by Mike Shevdon
Alex exchanged glances with Sparky, who was carrying the bag with all the things they'd stolen in it. He shrugged, "I don't need to go any further if you don't." He dropped the bag, holding it out and letting it fall from his outstretched hand.
"Careful!" Eve glared at him. "If you damage anything in there at this late stage, you'll suffer for it."
"All right," he said. "Keep your hair on."
"Save your flippant remarks. We are at the culmination of years of research and painstaking study. Have you never wondered what happened? Where they all went?"
"Where who all went?" asked Alex.
"Long, long ago," said Eve, "the world was a different place. Creatures walked the earth that we now think of as myths and legends, but were as real as you or I. Griffons, manticores, dragons – even unicorns. The universe was a different place. Magic was a core part of existence. Without magic you were meat, something to be caught and eaten."
"Lovely," said Alex.
"Then came the universe of men, shaping the world to suit themselves. They forced the world of magic back where it came from, shaping the world into a poor facsimile of what it was, the world we see spread out before us now." She gestured out to the land around them, fading into distance in the haze. "But we can change it back. We can remake the world as it was."
"But we're part human," said Alex. "It's what we are."
"And they despise us for it," said Eve. "We are not of either tribe, but a melding of both. We are as much human as we are fey, but neither will have us. They have refused us at every turn, they have tortured us in their hospitals, and their laboratories…"
For a moment there was an expression on Eve's face that frightened Alex, but then her face softened.
"…and when we turned to our brethren, our true heritage of magic and power, they turned their backs. They sent their assassins, their killers, they held the knife to our throat."
She smiled, looking at Sparky, then at Chipper, then at Alex.
"But we are better than them. They are old and weak, and we are young and strong. They were arrogant and complacent, and we were ready for them. Weighed down by concepts as irrelevant as honour and duty, by corrupt deals done in dark corners, they have shown themselves to be unfit to carry us into the future."
She held up the orb. "We are the torch bearers; it is up to us to show them the way."
"What do we need to do?" asked Sparky.
"Gather the items together. Alex, take the rod and the key and stand there."
She pointed to a spot in the grass. Sparky dipped into the bag and handed her the items. "It'll be OK," he said quietly. "You'll see."
"Chipper," said Eve, "take the scourge and the feather and stand there."
Chipper moved to collect the items and stood in his appointed place. Alex watched him, thinking that for once he was here in the real world with them, and not some virtual reality. For once he looked focussed and attentive.
"Sparky, bring the arrow and the cross and stand there." Eve pointed to a spot that would mean they formed a large triangle around her.
He moved across, winking at Alex as he passed. When he was in his place, Eve turned slowly, checking each was in position.
"Now," she said. "Now we will change everything. Hold out your arms to each other."
They did as she said, and as they did, each felt a connection being formed.
"It's working," said Sparky. "I can feel it."
"The circle is complete," said Eve. "Four elements for the four corners of the universe: earth, air, fire and water."
Alex could feel the power vibrating in the air. She grinned nervously at Sparky. On the other side of her, Chipper's eyes were wide open as he lifted his face to the sky above. She looked up and saw that the clouds were changing. The cloudscape twisted around them, pulled inwards. A giant spiral formed in the air above the Tor, dipping down over the spot where they stood. For a moment Alex was afraid it would form some sort of tornado, but it stabilised above them twisting tattered streams of cloud, tighter and tighter.
Eve lifted the orb in her hand and held it high in the centre of the triangle. Above her the clouds dilated, opening gradually into a circular aperture.
Alex stared upwards, fascinated by the sight that greeted her. Above the clouds it should have been the last vestiges of the autumn sunset, but what appeared was far from that. She was looking into the heart of the universe, she was sure. The spirals she saw mirroring the way the clouds turned around them must be galaxies, and the dust that formed them must be stars.
"It's beautiful," she said quietly.
"Everything that ever was, and will be," said Eve. 'The universe in our hands, to remake as we will."
• • • •
The Ways carried me towards Glastonbury, but as we approached something changed. Usually the Ways resonated to the sound of echoes of lost voices, and I was used to that, but now those voices built to a screeching wail across the dark, and the fabric of the Ways shivered as if with heat haze. When we reached Glastonbury there was a moment where I wondered whether I would be able to exit. It clung to me with threads of violet fox-fire before reluctantly releasing me.
I staggered forward, looking back in an unconscious gesture to see if I had dragged the threads back into the world, but there was nothing to see.
"You felt it too?" said Blackbird.
"What's wrong with it?" I asked her, looking around at the smooth lawns, mounds of stone protruding where the ancient abbey once stood. It was getting late in the afternoon and though the grey overcast sky threw no shadows across the grass, I could tell the sun was sinking.
