'Tom's with me. Don't know where the others are exactly. I think they're fine.'
'Ruth?'
'She's okay.'
They looked at each other for a moment, then broke out in broad grins, the telepathy of old friends replacing the need for talk.
'Then,' Shavi mused, 'the question is, how do we return?'
Unsure, Veitch surveyed the cluttered landscape of cold stone. 'I reckon we head back to the place where I came in, if we can find it. We'll find it,' he added positively.
They had to walk single file to pick their way amongst the grave markers, but Veitch could still tell Shavi was distracted. 'What's wrong?' he asked.
'I was thinking about Lee.'
'Your boyfriend.'
'When he died that night in Clapham, I thought I had seen the last of him. My heart was broken, but also I was consumed with guilt because I was sure I could have done something to save his life. When the spirits in Edinburgh sent him back to haunt me as the price I had to pay for gaining their secret knowl edge… I was almost pleased.' Veitch turned to stare at him, surprised by this new information. 'It was terrible-psychologically, emotionally-but I felt I deserved it. And even at the point of my death, he was there, ushering me across the boundary for more suffering.'
'So where is he now?'
'That is exactly what I was thinking. I do not really know what happened to me in the period that followed my death, but I do know that in some way I have come to terms with Lee's death, and my involvement in it. And now he is not here. It is almost as if the way I felt about myself turned him sour.' He paused thoughtfully. 'We make our own Hell, Ryan. In many ways, many times a day.'
Veitch continued his measured pace. 'You just be thankful you're shot of him.'
The hand closed round his ankle with the speed of a striking snake. It took him a second or two to realise what was happening, his gaze running up and down the pale limb protruding from the rough, pebbly soil of the grave, and by then movement had erupted all around.
'Shavi!' he yelled, but the word choked in his throat at the shock of what he was seeing.
The ground was opening up in a million small upheavals, mini volcanoes of showering earth and stone. Across the vast graveyard, bodies were thrusting out on locked elbows, alien trees growing in time-lapse photography. Witch, as brave as any man alive, felt his blood run cold.
In sickening silence they surged from every side. Hands clutched his arms, his hair, pulled at his jaw, slipped into his mouth. Odourless, stiff and dry, they dragged him down to the hard ground. He tried to see Shavi, but his friend had already been washed away in the tidal wave of bodies.
Even that thought was eradicated when he saw where they were dragging him: to the mausoleum that had haunted him from the moment he saw it.
It loomed up among the mists, only now its door hung agape and the interior was darker than anything he had ever seen before.
Tom smoked a joint as he watched the sun come up over Wandlebury Camp, but even the drugs couldn't take the edge off his anxiety. Veitch was sharp, a strategist, a warrior: there was no one else he could have despatched into the Grim Lands. Yet the decision was still a crushing weight on his heart. Despite his constant ferocity, Veitch was, to all intents and purposes, a child and the Grim Lands was the worst battlefield in the worst war in the history of the world. Tom winced at how he had fooled himself that his protege was operating under free will. Veitch had no capacity to make a rational choice.
Some people have to see the big picture. Tom had utilised that mantra many times during his long life and it had kept the beast locked up on most occasions. But increasingly his guilt was getting out of the cage. He'd been around the Brothers and Sisters of Dragons too long. Why did they have to humanise him? How could he be a general sending the innocents off to war if he felt every death, every scratch?
Some people have to see the big picture. All of existence is at stake. Against that, no individual matters.
He sucked on the joint, then let out the draught without inhaling, spat and tamped out the hot end. He had taken on the role of teacher, an archetype demanded by the universe, but he didn't feel up to it at all. The others might see him as all-knowing, but in his heart he was the same romantic fool who had fallen asleep under the hawthorn tree in the Eildon Hills. Whenever anyone described him as a mythic hero, he felt faintly sick. A man. Weak and pathetic like all men, crippled by insecurities, guilts and fears. Not up to the task at all. But like all men he put on a brave face and pretended to the world he was the one for the job; it was a man thing, as old as time, and it involved pretending to yourself as much as everyone else.
But still, in his quiet moments, when he dared look into his heart, he knew. Not up to the job, Thomas. Not up to it at all. Smoke some more hashish.
He stood up just as Robertson was approaching fearfully from the shade of the house. A bruise marred his cheek from Veitch's attack. He glanced at the sun now beating down on the lawns before he dared speak, 'Your friend-'
'I haven't got time for that now,' Tom snapped. 'Show me the stable block. I need some horse dung, some straw where a mare has slept, and then I need you to leave me alone for the next hour.'
Robertson stared at him blankly.
'Don't ask any questions.' Tom pushed by him. 'Or I'll do to you what my good friend did.'
Veitch was fighting like a berserker within seconds of being swamped by the wave of dead, a few limbs lopped off here, a skull or two split there. By the time the sword was knocked away from him, he was already aware how worthless it was.
He tried to yell Shavi's name to check his friend was okay, but dead fingers drove into his mouth like sticks blown off an old tree. Sandpapery hands crushed tight around his wrists and his legs, pulled at his head until he feared they were going to rip it off. He choked, saw stars, but still fought like a wild animal.
And the gaping black mouth of the mausoleum drew closer.
Dead hands passed Shavi from one to the other across the angry sea. It was impossible to get his bearings, or even to call out, and any retaliation was quickly stifled. From his occasional glimpses of Veitch he knew the dead were not treating him as roughly as his friend. Perhaps they considered him one of their own.
Veitch was thrown roughly into the mausoleum first. Shavi was pitched at head height into the dark after him. He skidded across the floor, knocking over Veitch, who was clambering to his feet in a daze.
Before he could say anything, Shavi noticed his pale hand was slowly turning grey. At the entrance only a thin crack of white mist and grey sky remained. As he threw himself forward, the door slammed shut with a resounding clang.
'Are you okay?' Veitch whispered.
Shavi felt a searching arm grab his sleeve, hauling the two of them together. 'Bruised.'
'Bastards.' A pause. 'Is this the best they can do? We'll be out of here in no time.'
'How?'
A long silence. 'How solid can this thing be?' Another pause. 'It's not like it's meant to keep things in. We could jemmy the door-'
'Wait.'
'What?'
'We are not in here alone.'
'What do you mean?'
'Hush.'
There came the sound of a large, slow-moving bulk dragging itself at the far end of the mausoleum.
'What the hell's that?' Unease strained Veitch's voice.
Shavi felt the hand leave his sleeve as Veitch scurried in the direction of the door. Several moments of scrabbling and grunting followed before he crawled back, panting and cursing.
Whatever else was in there was shifting towards them. Shavi had an image of something with only arms, dragging what remained of its body across the floor. He couldn't help but think it was hungry, probably hadn't been fed for a long time.
'I've still got my crossbow.' The note of futility in Veitch's voice suggested he wasn't about to use it. 'I
