombre and for the most part no one spoke.
Crowther came round a short way into the journey. Once he understood what had happened, he ranted and raged and attempted to force his way back up the tunnel, but Matt blocked his way and the brutal look in Caitlin's face forced the professor to accept the futility of his situation.
'So I'm a prisoner now,' he said bitterly, before joining their march, refusing to look at any of them.
The tunnel emerged at the back of a deep cave at the very edge of the foothills. They fought their way past a wall of wild rose obscuring the cave entrance and then picked a path through a sea of nettles and tangled brambles filling a small gully. Brilliant sunlight stunned them after the constant greyness of the Court of Soul's Ease. There was summer birdsong, and clouds of small flying insects buzzed back and forth in search of patches of shade. Velvety green grassland rolled gently, patchworked by lazy cloud shadows, reminding Caitlin of the South Downs and happier times. Behind them, the snow-capped peaks looked down impressively. Caitlin took in the whole vista, then said, 'This is just like the book I was reading to… reading to..The name choked in her throat.
'That's hardly surprising,' Crowther said sullenly. 'Nothing here is really how it appears.'
'That's life,' Matt said whimsically. 'Everything's a front and nobody is how they seem.'
'We're dull and stupid beings, trapped by the limitations of our senses,' the professor continued, ignoring him. 'The human brain continually reshapes the signals it receives, making everything more acceptable to our poor, weak minds. It's like a short-sighted man thinking the world is really blurred and indistinct.'
'So what's it really like?' Caitlin asked dreamily.
'The Eastern religions had it right.' Crowther rested on his staff, depression overcoming him as he came to terms with the fact that there was no escape for him. 'Reality, at least at this level, is shaped by will. The strongest wills create what lies around us. And not just here. We make this world, and we make our own world as well.'
'We make our world?' Matt laughed.
'Well, I wouldn't expect you to understand. Shallow thinkers always accept things as they see them. Don't you understand — nothing is ever how it appears. Everything is a metaphor! Everything a symbol! Realising that is all part of our journey to the next level.'
Crowther stalked away, leaving Caitlin and Matt to ponder his words. They marched as quickly as they could for the next hour in case any of Lugh's men were in pursuit. Once the foothills were behind them, the going was easy through meadows of thigh-high grass waving in the gentle breeze. Psychedelically coloured butterflies the size of Caitlin's hand fluttered lazily around them. The lowlands eased in gently, with copses suddenly breaking the tranquil scenery, the grass becoming shorter and greener. Then, as they came over a rise, they saw a thick, dark forest stretching out almost as far as the eye could see. It was oddly menacing, and they all stopped and surveyed it for a long moment. In the middle of the forest, the steely, mirrored glint of a river caught the sunshine. Caitlin brought them to a halt on the edge of a copse of ash, with the wood still some three miles away. 'Lugh told me where the House of Pain lay.' She waved towards the north. 'But I want to be sure there are no major obstacles in the way.' 'What are you going to do? Call the RAC?' Crowther sneered. He took off his hat and mopped the sweat from his brow. 'No,' Caitlin replied, 'you're going to find out for us — and any other information that might be of use.' 'Really. And how do you propose I do that?' Crowther slumped against the base of a tree. The others waited for Caitlin to reply, but instead her eyes rolled back eerily until only the whites were visible. 'Don't try to trick us.' It was Brigid's voice, punctuated by a cackling laugh. 'I wish she wouldn't do that,' Mahalia hissed. 'It's in your
