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<h1>31</h1>
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<p>'This is where it was.' I knew we had reached the end of this road.</p>
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<p>'I know, I remember,' Colin said in a low voice that carried up into the shadows. How deep we were under Ardmhor, I can't say. I couldn't even tell you whether the time and space there actually existed in the way that we know it. But even so, it felt real to us, as it had the first time. It felt like a hole in the very fabric of
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<em>rightness.</em></p>
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<p>Around us, the husks of the dead in their armour, their skins and their rough-woven rags. There was a small rattle as a bone settled, a metallic click as a helmet shifted on an ancient skull, and then there was silence, the kind of silence that is big and desolate and solid enough to feel.</p>
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<p>As we stared, the question rose in my mind. Was it time that caused the decay, or did the unseen beast suck out the last drops of the souls he'd kept stored in his lair?</p>
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<p>
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'It's coming,' Colin broke into my thought. I nodded. I could feel it, deep inside me, where instinct crouches, watching for danger in the shadow, alert for the horror of night. Colin stood motionless and I saw emotions flick across his face, each fighting for control.</p>
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<p>He was afraid, and so was I. After twenty years in the miasma that had been his life since we had come here as kids, he had woken up, and he had good reason to be scared. He had come alive, come to an instant manhood, making the transition from child without the benefit of sunny teenage years and hectic adolescence, the experiences of
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<em>life.</em></p>
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<p>He knew he was about to face what had robbed him of that life and those years, and he was terrified.</p>
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<p>But his teeth were clenched, making the muscles on his cheeks stand out. He held the fear within himself and his knuckles, gripped on the rowan staff, would have been pure white, had there been light to see them by.</p>
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<p>We stood in the silence, in the gloom, sensing the change in the air, a vibration that pulsed, almost imperceptibly, through the rock and through us.</p>
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<p>From what seemed very far away, the pulse came again, like a creeping cold breath, a black, sluggish heartbeat. Then again, a little louder, a little stronger. Closer.</p>
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<p>Colin shifted his stance as another pulse shook, I touched his shoulder and motioned him away from the centre, closer to the wall. We waded through the mound of dead that crackled like twigs underfoot. There was no way to avoid it. They sagged like empty sacks.</p>
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<p>The pulse echoed through the chamber, now a deeper rumble. It seemed to come up from the depths of eternity, approaching from a vast span of time to the
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<em>now</em> that we were in. Paddy stiffened against me, hands still dug in. Colin raised the spear.</p>
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<p>The throb became a pounding beat that filled the cavern, then a juddering roar shook the rocks, tilting the very ground as if a wave of hunger and hate passed through it in a seismic shock.</p>
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<p>And then it was <em>there.</em></p>
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<p>A black mass, huge and ponderous, hunched in the basin in the middle of the cavern close to where we had stood. Around it the air crackled and swirled in a hurricane maelstrom. And within it I could make out something vast that had no real form, blacker than black.</p>
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<p><em>Cu Saeng.</em> The ravener.</p>
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<p>'Get back' I urged Colin, shouting to make myself heard over the shriek of riven air. His eyes were fixed on where the spinning air was so compressed it was almost solid. A red-orange glow touched the edges of the basin, as if great heat was building up.</p>
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<p>'What is it?' Paddy's high voice was snatched by the wind.</p>
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<p>All I could do was hold her tighter. The black tornado screwed itself into the basalt rock. It was like looking into infinity and I felt if I stared, I might see whole star systems in a vast empty dark.</p>
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<p>I felt myself drawn against my will towards the edge, to see the thing that sat at its centre. I tried to stop myself, but I took the step. I took another, even though I fought against it. I grunted with the exertion of trying to prevent a third step and felt my muscles shriek.</p>
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<p>Panic screwed up inside me.</p>
