Darkest Hour (Age of Misrule, Book 2)

by Mark Chadbourn

  At some point he fell asleep, and he must have been out for a while, for on awakening suddenly his mouth and throat were uncommonly dry and every muscle ached. When he opened his eyes he was completely disorientated by the dark and had to struggle to recall where he was. But as soon as his memory clicked into action he became alert; he knew something had woken him.

  His first thought was that the Fomorii had finally tracked him down, but the dark caves around him seemed as empty as they ever had been. His next thought was of some supernatural presence; his instincts were as attuned to the Invisible as the visible world. But he didn’t have that queasy sensation which always materialised in the pit of his stomach whenever something uncanny was nearby.

  He held his breath and listened. At first, nothing; then a sound, just the slightest scuffle of dust from a footstep that many would have missed, but his own hearing had grown hyper-sensitive in the dark. There was someone else in the caves, and they were creeping, so as not to be discovered.

  The construction of the caves meant all sound was distorted, so it was impossible to tell from which direction the footfall had come. In the all-consuming darkness Shavi was loath to move one way or the other in case he bumped into the intruder. But then neither could he sit there and wait to be discovered.

  Weighing the odds, he decided to attempt to make his way back to the door; at least then he would have the option of fleeing if necessary. He stood up and rested his left hand on the wall before moving forward a few paces. He paused and listened. Another few paces and he stopped again.

  The unmistakable scrape of a foot on the gritty floor. A tingle ran down his spine. It seemed to come from somewhere over to his right. Cautiously he continued ahead, placing each foot down slowly and carefully, so as not to make even the slightest noise.

  His breath was held tightly in his chest. He half expected to come face to face with something terrible; the dark was so deep he wouldn’t have known if there were someone standing motionless even six inches in front of him. With an effort he drove those thoughts from his head; it would do him no good; he had to stay calm.

  Another noise, this time in front of him. The echoes were mesmerising. He couldn’t tell if the intruder was circling or if he was misreading the direction of the sounds. He moved back a few paces and waited again.

  In the claustrophobic space of the caves, Shavi knew it was only a matter of time before his pursuer caught him. Yet there was a slim chance to weight the odds a little more in his favour. He closed his eyes and took a deep, calming breath, focusing far within himself. He still couldn’t turn his nascent shamanistic abilities on and off like a light switch, but with concentration there were little tricks he had practised. He felt the force rising within him like a billowing sheet, filling him, moving out through his mouth, to wrap itself around him. The first time he had attempted this he had been standing within a few feet of Veitch, yet the Londoner had not even noticed him, at least for a moment or two. He didn’t know how it worked, but he perceived it as a cloak which made him merge in with the surroundings. It was a subtle trick and easily punctured, yet in the gloom of the cavern it might have more force. He hoped it would be enough.

  His throat had grown painfully dry. After several minutes without a sound, he moved off again. This time he progressed a long way through the caves, but somewhere in the dark he must have taken a wrong turning, for he knew he should have come across the door by then. There was no point retracing his steps-he wouldn’t have any idea when he arrived back at where he had slept anyway. His only option was to keep going left, in the hope that it would lead him to an outside wall which would eventually take him around the perimeter of the catacombs to the exit.

  As he moved he listened as intently as he could, but there was no sign of anyone; at the same time he had an overwhelming and unpleasant sense of presence. And then he froze as every nerve seemed to fire at once. Was someone standing right behind him? His mind screamed at him to run, but somehow he held his ground. In that heightened moment his senses started playing tricks on him. Was that the bloom of a breath on his neck? An involuntary spasm ran through him; he didn’t even dare swallow. The most natural thing in the world would have been to run away, but he was as sure as anything in his life that that would be the end of him.

  And so he waited, and after several minutes the feeling slowly ebbed away. He didn’t know if the intruder had been there, just inches away, listening, unable to see him, or if it was all in his mind. But the nausea he felt at the strain was certainly real.

  He began moving again, hugging the wall, straining not to be heard.

