On the Edge of Darkness

by Barbara Erskine

  Adam stared after her, then down at his own body. Boy, she had called him. To himself he looked as he had looked when he sat down at the foot of the stone in his own century, an old man in a worn waxed jacket with under it two thick Shetland sweaters and a shirt; an old man, with drawn, wrinkled skin and wiry hands and wild white hair.

  Turning he scrambled out of the hollow and hurried after Gartnait. He had to reach the stone before him. He had to make himself understood. He had to travel back with him, then they could search for Brid together.

  The stone was wreathed in mist. Panting, he slid down a gully and climbed up the other side. In front of him, hurrying away from him into the darkness, he could see a figure. ‘Gartnait!’ he shouted. ‘Wait!’ The figure did not hesitate; it moved on, swiftly, skirting a soft boggy area of ground and then leaping up over some rocks. ‘Gartnait!’ Adam could feel his chest tightening. He was beginning to gasp. He was forced to stop for a moment, doubled up, trying to regain his breath. When he straightened he could barely see the figure in the distance. He hurried on, and then as he came to the top of the last outcrop before the pine wood he halted again. He could see Gartnait now, his sword catching a stray ray of light escaping between the low-lying clouds. It would soon be dusk.

  Adam stiffened. There was a movement near him, in the rough heather moorland to his right. Someone else was following Gartnait to the stone. Adam went cold. He dropped to one knee to make himself less visible and craned round, trying to pinpoint the movement again. Perhaps it was a stag, or a fox in the heather. It was a man. He saw him now, clearly. He was obviously following Gartnait, bending low, hiding, ducking between pieces of cover as he drew closer to his quarry. ‘Gartnait!’ Adam’s warning was only a whisper. What could he do? Crawling now, he made his way laboriously towards the stone, as quietly as he could.

  Gartnait reached the small plateau where the stone stood and touched it with his hands, tracing the carvings lovingly, obviously remembering each and every one, the hard work of months in the open with his precious tools. He stooped and Adam saw him put his hand on the carving of the mirror – Brid’s sign, the sign of a priestess who could summon the power to travel to other planes of existence. Then he stood up again and raised his hands above his head. He was staring up, Adam realised suddenly, at a skein of birds flying low over the hillside towards the westering sun, studying their flight. It was the sign. The birds had told him to follow his sister towards the light.

  For a moment he stood there, and Adam watched him carefully. Gartnait seemed lost in thought, his eyes closed, his face still. He put his hands, palms flat, against the stone, and he had gone. Adam gasped. Where Gartnait had stood there was another man – a tall man with wild hair and a long black robe which blew against his legs in the wind: Broichan. In an instant, he too had gone, following Gartnait out of sight.

  ‘Oh my God!’ Adam sat down, his hand pressed against his mouth. He stared round, checking there had been no one with Broichan. As far as he could see the hillside was empty. He glanced over his shoulder. If only he could speak to Gemma, tell her what had happened. But it was no use. She could not hear him. There was only one option. He had to try and go back. He had to rejoin his body, lying still by the stone but in another time, and see if he could see Gartnait there. Cautiously he stood up and made his way across the grass and scree towards the great finger of stone where it pointed up towards the sky.

  As he laid his hands gently on its surface as he had seen Gartnait do, he had no way of knowing that his body, the vehicle of his dreaming, questing mind, had gone.

  23

  ‘How long has he been like this?’ Ivor Furness was standing at the foot of Adam’s bed.

  Ivor had aged well. He was still a distinguished-looking man, balding now, but slim and well muscled. He went to Adam’s side and bent over him, examining eye reflexes, feeling his hands, his pulse. ‘He looks the same as Brid did when she was comatose.’ He turned to pick up a briefcase and produced a well-worn file of notes, a private file he had felt justified in taking from the hospital when he retired. ‘I’ve asked to see the EEGs. There was a fascinating anomaly about Brid’s readings which at the time were put down as just that, an anomaly, but which I privately thought might be because of –’ he shrugged and flashed Liza a charming smile, ‘ – her rather odd origins, which, you understand, I did not share with my colleagues. They would have had me locked up as well! I had a theory that the brain readings might show the activity of a part of the brain which had not before been noticed, or at least not measured.’

