Cernunnos watched Shavi's face like an animal surveying something which could be prey or predator. Then he turned slowly, making strange, unnatural gestures with his left hand, and when he was facing Shavi again he was holding a small, smoky-coloured bottle with a wax stopper. "Here is the radiance that will burn out the Heart of Shadows."
He held out the bottle. Shavi took it gingerly. "What will happen?"
Cernunnos' eyes narrowed until the light within them seemed like distant stars, but he said nothing.
The bottle felt odd in Shavi's hand, not like glass at all. He slipped it quickly into his pocket. "On behalf of Ruth, I offer my great thanks for your aid. On behalf of all the Brothers and Sisters of Dragons."
"Go with speed, Twilight Dancer. I have always entertained your forebears well."
Shavi turned to leave, then paused, wondering if he dare give voice to what was lying heavy on his mind. "When the Wild Hunt has been summoned, someone must die. Is that correct?"
Cernunnos said nothing; in the background the Hunt was growing restless.
"There are a young man and woman nearby. Do not take them."
Cernunnos eyed him curiously for a moment, then nodded slowly in agreement. He looked towards the sun, now moving towards the horizon. "When night comes, the Wild Hunt will ride."
Though he had saved the young couple, Shavi felt the weight of his guilt: there would be yet another death on his conscience. Even the friendly powers that had colonised the world had no real respect for humanity; they agreed to whims with the gentle weariness of patrons who could turn suddenly if the mood took them. There would be no freedom until they were all driven out.
He bowed slightly, although it was a little curter than his greeting. Cernunnos made some strange animal noise, then moved back towards the riders, his shape slowly metamorphosing back into that of the Erl-King. After a few paces, he turned back towards Shavi, an enigmatic expression on his face. "I hail your sacrifice, Twilight Dancer, and I wish you well in the Grey Lands." And then he was gone, twisting and changing like sunlight on water. The horses moved away into the trees, the baying of the hounds more insistent; terrifying.
Shavi's shoulders sagged briefly, but then he pulled the bottle from his pocket. Here was confirmation that things were not all bad; that there were miracles among the nightmares. All he had to do was to reach Ruth before midnight. He checked the angle of the sun, then started to run across the parkland towards the nearest road. He would ride like the Devil was at his heels.
Chapter Twenty
Venceremos
Chutch didn't know how he made it back to the house. The sword was his support over the rough ground, levering him up over rocks which were too much for his battered body to surmount. There was so much pain in every inch of him that he no longer focused on it; he simply floated in a cloud untouched by his senses. The most sensible thing would be to black out and rest where he fell, let his body heal a little. But night was not far away, and Lughnasadh was rising after that. Everything depended on the next few hours; a moment's weakness would doom them all.
Laura was waiting for him as he crested the last ridge, a look of such contempt on her face he thought she was going to punch him. "Suicide boy," she sneered. "Looks like you got unlucky." Then she saw the pain that was racking him. "A close thing, though. Maybe next time, eh?"
He expected a supportive hand, but she marched back to the house, leaving him to make his own way.
By the time he reached the house he was feeling much better than when he had started his journey; the Pendragon Spirit was helping, coupled with whatever earth energies were focused within the tor, but he knew it would take many days to get back to full form; longer for his hand to heal properly. He had attempted to bind it with his handkerchief-the agony had almost made him black out. He would need Laura's help to fasten it up tightly enough for the bones to start to knit without any disfigurement.
But the moment he stepped into the house all thought of his own pain disappeared. Ruth was huddled in one corner, her belly distended and mottled grey, green and purple, as if it had been beaten with a stick. Her skin was drained of blood, the crescents under her eyes and the hollows of her cheeks so dark she looked as if she were close to death by starvation. There was no longer any ranting or delirium; her eyelids barely flickered and her breath was so shallow it was almost imperceptible. It was obvious the end was near.
Laura refused to look at her; she kept staring out of the windows or at the walls, as if there was something more interesting to see. "So when are you going to put her out of her misery?" she said bitterly. "I see you've found something for the execution."
