"Yes, control your ego before your head explodes." Tom collected the plates together and put them in the sink. "It's not important-"
"It's important to me. Nobody's ever called me a hero before."
"And this lot wouldn't either, if they knew you," Tom snapped. "To get back to the matter at hand-"
"Your strategy's all wrong."
Tom picked up his chair and banged it down in irritation. "So you said. Then what do you suggest?"
"You're the big bleedin' psychic. Shav here can talk to the birds. Can't you find out where the others are-exactly-so we can link up with them? We haven't got the time to keep wandering around. I want to be there the moment they roll up, ready to ride on London."
"And do what? Shake your stump at them?" Tom recognised it was a cheap shot the instant the words had left his lips but he refused to be contrite, although he wouldn't meet Veitch's eyes.
Veitch wasn't upset. He leaned forward, resting his elbows on the table so he wouldn't look so combative. "You know I'm talking sense here. We need a plan. There's only a matter of days until Hallowe'en… Samhain… that's all. There's not even a guarantee Church and the others are coming back."
"Then we're lost," Tom said sharply. "Separately, we are nothing."
"Sometimes you're so bleedin' pathetic."
"They will be back," Shavi said. "I have faith."
"Then we can get down to the fighting." Veitch adjusted the cloth around what remained of his wrist.
"You all appear to be forgetting something vitally important." Tom spun the chair around so he could lean on the back. He looked at Veitch accusingly. "Church will not have forgotten."
"What?" Veitch looked from Tom to Shavi.
"The land," Shavi said.
"Exactly." Tom took out his tin and made a roll-up with his dwindling supply of tobacco. "Wake the land. The primary mission, encoded for generations in myth and legend. There will be no defeating the Fomorii, no future for Britain-or the world for that matter-unless the land is woken from its long sleep."
"Like Church did in Edinburgh," Veitch said, "when the Fire helped blow those Bastards in their lair to kingdom come. But, yeah, it helped. Why's it so important?"
"The Tuatha De Danann would not have beaten the Fomorii before if the power in the land had not been vibrant."
"I do not remember you telling us that before," Shavi said suspiciously.
Tom sucked on the roll-up a few times to get it alight. "The power in the land, at its height, weakens the Fomorii. The Blue Fire-and what it represents-is the antithesis of the Night Walkers, and what they represent."
"So it's everywhere-" Veitch began.
Tom had no patience left. "It is powered by belief and faith and hope, by humanity and nature in conjunction. By all that is good in us. And for generations it has been slowly growing dormant. Several hundred years ago humanity took a wrong path. We gave up all that was most important for the promise of shiny things, home comforts, products. There was a time we could have had both, to a degree. But the ones who shape our thoughts, in politics and business, and the fools who invested their faith in science alone, convinced us to trade one off for the other. And without the belief of the people, the energy slowly withered, like a stream in a drought. Not gone for ever, just sleeping."
"But you know how it can be woken," Shavi said. "You have always known."
Veitch watched Shavi's face and then turned his narrowing eyes to Tom. "Another thing you've kept from us. You can't be trusted at all, can you, you old bastard? We could have done it weeks ago and saved us all a load of trouble."
"The time was not right then. Church was not right. The Fomorii corruption in him would have brought failure. And to fail once would have meant failing for all time."
Shavi watched Tom carefully. "What else do you know?"
"More things than you could ever dream." Tom was unbowed. "Some have to be learned through hardship and ritual-they can't be imparted over a quiet cup of tea. Others, well, the telling of them could alter the outcome of what is being told. I ask you to trust me, as I always have."
"We do trust you," Veitch said irritably. "That doesn't mean you don't get on our tits half the time."
"At least we have some common ground," Tom said acidly. The strain of events was eating away at all of them.
"Then what needs to be done?" Shavi asked. "And can it be done in the time that remains?"
Tom sucked on the roll-up thoughtfully; they couldn't quite divine his mood: dismal or hopeful? "The energy in the earth crisscrosses the globe, interlinking like the lines of latitude and longitude, only not so uniform. The Fire is not a straight line thing. It splits and winds in two strands around a central point, so that from above it resembles the double helix, the map of life, or perhaps the caduceus, the ageold symbol of two serpents coiled around a staff. Imagine, if you will, powerpoints where the energy rushes in, or is refocused and driven out into the network. The Well of Fire at Edinburgh was one, and Stonehenge and Avebury and Glastonbury Tor. The last three are important for they all fall on the divining line for Britain."
"The St. Michael Line," Shavi noted. "A ley running from Carn Les Boel at Land's End to St. Margaret's Church at Hopton on the east coast in Norfolk."
"Along that line are many of those powerpoints. They feed the whole network. For the land to come alive with the earth energy, the St. Michael Line must be vibrant and powerful. But it is fractured in part, sluggish in others, a trickle in many places."
"And to wake it?" Shavi asked.
"On the tip of Cornwall there is an ancient and mysterious place known as St. Michael's Mount. It is the lynchpin of the entire line. I have spoken in the past about the Celts and the other ancient races encoding great secrets in the earth itself. At St. Michael's Mount is the greatest secret of all. Locked under that place, Church-and Church alone-will uncover the key to bringing the line, and the land, back to life. Or he will find death."
Veitch tapped out a monotonous beat on the kitchen table with a teaspoon. "They'll have the place well defended," he said, staring into space. "Those tricks and traps they lined up to guard the spear, sword and the rest of it were bad enough. If this is their biggest secret-"
"Exactly," Tom said.
"Then," Shavi said, "we need to get Church to St. Michael's Mount as soon as we can."
In a quiet orchard at the back of the farmhouse, with the yellowing, autumn leaves glowing spectrally in the moonlight, Shavi sat cross-legged and listened to the sound of the night. Amongst the surrounding vegetation, eyes glittered-a fox, a rabbit, a badger, several stray cats-all of whom had come to see the shaman at work. The ritual, his first since leaving the Grim Lands, had been wearying, necessitating some of the tricks of concentration he thought he had become too experienced to need. But it had worked.
A few feet above the ground, the air was boiling as what appeared to be liquid metal bubbled out and drifted down; it was accompanied by the familiar smell of burnt iron. Behind it came one of the bone-white, featureless creatures Shavi had summoned before, a human-shaped construct used by one of the denizens of the Invisible World. It pulled itself forward and hung half in and half out of the hole in space.
"Who brings me to this place?" Its voice was like the wind on a winter sea.
"It is I, Brother of Dragons."
"I know you, Brother of Dragons. Have you not learned your lesson, of reaching out to the worlds beyond your own?"
"I know my place, and I know yours. I seek guidance."
"You did not heed our words before." The creature put its head on one side in a faintly mocking style.
Shavi recalled the prophetic message one of these creatures had given him about his murder at Callow's hands, but it had been couched in such cryptic terms he had not realised its meaning until it was too late to do anything about it. "I chose my path. And I am here to hear your words again."