Darkest Hour (Age of Misrule, Book 2) (10 page)

“Wise teacher, in my words lies your salvation. You require more? Then heed this: for the source of threat, look within as well as without. For direction, follow your hearts south to the city of the Well of Fire. For success in battle, cleanse the darkness from the spirit of your chieftain. And remember this: an ally already stands tall among the Children of Danu. Treat him with respect to keep his comfort close. Now, your offering was gratefully received, but it will buy no more of my patience. If you require anything else, you must pay for it with a life. Do you wish to proceed?”

Suddenly, the arc of Celts seemed too close, ready to cut off any retreat. As Church looked round, they seemed to waver like an image in a heat haze and for a moment he sensed something very like hunger; anxiety began to turn to fear deep in the pit of his stomach.

“Revered ancestor, we have been enlightened by your wisdom,” Tom began. “And we offer our gracious thanks for your time. We shall delay you no more. We wish you well on your return to the Grim Lands.”

The Celt who had addressed them lowered his head slightly in parting and, for the briefest instant, the shadows that covered his eyes seemed to clear; what Church glimpsed there made his mind squirm and he had to stop himself fleeing back to the campfire.

It was several minutes after the Celts had melted back into the landscape before anyone spoke. It was as if they were coming out of a dream, one tinged with incipient menace where strange truths had been made known, so strange that they could barely be comprehended upon awakening. The feeling was heightened when they realised they could only hazily remember what they had seen, although the words still rang out in their minds.

“Did we actually experience that, or was it the mushrooms?” Ruth asked. Church saw she was gripping her hands together to prevent them shaking.

“A little of both,” Tom replied.

Shavi nodded in agreement. “The mushrooms are the key to opening the doors of perception.”

Tom smiled suddenly. “I remember seeing Jim Morrison perform in Florida-“

“Most old gits talk about the war,” Laura interrupted. “We get reminiscences of the happy hippie trail. Now can we get back to the fire-it’s freezing out here.”

Veitch pulled out a bottle of single malt he’d found in the grocery store on Kyleakin and they drank it from plastic cups around the fire.

“So, correct me if I’m wrong, but that was just a load of cryptic bollocks that wasted our time, right?” Although Laura sat next to Church, she was careful not to make the others feel uncomfortable by showing any sign of her affection for him, though Church had sensed an obvious proprietary instinct in the way she had taken her seat just as Ruth was walking up.

Tom shook his head. “They didn’t make it easy for us, but all the information they offered is vital.”

“Except we probably won’t crack the code until it’s too late,” Church noted. “What’s the Luck of the Land?”

“I have no idea. The Celts believed it was dangerous to name a sacred thing by its true name, which is why these exercises end up in irritating circumlocution.” Tom took a deep swig of the whisky and then said tartly, “But we can pull some pearls from the verbal ordure. The city of the Well of Fire is Edinburgh. There’s an extinct volcanic feature in the city called Arthur’s Seat.”

“More Arthurian code for a site linked to the earth power?” Church mused.

“It’s a very powerful source, the most powerful in Scotland. The Well lies under Arthur’s Seat.”

“Then that’s where we’ve got to go. Shouldn’t take too long from here.” Veitch lay back with his hands behind his head.

“The ally is obviously Cernunnos.” Ruth examined the mark that had been burned into the flesh of her hand by the nature god. She had a sudden flashback to the rainswept night in Manorbier, the terrifying power she had seen in the being as its body melted and changed like oil on water.

“Your ally,” Veitch noted. “You’re his big pal.”

“As long as I’m with you, he’s with you. But how are we supposed to show him respect?”

“These beings,” Shavi mused, “seem to expect deference from those beneath them in the hierarchy of power.”

“I’ll just tug my forelock in front of the toffs,” Veitch sneered. “Blimey, talk about things being the same all over.”

“The Celts rightly believed islands were prime places for carrying out rituals,” Tom stated. “Not far from here, in Loch Maree, there’s an island called Eilean Maree, with a sacred grove dedicated to the Tuatha De Danann, where we can make an offering to-“

“How do you know all these things, wise teacher?” Laura asked pointedly.

Shavi eyed Tom incisively. “Tom knows all of the lore of the Celts, is that not right? You told us you were tutored by the people of the Bone Inspector-“

“And so the knowledge of being a freak is passed down,” Laura sniffed.

“And the Bone Inspector spoke of his people, an unbroken line of guardians of the old places stretching back through history,” Shavi continued.

Church threw another branch on the fire. “Well, we all know what cleansing the darkness from the chieftain means,” he added sombrely, “though a little guidance on how to go about it wouldn’t have gone amiss.”

“There was one other thing,” Ruth said. “What did for the source of the threat, look within as well as without mean?”

“As if you don’t know.” Laura stared deep into the heart of the fire. “It means one of us is looking to earn thirty pieces of silver.”

After the others had retired to their tents, Church and Laura sat warming themselves by the dying embers. In the midst of all the chaos and tension, Church felt remarkably comforted to have Laura curled up next to him. With his arm around her and her head on his shoulder, the emotional closeness to another human filled him with a sense of well-being.

“This is what it’s all about,” he muttered to himself.

“You’re talking to yourself again.”

Although they were entwined, Laura still seemed a little stiff and distant. He had started to strip away the many defences she had erected to protect herself, but he knew it would be a long time before she gave her inner self up freely. In fact, the more he got to know her, the more he felt the acid-tongued, confident, aggressive Laura was a character that had been completely constructed, and whatever lay within was something he might not recognise at all. But that sense of protecting the vulnerable heart of their being was something they shared, and possibly what had attracted them in the first place.

“So this Marianne must have been a big thing in your life,” she said after a long period of introspection.