"There's still time," he replied wearily; he didn't have the energy to deal with her baiting.
He knelt down and brushed the hair from Ruth's forehead; her skin was clammily unpleasant to the touch. Hesitantly he moved his hand down, hovering over her belly for an instant before he laid it on her skin. The instant he touched it something moved beneath. He snatched his hand away, stifling a cry of disgust. It had felt like a dog had snapped at him.
Laura must have seen something too, for there were tears in her eyes born of incomprehension and horror. "How can that happen?" Her voice was a small child's. "It can't really be inside her. Nothing's inside her, is it?"
Church rubbed a hand across his face, composed himself, then stood up and walked to the door. "We'll give it till nearly midnight," he said without looking at her. He had to find some place to rest so he could find the reserves he prayed were buried deep within him. "We've got to have hope. There's still a chance one of the others could make it back."
He felt her eyes heavy on his back, urging him to go back to her, comfort her. He paused briefly, then walked out into the afternoon sun, mentally preparing himself for what the night would bring.
The sun was uncomfortably close to the horizon when Shavi made it across the park to the nearest road. He was slick with sweat, his throat burned and his stomach was in knots, but none of it mattered; he knew instinctively he was the last hope for Ruth, for all of them. There was still time to make it back with Cernunnos' mysterious potion, just as long as he found a vehicle quickly.
Desperately he scanned the road in both directions. Normally there would have been a constant flow of traffic in both directions, but in the twilight of society's dissolution there was no sign of anything.
"Please," he whispered. "Whatever gods are listening-"
A white Renault Clio appeared from around the bend. Stifling a wave of exaltation, he took a step out into the road, furiously trying to think how he would convince the driver to hand over his vehicle, knowing he would take it by force if he had to.
As he neared he saw the troubled face of a white-haired old woman leaning over the wheel, peering ahead anxiously as if she expected a sudden rush of juggernauts. Suddenly she glanced in his direction and her expression froze in horror, her mouth a growing 0.
What is wrong with her? Shavi thought.
He took another step into the road. She put a foot on the accelerator.
"No!" Shavi shouted. "I need-!"
From somewhere nearby there came the strangest sound. It could have been the wind blowing across the park, but it sounded very much like howling. Sirens went off in his mind; there was something important he hadn't remembered. A second passed. And then he had it: the ritual in the woods with the travellers. The spirit construct hanging in the air, warning him, something about howling. Then he had it: turn quickly.
The pain in his back felt like a red-hot poker had been rammed through his skin. His thoughts fractured. He hung on to the image of the woman's face, her mouth growing wider and wider until he thought it was going to swallow her head; the car speeding up, rushing by, taking hope with it.
No, he tried to call, but his voice had gone with the car.
The howling, like a wolf.
And then suddenly he felt an arm round his chest, dragging him back, across the road, into the park, into the tree
s. He tried to fight, but in his shock his limbs felt like jelly, his thoughts in disarray.
Roughly he was thrust backwards, hitting the ground hard. His shirt felt wet near his shoulder blade. He could smell the meaty odour of the blood. Quickly his fingers slipped behind him. When he withdrew them, they were dark and wet.
The shock of the image kickstarted his thoughts into life and he threw himself on to his elbows, ready to drive up to his feet.
A boot cracked sharply on his right elbow and he fell back to the ground in pain. Before he could move again a figure was over him, brandishing a knife at his face. Shavi's immediate impression was of an enormous wolf and he knew at once that this was the creature that had stalked them from the Highlands. But gradually his perception fought back, struggling for the truth, and it was as if a mist was shifting from before his eyes.
