‘Daddy!’
The voice shocks them both. A soaking wet Sammy is out of the shower.
‘Princess!’ He grabs a towel, wraps it around her and scoops her into his arms. ‘Let me take a look at you.’ He pulls open the bathroom door. ‘Do us a favour, Meg, and make a cup of tea while I get my daughter dry.’
151
The Henge Master sits poring over ancient maps and astronomical charts spread on the stone table. The day’s celestial movements are critical. The time is coming.
‘Father.’
Both the voice and the word surprise him. Father. How he has longed to hear it. ‘Phoenix. Come in. I had forgotten that I’d sent for you.’
Phoenix. The name pricks Gideon like a thorn in his flesh.
‘Sit down.’ The Master gestures to the stone bench by the table. ‘How is the girl? She looked distressed when I saw you.’
‘Understandably so.’
‘What did you tell her?’
‘Her destiny. What will happen to her today. It’s right that she be given an opportunity to come to terms with this, make peace with her own god.’
‘And perhaps be accepted by ours.’
‘Indeed. I would like to stay with her, if that’s possible. Right until the very end. I think she needs me to give her strength.’
‘The very end. Do you think you are ready for that?’
‘I’m sure I am.’ Gideon pauses, as if weighing their words. ‘Father, we have no more secrets. You think you hold something over me but you don’t. I know where we are. I know it from your name, my family name, my heritage. I know it from the great forces that you can muster, from the architecture and archaeology of this Sanctuary, from the position of the star shafts and the alignment with the henge. I know it, Father.’
James Pendragon’s eyes are glittering in the dark. He walks closer to his son. ‘You are right. The time has come when we need to trust each other more. But know this: the ceremony has a certain vividness. It can be shocking. Are you sure you wish to be that close to the woman?’
‘I am sure.’
‘Very well. You may stay with her until the ritual of renewal has been completed, the Sacreds honoured and our debt repaid.’
‘And then?’
‘Then we reap the benefits. The autumn equinox is but twelve weeks away. This is the time the Sacreds will bless us.’
Gideon’s eyes fall on the scrolls of paper on the Master’s desk. They look identical to those he found in Nathaniel’s observatory.
The Master follows his eyes. ‘Do you know anything about archaeoastronomy or ethnoastronomy?’
‘Not much,’ he confesses. ‘The former is the study of how ancient people understood the movement of planets and stars and how they shaped their cultures around those movements. The latter is more the anthropological study of sky watching in contemporary societies.’
The Master looks pleased. ‘That’s right. Our Craft combines the two. We use historical records, such as those you have seen in our archive, and we keep looking, checking constellations and planetary movements. The alignments with the henge and the Sanctuary are critical to our beliefs.’
‘I know.’
‘Of course you do. You are one of the few who understands that nothing here is accidental. The position of every building block and star shaft, the physical alignments with sunrise in the east and sunset in the west, the architectural homage to magnetic north, the tilt of the Descending Passages to mirror the inclination of the earth, it all has sacred meaning.’ The Master grows thoughtful. ‘I must leave shortly. There are things I need to attend to outside of the Sanctuary. We had a problem earlier today. Nothing to worry about but I have to go.’
‘Anything I can assist with?’
‘No, no. Not at all. It would help if you could keep the girl calm. She will grow more anxious by the hour.’ He picks up a long slate knife from among the maps.
The ceremonial blade.
He holds up his right hand and cuts into the palm. Blood trickles in a crimson snake down his wrist. ‘Give me your hand.’
Gideon tentatively stretches his hand out and the Master draws the blade across his palm. Pendragon looks into his son’s unblinking eyes and takes the blooded hand in his own. ‘Blood on blood. Father and son. We are as one.’ He holds up their entwined fingers and draws Gideon tight to him. ‘When I next see you, it will be after the ritual has begun.’ He grips his son’s hand tighter. ‘Swear to me now, as my blood runs in yours and yours in mine, that our souls and our truths are aligned, that I can lay all my trust in you and in this bond between us.’
‘I swear it, Father.’
Gideon watches the crimson drops drip from his elbow and knows it won’t be the last blood shed today.
152
Josh Goran flips his mobile shut, amazed at what Jimmy has told him. He and his boss are no-shows. The woman says she’s staying with her kid and Jimmy’s apparently busy chasing another lead. He can’t believe it. The cops here are worse than the FBI. Hundred per cent amateurs.
Goran gets his men moving. Things are already running behind schedule and Echo Team has been compromised. Forced to abandon the surveillance on the builder’s van. But he isn’t worried. If there is anything to find out on the training range, he’ll find it.
They get back to Imber by early afternoon. The road into the range is as deserted as it was in the early hours of the morning. But as they cruise past the restricted signs, the empty buildings and devastated gardens, they see ripples of mud on the road.
‘Fresh tank tracks,’ says Luc from the front passenger seat. ‘Not even wet yet.’
‘Challenger, most probably,’ observes Goran. ‘Piece of shit. I saw them in Kosovo. Brits would have been better sticking to the old Chieftains.’
‘Or Rotem K2’s,’ says Luc. ‘Korean Black Panthers. They’ve got fire-and-forget technology and full nuclear, biological and chemical armour protection.’
‘K2’s are an army equivalent of a Kia,’ shouts Lynton from the back. ‘Who’d go to war in a Kia?’
They all laugh.
Goran takes the Transit off road down a dirt track, west towards Warminster. It bumps around for about a mile and a half then they park up and drag out rucksacks filled with cameras, clipboards, fake documentation and specimen bags. Their cover this time is as members of the International Entomological and Natural History Society. Insect hunters. Lynton has mocked up IENHS access documentation to the Imber range and even filled their bags with research papers on bees, bugs and all manner of weird creatures.
Luc and Jay drop ramps from the back of the van and unload four Yamaha YZ125 trail bikes.
‘Echo, November, Sierra and Whiskey Teams, this is Command,’ Goran barks into the radio. ‘We are go. Repeat, we are go. Command out.’
The four bikes start their outward sweep, while Echo, November, Sierra and Whiskey recon teams begin to walk inwards from the circumference of the range.
153
Warminster is eight point two miles west of Imber.
It takes the Henge Master twenty-five minutes to make the journey. On any day other than Sunday he would have done it in only nineteen. But Sunday is a day for churchgoers and tourists, and the old Saxon town has eight major places of worship and the kind of surroundings people don’t want to hurry past.