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<p>The fourth step was physical and mental agony as my fear exploded. My survival instinct was overloaded to breaking point. I knew the eternal horror I would suffer when I got to that edge. My foot dragged over the stone and then I was close to the rim of the pit that only moments ago had been a few yards wide. Now it stretched like a great arena, red on its lip where the rock steamed and bubbled without heat.</p>
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<p>Another step and I would fall a million miles in one long and continuous scream, like Lucifer falling to hell. It was going to take me. It was going to....</p>
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<p>I was suddenly flat on my back and the scream that had been building up came out as a hacking groan as my breath was slammed right out.</p>
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<p>Colin's hand gripped my collar. He'd almost jerked me out of my jacket with the force of his desperate heave.</p>
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<p>
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'Don't do that. Don't go in there.'</p>
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<p>From the look in his eyes, he must have thought I'd had a choice. In that moment, all I could think of was that I was still alive.</p>
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<p>Sweat slathered my brow and ran into my eyes. I knuckled them clear and let my clothes take care of the rest that had drenched me all over. I had heard of cold sweat before. This was the first time I had experienced it. I felt I would throw up once again. Colin still gripped my collar as he helped me to the wall, Paddy held tight.</p>
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<p>
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'Don't look at it,' I finally gasped. 'It pulls you in.'</p>
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<p>'I won't,' Paddy said.</p>
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<p>'What is it?' Colin asked. Within the swirling tornado, the bulk that hunched in the centre couldn't be clearly seen. But I could just feel the pressure of its hunger.</p>
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<p>
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'It's the...' I began.</p>
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<p>And the storm exploded with a boom of shattering intensity, like the scream of a jet engine. Rocks tumbled from high above us. A stalactite broke off and lanced down to shatter on the stones below. The dry carcasses were blown upwards and away, like rags. Everything flashed out in a pressure wave that blinded my eyes for a second. Sight returned in flashes.</p>
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<p>And then I saw it.</p>
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<p>The shape loomed from the centre of its cauldron, a twisted, angled blackness that seemed to grind as it moved. It was solid, yet
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<em>not</em> solid; crystalline, yet viscidly liquid. It was something with dimensions that did not belong in this universe.
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</p>
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<p>As I stared, sometimes I could see something clearly, but in an instant it would flicker and warp. It was a huge, dark, impossible presence that had no true form. But I could feel its alien mind, so cold and utterly evil that it seemed to freeze everything around it.</p>
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<p>It expanded and contracted impossibly, shifting and warping with incessant motion.</p>
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<p>It's hideous geometries hurt the eyes.</p>
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<p>I felt the focus of its will as it cast around. It turned round and through itself and speared me with the repugnant and alien inhumanity of its thought. As if a scaly hand had reached through me to my heart and squeezed hard.</p>
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<p>A jolt of revulsion shuddered through me as its mind sought to probe mine. It scraped on my brain, like claws. Pain shot up and down my spine.</p>
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<p>Then, in an instant, it changed. There was a lurching sensation deep inside me and the mass in the pit warped and twisted.</p>
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<p>There was a dizzying flick of unreality.</p>
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<p>Then my grandfather stood there, tall and gaunt, a shimmering figure of shadow outlined in deeper dark.</p>
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<p>There was a creaking protest as his head - looming twenty or thirty feet above mine - swivelled and he leaned out of the dimensionless black, fixing me with his eyes.</p>
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<p>Then he smiled, a great wide smile, and that chilled me as much as the dead, cold touch of the beast's mind.</p>
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<p>My grandfather? Why?</p>
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<p>I'd loved the old man, uncompromisingly, unquestioningly.</p>
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<p>He had been the foundation stone of my early years. He'd taught me and helped me and he'd loved me in the same way that I loved him. It had been he and Kitty Macbeth who had dragged me from the rock fall was back then. He'd scoured the countryside and organised the search parties. He'd been the one who had backed me and help make me what I wm.</p>