  His journey seemed to take hours, punctuated by long pauses brought on by dim echoes, the faintest footfalls, that might very well have been all in his mind.

  And then, just as he was about to dismiss the entire experience as a flight of fancy, he happened to glance behind him, though his eyes were useless. The intensity of the darkness was almost hallucinatory and for a while his mind had been conjuring up flashes of colours, streaks of light, that were just brief electrical bursts on his retina. He could have dismissed it as another mind-flash, but what he saw made him stop and stare. No flash, no streak. Two tiny points of yellow away in the dark.

  But then they disappeared and reappeared and he knew what they were: eyes, glinting with an awful inner light.

  In his shock, he turned back and there was a thin grey band of dim light. It was seeping through the entrance. He moved towards it as quickly but as quietly as he could.

  Steeling himself, his hand hovered over the handle. Then he wrenched it open and hurled himself out into a world just coming to life. On the threshold, he couldn’t resist making the most of that pre-dawn light and threw one glance over his shoulder before sprinting across the park as fast as he could go.

  And then he ran and he ran, that briefest glimpse staying with him as he put as much distance between him and his pursuer as he could. What he half saw in the gloom was a shape that looked like a giant wolf, its eyes growing with a malignant fire. But an instant later his mind had started to rearrange it into something else: a human figure. The killer was still close behind him, as relentless in its pursuit as the wolf his mind presumed it to be.

  But what troubled him more than the knowledge that he had escaped death only by a hair’s breadth was that in that instant when the shape had started to change he was almost convinced he knew the person it was becoming. In the gloom and the fear, he hadn’t been able to harden up the vision, and the connection remained disturbingly elusive.

  To his infinite relief, there was no pursuit; nor were there any Fomorii in the immediate vicinity. But what he had half seen continued to haunt him long after the sun had driven the greyness out of the landscape.

  chapter eighteen

  The court of the

  queen of elfland

  nverness appeared out of the dark Highlands landscape like a small island of light in a vast sea of shadows. Witch and Tom walked down from the hills with leaden legs, burdened with the crushing weight of exhaustion. They had spent the last few days endlessly dodging the Fomorii, who were swarming across the purple moorland in increasing numbers. Tom had utilised some of his tricksa ritual, some foul-tasting brew made from herbs and roots-which made the two of them oblivious to the Night Walkers unless they were in direct line of sight. But that still entailed endless hours of creeping along rocky gullies, taking the hard route over peaks or skulking in woods until the danger had passed.

  It was a far cry from the first leg of their Scottish journey, when they had dined out on wholesome provisions from the villages they dropped in on. Now Veitch was heartily sick of wild game, roots and herbs, however well Tom cooked it. He had an almost unbearable craving for pizza or a curry, washed down with a beer.

  “You reckon we’ll get time to stop off for a ruby?” he said wearily as they trudged into the outskirts of town.

  Tom looked at him blankly.

  “Ruby Murray. Curry. It rhymes.”
>
  Tom shook his head contemptuously. “Eight days left. Why don’t we go on a pub crawl while we’re at it? We could have a few drinks for Ruth. That should make her well.”

  “All right. No need to act so bleedin’ crabby.” He took a few steps, then muttered, “Twat,” under his breath. That made him feel better.

  The truth was, their nerves were growing frayed. Time was running away from them. Lughnasadh was close, and the presence of Balor was almost tangible. They had both dreamed of a single eye watching them malignantly from the dark, and had woken sweaty and sick, with the feeling that the monstrous god of the Fomorii was aware of them. Even when they walked, they could feel his attention sweeping over them, the air thick with dread; with it came an overpowering sense of black despair that conjured thoughts of suicide, which they had to fight constantly to repel.

  The weariness shucked off their shoulders the more they progressed into town. It felt good to see sodium lights after the oppression of a country night, to smell motor oil and the aroma of home cooking. But the closer they got into the centre, the more they began to realise something was wrong. No cars had passed them at all. Nobody walked the streets, even though it was only just past ten. The pubs were all locked, the curtains drawn, although Veitch could hear people drinking within; when he hammered on the doors a deep silence fell, but no one ever came to answer.

