“The Celtic deities were said to possess great powers. When Christianity arrived, the druids were broken and scattered, and their powers were declared to be ‘magic’ and therefore evil. The deities were declared to be fairies and not real, and the whole cultural spirituality was ridiculed and declared inferior to the Christian way.
“Now, I’m no expert, but,” she said, touching the torque at her throat, “I can testify to the power of this thing, and it’s not what you would consider magic. This is power, and real power. Whether it is spiritual or as yet undiscovered scientific power, I have no idea, but when I am told to do something and that it’s important, I will just do it.”
Lee regarded the torque for a moment. He’d seen it on the avatar within the game, so when Tamsyn arrived wearing it, he gave it no second thought.
“So, where does it come from?” he asked.
“I never knew, but Gladwin gave me a clue at the castle mound. He told me that the great mage, possibly Merlin himself brought it with him when he fled his own land. By what he told me, Merlin’s home was destroyed by an eruption and possibly an earthquake. Gladwin called them the Slat’lanti.”
“I’ve never heard of them.”
“Not like that, but imagine that after several hundreds of years have passed. How do you think it would be heard in conversation?”
“My God; Atlantis!”
“Rumours of where Atlantis was located have been floating about for years, but what if this torque came from there, and the sword was made by some special technique? Perhaps it holds similar and possibly some negative power that will bring some terrible destruction if not removed.”
“This is creepy.”
“Not really; inexplicable perhaps, but then eventually, everything gets explained.”
“So, back to my question, what do we do?”
“Well, we need combustibles and some means of accelerating the oxygen supply, I suppose.”
“So, once we manage to get it white hot, what then?”
The girl shrugged.
Lee peered into the little cave that had been a forge.
“How much coal?”
“Coke, as coal will give off too much smoke.”
“Okay, coke then. How much?”
They both peered into the hole.
“What do you think?”
“More than I can get on my bike, that’s for sure. And you’ll need kindling to get the damn thing going.”
Tamsyn was staring into the hole.
“Get a long branch, would you?”
Lee found a six foot length of branch that was reasonably straight. He brought to back to Tamsyn.
“Give that a poke, as I think there are coals still in there.”
“They’ll be too damp to use,” he said, poking away, nonetheless.
“There are coals in there; so, what do you want to do?”
“One bag of coke and we can use paper and twigs to start it. If you go find the coke, I’ll pack it with twigs. Bring some old newspaper as well. If you can find a bellows, that might help, but don’t worry too much.”
They both walked back to the bike. Tamsyn took the sword from the case and Lee used his smart phone to Google coal merchants.
“There’s one on the quay in Peel,” he said, keying in the number.
After a brief discussion, he shut off the call.
“One bag of coke ordered. I’ll see you,” he said, and took off back towards Peel.
Tamsyn made her way back up the lane to the forge and started clearing what was in there.
It was pure luck, or perhaps fate.
Mitchell returned to the castle, just as somewhere to start. He sat on his bike, staring at the ruins from the quayside wondering how the heck he would ever find the pair.
Finding no inspiration, he was cruising back along the west Quay when he glanced across the narrow marina and moorings at the parallel East Quay.
There was a motorcycle on a parallel course to him, but slightly ahead. It was the right make – a blue Suzuki GFS 650, but in place of a pillion passenger were a large bag of something and a cylinder of propane strapped to the bike.
Mitch felt the familiar and welcome buzz of adrenaline, and opened the throttle slightly to pull ahead. He would have to turn left at the top, so he didn’t want the other bike to get away.
By the time Mitchell got to the end of the West Quay, the other bike had turned off to the left somewhere. Due to all the boats moored between the two roads, he had not been able to maintain vision of the bike.
Cursing, Mitchell tried to work out which of the roads the other bike had gone down. There were only four main roads going out of town, the A4 heading northeast, A20 – down which he had come from the Highwayman, the A1 that headed east to Douglas and the A27 that went south.
“Pick a bloody number!” he said to himself. He chose the A1
There was nothing in front of him, so he opened up the throttle and took off as fast as he felt safe.
Lee, who had not been speeding due to the weight and mass of his cargo, pulled up at the green gate. There was no sign of Tamsyn. He knew the wooden gate would be too narrow for the bike, but the green metal gate was big enough for farmer’s tractors, so he opened that. He rode the bike through and was just closing the gate when a Kawasaki shot past on the main road, heading east.
Lee paid no attention and rode the bike up the lane to the footpath.
Mitchell caught the helmeted figure closing the gate out of the corner of his eye and slammed on the brakes, almost losing control. He turned and rode back to the gate, where he pulled onto the grass. There were marks of the other bike in the grass and mud.
He glanced up the lane. There was no sight of the other bike and rider. He didn’t even know whether it was the right bike, as he never saw the registration plate. There were a disproportionate number of bikes on this island, due to the fame of the TT races globally.
He had two options. One, follow into unknown circumstances and get it wrong, or he could wait him out and confirm or exclude this bike from his quest.
Time was limited, so he decided on option one.
He opened the gate and followed the track up until he found the marks where the other bike had left the tractor track and entered the woodlands via a footpath. He frowned as the Suzuki was a road bike, not a trials bike. He moved his bike back along the track towards the gate and secreted it in some bushes.
The other guy had been carrying some weight on that bike, so probably felt justified in entering the woods and thereby, not having to carry anything very far.
Leaving his helmet locked to his bike, Mitchell started to make for the same footpath on foot. He wasn’t armed, but then with his skills, he didn’t need guns.
Tamsyn was pleased to see Lee, but was faintly surprised at him bringing the bike to the clearing.
Then she saw the propane cylinder.
“Genius,” she said, hugging him.
Lee saw that she had cleared out the old forge. The pile of darkened material could be just about anything, but it was damp and probably unusable. She had packed the small chamber with dry twigs and dead stalks of various bushes. Being autumn, there was a lot of dead stuff.
He handed her an old newspaper and she tore it up, stuffing the paper amongst the sticks.
Using the gas pipe he had acquired with the cylinder, he attached it to the regulator and stuffed the pipe into the hole. Then, taking some mud, he sealed the hole as best he could.
Tamsyn lit a match and threw it into the forge. The paper took, the sticks caught and soon it was crackling away. They added handfuls of coke. A hitherto undisclosed vent at the back of the forge started to smoke, so Lee cleared it of debris and smoke started to pour upwards.
They watched, spellbound, as the sticks slowly disappeared and the chunks of black combustibles started to glow red hot.
“How hot does it have to be?”
“I don’t know. Open the gas.”
Lee opened the gas cylinder tap and the rush of propane added to the fire, causing a great whoosh of fire.