Always Forever (17 page)

She looked over their heads as if the voice had come from the shadowy corners. "Fragile Creatures are always offensive."

"What's wrong?" Veitch was shocked when the words emerged from his
mouth, so rimmed with pathetic submission were they; he couldn't help himself, that was the worst thing.

"You are free to leave the Court of the Yearning Heart." She addressed Tom
directly. "All compacts and contracts are rescinded. This is a gift given freely
and without obligation."

Tom kept his head bowed. "We thank you for your hospitality, my Queen.
And may I say-"

She raised her hand. Instantly Melliflor was at Tom's side, directing him
towards the exit. The rapidity of their dismissal took them both by surprise, but
Tom saw Veitch bristle before they had reached the door.

"Is that it?" Veitch hissed. Then: "What's up with her?" When Tom didn't
answer, Veitch thought for a long moment and then said, "She just got bored,
didn't she, like some fucking spoilt aristocrat." He tried not to sound too hurt.
"She's found something else to interest her more. We're just ... nothing."

"Hush!" Tom cautioned with blazing eyes. "If you want to get out of here
alive-"

"True Thomas."

A look of horror crossed his face at her voice. He turned sharply. "My Queen?"

"The Quincunx are no more, True Thomas."

Veitch saw Tom blanch. "What's she on about?" he whispered.

"The shaman has moved on from the Fixed Lands." A cruel smile lay comfortably on her face.

Tom bowed his head, this time for himself. "And the other Brother and
Sisters of Dragons, my Queen?"

She inclined her head thoughtfully. "One of them sleeps in a charnel pit. I
hear the other two travel to the Western Isles, True Thomas. And you know
what that means."

Veitch looked to Tom for explanation, although in his heart he understood
the sense of the Queen's words. He stifled the rising panic, pretending he didn't
believe them. Tom's face wouldn't allow him to wallow in the lie, and then Melliflor was once again steering them towards the door.

They emerged on to the summit of the Hill of Yews on an ethereal, late summer
morning. Grey mist drifted amongst the gravestones and the clustering trees;
the whole world was half-formed; fluid. It was cool and still, disturbed only by
the occasional bird song and a wild fluttering in the treetops. They could hear
no car nor plane nor boat on the nearby river. Their first thought was that they
were the only ones left alive.

"Can you feel it?" Tom asked.

And Veitch did, though he was by far and away the least sensitive of them
all: there was a sourness in the air.

"Balor is here," Tom said redundantly.

Like a child, Veitch still refused to accept. "Then why hasn't it all been
wiped away?" His gesture took in the towering trees and the stones and the War
monument and the glimpses of Inverness beyond.

"It can afford to take its time. Not that time has any meaning for it."
Tom drew in a deep breath of air, surprised he was still alive, stunned by how
much he was glad to be back; he had thought he couldn't feel anything so
acutely any more. "It's waiting for Samhain, when its power is at a peak. But
things are moving." He closed his eyes and gave himself up to the sensations.
"Things are moving over the lip of reality, creeping here, eating away at the
edges."

Veitch kicked at the wet grass. "That's why she threw us out. Suddenly she's
got something more important to think about. She's like a spoilt brat who's been
told she can't play with her toys because she'd got to do her homework."

"You could be right. It would be unwise for the Tuatha De Danann to
ignore the threat of the Fomorii. The Queen may well have been entreated to
face up to her obligations."

"Fuck it." Veitch furiously blinked away tears that had appeared from
nowhere. "Shavi's dead."

Tom nodded slowly. "It appears so."

Veitch's shoulders slumped until a new revelation dawned on him. "But
not Ruth!"

"Somehow she survived."

"But if Shavi died, and we failed, who saved her?" His eyes narrowed. "That
bitch wasn't lying, was she?"

"No. She told us about Shavi to hurt us. If she could have hurt you more by
telling you Ruth was dead, she would have done."

Veitch punched the air. "Yes! Jesus, yes!" Tom watched his emotions seesaw
as he struggled to cope with Shavi's loss and Ruth's survival. "But Shavi ..."

