2

They passed between the standing stones, turning their backs on the world they knew and everything that was familiar.

The black obsidian stone heart suddenly began to vibrate against Jack's chest, so fast it sang a clear high note that sounded like glass on the verge of shattering. He gripped Kerry by the arm as the light of the moon vanished behind them and they waded into a darkness so complete it seemed solid.

Kerry said something, but his voice was drawn out and stretched until it sounded far away. Jack's eyes opened and brilliant colours spangled and sparkled all around him in wavering shapes. His skin puckered, every hair standing on end and stings of a thousand nettles prickled all over him. He again felt that nauseous sensation of feeling turned inside out. Time lost all meaning.

He tried to call Kerry's name but the words were snatched away in deep-pulsing echoes. His ears popped and huge pressure hissed behind his eyes.

And then they were stumbling in blinding daylight, pitched forward on short cropped grass. Kerry tripped and his arm pulled from Jack's grip. He went down with a faint cry and Jack sank to his knees, holding his eyes tight shut against the glare of the low sun.

Kerry groaned.

"I'm never going to get used to that." He shook his head. "My ears are still ringing."

Jack breathed air, cold air. A thin frost rimed the ground and a bitter wind blew.

Somewhere in the distance a lone curlew piped.

"Winter," Jack finally said. "Or autumn. Wherever we are."

"Brilliant," Kerry muttered. "Couldn't she have picked somewhere warm? Like the Bahamas."

"She didn't have a choice," Jack replied.

"Only kidding, man. Let's find her and get out of here."

Jack got to his feet, still hurting all over, and helped Kerry up. Both of them looked around, expecting Corriwen to be sitting on the grass, but there was no sign of her, no footprints, no trodden leaves. No marks in the rime of frost.

Behind them two great pillars of stone towered. The ring of stones had vanished. They were eroded with age, but they could still make out the worn carvings on each of their four faces.

"Look," Kerry said. "It's the Guinness Harp. Maybe we're in our own time."

A harp was etched into the south face. On the others, what looked like a great sword, a witch's cauldron and a club of some sort, its head shaped like a skull.

"I don't think so," Jack said. "This is really old."

Down the slope, a steam wound its way through rushes and over shingle shallows. They started down the hill, joints aching, bruises protesting, leaning against each other for support.

They reached a mossy bank. Jack dropped his pack and the amberhorn bow. Kerry dug his sword into the turf and together they waded in, side by side until the water came up to their thighs, then, without a word, they let themselves slump into the water and let its icy cold ease their hurt.

The flow cleansed the cuts and scratches and sucked the heat from their bruises until they began to get numb from the cold. They clambered up the bank and lay gasping, under a leaden sky that threatened rain or snow.

Kerry got up on one elbow.

"You look like you've been hit by a bus."

"Thanks. You don't look so good yourself."

"I've felt a whole lot better," Kerry admitted. "And I've lost half a shoe." He held it up. The sole flapped like a fish-mouth.

Jack raised a dripping foot. "Mine are torn to ribbons."

"I could use some fresh undies. Maybe there's an Oxfam shop. Or George at Asda."

"Somehow I doubt it." Jack levered himself to his feet and helped Kerry up. Their clothes were torn and shredded. They looked as if they'd been in the wars. They truly had been in the wars.

"Come on," Jack said. "She's here somewhere."

"You sure you got the right gate?"

"Pretty sure." Jack hoped. "You saw where she hit the ground."

"Was she hurt?"

"I don't know. Maybe. It hit her pretty hard. Swiped her off her feet."

"I know what that feels like," Kerry said. The water had washed most of the blood from his rabbit-skin tunic. Jack hoped the cold had closed the wound. He would have to look at it, check the damage.

They made it back up the hill and stood next to the pair of stones set deep in the ground, scanned the land around them. The slope gentled down on all sides, short grass and clover for a hundred yards. A hedge of some sort beyond the stream; a thick pine coppice further on. Some hills in the distance.

