Darkest Hour (Age of Misrule, Book 2) (65 page)

“Well, that’s why God invented horses, matey! If it’s good enough for the old ancestors, it’s good enough for me and mine. I can see it now: a big, old, yellow caravan … ” He burst out laughing. “Bloody hell! Mr. Toad! Poot, poot!” He was laughing so much tears streamed down his cheeks and he rested his head on the steering wheel to calm himself. Shavi had a sudden pang of anxiety and considered grabbing the wheel, but Breaker pulled his head up a second later and righted the bus as it drifted towards the hedge.

Shavi noticed an ornate Celtic cross hanging from the rearview mirror. “For safety on the road?”

Breaker nodded. “Though not in the way you think. That symbol was around long before the Christians got hold of it.” He muttered something under his breath. “Bloody Christians stamping all over any other religion. Some of ‘em are the worst advert there is for Christianity. On paper it’s not a bad religion. Love thy neighbour, and all that. But once they start mangling the words, anything can happen. Having said that, we’ve got a few Christians here, but they’re not the kind where you can see the whites of their eyes, if you know what I mean. The rest of us are a mixed bag of Pagans and Wiccans, an Odinist, a few Buddhists, some I don’t even bloody well know what they’re called, and I don’t reckon they know themselves either!”

“In these times faith has come into its own. It really can move mountains.”

“What do you believe in, then?”

Shavi rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Everything.”

Breaker guffawed. “Good answer! I tell you, the people you have to watch are those bastards who don’t believe in anything. You can see them all around. Scientists who reckon they know how the universe works ‘cause they know how one molecule bumps into another. Bloody businessmen who think they can screw anyone over in this life to get what they want because there’s no afterlife so no comeuppance. Property developers flattening the land …” He chewed on his lip. “Making a fast buck, that’s too many people’s faith.” He raised a hopeful eyebrow in Shavi’s direction. “Looks like they could have a few problems in this new world.”

“Oh, let us hope.”

They laughed together.

The convoy avoided the motorways and kept to the quiet backroads. It was a slow route that involved much doubling back, but Breaker explained it meant they could more easily avoid undue police attention. As they cruised down the A444 towards Nuneaton they passed another convoy coming in the opposite direction, but these were the army. Grim-faced soldiers peered out from behind dusty windscreens; they looked exhausted and threatened.

“We live in a time of constant danger,” Shavi said.

“Something big’s been happening, but we never get to hear about it. They go bringing in martial law, then they haven’t got the resources to police it because everybody’s off fighting somewhere. At least that’s what the rumours say.” He glanced at Shavi. “You hear anything?”

“I have seen signs … a little, here and there. The authorities have no idea what they are doing. They are trying to fight with old thinking.”

“They don’t stand a chance, do they?” He mused for a second. “We always wanted the Establishment to leave us alone. I wonder what the world’s gonna be like without them?”

As they rounded a corner they were hit by a moment of pure irony: a police roadblock barred their way.

They were held there for half an hour. Everyone was forced out of their vehicles on to the side of the road while they and all their possessions were searched. Nothing untoward was found; those who did carry drugs had found much better hiding places, after years of bitter experience. Even so, the indignities were ladled on: verbal abuse, women pushed around, homes turned upside down and left in chaos. All the travellers remained calm. They had obviously learned any opposition would result in a rapid escalation into a confrontation they could never win.

Shavi expected the police to pounce on him in a second, but they seemed to have no idea who he was. Eventually, once the police had had their sport, the convoy was turned around for no good reason that anyone could see; other cars and lorries were waved right through.

Breaker’s face was stony as he headed back north and looked for a side road. “Just like the bleeding miners’ strike. And they call this a free country.”

They eventually made their way around the blocked area and pitched camp for the night in the deserted countryside to the east of Stratford-on-Avon. The area was thickly wooded enough for their vehicles not to be seen from any of the roads in the area.

“One of the good things about all this-we never get hassled at night any more,” Breaker said. “Everybody’s too afraid to leave their homes once the sun goes down.”