  Eventually an old man swung open an upstairs window and hung out, his face filled with such fear Veitch gaped for a second.

  “For God’s sake, man, get yourself to your hearth!” The old man glanced up and down the street; he hadn’t noticed Veitch wasn’t alone. “Can you not see it’s after dark!” He slammed the window shut and drew the curtains before Veitch could question him; Veitch shouted to him several times, but there was no further response.

  “What’s up?” Veitch asked Tom with disquiet.

  Tom continued to walk briskly, seemingly oblivious to the sense of threat. “What’ up? Old friends have come to visit Inverness and they won’t leave until they’ve expressed their infinite kindness.” Sarcasm dripped from his words.

  “You’re talking about the ones we’re going to see?”

  “The Queen of Elfland-“

  A curiously amused expression jumped on Veitch’s face. “You’re kidding me.”

  “The Queen of Elfland. That’s what they used to call her in the old stories. As if to pretend she was some kind of nice, acceptable fairy-” the word was filled with bitterness “-would somehow deflect her attentions.”

  “So what would you call her?”

  “Nothing she could hear.” He looked away so Veitch could not see his face. “The moment we cross over, we must be on our guard.”

  “You make her sound like some witch ready to tear our bleedin’ heads off.”

  “She will be filled with charisma, magnetic and alluring. That is her danger.”

  “Okay. No problem.”

  “No, you do not understand. The slightest wrong move could be the end of you. Every court of the Tuatha De Danann is different. The Court of the Yearning Heart embraces chaos and madness, which is why it is given over to pleasure. It is very easy to be seduced by it.” The deep tone of personal experience was unmiss able. “Listen carefully. You know the rules of Otherworld, and they go doubly here. You must accept no food nor drink from anyone or you will instantly fall under the power of the Queen. And she will find it greatly entertaining to trick you into doing so. You have to be sharp, Ryan. You have to be sharp.”

  Veitch was shocked by the familiarity of Tom’s use of his Christian name. For the first time, he felt the Rhymer was truly concerned about his safety. “What’ll happen, you know, if I do-?”

  “Don’t.”

  “But if I do?”

  Tom sighed. “You will not be allowed to leave the Court of the Yearning Heart, at least not until the Queen has taken you apart down to your very molecules and has rebuilt you in whatever way her whims take her at the time. Until you have suffered every pain and pleasure imaginable, until it has become such a way of life that you want such suffering. And when she has finished, you will no longer be the man you are. You will no longer be a man.”

  If Tom had tried to scare him, he’d succeeded.

  “There isn’t a man alive who couldn’t love her,” Tom continued. “But she dishes out joy and cruelty in equal measure; sometimes she isn’t even aware that’s what she’s doing. The gates at Tom-na-hurich remained intermittently open long after the Sundering. There is a story of two itinerant fiddlers who crossed over. The Queen paid them to entertain the Court and allowed them to eat one of the sumptuous meals that are always laid out there. The fiddlers played their hearts out for the rest of the night. But when they were taken back to the Hill of Yews come the morning, they crumbled into dust. Two hundred years had passed without them knowing, and the Queen had taken great pleasure in hiding this from them.”

  Veitch was silent for a moment. “So how come you didn’t turn to dust?”

  Tom laughed hollowly. “Why, only humans suffer such fates! The Queen has seen that I can never fit that bill.” He stopped in the middle of the road and looked out across the city to beyond the River Ness; Veitch guessed their destination lay in that direction. “The legends say I lie under Tom-na-hurich with my men and white horse, ready to save Scotland in her hour of need.”

  “Well, that’s what you’re doing, ain’t it?”

  Tom snorted. “Heroes only exist in stories. There’s no nobility in what people do. We’re all driven by a complex stew of emotions and it’s down to fate whether people see us as good or bad.”

