'I'm sorry about this, but please believe me, we don't want to hurt you or your property or to steal anything. You'll have to forgive us for the damage to the front door -that was necessary. All we need to do is to stay here for the next few hours. We can't say yet exactly how long it'll be. But it's absolutely vital that nobody realizes we're here. So we have to keep you all under guard till it's over and see that none of you leave or try to signal anyone outside. You can come and go as you please inside the house as long as one of us is with you.' He smiled, he hoped reassuringly. 'We've been as considerate as we can - you'll notice that two of our guards are women, and
they'll
conduct the ladies to the loo and so on. The only place you must keep out of is the lounge bar, because we'll be using that. And please make as little noise as possible when you're anywhere near it. If we eat or drink anything while we're here, we'll pay for it -we've brought a couple of sacks of assorted goodies for the purpose and I'm sure there will be things in them that you'll find useful.'
'But what's it all
about?'
the obvious leader of the group asked. He was a solid-looking man in his fifties whom they had heard addressed as Lenny. 'Bandits I could understand and serve us right for not posting sentries - we've had no trouble for months, so we got careless. But all this politeness with a gun at our heads.
...
It don't make much sense, tell you the truth. What are you up to?'
'A fair question, Lenny - that's your name, isn't it? . . . Have you heard of the Black Mamba and her lot?'
The frightened reaction, of the women in particular, was immediate, and Lenny swallowed. 'Everyone round here has. But they've never troubled us. Are
you
from there?'
'Not on your life. They're everybody's enemies.
...
Do you remember the earth tremors last month?'
'You bet we do.'
'And did you hear what the Black Mamba's gang did at Stonehenge that day?'
Even Lenny could not hide his fear at the question. "Word got around.'
'Yes, I'm sure it did. Well, this morning two things are going to happen. We've had word that they'll be doing it again today, probably at sunrise, and probably worse than the last time. And we've also had word that the Army's coming out of Beehive to try and take control of the country. Now I don't know what you people believe or how you feel about witches. But we're witches -
white
witches - all of us. And while the other lot are making use of Stonehenge for evil, we're going to do everything we can to use Avebury for good, to fight against the evil they're doing. The Red Lion's right in the middle of Avebury Circle. And that's why we're here.'
Dan paused, waiting for reactions. Lenny and the others looked at each other and then Lenny spoke.
'I'm Church of England, myself, and so's the missus here and the kids, and some of the others. Young Jane over there, she reckons she's a witch but she's a good girl and my wife's cousin, so we've been keeping quiet about it and looking after her. . . . The way I look at it - if you're telling the truth, and I'd say you are, we're not going to stand in your way. I've lived wit
h these stones all my life and I
know there's power in them, whatever the Vicar used to say. Stonehenge too but that's dark to my way of thinking, never felt easy there even before all this. But
our
stones, they're light, they're different. And I'd leave it to them. If what you're trying to do is good, they'll help you. If it ain't, they won't - and they might even punish you for it, some ways. An' may God forgive me for saying it. . . . You carry on, lad. We won't cause you any trouble. But keep your guards on us - you'll be too busy to have to worry about whether I'm lying to you. I ain't but I might be, mightn't I? So tell 'em to keep their guns loaded and then you'll be easy in your mind. . . . Those others without guns, in the lounge -they'll be doing the magicking?' That's right, Lenny. Me too.'
'Well, good luck to you. Is there time for the missus to brew up some hot soup for everybody before you start?'
It had been a greater wrench than Rosemary had expected, the exodus from Camp Cerridwen into the forest. Most of the campers (there were nearly 160 of them, after the PAG had left) believed, against all apparent logic, that they would be able to return. The witches believed it by conscious decision with the object of bringing it about by envisaging their return with concerted willpower and imagination, and the non-witches had been generally infected by their confidence. Anxiety over Moira and Dan and the PAG, so far away and with the two leaders on the Army's wanted list, was inevitable and hardly unexpected. But the actual leaving of the camp, on the morning of the twentieth, had been a sadness whose intensity took them by surprise. They had built and ploughed and planted it with their own hands and leaving it empty was like abandoning an only child.
Everything of particular value that could be moved had been hidden in the storage cave and the entrance effectively camouflaged. It would be extremely bad luck if it were discovered and the witches did not believe in bad luck. Rosemary and Greg, with their coven, had spent an intensive half-hour on a spell to turn inquisitive eyes away from it.
Gareth had originally suggested that no hint be given to the New Dyfnant villagers of the evacuation plan but a few days' acquaintance with the relationship between camp and village had made him admit that this could be modified. Three old people, two sick, and three couples with young babies had been adopted by village families 'for the duration of the emergency', and the village, to a man, would have cut their own tongues out rather than betray them. Eileen, at six months the most advanced pregnancy in the camp, had been offered an almost embarrassing number of homes (New Dyfnant had not forgotten that she, above all, had saved them from the Dust) but had insisted on joining the exodus, clinching her refusal with the argument that her face, too, might be on the wanted list - and Gareth could not be sure it was not. To minimize dangerous knowledge, all arrangements, by common consent, had been through one person, Bronwen Jones the Shop, and only she had any idea of what was actually planned, though neither she nor anyone else in the village knew or needed to know just where the exodus was heading. Only she, indeed, knew the hour of departure - and two hours after it she passed the word to Dai Police and Dai Forest Inn to send u
p a herdin
g party to bring the camp's livestock down to the village for lodging around the farms.
By that time all the men, women, and children of Camp Cerridwen had melted into the forest.