Jack rummaged in the backpack and drew out the Major's binoculars, heavy and black, fingered the focus ring and the coppice, at first blurred, snapped into close-up clarity. A flock of snow buntings broke cover and whirred out of sight. Jack scanned the trees and saw nothing, then panned around, searching beyond the hedgerow and the stream. There was still nothing to be seen. He had hoped to catch a flash of Corriwen's red hair.

Kerry moved out, limping just a little, keeping his eyes fixed to the ground, and if there was any trace, anything to see, he'd have found it. He might have had trouble with books at school, but he could read the ground the way Jack could read stories. The Major had mentioned before that when Kerry left school he'd hire him as the estate gamekeeper, which would give him the added bonus of not losing quite so many pheasants from the fields and salmon from the river.

After a while he came back, shaking his head.

"Not a thing," he said. "Nobody's been here in a while."

"That doesn't mean she wasn't here. Or that she won't be."

"I don't get you."

"I mean, I know she went through the gate. But I don't know when. There was a carved shape on the capstone. The heart fit exactly. The Bard was right. When I turned it, the days went back. Back to the night we saw Billy Robbins."

He paused, concentrating. "I'm trying to remember, but I think time was still changing when she went through. I don't know if it was going forward or back."

"So you're saying we did all that stuff in Temair and then we came back to before we did it?"

Jack nodded.

"That's really cool. Hey, we could use that. We could go fishing for weeks on end and then come back the same day in time for tea. Old Iron Britches would never know."

Jack laughed. The Major's housekeeper had a heart of gold well hidden behind a formidable exterior. Just as well she didn't know Kerry's nickname for her.

The smile faded as quickly as it had appeared.

"First we have to solve this. Did she come through before? Or is she coming later?"

He was holding the heartstone in one hand. It was warm from the contact with his skin, but now it was quiet. No pulsing beat warned him of any danger. Finbar the Bard had told him it was a key, and Jack knew now how true that was. He sensed it was much more than just a key. It had burned the Banshee touch from his body and it had saved him from the hellish heat when the ground in Temair had split into bubbling fissures. What else this stone could do, he didn't know. But it had been his father's, and it was the only link an orphan had to a parent he never knew. He held it warm in his hand and tried to think of what to do next.

"This links all the worlds," he finally said. "And it opens the gates. That's why the Major gave it to me. My father must have been the keeper. I don't know why."

"So how did the Major have it?"

"That I don't know. He didn't have time to tell me, remember?"

No time at all, when he was battling the foul darkness that oozed through the big house.

"I've tried to remember," Jack continued. "but I was only a baby. Somebody brought me through the gate, but I don't know from where."

He raised the stone, catching the sunlight and sending a prism of purplish light across Kerry's cheek.

"So where are we now? Kerry asked.

"Only one way to find out."

Jack took the satchel and drew out the Book of Ways that had guided them through the perils of old Temair.

He opened it quickly and they watched the words appear on the page. This script was different, more rounded and ornate than the writing that had scrolled on the old vellum pages in that other world. On either side of the lines, in fainter ink, was an etching of the massive stones that stood alone on the small hill.

They read the words together.

The Farward Gate of Fair Eirinn

For friend now lost a quest begin

Be mindful of a hero's Plight

A captive held must fast take Flight

The green sward turns to winter Waste

And famine spreads in evil Haste.

Traveller be southway bound

Ere the Homeward gate is found.

Yet journeyman be well aware

This Eirinn now is serpent lair.

"Clear as mud, as usual" Kerry remarked.

"Some of it yes. But it tells us where we are and where we have to go."

"So where are we," Kerry repeated.

"Eirinn. It's another name for the Celtic world."

"So it's Temair again?"

"That I don't know. I don't think so. The words are different. But we have to go south. And this isn't like where we arrived before."

"Too right. That was totally creepy. Remember that hand that grabbed me?"

"That wasn't the worst of it. She was. The Morrigan. Whatever's going on here can't be as bad as that."

Nothing could be as bad as that demon woman, Jack thought.

He examined the script again. It had taken them a while, back in Temair, to realise the Book of Ways gave warnings as well as directions.

"It says we go south. And it says we have to start a quest for a lost friend."

