Darkest Hour (Age of Misrule, Book 2) (27 page)

Lub-dub, lub-dub.

It seemed to be calling out to her and issuing a warning at the same time. And then she knew what it really sounded like. The beating of a heart that would never know death, buried far beneath the ancient landscape. The image spawned a wave of terror. Laura screwed up her eyes and covered her ears, but it was there inside her head and there was nothing she could do to get it out, and she knew she would not sleep again that night. Lub-dub, lub-dub. The relentless rhythm of death and madness.

While Laura and Shavi were just winding their way out of the city centre, Church and Tom skirted the edge of the Old Town before cutting across its easternmost edge to break into the green expanse of Holyrood Park. The sedate mass of the Royal household loomed up silently through the haar which obscured all of Arthur’s Seat apart from the lowest twenty feet. The area, normally a haven for joggers and dog-walkers, was deserted. In its desolation it seemed unbearably lonely and ancient.

No words passed between them until they were standing before the wellhead, feeling unseasonably cold.

“Here we are then,” Church said banally.

Now they were there, they could see how out of place the well-head looked, surrounded by the wild grass and bare rock of the wilderness that soared up above the city: a defiant statement that man would not be bowed by nature. Iron bars ran on both sides of the forecourt before the well and up the hillside over the top of it. The well-head itself was dark stone stained with the residue of years; the water trickled out into a small pool just out of reach beyond more vandal-proof bars. It smelled of cold iron and dark tombs. Above it was a plaque which said:

St. Margaret’s Well

This unique Well House dates from the late 15th century. It originally stood at Restalrig, close to the church, and its design is a miniature of St. Triduana’s Aisle there. In 1860 it was removed from its first site, which was then encroached upon by a railway depot, and was reconstructed in its present position near a natural spring.

Church read it carefully then said, “When they moved it, did whoever was in charge know this was the entrance to the path beneath Arthur’s Seat? Or was it coincidence?”

“There is no coincidence.” Tom surveyed the well-head carefully, as if he were looking for a lock.

“So someone did know?”

“Perhaps. A great deal of secret knowledge has been maintained down the years. There are numerous societies which keep their version of the truth close to them, many secret believers passing words down from mother to daughter, father to son. Or perhaps the people who moved the well-head were simply guided by an unseen hand.”

A few weeks earlier Church would have met such a comment with derision, but now he was more than aware of what lay behind the visible. “So how do we get in? Can you see the switch like you did at Tintagel?”

“I can, but I’d be remiss in my job if I didn’t start teaching you.”

“I can’t see anything!”

“That’s because you are not looking correctly,” Tom replied with exasperation.

Church squinted in the feeble hope it would reveal some hitherto obscured detail, but it only brought an irritated snort from Tom. “Haven’t you learned anything yet?”

“I’ve learned you’re an annoying bastard,” Church snapped.

“The mistake you people constantly make is that you see the five senses as separate, and as the only tools at your disposal. Haven’t I told you to trust your intuition? Sense where the switch is. Feel the power of the earth energy in this spot, its arteries and veins, where it pulses the strongest. Then let it inform each sense in turn, until they are all working together. Smell the switch, taste it in the air. Hear it calling to you.”

Church attempted to do what Tom said. After a few seconds he said, “It’s not working.”

Tom cuffed his shoulder so that Church spun round in irritation. “You’re not trying hard enough. Concentrate. Open your mind and your heart to it. If you don’t believe, you won’t do it.”

“Why should I be able to do it?”

“Why? Because you’re special, though God knows why. You are a manifestation of the Pendragon Spirit. Its force moves through you. You’re closer to the land and the energy than I am. In an ideal world, you should be teaching me!”

Church sighed and turned back to the well-head. “It’s not easy to believe in something like that.”

“Stop whining. Get on with it.”

Church concentrated. After a while he gave up trying to look at the detail in the stone and closed his eyes; that seemed to help. In the dark behind his eyelids he imagined he could see blue tracings like the trails left by firework sparklers. But then he realised it wasn’t his imagination, and if he concentrated, he could make the paths stronger, see the faint web they made. A little more concentration and he could hear them fizzing, as if he were standing near a hightension power line; they smelled and tasted like burnt iron.

