Olive felt it, and exulted, and Rosemary knew. The current was flowing, steadily and strongly.
Then, astonishingly, with the current still unwavering, the cave and the hills and the forest recaptured Rosemary's awareness. The earth was real and alive around her; and not only
here
but Avebury as well, the mandala village with its sidestepped crossroads, its tree-crowned earthworks, its immemorial ring and avenue of stones. And all the land between, the rock and soil and water of Wales and England; a living organism, living and breathing and feeling, and they all a pan of it.
The vision sank again into the background, leaving the astral power-line to fill Rosemary's world. But she knew.
The Earth had spoken to her and She was on their side.
Miriam, sitting in a corner outside the ring of the Group with her earphones clamped to her head, broke the silence with one word: 'Aconite'.
Moira said 'Thank you', and the Group, unmoving, braced themselves.
The Army helicopter settled outside the ditch, west of the Henge and facing it. As the pilot cut his switches and the noise died, John could see the main group pacifying their frightened horses, three hundred metres away to the north of the perimeter, their reins tied to the road fence.
The main group of the Angels of Lucifer had come ahead on horseback, leaving Karen, John, Stanley Friell, Sonia and the six prisoners with their guard to arrive just before sunrise in the helicopter Harley had provided. John had not seen the necessity for the helicopter but had acquiesced. Only Karen knew its real purpose. It was to stay with her till Harley signalled that the success of Operation Skylight was beyond doubt and then fly her to Harley's side with the dozen or so Angels who really mattered and whom
she had already secretl
y briefed. John and the others would be left to fend for themselves. If they caused any trouble -which Karen, despising them, did not envisage - a word from Harley to the Army would settle the matter.
But that was for later and Karen barely thought of it. Her whole mind was on the coming sunrise and the magical offensive whose impact would be felt across the length and breadth of Britain. Of that, Karen had not even a subliminal flicker of doubt. And when the smoke of battle cleared, she, Karen Morley, would be High Priestess - not merely of a handful of black witches, however effective, but of Britain itself. Power was her destiny. And on the path to power, John was an outworn tool and Harley a new and keen-edged one.
Karen stepped to the ground, the others following.
When his passengers were all clear, Captain Brodie leaned back in his seat and blew out his checks. 'What an incredible bunch,' he said to his co-pilot.
'That boss-woman gives me the creeps,' Lieutenant Denning replied. 'And who are those poor sods with their hands tied? They look bloody hypnotized.'
'Drugged,' Brodie said. 'The other chap's a doctor, the one with the bush-jacket on. And you know what, Den? If my guess is right, I hope those "poor sods" stay drugged.'
Denning grunted. Neither of them had any real doubt what was afoot. Harley's relationship with the Black Mamba was no longer a secret in Beehive and stories of her magical powers (most, but not all, apocryphal) had been circulating for weeks The name 'Angels of Lucifer' had been whispered, though cautiously. Once Beehive had got used to the idea, the general reaction had been 'At least they're on our side'. From that, among people already attuned by the witchhunt to the idea of magic being powerful and dangerous, it was an easy step to accepting as reassuring the knowledge that a group of black witches had been enlisted as Beehive's allies in Operation Skylight.
But like meat-eaters with abattoirs, acceptance was one thing, and having to watch the physical reality was quite another. The two officers gazed after their departing passengers with an uneasy fascination. The two young women naked to the hips, made up and jewelled, the black-skirted and black-haired one vibrant with a terrifying authority, the white-skirted and auburn-haired one surrounded by an aura of spiritual madness almost as terrifying. The unsmiling man in the black robe with the knife at his belt. The bush-shirted doctor, the very ordinariness of his garb unnerving beside the others. The six drugged prisoners, barefoot and clad in plain shifts like the Burghers of Calais. Their watchful guard in jeans and boots, carrying a shotgun. All moving towards the heart of the Henge, around which the twenty or thirty men and women who had been with the horses were now arranging themselves, all stark naked and even at this distance grimly but eagerly purposeful.
‘I
don't think I want to watch this,' Brodie said.
'We're not going to be able to help watching it,' Denning told him, and, sickly, the captain knew he was right.
Sonia shed her skirt, laid herself gracefully supine on the Altar Stone and began to sing. The song was wordless, a quiet atavistic keening, an enraptured salute to the Master she longed to embrace, a resonant consecration of the blood still imprisoned in her veins and demanding the freedom of sacrifice.
The sound cut through John like a knife, sharper than the blade in his right hand. It was scarcely to be borne and Karen's evident gratification at it enhanced the torment. Still John did not doubt; he was here for a purpose and the purpose had been grasped to his soul si
nce he had first set out for Sav
ernake Forest. But would the sun never rise so that the unbearable song could be ended ?
The Angels were circling wildly, widdershins between the megaliths as before, their cries in eerie counterpoint to Sonia's keening. Karen, arms high and wide, was intoning an invocation, its charged sentences weaving in the air like smoke. John, entranced by his pain, stared alternately at the horizon and at Sonia's pulsing throat on which the pearl necklace rolled gently back and forth like the creamy edge of a wave on a smooth beach.
Time stood still but sound and movement and rhythm did not.
Then, at the end of timele
ssness, the edge of the sun blistered the horizon.
John struck at the white throat. The song ended in a bubbling hiss, and the blood rippled down from pearl to pearl and spread over the Altar Stone. Sonia's head rocked sideways and the eyes, sightless and blissful, gazed into his own.
