Two red lights approached the perimeter of the henge. They floated unsettlingly in the dark, and it was a second before Mallory realised they were eyes. Old Shuck had found them.
Urgently, he turned back to Sophie — threats were converging on them from every side and their time was almost gone. In the split second his attention had been away from her, she had changed. Her eyes blazed with blue light, her muscles holding her as rigid as wood while sapphire sparks flashed around her limbs. From the sword, lines of the earth energy radiated up into the stone structure of the church and, even as he watched, rushed out into the henge.
Blue lightning flashed all around. Mallory heard a voice that wasn't Sophie's, or his, or anyone he knew, saying, 'There are worlds beyond worlds. Which one is real?'
And then the night snapped shut.
Darkness lay heavily over everything. Only the glow of Mallory's sword provided any illumination. They stood in a dense forest, the trees so tightly packed that they couldn't see a beginning or end of it. The thick canopy of branches and leaves made it impossible to tell if it was night or day, but they guessed from the cool, strong aroma of vegetation that it was dark.
'Where are we?' Mallory said.
'I don't know.' Sophie sounded dazed; the effects of whatever she had done had taken their toll.
As Mallory shucked off his disorientation, the words of the strange beings at Old Sarum came back to him. 'The Forest of the Night,' he muttered. The place where they would become the prey of the Wild Hunt.
As if in echo of his thoughts, the dim sound of a hunting horn rang out through the forest. The density of the trees made it impossible to tell if it was distant or close at hand. He slipped a hand under Sophie's arm to help her to her feet.
'Come on,' he said insistently. 'We have to move.'
'Where to?' she said, confused.
And that was it: he had no idea where they were supposed to be going. 'Just move,' he replied.
The forest was unchanging, never-ending. There was a faint ambient light, enough to guide them, but Mallory couldn't comprehend its source. They ran as fast as they could amongst the trees, occasionally tripping on creepers or ploughing through bushes, jumping gently trickling streams or clambering through boulder-strewn hollows. Most of the time Mallory had to help Sophie along; she was drained of energy, at first a little delirious even, but gradually coming to her senses.
The sounds of pursuit drew closer. He heard the yelp of hounds above the crackle of his footsteps on the dry forest floor, felt the rumble of horses' hooves in the soft leaf-mould, and always the intermittent threatening dissonance of the hunting horn.
'We have to find him,' Sophie gasped, during one of her occasional moments of confusion. 'The… the Devil.'
'The Devil,' Mallory repeated bitterly. He wondered what hell would look like, recalled the last days of Stefan's rule in the cathedral and thought perhaps that he had seen the start of it.
The first inkling he had that the end was near was the appearance of shapes moving fast amongst the trees on both sides. They bounded low, like ghosts in the gloom. He found it hard to look and run in the obstacle- littered environment, but eventually he realised they were hounds, long, thin and whippetlike, but with an unnatural colouring of red and white.
Running, he thought with a sick desperation. He was always running. A metaphor for his life.
The dogs began to close in with a pincer movement. It was hopeless; it had been hopeless from the moment he had set off from the cathedral, but he had tried his best. He wondered if that was enough.
A storm of hoofbeats filled the air. And still they ran. A laugh escaped his lips. It was crazy. They should just lie down and be trampled or torn apart.
They leaped another stream where white water cascaded over glistening rocks and almost became bogged down in the mud on the other side. A rider jumped it easily. In the thin light, Mallory had an impression of furs and leather, and of a long pole with a sickle attached to the end. The horse, as he glimpsed it, looked like a horse in every way, yet he strangely felt that it was some unrecognisable alien beast. It danced amongst the trees in a way no horse could ever achieve. Mallory sensed more riders at his back, just the slice of a sickle away.
The rider to his left began to close in, raising the weapon to his underarm in a jousting position. Not long now, Mallory thought. At his side, Sophie was lost to her running and her thoughts.
The rider drew closer. The sickle glowed silver, cruelly sharp.
Suddenly, Mallory grabbed Sophie's hand and yanked her to a halt. 'What are you doing?' she asked, dazed. He pulled her to him and wrapped his arms around her, a feeble protection and a final act of communion with the woman he loved. He smelled her hair, kissed her gently on the forehead.
The closest rider reined in his horse and came back. The others circled in a wide, lazy arc, the hounds baying and whimpering in the gloom beyond. Mallory held up his head, waiting for the killing stroke, but the huntsman lowered his weapon and waved it curtly to prompt them to move forwards.
They continued that way in silence for ten minutes, Mallory's arm tight around Sophie's shoulders, until they came to a clearing. In a circle of well-worn grass at the centre was a standing stone slouching to one side. Overhead, Mallory could see the stars for the first time, but no constellations that he recognised. The full moon, though, looked down brightiy. There was a cathedral-like stillness and gravity.
The riders brought their horses to a halt around the edge of the clearing and a deep silence descended; even the hounds were quiet.
Not long after, the black dog padded out into the moonlight on the other side of the clearing. When it reached the standing stone, it dropped down to its haunches and stared at Mallory and Sophie in such a human way it made Mallory's flesh prickle.
'We come with the night,' it said in a voice like iron on gravel. Mallory started in shock.
Its red eyes looked as big as saucers. Sophie surfaced from her daze, gripping Mallory's arm tightly.
'What you seek lies beyond,' the dog continued. 'Follow the path. Do not turn from it, whatever you might see.' The dog rose up and began to leave, pausing halfway to turn its head back to them. 'Nothing is as it seems. Ever,' it said. It lost itself beyond the riders.
'I can't see a path,' Sophie whispered.
As Mallory scanned the tree line on the other side of the clearing, the moonlight illuminated the standing stone at just the right angle and a trail of energy ran out from the base of it into the forest. It was undoubtedly of the same essence as the Blue Fire, but this had a milky luminescence, like the moon on waves.
Sophie's eyes were wide and distant. 'I suppose we should go,' she said.
When they passed the standing stone it felt as though they were moving through a gauzy veil. Briefly, they appeared to lose touch with each other, although they had been holding hands, and were again shordy after. And then they were across the clearing and plunging into the dark beneath the branches.
A night wind slipped amongst the trees like a spirit, bringing with it aromas of pine and grass and sleeping flowers. Mallory was filled with something close to peace.
This is the end, he thought dreamily. We're going to see the Devil.
As they followed the shimmering white path, they became aware of movement amongst the trees: shapes drifted by, as insubstantial as mist, some human in form, some animals, some a combination of the two.
'What are they?' Sophie asked.
Before he could answer, they were both overwhelmed with a tremendous sense of presence, as if the ground on which they walked and the trees and vegetation were all one being. They gripped each other, rooted to the spot, Existence spinning all around them. Their own thoughts and emotions were intermingled with something from outside, so far beyond them in every aspect they couldn't begin to comprehend it.