Veitch backed down, and then they were both out of the door, running across the orchard and into the fields beyond.
His joints aching, Tom pedalled as fast as he could. The evening was alive with monkey shrieks, dark shapes flitting across the fields towards the farmhouse, the candlelit rooms surprisingly bright in the sea of night. He desperately hoped Witch and Shavi would escape-if anyone could, they could-but he had his doubts for Davenport and his wife.
That the Fomorii were still looking for them had taken him by surprise. He had thought that in the aftermath of their great success at bringing back Balor, the Night Walkers would have little time for failed insurrectionists.
He narrowed his eyes and concentrated until the thin tracings of Blue Fire rose from the shadowy background, like silver filigree glinting off the blades of grass in the fields. It was not strong in that area, but he could still pick out the ebb and flow. Driving himself on as fast as he could, he searched for a confluence on the St. Michael's Line.
An hour later he found himself in the Hertfordshire town of Royston, at a point where the ancient Royal Roads of Britain, the Icknield Way and Ermine Street, crossed. The town was still, although candles glowed in many windows. The moment he saw the town name, he knew where he was heading. The old stories enshrined the mythic power of certain locations so they would never be forgotten by the adepts, however much locals became inured to their mystery.
A grating in the pavement showed his destination, but it took him a while longer to raise one of the residents to point him in the direction of an old wooden door. Taking a candle, he made his way along a tunnel to a thirty- foothigh, bell-shaped chamber cut into the solid chalk lying just beneath the street. He remembered how one of the Culture had told him of its rediscovery in the eighteenth century when a group of workmen digging a hole found a millstone sunk in the earth; beneath it was a shaft that led into the cave.
Tom held up the candle and the walls came alive; carved pictures swelled and receded in the flickering light. Here Sheela-na-Gig, one of the old fertility goddesses, there Christian images of the crucifixion, and then a mix of the two, with St. Catherine holding the symbolic eight-spoked wheel of the sun disc. It had the same resonances as Rosslyn Chapel, where Shavi and Laura had freed the mad god Maponus, and like that place, it had also been a haunt of the Knights Templar, the old guardians of secret mysteries and the last people to truly understand the earth energy.
Cautiously he set down the candle and sat cross-legged in the centre of the chill cave, allowing its symbolism to work its magic on his subconscious. The shape of an inverted womb and the female images on the wall showed it was a place where the Earth Goddess was honoured by the ancients; more, it was a place where the life-giving power of the earth was celebrated.
The atmosphere was already crackling, setting the hairs alive across his arms and neck. He closed his eyes, breathed deeply, and prepared for his trip.
The deep dark of predawn clustered along the coastline as Wave Sweeper sailed in to the sleeping land. The waves crashed in bursts of white along the rocky coast and the salty scent of seaweed filled the air. Church stood at the rail, filled with excitement at the prospect of returning home after too long in the strangest of strange lands. Behind it, though, was apprehension at what lay ahead.
Ruth gave the back of his hand a squeeze with a reassuring smile. Her hair had been tied back, but the force of the wind still lashed it around. 'Ready for the final act?'
'I don't like the way that sounds.' He slipped an arm round her shoulders, comforted by her warmth.
All around them the deck milled with the Tuatha De Danann readying the ship for landing. The decks below were crammed with even more of the force: horses, and strange, gleaming chariots with spiked wheels, an entire deck of armaments prepared by Goibhniu and his brothers, plus tents and supplies and all the other minutiae needed by an army on the move.
'I wonder if we'll see the others?' he mused.
'When. It's only a matter of time. We were drawn together in the first place, and it'll happen again.' Her thoughts turned to Veitch; she quickly drove them out.
'It's funny that it's going to end in London.' The spray flew up around him. 'We've come full circle.'
'The Universe speaks to us in symbols, that's what Tom would say. I still can't get over how much we've all changed. If the stakes weren't so high, that would be… an achievement in itself.'
'You feel better for it all?' He gently touched the space where her finger had been.
She only had to think for an instant. 'As stupid as it seems, I do. Between this and the rest of my days stretching out in a safe but mundane legal world, there's no contest. It's such an obvious thing, but we never, ever grasp it: life's short, so why spend it bumping along in a secure existence that stops you feeling anything? Life should be about snatching as many great experiences as you can before you die, trading them in for wisdom. But if you want that, you've got to take the risk of great lows as well. Any sane person would say there's no contest, but we keep doing it.'
'It's society. Conditioning. That's what we all need to break.'
She laughed. 'Life in the Age of Reason isn't all the brochures say.'
'Reminds me of an old song.'
'One nobody else has heard of, I suppose.'
'I guess.' As they neared the coast, he picked out a few lights in Mousehole; either early risers or the night watch.
Ruth watched the shadow of thoughts play on his face. 'What's wrong?'
`Just wishing the Walpurgis hadn't died before he could tell me what he knew.'
'About the one of us who's going to sell all the others down the river?' She kept her eyes fixed on the shoreline.
'I just hope that wasn't a turning point, the one moment when we could have saved everything, only to lose out by a hair's breadth. And Callow's treachery.'
'No point worrying about it now.' Her face was dark, unreadable. 'We've just got to play the cards as they fall. That, and other cliches.'
If the residents of Mousehole knew an alien ship was disgorging some of the most powerful beings of all existence in their midst, they never showed it. Doors and windows remained resolutely closed, despite the clatter of metal and the grind of wheels on stone and the whinnying of horses that looked like any other until one saw the unnaturally intelligent gleam in their eye.
Yet there was one figure, waiting near the pub where they had stayed on their arrival. He was wrapped in a voluminous, extreme-weather anorak, the snorkel hood pulled far forward against the chill so his features were lost to shadow. Even so, Church recognised him in an instant from the stance, at once relaxed, yet, conversely, taut.
He ran across the road and threw his arms around the figure. 'Tom!'
The Rhymer pulled back his hood to reveal a face worn by exhaustion, the edge taken off it by the flicker of a smile. 'If you knew the trouble I'd had to get here-'
'We wondered if you were dead!'
'If only.' He blushed as Ruth bowled up and planted a large kiss on his cheek before throwing her arms around him. 'Enough of that.' He tried to recapture his grizzly demeanour, but they could both see his true feelings. 'We have serious business ahead.'
He filled them in quickly before motioning towards three horses he had tied up at the side of the pub. 'We can be at St. Michael's Mount soon after dawn, if we hurry.'
'And what do I get to do while Mr. Hero goes off and does all his testosterone business?' Despite her tone, Church knew Ruth wasn't offended that she had to sit it out; she was afraid for him and wanted to help.
'It'll be okay,' he said. 'I have to do it alone. It's a destiny thing. You know, like the old stories. Except this time they've got me instead of King Arthur. Bummer, eh?'
Baccharus sauntered over when he saw the three of them conversing. 'Greetings, True Thomas. I knew you would not let hardship come between us meeting again.'
'Baccharus. So your people have finally decided to stir themselves into action, I see.'
'The Golden Ones like to conserve their energy so they are more effective when the time is ripe.'
Tom tried to read his face, but the god gave nothing away. 'You better watch yourself, Baccharus. Humour?
