World's End (Age of Misrule, Book 1) (55 page)

The dwindling path eventually brought them to a deserted beach sheltered in a small cove. Shavi stood among the blue-green and yellow banks of gorse and shielded his eyes to peer at the sparkling waves. "Beautiful," he said.

"Make the most of it." Church glanced at Tom, who had stopped to wipe his forehead with a handkerchief. "You okay?" He nodded, but still seemed uncomfortable, distracted.

Church took the lead, picking a way along the serpentine path that led down to the beach. Halfway there he realised the Wayfinder was pointing to a grove of trees on a ledge that broke the steep slope down to the sea. The thick bracken and brambles surrounding it suggested no one had been there in a long while. He nodded towards it.

"If this spear is such a big deal, how come it's left in a bunch of trees where anyone can find it?" Veitch was already on his guard, scanning the landscape for any sign of danger.

"Not just anyone can find it," Tom said.

"Well, aren't we the lucky ones." Church ploughed ahead through the dense fern cover.

About ten feet from the grove, he noticed a sudden change in the air pressure and temperature, as if they had slipped through the skin of an invisible bubble. He could taste metal in his mouth and there was a bizarre aroma of coffee in his nose. As he neared the trees, the hairs on the back of his neck mysteriously stood on end.

"There's something pale there," Ruth noted apprehensively.

Church peered among the branches, but although he could make out the indistinct shapes Ruth had seen, he couldn't tell what they were.

"I advise caution," Tom said.

"Why don't you advise us all to breathe at the same time?" Laura took a step forward.

Church crept ahead, keeping his gaze firmly on the dark shadows that clung between the trees. When they were close enough to smell the fragrance of the leaves, he finally made out the faintly luminescent orbs that seemed to be hanging like Chinese lanterns from the branches.

"Oh my God!" Ruth said before he could utter a word.

Human heads, eyes staring, mouths drooping, were draped on twisted vines, some of them as fresh and new as if they had been put there only the day before, others with skin as livid as the leaves that shaded them. Men, women, the old, the very young.

"Mondo disgusto!" Laura pinched her nose tightly.

"The Celts revered human heads. They thought they were a source of magical power. They always kept their enemies' heads on display." Church paused, unsure whether to continue.

"We have no choice," Shavi said, as if he could read Church's thoughts.

Church steeled himself and stepped into the shade. The smell of the heads was ripe in the hot morning sun; he coughed, tried to hold his breath. The others covered their mouths; Ruth was on the verge of vomiting.

Church felt like they were in another world; the quality of light was wrong; distorted. The shadows were too deep to see exactly where they were going.

"Marianne was having an affair."

Church froze. The voice was rough, as if it hadn't spoken for days. He turned slowly, looked into the face of a mottled green head. Dead eyes stared back. But the lips quivered, formed new words to torment him again. "She killed herself because she could not bear to tell you."

"Don't listen!" Tom instructed from the back. "Lies to divert you from the path! Thoughts plucked from your own mind!"

"How come you're never at the front?" Church snapped.

"Your uncle's guts spilled from his body," another head said as Ruth passed. "Ryan laughed when he saw it." Ruth's eyes filled with tears and she turned sharply to Veitch. He shook his head forcefully, but it didn't dispel the hate in her eyes. She put her head down, kept walking.

Other words were spoken. Church heard some, but it made him sick to his stomach and the only way he could progress was to deaden his ears to it. And the heads were everywhere. The grove seemed much bigger than it had appeared from the outside, and those foul decorations looked to be hanging from every branch; he wondered if it were a crop scooped from the remnants of an enormous bloody battle. The more they moved forward, the more the trees, and the heads, pressed together until they were regularly brushing against them, feeling the dead skin, setting them swinging like Christmas tree decorations. And the words continued in hideous whispers from all sides, punctuated by the occasional shriek and howl that made their blood run cold, until it seemed like they were being suffocated by waves of noise that threatened to drown their souls.