"Does that mean she's here already?"

"I think so. Probably. The Homeward Gate is south of here." Jack closed his eyes, got his bearings, and pointed beyond the coppice. "It's that way."

"Okay," Kerry said, rising slowly to his feet. "We'd better get moving."

Jack grabbed his wrist and tugged him back down to the grass.

"No," he said. "It's going to be dark soon. We don't know this place. We're tired and sore. I say we stay here until morning."

He could tell Kerry was itching to be up and off, despite the exhaustion of the past days, despite the hurt where the Morrigan had slammed him away in Cromwath Forest. Jack squeezed on his wrist.

"If we don't get some rest, we won't be any use to anybody," he said.

Kerry finally nodded and leaned back against the big stone.

"Maybe you're right. I'm done in." He closed his eyes, just for a moment, but a moment was all it took for sleep to take him and soon after that, night crept its way over the hill, casting long shadows that thickened to dusk and then to a starless night. Just before the last of the light faded, a huge wedge of geese, flying high, arrowed westwards towards the set sun.

Sometime in the night, their honking awoke Jack from a troubled slumber in which the Morrigan screamed after him in black dreams. He couldn't see the flock, but now they were flying east. He couldn't figure that out. Maybe the geese were just as confused as he was.

It was colder now, much colder, and he huddled inside the old leather jacket in the shelter of the great stone, leaning against Kerry to share their warmth, two boys in the dark of a strange world. Above, the clear sky black and he scanned it from north to south, searching for the corona that had shone down from the sky in Temair, but there were no stars and no moon.

Eirinn, the book had said. Eirinn. A name from the books in the Major's library, the tales of mythic heroes that he'd read cover to cover, losing himself in sagas of quests and glory. There's a kernel of truth in every legend, the major had told him. He'd said the universe is stranger than we can imagine.

How right he had been on both counts. But what else did Major MacBeth know. Finbar the Bard said he was the last in a long line of guardians. Guardians of the Ways.

Now Jack Flint and Kerry Malone were travellers of the Ways. Journeymen, like the book said. That first time, they had stumbled through the gate to escape the black pursuit.

This time they had leapt into the unknown to find Corriwen Redthorn.

Who knew what they would find here?

Jack pulled the jacket closer as the wind moaned sad and deep between the stones. He dozed fitfully wondering if they would ever find Corriwen Redthorn and the next thing he knew Kerry had clamped a hand over his mouth and pressed him against the stone.

Jack tried to speak, but couldn't make a sound.

"Shhhh!"

Kerry's eyes were shadows, his face turned to look beyond the stones and down the hill. Jack nodded.

"You were snoring," Kerry whispered. "I heard something." He took his hand away.

"Out there."

Jack twisted and peered out into the cold dark.

Something moved. He wasn't sure whether it was a shadow or a cloud passing. He turned his eyes to the left, trying to catch motion in peripheral vision which was much sharper at night.

A low rumble came from beyond the hedge, like thunder far off. The shadow moved again and this time Jack knew he had seen something. Something really big. Kerry tensed beside him.

"What is it?"

The ground vibrated under them, dull shivers that rattled their teeth.

"Can't see, but it's huge."

The rumbling sound came again and the shape came closer. Heavy footsteps thudded on the hard earth and they heard the hoarse rasp of slow breath. They huddled tighter against the stone, each holding breath so as to make no sound. Kerry's hand was on his sword-hilt. Jack reached for the amberhorn bow.

The heavy breathing misted the night air in a cloud and they stayed still as mice, expecting a mouthful of teeth or a hairy claw to come looming out of the night.

The thing rumbled again, low as a lion in the night, but then it turned away, great feet making the ground shudder. In the distance, branches snapped like crackshots and the thing was gone.

"I never saw it," Kerry finally whispered.

"I don't want to see it," Jack earnestly replied. "Maybe this place isn't as quiet as it looks."

It certainly wasn't as nice in the morning when they awoke, still huddled together, hungry and stiff and frozen.

When Jack opened his eyes, the ground was white with snow, and a fell wind blew sharp spindrift crystals of ice against his cheek.