"There should be a Way-Node here to take us to the Tor. It was once a meeting place where humanity would come bearing gifts to petition the Feyre for favour. The soil is rich in iron, which offers some protection for the unwary, and it is one of the oldest places of true power. The Way-node should take us there, but it isn't here."
"What do you mean it isn't here?"
"It was here, and now it's not. It must be the orb. It's doing something to the Ways. We should hurry."
She headed briskly for the exit from the Abbey Gardens. I felt her glamour intensify, hiding her from unwelcome eyes. I followed her lead, turning away curious glances. At the entrance the staff were packing away, closing up the shop and putting away signs advertising ice creams and discount membership. We walked between them, but they neither turned nor made any remark as we left. We let the concealment fall away as we merged with the people on the street outside.
"We don't have time to walk," she tutted at the empty taxi rank opposite. "Wait here."
She went back to the shop, leaving me to view Glastonbury. It gave the impression of a sleepy little place of old stone houses and historic buildings which had been contaminated by new-age tourism. The magic shops nestled by the tea rooms, and signs in windows offered crystal healing alongside bikes for sale. It left me wondering whether there was another Glastonbury underneath the tourist glitz, and whether the people around me were as innocent as they appeared. I found myself jumping at the approach of passers-by, even though they showed no interest in me.
Blackbird appeared again at my side. "They've called us a minicab. It shouldn't be more than a few moments."
"Good," I told her. "This is not somewhere I'd want to stay for any length of time."
Blackbird placed her hand on my arm. "I feel it too. This is one of the old places. It should be a sanctuary, a place where you can rest. For the Feyre, this is neutral ground; no one claims dominion here." She wrapped her arms around her body. "I feel like I'm being watched. As if at any moment something will leap out at me. It shouldn't feel like this. Something is deeply wrong, Niall."
I put my arm around her shoulder and drew her to me. "It'll be OK," I said, but the lie was apparent to both of us.
As I held her, I glanced up at the sky. The clouds had formed into a layer across the sky, like an featureless upside-down landscape with valleys and hills, reflecting th
e landscape below in grey monotones. The air felt heavy, dampening sounds. People around us carried on regardless, seemingly unaware of the change in atmosphere.
The minicab drew into the entrance to the car-park, ignoring the car indicating right in the middle of the road, trying to turn in. The cab was a seven seater people-carrier, and it stopped in the middle of the car-park entrance, so that the car waiting to turn into the car-park from the other direction blared its horn. I pulled the sliding door open and we got quickly into the cab, not wanting to hold things up more than necessary.
"And the same to you!" shouted the driver from the open window. He pulled back into the traffic, nearly colliding with another car that was driving past.
I glanced at Blackbird, wondering whether a minicab had been the right thing to do. Even London cabbies weren't usually this aggressive.
"Even they feel it," she said. "It's nothing they could put a name to, but everyone's on edge."
"Sorry about that," said the driver, unaware that we could both hear the lack of sincerity in the apology. "Where to, Matey?"
"We'd like to go Glastonbury Tor," I told him.
"Load of old cobblers, that is," he said. "Nothing to see but a stupid old hill."
"Nevertheless," I asked him. "That's where we'd like to go."
"Please yourself," he said. He accelerated up the road, ignoring the speed limit. I reached over and buckled myself into the seat belt, indicating that Blackbird should do the same. It would be a shame to be killed in a car crash on the way to save civilisation.
"Will Gregor follow us?" I asked.
"Most likely," she confirmed, "but whether he'll be in time – who knows?"
"I don't understand how you could tell from Gregor's tarot that it would be in Glastonbury," I said.
"Like many who profess to learn magic," Blackbird explained, "he's learned to trust his intuition and interpret things in unconventional ways. It's not the cards themselves, it's how he handles them and what they mean to him."
"But he turned over The Tower. That's how you knew where they'd taken the orb."
"He's using the tarot to learn the location of an object – it's like dowsing, but with cards. He's standing on the top of a Way-node, where the whole of the Ways are being distorted by the thing he's trying to find. Even then he was nearly overwhelmed by his own premonition of death."
"Is he going to die, then?" I asked.
"We're all going to die, Niall. It's simply a matter of when. Like much of humanity, he's obsessed with his own mortality. As he gets older, it gets worse."
"I suppose the Feyre don't have that problem," I said. "Living so much longer frees them from that obsession."
"Only to be prey to other obsessions," she said. "Look at the sky."
I leaned across to look out. The edge of Glastonbury had given way to fields, trees and hedgerows, but where before the sky had been a uniform layer of grey moulded hills and valleys, now it had twisted, forming a bruised huge spiral, tinted with purple and yellow. I had a feeling I knew where the spiral was centred.
"Has that just happened?" I asked her.
"It's getting worse as we get closer."
"You mean we can see more of it as we get closer?" I said.