"You were close to him. I'm sorry." His sorrow was much deeper than his
words suggested; without the five of them there was no hope. But that didn't
make sense: he had seen the end, or part of it at least. That was the trouble with
second sight: it never gave a true picture.

"I know he was a queen and all, but, you know, he was all right." Veitch,
never one to express sensitive emotions, looked like he was about to tear himself
apart trying to find words to maintain his pride, yet show his true feelings.

Tom spared him. "Come on. This isn't a place we want to tarry."

Inverness was a ghost town. It didn't take them long to discover that technology
had finally given up its futile battle to maintain a foothold in the world. The
people they met looked uniformly dazed, as if they were walking through a
dream, waiting to wake. But as the day passed, those who were determined to
maintain some degree of normality came out of the woodwork. They found a
cafe near the river where the owner had sourced produce from local farmers, but
her face had the perpetually troubled expression of someone who worried how
much longer it could last. Cash was still accepted; things hadn't yet broken
down that much. Veitch and Tom had only a few pounds left between them in
crumpled notes and coins, and they decided to blow it all on a big breakfast.
Nothing tasted as vibrant or heady as the food in Otherworld, but, surprisingly,
it was more fulfilling. Three weeks had passed since Lughnasadh and Balor's
return, nearly a month of so-far gentle winding down.

The breakfast passed in funereal silence. They should have been jubilant at
their escape from Otherworld, but Shavi's death weighed so heavily on Veitch,
nothing else felt important.

Over strong tea at the end of the heavy, fried meal, Veitch asked, "So what
do we do now?"

Tom blew on his tea, but even before he spoke, Veitch could tell he had no
answers. That disturbed him; the hippie had always acted like he knew everything. "Jack and Ruth are on their way to the Western Isles. There's nothing we can do until they return. If they return." He spent a moment floundering around
for words, then looked Veitch squarely in the eye. "Everything has changed,
Ryan. We cannot move ahead as we have in the past."

"So we didn't stop the biggest Bastard of all coming back. We've had setbacks before-"

"No. It's worse than you understand. I know you find it hard to see beneath
the surface-that's not where your strengths lie. But I think you realise everything we see around isn't the picture at all. It's a shop window decoration, a lie
designed with a particular aim in mind. Behind it is a complex pattern of
powers and relationships. Things work differently there. A single muttered
word can have unguessed repercussions. Symbols weave through that pattern,
across time and space, wielding powers undreamed of. There are rules none of us
know, Ryan, a language we can't begin to understand."

"What are you saying?"

"Five is one of those things that sends powerful ripples through all of existence, Ryan. Forget everything you know for a moment, if you can. Five is not
a number. Let's give it another definition to point you in the right direction. Say,
Five is a word we give to a nuclear generator, creating great energy that could
transform the world, but also great destructive force." Tom stared into Veitch's
eyes, waiting for that familiar glazing over, but Veitch's gaze remained true, if
troubled. "There have to be five of you, Ryan. If not, the power isn't there. However much effort you expend, however clever you are, it will amount to nothing,
because in the new language we're talking about, Three has a different meaning.
It has to be Five. And it has to be the Five selected by whatever the unifying
force is, whether you call it God or Goddess or the Voice of the Universe."

Veitch looked dazed. "You're saying it really is all over? I thought the message you were trying to drum into us all was that there's always hope? Because
that's what I feel here." He thumped his heart. "So I know it's right. You taught
us that, and I learned it well. So don't come here with your bleedin' mealymouthed talk of failure 'cause I'm not having any of it. Are you telling me we
can't do anything?" He jabbed a finger at Tom's face. "Are you?"

Tom finished his tea thoughtfully. "I know things will come to a head. I
know it will be a dark and disturbing time, but I have no idea if the resolution
will be the one we all hope for. Perhaps we can do something." At that moment
he felt the weight of his great age.

One of the other early diners leaned over them on his way out. He was an
old man in a dark, faded overcoat and thinning snowy hair above a similarly
bleached face. "Put a smile on your face," he said in his lyrical Highlands accent.
"You'll be dead a long time. However bad it is now, think on that."

"See," Veitch said. "Even he can bleedin' well see it."