But however many emotional blows they took, their determination kept them moving forward. Then something seemed to break, as if the heads, or whatever force controlled them, realised their tactics weren't working. The head nearest to Church moved of its own volition and clamped its jaws on the muscle of his upper arm. He howled in pain and frantically tried to knock it off, but it held fast, increasing the pressure. Just when he thought it was going to rip a chunk from his flesh, Veitch stepped forward, pulled out his gun, put the barrel to the head's temple and pulled the trigger. Bone and brain exploded over Church and the jaw dropped free to the ground.

"Jesus!" Ruth yelled. "You've still got a fucking gun!"

But there wasn't any time for anyone to answer. As one, all the heads emitted a piercing scream and tore their jaws wide, gnashing their jagged, broken teeth as they tried to bite anything that came near them. That far into the grove they were packed so tightly there was barely any space to squeeze between them; to stand still meant the flesh would be torn from their bones in bloody chunks.

Church put his head down and ploughed forward, with the others following suit, cursing loudly and lashing out as if the heads were punchballs. Within a matter of paces, any area of bare flesh was slick with blood.

Finally, when they all doubted they would be able to get any further, they suddenly broke through to an area of hard-packed leaf mould and mud, free from any grotesque ornaments. The moment they stepped into the wide circle, the heads instantly lost all animation, as if someone had flicked a switch.

The sun broke through the verdant canopy to illuminate a small circle at the heart of the open space, like a spotlight on a stage. And in the centre of the glowing spot lay what appeared to be a long stick, intricately carved with a tiny, strange script.

"That's the spear?" Veitch said. "Where's the business end?"

Church saw that he was right; at the end of the stick was a scored area where it obviously fitted to a blade of some kind. "I thought it was going to be over," he said dismally.

"The remainder of the spear will be somewhere in the surrounding area, but not in the immediate vicinity," Tom said. He removed his glasses to wipe away the flecks of blood. "The spear has great power as a weapon, and the two parts may have been separated to make it more secure, but they are bound on some intrinsic level and so cannot lie too far apart."

"You have all the answers apart from the ones we really need," Church said coolly. He picked up the spear, which seemed to sing in his hands, and inspected the odd inscription. "Looks like Ogham script."

"Arabic," Shavi corrected. "See the swirls?"

"No, I don't see that," Church replied.

"Greek," Laura suggested, pushing her way in next to them.

"No, that's definitely Russian," Ruth prompted.

Church shook his head, then weighed the spear in his hands. "What am I going to do with this? It won't fit in the crate."

"Carry it," Shavi suggested. "It could easily be a staff."

"But what if I damage it?"

Tom snorted contemptuously.

"Okay," Church agreed, "that was stupid. It looks like ancient wood, but it's not. It's survived millennia and I suppose it's pretty much indestructible. Let's get out of here."

They stood on the edge of the circle looking at the gently swaying heads with trepidation, but the way they had come was the only way out; the other side of the grove was barred by an impenetrable mass of bramble and hawthorn. Finally Veitch pushed past the others and plunged among the mass of heads. Church followed swiftly behind. They were in such a state of high alert that they had travelled several paces before they realised the heads were unmoving; as dead as they looked. Nevertheless, they all continued through the stinking atmosphere as fast as they could and didn't look back until they had exited the grove and skidded down the bank, back to the beach in the tiny cove. There, they washed away the blood in the sea and dabbed at their wounds, resting on the sand until their tension eased.

Once he had recovered enough, Church took out the Wayfinder for what he hoped would be the final time. Its flame pointed across the strait to a point slightly along the coast. He checked his watch; it was just past noon. "If we hurry, we can find it and be prepared to make our stand by nightfall," he said.

Back on the mainland they hauled their few possessions to the van and set off out of town along a winding coast road that ran through beautiful, unspoilt countryside. After a few miles, the lantern pointed them down a side road which picked its way through the sleepy village of Manorbier, where they bought sandwiches, packets of crisps and Coke. At the end of a steep, tree-lined lane, they found themselves in another secluded cove. They parked in a large but nearly deserted car park near to the stony beach where the flame finally resumed its upright position.