  ‘Dr Furness, what I don’t understand is how, if Brid’s body was in bed, and demonstrably there, in front of you, how could it also have been elsewhere? Adam didn’t imagine her in his bed. The people who saw her, whom she attacked, didn’t imagine it.’

  ‘How indeed?’ Ivor Furness was studying Adam’s chart. ‘And where is the good Dr Craig now, I wonder?’ He stood looking down at Adam, chewing the inside of his cheek thoughtfully. ‘And does it matter that you have moved him?’

  Liza stared at him aghast. ‘What do you mean?’

  Furness shrugged. ‘Just that I have often found myself wondering about the infinities of time and space. If one can wander through time and space at will, does it matter where one has left one’s body? That is, if one intends to return to it. And if the body dies, where does the spirit, the soul, whatever we term the life force that has left it, go? Does it go, as it were, further out into yet another dimension, or is it condemned to wander forever, like a ghost, between worlds looking for the host flesh?’

  ‘That sounds awful.’ Liza shuddered. She reached out and took Adam’s hand. She sighed deeply. ‘Poor love. She’s made his life hell on earth. And when at last he wanted her, she wasn’t there.’

  ‘Perhaps he’s found her now.’ Furness stared thoughtfully down at Adam’s face. ‘I wish there was a way we could know for sure.’

  They both looked up as a nurse walked into the room, checked on Adam, and walked out again, closing the door behind her.

  Liza sighed. ‘You’ve worried me now. I thought he would somehow know what we had done, but what if he has gone back to the stone, looking for his body, and it isn’t there? What if he doesn’t know where it is? But we couldn’t have left him there. He would have died.’ She stood up and walked over to the window, staring down. ‘I wonder if some of the people whom modern medicine categorise as being in a coma are actually trapped, not able to return to their bodies because they have been moved to hospital and their spirit cannot find them?’ She turned and looked at him. ‘I’m going to have to go back to the stone.’

  Furness shrugged. ‘And do what? Leave a message?’

  ‘I don’t know!’ She was angry. ‘But I can’t just leave it, can I? What happens if he needs to go back there? Is the hospital going to let him be taken up a mountain in November on the offchance that his soul might pop back into his body?’

  Ivor Furness shook his head sadly. ‘You know they are not.’

  ‘Then what happens? Is he condemned to wander forever?’

  ‘You and he were very close, weren’t you?’ Furness walked over to her and gently touched her shoulder. ‘Perhaps he will come and find you. I’m afraid nothing else can be done. All you can do is wait. Unless,’ he stopped and gazed down at Adam.

  ‘Unless what?’

  ‘Unless, somehow, we can get him there in person.’

  The mist was very heavy. Broichan moved cautiously after Brid’s brother, through the trees and down the steep track. The air was thick and hard to breathe, the path strangely formless beneath his soft-soled sandals.

  Gartnait was striding out fearlessly, his sword in his hand, sliding now and then on the mud, oblivious to the shadowy figure behind him, his eyes searching the murky distances between the trees. ‘Brid!’ His voice was strangely flat in the mist. It didn’t carry and for the first time the younger man felt the prickle of fear across his shoulderblades. He stopped and glanced round, listening.
There was someone nearby. The sound of the water seemed to come from a long way away, though he could see the flash of white from the torrents as they poured over the black rocks close beside him. He clutched his sword more tightly, lifting the blade slightly as he turned completely round. He did not see the figure in the shadows.

  Broichan had long ago learned the art of invisibility, but Gartnait sensed he was there. So be it. He would have to deal with his uncle one day, but now he had just one aim: to find Brid and bring her home and then somehow to liberate her totally from Broichan’s geas, and from her imprisonment.

  At the foot of the hill he stopped. He had no way of knowing where to go. Brid. He called her in his head. Where are you, little sister?

  There was no answer. All he could hear was the moaning of the wind in the trees behind him.

