Sometimes Church thought he had never seen a night sky like the one above Mam Tor. Unencumbered by light pollution, benefiting in some indescribable way from the sheer height above sea level, they seemed to be enveloped by the sparkling heavens. If not for their circumstances, it would have been a sublime experience.
He stood with Laura in his arms, looking up at the celestial vault; for once she had removed her sunglasses. "We've come a long way, despite everything. Pity if it had to end here."
"No fat lady singing yet, boy."
"No, not yet." He watched a meteor burn up over their heads, wondering if it were some kind of sign. "Sometimes it's hard to take a step back and appreciate exactly what we're doing here. You know, I look at myself, look at you and the others, and all I see is normal people with all the stupid kinds of problems everybody has. And that's who we are, but at the same time we're something else as well-the champions of a race, a planet. The living embodiment of the Pendragon Spirit, whatever that might be-"
"Maybe we're not special."
"What do you mean?"
"Maybe this thing the old git calls the Pendragon Spirit is in everybody. Maybe it's the spirit of man, or some shit. Listen to me, I sound like some wetbrained New Age idiot. What I'm trying to say is, what if he's just calling us special to keep us on board. So we think sorting out this whole mess is just down to us."
"Or so we dig deep to find the best in us to get the job done."
"That too." She rested her forehead on his shoulder. "That would explain why we all seem like such a bunch of losers. We are a bunch of losers."
"Doing the best we can. And doing a damn good job-"
"So far. But if we've not got any special dispensation, the chances of us fucking up are even greater. We've got through on a wing and a prayer and too much confidence. But sooner or later the blind, stupid luck is going to run out."
Church thought about this while he continued to watch the stars. Then: "I might have agreed with you a few weeks back, when we first met each other. But in all the shit we've waded through, everybody has shown a real goodness at the heart of them. There isn't anybody else I'd want around me at this time and there isn't anybody else I think could do a better job-"
"You don't know the thoughts in my head-"
"I can guess at them."
"No, you can't. There are sick, twisted things crawling around up there. Take Little Miss Goody-Shoes back there. Sometimes I wish she'd hurry up and die so she wouldn't carry on getting between me and you. I know it's a nasty, evil little part of me and I hate myself for it. But I still do it."
"She doesn't get between us."
"You're too stupid to see it. She loves you and I think you love her, and if there wasn't a constant state of crisis you'd recognise that."
Her words sparked rampant, brilliant bursts in his mind, but they were all too fleeting to get a handle on. He pulled back slightly so he could try to read her; she half-turned her head away. "You're a good person, Laura."
"You're a good liar."
"You've got an answer for everything."
"If I had, I wouldn't be feeling like my brains were leaking out of my ears. Too much thinking isn't good for anyone."
"Look-"
She slammed her hand on his mouth. "Don't say anything. It'll sort itself out one way or the other." He didn't like the look that crossed her face when she said that.
He hated to think anything unpleasant of her, so instead he kissed her. At first she seemed to be resisting him, but then she gave in, and for the briefest instant everything seemed in perfect harmony.
But then an unseasonally cold wind came whipping across the tor and buffeted them. Church broke off the kiss, shivering. Away in the west, billowing clouds were sweeping towards them at an unnatural rate. Lightning flashed within them, illuminating the underside of the roiling mass; one bolt burst out in a jagged streak to the ground. But they were not storm clouds, and there was no thunder.
The wind grew stronger as the clouds neared until it was lashing their hair, then threatening to throw them to the ground.
"What's going on?" Laura said. "Is this it?"
The clouds came down until they were rolling across the ground, and at that point Church realised there was a figure among them. At first it was just a silhouette almost lost beneath the shrouding mist, but then it came closer to the fore and Church realised who it was, and what was happening.
"Get back to the house." The snap in his voice stifled any questions instantly. Laura took one more glance at the clouds, then ran for the cottage. Halfway across the turf she realised Church wasn't behind her, but when she looked back he waved frantically for her to continue.
