She came to a village called Griffydam, so named, according to myth, because its water supply had once been guarded by a griffin, the legendary half-eagle, half-lion creature. Crowther could have told her that such ancient stories were a code, denoting places where the barrier with the Otherworld was thin and where strange things often crossed over. But Caitlin knew this instinctively.
As she approached an old stone-lined well beside the road, thin lines of blue slowly rose to the surface of the ground beneath her feet, growing brighter and stronger as they rushed towards the well, casting a sapphire glow across the hedgerows and walls in that dark time just before dawn.
At the base of the well, cold blue fire blazed up higher, then formed lines of coruscating energy that rose up and up, crossing over, building a structure like a church with the well at its heart, as visible as a beacon across the surrounding countryside.
A burst of thunder shook the ground and continued to roll out all around as blue sparks fizzed and crackled in the ionised air. Caitlin stopped and stared in a moment of clarity brought on by the awe and the wonder, but then the familiar, urgent cawing of the Morrigan rose up once more.
Standing nearby, though he hadn't been there before, was the knight in the boar's-head mask. In her detached state, Caitlin half-made to speak to him, still not sure if he was there to help her or torment her. But all he would do was guide her towards the crackling blue light with his pointed sword.
She cast one last, wary look at him, and then the Morrigan propelled her into the blue.
Chapter Fourteen Long memories
'Women must come off the pedestal.
Men put us up there to get us out of the way.'
Viscountess Rhondda
All day long, carrion crows swept in clouds so vast they brought a nocturnal gloom down on the fields, even in the middle of the day. Rats, too, swarmed everywhere, bigger, more daring and more vicious than any Mary had ever known. She tried not to get too biblical, but the symbolism of portents and omens was vivid for anyone who wished to see them.
Her winding journey through England's heartland had followed ancient trackways away from the centres of population, but signs of the plague tightening its grip were evident in even the smallest hamlet. Plumes of smoke rose up like markers of despair, sometimes whole villages burning. The stink of decomposition tainted the wind, ever-present behind the sweet aromas of summer countryside.
Mary knew her history. During the Middle Ages, the Black Death wiped out twenty million people across Europe and killed a third of the population in its first onslaught, with even more dying subsequently. Questions haunted her. How many were dying now? Thousands? Millions? How many people were needed to create a viable population? Once that defining line had been crossed, humanity would just wither away, another extinction in a long, long line.She had spent many an evening next to the campfire considering the nature of those malign imps she had seen tormenting the infected and spreading the plague with their touch. In her contemplation, she had sensed subtle strands coming together into a grand scheme, and as she examined them she realised that something didn't make sense.
And so she broke her journey at Stonehenge. As she entered its circle, the energy in the ground was so potent it made her entire body tingle. She found she could follow the flow by sense alone, making her way to the focal point. She wouldn't even need to spirit-fly to achieve connection.
She sat cross-legged with her eyes closed and visualised the Blue Fire. Instantly, she felt the force rise through her chakras, the Kundalini snake of the Eastern mystics. The site was like an enormous battery! The flames surged up her spine to her head, rushing into the metaphorical third eye. When it opened, it felt as if her skull was unfolding to let the universe in. And when she opened her real eyes, the truth was revealed.
A cathedral of flaming blue energy soared high over Stonehenge and everything within it was alive with such a potent spirituality that Mary reeled. The Elysium stood all around.
'Sharish?' Her guardian angel came forward at her summons. He bore a faint, knowing smile. She cut straight to what was on her mind. 'You weren't there randomly at Dragon Hill. You were waiting for me.' With the blue light surrounding him, he appeared truly angelic for the first time.
'Why do you say that?' he asked simply.
'I was thinking about connections and coincidences, and how some things always seem to turn out the right way ... as if they're planned.'
The quality of his smile changed slightly, suggesting infinite wisdom, forever beyond Mary's reach. 'There are no coincidences.''So, there was some kind of ... plan. And I thought I was acting on free will.'
'All living creatures naturally assume themselves to be the centre of the world. It is not within human nature to consider oneself a part of something much, much larger—'
'A cog in some machine—'
'—an essential part of a grand plan.'
Mary hardened. 'That Jigsaw Man - he wasn't sent after me by whoever's causing the plague. You put him on my tail.'
'Not us—'
'Then whoever you're working for. It was obvious when you think about it. The thing that created the plague, those little imps, could have destroyed me in an instant. It didn't need to set that thing hunting me across five counties. What's going on?'
Sharish nodded benignly. Mary had feared the worst - that somehow the Elysium were working with the one behind the plague - but her instinct told her otherwise. 'If you had not been pushed to the limits, you would have failed in your search,' he said.
'So it was for my own good?' she said tartly.
Sharish pressed the fingertips of both hands together and thought for a long moment, as if deciding how much he could tell her. 'Growth and development only take place through ... trials. Not just for individuals, but for entire races. Trials bring about change within. Those who wish to achieve the next stage must embark on a spirit- quest. They must overcome obstacles, plumb the very depths of their resilience, develop new skills. Become.. He gave the final word added weight.
'Then the Jigsaw Man can't really kill me.'
