don't think we have the luxury of waiting,' Ruth noted.
'We cannot run,' Niamh said. 'Nor can we confront the Plague-Bringer, or we will all be destroyed. What do you suggest?'
There was a brief, hanging moment of confusion until a shiver ran through Church: the gods were looking to him and Ruth for a solution. How could they have faith in Fragile Creatures? He turned to face the rocking barricade, feeling the cold weight of responsibility. They were saying there was nothing they could do; they were elevating him to a height beyond his capabilities.
Beyond the barricade, the baby cry began again, but this time it didn't sound like it was going to stop: it rose higher and higher until his ears rang and his teeth were set on edge; mingled in it somewhere he was sure he heard a note of triumph.
In T'ir n'a n'Og, time moved fast, or slow, or stood still with no rhyme or reason, but in the Fixed Lands life crept on at its solemn, relentless pace. Veitch and Tom could not be frozen between moments or see the days and weeks flash by like the view from a train, but they both felt it was moving quicker than they could handle.
They had spent twenty minutes with their own thoughts, preparing for the trial that lay ahead, watching the birds or the swaying branches of the trees, but never straying too far from the cairn at Corrimony. It felt like sanctuary: the Blue Fire that could be tapped so easily there was both protector and energiser, filling them up and giving them purpose.
Veitch was still enthused with all the energies his encounter with the archetype had instilled in him; to him, he had met Robin Hood, a hero of Britain whose good deeds transcended time. Veitch barely dared admit to himself how much that excited him; and how much he wanted something similar. He wouldn't even mind dying if he could become a hero people would remember, wiping out in an instant the petty, twisted parts of his nature, the waste he'd made of his life.
For the first time in many years, Tom was feeling bewildered, and it wasn't from the two joints he'd smoked in quick succession as he ambled around the cairn, fascinated by the shape of the stones, their colour in the sun. He'd lived for hundreds of years. His memory was a vast library stretching into deep, subterranean chambers, but his own character he knew with weary boredom. Or thought he did. But Veitch, rough, uneducated, shallow, had made several sharp comments during the course of the night that suggested he didn't know himself very well at all. In his own eyes, he was compromised by the complexity of an age when things could no longer be seen in black and white. To Veitch, he was a hero, a conclusion born from observation, for not so long ago the Londoner had railed against his mythological status. What had Veitch seen that he couldn't see himself? It troubled him, yet excited him a little too. But it was a frisson nonetheless, and for anything that stirred his blood after such a long life he was eternally grateful.
When he finished his last joint, he peered over the top of the cairn and shouted, 'It's time.'
'You know you're not supposed to drive on that stuff,' Veitch said as he wandered over. 'I'm not so sure I want you in charge when we're throwing ourselves into the Universal Transporter.'
'Oh, shut up. We had a name for you back in the sixties.'
'I have a name for you right now. Get on with it.'
They crawled on their bellies through the symbolic tunnel until they were sitting cross-legged inside the cairn. After the previous night, when the stones had been alive with the crackling blue energy, the place looked flat and dead, but they both could feel the vitality deep down in the earth, waiting to be brought out.
'You're sure you're ready for this?' Tom said.
Witch peered up into the blue September sky. 'It's for a mate. I'm ready.'
'As long as you know what you're letting yourself in for. Don't forget-this isn't a test. No trial runs.'
'In life or anything else. Just get on with it.'
At first Tom was annoyed that Veitch hadn't grasped the true dangers of what they were attempting, but as he watched the Londoner's face he saw that wasn't right; Veitch simply didn't care. The dangers paled into insignificance compared to what they might achieve: bringing a trusted, much-loved friend back from the other side of death.
'So what do we have to do?' Veitch asked blithely.
'We rip out our souls and throw them to the four winds.'
Veitch shrugged.
