The Firehills (8 page)

Sam was swaying on his feet now, at the center of a
radiating pattern of intense purple white light. He felt as if all the
molecules in his body were under the influence of some alien gravity, a strange
tide that sent them flowing in circles within him. His vision began to sparkle
around the edges, narrowing gradually as though the world was receding. Just
before he blacked out, he saw every stalk of barley in a circle around him
suddenly soften like hot wax and droop to the ground. And then his mind fled.
He opened his eyes to find Charly shaking him. “Come on!” she said.
“It’s closing!”

Sam pushed himself up on his elbows. He was lying at the
center of a perfect circle of fallen barley, every stem lying flat and neat.
Around the perimeter, equally spaced, were three smaller circles. Beyond those,
he could just make out others, decreasing in size as they spiraled away.

“Hurry!”

He looked in the direction Charly was pointing. In the
hillside behind her, vast doors of white chalk stood open, monumental slabs of
white rock fringed with the torn roots of grass. But already they were
beginning to close. The ground vibrated beneath him as the doors swung through
their slow arcs.

Scrambling to his feet, he shouted, “Come on,
then!” and began to run. Charly set off after him. They were
still some distance from the gateway, with a long slope of grassland
between
them and the lip of the opening. The doors were past the vertical now,
their
speed increasing as gravity took hold. It dawned on Sam that they were
never going to make it, not at this speed. With his head down
and his arms pistoning by his sides, he accelerated, his breath rasping
in his
throat.

Charly was dropping farther behind. Try as she might, she
was not as fast as Sam, and it was clear that even he was not going to make it
to the opening in time. The huge doors were nearly closed now, a gap of perhaps
five meters between them. She was about to give up when Sam suddenly seemed to
vanish. Then she spotted him, a small, brown shape against the green of the
hillside. He had turned himself into a hare.

No,
she gasped to herself,
Sam, no. I can’t!
She tried to form the shape of
a hare in her mind, to capture the particular feeling that accompanied
transformation, but her thoughts were in chaos. The more frantic she became,
the more impossible it was to hold a shape in her mind’s eye. Sam was close
to the threshold, long ears pressed back along his spine and powerful hind legs
pumping. The gap was only as wide as his human arms could have stretched now,
but he was so near. With a final kick from his back feet, he launched himself
through the closing gap. Skidding to a halt in the darkness, he heard a vast,
hollow boom as the mighty doors slammed shut, and he thought,
Yes! Made it!
And then he realized Charly was still
outside, and there was nothing he could do. If he tried to open the doors
again, he risked triggering another discharge of energy like the one that had
created the crop circle. He reverted to his human form and sagged back onto the
dry dirt floor, eyes pressed tight against the darkness.

Outside, on the short-cropped turf of the hillside, Charly
buried her face in her hands, gave in to the frustration and the anger, and let
the tears come.

Amergin struggled to raise his chin from his chest; a face
swam into focus before him—high cheekbones, pale, flawless skin.
He’s awake.
Amergin heard the voice in his mind. The
face withdrew into the gray blur.

Amergin mac Mil,
came a
deeper voice.
I am most sur
prised to see you again. And little has surprised me for
centuries.
The wizard raised his head once more and tried to focus. Off
in the gloom, he could make out, with difficulty, a seated figure.
“Finnvarr?” he croaked.

Aye, Finnbheara, Lord of the Sidhe,
came a lighter voice, high and proud in Amergin’s head. A figure
broke free of the shadows and came toward him. The clicking of footsteps echoed
off unseen walls. A pale face framed in dark hair loomed into his field of
vision.
You look tired, old man.

“And the Lady Una.” Amergin sighed. “Lovely as
ever.”

Amergin, old friend,
continued the voice of the Lord of the Sidhe.
Leaving
aside the riddle of how you come to be here,
alive,
so many long years after you stole my country and
butchered my people—

“Ah,” said Amergin, “you remembered.”

