and forth along a wide arc. The night was suddenly torn by the monkey screeches and guttural roars of the Fomorii. Church moved the sword around, hoping it would be enough to frighten them off, but the attackers held their ground.
Before he could make another move, the crows emitted a fierce cawing and their swirling became even more frenzied. A second later a hole opened up in the heart of them. Church glimpsed an entity inside that made his eyes sting and his gorge rise, and then something dark and translucent erupted out of it and burst over their heads. The shockwave threw them to their knees and an awful sulphurous smell filled the air. Church felt his skin crawling, as if insects were swarming all over him. He glanced down to see pinpricks of blood bursting from his pores. Tom was screaming something, but Church's ears were still ringing from the explosion, and when he glanced to one side Veitch was yelling too. His face was covered with blood.
In that instant the other Fomorii surged forward. Tom grabbed Church's shirt and yanked, a signal to retreat. The three of them backed away hurriedly, but within seconds the ground was falling away beneath their feet and they were desperately trying to right themselves on the steep incline towards the cliffs. Church brandished the sword before him, but the Fomorii seemed quite content to herd the three of them where there was nowhere else to go. The buffeting wind at his back and the roaring of the sea as it crashed against the cliffs told him when they had run out of land, and time. He glanced back briefly. They were a foot away from the precipice; far beneath, the white water sucked and thrashed menacingly against the rocks. There was no way they could survive a plunge.
His skin was slick with blood from head to toe, but the only thought that dominated his mind was that he had wasted too long worrying about the Watchtower's untrue premonition of his death.
The first of the Fomorii moved forward with a roar and, despite Tom's spell, Church could still not look it full in the face. He closed his eyes and lashed out blindly with the sword. The impact made his bones ache, forcing his eyes open. He was shocked to see the sword had sliced through whatever the creature had instead of a collar bone and had imbedded itself in its skeleton. It was howling wildly and flailing its limbs as it died; Church almost vomited from the foul stench that was emanating from the wound. With an immense effort, he wrenched out the sword and swung it in an arc, cleaving off the beast's head.
He didn't have time to celebrate, for at that moment the screeching of the remaining Fomorii reached a crescendo and they moved forward as one. Out of the corner of his eye, he glimpsed Tom hunched over, muttering to himself, his hands and arms twitching as if he had an ague. Then Veitch was at his side, shouting obscenities as he waved the hunting knife so violently it no longer seemed as feeble as it had before.
The Fomorii bore down on them in a wave of deformed bodies, radiating a dark, terrifying power that made him sick to his stomach. Feeling the fear and despair surge through him, Church swung the sword back and closed his eyes. He thought, This is-
Something grasped the collar of his jacket and hauled him backwards. His heels kicked grass, rock and then nothing, and he was falling so fast the wind tore his breath from his mouth. There was no time to think of anything before he hit the waves hard. An instant later he blacked out as the water surged into his mouth and nose and pulled him far beneath the swell.
Shavi, Ruth and Laura sat on the cold stone bench in the tiny tower that was all that remained of St. Michael's Church, perched high on top of the tor. Through the open arch where the wind blew mercilessly they could see the lights of Glastonbury spread out comfortingly in the intense dark just before dawn. On the cracked stone floor before them stood the plastic bottle which contained the water they had brought from the Chalice Well.
'I don't feel ready for this,' Ruth said. It would have been a little easier if Jim hadn't gone on at length about all the dangers.'
'That's God people for you,' Laura noted. 'They're never happy unless someone's worried or scared.'
Ruth watched the stars for a long moment, remembering a similar night in Stonehenge, and then said almost to herself, 'I wish Church was here.' She realised what she had said and glanced at Laura. 'I don't mean because I'm not up to it myself-'
Laura didn't look at her. 'I know what you mean.'
Shavi rose and went through a series of yoga movements to stretch the ache of the night chill from his muscles. It felt like they had been sitting in the tower for hours, although it had only been about forty-five minutes.
'So what do we do now? Do you think Mister Dog Collar could have been any more vague?' Laura asked gloomily.
'It is all about ritual,' Shavi explained, 'and part of the ritual is finding the path ourselves. He gave us some guidance-the time of the ritual-and I think the rest of it is pretty obvious.'
'To you, maybe, but then you're some big shaman-type.' Laura stood up and leaned in the arch, looking down at the town.
Shavi moved in beside her and pointed to the faint terraces cut into the hill centuries ago, visible by their moon-shadows even in the dark. 'You see those? What use are they? They are patently not fields, nor could they be the kind of defences thrown up on some earthworks from neolithic times. Yet it would take a tremendous amount of effort to level out those terraces, so they must be of some significance to whatever culture invested all that manpower and time hundreds or thousands of years ago.'
Ruth joined them in the archway, tracing the path of the terraces with her fingertip. 'They're like steps.'
'Exactly,' Shavi nodded. 'A path to the top, but not in the manner you suggest. A labyrinth, a three- dimensional one. You can walk a route back and forth around the tor to the summit.'
'Why do that when it's easier to go in a straight line?' Laura said.
'The labyrinth is a classical design found in rock carvings, coins, turf mazes around the world. It has more than one meaning, like everything else we have encountered, but at its heart it represents a journey to and from the land of the dead. Birth, death and rebirth.'
'I really don't like all this talk of death,' Ruth murmured.
'And what happens when we get to the end?' Laura stamped her feet to boost the blood circulation.
Shavi shrugged.
'And the water?'
'An oblation to be offered at the point where we find ourselves.'
'You call it ritual, but it sounds like magic to me,' Ruth noted.
'Perhaps.' Shavi put an arm around both their shoulders, an act that would have seemed too familiar from any other man they had just met, yet from him it simply suggested friendship and security. 'We think of magic as something from children's stories, but it may simply be a word for describing that activa tion of the earth force you have seen. New knowledge which we have no frame of reference to understand. Magic is as good a word as any.'
'Sometimes you sound just like that old hippie,' Laura said with an acidity that was transparent to both Shavi and Ruth.
They continued to discuss the tor and the mysteries they had uncovered for the next half hour, yet none of them touched on the matter that was most important in all their hearts; the sense that they were on the verge of something profound, a turning point which would finally reveal the truth about the events that were shaping the world, about the forgotten past and the hidden future, and, above all, about themselves.
The closer the sunrise drew, the more they seemed to feel an electric quality in the air which resonated deep within them. Barely able to contain their anticipation, they sat against a wall and watched the eastern sky for its lightening. It was a magical moment that stilled conversation, of stars, and wind and the sound of the trees at the foot of the tor, and for a while they seemed to feel the axis of the heavens turning, as they knew their ancestors would have done millennia ago.
It was during one such lull in the conversation that they were startled by the noise of something heavy hitting the ground and a strange liquid, flopping sound. It was incongruous enough to set their hearts racing, and they hurried around the tower to search for its origin.
But as they rounded the western flank of the tower, they were brought up sharp by a bizarre sight that sent their heads spinning: three figures floundered like fish on the slopes of the tor, soaked to the skin and retching up sea water.
'Oh great,' Laura said sourly. 'The old git's back.'