And then he opened his eyes and he could still see the blue trails glowing beneath the surface of the stone and the surrounding grass. “It’s there.” His awed voice was hushed. He let his gaze slip slightly to the side and he could see the blue arteries continuing out and up into Arthur’s Seat, across the ground behind him towards the city. “It’s in everything. Everywhere.”

He noticed that some of the arteries and veins glowed with a paler blue and others appeared oddly truncated, as if they had withered and died. With this realisation and the conscious stream of thoughts it generated, he began to lose control of the vision. It flickered as his senses fragmented, became individual units again. Desperately he launched himself forward and hammered the palm of his hand on to the point on the well-head where the blue fire had appeared to converge. There was a surge of needle-pain in his fingertips and blue sparks flew. With a deep rumble, the well-head split open, flooding water out, but giving access to a dark tunnel which lay beyond the spout of the spring.

Tom grabbed his elbow and propelled him in. The moment they set foot in the tunnel the well-head ground shut behind them. Church had expected stifling darkness, but there was a faint phosphorescent glow to the slick rock walls which gave the passage the gloomy appearance of the last minutes of twilight. But it was enough to see by, and Tom was already marching ahead.

Church caught up with him with a double-step, breathing in the dank air and shivering slightly. His footsteps echoed off the walls. “That was amazing.” Although there was no reason for it, he spoke in a whisper. “Is that how you see things?”

“Sometimes. When I allow myself.”

“It’s-” He searched for the right word, but couldn’t find one to match the immensity of what he felt. He settled for, “Tremendous. I can understand how people could get all religious about that. It showed the interconnectedness of everything. That blue, spiritual fire, in the land, in the rocks.” He gazed at the back of his hand. “In us.”

“It’s the neolithic mindset. Once everybody could see things that way.”

“Then what happened? Why did we lose it?”

Tom shrugged. “The more we developed the rational side of the brain, the more we lost touch with the intuitive. We simply forgot the skill to combine the senses, to be holistic in feeling. It’s one of the great arrogances of man that we consider we are constantly evolving, that to dwell wholly on reason and science and logic is somehow better. But what would you think of a man who chopped off his left arm to make his right arm stronger? That ability to combine the senses, to feel, that was the most amazing skill of all. Man hasn’t been whole for a long time, yet everyone in this century thinks they’re some kind of superman, the pinnacle of existence. If it wasn’t so bitter, the irony would make me laugh.”

Church thought about this. The passage began to slope down, but just as he thought they were going to head into the bowels of the earth it rose up sharply, then descended again. Soon he’d lost all sense of direction.

“I’ve got a question,” he said eventually.

“Go ahead.”

“In all the stories there’s a myth that the fairies are scared of iron. The Fomorii and Tuatha De Danann don’t seem to have any problem with it.”

“Correct.”

“But I noticed the earth energy seems to smell and taste of iron-” Tom’s sudden grin brought him up sharp.

“Very perceptive! You’ve found the source of the myth! It’s the blue fire and everything it represents that fills them with fear. That’s what can bind them. And in its most potent form, that’s what can destroy them.”

Church surprised himself with the awe he felt. “I didn’t realise the power of it. Then if we can control it-“

“The Brothers and Sisters of Dragons truly can be the defenders of the land.”

“We have to awaken it,” Church said firmly, almost to himself.

“That’s your destiny,” Tom added.

Ahead of them the tunnel dipped down into the darkness again. Church found himself subconsciously going for the locket given him by the young Marianne; it filled him with strength in a way he still couldn’t quite understand.

“What lies ahead, then?” he said uneasily.

Tom shrugged. “It won’t be an easy journey. This close to such a powerful source of the earth energy, time and space will warp. It will be disorientating. We will have to keep our wits about us.”

“And when we get to where we’re going, how are we supposed to get the blue fire moving again?”

“Do I look like the fount of all knowledge?” Tom said irritably. “We’ll find out when we get there. Hopefully.”

And with that he set off into the darkness.