You may be able to help us with
another puzzle. We have
recently noted that there
is a power abroad in the land. The Old
Ways crackle
with it and overflow. It is as if the snows of a
thousand winters have thawed, and the meltwater is come
to
burst the banks of the streams and ditches that
men make. Why
should this be?

“The Malifex,” replied Amergin. “He was defeated,
dispersed. His power is spread throughout the land.”

Ah,
said Finnvarr,
that one. I see a great tale waits to be
told. You will tell it to us, later.
The Lord of the
Sidhe shifted forward in his seat.
We would have his
power, old
friend. We would make it our own. And
then no longer would
we skulk in the Hills. We
would reclaim the land that your peo-
ple stole
from us. Aye, and more. But something stops us. The
power that opposed the Malifex, the Old One, Attis, the
Green
Man—something of him also remains?

Amergin remained silent.

If my lord were to think that you
were withholding some
thing,
said the Lady
Una, peering once more into Amergin’s face,
it would go
ill with you.
The wizard stared back into her deep black eyes for a
moment and said, “My lady, I am the last survivor in this world of the race
that destroyed your people and stole your land. I fear it will go ill with me
whatever happens.”

The Lady Una threw back her head and laughed.

High on the flank of Windover Hill, Charly sat with her
arms around her knees and gazed out over the valley. The sun was low in the sky
now, throwing a soft, golden haze across the air. Below her, the pattern of crop
circles that had formed around Sam was stamped onto the landscape as a reminder
of her failure. Her vision blurred once more. She blinked away the tears, then
wiped her nose on the back of her hand.
It’s not fair,
she thought. If she had Sam’s power, she would revel in it, use it to
its full, do good works with it. Not like him.
He’s such
a . . . such a boy!
she thought. And she just trailed in his wake,
blown along against her will, being turned into things when it suited him.
Well, she was a fully initiated Wiccan now. It was time she took charge of her
own destiny. She scrubbed at her eyes and stood up.
Right.
When brute force fails, it’s time
for female
brain power.

She turned and examined the figure of the Long Man,
spread-eagled against the green hillside, but there was no sign of the doorway.
The edges of the great slabs had merged back into the turf. If she couldn’t
follow Sam, she needed to get back home and decide what to do next. She’d
done it once before. The previous year, when Sam left her to pursue the
Malifex, she had made her own way home. No reason why she shouldn’t be able
to do it again. Closing her eyes, Charly concentrated on a shape. She chose the
swift once more; its feel was fresh in her memory. That previous time—last
year in the woods on Dartmoor, when she had taken the shape of a
flycatcher—it had helped to spin. She began to rotate on the spot,
arms held straight out at shoulder height. Eyes tightly closed, she
concentrated on the shape and feel of the bird. Nothing.

Feeling rather ridiculous—and more than a little dizzy—Charly sat back down on the grass. She pulled her
braid from behind her neck and fiddled with the band of elasticized fabric that
held the auburn hair in check. Then she jumped to her feet again.

“Got it!” she exclaimed, out loud, and set off down
the slope.

Taking up position in the center of the biggest crop
circle, she held her arms out once more and felt the faint, leftover prickle of
power radiating from the fallen stems. She began to spin, and moments later, a
swift flicked its long wings and with a scream headed eastward.

It took a while for Sam’s eyes to grow accustomed to the
dark. As he lay there in the black void, he thought,
This
is it. She’s going to kill me. There’s no way she’s ever going
to forgive me for this one.
He sighed. Why
couldn’t Charly have just kept up? She made everything so complicated,
typical girl. Oh, well. He was almost certainly better off without her. But he
was going to be in so much trouble when he saw her again.