Once they were all parked up, they assembled for the tasks to be handed out. Three went off to dig the latrines while others scouted the area for wood for the fire; no one was allowed to touch any living tree. The cooking range was erected from Breaker’s bus and several volunteers set about preparing a vat of vegetarian chilli. The mouth-watering aromas drifted over the campsite.

After everyone had eaten their fill, Shavi sat with Breaker, Meg and Carolina next to the fire, watching the gloom gather. He had spent the day mulling over the story Breaker had told him about the abducted child and he had grown increasingly disturbed that so little had been done.

“What could be done?” Carolina said dismally.

Meg agreed. “We’ve seen the things away in the field. Enough of us have come across all the strange, freaky shit that hovers around the camp at night. We’re not stupid.”

“I am not suggesting you are,” Shavi said. “But if you believe in the reality of the things you talk about, then you should not be surprised when I tell you I have certain abilities which may be of use to you.” He explained the gradual development of his shamanic skills over the weeks since the world had changed. It was a difficult task-he knew most people were still mired in the old way of thinking-but after all he had seen of the travellers’ nonconformist lifestyle, he guessed they would not be so blinkered.

“So what do you suggest?” Carolina suggested. “A shamanic ritual?”

“That might be effective. It is a matter of trying to peel back the layers to achieve contact with the invisible world, where all knowledge lies.”

“And you think you’ve got what it takes?” Carolina gave a wry smile.

“Bloody hell, Carolina! Give the bloke a chance!” Breaker berated loudly. “He’s right-we’ve done bugger-all so far. It wouldn’t hurt to take a shot at this.”

Meg nodded. “I’m in agreement. We can do it tonight, if you like. What do you need?”

“A quiet place among the trees, a handful of us to provide the focus of energies, some mushrooms or hash preferably, natural highs to alter consciousness. If not, we will have to make do with alcohol.”

The others looked from one to the other and laughed. “Yeah, I think that’s doable,” Carolina said with a smirk.

Penny broke down in a sobbing fit once Meg told her what was planned. She pushed her way past the others to clutch at Shavi’s clothes, her tearful face contorted by all the emotions she had not been able to vent. “Please God, help me find jack!” she wailed.

Meg led her away to calm her down with a cup of tea while Breaker rounded up a few people to help with the ritual. By the end there were eight of them: Shavi, Breaker, Meg and Carolina, a woman in her sixties with long white hair tied in a ponytail, the mud-covered eighteen-year-old, who was known as Spink, a ratty-faced man with curly ginger hair and his partner, a heavyset woman who smiled a lot.

They found a clearing in the woods where they couldn’t see the camp or hear any voices. Breaker had been wary of straying so far from the safety of the fire, but Shavi had convinced him the ritual would protect them as much as any physical defence.

The evening was warm. They sat in a circle, breathing in the woody, verdant aroma of the trees, listening to the soothing rustle of the leaves in the cooling breeze. It wasn’t as dark as they had feared under the trees. The night was clear and the near-full moon provided beams of silver luminescence that broke through spaces in the canopy like spotlights picking out circles on the wood floor. The patterns of light and shade it created provided an attractive, stimulating backdrop to what they were about to do.

Breaker had rustled up a plastic bag of dried mushrooms and a block of hash, which they shared out equally. They didn’t have to wait long for it to take effect. Shavi had primed them to begin a regular, low chant. He knew, instinctively, that the insistent vibrations coupled with the psychoactive drugs stimulated the particular region of his brain he needed to achieve the higher level. He didn’t know how he knew that, but it was there in the same way that he knew it was the technique employed by their ancestors in the stone circles and chambered tombs millennia ago.

The chant moved among the trees until it became a solid, living thing, circling back and forth, then inserting probing fingers deep into his mind. He closed his eyes and raised his face so the breeze caressed his skin. The blood was singing in his veins as a tremendous sense of well-being consumed him; he felt roots going down from his body into the soil, moving underground until they joined with the trees and the shrubs. He felt a part of it all.