The wolf began to grow smaller, the yellow eyes becoming less and less intense, until it coalesced into the shape of a man. At first, details were hazy, but as the veil was drawn back a feeling of revulsion slowly engulfed Shavi. The veins of his attacker stood out in deep black on his pale skin, as if they were filled with ink instead of blood. His eyes were lidless, the unchanging stare charged with a mix of insane fury and crazed despair. His teeth were rotting and blackened too, which made his mouth look like the gaping maw of an alien beast; although he couldn't possibly survive in that form, whatever the Fomorii had done to him kept him going.
It was almost impossible to consider him a man; yet in the straggly mane of silver hair and the shabby, dark suit, Shavi recognised him.
"Callow," he hissed. Ice water washed through him at the thought of what monstrous things must have been perpetrated on the itinerant to transform him into such a thing.
But once the initial shock had dissipated, Shavi was overcome with a deep loathing. Normally he tried to maintain an equilibrium for all living things, but here was the man who had slashed Laura's face, sliced off Ruth's finger and delivered her into the hands of the Fomorii to be tortured; who had tried to sell humanity to the beasts for his own gain.
Shavi clapped his hand on his wound to staunch the blood flow; it didn't seem too bad. "What have they done to you, Callow?" he asked, biding his time while he looked for a way out.
"What have they done?" Callow rolled his eyes insanely. "Look at me! They've ruined me! Calatin's punishment for my involvement in the farrago which you and your pathetic colleagues brought about in the Lake District. Punishing me more for his own failures. The indescribable bastard!" He made a strange noise in the corner of his mouth which could have been a laugh or a curse; the insanity brought on by his suffering was writ large in every movement he made. "And once he had tormented me, he didn't even keep me around. He threw me out into the world to make my own way."
"You paid a terrible price-"
"Not fair!" He wiped his mouth feverishly with the back of his hand. "It was your fault! All of you! You are the ones who should have suffered! That was why I sought you out. To make you pay." He waggled his filthy fingers in front of Shavi's face. One was missing; the first severed finger they had found next to Loch Maree had been his own. "Each one of you, a little pinkie!" He chuckled. "The five fingers that held my fate in their grasp. I will sever each of you until I am free. And any other one who dares to hold me back."
Cautiously, Shavi dug his heels in the ground and shifted his weight, ready to throw himself at his attacker if Callow dropped his guard. "If all you wanted was revenge, why then did you deliver Ruth to the Fomorii?" Desperately he tried to keep the conversation going.
Callow's expression grew rueful. "I thought she might buy my way back into the Midnight Court. She is the most powerful of all of you, you see. More powerful even than you. I explained to Calatin that this would make her the perfect vehicle for the return of their Dark Lord. The delicious irony! The champion of this world bringing about its demise! Calatin had no sense of irony, but he realised her strength would make her more likely to withstand the rigours of the pregnancy." He chuckled crazily to himself. "Pregnant! A virgin birth! They were going to use one of their own up to that point. So he took her, and then he threw me out again! But once I have eliminated the rest of you, he will take me back. I know he will."
"Why do you want to return when they have done this to you?" Shavi could not keep the disgust out of his voice.
Callow did not seem to notice. "He loves me. He shaped me with his own hands. I hate him and I love him too. There is nowhere else in this world for me now, unless it's by his side."
In his words Shavi heard echoes of Tom's twisted relationship with the Tuatha De Danann. What was it in the psyche of humankind that made them complicit in the actions of their tormentors, he wondered?
Callow wiped his knife on Shavi's trousers, leaving a thin trail of blood. "You have to give in to them, you see," he continued, almost to himself. "They're our gods. They control our lives."
Shavi eyed the sinking sun nervously. He had to break free from Callow soon or all would be lost. "We give in to no one. If humanity is to rise again, it will not come from kowtowing to any earthly power. We must seize control-"
Callow's painful laugh cut him short. "You think they can be beaten?"
"Not easily. Not without a great struggle. But I believe it is man's destiny to rise, not to kneel in servitude." The pain and the wetness in Shavi's back was starting to spread. The wound might not have been deep, but it still needed treatment or he'd bleed to death there, in conversation with a lunatic.
