Despite her desire to continue drifting, Sophie found herself rising up the well until she was looking into a woman’s face. At first, the features appeared to run like oil; Sophie thought that she was in the presence of some famous artist whose name she couldn’t quite recall, then a wise woman from a camp she had once passed through. As her perception cleared, the sense of familiarity faded. The woman was beautiful and sensitive, her dark eyes flashing in a pale face surrounded by long black hair that shone in the light of the moon.
‘Who are you?’ Sophie was surprised by the weakness of her voice.
‘Your kind once called me Ceridwen, amongst many other names,’ the woman replied. Her gaze left Sophie to dart around the dark hillside with apprehension.
Sophie wondered briefly if she was dreaming, for it appeared to be snowing. It was only when she attempted to move that she realised how numb her body had been; pain shot through her as if she had been stabbed. She looked down to see blood staining the whitening grass.
‘Do not move, Sister of Dragons. Your light burns low,’ Ceridwen said. ‘You have little time left for the Fixed Lands unless your wound can be staunched.’
Sophie let her head flop back, her vision swimming. ‘Mallory,’ she whispered.
Ceridwen was doing something at her side, from where the pain emanated. On the edge of her vision, Sophie saw a soothing blue glow and the pain eased a little. ‘There,’ Ceridwen said, ‘that will hold for a while. But you need to rest and heal.’
‘I was shot-’
‘Hush. We need to leave this place. Something terrible is happening. The Lament-Brood are here, only a few of them, but if they find us, they will corrupt us both. Yes, even I, even a Golden One.’
Ceridwen lifted Sophie as if she weighed nothing at all.
‘Where are you taking me?’ Sophie said weakly.
‘Far away from this place of sorrow.’ The words caught in Ceridwen’s throat. ‘Though in these bitter times, even the Far Lands are tainted with misery.’
Before she could utter another word, the soft, unnerving whispering of the Lament-Brood rolled across the hillside. Sophie raised her head enough to see the riders on their reptilian mounts emerging from the trees.
‘What are they?’ Sophie asked.
‘Agents of the Void,’ Ceridwen replied. ‘The abyss has beckoned.’
Sophie began to slip back into the well. Ceridwen backed away from the approaching riders, but there was the sound of others approaching to close off their retreat.
‘There’s nowhere we can go,’ Sophie muttered. ‘They’ve got us.’
When Ceridwen didn’t reply, Sophie knew she was right. The last thing she heard before she slipped into darkness was the sound of the horses’ hooves thundering across the hillside towards them.
Hal walked with Hunter along the empty, ringing corridors and out to the Deer Park where the helicopter waited. Neither of them felt like speaking.
The snow gleamed crisp and even across the grass in the morning light, with only one trail of multiple footprints leading to the waiting chopper; the General and his men were already on board.
‘He’s keen,’ Hal said.
‘What the bloody hell is up with this weather?’ Hunter snapped. ‘I hate snow. I hate it!’ He turned to Hal and his familiar rakish grin had returned. ‘Keep the home fires burning. And don’t talk to anybody, all right? Don’t do anything dangerous like thinking for yourself. Do what I say.’
‘I will.’
Nodding his goodbye, Hunter ran towards the helicopter, ducking low beneath the blades that had just started to whirr. Hal waited until it had disappeared and then turned back to Magdalen with a heavy heart.
Inside the ancient buildings it was unusually deserted. Most of the staff was in the New Library, which had been converted to an operations room for whatever the General had been planning. Hal was to report there later for a briefing.
As he made his way to his room for a rest, he heard footsteps approaching. For some reason he couldn’t quite explain, Hal felt the urge to step out of view. He slipped into one of the darkened offices and waited with the door ajar.
A few seconds later, Catherine Manning marched forcefully by, the echoes of her heels clack-clacking off the walls. She was talking to herself.
‘If I can get close to the PM, I think I can turn things around,’ she said.
Although Hal could see no sign of a radio or mobile phone, Manning acted as if she was having a conversation with someone unseen.
‘All it takes is a little-’ Manning paused suddenly a few feet past the door behind which Hal was hiding and then turned to look back. Hal slipped away from the door before she saw him.
‘Where?’ she snapped.
Hal’s blood ran cold. He backed further into the room, banging against a desk top, stifling an instinctive cry and grabbing the edge to stop the desk from grinding across the floor. Quickly, he ducked underneath it.
He was just in time, for the door swung open silently at the touch of Manning’s fingertips. Hal could see her legs as she stood there silently for an unbearable few seconds. Then: ‘There’s no one here.’
Hal only breathed again when he heard her heels disappear up the corridor. The troubling questions came thick and fast. To whom had she been talking? How had she known that he was hiding there? Why had she mentioned the PM, who was ensconced in his war bunker at Balliol and rarely seen by anyone outside the Cabinet? It left him with the feeling that some deep, dark plot was being put in motion.
And overriding it all was the sense that Hal could no longer trust anyone.
Strong winds buffeted the helicopter from side to side as they flew over the Scottish Border counties. They’d already been forced to put down for several hours to avoid bad weather and the mood on board was strained. Snow encrusted the edges of the windows, making it difficult to see more than a few feet out, though there was nothing at all visible in the night-dark countryside below.
Hunter stared out into the snowstorm, lost in thought. The General had refused to say what they were going to see, but his demeanour suggested it was not good.
In the days since the Fall, electric lights had been missing from much of the countryside at night, so Hunter at first assumed the glimmer he saw on the horizon to be just an illusion caused by the snow. But as they moved closer, he realised it was fire, and closer still the reality became apparent: it was an enormous fire.
‘That’s it?’ he asked.
The General came to sit next to him. ‘I think so.’
‘What’s going on?’
‘While we were plotting our strike-back, the enemy decided to move first.’
Hunter gazed at the flickering flames. The smoke billowed up into the snow-filled clouds. ‘That’s a town?’
‘Lanark.’
‘It doesn’t make any sense. The gods have left us alone for so long because they know we’re no threat to them. They can pick us off as and when they like, so why would they be launching a full-scale assault now?’
‘Nevertheless, our intelligence says that’s what’s happening. And as you know, Hunter, in the absence of being able to do anything more effective, we have at least established a first-rate intelligence network. Probably better than the one we had before the Fall.’
‘Can we get closer?’
‘We’ll go as close as is safe.’ The General sat back. He was surprisingly at ease, and when he next spoke, Hunter understood why. ‘I’ve spent months arguing for a chance to repel the invader. Months. Manning was too cautious. Reid was always after more intelligence; more, more, more. He’ll never have enough. The others always sat on the fence because no one was big enough to take the really tough decisions, so the PM was always swayed by those two. Now the balance of power has to shift. We can’t sit around and do nothing. We need to mount a robust defence and then strike back with devastating force.’
‘Have we got any? I know I’m devastating in my own way, but I don’t think I’d be much use against that.’