'No,' Church said adamantly. 'There's no sign of anything like that. Whatever's happened, it's not anything nuclear, chemical or biological-'
'Face up to it, Malcolm, it's the End of the World.' A long-haired man in his thirties hung over his pint morosely. 'You can't keep fooling yourself it's something normal. For Christ's sake, we've all seen the signs!'
Malcolm grimaced in a manner that suggested he didn't want to hear. 'We're muddling on as best we can,' he continued blithely. 'Set up a local network of farms to keep the food supply going. With no communications, it's proving difficult. But we're pulling through.'
'Boiling water,' the morose man said to his beer. 'Every day. Boil, boil, boil.'
Malcolm glared at him. 'Don't mind Richard. He's still working on his attitude.'
'You're not alone,' Ruth said. 'We've travelled a long way over the last few days. Everywhere people are trying to keep things going.'
That seemed to cheer him. 'I've got to get back to the meeting-a lot of planning needs doing. You must be hungry-I'll get some food for you. We can't offer you much, but-'
'Thank you,' Ruth said. 'We appreciate your generosity.'
'If this isn't a time to be generous, I don't know when is.'
Malcolm left them to dry off at a table in one corner where the candlelight barely reached. 'I feel guilty not telling them everything we know,' Ruth whispered once they were sitting.
'They don't need to know how hopeless it all is.'
Ruth's eyes narrowed. 'You don't think it's hopeless. I can tell.'
Church shrugged. 'We're still walking.'
'That's what I like about you.' Ruth gave his hand a squeeze. 'You're such a moron.'
The exhausting journey from Mam Tor in the High Peaks had been conducted against a background of constant threat; although they saw nothing out of the ordinary, they were convinced they were about to be struck dead at any moment. Somewhere, Evil in its most concentrated form had been born back into the world: Balor, the one-eyed god of death, a force of unimaginable power dragging all of existence into chaos. Whatever it truly was, the Tuatha De Danann called it the End of Everything. They had expected fire in the sky and rivers of blood flowing across the land, but the reality had been more prosaic. At first there was simply a vague feeling that something was not quite right, then an impression of imminent disaster that kept them scanning the lonely landscape. There was a sour taste in the wind and occasional violent storms. The only true sign that the world had slipped further from the light was the complete failure of all things technological. No vehicles moved. Pylons no longer hummed. The night was darker than it had been for more than a hundred years.
The Bone Inspector had suggested Balor would not be at its peak until Samhain, one of the Celtic feast days marking an occasion when the great cycle of existence unleashed powerful forces. From a Christian perspective it was chillingly fitting: the Church had made Samhain into Hallowe'en, when the forces of evil were loosed on the earth. And there was no doubt the threat was gathering pace. The progression was like the darkness eating away at the edges of the vision of a dying man: each day was a little gloomier. Soon all hell would break loose.
There appeared little they could do; and just three months before the doors of Samhain opened: no time at all. But Church's experiences over the preceding months had left him with the belief that there was a meaning to everything; he refused to give in to fatalism, however dark things appeared. If the Tuatha De Danann could be convinced to help them, they stood the slimmest of chances.
To win over the Golden Ones, he had to expunge the Fomorii corruption from his body, an act he had been told could be achieved only in the mysterious Western Isles, the home of the gods somewhere in T'ir n'a n'Og. The journey to that place began at Mousehole on the Cornish coast, and a landmark called Merlin's Rock where legend said it was possible to spy a fairy ship that travelled between this world and the next. But one thing in the myths disturbed him greatly: his destination had another name-the Islands of the Dead.
More than anything, Church was glad he had Ruth along with him. Her suffering at the hands of the Fomorii had been terrible, but she had survived to become a much stronger person, free from the fear and doubts that had consumed her before. Now when he looked into her eyes it was like looking into a dark river where deep waters moved silently. She maintained she had died in the last few minutes before Lughnasadh, when she had been close to giving birth to Balor; only Laura's monumental sacrifice had brought her spirit back to her body. Whether that was simply a hallucination on the verge of death or the truth of the matter, it had forged something strong inside her.
As their journey to the southwest progressed, she had been relieved by the reappearance of her owl familiar. But when Church saw it dipping and diving in the grey sky, all he could think of was its manifestation as a strange bird-man hybrid when it had warned him of Ruth's capture in Callender. Could something so alien be trusted, he wondered?
Yet the abilities it had bequeathed to Ruth were extraordinary. She had told him how it had whispered knowledge to her that wormed its way into her mind as if she had known it all her life. When Church fell ill with a stomach bug after drinking from a dirty stream, she knew just the plant for him to chew to restore his health within hours. When they were beaten down by an electrical storm with nowhere to shelter, she had wandered a few yards away from his gaze and minutes later the storm abated. It was amazing, yet also strangely worrying.
Across the roiling, grey sea, lightning twisted and turned in a maniac dance. There was too much of it to be natural: nature's last stab of defiance. Resting against the edge of the window in the bedroom that had been prepared for Ruth, Church let his thoughts drift in the fury of the storm, considering their options, praying the power of hope carried some kind of weight.
'I hope you've got a strong stomach for sailing.'
Ruth's words pulled him from his reverie and he turned back to the pleasant, old room with its wooden floorboards and walls draped with nets and lanterns and other sailing memorabilia. He felt secure in its warm aroma of candle smoke, dust and fresh linen.
Ruth sat on the edge of the bed, finishing the cold lamb, mashed potatoes and gravy the locals had prepared for them. 'I wish we could pay them back for this.' She speared the last piece of meat. 'They must be worried about maintaining their supplies, yet they offered to take us in without a moment's thought.'
'Doing what we hope to do will be payment enough.'
She made a face.
'I'm not giving in to hopelessness. Not any more. You know the band Prefab Sprout? They had a song which went, If the dead could speak, I know what they would say-don't waste another day. That's how I want to live my life. Whatever's left of it.'
The candlelight cast a strange expression on Ruth's face, both curious and concerned. 'You really think there's a chance?'
'Don't you?'
She shrugged. 'I try not to think beyond the end of each day.'
The window rattled noisily, emphasising the frailness of their shelter. 'I think about the others. A lot.'
Ruth drew a pattern in the gravy: two interlocking circles. It hypnotised both of them for a second. 'They might still be alive,' she said after a moment or two.
'I feel bad that they might be back at Mam Tor now, wondering where we've gone.'
'If they're alive, I think they'll find us. That bond brought us all together in the first place. It could do it again.'
'That's another thing.' Church sat on the bed next to her, then flopped backwards, bouncing on the sagging mattress. 'Everything we've heard spoke about the five Brothers and Sisters of Dragons being one. The five who are one. One spirit, one force. And now-'
'Laura's dead. No doubt about that one.' Ruth shifted uncomfortably. 'Where does that leave us?' The question hung in the air for a moment and then Ruth pushed away the rickety table and sat back. 'No point thinking about it now.'
'There's something else that strikes me.'
His voice sounded odd enough for her to turn and look at him; one arm was thrown across his face, obscuring his eyes.
'Three months ago when Tom called back the spirits of the Celtic dead, they said one of us would be a traitor-'
'You know any help the dead give is always wrapped up in mischief.' She waited for him to move his arm so