"Where now?" Laura asked.

Shavi pointed to a ruined castle which could just be glimpsed through the trees.

They ate lunch in the van and bantered with new-found vigour, buoyed by their success on Caldey. Church and Ruth led the way to the twelfth century castle atop a red sandstone spur, still partly occupied by its current owners. Inside the gates it was quite small, a lawned area the size of a football pitch lying at the heart of the crumbling battlements. Tom bought a guidebook from the tiny castle shop for reference, which he read while smoking a joint on a wooden bench. The others wandered around looking for a sign of the way forward.

Half an hour later, having futilely scoured the castle from top to bottom, they met up in the shade of the chapel. "I knew it was going too well." Church checked his watch anxiously.

"What do you expect-neon signs?" Laura said. "These things are supposed to be near-impossible to find."

"Except for us," Church stressed. "We're fated to find them, remember?"

Laura bristled. "Nice line in patronising. When was your coronation?"

"Sorry." The tension was making them all irritable; Church could see it in their faces, their body language. Unchecked, he was afraid it might tear them apart. "We'll start looking again-"

"Maybe we're in the wrong place," Veitch suggested. "It could be buried under the car park."

Church shook his head. "This place fits the trend. It has to be here."

Ruth looked to Shavi. "You could do something. Like you did in Glastonbury."

Shavi recalled uneasily how much the exercise in Glastonbury had taken out of him; there was one point when he feared he might have been consumed by the powers he was unleashing, but he didn't let the others see his thoughts. "I seem to have an aptitude for certain shamanistic skills," he agreed in response to Church's enquiring expression. "In the right conditions, the right frame of mind, I can communicate with the invisible world."

Veitch looked at him as if he were speaking a foreign language. "Talk to ghosts?"

"Everything has a spirit, Ryan. People, animals, ghosts. Throughout history shamans have contacted them in search of knowledge." Veitch sniffed derisively. "I have always felt I had certain abilities, though unfocused, raw, but since the change that has come over the world they seem sharper."

"I think we're all adapting," Ruth said. There was something in her tone that made them feel uncomfortable.

"You're simply achieving your potential," Tom said. "That's why you've all been selected."

"You have to survive to achieve potential," Church said with irritation. "Look, this isn't getting us anywhere. Shavi, if you can do something, anything, do it. If not, let's get searching."

In the end, Shavi agreed he would find a quiet place to attempt a divination while the others continued the hunt. Accompanied by Church, they settled on an area where they were unlikely to be disturbed, in a secluded corner of the ruined hall where thistles and willowherb grew with abandon. It was a fencedoff, sheltered space under an overhanging stairway that ended in thin air.

"I normally do this alone," Shavi said, taking a mouthful of mushrooms from a tightly wound plastic bag hidden in his jacket, "but there is no time to recover from the trip. I fear I will be of little use to you for a while afterwards."

"I don't care if we have to carry you round on a stretcher as long as you give us something we can use," Church said. He sat on a lump of masonry while Shavi adopted a cross-legged position against the wall. "This stuff really works, then?"

"Sometimes. Never quite in the way I hope, but enough to make it worthwhile. It is not scientific. If there are any rules, I have no idea what they might be."

"That sounds like a mantra for this new age," Church said wearily.

"It was always that way, Jack. Before, we lied to ourselves or listened to religious leaders and scientists who lied to themselves. Perhaps one of the good things that will come out of all this is that people will start searching for meaning within themselves."

"You have a very optimistic view of human nature." Church let his eyes rise up the cracked grey walls to the clear blue sky above. "Sometimes I think there's no meaning in anything. Just random events impacting on one another. Chaos giving the illusion of a coherent plan." But his words were lost; Shavi was already immersed in his inner world.

For half an hour, nothing happened. Church became increasingly agitated as Shavi sat stock-still and silent, his eyes closed. But just as Church was about to give in to the futility of the moment, Shavi began to mumble, barely audibly to begin with, but then increasingly louder; Church had the uneasy sensation that he was hearing one side of a conversation.