Rattling his cup in its saucer, Tom stood up and attempted to ease the strain
from his limbs. The terrors of the Court of the Yearning Heart had shaken him
to the core of his being; he needed time to find his true centre once more, his
confidence. He truly didn't know which way to turn, but Ryan was relying on
him, as they all had relied on him. He looked down at the childlike hope on
Witch's face and felt an abiding sadness.

"Come on, then," he said. "We'd better go and talk to the universe."

The clear night sky was awash with a thousand stars normally obscured by the
mundane glow of sodium lights, while the moon shone its brilliant rays through
the treetops. The air was warm from the heat of the day and filled with the
aroma of pine. The only sounds were their footsteps on the deserted road and the
lapping of the waves in the loch.

Veitch couldn't stop looking up at the sky, feeling a small part of something
immense and wonderful. Even a country boy would have thought it was special,
but to Veitch, raised in a city where the night sky was a mystery, it was unbelievable. Even the thick shadows that swamped the hillsides running to the loch
took a friendly cast.

"It's a good night," Tom said, as if sensing his companion's thoughts.

"I've seen a lot of country over the last few weeks, but nothing like this."

"There's still magic out there. Even with all that's happening."

"Maybe it's become more powerful because of what's happening."

Tom was surprised at Witch's insight; it was rarely given voice, but when
it did it came in inspirational flashes. "You know what, I think you're right."

"Yeah, magic. Something for us to plug into." They walked in silence for a
few yards and then Veitch added, "Shavi would have loved this."

Tom felt humbled by the aching loss he heard in Witch's voice, but there was
warmth there, too, of a kind Veitch had never before exhibited. During their
journey north to the Court of the Yearning Heart Tom had learned to see his companion in a new light, more than just a caricature of muscles and South London
honour; he was a good man, for all his faults, riven by neuroses, but with a decent
heart. "He was developing into a fine shaman. I was surprised how quickly he took
to his abilities, always pushing back the boundaries, striving to better himself."

"Yeah, that's it, innit? We all try to do the best we can, but it came natural
to him. It's not fair he caught it first."

"How do you feel about it?"

"Like I've lost my best mate." Subconsciously he pushed himself a few paces
ahead of Tom, head bowed, his hanging hair obscuring his face. "I miss his advice, y'know. He always knew the right thing to say. I've never known anybody ... sensible before."

Tom was prepared to continue the conversation, but Veitch pushed on a
little further, keen to be alone with his thoughts.

It had taken them most of the day to walk from Inverness, and even their hardened muscles were starting to ache. It would be just an hour or so more before
they reached their final destination in Glen Urquhart, the valley running down
to Loch Ness. For Veitch, the surroundings were still haunted by his memories
of the hunt for the Questing Beast and the subsequent battle that had left him
only a hairsbreadth from death.

They came up on the site Tom had identified on the map just before midnight; it was the place where Veitch had found the remains of one of the
Questing Beast's victims, but the body was no longer there.

Corrimony was the home of a chambered cairn made of water-worn stone
taken from the nearby river Enrick. It lay in green pasture at the foot of pinecovered hills, swathed in an atmosphere of abiding peace.

"Can you feel it?" Tom's voice was almost lost beneath the breeze.

Electricity buzzed in the soles of Veitch's feet, sending not-unpleasant
crackles up to his knees. When he held up his hand, the faintest blue nimbus
limned it against the dark of the landscape. "Bloody hell," he said in hushed
awe.

"Since the Well of Fire at Edinburgh was ignited, this part of the land has
come alive. At the right time, in the right atmosphere, it's quite potent." Tom
squatted down and stretched out an arm. When his finger was an inch from the
sward a blue spark jumped between them.

"What are you going to do?"

"What Shavi would have done if he'd been here, only not as well. I learnt
bits and pieces from the Culture, but not enough. I'm not a natural like he was.
The Pendragon Spirit is an unbroken chain linking Shavi to the ancient races
that set up these things, the ones who preserved their knowledge in the land.
He was a lightning rod, attracting it all to him." Tom dropped to his hands and
knees and crawled into the claustrophobically low tunnel that led into the heart
of the cairn. Veitch heard his voice float back, although the words were obviously not meant for him. "I'm not much good for anything, really."