"We should have been able to see this from Glastonbury, it's big enough, and it hasn't just formed. The weather is different here – not just a change in the same weather, but different weather."
"But it's the same sky," I said.
"Is it?" As she stared at the sky, there was an ominous flickering within. "I'm not sure we're even looking at the same world any more."
The cab slowed down and halted in a gateway. "This is as far as I go," he said.
I could see the Tor stark against the moving sky, through the trees ahead. "Can't you take us a bit further," I asked. "It'll be quite a walk from here."
"I'm not going any further," he said, leaning forward and looking up through the windscreen. "I've seen storms, but that's a bad one. If you want to get out here, you're welcome, but if I was you I'd come back into town, find a nice tea room and sit it out."
"We'll get out here," said Blackbird.
She shuffled across, and I slid back the door so we could exit. As soon as we were out, he revved the engine and did a rapid U-turn, not even waiting for me to close the door.
"Hey," I called, "we haven't paid you!"
There was a harsh grating sound as he missed the gear and then accelerated back down the lane, leaving us standing by the side of the road. As the sound of the engine died away, I realised there was absolute quiet. The wind had dropped and there was no birdsong, or even the distant sound of a tractor or a motor-bike. That changed as there was a flicker in the clouds, passing from one to another along the outward spiral, so that it seemed that even the lightning wanted to escape. A few moments later there was a low rumble, more felt than heard.
"Come on," said Blackbird. "With luck we'll get there before it decides to rain."
She set off towards the outline of the tower on the Tor.
Thinking on what Blackbird had said, it occurred to me that what we were looking at might not be real. What if she was right? What if we were looking at a different world, a kind of pocket of existence with the orb at its centre. Was it like the Glade, the pocket world inhabited by the rogue fey who lured unwary sleepers there to feed on them by proxy? I had escaped that by pricking the heart at its centre. Could I do that here?
I let myself relax and began absorbing energy from my surroundings. I gathered power from the road beneath me, the air around me. The air chilled, making the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. The world dimmed and I began to see the world with my wraithkin sense. It was filled with lines of force, distortions in the very fabric of reality like lines made by a magnet in iron filings. From nowhere, something cannoned into me, knocking me backwards.
I staggered back, missing my footing on the edge of the road and tumbling backwards into a dry ditch at the edge of the road. Winded, I lost my grip on the power and it slipped from me, returning my vision to normal. Blackbird was lying on top of me.
"What…?" I said, still winded.
"Idiot!" she said. "Look up!"
From my position on my back underneath her, I looked up at the sky. In the giant spiral centred over the Tor, another minispiral had formed, right over my head, circling within the greater spiral. As we lay there, all the hairs on my body stood on end.
"Stay down!" she warned.
There was a painfully bright flash, right where I had been standing. My ears popped as the sound-wave hit us and the world echoed with a crack that shook my bones. The smell of chlorine and ozone, and the taste of burned metal, filled my mouth and nose.
I swore loudly, but though the word formed on my tongue, I couldn't hear myself. It was like being wrapped in cotton wool. Blackbird pressed me down, waiting, glancing briefly up. The spiral above me whirled away down the arm of the greater vortex, stabbing down occasional arcs of brightness onto the surrounding fields, accompanied by sharp cracks which even my muted ears could hear.
Gradually my hearing returned to normal.
Blackbird levered herself up hesitantly, pressing her hand on my chest.
"It's OK," she said. "Not safe, but OK."
She scrambled up out of the ditch and I crawled out after her. In the road where I had been standing was a small smoking pit where the tarmac had melted.
"What happened?" I asked.
"When you use power, you take some from your surroundings," she said, "and the largest source of energy nearby would be that huge cloud above your head. Did you never think to look up?" she asked.
"I was too busy looking at… it's all being pulled inwards," I said. "Space itself is being pulled in."
"If you decide to do that again, make sure you're nowhere near me," she said, and turned and walked away.
I ran after her as she walked briskly up the lane towards the hill with the stark tower on the top.
"I'm
not sure you heard me," I said. "It's already started."
She stopped. "I know. What do you want me to say? Shall we just stand here and wait for the end?"
I shrugged. "I'm not sure there's anything we can do."
"You're worse than Gregor," she said. "Never ever give in, even unto the end of the universe itself. There's always hope, Niall."
Nevertheless, when she started back down the lane to the Tor, she was running.
TWENTY
After the hurried dash down the lanes, the Tor was a climb I didn't need, no matter how much fitter I'd become. Even so, Blackbird paced ahead of me. We made our way up the path, but we could already see it had begun. The clouds twisted down and opened out over the summit, revealing a dark vista on infinity. I ran up the path after her, but then slowed as I met an invisible resistance. I caught up with her where she pushed against it.