Then the wind did knock him to his knees and as he tried to scramble to his feet again, it hit him with all the force of a rampaging bull. He rolled over and it kept him rolling, driving him towards the jagged cliff edge and the precipitous drop to the rocks far below. Desperately he tried to dig his fingers in the grass, but they were torn out immediately; his bones cracked on stones, his face was dragged across the rough ground until it burned and bled.
The cliff rushed towards him. He had a fleeting vision of his broken, bloody body smashed at the foot of the tor and then the wind eased off just as he was half-hanging over the edge. He sucked in a deep breath, shaking with shock, tried to scramble back using his heels for purchase, but another gust came and pinned him on the cusp between life and death.
He had to calm himself, order his thoughts; it was his only chance. The gulf beneath him tugged at his hair, made his head spin.
Niamh hovered in front of him a foot above the ground, wrapped in the clouds of her discontent. He barely recognised her. The beautiful face was lost; instead, it rippled and twisted, unable to settle in a vision his mind could comprehend; her fury and dismay had reduced her to her primal form.
"Betrayal!" The word seemed to come from all around them, not spoken by any human voice, filled with strange vibrations that reverberated in the pit of his stomach.
"I didn't-"
"You gave me your word! You promised me your love solely! You lied! Untrustworthy, like all Frail Creatures!" A gust pushed him another inch over the drop. His fingers ached from clinging on to the rock lip.
"I'm sorry!" He had to raise his voice to be heard above the wind that was rushing all around the tor.
"No more lies!" Her voice exploded with the fury of a breaking storm, but at the centre of it Church could hear her heartache.
"I'm sorry!" he shouted again. This time she seemed to hear him, for there was a faint lull. He seized the opportunity. "I was stupid… confused-"
The wind hit him hard; he moved another inch. One more and he wouldn't be able to stop himself falling. His fingers felt like they were breaking from clutching on; the panic in his throat made it difficult to catch his breath.
"Lies." Her voice sounded less frenzied, more openly emotional, more humanity creeping into it. Church forced his head up so he could see. Her face had settled back into the features he knew, but they were broken with hurt. At that moment his heart went out to her and he was consumed with guilt at how he had disregarded her feelings. "We Golden Ones live our lives in the extremes of passion. We feel too strongly. You cannot even begin to understand the slightest working of our hearts and minds!"
The clouds continued to churn behind her, occasionally lifting her a few more inches higher before she settled down at the same level. Church wanted to say something to calm her, but he didn't have any grounds to defend himself and he was afraid he would only make it worse.
She floated closer to him, almost to the lip of the edge, so he could see her face without straining. Her pain had now turned to a cold, hard anger; he feared for his life once again. "My people always said nothing good could ever come of an affair with a Fragile Creature, and it appears they were correct. I have watched you too long from afar, Jack Churchill, and I have allowed my judgement to be swayed by what I saw."
The gale be
gan to press on his chest; he could feel himself sliding. In that moment, thoughts went rushing through Church's head and he was surprised to realise he was less scared for himself than angry that he had once again allowed his emotions to ruin everything; if he died, every hope would die with him.
Before he could say anything the wind retracted and Niamh began to drift away, her face still cold and hard. "Our agreement is broken." Church followed her pointing finger towards the dark horizon; there, golden light flashed ominously. "The Good Son will soon be paying you a visit."
And with that, the clouds folded around her so she was completely lost to him, and the whole mass moved quickly back over the landscape until it disappeared beyond the summit of the tor.
Church scrambled back. When he was lying on solid ground, he gulped in mouthfuls of air and felt his pumping heart slowly return to normal. As he dragged himself to his feet, Laura ran from the house.
"You really know how to fuck women up, don't you?" she said breathlessly.
He could barely hear her. His attention was drawn to the occasional bursts of light in the distance and the engulfing darkness closer to home.