Moira felt the shock-wave of evil sweep over them and gasped, tightening her grip on the hands to right and left. Fighting back, she rallied. One of the Group had fainted but his neighbours had joined hands across him; the rule had to be 'no stopping for casualties'.
She knew, with a flash of certainty, what she had to do next.
She ordered: 'Joy Hassell! Project Joy to John!'
The Group heard and understood. Some had known Joy and the others had been given a photograph to study, for she was one of the prepared weapons. Bracing themselves against the black tide still flowing from Stonehenge, they worked together, building up Joy's image.
Sonia's body had been removed and the first of the prisoner-victims, bound and gibbering with terror from Stanley's reviving injection, had been flung down on the Altar Stone. He had slipped on Sonia's copious blood, and the two men responsible for bringing forward the victims were having a struggle to place him for John's knife. Karen's incantation had become specific, launching the tide of power in support of the
6
,000 soldiers already fanning out in the skies of Britain, strengthening their resolve, binding any urge to compassion, numbing and paralysing all who would resist them. John, in a rage of destruction now that blood had flowed, roared at his assistants to hold the sacrifice still. He raised the knife.
In that instant the earth moved. The great uprights of the trilithons groaned at the tremor and one of the capstan lintels screeched.
Briefly, the screech merged with John's scream, and Karen failed to distinguish the two. Then she realized that John had dropped the knife and was staring transfixed past her shoulder. Karen spun round and saw what he saw: misty but unmistakable, Joy, his dead golden wife, as she had been at the Grand Sabbat before the lance impaled her but with a face of infinite love and infinite sadness.
John screamed again, then turned and ran.
Joy flickered, was gone - and reappeared, running ahead of him.
Half blind with fury, Karen snatched up the knife and dispatched the sacrifice, ordering the next to be prepared. She knew the source, now; Moira and Dan, her mortal enemies, were nearby and striking back. She flung venom at them and then directed all her power at John, who had reached a horse and leaped into the saddle.
He tried to ride away but could feel her power drawing the horse back, in a tightening spiral round the Henge, inwards and inwards though he tugged at the reins till the horse's mouth bled. Joy was away, beyond the earthworks, still calling to him, but he was helpless. He screamed again in misery and despair. The horse brought him almost to the Altar Stone and then reared in panic at another victim's dying cry. John was thrown from the saddle, hitting one of the uprights. He fell to the ground inside a trilithon archway and the horse bolted away, trampling him as it turned.
John lay there, three-quarters stunned, but conscious enough to know that his back was broken. He would never move again and he did not care. He watched, almost with detachment, Karen at her murderous work. Dimly he heard the exultant cries of the circling Angels of Lucifer and the shrieks of the victims. He did not care. He had willed all this and he was past redemption.
The earth was trembling again, quaking and shuddering under his ruined back. He saw, against the sky, the uprights of the trilithon move, scraping a hand's-breadth outwards along the underside of the lintel. A shower of splintered sarsen fell around him. What did it matter?
But through the haze of pain, golden Joy would not let him rest. She stood by the upright, urging him, pleading with him; it does matter, there is still something you can do, you can help to stem the tide you unleashed.... There were others with her. He lay in a circle of people - Moira, Dan, other familiar faces . . . No, they must leave him, it was not to be borne
...
His eyes were drawn back, despite his shame, to the figure who pleaded with him, his golden Joy, his accuser, his dead beloved
...
Then she was blotted out by Karen, towering over him with the knife, the two helpers behind her. Her face was a mask of hatred and she pointed at him with an arm that was red to the elbow.
'Now
him!'
John was not afraid; death did not matter. But he was furious at her for obscuring Joy and he could feel the shadowy ring of Moira, Dan and the others, urging him.
The earth trembled again.
Something broke loose in the dying John and he cried: 'Mother Earth! Great Mother! Destroy her!' The last thing he saw was the uprights falling outwards and the huge lintel crashing down to obliterate Karen and himself.
At Avebury the battle had seemed endless; two more had fainted and even Moira, locked in a nightmare of clashing darkness and light, was beginning to wonder if she could survive much longer. But near the worst of it, she had felt John, or a part of him, reaching out to them; tormented and confused, he was a breach in evil's armour and she had hung on, gasping.
Then, without warning, the dark wave had shattered.
Knowledge of victory swept over them. Moira could feel the tears of relief running down her cheeks, hear the others laughing in triumph, some of them near to hysteria; feel Dan's arms around her; hear Miriam excitedly relaying Bruce's reports.
She bathed in the tide of success for a few moments longer, then pulled herself up. Quietening the Group, assuring herself that the three unconscious ones were all right and re-establishing control, she made them listen.
'We've broken the Angels of Lucifer, with the Goddess's help. They challenged her once too often. But she's still challenged. Right now the soldiers of Beehive are setting out to steal or destroy what the survivors have built. They'll be on their way to Camp Cerridwen at this moment - and to all the other places, some good and some not so good -but even the worst aren't as evil as what Harley wants to impose. He's damned himself by the allies he sought and the methods he used. He mustn't be allowed to succeed -I don't have to tell you that. . . . Our people at home in Wales are still working to feed us power. So let's
use
it. Make victory complete . . . And remember, the Earth Mother's with us. You heard what Bruce reported - an earth tremor hit Stonehenge and brought down the stones on Karen and John.
But it didn't reach here
- or anywhere else, is my guess. And what does that mean?'
She held out her hands and the ring re-formed. When she knew it had re-formed mentally and astrally as well, she gave the word.
'Speak to the soldiers. Speak of peace.'
'It's as though the Earth had punished them,' Captain Brodie said, wonderingly.