Weaveworld

‘I don’t know. Morning sometime.’

‘Want some tea?’

‘Gluck, I think I know where they are.’

The words brought him round. He stood up.

‘Mooney! You mean it? Where?’

‘What do you know about a place called Rayment’s Hill?’

‘Never heard of it.’

‘Then that’s where they are.’

Part Thirteen

Magic Night

‘The woods are lovely, dark and deep.

But I have promises to keep,

And miles to go before I sleep.’

Robert Frost

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

I

BLIZZARD

1

ce had stopped the clocks of England.

Though the meteorologists had been predicting Siberian conditions for more than a week, the sudden drop in temperature found the country, as usual, unprepared. Trains had ceased to run; aircraft were grounded. Telephone and power lines were down in Yorkshire and Lincolnshire; villages and even small towns in the Southern Counties cut off by drifting snow. The plea from the media was to stay at home; advice that was widely taken, leaving industry and commerce to dwindle and – in some areas – stop entirely. Nobody was moving, and with good reason. Large sections of motorway were closed, either blocked by snow or stranded vehicles; the major roads were a nightmare, the minor roads impassable. To all intents and purposes the Speared Isle had ground to a halt.

2

It had taken Cal some time to locate Rayment’s Hill amongst Gluck’s comprehensive supply of maps, but he found it eventually: it was in Somerset, South of Glastonbury. In ordinary conditions it was perhaps an hour’s drive down the M5. Today, however, God alone knew how long it would take.

Gluck, of course, wanted to come with him, but Cal suspected that if the Seerkind were indeed in hiding at the hill they’d not take kindly to his bringing a stranger into their midst. He put the point to Gluck as gently as he could. Try as he might Gluck couldn’t conceal his disappointment, but said he understood how delicate these encounters could be; he’d been preparing himself for just such a meeting all his life; he would not insist. And yes, of course Cal could take one of the cars, though neither was exactly reliable.

As Cal prepared to leave, bundled up as best they could devise against the cold, Gluck presented him with a parcel, roughly tied up with string.

‘What is it?’ he asked.

‘The jacket,’ Gluck replied. ‘And some of the other evidence I picked up.’

‘I don’t want to take it. Especially not the jacket.’

‘It’s their magic, isn’t it?’ Gluck said. ‘Take it, damn you. Don’t make a thief of me.’

‘Under protest.’

‘I put some cigars in too. A little peace offering from a friend.’ He grinned, ‘I envy you, Cal; every frozen mile.’

He had time to doubt as he drove; time to call himself a fool for hoping again, for even daring to believe some memory he’d dredged up would lead him to the lost ones. But his dream, or a part of it at least, was validated as he drove. England was a blank page; the blizzard had blotted everything out. Somewhere beneath its shroud people were presumably about their lives, but there was little sign of that. Doors were locked and curtains closed against a day that had begun back towards night somewhere around noon. Those few hardy souls who were out in the storm hurried along the pavements as fast as the ice underfoot would allow, eager to be back beside their fires, where the television would be promising a Christmas of plastic snow and sentiment.

There was practically no traffic on the roads, which allowed Cal to take liberties with the Law: crossing intersections on red and ignoring one-way systems as he escaped the city. Gluck had helped him plan his route before he left, and the news bulletins kept him alerted to road closures, so he made reasonably good progress at first, joining the M5 South of Birmingham, and managing a steady forty miles an hour until – just North of the Worcester junction – the radio informed him that a fata) accident had closed the motorway between junctions eight and nine. Cursing, he was obliged to leave the motorway and take the A38 through Great Malvern, Tewkesbury and Gloucester. Going was much slower here. No attempt had been made to clear or grit the road, and several vehicles had simply been abandoned by drivers who’d decided that to press on was tantamount to suicide.

The weather worsened as he approached Bristol, obliging him to cut his speed to a crawl. Blinded by snow, he missed the turn for the A37 and had to retrace his route, the sky now almost pitch black though it was still only the middle of the afternoon. A mile or so short of Shepton Mallet he stopped for petrol and chocolate, to be told by a garage attendant that most of the roads south of the town were blocked. He began to feel plotted against. It was as though the weather was somehow part of the Scourge’s masterplan, that it knew he was near and was throwing obstacles in his path to see just how hard he’d fight to reach his place of execution.

But if that were so then at least it meant he was on the right track; that somewhere in the wilderness ahead his loved ones were waiting.

3

The truth in the warning he’d been given at the garage became all too apparent when he turned off the A road at Lydford on Fosse, and onto a minor thoroughfare that would in theory carry him West to Rayment’s Hill. He’d known before setting out that this would be the most problematic part of the journey, but there was no alternative. No main road fed this area; there were only narrow tracks and backwaters, most of which, he knew, would have been buried beneath the drifts.

He advanced maybe two miles, the road ahead white on white, until the ice-dogged tread of the tyres would no longer grip, and the car came to a halt, its spinning wheels doing no more than kick up sheets of snow. He revved the engine, bullying it and coaxing it by turns, but the vehicle was not going to move without help. Reluctantly, he got out, and immediately sank to mid-shin in the snow. Gluck had lent him a pair of hiking boots and heavy socks, which protected his feet, but the chill soaked through his trousers in an instant. He put up the hood of his anorak – again, Gluck’s gift – and trudged round to the back of the car. Having no shovel all he could do was clear the snow by hand. His efforts bore no fruit. After twenty minutes’ work he hadn’t succeeded in getting the car to move an inch either forward or backward.

He decided to give up on the task before his fingertips froze. Taking refuge in the car, the engine idling so as to keep the heat coming, he sat and considered the options available to him. The last sign of human habitation had been back at the turn into this road, two miles behind him; two miles of digging through the drifts – with the snow