The next step was the hardest. There was a deep anxiety locked inside him from the time his mind had been almost lost to the sea serpent just off Skye, and he had to fight to ensure the drugs didn’t amplify it to the point where it overwhelmed him. He regulated his breathing and focused, riding the waves with mastery. And then it was just a matter of falling back into his head, and back and back, as if he were plummeting into a deep well. Paradoxically, that journey deep within saw him suddenly out of his body. He was in the air over the clearing, looking down at himself and the others, still chanting. The view was strange, fractured; colours seemed oddly out of sorts and the dark was almost a living, breathing thing. He had only the warped perspective for an instant before his mind was jumping like lightning through the woods. There was a sensation like pinpricks all over his body, and then he was blinking, seeing the world at ground level; a wrinkle of his nose and a bound; he was a rabbit investigating the strange scene. Another lightning leap and suddenly he was up in the treetops, seeing with astonishing precision. There was the rabbit, white cotton-tail twitching. He was consumed by raptor-lust; his big owl eyes blinked twice and then he was on the wing. The lightning leap plucked him away again, to a badger snuffling in the undergrowth further afield, to a fox probing the outer reaches of the campsite for any food to steal, to a moth battering against the windscreen of a bus, trying to reach the light inside.

And then, suddenly, he was jolted back into his own body, only this time he was seeing with different eyes, feeling and hearing and smelling with completely new senses. The invisible world was opening to him.

“Come to us,” he said loudly. There was a ripple in the chanting, but he felt Breaker glance round the others to maintain the rhythm.

Above him, in the centre of the clearing, the air seemed to be folding back on itself. What looked like liquid metal bubbled out and lapped around the edges of the disturbance. There was an odour like burned iron. Shavi could feel the nascent fear of those sitting near him, but to their credit they all held firm in their trust in him. A hand thrust out of the seething rift with the white colour and texture of blind fish that spent their lives in lightless caverns. Then another hand, followed by arms, elbows wedged, heaving itself out into the night. A head and shoulders protruded between them, featureless, apart from slight indentations where the eyes, nose and mouth should have been. Shavi knew from experience it was one of the human-form constructs shaped out of the aether that the residents of the Invisible World often used to communicate.

“Who calls?” It was suspended half out of the rift, as if it were hanging from a window.

“I call.” Shavi knew better than to give his true name. “I seek knowledge. The whereabouts of a mortal child.”

The white head moved from side to side in a strange pastiche of thinking. “Know you there is a price to pay for information.”

Shavi held up his hand and slit the fleshy pad of his thumb with a hunting knife he had brought from the camp. Several droplets of blood splashed on to the ground.

“Good,” the construct said. “A tasty morsel of soul. How is Lee?”

Shavi winced at the mention of his dead boyfriend’s name. “No games. Now, information. The mortal child was stolen from this group several weeks ago. A twig doll was left in its place.”

“The child is in the Far Lands.”

“Alive and well?”

“As well as can be expected.”

“Who took him?”

“The Golden Ones enjoy the company of mortals.” There was a faint hint of irony in its voice. “They pretend they like to play with their pets, which they do, but that is not the true reason.”

This sounded like it could be dissembling, but he pressed on anyhow. “What is the true reason?”

“That answer is too large and important for one such as I to give.” This gave Shavi pause; he made a mental note to consider it at a later date. “Rather you should ask me if there is hope the child will be returned,” the construct continued.

“Is there?”

“No hope.”

“None?”

“Unless the Golden Ones can be made to bow to your will. Or you can provide them with something they need in exchange.” There was none of the mockery Shavi had expected in these comments. What was the construct really saying?

“Where is the child?”

“In the Court of the Final Word.”

Where Church and Tom had encountered Dian Cecht. Where the Tuatha De Danann carried out their hideous experiments on humans.

“I thank you for your aid. I wish you well on your return to the Invisible World.”

“One more thing.” There was a note of caution in the construct’s voice. “Turn quickly when the howling begins or the world will fall beneath your feet.”

Before Shavi could ask about this unsolicited, oblique advice, the construct had wriggled back into the rift and it had folded around him. The warning, if that was what it was, turned slowly in his mind, but he didn’t have a second to consider it. Carolina yelled sharply; Shavi followed her wide-eyed, frightened stare.