"There is a price."
Shavi ran a thumb over the rough pad of his left hand, now crisscrossed with a score of tiny scars, chose a spot, then slit it with a knife. The blood dripped on to the damp grass.
"You give freely of your essence, Brother of Dragons." An underlying note of warning.
"Another Brother of Dragons, our leader, known as Church, is currently abroad in the Far Lands. Firstly, how does he fare?"
"He fares well. You have achieved all that you desire, but what you desire may do more harm than good."
Shavi noted this subtle warning, knowing there was no point attempting to get the construct to elucidate. "Then he will be back shortly. My second question: where will he arrive?"
"He will return to the Fixed Lands at the point from which he departed, where Merlin's Rock marks a doorway between worlds."
Shavi didn't recognise the name, but he guessed Tom probably would. "Then I thank you for your guidance. Return safely to the Invisible World." He paused. "No final words of warning?"
Although the construct had no features, Shavi was convinced it was smiling. "No warning would ever do justice to what lies ahead for you and your Brothers and Sisters."
And then it was gone.
Tom and Veitch sat around the range in the candlelight, drinking homemade beer. They were used to Shavi's ragged appearance after making contact with the Invisible World, but were eager to discover what he had learned. As he had expected, Tom knew the location instantly.
"Mousehole," the Rhymer said gruffly. "Then he joined Manannan's sick crew."
"Where's that, then?" Veitch swilled the beer down rapidly; six large mugs in a quarter of an hour.
"Cornwall." Tom stared at the red coals in the open door of the range. "In the furthest tip. The part of the country where the Celts buried their greatest secrets, and subsequently the most spiritual part of the land."
"Bloody hell, it's going to take us ages to get down there." Veitch took another swig, then looked up suddenly. "You could make another jump."
Tom waved him silent, his eyes still fixed on the fire, deep in thought. Shavi asked what Veitch meant and the Londoner spent the next five minutes attempting to explain how they had slipped into the energy flow between Scotland and Wandlebury Camp. Shavi was enthused by the entire concept and excitedly questioned Tom about it.
"Didn't you hear me say the St. Michael Line is fractured?" he snapped. "If we attempt to travel along it and hit a dead spot we will be unceremoniously spewed out into the world. Perhaps over a gorge or a cliff face or above a river in torrent. Now what good will that do?"
Veitch examined the deep lines of Tom's face, the fix of his eyes, until Tom could no longer pretend he hadn't seen him. "What?"
"You're thinking about it."
"No, I'm not."
"Yes, you are. I can see it in your face, you old bastard. And I know exactly what you're thinking. You're thinking it's too much of a risk for all three of us, but one of us needs to try it because we're running out of time."
Tom was particularly irritated at Veitch's sudden insight.
"I'm right, aren't I?"
"Oh, shut up." Tom rose from his chair and went over to the window to peer out into the dark. "It has to be me because only I can give Church the guidance he needs. Only I can point him towards St. Michael's Mount." A few beats of silence. "And the two of you are too valuable to risk. Five of you are needed to put this square. Any less… if any of you don't make it through the next two weeks…" He made a dismissive gesture.
"Then what should we do?" Shavi asked.
Tom was already gathering his things together in his haversack. "You must make your way to a meeting place, somewhere just beyond the reach of the Fomorii influence on the outskirts of London. I would suggest the west-"
The door crashed open and Davenport lurched in, his face pale and drawn. Shavi helped the farmer to a chair. Veitch's eyes went instantly to the door and window; the farmhouse was sprawling, impossible to defend.
"Down at the pub," Davenport gasped between juddering breaths. "I was talking to some bloke about you lot. Never seen him before. He was asking a lot of questions. I thought he'd just heard the stories, like the rest of us-"
"What happened?" Veitch gripped Davenport's shoulders and had to be prised off by Shavi.
"After I told him you were up here, his face started to change… melt… I thought I was going mad. Then I thought I was going to black out. One of the other blokes down there was sharp. Chucked a pint glass at him. I got away, still thought I was going to puke my guts up."
"Fomorii," Shavi snapped.
"There were more of them," Davenport continued. "I saw as I ran up here. They were following me-"
His sentence was cut off by a crashing at the front door.
"No time," Tom said. "We will find each other in the west, along the M4 between Reading and London." He nodded to them all, then darted through the back door where he snatched Davenport's bicycle from its resting place against the wall.
"Hide," Shavi said to the farmer. "They are after us. They will leave you alone." He saw Veitch's fixed expression and knew he was considering a fight. "This is not the time. We cannot afford to fail now."
Veitch backed down, and then they were both out of the door, running across the orchard and into the fields beyond.
His joints aching, Tom pedalled as fast as he could. The evening was alive with monkey shrieks, dark shapes flitting across the fields towards the farmhouse, the candlelit rooms surprisingly bright in the sea of night. He desperately hoped Witch and Shavi would escape-if anyone could, they could-but he had his doubts for Davenport and his wife.
That the Fomorii were still looking for them had taken him by surprise. He had thought that in the aftermath of their great success at bringing back Balor, the Night Walkers would have little time for failed insurrectionists.
He narrowed his eyes and concentrated until the thin tracings of Blue Fire rose from the shadowy background, like silver filigree glinting off the blades of grass in the fields. It was not strong in that area, but he could still pick out the ebb and flow. Driving himself on as fast as he could, he searched for a confluence on the St. Michael's Line.
An hour later he found himself in the Hertfordshire town of Royston, at a point where the ancient Royal Roads of Britain, the Icknield Way and Ermine Street, crossed. The town was still, although candles glowed in many windows. The moment he saw the town name, he knew where he was heading. The old stories enshrined the mythic power of certain locations so they would never be forgotten by the adepts, however much locals became inured to their mystery.
A grating in the pavement showed his destination, but it took him a while longer to raise one of the residents to point him in the direction of an old wooden door. Taking a candle, he made his way along a tunnel to a thirty-foothigh, bell-shaped chamber cut into the solid chalk lying just beneath the street. He remembered how one of the Culture had told him of its rediscovery in the eighteenth century when a group of workmen digging a hole found a millstone sunk in the earth; beneath it was a shaft that led into the cave.
Tom held up the candle and the walls came alive; carved pictures swelled and receded in the flickering light. Here Sheela-na-Gig, one of the old fertility goddesses, there Christian images of the crucifixion, and then a mix of the two, with St. Catherine holding the symbolic eight-spoked wheel of the sun disc. It had the same resonances as Rosslyn Chapel, where Shavi and Laura had freed the mad god Maponus, and like that place, it had also been a haunt of the Knights Templar, the old guardians of secret mysteries and the last people to truly understand the earth energy.