"I've done it again," he said quietly.
"What?"
"Screwed everything up." He couldn't even bring himself to tell her that a near-hopeless situation had suddenly become much worse. With his head bowed, he turned and trudged back to the house.
Veitch spent the first two days roaming through the heavily wooded slopes which enclosed the loch. It was a place like none he had experienced before, enveloped in its own strange, eerie atmosphere; purple hillsides cloaked in mist just beyond the tree boundary, outcroppings of orange, brown and black rocks, ancient trees, gnarled and twisted and scarred with green lichen that showed their great age, and over all the constant, soothing sound of the waves lapping against the pink shale and pebbles at the water's edge. The way the pines clustered so deeply to the shore on the south bank made him feel penned in, and there was an unshakeable sense that he was being watched from somewhere in their depths. But there was also a deep serenity, almost mystical in its intensity, with the birdsong hanging melodically in the air. At times the water was as still as glass, reflecting the verdant landscape and clear blue skies so perfectly he felt he could dive in and walk among the cool glades. At other times storms sprang from nowhere, sweeping up odd, eddying waves that crashed against the steep banks. Fog came and went among the trees, like ghosts, and at night, beneath a shimmering moon and diamond stars the valley was filled with the pregnant hush that came before a conversation.
He saw no traffic at all along the sinuous road that ran along the banks of the loch, and he didn't know if that was down to the Questing Beast or if everyone had simply fled to the cities. In Drumnadrochit, the quiet village that lay where Glen Urquhart intersected the Great Glen, the houses were still and locked, although a wisp of smoke rose from the occasional chimney. At the loch's southern tip, Fort Augustus was near empty too, and the occasional resident who saw him coming quickly ran for cover.
He made camp on both nights in a tree-lined gorge not far from Fort Augustus. Without even the slightest sign of the Questing Beast, he had started to wonder if it was another of the Queen's incomprehensible machinations, perhaps to separate him from Tom.
On the third day, he realised his hunt was true. In the early morning, he travelled alongside the tumbling river at the bottom of Glen Urquhart. The valley was blanketed beneath the drifting white mist that seemed to come and go with a mind of its own, muffling and distorting the splashing of the water and the clipped echoes of the horse's hooves. In a lonely spot surrounded by acres of sheep-clipped grass he came across an old stone cairn. There was a fading majesty to it, and even he, who was usually insensitive to the blue fire, felt a hint of its power there. But among the standing stones beyond the cairn he came across the remains of a man, half-strung over a barbed-wire fence. From his clothes, he looked like a farmer or an agricultural labourer. He was partially disembowelled as if he had been gored by a bull or a boar, but he had been out there long enough for the carrion birds to have been at his eyes and genitals, so it was impossible to tell if the Beast had consumed any of him as well. Veitch inspected the corpse and the surrounding area for anything that might help him, but there was no spoor or other discernible sign. The only thing that troubled him was that the poor man's blood had splattered randomly on the ground in a shape that resembled a screaming face. After spending time with Shavi he had grown reasonably adept at reading meaning in things that appeared to have none, and that image began to eat away at his subconscious. As he moved away his mind's eye had already begun to paint a picture of the true appearance of the Questing Beast.
That night he made camp among the trees high up on the hillside where he had a clear view of the loch and the bleak southern slopes. The setting sun painted the water red and purple; it was once again so still the water gave the illusion of glass. The air was sweet with the aroma of pine and wild flowers, and an abiding peace lay over the landscape. Yet it was hard for him to rest knowing that the thing could come at him from any direction at any time; he had even started to think of it as invisible or as something that flew on silent wings. All he wanted was something solid to latch on to, something he could stab or shoot or hack at, and then he would be fine.