  “You’re a cynical git,” Veitch said dismissively. “And you’re wrong.”

  They continued in silence for the next fifteen minutes until Veitch noticed a golden glow washing over the shops of the High Street. It was moving gradually towards them, casting strange shadows up the grim brick walls of Eastgate Centre. “What’s that?” His hand went to his sword under his coat.

  “The welcoming committee.”

  As the glow drew nearer, Veitch saw it was coming off a small group of people wandering along the road, although there was no sign of any light source. The moment he looked at the figures he experienced the now-familiar disorientating effect.

  Tom drew himself up; the faintest tremor ran through his body, but his face was a mask of calmness. Veitch moved in next to him, tight with apprehension.

  Five figures were approaching, all of them wearing outlandish clothes which mixed golden armour and red silk, topped by unusual helmets like enormous sea shells.

  “The Queen’s guard,” Tom noted. “Out hunting for entertainment.”

  Veitch took his lead from Tom, although his instinct was to hide. He watched as the guard progressed down the street, glancing into alleyways and side streets, shining their terrible regard into windows.

  When they first clapped eyes on Tom and Veitch, sly smiles spread across their faces and they picked up their step as if they expected their quarry to flee for their lives. As they neared, their expressions became even more triumphal with recognition.

  “True Thomas!” the leader of the guard exclaimed; there was a dark glee in his words, a contemptuous sneer shaping his mouth.

  “Melliflor,” Tom said in greeting, giving nothing away.

  “Why, we thought you had gone from our doors for all time, True Thomas!” Melliflor smiled with barely disguised mockery. “The many wonders of the Court of the Yearning Heart are hard to resist, are they not? It calls to you always, even when you do not want to hear. Or,” he mused, “is it your mistress who has brought you back? Our Lady of Light would be overjoyed to see you, True Thomas.”

  Two of the guards had moved behind Veitch and Tom, to prevent any retreat. Veitch watched them suspiciously from the corner of his eye.

  “Then take me to her, Melliflor,” Tom said. “It will be good to see my Queen again after so long.”

  Melliflor made an exaggerated sweeping gesture wi
th his right hand to allow Tom to lead the way. After a few steps he arrived by Tom’s side; Veitch might as well not have been there.

  “May I enquire why you have returned to our doorstep?” Melliflor asked artfully.

  “To renew acquaintances, Melliflor.”

  “I hear you played a significant part in our return to the solid lands. I am sure our Queen will wish to offer her gratitude in her usual way.”

  “Lead on, Melliflor. I have come far these last few days and I am too weary for conversation.”

  Melliflor’s sneering smile suggested he knew the meaning behind Tom’s words; Veitch could quite easily have loosed the crossbow at him there and then.

  They moved silently at a fast pace through the deserted streets, crossing Ness Bridge with the water rolling silently beneath, then along Glenurquhart Road, past suburban houses all deserted; some were merely burnt-out shells. Tomna- hurich Cemetery loomed up suddenly, the white ghosts of stones gleaming. Melliflor led them past the neatly tended plots to a road running up a hill which looked strangely unnatural on the flat valley bottom. It soared steeply, cloaked in a thick swathe of trees: yews, oaks, holly, pine, sycamore, all interspersed with thick clumps of spiny gorse; the air was heady with the summery aromas of the wood. Hundreds of graves were hidden among the trees right up the hillside, as if they too had grown there. The road curved in a spiral dance around the hill to the summit, modern in construction but hinting at an ancient processional route. “Welcome to the Hill of Yews,” Melliflor said respectfully, “known by the local people as Tom-na-hurich.”

  They followed the road round until they were swallowed by the trees and the lights of Inverness were lost. It was a strange, mysterious place, eerily still, yet their footfalls echoed in an unusual and unnerving manner; no one felt like talking until they had reached the summit. Here a large area had been cleared at the centre and filled with the jarringly regimented rows of a Victorian cemetery. The fringes were thickly treed with the oldest yews and oaks. At the highest point a cross had been raised to mark Remembrance Day.