  When his mind touched hers, it was only for a moment. He felt her anger and her fear and her pain. She had lost her A-dam; she did not know where he was, and she blamed another for it. She was hunting again with her knife, searching for blood to try to find her love and take away the anguish which surrounded him. And just as instantly Gartnait knew who it was Brid hunted. It was the child of A-dam’s child, A-dam’s only family by blood, the only person who could hold him in his own time and come between him and Brid.

  The mist drew closer round him. She had gone.

  Brid …

  His call was lost in the whirling endlessness of space.

  The first Beth knew of her visitor was the flare of headlights across the living room ceiling as a car headed up the track towards the house and turned into the drive. She woke with a start and found herself sitting in the chair by the stove, her heart thumping, not knowing for a moment what had disturbed her. Then she heard a car door slam. She sat up. Giles was back. Thank God! She moved over to the window and stared out. A thick white mist was drifting across the garden. She could see nothing. Then she heard slow footsteps moving towards the house. It wasn’t Giles. She held her breath, staring at the tall thin bent figure making its way up the path.

  Stepping away from the window and tiptoeing to the door she waited, listening. There was a long silence, then at last she heard a firm knocking and then a shout. ‘Beth? Beth, my dear, are you there?’

  She tensed. She did not at first recognise the voice.

  ‘Beth, it’s Meryn!’

  ‘Meryn?’ She breathed the name in utter disbelief. ‘Meryn! Wait, wait! I’m coming!’

  She reached for the bolts with shaking hands and dragging them back, pulled open the door. ‘Meryn? How did you know? Oh, I’m so glad to see you!’ She flung her arms round his neck. ‘I’ve been so scared! Where have you been? How did you know I was here?’

  If he noticed that she had rebolted the door top and bottom behind him he made no sign as he walked over to the stove and automatically bent down to throw in a couple of logs as if it were his own house. Then he turned to her. He looked just the same, perhaps a little more tanned, a little older. His eyes still had the same deep, all-seeing quality which she remembered being so fascinated by when she was a child. ‘I came because I could sense you needed me, but Beth, you must realise I am only human.’ He smiled at her gently. ‘Not Merlin!’

  She bit her lip, half embarrassed. ‘Got to be Merlin. Only Merlin can help us.’

  She sat down on the edge of the sofa and started telling him everything that had happened, wondering every now and then if he already knew, but determined to tell him anyway. ‘I’ve been so afraid. She’s here, in the mountains, and nothing can keep her away. I don’t even know if she can get in here.’

  He sat for a full minute without speaking as she fell silent, watching his face. Then at last he shook his head. ‘I sense nothing beyond her fear. I suspect she is as frightened of you as you are of her.’ No point in telling her the truth, not yet. He leaned back against the cushions. ‘Beth, I am going to have to teach you, as I taught your grandmother, some basic facts about life and death.’ His eyes twinkled for a moment. ‘As well as some techniques for dealing with them. You must not be afraid. Brid is, or was, an ordinary human being. She doesn’t appear to be a very nice one, but we don’t know what may have happened to her in her life to have moulded and twisted her, just as we might not know what has influenced any unhappy criminal or unbalanced person we meet in the course of so-called everyday life. She has learned, in her turn, techniques which enable her to travel around in a rather, to us, alarming fashion. She comes, if your grandfather is to be believed, from a culture where such things were not only believed in, but practised. An extraordinarily sophisticated culture by all accounts, which we in our self-proclaimed wisdom belittle as barbaric – though no more so than many present day people – and which we, because we cannot by and large do some of the things they could do, dismiss as superstitious and credulous. You and I know differently.’ He turned back to the open doors of the stove and stooping, picked up the poker. The smouldering logs burst into flame. ‘Brid went to college for years to learn all she knows. Perhaps she didn’t finish the course, but she is very, very knowledgeable, of that you can be sure. I am no Druid,’ he gave another smile, ‘whatever your grandmother says. But perhaps I am a descendant of Druids, or at least of a school of healers and mystics which goes back many centuries. I have studied all over the world, written books, sat at the feet of teachers and watched and listened – above all listened.’ He sat down on the chair opposite her. ‘You look surprised.’