'Oh, yes, it can. And it will. If it were not a true threat, it would not serve its purpose.'
'And is that what this plague is? A trial for the human race? Millions might die, but don't worry about them because the ones who survive will come out of it better?'
'It is a trial, but not of our making. All of life is a trial on the road to ...' He caught himself. '... somewhere else. It is a school, if you will. A school for the spirit.'
'And we don't get to graduate until we pass all the exams.' She laughed without humour. 'Excuse me if I don't cheer. I'm too busy concentrating on all the pain and suffering.'
'I understand your reaction. From your perspective ...'
'Oh, bollocks to it!' She flapped a hand at him. 'I suppose it's too much to ask that you just leave me alone so I can get on with what I have to do?'
'There are schemes, grand schemes, great powers beyond your wildest imaginings. From your perspective, it is impossible to see what part you play, great or small. Or what is at stake.'
'You could tell me.'
For the briefest second, his face became frightening and filled with awe; she thought she saw whole universes reflected within it. 'Your part must remain closed to you or your development will be tainted. But as to what is at stake? Everything is at stake. All of human existence has been leading to this point. We stand on the cusp of Everything ... and Nothing. Of Life and the Void. Humanity must ascend if the seasons are to continue to turn.'
Sharish saw her puzzlement, and in response reached out to touch her in the middle of her forehead. An image flashed into her mind: a figure wrapped in what looked like a shroud, the one Mary had come across at the crossroads.
'The gods who came here with the Fall are not the only ones. There are greater gods above them, older gods,' Sharish said. 'They are the ones who have been guiding you. In your world, they are now seen as spirits of place, genii lo
ci, at crossroads and lakes and rivers and mountains, but their appearances belie their true nature.'
'And the god of Wilmington and the missing Goddess are part of them?'
'They exist beyond your frame of reference,' Sharish continued obliquely. 'The scope of Existence is too vast to understand even a part of it, and it encompasses many things, in a scheme of bewildering complexity. For any living thing to see even the smallest aspect is too much.'
'You serve the Older Gods,' Mary said.
'I am one of their agents.' Sharish began to lead her back to the beckoning warmth of the blue. 'Now, I have answered your questions. So take this advice, too: you are important. All things are important. Everything plays a part. No one dies without a reason. None suffer unnecessarily.
'There is an abiding structure. There is meaning.'
Mary gained a tremendous comfort from his words. It made her feel part of something important, so that her own troubles were diminished next to it.
'You could turn back,' Sharish said. 'The one following you would likely fade away in those circumstances.'
Mary laughed at his transparency. 'You're testing me. No, I'm not going to turn back. I'm not doing this for myself. It's for Caitlin, somebody extremely valuable to me, and it's for the Goddess. I spent all my early years betraying those closest to me. Not in any big way ... not selling them out to the cops or robbing them blind. But betraying them in a way that felt like I'd punched a hole in my heart. I'm not going to do that again. Perhaps this is my chance to make amends.'
Sharish's smile was astonishingly warm. He reached out to touch her on the forehead once again.
Sometime later, Mary found herself alone in the shadow of one of the megaliths. Sharish had gone; the cathedral of blue fire had flickered out. Her first thought was clear: of all the people that could have been chosen, why her? She wasn't deserving. Was this really leading to the punishment she had expected for the last thirty-five years? A grand scheme to pay her back for wasting her life?
Sunchaser was moored a few hundred yards down the river in a deserted port, its fantastic buildings disappearing into the depths of the forest. The final light of the fading sun had brought the midges out to dance above the water in clouds and there was a hot and sticky tropical feel to the air. It had taken Mahalia, Matt and Jack a while to pick their way through the thick tree cover while steering Crowther along with them. It was as if he were sleepwalking; he never responded to their words, never looked to right or left, but somehow managed to put one foot in front of the other.
When they reached a jetty opposite the boat, Matt hailed the Golden One. Though Triathus didn't appear on deck, his response came back sharp and clear. Sunchaser drifted slowly towards them. When it was close enough, they splashed into the shallows and clambered up a rope ladder hanging over the side, hauling the professor behind them.
'Where's Triathus?' Mahalia asked warily. The boat moved away from the shore to mid-stream, ready to make its way upriver. After their experience in the Court of the Dreaming Song, none of them moved from the rail.
Triathus eased their worries when his voice floated up from below deck. 'Down here.'
Eager to see a friendly face, they hurried to the hatch, but when they peered down into the galley they were stunned into silence. Triathus sat on the floor against one of the storage units, his golden skin covered in black lines as if he had been tattooed. His breathing was shallow, and he barely had the energy to look up at them.
'God,' Mahalia gasped. 'He's got the plague.'
Matt, Mahalia and Jack left Crowther on deck and hurried down to the god's side. 'The first signs appeared shortly after you left.' Triathus' voice was clear despite his state.
Matt feebly checked the god's forehead for a temperature, then gave up. 'I wouldn't know where to start—'
'Do not concern yourself.' Triathus gave a faint smile. 'There is nothing you can do.'
'There must be something!' Mahalia protested.
Triathus shook his head sadly. 'I am being removed from Existence.'
