Mark Chadbourn - Destroyer of Worlds

'We have not hurt anyone-'

'Yes, we have!' She lowered her voice and looked down when Veitch cast a suspicious glance at her. 'We've turned people's lives on their heads, all their little happinesses that everyone around here laughs at so much, we've seen people hurt and killed, and we've carried on regardless because we believed it was a necessary price to pay. Because we thought we had the moral high ground. We've not given them anything better to make up for their loss, just the promise of heaven around the corner. You could say there wouldn't have been any Fomorii invasion and world-turned-on-its-head if the Void hadn't been afraid the Pendragon Spirit and its Champions of Existence weren't going to upset the apple cart.'

'I would say you are considering things too closely. The big picture-'

'Can't be seen, yeah, yeah, that's our great get-out clause so we don't have to face up to the consequences of our actions. Think of all the misery and suffering that's followed us around. How can we be the heroes? We're not revolutionaries, we're terrorists.'

Laura wouldn't meet Shavi's eye, but she couldn't hide how close to tears she was. 'It is all right to have doubts,' he said gently, slipping an arm around her shoulders. 'All of us have doubts at some point.'

'Even you?'

'Even me. When you do not know the rules of Existence, and when you cannot see the greater patterns, all you have left is faith in yourself, and faith in your friends.'

The words were meant to be comforting, but they only upset Laura more. Stray tears ran down her cheeks and she wiped them away angrily before accepting a brief, reassuring hug, then marched off to be alone with her thoughts.

The mist turned into a dense fog as they drew towards Stonehenge. Colours glinted in droplets of moisture all around and Veitch asked uneasily, 'Are we back in the Warp Zone or what?'

'I don't know, but something's not right.' Church slowed the pace as they attempted to orient themselves.

'Someone's here,' Ruth said.

'I don't see anyone,' Veitch responded.

'I… feel it.'

'You're using the Craft?' Church asked. 'I thought it didn't work so well here when the Blue Fire is dormant.'

'I don't know… it feels stronger, somehow. I was using it instinctively, like I learned to do in the Otherworld.'

Lurching out of the dense fog, a figure brought them to a sudden halt. His long hair tied in a knot at the side of his head, he wore a fur cape over a woollen tunic that had been dyed brightly with berries. They bristled for an attack, but he grinned broadly and waved before hailing them in a musical language that only Church understood. With a flourish, he disappeared back into the fog.

'What the fuck?' Laura said.

'Iron Age Celt,' Church said, recalling with a pang his time in Carn Euny almost two thousand years ago.

'In Wiltshire, now?' Ruth said.

'Something is strange here,' Tom muttered. 'And we are still not alone.'

Footsteps circled them, ebbing and flowing through the muffling shroud of the fog so that it was impossible to pinpoint their location. But they could all tell that whoever was making them was following with caution, perhaps even a hint of threat. They drew into a tighter knot, unsettled by how fast the footsteps moved. At times they wondered if they were mistaken and it was really an animal prowling around just beyond view.

The fog folded and briefly revealed a dark shape that did not assuage their doubts; it was long and lean, moving low, so it could have been rising from all fours or falling from two feet. It loped back into the fog as soon as their gaze fell upon it.

Church drew Caledfwlch and was shocked by the whoosh! as the blue flames leaped around the blade.

'That cannot be right,' Tom said. 'In the times when the Void has been most dominant, the Blue Fire in this area has always been more dormant than at other sites. Human encroachment, the roads and the abuse bled the land of its sacred quality.'

'Maybe,' Church said thoughtfully, 'the Void isn't as dominant as we thought.'

The figure erupted from the mists in a whirl of limbs brandishing a weapon that moved too fast for them to see. A blow creased Church's forehead; another upended Veitch; and the final one came to rest at the skin of Ruth's throat.

Her gaze ran along the gnarled wooden staff to the just as gnarled figure holding it, arms and face mahogany-brown from the sun and wind, grey-black, greasy hair hanging lank around his head, a stained cheesecloth shirt and mud-spattered trousers and the fiercest eyes Ruth had ever seen.

Familiar eyes.

'Wait!' Shavi called exuberantly. 'It is us!'

The Bone Inspector eyed them suspiciously, then slowly lowered his staff. 'These are dangerous times,' he growled. 'Upheaval. Constant change. Damned spiders coming and going. And now… this.' He nodded around him. 'We're going to have all hell on us in no time.' His steely gaze scanned every face until his eyes rested on Tom and a small smile sprang to his lips. 'I'd heard you were dead.'

'It was overrated. I came back.' They hugged each other briefly like old friends.

'Two grumpy old bastards together,' Laura muttered. 'This is hell in stereo.'

'We'd also heard you lot were gone from this world,' the Bone Inspector said to the others. 'I wanted to be sure you weren't some trick of the spiders. A Trojan Horse.'

'Who is he?' Rachel whispered to Shavi.

'You've got nothing to fear from me,' the Bone Inspector said. 'Not unless you get on the wrong side of me. I watch over the old places, the burial mounds, the wells, the stone circles, the cairns. Make sure no one interferes with the treasures they've held since the old times. From Shetland to Scilly, Neath to Norfolk, I'm there. Always have been. Will be till I die.'

'You said "we".' Church rubbed the bump on his head. 'You're not alone.'

'If you're here, then I suppose you need to see this.' He turned and loped into the fog, and the others hurried to keep up.

After only a few yards, the fog began to thin, turning back into the low, drifting mist, now golden in the light of the dawn sun, and within a few moments that too was gone. Behind it lay a landscape that took their breath away, so ancient and wild that it appeared as if they had walked two thousand years into the past. But when he squinted, Shavi could see pylons in the distance and the air still had the taint of petrol fumes.

Stonehenge was no longer a ruin, eroded by centuries of wind and rain and man's poor stewardship. The megaliths stood tall and proud, the lintels complete, and all around the outlying stones were erect, their surfaces gleaming and smooth as though they had been hewn by the stone-workers only recently.

A sprawling crowd faced the rising sun in silent adoration. The reinvigorating dawn rays shone brightly along the precisely aligned avenue. The people wore the Iron Age clothes of the man they had encountered in the fog, and there were young and old, men, women and children, strong and frail, all side by side in the solemn congregation.

The sun hit a point where it was framed whole and round between two stones, and a man — some kind of priest, Shavi guessed — raised his arms and called out to the sky. As one the people raised their heads. Loud drumming began instantly, a perfect, complex rhythm, but within seconds Shavi realised there was more to it than a simple celebration. The peculiar alignment of the stones created strange acoustics that amplified and distorted the pounding so that it appeared as if the stones themselves were singing to the heavens, the sound rolling and muffling, then growing louder as it shifted around the circle like a living thing. It was hallucinogenic, transcendental; though he was well away from the ritual, he was transported, and he wondered what awe those at the henge would be feeling.