It would take a large-scale operation with hundreds of men to find them, for in the past quarter-century the Forestry Commission had extended the Dyfnant plantation till it covered more than fifty square kilometres south and south-west of Lake Vyrnwy. Peter O'Malley had chosen their destination and planned the route, for he knew the forest better than anyone in Camp Cerridwen - and knew, too, which species of tree would give them maximum cover from the air. He had ordered dark clothes and drilled everyone in what to do at the first sound of a helicopter engine. He had chosen an area towards Llechwedd Du, four or five kilometres to the west, where he knew of a small group of caves that could
accommodate the whole party - a
nd, most important for D-Day, could give the fourteen covens working space separated from the children and the non-witches who would look after them, so that they could concentrate without distraction.
It had been a heavily laden procession that had set out from the camp along the plantation 'corridors', for nobody knew how long they would have to hide, and they were carrying as much food as they could. Bedding was less of a problem; it was a warm June and the weather seemed set fair. Geraint and Tonia had been tempted to lug their radio equipment with them but it would have been impossible to carry the batteries as well, and since transmitting was out of the question and the PAG pack radios were much too far away to receive, it would have been of little use. So they had buried it, well wrapped in polythene sacks, half a kilometre from the camp the day before they left.
On the journey, Rosemary had kept an anxious eye on Greg, for although he had said little and maintained the cheerful exterior required of one of the founder members and acknowledged leaders of the camp, she knew that he had been worse hit than almost anyone by having to leave it. No one had put more ingenuity, craftsmanship and sheer hard work into it, from the start, than he. She could have wept as she watched him carry his precious alternators from the little river power-station to the cave with his own hands and then the heavy-duty batteries in a wheelbarrow - nothing, she knew, would he leave undone to make a new start possible if the chance came. She had had, finally on the last night, to order him to bed so that he would be fit for the march, otherwise he would have been up till dawn removing and hiding more and more pieces of treasured equipment.
But once the trek was over, the people under cover, and a meal organized, she was relieved to sense that his cheerfulness became more convincing. A new phase had begun and he was responding to the challenge. When everybody had begun to relax a little, he had started urging her, as convener of the Elders in Moira's absence, to call them together to plan tomorrow's support effort for the PAG, and shepherded Tricia into a quiet corner with instructions to see what she could pick up from Avebury. Then, at last, Rosemary could smile; for Greg, she saw, the worst was over. What tomorrow's worst might be, remained to be seen - but with the trauma of the exodus firmly behind him, he was prepared to face it.
An hour before sunrise, the covens were assembled and ready, in three caves so close together on a broken hillside that they were virtually interconnecting. Rosemary and Greg's group was in the centre cave, where Rosemary's voice could be heard by everyone if necessary. Tricia sat beside Rosemary, made as comfortable as possible with rolled bedding, for though her clairvoyance was usually in full consciousness, she could sometimes go into trance without warning. One Circle could have embraced them all but Rosemary would not tamper with the arrangements they had practised already when the covens were less closely packed; so each High Priestess cast her own, even though the smallest was barely two metres across. That done, Rosemary cast a Great Circle mentally, whispering to Greg that she was doing so. He nodded and suddenly she remembered - and knew he was remembering - the last time they had sat in their own Circle, one among many inside a Great Circle. A year ago today; the Midsummer Grand Sabbat on Bell Beacon. . . . The wheel had come fully round. Some - perhaps twenty or thirty - of today's gathering had been there too; were they remembering?
Was John Hassell, on his way to Stonehenge, remembering his golden Joy? And if so, was it adding rage to his corrupted intent - or opening for him a chasm of doubt? Such wondering was wasted effort; they would need all they could summon up to feed power to Moira and Dan and the others.
Rosemary closed her eyes and slid her hand into Greg's. Curling her fingers, she could feel the fine hairs on the back of his hand and she was overcome with love for him. He gave a faint rumble in his throat, his habitual acknowledgement of any love-signal when other people were around and squeezed her palm against his own.
'Moira and the others are ready,' Tricia said suddenly. 'I can see the dark woodwork and the open fireplace . . . They're in their Circle, holding hands.'
With slow deliberation, Rosemary strengthened her union with Greg, and expanded it in her mind to include their whole coven. She could feel the ring of individualities closing and integrating, the group mind awakening, and when she
knew it was ready she said quietl
y,
'Deosil
now,
deosil
.
She urged the power to her left clockwise, into Greg and the girl beyond him, and felt the surge from the man on her right. Soon the current was flowing as they had practised, a flywheel of psychic power through their unmoving bodies,
deosil, deosil,
amplifying itself with its own momentum. She knew, on the fringe of consciousness, that the other covens were picking up her cue and doing the same and she could sense the growing battery of sunwise whirlpools around them; but she diverted no attention to them, that was not her function. Her coven's power must all go to their link at Avebury, young Olive Sennett of the quicksilver mind, while the others concentrated on their own links. The flywheel of power was building, growing into a cone with its tip a shimmering vortex above the centre of their Circle, vividly clear to Rosemary's astral vision. Rosemary said: 'Olive.'
She visualized Olive, sitting as they had arranged on Dan's left; the rather bony young body, the pony-tailed brown hair, the wide mouth and surprised-looking eyes, the habitual crouch with one leg curled under her and the other thrust straight out. . . . She felt an echo, an interlocking, and knew they had her. She said: 'Feed her.'
She was barely aware of the cave around them or of their physical bodies any longer; only of the ring of astral bodies, of linked minds, of the bright vortex of power they had created. On her command, the vortex reached out, not leaning, not losing its momentum, not changing its shape, but reaching out in another dimension to mesh with Olive and invigorate her.