Sam scrambled to his feet and looked around. The darkness
was not complete. Here and there, small cracks in the ceiling and walls let in
narrow beams of light, swirling with dust motes. His night vision had been
unnaturally good since his encounter with the Green Man, and he found that he
could see quite well. He was in a long chamber with an arched roof, presumably
corresponding to the interior of Windover Hill. He turned to his left, hoping
that this would take him roughly back in the direction of Hastings, though Mrs. P.
had given him the impression that directions inside the Hollow Hills didn’t
necessarily match those outside. Still, he had to go one way or the other, and
left would do. The floor was dust-dry and chalky; clouds of white powder kicked
up around his feet in the occasional shafts of daylight. The chamber gradually
narrowed, the walls drew closer together, and the roof crept lower, until Sam
found himself at a dark archway. From here, rough steps led downward in a tight
spiral. Sam walked with the tips of his fingers trailing along one wall. The
light was too faint even for his eyes. When he reached the bottom, the floor
took him by surprise, and he stumbled. Opening his eyes, he found that he had
emerged into a vast tunnel that disappeared into gloom in either direction.

The spiral staircase had taken away his sense of direction
completely, so Sam chose left once more. Close to the foot of the stairs, the
floor was uneven and rocky, but as he moved out into the huge chamber, it
became smooth and well-worn, as if by the passage of many feet. Keeping to the
center, where the floor was smoothest, Sam made good progress. After half an
hour, he was sweaty and covered in dust, but he felt as if he had put some
distance behind him. The chamber twisted and snaked, so that the farther
reaches were always out of sight, around a bend or lost in darkness. Otherwise,
his surroundings seemed to change very little. In fact, Sam’s progress was so
monotonous that the sound must have been audible for several minutes before he
noticed it. He heard a dull rumble, made indistinct by the echo of the high
roof but drawing nearer. Sam stopped and looked around, but there was nothing to see in
the gloom.

The light in the chamber was faint, rare shafts lancing
down from the recesses of the roof far above, fading long before they reached
the ground. Away from the central path was a jumbled chaos of boulders and
slabs, a fragmented landscape of shadows and harsh angles. Sam could feel the
vibration now through the soles of his feet and looked around for a hiding
place.

At that moment, he saw motion to his right. Out of the
darkness came figures on horseback, five or six of them riding in close
formation. Horsemen of the Sidhe, black hair streaming out behind them. Their
horses’ hooves thundered on the hard-packed earth of the cavern floor, and
the echoes boomed around Sam. Frantically, he looked for cover. He began to
run, pounding along the path, peering into the pools of shadow between the
great boulders, seeking an exit. The riders were close behind him now. He
glanced over his shoulder and saw the leader, tall and pale, bearing down upon
him. His horse was as black as night, and fire flickered in its nostrils.
Without a word, the riders hauled on their reins and brought their mounts
skidding to a halt, clouds of dust billowing around their hoofs. Sam darted off
the path and began to scramble among the boulders. Behind him, in the silence,
he heard a solid
thud
as a pair of leather boots
impacted the ground. The lead rider strode toward him, confident, unhurried.
Sam forced himself between two great slabs, ducked beneath a third and, on
hands and knees, scuttled through the dust.

The ground was sloping upward now, ever steeper. Pushing
through a final gap, he came up against the wall of the tunnel. Turning, he
flailed with his legs, kicking himself backward until he felt solid rock
against his spine. He thought about changing shape and tried to picture
something—a bird, a mouse, anything—but in his panic no clear shape would
form in his mind. He stared at the gap in front of him, panting in desperation,
waiting for the inevitable pale face to appear.
I need a
doorway,
he thought.
Why is there never a doorway?
He cast his mind out into the rock behind him, straining for that alien
strangeness he had tasted in the Long Man gateway, the Door of Air. And fell,
tumbling over backward. Light flashed before his closed eyes—on, off, on,
off—as, head over heels, he rolled down a long slope. With a crash that
knocked the air from his lungs, he came to rest in a tangled heap against a
thorn bush.

Charly reverted to her human form a short distance above
the garden of the Aphrodite Guest House and skidded across the lawn.
I must work on my landings,
she thought as she came to a
halt in the shrubbery. She scrambled up and brushed the dead grass from her
clothes, then headed indoors.