The Chalice

When the wooden doors opened, Diane expected a great and hurtful surge of daylight, but thankfully there was only more darkness. And people.

'Well, my goodness,' said Ceridwen, and she no longer looked quite so happy. 'If it isn't sister Carey.'

St was like entering an elf's house in a children's storybook, but vaster inside; the hall of the Mountain King, the subterranean lair of Gwyn ap Nudd.

In fact, it was a small storage reservoir, half underground, with a mound over it like a tumulus. It must have been out of commission for over twenty years judging by the size of some of the trees which overgrew it. But it was the dream temple. A hollow shell inside organic matter. Directly on the ley. Virtually under the Tor itself. Any time other than this, Powys would have been fascinated.

Inside, there were no trappings of a temple, white or black. No pentagrams, no inverted crosses. Only a few dark couches and rugs between the utility concrete pillars, brown-stained like nicotine fingers. Bizarrely, in the very centre of the former reservoir, there was a utility hospital bed, metal framed, white sheeted.

Diane lay on it.

She'd lost a lot of weight. She had an unhealthy pallor, obvious even down here. She inspected them curiously, her mouth tilted into a smile you could only call complacent.

She showed no relief at their arrival.

For the first time, Powys saw Ceridwen, a heavy, wild-haired woman, an old hippy gone to seed. She was studying Juanita in the light of candles held by others, men and women in ratty looking robes.

'You look well,' she said to Juanita, possibly surprised.

'That's because I'm one of your failures, Ceridwen,' Juanita smiled pleasantly, the goddess shining in her – Ceridwen would see that.

'I don't have failures,' Ceridwen said coldly. 'Some things merely take longer than others.'

'Well,' Juanita was brisk. 'We won't waste your time. We've come to collect Diane.'

Smiles vanished, but Ceridwen seemed unfazed. 'So take her. Why not? Diane, look who's here.'

Juanita said, 'Diane?'

Diane wore a black nightdress. It didn't look right on her. Or maybe – Powys acknowledged a cold feeling in his gut – maybe it did.

'Diane?' Juanita said again, approaching tentatively.

Powys just hoping it wasn't too late, praying the girl would see the light around her and rush to her.

Diane gave Juanita an uncharacteristically coquettish smile.

'Fuck off,' she said sweetly. Behind her, the big wooden doors closed and a shutter clanged in Powys's head.

'OK.' Juanita turned abruptly away from the bed. Powys thought she must be a good deal less cool than she looked.

Forehead furrowed, she faced Ceridwen close up. 'What exactly have you done?'

'I've set her free,' Ceridwen said simply. 'Haven't I, Diane?'

'Yes, Nanny,' Diane said and giggled.

Powys said, 'She's told her about Archer.'

'Of course,' Ceridwen said to Juanita, goddess to goddess, dark to light.

'And she's conjured DF's pet elemental?' Powys said. 'The wolf from the North?'

'And sent it on its way!' Ceridwen's voice ringing. 'If you only knew the beauty of it, Mr J.M. Powys.' But still looking at Juanita.

'You want to explain it to me?'

Ceridwen smiled at Juanita.

'I'll tell you, then,' Powys said, realising, with a feeling of deep sickness, that he could. 'Goes back to 1919. When Roger Ffitch had the opportunity to lure DF – even then potentially the strongest magician in the whole of the Western Tradition – on to the dark path. By exposing her to the Chalice.'

Ceridwen didn't react.

'And possibly his cock,' Powys said. 'Because Roger wasn't subtle.'

If they were going to get Diane out of here, they'd have to play for time. Sam's fires would bring people – any people would do.

'All she had to do.' Powys said, 'was release that black elemental force against him. The Dark Chalice – him being a Ffitch – would have shielded him. And both of them would have lived happily and Satanically ever after. They might even have married. Right?'

Ceridwen turned at last to look at him.

'Unfortunately,' Powys said, 'it rebounded. As these things often do.'

'Seldom do,' Ceridwen said.

'But then you would say that, wouldn't you?'

Making himself meet her brooding, dark brown gaze.

'Being a crazy old ratbag.' He smiled at her, his insides freezing up at her expression. This woman was steeped in it.

'Anyway,' he said. 'She did produce it. But she immediately saw what she'd done and eventually she gets it back. Which was tough, a lot tougher than letting it go. But it made her a better person and stronger. Better equipped, anyway, to deal with what she'd stumbled on.'

Ceridwen's steady gaze was a long tunnel, no light at the end. No end, in fact.

'The Chalice,' Powys said. 'A receptacle for evil. Naturally, she wanted to destroy it. The way she'd wanted to destroy Roger Ffitch. But the very act of destruction was negative and it rebounded. Violet was very confused.'

'She could have had it all,' Ceridwen said.

'If that's your idea of having it all,' Powys said mildly. 'It just shows how bloody shallow you bastards are. Anyway she went back to Dr Moriarty for advice and maybe he put her on to a third party – not an occultist, but certainly a visionary. Someone already obsessed with the concept of the Holy Grail.'

He held on to Ceridwen's gaze, talking slowly, holding the floor. Aware of Juanita moving closer to Diane.

'John Cowper Powys. A man with a lot of personal hang-ups. A seriously flawed character. But a bit older than Violet. And smart. I can hear DF and JCP talking long into the night, working out the implications of Grail versus anti-Grail.'

'And realising,' Ceridwen said, 'as you obviously cannot grasp, that they were dealing with a very ancient duality.'

'That everything has its negative? That without evil, how could we comprehend good?'

'That without the sterility of what you naively call good,' said Ceridwen, 'we cannot appreciate the beauty of what you call evil.'

'Bloody hell, Ruth,' Powys said admiringly, 'you'll be converting me.'

'I wouldn't want you as a convert,' Ceridwen said. 'You're no more use than your grandfather or whatever he was.'

'Probably not,' Powys conceded. 'But they did manage it, didn't they? DF would have decided they needed to conduct a binding ritual. To put the Chalice itself – if not the force behind it – into cold storage. And give the Ffitches at least a chance of salvation. It would've been JCP who worked out how to do it, how to put the arm on Roger – who, by now, was back into his nightmares and vulnerable.

So they bound the Chalice. To the general benefit of mankind. But no help to the Ffitches. Their fortunes hit the skids. Since when…' He shrugged, '… the Dark Chalice has become a legendary prize for, um, certain species of spiritual pond-life.'

The tall guy with the pigtail stepped forward, holding his metal candlestick like a sword. 'You don't have to take this.'

'Let him finish.'

'I'm nearly there anyway.' Thinking of Diane in the hospital bed, Ceridwen, the nurse, an idea was forming. To liberate the Dark Chalice and whatever it represents, you had to actually corrupt the spirit of DF. Which is no small undertaking. It involved creating and developing a whole person. You were there when Diane was born, weren't you?'

'Yes.' Ceridwen looked uncertain and then her face broke into a beam, like the sun actually shining out of an arse, he thought. 'Yes. She knows that. I was her midwife.'

He imagined Juanita's eyes opening wider at that. She was no more than a couple of yards away from where Diane lay seemingly unaware of any of them through the residual haze of whatever she'd been given to sedate her.

'I don't know what you planted in that baby,' he said. 'But you obviously thought you had to kill her mother to keep it alive.'