“We’d been together a long time. We were going to get married. So, yes, she was a big thing.”

“I suppose that explains why you were knocked so out of whack when she died. Do you think you’ll ever get over it?”

“I don’t think anybody ever gets over something like that. You just learn to accommodate it.”

She thought about this for a moment, then said, “What was she like?”

“Oh, I don’t know-“

“Go on, I want to know. Was she a good person?”

“I suppose. I never really thought of her like that. She was pretty much a malice-free zone. But she had her bad qualities-who doesn’t?”

“Yeah, right. But it’s a balancing act, isn’t it? There aren’t any real goodies or baddies. Most people manage to keep that scale just right, a little bit up, a little bit down, over the course of a life. And just a few go up one side or the other.” She dug him sharply in the ribs with her elbow. “Christ, it’s like getting blood out of a stone with you.”

“I think that’s a black kettle and pot situation.” He sighed. “She was smart. She read a lot. She liked to talk about ideas, about things that mattered. She made me laugh. She took the piss out of me when I was being pompous. She didn’t take the piss out of me when I was talking about a list of dreary finds from some boring dig in Somerset. She could argue the case for northern soul when I was banging on about guitar music. She’d watch Star Wars with me and wouldn’t beg me to watch jean de Florette with her. And she allowed me to be weak.” He paused, feeling the rawness of some of the emotions that were surfacing. “Lifes good as long as you don’t weaken-that’s a pretty good rule of thumb. We all have to keep up a resilient front, but you know you’ve found someone good when you can let the barriers down to show that weak, pathetic, characterdestroying side of you, that part that you have to let out every now and then or go mad, but you normally have to do in the privacy of your room.” He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Is that good enough for you?”

“It’ll do. For now.”

“Why did you want to know? For the sake of comparison?”

“No. What’s gone is gone. That doesn’t bother me. But you can find out a lot about someone from the way they view the love of their life.”

Her words made him give pause. “Very lateral thinking. So what did you find out?”

“You don’t think I’m going to tell you, do you?”

“Okay. Tell me about the love of your life.”

She laughed. “You must think I’m a real sucker. Sorry, pal, my past is a closed book.”

He pulled her in tight and gave her scalp a monkey scrub.

“Ow! Just because you can’t compete with my intellect.” She pinched him hard until Veitch hollered from the depths of his tent for them to be quiet. Then they giggled like schoolchildren and continued their conversation in hushed tones.

“So,” Church said eventually, “do you and I get a happy ending, do you think?”

There was a long pause that surprised him, and when he looked up at her face he saw the humour had drained from it. “Come on, Church, you’re a big boy now. Look around you. There aren’t going to be any happy endings.”

Church sighed. “Why’s everyone so pessimistic? Ruth said something similar.”

“Yeah, I knew she’d been talking to you. Well … maybe it’s a chick thing. You boys have no perception. No happy endings. We just have to make the most of what we’ve got for as long as we’ve got it.” There was a note of deep sadness in her voice, but a second later she had forced herself to brighten and was tugging him towards the tent. “Come on. I want my brains removing and you’ve got just the tool to do it.”

is beautiful.” Pressing her face against the window, Ruth looked out at the tranquil expanse of Loch Maree. The water was as glassy as it had been the previous day, reflecting the overcast sky punctured by bursts of blue and the hillsides that soared up steeply in a breathtaking wall of brown, purple and green. In the centre of the water lay Eilean Maree, serene and secret among its thick trees.

It had taken them only twenty-five minutes from Gairloch after a hearty breakfast of farmhouse bacon and eggs. They were all eager to continue on to Edinburgh and civilisation, but Tom had convinced them that a brief pause to make an offering to Cernunnos would pay dividends in the long run.

“I’ve got some reservations about this,” Church said as they parked up on the water’s edge. “Making an offering is a tacit admission that we accept they’re our gods rather than simply beings that are more powerful than us. I have no intention of doffing my cap and being fawning-“

“Even if it means saving your life?” Tom interrupted.

Church radiated defiance. “Even then. I’m not bowing down. I’m not folding up and showing my throat-“

“Then don’t see it as an offering. See it as a bribe.” Tom marched off across the pebbles to a small boat that had been pulled up on the bank.

Witch rowed Laura, Ruth and Tom over first, then came back for Shavi and Church. The island was small and rocky along the shoreline, but heavily wooded with a thick undergrowth. They moved cautiously away from the light at the banks to the shadows that lay beneath the leafy covering. There was a tangible atmosphere of peace which put them at ease; it reminded Shavi of the aura of calm that hung over the grounds of Glastonbury Abbey. Yet despite the idyllic setting, no birds sang at all.

Tom led them through the trees to the tip of the island. In a grove, out of sight of the road, an obvious altar had been created from a tree stump. Wild flowers lay on it, along with a cup of milk and the remnants of a loaf of bread. The air of sanctity was at its most concentrated in the altar’s vicinity.

“Looks like someone’s been here before us,” Church noted.

“The power that Cernunnos represents didn’t die away when the old gods left,” Tom replied. “In places away from the cities there’s been an unbroken chain of worship. Some people are still close to the land. Some refuse to forget.”

“Fuckin’ nutters,” Veitch muttered.

“And there’s the arrogance of the urban dweller.” Tom pressed his spectacles back on to the bridge of his nose, a mannerism which Church recognised as a sign of irritation. “I thought you would have learned by now not to judge by surface. Whales move in deep water and leave no mark of their passing.”

“Whales?” Veitch said distractedly. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

They stood in front of the altar for a moment, deep in thought. Then Ruth said, “I want to make an offering too.”

Church looked at her in surprise, but Tom said, “As you choose. You must respond to your feelings.”