  ‘We didn’t know. Liza didn’t know you wrote books.’

  ‘Why should she?’ He was silent for a moment. ‘Your friend Giles is going to spend the night with Ken Maclaren. Don’t ask me how I know, or how he knows you will be safe. That is part of the mystery.’ He smiled again. ‘But we have to have the time together alone to plan your instruction. You have to try to learn in a night what would normally take months or years. You must suspend that small niggling core of disbelief which I sense still there in the centre of your brain, take your brain out of the equation altogether, and learn to listen to your intuition. You need to learn to protect yourself from Brid and her companions if there are any. You need to be able to communicate with her. You need to be able to fend off the cat in her. You need to be able to secure your family from harm and, perhaps, you will learn to try to guide your grandfather home. A tall order for,’ he glanced at the watch on his wrist, ‘perhaps seven hours.’

  Beth grimaced. ‘Why so little time?’

  ‘Because I have to go tomorrow. I know Liza likes to think of me as disappearing in a puff of smoke up there on Penny Beacon, to hide between the worlds for months or years on end. I’m afraid it is much more mundane. I am booked on a jumbo jet from London to New York.’ He gave a small chuckle. ‘Also, I think you are right. I think Brid has formed a link with you and you are in great danger. There may not be a lot of time before she makes her next attack. So,’ he sat forward and rubbed his hands together, ‘as you do not, I suspect, have the trained memory of a bard who can recite for days or weeks on end without repeating him or herself once, I suggest you fetch a notebook and pencil and that traditional overseer of all-night study, a large cup of black coffee, and we will start now.’

  He did not tell her that before he went back to New York he too had a battle to fight. His was with Broichan alone.

  Dawn came slowly, a murky paleness behind the windows, muffled by the mist which had grown thicker as the light came, but they worked on without noticing.

  He gave her no time to be afraid, no time to doubt her own ability. Each time she thought she would collapse with exhaustion he called her back to wakefulness. When he had finished he stood up and smiled down at her. ‘You are ready, Beth.’

  She stood up too and looked down into the fire. Her head was swimming and she felt exhausted but at the same time curiously exhilarated. ‘Are you sure?’

  He smiled. ‘Now, what did I say? Confidence! Beth, my dear, I have a plane to catch. You will be all right. You have a natural instinct for th
is or I would not have been able to teach you so quickly. You can thank Liza for that, I suspect. You have inherited her intuition. The scepticism you inherited from your grandfather has held you back, but now, as he has, you have learned that there is more in heaven and earth than ever you dreamed of, and that it is very real. But that you can keep control. Be brave, my Beth. I shall be with you in spirit, remember that whenever you need me.’ He stooped and kissed her on the cheek. ‘Oh, and Beth,’ it was an afterthought, ‘don’t let Giles sap your energy, my dear.’ He touched the side of his nose with a twinkle in his eye. ‘Just for now, concentrate on what must be done.’

  She stood in the doorway staring after him for a long time as his car disappeared down the track, then with a shiver she went back inside and shut the door. Her notebook, packed with scribbled advice, diagrams and information lay on the sofa where she had been sitting for most of the night. The room felt suddenly very empty and lonely.

  She hadn’t had time to assimilate what had happened, and feel confident that she had fully absorbed all he had tried to teach her in those few intensive hours of learning. She built up the fire in the stove and then began slowly to climb the stairs. A hot bath, and breakfast would help to take the ache out of her bones, and then she would go to bed for a few hours to try to restore her strength before the battle, for battle there was going to be, Meryn seemed certain of that, and she agreed with him. She could feel it in the air, like a distant storm, a tension, a frisson in the energy field around her body – she knew how to describe it now – a congealing of emotion in the planes where, somewhere, Adam and Brid circled one another but did not meet.

  You can wait for Brid to find you, or you can go to her.

  Meryn’s instructions had been calm, almost matter-of-fact.

  I think her soul is fragmented. One part of her hunts Adam, another wants to destroy anyone who she thinks gets in her way. That is you. It is up to you, Beth, to retrieve him, and to deal with her.