'Dying,' Jack said with quiet amazement. Sympathy surfaced through his inherent fear of the race that had tormented him for so long.
'I didn't think your kind would be able to catch the plague,' Matt said.
Triathus' eyes moved along his limbs, seeing things that were invisible to the rest of them. 'The plague is not a disease as you would perceive it. It attacks the force that binds things together ... the energising spirit of all Existence.'
'We've seen things,' Matt recalled. 'Flowers, plants, all being attacked by something like the plague. And there was something else.' He attempted to describe the hole in space that he and Jack had seen shortly before entering the Court of the Dreaming Song.
'The Far Lands themselves are in danger of being destroyed,' Triathus replied. His voice had grown a little weaker.
'We brought it here, didn't we?' Mahalia said.
'You must not blame yourselves.' His eyelids fluttered and he slipped to one side. 'I am sorry. I grow weak.'
'Come on, let's get him to a bunk,' Matt said, 'make him comfortable.'
'No. Take me on deck, where I can watch the sun set.' There was a terrible note of finality in his request.
Jack and Matt carried the god up the steps and found a pleasant spot. He felt unnervingly light, as though there was nothing to him.
Mahalia stood at the rail, watching the darkness slowly coalesce amongst the trees. She didn't look up when Matt came to stand beside her. 'You know, there's a definite feeling of what's the point about all this,' she said.
'Of course there's a point,' Matt chided. 'People are dying like flies back home, you know that.'
'I haven't forgotten. But do you really think we can do anything? Carlton's dead.' The words caught briefly in her throat, but her expression didn't change. 'Caitlin might as well be. Triathus is on his way out. The professor is a zombie. There's just you, me and Jack. We don't know where we're going. We don't know what the cure is, or what to do when we find out. And everything is falling apart around our ears.'
Matt stared into the darkening trees. 'I was wondering if we should go back, try to find Caitlin.'
'Good idea. You'll be able to navigate this tug through the rapids, right? We'll be able to scour the forest, dodge all those Whisperers—'
'All right.' It was the first time she had heard real anger in his voice and it frightened her.
'Look, I know how you feel about her, but she's the kind of person who's going to survive if she can survive. We could always search on the way back...' Her words dried up; they sounded hollow even to her.
She turned her attention to Crowther, who stood, swaying, with the red light of the setting sun gleaming off the eerie mask. Mahalia pushed herself away from the rail and marched over to him. Dragging on his overcoat, she forced him to sit on the deck, and then she pulled out a knife.
Matt started in shock, and rushed over. As she brought the knife to the side of Crowther's face, Matt knocked her hand away, the knife clattering to the deck. 'What do you think you're doing?'
'It's the mask - it's got a life of its own. You remember what he told us—'
'What are you doing?' he repeated. The coldness he saw in her eyes unnerved him, and it was very rare that anything upset his equilibrium.
She picked up the knife, held it easily. 'I'm going to get the point into the side of his head and prise out those bolts. And if it's attached in any other way I'm going to cut it off his face.'
Matt tried to decide whether she was joking or just trying to annoy him, which she seemed to try to do to everyone at one time or another - a control thing - but her face was impossible to divine. 'You'd cut his face?'
'Well, let's look at it this way: what's more important to him - a career on the catwalk or being stuck for ever behind that thing, with it sucking the life out of him?'
'You don't know that's what's happening. The process might just be taking longer this time. It might drop off of its own
accord.'
'Might. You like that word, don't you?' She read Matt's eyes carefully, saw that there was no point in pursuing the matter. 'You've got no idea what he's like.'
'And you do?'
'Actually, yes. He doesn't like being controlled—'
'Nobody does.'
'He really doesn't. He feels he's not up to much and he tries to hide away, but all he's really doing is hiding away from the things that he believes control him. He's a free spirit.' She sheathed the knife.
'You really think you're smart, don't you? And tough. But you're a kid. That's all you are. So don't ever forget it.'
Mahalia watched him walk away, the ice in her face gradually giving way to a dull heat beneath.
Shortly after, the mask began acting up again. The first sign was beautiful colours shifting in psychedelic patterns over the river, their reflection making it appear as though vast and astonishing alien creatures swam back and forth just beneath the surface. For a while it was entrancing and Matt, Mahalia and Jack watched it from different points around the deck. Then came the sounds, bass rumbles and high-pitched shrieks, invisible fireworks, music fading in and out, some almost familiar, some intriguingly otherworldly; a mystical son et lumiere.
Slowly it became more intense and disturbing. Mahalia sought solace with Jack under a blanket near the aft-rail, kissing and groping, but he came at the touch of her hand with a young teenager's desperation. She didn't know whether to be upset or thankful for the sudden stickiness. She would have made love to him, her first time and not out of love at all, but out of a desperate need for closeness and comfort and some stability in a mad, mad world.
Sometime in the small hours, Mahalia and Jack were woken by Matt's exclamation. A tremendous surge of golden light rushed over the boat and exploded with silent but furious illumination beyond the other bank. At first, Mahalia thought it was another of the mask's creations, but when a second blast came over she realised it was too regular.
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