Tom shook his head wearily before taking in a deep breath to clear his head. The drug lifted him one step beyond day-to-day existence. Closing his eyes, he said in a dreamy, hypnotic voice, 'Stone has strange properties. It vibrates, did you know that? It collects and responds to the energies at the heart of everything. That's why so many ghosts are seen in places made of stone-castles and old houses and monasteries. The power affects the brain, raises the consciousness. Lets you see the Invisible World.' He took another deep, calming breath. 'These old, sacred places, these circles and cairns, were constructed out of stone for that reason, not simply because that was the only material at hand. The peculiar qualities of stone made it easier to release the stored energy our ancestors needed to transcend. All they had to do was make the stones vibrate. Do you know how they did it?'
Veitch was gripped by Tom's mesmerising voice weaving a spell around him.
'Sound. All these places are designed for auditory effect. Consider the fougous in Cornwall. The great chambered cairns. They have the sonic qualities of the best musical halls. The perfect pitch, the exact timbre. All are achieved within their confines. Yet they look so rough, just thrown together.' To illustrate his point, he made one low note, which bounced around the walls without losing any of its sharpness. 'When this place was complete, with a roof of stone to contain the sound, it would have been even more effective. Primitive woodwind instruments, carved from bone or wood, rhythmic chanting, the tools of the shaman the world over. Sound has power. Music has power-even on a mundane level. Yes, sound releases the energy in the stone, but it shifts something in our brain too, making us more receptive to the transcendent experience. That's why hymns are sung in church. The music provides direct access to the god centre, helping us to see the wonder that is around us all the time.'
He waited for Veitch to make some deflating comment, but his companion was rapt. Tom hadn't expected that. He was only really using the rhythm of his words, the rise and fall of the sound levels, to make Veitch more receptive to the kind of sonic manipulation he was describing. And there he was, actually listening.
'So, it's like pop songs…' Witch winced. 'Tell me if I'm being stupid, all right? But it's like some crappy little pop record. You hear it on the radio or somethin', and suddenly that moment that you heard it is… locked in. It's, like, more real than all the moments around it. Brighter, you can remember what things smelled like and sounded like, all the detail, even years after, when you've forgotten every other moment that got you to that point.'
'You have it.' Tom restrained a smile of deep affection. 'Now, say no more. Prepare yourself. Don't see or smell or touch. Hear.'
Veitch closed his eyes, surprised at how centred he felt. Even the anger that in recent times had become a constant background buzz had faded away.
Tom took another deep breath and when he released it, he made a low, rumbling sound deep in his throat, sustaining it until every part of the breath had been expelled from his lungs. Sooooooooooooooooo. Another breath, and then he repeated the sound. This routine continued, building up a mantra that filled the whole of the cairn. After a while Veitch felt confident enough to introduce his own chant into the breaks when Tom gathered his breath. It created a constant wall of sound swirling around the walls in ripples and eddies.
The first thing Veitch noticed was a tingling in his fingertips. Gradually that sensitivity progressed along his arms, while a similar force rose up from his spine, like a snake sinuously progressing round the bony stem, a sensation he recognised from the time Ruth had practised her sex magic on him. Flares burst at different points as the snake passed on its journey towards the back of his brain.
All around, the sharp edges of the stones were limned with the now-familiar blue glow. And it wasn't just in the stones, but in the ground, and in Tom, and in him, everything linked.
The snake passed his shoulder blades, wriggled its way up to his neck, ready to make that final leap. Veitch prepared himself for the rocket ride he had experienced previously.
Only this time it was different. At the final moment, he heard, or thought he did, Tom utter a word, one that he couldn't remember a second later, but which was filled with a tremendous weight of power, and then he felt like he was slipping into a warm bath. The tension was stripped from him in an instant; the tingling transferred to his groin; he felt as light as a leaf caught in the wind.
A tremendous sense of well-being washed over him. No problem was important, no financial worries, no argument with his friends or his family, no doubts about his own abilities; not even death. He was consumed with
