Phil Rickman - The Chalice

'She did. You see her? You recognise her? That's your midwife, Father. From the Belvedere clinic. Ask her. Ask her!'

The moment seemed to last forever. Archer's finger frozen in the dawn.

The finger still hanging there as Powys saw Archer's head burst like a bud into flower. A free form flower of red and pink and grey.

And by the time his brain had registered the explosion, seen the smoke from the twelve-bore, heard the shouting and the screams, Pennard was raising the gun again and the shot from the second barrel took Ceridwen in the throat and she seemed to float to her knees, astonishment in the deep brown eyes and blood pumping down the robe, splashing on the concrete as her head fell off into her lap.

There was an instant of hollow nothingness.

At first, Powys thought he was trembling. But it was the ground. The ground was trembling.

Still it didn't occur to him what was happening.

At least, not until he saw the cracks appear in the grey concrete pillars of the old storage reservoir and he thought idly what a hell of a flood there would be if it was still in use.

Then, amid the incomprehension which preceded the stampede, he saw Juanita dragging Diane from the hospital bed, and when his legs would move again he ran to help her and they pulled her, kicking and squealing out of the reservoir and into the bleak beginnings of the shortest day and the stubbly wasteland from where Sam Daniel's trio of petrol-fired beacons sent signals, too late, to Glastonbury Tor.

At first, Powys thought it must be a frenzied, knee-jerk reaction to Sam's beacon fires and then he saw that the three of them were running against a tide of panic. Breaking on the Tor, flowing across the fields. So many frightened people, so much smoke, so many abandoned protest- placards. He couldn't see Sam anywhere.

He thought he heard another shot. Or maybe he knew that, for what remained of the honour of that family, there was, sooner or later, going to be another shot.

A big-eyed girl in an orange waterproof collided with him. He helped her up. 'What's happening? What's exploded?',

'Earthquake. Tremor. The tower's collapsing. Jesus. Stones and stuff crashing down like the Middle Ages all over again.'

'What?' Powys looked up at the Tor. The shell Of the St Michael tower looked full and firm as ever against the pink-streaked Solstice dawn.

'The rest of the church came down in the Middle Ages.' A guy with a beard dragging the girl away. 'Leaving just the tower. Doomsday, man. Doomsday.'

Juanita heard none of this. She was listening to only one voice and that voice came from far inside her and it was saying. Just get her out of here. Get her away.

Diane was wrapped in Juanita's coat – so much weight gone now that it almost fitted. Her feet sliding about in the clumping shoes Juanita had snatched from Ceridwen's corpse. Diane seemed completely fogged, walking, head bowed, between Juanita and Powys, Arnold hopping ahead of them, Juanita wondering if anyone else had seen the ball of light in the dog's mouth or heard that headmistressy voice: Fetch!

Occasionally, without looking up, Diane giggled. Sister Dunn and her drugs. Drugs that might keep you permanently at that stage between waking and sleeping when, as DF put it, the etheric so easily extrudes. Drugs which might make it difficult to absorb the full emotional impact of your father discharging his shotgun into the admittedly unloved face of your only brother.

Juanita had seen this happen from behind, feeling a light splash of something like lukewarm soup on her forehead, refusing to give in to the nausea, concentrating on Diane.

Who, as they were approaching Wellhouse Lane across the field, stopped at a stile.

Juanita followed her eyes. They were just a hedge and a gate away from Don Moulder's infamous bottom field, Juanita caught her breath. In one corner was parked a black bus. She turned away at once and, for the first time, Diane's eyes met hers and an odd, mute plea passed between them, the struggle of something attempting to surface.

Juanita glanced quickly at Powys.

The glance said, Leave us.

Be careful,' Powys said.

There was a wintry silence around Meadwell.

The gate seemed to click against it when Powys lifted the latch. He saw the house door hanging open, but he didn't go in.

Verity was standing on the path, a rigid porcelain doll in a body-warmer.

She saw him, bit her lip. And then beckoned, turning away to walk across the lawn to the wilderness part, and Arnold set off after her, which was curious.

The air was icy-still and the tower on the Tor seemed suspended in milky light. Verity led Powys to the concrete plinth, a perfectly circular black hole in it now. A rusting cast-iron lid lay amid the rubble.

So Oliver Pixhill had done it. Feeling so tired he could hardly stand, Powys contemplated the final irony of a Dark Chalice liberated into a world where the only remaining Ffitch had tripped over from airy-fairy to obscenely possessed.

Verity said nothing. From the wet grass to one side, she produced a big, red, rubber-covered flashlight and handed it to Powys.

He knelt above the hole and shone it down, recoiling at once, looking up at Verity.

'Oliver Pixhill,' she said.

'Dead?'

'He… he was down there when the tremor came. That is, I suppose… Perhaps he lost his balance.'

He glanced back down the well, without the light. All you could see was a white hand, fingers bent.

What did it mean?

'Most likely he was waiting for the dawn, Verity. He had to bring the Chalice out at dawn. At that moment. It was as if they knew about the earth tremor. Or that something would happen.'

He was thinking of the alignment of the Tor, Meadwell, Bowermead. The reservoir precisely on it. The way the road had been dug out. The way the trees had been taken out. A build-up of violence.

'Maybe they needed to unblock the well in advance, like you let old wine breathe for a while.'

But what they really needed was for Verity to lay down her defences and invite Grainger in to do it. The little woman was as much a part of the defence system as the binding ritual itself. She had to be gently defused, like a bomb.

'Getting you out of the house was a last resort,' he said.

'But if you hadn't responded to Wanda's invitation, they'd have had to use a blunter instrument.'

Verity winced. But he knew that Oliver Pixhill could never have killed Verity. Such a forcefield surrounding her, the little woman who could not See.

'Have you called the police?'

'Oh. No. I've been praying. With Mr Woolaston.'

'Woolly…?'

She let him in through the back door so he wouldn't have to see Woolly, whose battered body she'd sat beside for perhaps two hours. Unconcerned about the smells, the atmosphere of brutal violence. She'd lived in the ever-darkening Meadwell; she did not See. Powys couldn't believe how strong she was.

Surprisingly, Arnold followed him in.

A plastic bag stood upside down, covering something on the table. On the hag, it said, SAFEWAY.

He swallowed. He was very scared. Rose light dribbled in from the high window, tinting the bulging white walls with the effect of watered blood.

'Don't you go near it, Mr Powys,' Verity said.

He stared at it, bitter and sickened Whatever it was.

Woolly had died for it. Beaten to death with a brick. The bag went in and out of focus. He wanted to find that same brick and hammer the Chalice flat.

'We should never have left him,' he said. 'We should've called the police.'

'No. It was my fault, if anyone's. I should have stayed. It was my duty.'

'And then you'd have been…' He shook his head. 'We were expecting Grainger. We didn't know what we were dealing with.'