made him look away. Here was a power he had never experienced before, one of the oldest gods, the most primal and powerful, not far removed from the archetypes. Her form had resonated in the belief system of mankind from the earliest time.

The horse reared up before the ranks of the dead, its hooves striking the air. She let that withering gaze move slowly across the army of the dead. It was apparent they were not going to allow her through.

From the way she was directing herself towards the mausoleum, Shavi guessed she was there for Veitch, although he had no idea why. She took her charger back and forth across the frontline of the dead in search of access.

At one point she paused to address the dead in a language Shavi had never heard: wild shrieks that disappeared off the register, interspersed with the snortings of horses. Whatever she suggested, it had no effect.

Why can she not force her way through them? Shavi wondered. But from what he remembered from the stories Tom had told him of the Tuatha lle Danann, one of her obligations had been the Grim Lands, or at least where it bordered with the world of the living. Perhaps she served them as much as she dominated them, in the way that Cernunnos had a similar dual relationship with the Fragile Creatures?

The delay cranked up his anxiety. How long could Veitch survive in the shallow grave with the air running out? What terrible things would be going through his mind?

No air was left in the coffin. Veitch wheezed like an asthmatic old man. The weight on his chest was crushing him. There was blood under his fingernails and his head swam with shifting lights and the sensation of tumbling down a neverending well. No one was coming for him. It was the end; life was being sucked out of him, one breath at a time.

'Lee! I need you! You must help me!' Shavi turned towards the spirit of his boyfriend once again, but the place where Lee had stood was empty, and in the vast crowd of the dead there was no hope of finding him.

Perhaps he could force a way through so Epona could follow. He started to push through the stiff, unmoving bodies towards the frontline, but before he was halfway there he noticed movement not far from Epona. The army of the dead was parting like grey waters before the power of God.

Shavi used his elbows to drive his way towards the path. Epona had already started to trot down it towards the mausoleum. He slipped in behind her before the dead closed ranks.

As Epona moved before the mausoleum door, Shavi caught sight of the reason for the dead's change of heart. Lee waited in the shadow of the stone building, and for the first time that day Shavi saw his face. It was not terrible and frightening and filled with the horrors of death as it had been during the long days and nights following his return in Edinburgh. It was the Lee he remembered: gentle, thoughtful, smiling. For one fleeting moment, things passed between them: acknowledgement, gratitude, friendship, love. And then Lee was moving away towards the grey horizon; not walking, but simply appearing further and further back, as if there were shifts in Shavi's perception. For one instant he appeared to glow like a star, and then he was gone.

Shavi's eyes filled with tears. Lee had achieved his own salvation; he would never have to walk in the Grim Lands again.

He barely had time to think what that meant before he was jolted by a resounding crash as the flinty hooves of Epona's mount broke down the mausoleum door. Although she had appeared too tall to pass through the doorway, a second later she was inside. Shavi ran in behind her.

Close to Epona he felt faintly queasy, his teeth on edge as if he were standing in an electrical field. The goddess moved beyond the rough grave and faced the shadows that still pulsed at the rear of the chamber. From the outside, the Mausoleum appeared twenty feet long, but peering into the gloom, Shavi had the unnerving feeling that it continued forever.

He didn't wait to see what the goddess was doing. Throwing himself on top of the grave, he tore at the shards of rock, the pebbles and soil, with his bare hands. Within seconds the blood streamed down his fingers until his palms were covered with a brown sludge of rock dust and grue.

'Ryan!' he yelled. 'Hold on!'

From the corner of his eye, he could see movement in the shadows. Epona's horse reared up to face it; the goddess issued a warning in that half-shrieking, half-equine cry.

The response was not in that deathly voice Shavi had heard before, but an incomprehensible bass rumble filling him with dread. It was followed by the dragging sound of the huge bulk moving across the stone floor. The shadows swelled forward.

Shavi threw the contents of the grave wildly in all directions. It was loosely packed and easy to move, but it was still taking too long.

'Ryan!' he shouted again. 'Ryan!'

This time he heard a muffled response that spurred him on.

On the edges of his vision he realised Epona was glowing with a faint blue light that lit up their end of the mausoleum, but made no inroads into the advancing shadow. The rumbling sound emanated once again from the dark. This time Epona altered in shape, becoming almost opaque, then something that Shavi didn't recognise. Crackling blue energy washed off her up the mausoleum walls. The shadow stopped sharply before responding with what at first appeared to be a black lightning bolt, or could have been an arm, or a tentacle, lashing out furiously. Epona fended it off with the silver shield, but the force of it drove her back a pace.

No one else would have been able to hold back that thing, Shavi knew. Whatever reason she was there, it had given him the only chance he might have had of saving his friend. He could no longer feel his swollen hands as he tore through the rubble, but eventually the sound of his scraping changed and he realised he had reached wood. Frantically he ripped out the remaining stones while Epona and the unseen presence conducted a ferocious dance in the background. Blue light and black shadows flashed wildly around the mausoleum.

Thrusting his tattered nails under the lid, he wrenched it free. Veitch shot upwards, gulping air, clawing at Shavi's shirt with his one good hand. Shavi was sickened to see the charred black stump that flailed behind.

Even when his lungs were full, Veitch continued to choke. Shavi grabbed his shoulders and held him tightly, stroking his hair until the panic subsided. 'You have survived,' he whispered. 'You are the stronger for it.'

The battle in the background came to a sudden halt. The dark throbbed around whatever it contained. After a moment the bass rumble began, at first so loud it hurt Shavi's ears, but then it changed to words in the chilling, boneyard voice they remembered. 'You have broken the pact. Transgressed the rules of this place. In times to come you will discover you cannot evade your punishment, and it will be inflicted not only upon you, but upon your world.'

'Our world is already suffering,' Shavi muttered.

'There are worse things than the Night Walkers. Worse than the Heart of Darkness. Beyond the edge of existence, the void is stirring. Soon you will fall beneath its unflinching eye. And then it will move towards you.'

Shavi levered himself to his feet, still holding Veitch to his chest. 'We will face it as we have faced everything else. With dignity and hope and faith.'

The shadows began to drag towards him, but the pulsing light around Epona flared and it withdrew. Shavi stared at it defiantly, then turned and helped Veitch out into the thin, grey light.

Epona led the way across the blasted, grey land to the slope on which Veitch had first appeared. She kept a way ahead of them, sometimes disappearing in the mist, but they were always aware of her presence. Now that the conflict was over, there was something eminently soothing about her that raised even Witch's spirits. They found bread and fruit in her path, which they devoured hungrily; it quickly made them replete and relaxed and imposed a warm sensation of abiding safety that for some reason reminded Shavi of his mother.

The goddess slipped into a state of flux now that the warrior side had been put away. Sometimes when Shavi glimpsed her, she was a young girl on a pony, then a plump mother on a mare, and finally an old, old woman with streaming white hair, on a similarly ancient white charger. Shavi recognised the sign instantly: the triple goddess, mother-maiden-crone, one of the most powerful of feminine symbols. Just like the goddess who had manifested to Ruth.

The more he considered this, the more it gave him pause. He couldn't understand why some of the Tuatha De Danann were so close to humanity, both sources of worship and symbols of all that was good, while others had provided the template for the mischievous and malicious sprites and fairies who held humanity in contempt if not hatred. It didn't make sense.

When they reached the summit, Epona cantered round it clockwise three times and the doorway appeared,

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