As he had done the other nights, he dined on chocolate, biscuits and crisps he'd taken from a mysteriously deserted garage in Fort Augustus; the sugar and the processed taste sickened him, but he would have felt ridiculous striding into a supermarket for something more sustaining in the armour bequeathed him by the Tuatha De Danann. He was almost too distracted to think of food. Whenever he rested, Ruth loomed heavy in his thoughts, her face, darkened by fear after her discovery of what she carried with her, a frequent, troubling image he never seemed able to shake. Spurred by Church's right-thinking motivations, he had set out to help in the fight, but he knew his own motivation had been a quest for redemption for his past crimes. The chance to become a better person still weighed on him, but now, more than anything, he was doing it for her; to find some solution to heal her in the short term, to save her in the long term, whatever the cost to himself. Being driven by love was a strange experience for him and he was surprised how much he liked it.
As darkness fell, he stoked up the campfire for warmth during the cold night ahead, before taking time to groom the horse of which he had grown increasingly fond. When he had asked Melliflor for its name, the reply had been something indecipherable, so he had secretly decided to call it Thunder after the horse of some cowboy hero in an American comic he had read as a child. He would never tell the others something like that, but it gave him a deep, personal comfort. He got pleasure from treating it with affection, although he privately wished it were a little more responsive. It seemed unduly wary of him, almost as if it were scared, which he guessed must have come from whatever treatment had been meted out in the strange stables of the Court of the Yearning Heart. I can't even get a horse to like nze, he thought as he stroked its flank; the notion was so ridiculous it made him laugh out loud.
It was Thunder who alerted him to danger as he settled down to sleep next to the fire under the fragrant canopy of a pine. It whinnied and stamped its hooves long before Veitch heard any sign, and he was up on his feet with the sword in his hands as the howl of fear came from somewhere near the road on his side of the loch. The cry was suddenly infused with pain, before being snapped off.
Veitch jumped on to Thunder and spurred him through the trees on the steep slopes down to the road. The horse was uneasy, but it responded to his heels and it didn't take him long to find the mangled remains of a motorbike. There was a pool of blood on the tarmac, but no sign of any body. He dismounted and examined the road surface. It was difficult to tell in the dark, but the splatters of blood appeared to point in the direction of the inlet overlooked by the ruins of Castle Urquhart. Briefly, he stopped and listened, but the night was as quiet as ever. He wondered ho
w swiftly the Beast could move; perhaps it was already miles away. Cautiously he climbed back on Thunder and headed in the direction indicated by the blood.
The clatter of the hooves echoed loudly in the quiet. It still surprised him to be riding down the middle of a road without seeing any sign of headlights in the deep night that hung over the water.
Ten minutes later he passed the still ruins of Urquhart Castle. There was no anxiety within him, just a quiet, intense concentration that took over his mind and permeated his being. His instinct told him his quarry was somewhere in the vicinity; there was a constant resonance vibrating inside him that he had come to trust: a warning to be as alert as he could be.
Around the bend in the road that led to Drumnadrochit he came across a few shreds of bloodied clothing. He jumped down to investigate without once lessening the sharp focus of his attention. He could hear nothing, smell nothing. The Beast left no sign in its passing, but Thunder seemed to sense something; its eyes rolled and it stamped its hooves again.
From the shape of the clump of clothing he could at least discern the direction in which the Beast had been travelling when the remnants were dropped. It was moving towards the area where the road was darkest and the trees clustered claustrophobically close. Back on Thunder, he gently urged it on; slowly, slowly, eyes constantly searching the surroundings. He rounded the small bay; ahead, the road moved off towards Inverness.
From the corner of his eye he caught a sudden movement in the trees away to his left. It was a darkness deeper than the surrounding shadows, moving so quickly it disturbed him.
He spurred Thunder into the trees, his crossbow held over the crook of his arm, his finger poised on the trigger. At that point there was little opportunity to manoeuvre among the trees. The movement of the branches in the faint breeze made odd shifts in the ambient light that at times made him feel something was creeping up on him. His heart pounding, he kept glancing all around to reassure himself.
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