Mark Chadbourn - The Hounds of Avalon

‘What is it with all these odd monuments and buildings?’ Samantha said. ‘I’ve been to one or two of these old houses, but none of them had things like this.’

‘That one’s called the Chinese House,’ Hal said. ‘In the mid-eighteenth century, two brothers from the Anson family who owned the hall restyled the house and gardens. Thomas Anson had travelled pretty extensively — maybe he brought back designs he particularly liked. There’s a Doric temple in the ancient Greek style further on. He was a member of the Society of Dilettanti, who were basically a bunch of connoisseurs of history and architecture who went all around the eastern Med collecting knowledge and artefacts and generally showing off their good taste…’ The word died in his throat.

‘What is it?’ Samantha asked.

‘I don’t know,’ he began hesitantly. ‘Maybe that society was only interested in art and culture. Or perhaps they were searching for something.’

‘Something linked to the mystery of the Shepherds’ Monument?’

More connections clicked into place in Hal’s mind. He began to glimpse a grand scheme reaching back through history. ‘A lot of the societies back then were interested in esoteric knowledge but hid it behind a facade of mundaneness. Secret knowledge shouldn’t be for the masses, that was the general belief. Painters, musicians, writers — they’d often use codes, sacred geometry, all sorts of things to bury secrets in their works so that only the initiated would find them.’

‘You’ve done a lot of research,’ Samantha said, impressed.

Hal stared at the Chinese House. ‘Symbolism,’ he mused to himself before turning to Samantha excitedly. ‘Things that look normal and meaningless on the surface, but which have hidden meaning underneath. Secret symbols.’ In his rush of thoughts he was starting to gabble and he could see from Samantha’s face that he wasn’t making sense. ‘The Shepherds’ Monument clearly means something beyond what it appears to be on the surface — a garden ornament. What if all the things in this garden are part of the wider secret? All linked. All meaning something when they’re placed in context.’ Suddenly excited, he grabbed Samantha’s hand and pulled her along the path.

Finally they came upon the Shepherds’ Monument, just off the path to their right, set in an avenue of shrubs with a wall of trees behind it. Hal felt a shock run up his spine when he saw it: everything about its position in the landscape suggested that it was important.

‘The atmosphere is even more electric here,’ Samantha said quietly. ‘There has to be something in this.’

‘Did you ever doubt me?’ Hal walked slowly down the short avenue; the crunching echo of his footsteps now sounded strange, distorted.

When he finally stood before the monument, none of the pictures he had seen in the books had prepared him for its scale: he was dwarfed by its size. The reversed image from Poussin’s painting was only one small, though central, part of the whole monument. It was framed by two giant stone columns topped by a megalithic block, with another ornamental block on top. On the large stone that straddled the columns, two faces had been carved, one smiling, one sad, like the Greek masks for tragedy and comedy. The size and shape of the framing monument reminded Hal of nothing less than one of Stonehenge’s trilithons.

Underpinning the whole monument was the mysterious inscription: O.U.O.S.V.A.V.V. with a ‘D’ and an ‘M’ carved partly beneath the line. Another clue left by the Society of Dilettanti, perhaps, its meaning now lost to time. Cautiously, Hal reached forward and scraped his fingers across the rough stone surface of the Poussin relief, picking out the legend ‘ Et in Arcadia Ego ’ carved on the tomb.

But as he removed his hand, a large blue spark jumped out from his fingertips and crackled into the monument. Hal jumped back in shock.

‘What was that?’ Samantha gasped.

Before Hal could answer, flickers of blue energy appeared on the relief, sizzling around the outline of the tomb before moving down the monument. Though the ground was thick with snow, Hal could see the sapphire electricity sparking beneath the surface as it surged away from the monument in straight lines.

‘What are you looking at?’

Hal turned to Samantha, who was staring at him, puzzled. ‘The electricity, or whatever it is.’ He pointed to the lines of force moving out across the gardens.

Samantha followed the line of his finger, but shook her head. ‘I can’t see anything.’

‘You can’t?’ Hal was baffled. The blue light now burned brightly through the snow, the lines reaching out across the landscape far into the distance, interconnecting — a network of fire. The brilliant blue energy was the same as that which formed the image locked into the Wish Stone. Hal could feel it resonating inside him, filling him with a tremendous exhilaration. He felt as if he could do anything, that he was linked to everything. Was this part of what it meant to be a Brother of Dragons? Was that why Samantha was blind to the power?

There was a sudden rush in his heart and the blue light exploded upwards from the ground, soaring into the sky to form a cathedral-like structure high over the Shepherds’ Monument. Hal was stunned by the wonder of what was happening around him.

He turned back to the Shepherds’ Monument and was shocked to see that it was transforming. The blue light had made the stone relief translucent and now the image had turned the right way around. As Hal watched, the stonework began to fold out like two shutters.

‘It’s like a window,’ Samantha said, entranced.

‘You can see that?’

‘Of course I can.’

Hal’s heart thumped even harder when he realised that what he was seeing through the gap where the relief had been was not the trees behind the monument, but another landscape entirely. Hal made out rolling grassland, and in the distance a thick forest before a row of breathtaking mountains. In that place, the sun was just rising, casting the land in a magical light, picking out the mist in the hollows, illuminating the dawn clouds. The ethereal quality was palpable and sparked in Hal a deep yearning.

‘Where is that?’ The awe in Samantha’s voice told Hal that she felt it, too.

‘Otherworld,’ he said softly. ‘T’ir n’a n’Og. The Land of Always Summer.’

Across the magical landscape, Hal could just make out tracings of the blue energy that was spreading out across the countryside behind him. It was in everything, linking this world and the Otherworld, and the instant that thought entered his head, more pieces of the mystery fell into place.

‘Arcadia is the Otherworld,’ he said. ‘Poussin is pointing us towards something in the Otherworld. The image here is reversed because T’ir n’a n’Og is the flipside of our world. It’s telling us to view it from the other side!’

A surge like a strong wind came through the window from Otherworld; it felt like a bubble expanding as it passed through Hal and continued outwards, and when he looked around he was shocked once again. The gardens had been transformed, the snow gone, the quality of light that of dawn on a summer’s day.

‘That’s why this place is so important!’ Hal said jubilantly. ‘For some reason, this is one of the special spots where our world and the Otherworld intersect. That’s what you could feel earlier… the echo of it. But feel it now!’

‘I can!’ Samantha exclaimed. ‘It’s so different… I feel as if I’m drunk!’

‘That’s just the start of the mystery, though,’ Hal said. ‘There’s more. We’ve just got to keep pushing.’

Suddenly there was movement in the bushes nearby. Hal whirled just in time to catch a glimpse of a small man with the legs of a goat. The figure was naked to the waist, and small horns protruded from his forehead. He winked at Hal as he danced off, clutching a set of pan pipes. More activity was apparent all around the garden, drawing Hal and Samantha away from the monument. None of it was threatening. A magical air hung over the whole landscape, and Hal found himself grinning for no apparent reason. Samantha caught his hand and they ran to investigate, laughing, as the jaunty music of the pan pipes floated across the balmy garden. Bats flitted in and out of the trees, joined here and there by what Hal at first took to be fireflies until he realised they were tiny people with gossamer wings, glowing with an inner light.