"You'll be the first to die. Then I'll take your finger. Or perhaps I'll take the finger first." Callow watched him slyly with those permanently uncovered orbs like twin moons, glowing unnaturally white. He started to turn the knife slowly in his filthy fingers. Shavi watched his muscles tense, preparing to strike.
"We may be able to help you," Shavi said with a comforting smile. "The Tuatha De Danann have remarkable abilities and their opposition to the Fomorii may induce them to find a cure for you."
"Really?" Callow's muscles untensed.
Shavi felt the relief creep into his chest. Now was the time to act. "Yes. We can-
Callow lunged forward like a cobra. The knife plunged into Shavi's chest with the force of a hammer, knocking him back on the ground. And again. And again. For an instant his thoughts flashed out and he was left in infinite darkness. When he came down he seemed to be buried deep in his head with only a tiny window to look out on to the world. There was an unbearable pain in his left hand, but he couldn't move to drag his arm away, couldn't even move to see what was happening. A receding part of him knew, but what remained of his conscious mind wouldn't accept the knowledge. It couldn't make sense of any thing; there were just random impressions: the comforting feel of the grass against his cheek, the summery aroma of woodland, the feel of the heat slowly fading as the sun slipped down the sky, an overwhelming but fleeting grief that he had failed everybody, a snapshot of Ruth, Church, Laura, Veitch, Tom, Lee, his mother and father.
And then he heard Callow's voice as if from across a desolate pain: "There is no cure. This is all there is-pain and suffering."
The sounds of Callow shuffling away. Silence. Another face moving in towards him, familiar, but insubstantial; and it wasn't even dark. The guilt and regret. The voice that tormented him on a nightly basis, softly, so softly. "You'll be with nae soon, Shavi." Lee bending closer to tell him terrible things that would stay with him in the Grey Lands forever.
And then there was nothing.
The sun was low on the horizon and long shadows ran across the Windsor parkland. Darkness had started to gather among the trees. From somewhere nearby came the forlorn baying of hounds. One shadow separated from the others and moved across the grass until it found Shavi lying in a pool of his blood. There was a brief snuffling around the recumbent form and then Cernunnos raised his antlered head and howled at the sky. It merged with the questing of the dogs into a sound that would have broken the heart of anyone who heard it.
Complete silence followed; no bird called, no insect chirruped; it was as if a blanket had been lain across the parkland, and that was somehow as unbearable as the noise that preceded it. Finally, Cernunnos groped inside Shavi's jacket and removed the smoky bottle he had handed over earlier. The god held it delicately for a moment, his head moving slowly from side to side, and then he loped back into the undergrowth.
Church sat on his favourite rock, watching the sunset. The sky had turned an angry red, almost apocalyptic in its intensity. His body felt like it belonged to someone else, a mass of aches and bruises highlighted by the throbbing in his hand, which had receded from its initial agony to a dull pain that made him feel sick. He had passed out briefly as Laura bound it tightly for him and she had chided him for that, although there wasn't much heart in her mockery.
The sword felt uncomfortable in his good hand, the strange, cold, metal more like the skin of a snake; sometimes he was even convinced it moved beneath his palm. The way he felt, though, he doubted if he would have the strength to use it.
He couldn't help continually checking his watch as he counted off the min utes until midnight. More than anything, he thought of Ruth. He recalled when they first met how he had the overwhelming feeling they were kindred spirits. Lying together beneath the sheets in her Salisbury hotel room when one of the Baobhan Sith was stalking only feet away. Sitting beside the campfire on Skye when she told him, "We're not all going to come out of it alive."
He bolstered himself with the thought that until Lughnasadh rose there was still a chance of the cavalry riding in to save all of them from damnation. Yet in his heart he knew a little piece of hope went with each glimmer of light that ebbed out of the sky.
Could he kill the woman he felt closer to than anyone, even though she was going to die anyway? Could he drive that last piece of life out of her, and watch as her face returned to innocence? For the first time in many years, he covered his eyes and prayed.
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