He saw the shadowy outline of a man standing before the cairn, but as he took a few more steps and the angle of the sun shifted, he seemed to disappear into the stones. There was no-one there. The effect was unnerving. Alymere reached instinctively for the comfort of his sword, not trusting his eyes. Things, in his experience, did not simply disappear. He thought again of what the Scots called this place, the fairy hill, and what that might actually mean. The Picts were superstitious to the point of being primitive, but they were not stupid. Was it possible this place stood between worlds? Was this a gateway to the the land of Annwn?11 Did Nectan's shade stand as guardian over the Chalice in the dead lands?
All he knew for sure was that Sidh Chailleann was sacred to the clans, and the Devil had promised him all would be revealed once he reached the cairn of the great laird.
The bird cawed raucously, banking in the air before him, and streaked away toward the cairn. He watched as the crow circled it once, twice, three times, widdershins, only to vanish in an instant from the clear blue sky.
He stopped, staring, refusing to believe his eyes. The crow did not reappear.
"I am here," he said, not daring to look away from the stones in case something slipped through from the other side unseen. The clouds were thicker here, strands of white clinging to the heather behind the cairn like ghosts. The lowering sun filtered through the wraiths of cloud. Mist gathered to transform the hillside into an eerie half-world of light and shadow shapes. His breath misted up in front of his face. It was colder now, and not just a little, he realised. He hadn't felt it happening, but the cold was now biting.
He walked cautiously toward the cairn, not sure what he expected to happen. It dwarfed him.
He found himself mirroring the crow, circling the cairn cautiously. He tried to look everywhere at once; down the mountainside, across the treetops of Coit Celidon and the crystal blue waters of Loch Tay, at the stones themselves stacked one atop another, and the deep shadows between them. He tried to watch the sky for the crow, in case it might suddenly reappear in a burst of caws and falling feathers. He tried to take in the rest of the path as it rose toward the peak, and the jagged bill of rock that marked the very top of Sidh Chailleann, hundreds of feet above him.
He completed his first circuit of the cairn, needing sixty paces to do it.
The air felt alive around him. His skin crawled with it; with a mixture of anticipation and dread.
He was close. He could feel it.
Yes, the presence that had taken up root within him crooned, urging him on.
The muscles in his legs burned. His head swam from the exertion and from hunger. His vision blurred slightly, the landscape around him fogging, and for a moment he was willing to put that down to the same thing, but it wasn't. He had started his second ring around the stone cairn, and in doing so had passed through the first veil. His breath quickened. His heartbeat matched it, beating more and more erratically against his ribs. He forced himself to press on, feeling the wind rise to batter at his face and body as though the elements themselves were amassing to hold him back. He didn't know what he expected to find waiting around the next corner; an army of kirtled highlanders looking to spill blood, perhaps?
Alymere put his head down and pushed on into the storm.
And a storm it was.
The mist had become rain, and now lashed at him, stinging his face and hands. The wind howled, bullying him, but he refused to let it push him even a single step backwards.
Halfway around his second pass, he made the mistake of looking down at his hands. They were shaking, but that wasn't what unnerved him so badly. They had begun to fade, blurring around the edges. He reached out, holding his hands out before him, and saw that they lost a little more clarity and definition. He pulled them back sharply, wanting to turn and run and forget all about the Black Chalice.
You are my knight, Alymere, my champion. Bring me my grail.
He could not refuse the voice.
He did not want to refuse.
He walked on.
After six more paces, as he came around to the front of the cairn to complete the second lap, he heard the sound of a dog barking in the distance. He peered down the slope through the storm, but could see neither hide nor hair of the animal. He glanced back over his shoulder, but all he could see there was thickening white mist. With each step forward, the barking intensified; the dog had his scent now. He started to run. He could hear it bounding across the open ground, hear it slavering and panting between growls, but the animal was nowhere to be seen.
Then, between one step and another, the sky went black.
Somehow in that single footstep he had left the day behind and stepped into night.
He didn't have time to panic — a huge black hound came racing toward him, every powerful muscle visible beneath its slick pelt. Its eyes burned sulphurous yellow in the moonlight, and its teeth — long saliva-flecked fangs — gleamed wickedly. Alymere stopped dead in his tracks. For a moment he couldn't move; all he could do was stare at the animal. It was easily twice the size of any dog he had ever seen. Its huge gait devoured the distance between them. He drew his sword, for what little good it would do him against the monstrous hound.
Behind it, he saw the dog's master striding purposefully up the hill towards him. Like his beast, the man was black as night. He wore the shadows like a cloak, masking his face, and was big. Considerably bigger than Alymere. Broader at the shoulder, thicker at the trunk, and graced with forearms like huge ham hocks. As he drew closer Alymere saw that he was wearing some sort of blackened leather armour, with a skirt over his thighs in the Roman style. A huge double-headed axe rested against his shoulder, the blades demonic in the jaundiced moonlight.
"Call it off!" Alymere demanded, the wind stealing his words away.
The axeman gave no indication that he had heard Alymere's plea, and his face was unreadable, wrapped in black cloth.
And then the dog was on top of him, snapping and snarling as he brought his sword to bear. Alymere moved instinctively, ramming the blade between the huge animal's ribs even as its teeth raked his face, spattering the ground with blood. Even with his steel buried in its body, the black dog kept fighting, snapping its huge jaws as it strove to reach his throat and slashing his shirt with its claws, ripping fabric and flesh. Alymere strained to keep the beast at arm's length, but faltered as it lunged again; his scream curdled in his throat as the dog's teeth sank into the side of his face and tore his right ear off. Blood streamed from the wound, but the scarred flesh of his ruined face felt no pain.
That saved his life.
He rammed the sword in deeper, thrusting it up all the way through the dog's body until the animal jerked and spasmed on the end of it like a spit. And still he drove the sword deeper, twisting the blade until it scraped against bone.
Only then did Alymere wrench his sword clear.
He kicked the still twitching carcass away and turned to face the dog's master.
"Have you come to die as well?"
The axeman said nothing.
"Very well," Alymere sucked in a ragged breath and wiped away the blood from the side of his face with his free hand, "Best get on with it."
They came together. Still the axeman said nothing. There was a coldness behind his eyes that chilled Alymere more than anything else. He lunged forward, throwing himself off-balance in the hope that the sudden assault would end the duel before it had even begun. The axeman caught his blade on the long shaft of his double-headed axe and brought the butt of it scything around to sweep Alymere's legs out from under him.