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<p>I would have done anything for the old man, and when he'd died when I was still in my teens, I would have done anything to bring him back.</p>
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<p>Now he <em>was</em> back.</p>
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<p>But it wasn't him. It was the beast, bringing back his image to mock him and terrify me.</p>
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<p>The smile widened, became a grimace, a hard wide leer, looming high above us.</p>
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<p>'Ah, Nicky lad,' his voice boomed from a cavern of a mouth, rumbling up from the deeps. 'You've come back again have you? I warned you never to come back here.'</p>
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<p>'What do you want?' I cried.</p>
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<p>'I want <em>you</em>, Nicky. I want you to join me. We can be together. You and me. For all time.' </p>
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<p>'No. You're not real. You're the beast.'</p>
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<p>'Come on Nicky. Come to me. First throw the stick away.'</p>
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<p>'Get out of my fucking <em>head.</em>'</p>
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<p>The thing that looked like a grotesque image of the old man leaned impossibly far out until it loomed over me. The eyes changed from deepest black, shading to grey, then milky to maggot-white. Blind snake eyes. They rolled and the head swivelled. They glared into mine, trying to suck my will.</p>
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<p>'Yes Nick. You have to throw it away. That's my walking stick and we don't need that. We don't want that. You be a good boy and throw it away, because it's mine. You shouldn't have it.'</p>
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<p>'Get out. Get away!'</p>
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<p>'I'm old, Nicky boy. Old. And I need you to help me. But you don't want that old blackthorn. It's <em>bad</em>.'</p>
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<p>I gripped the stick tighter. Somebody had said something about hawthorn and blackthorn. Was it Kitty MacBeth?</p>
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<p>A memory flooded me then.</p>
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<p>It was Colin. Colin with his bow and blackthorn arrows. He'd fired at it back then and hit it right in its eye.</p>
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<p>That's what helped stop it. The Blackthorn. That's why it was important.</p>
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<p>
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'No!' I bawled.</p>
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<p>'Throw it away now!' His voice rose to a rasping screech.</p>
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<p>Something else flashed into my head. I don't know where it came from, or how it got past the grip the beast's will had on me at that moment, but it came fleeting in and I heard the voice of Kitty Macbeth, Catriona O'Connor MacBeatha, the daughter of the sons of life. Her voice was old and wise and it spoke to my soul.</p>
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<p>'A wall of hawthorn that was sacred because it has power, like the blackthorn and the rowan. An earth power that is strong in the earth-day born. A weapon to fight the Cu Saeng.'</p>
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<p>Then I knew why it wanted me to discard the old blackthorn stick. It was afraid of its power, something it couldn't control.</p>
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<p>With that realisation came a wave of anger that washed up and over and through me: anger at the destruction the thing had brought to Arden time and again.</p>
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<p>Anger over what it had done to Kitty Macbeth and to Barbara and Colin and all the rest. In my mind's eye I saw the madness in Jimmy Allison's eyes and I saw Duncan Bennett's hideously swollen face.</p>
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<p>I saw that black shoe and the red skin dangling from the boar's jaws and my anger soared.</p>
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<p>I felt a huge fury at the madness and hate it sent out from this rock. And I knew that we couldn't stop it, what had happened to Arden was nothing compared to the devastation if it broke free.</p>
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<p>Suddenly, my mind seemed to twist out of the power that had pinned my feet to the rock floor and I jumped upwards and forwards towards the thing that sometimes looked like my grandfather and had a mind like festering disease.</p>
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<p>I raised the blackthorn stick and swung it with all the strength I had, the strength of righteous fury, with the knobbly handle pointing forward. I smashed it into the face that loomed above me.</p>
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<p>There was a shock of impact that ran like fire up my arm then a horrendous
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<em>snap</em> as reality twanged back and forth and the thing in the pit let out a shriek that shook the very stone. I heard myself yelling as I beat at it with the blackthorn and it shimmered and changed before me, drawing itself back into the formless dark.
