Mark Chadbourn - The Hounds of Avalon

Discovering that they were a Brother and Sister of Dragons had only strengthened the bond between them. They were united by some great power that coursed through the earth and everything on it, a blazing blue energy that had entered both of them. Mallory didn’t care that it meant they were both champions of life. To him, it was a sign that he and Sophie were meant to be.

And so he had agreed to follow her when she had insisted on embarking on a quest to find the remaining Brothers and Sisters of Dragons and to discover what their destiny really was. She spoke of responsibilities and obligations and a higher calling. Mallory only heard her voice.

But despite the inner peace he was feeling for the first time in his life, Mallory knew that all was not right. The emptiness in his life that Sophie had filled still echoed somewhere in the deepest part of him. It was characterised by an image that haunted his nights and was always there on the periphery of his thoughts during the day: a flash of fire in the dark. He knew in some way that it signified his death, but rather than being a premonition, it appeared to be some fragmented memory. How could that be?

Sophie had helped him come to terms with it at Salisbury, and for a while he thought he had put it behind him. But in recent weeks it had returned in force, the ghost that refused to let him forget but would not let him remember, either.

Fire in the dark, and death. What did it mean? Why wouldn’t it leave him alone to enjoy Sophie’s love and his life with her? What was the terrible secret that he knew lay just behind that unsettling image?

In the late afternoon sun, Cadbury Hill cast an enormous shadow across the Somerset lowlands. Majestic in scale, the terraces and cuttings of the Iron Age hill-fort hinted at hidden mysteries, artificiality layered over the natural so that it was impossible to see where one ended and the other began. Mallory and Sophie stood on the edge of the umbra and surveyed the wooded slopes where birdsong echoed pleasingly. Wild flowers grew all around — wood spurge and spurge laurel — the scent of summer promise.

‘It’s bigger than I thought it would be,’ Mallory said.

‘You can see why it’s been identified with Camelot for more than six hundred years,’ Sophie replied. ‘It inspired the medieval romances of Lancelot and Guinevere, Galahad and the Holy Grail. Can’t you feel it? There’s something in the air itself, as if it’s radiating out of the heart of the hill.’

‘So it’s the right place?’

‘It has to be.’ Sophie took a deep, soothing breath, finally happy to be at the destination that had plagued her ever since they had left Salisbury at Christmas. The first hint had come in a dream, an imposing hill in a green landscape, a crow telling her to take heed. It had all the hallmarks of a communication from the Invisible World and the image had stayed with her potently for days. When she had used her Craft to commune with the Higher Powers for answers, the response had been cryptic and teasing, as always. But as the weeks and months passed, the clues had mounted, finally leading them here.

‘It’s not just the feeling,’ she continued. ‘The mythic symbolism is perfect. We know that the Arthurian legends are a code. They all identify places of power where the walls that divide dimensions are thin, where there’s a doorway to the Otherworld… T’ir n’a n’Og.’

‘The Land of Always Summer. You see, I was listening when you were telling me about your crazy religious beliefs.’

‘King Arthur is a code for-’

‘The energy that runs through all things. The Blue Fire,’ Mallory chanted with mock-weariness. ‘The Pendragon Spirit.’

Mallory tried to pretend it was all a joke, but he’d seen the evidence of the power, felt its euphoric effect. It was the thing that linked the Brothers and Sisters of Dragons across millennia and though he would never have mentioned it to Sophie, he was humbled to be a part of it.

‘So what exactly are we looking for?’ he asked.

‘Something important. Something that ties in to the whole reason why we were chosen.’ Her eyes were filled with passion and just the briefest hint of apprehension.

They spent the next half-hour fighting their way through the wildly overgrown lower reaches of the hill. It didn’t look as though anyone had been there since the Fall. The largest butterflies Mallory had ever seen in his life flitted in and out of the trees, and there was an abundance of wildlife — rabbits that were almost tame, even a fox slinking like a russet ghost through the vegetation’s shadows.

‘Can you see anything yet?’ Sophie asked him as he hacked through the undergrowth.

‘It’s hard to concentrate when I’m having to chop and thrust every six feet.’ Mallory paused to rest on his sword. ‘Just give me a minute to catch my breath.’

Once he had rested, he tried again, just as she had been teaching him during the last six months. The perception wasn’t easy to reach, or to sustain — Sophie had described it as ‘like looking at a Magic Eye picture’ — but when he did finally achieve it, he was shocked by what he saw.

Lines of shimmering blue appeared on the ground as if power cables were glowing just beneath the surface. They ran backwards and forwards in a grid pattern across the whole of the hill, and on the flat summit he could just make out a spike rising up to the clouds like a gigantic radio antenna.

‘Bloody hell,’ he said, awed.

‘It’s like a giant battery.’ Sophie took his hand and tugged him to the left. ‘This way.’

As they carved their way through brambles and long grass with renewed vigour, Mallory said, ‘OK, but why this place, of all the Arthurian locations?’

‘Because this is one of the most special. Legend says it’s hollow, like the one at Glastonbury Tor, which is unquestionably special. At the summer solstice, it’s supposed to turn into glass so that you can see all the secret caves inside.’

‘Aha. And it would be… what? A coincidence that we just happen to be here at the solstice?’

She smiled enigmatically.

‘And what’s supposed to be in these secret caves?’

‘According to legend, Arthur himself and all his knights, who are sleeping until England calls on their services again.’

‘More symbolism?’

She shrugged. ‘There’s more: the legend goes on to say that every seven years, on midsummer’s eve, a giant gate opens in the side of the hill allowing entry to that place.’

Mallory surveyed the imposing hill thoughtfully. ‘Looks like we’re in for a night of surprises.’

For a while, the flow of blue energy faded in and out of view, but eventually Mallory found himself picking out stronger arterial routes leading towards a focal point. As he followed the more potent lines of force, he was overcome by a strange sensation of distortion. Leaves and branches moved too quickly; shadows lengthened at an alarming rate. It felt as if time was accelerating, and when he checked the arc of blue sky visible through the foliage above them, he was unnerved to see the colour shifting to magenta as clouds hurtled overhead. The sun shifted from yellow to red and rushed towards the horizon.

He gripped Sophie’s arms. ‘Call me jumpy, but I reckon we need to reach our destination by nightfall or something bad’s going to happen.’

‘Any particular reason?’

‘A gut feeling.’ Increasingly, he found that his instincts were rarely wrong, as though he was becoming more sensitive to subtle warning signs.

Sophie nodded and picked up her speed.

As the darkness washed in from the east, gloom rose up around the trunks of the trees and the sounds of the hillside became eerily magnified. Every windborne rustle became a predator at their backs, every footstep the thunderous beat of a buried heart.