The hotel seemed empty without the others around. Veitch ate dinner early, steak and potatoes with a good red wine, but the high life he could never have afforded before did little to raise his spirits. With everything in such a state of flux, so many pressures and so much at risk, there was too much even to think about. And it wasn’t just that the world was changing, it was the deep things shifting within him. Here, finally, was a chance to change; he could leave behind the Ryan Veitch he had despised all his life and become the person he always dreamed he would be: good, decent, unselfish, caring. Until chaos had descended on the world, he had dismissed the idea with the certain knowledge that he was who he was-he would never change. But now he had a chance, he was determined not to let it slip through his fingers.

When the sun started to go down he took his brooding with him to the bar. The room was near-deserted. It would have been wiser to stick with wine, but he couldn’t resist ordering a pint of lager, which he took to a table where he could see the door; an old habit.

He’d got halfway down his drink when he noticed the elderly gentleman who’d come up to him in the lobby the previous day. He was smiling at Veitch from a nearby table, as elegant as ever with his smart suit and his swept-back white hair. He sat with his hands crossed on top of his cane.

“You know, this old place used to be thronging at this time of year,” the man said. Veitch smiled politely, but he had never been one for small talk, particularly with a higher class. Toffs always made him feel insignificant, stupid and uncultured, whatever his better judgement. But this man seemed pleasant enough; his smile was warm and open, and there didn’t seem any judgment in the way he looked at Veitch. “Do you mind if I join you?” He smiled at Veitch’s reticence. “Oh, don’t worry. I’m not some predatory shirtlifter. I merely wish to share your company and, well, and perhaps my thoughts.” His smile changed key, but Veitch couldn’t read what it signified.

“Okay,” Veitch said, recognising his own loneliness. “I’ll have a drink with you.” He took his lager over to the man’s table and sat opposite him. Up close, he could see the man’s eyes sparkled with a youthfulness that belied his age. He smelled of expensive aftershave and pipe tobacco.

“Gordon Reynolds,” the old man said holding out a well-tended hand. Veitch shook it and introduced himself.

For the next hour they exchanged small talk: about how Veitch was finding Edinburgh, about the weather, the best tourist sites, the malts that really ought to be sampled and a host of other minor issues. Reynolds broke off to sip at his whisky and when he replaced his glass there was a gleam in his eye. “You look like a bright young man,” he said. “You are aware, of course, that something very strange is going on in the world.”

“I’ve seen some funny things.” Veitch sipped at his lager.

“They closed off the Old Town today.”

Veitch nodded.

“You’re very reticent.” Reynolds smiled. “I suspect you know much more than you’re saying.”

“I know a bit. Don’t like to talk about it.”

“It’s bad, then. No, don’t bother telling me otherwise. I’ve some friends in Wick who used to keep in touch before the telephones went down. They were keen hill-walkers, used to go off into the wilderness. Well, rather them than me. Give me a warm fire and an old malt by it any day. But one day, not so long ago, they went off into the wilds and saw some … quite terrible things. Quite terrible. Now they never leave the town. No one does. The wilderness is offlimits.” He scanned Veitch with a dissecting gaze, taking in every minute movement of the Londoner’s face. “But you know all this, I can see. Then you know it’s not just happening up in Wick. There’s word coming from all over. Here in Auld Reekie, with our sophisticated ways, we could laugh at the superstitions of our country cousins. And now they’ve closed off the Old Town.”

“It’s going to get worse before it gets better.”

“I’m sure it is, I’m sure it is. And there’s the Government with the hints and whispers and `it’s a crisis, we can’t give you too much information,’ trying to make us think it’s the Russkies or the Iraqis or God knows who while they desperately flounder around for an answer that will constantly evade them. Never trust the Establishment, my boy. They’re in-bred with arrogance. They think we’re too stupid to be told anything as radical as the truth.”

“I’ll drink to that.” Veitch drained his pint and glanced towards the bar, hoping for a lull in the conversation so he could get a refill.

“The ironic thing is that most of the people are starting to know better than they. The Establishment is too inflexible and this new age needs people who are prepared to take great leaps forward. They’ll be left behind. Only the fleet of mind will survive. What do you think of that?”