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</p>
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<p>From behind, I heard Colin roar like the bull at McFall's farm. He darted in front of me with the spear raised and the white lines in his hair standing out like war plumes. His back bent as he coiled, then launched forward. His arm, whipped out in a blur as he drove the spear-head right at the other great pallid eye near the top of the mass.</p>
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<p>The spear crackled through that warped space, seeming to slow to a standstill, then inch by inch the obsidian point was driven forward until it met that bloodless eye.</p>
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<p>The stone stabbed in with a rending sound.</p>
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<p>Viscous fluid spurted, but Colin just put his whole weight on the rowan shaft and kept driving it in until the whole spearhead was buried deep inside the eye, and half of the shaft with it.</p>
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<p>Where the fluid dripped, the stone hissed and bubbled.</p>
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<p>I pulled Colin back then, just in case any splashed on him. I knew it would eat his flesh away.</p>
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<p>Another mental blast exploded, this time of anger and agony. It ripped out in all directions and almost bowled us over. The black shape seemed to go into a frenzy. It expanded up and out of the pit in a great shuddering motion that defied sanity.</p>
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<p>The spear angled out of the puckered eye and it seemed the thing was trying to shake it loose,</p>
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<p>Beside the spear, another eye was half closed and crumpled as if it had rotted away. A smaller shaft stuck out from the puckered lid.</p>
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<p>And I recalled the moment when Colin had fired his arrow two decades ago, before Cu Saeng had reached out and grabbed him with such force it locked his very mind.</p>
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<p>Another shriek rent the air, and the huge, eyeless face twisted towards us, shimmering and warping as if seen through frosted glass. I scrabbled backwards. Paddy screamed. I twisted to grab her and she pointed at the pit.</p>
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<p>At the very centre there was a motion and a scraping sound of rocks grinding together. The shape expanded as two masses formed on each side. They grew, like faceted crystals rimmed with green light.</p>
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<p>I felt another instant sensation of déjà -vu. It was coming for us again, and I could not avoid it.</p>
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<p>The final vision of what had happened down here finally clicked in my head and suddenly I was a kid again, scared out of my wits and screaming with a mad fear.</p>
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<p>In that clarity of recall, I saw Colin's arrow streak towards that malignant eye and drive deep inside.</p>
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<p>And an arm black as night snaked out and an impossible claw snapped shut on Colin's head. It lifted him clean off the ground. Colin had started to scream. I felt it in my head, a mental blast of agony that ripped through Barbara and me.</p>
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<p>His pain was so intense that it almost paralysed us.</p>
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<p>But what Barbara and I had felt was a mere echo of what Colin suffered in those seconds as the beast took its revenge for the blackthorn arrow, but it had been intense enough to make my legs buckle.</p>
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<p>With that memory right up at the front of my mind, I knew what would happen now. It was coming for us again and it wanted revenge.</p>
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<p>The arms elongated towards us, growing across the space between us and the pit.</p>
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<p>'Back. Get away from it,' I shouted, trying to avoid the reaching claws.</p>
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<p>The thing was blind, but bit could sense us. Something snapped around my leg and a pain jolted through me in an electrical surge. I jerked like a galvanised frog.</p>
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<p>The pain was immense.</p>
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<p>Beside me, Colin let out a hoarse cry. The thing had him too.</p>
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<p>He struggled, still bawling. His pain interfaced with my own. In an instant we were hauled up and into a roiling black and into the place where it existed.</p>
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<p>There was a racking twist and we were in a vast space. There was no sound except the throb of something that might have been a heart. Colin's emotions came through me like waves.</p>
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<p>And the beast came into view.</p>
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<p>It was an amorphous shadow, with eyes that dripped pus. Only the arrow and the spear shaft shone with clean fire, the only true light in this place and I could feel its suffering. I knew it would never lose the pain if it lived forever. But I could smell its stink and sense the foulness of its mind. It was something that should not exist on this earth, the thing that had brought madness to Arden down those eons.</p>
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<p>I fell into a darkness and time itself seemed to flicker and change....</p>
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<p>I saw myself watching the flow of Strowan's well when we breached the dam.</p>
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<p>I saw me lying unconscious under the rock fall, and my grandfather struggling to get me out.</p>
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<p>I saw my mother in bed, giving birth to the squalling thing that was me.</p>
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<p>And back and back in time.</p>
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<p>To Kitty Macbeth on the foreshore, her hair long and golden, watching the rock.</p>
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<p>And yet further, to the horrors that had visited Arden. Terrible things done under the bale force that dominated the rock.</p>
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<p>I saw before that. A time when Arden was clean. I saw it all. The history of bad times again and again.</p>
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<p>Then, in a flickering twist, I was back here, back below Ardmhor. Colin was beside me, struggling and kicking in the grip of what held us, but he was alive.</p>
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<p>And the pain was gone, from him and from me.</p>
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<p>A golden light sent sparkles of brilliance all around us, a light that should have burned our eyes, but only washed them with balm. It came from far below where we were held, a pinpoint of radiance that flowed up and around us.</p>
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<p>A high pitched voice came from very far away.</p>
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<p>Whatever held us faltered, loosing its grip. The mind that subdued us was diverted. Its power drained by something that was more powerful.</p>
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<p>And that power suddenly freed us from the terrible force that had invaded our minds.</p>
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