“Don’t use the axe! You might puncture the boat!”
— John
The Same Thing But Aquatically
Ashley sets off after the woman. Maya tries to stop her, but Ashley grabs the seagull, firmly but carefully, then sets her down outside the cave before hurrying into the weird blue light inside.
Pissed off, Maya launches herself into the night sky and heads through the dark to where she’d agreed to meet John and Bea.
When they get there, they are standing outside the cave. There is no sign of Gawain.
“Hey,” she says, after transforming back into her human form. “Thomson took off into the caves to see what was going on. They were acting really weird. I tried to stop them, but they actually physically PICKED ME UP and MOVED ME OUT OF THE WAY.”
“Do you mean under the influence weird?” Bea asks.
“I don’t know. I tried to stop them once by flapping at them, and it worked. The next time, it didn’t. They were really determined, so I thought I’d leave them to it.”
“And you couldn’t tell whether they were being controlled by someone?”
“No. I don’t know. I don’t think so.”
“Well, we didn’t have much more luck with Bert,” Bea says, and then explains what happened when they met him.
“I think it’s time we report to C,” John says.
It’s a little after eleven, but Igraine answers nevertheless. “Good evening, John.”
“Hi. We’ve got some news, It’s pretty urgent. Is C available?”
“Just one moment.”
No hold music this time. C’s voice replaces Darling’s in a matter of seconds. “As you are calling this late, I shall not ask if it is important.”
“We managed to talk to Gawain again and get his real personality. He said to tell you that Sebastien Strunk is back. That you didn’t manage to deal with him properly last time, and he’s up to his old tricks.”
A moment of pregnant silence from the cellphone’s tiny speaker. Grasshoppers zing in the velvet darkness of the boskage.
“Oh dear,” C says at last, and in that understatement is carried a mere hint of how calamitous she has found this news. “Strunk is evil, or as close to anything in this world that could be described as evil as it is possible to get. He is powerful, he is cunning, he is intelligent, and he is ruthless. We thought we had managed to banish him for good. Apparently not.”
“Gawain said he was protecting the Orb from Strunk,” Bea says.
“And well he might. It is vitally important for the safety of the world that you stop Strunk. He has a penchant for summoning Elder Gods. Not the soap opera melodrama of the Ancient Greek gods or the Norse. The H.P. Lovecraft — misogynistic racist bigot that he was — limitless eldritch cosmic horror kind of Elder God. Will suck your sanity through the orifices in your head and leave you in a world of endless suffering kind of Elder God. I would not be exaggerating to say the safety and future of the human race is at stake.”
“No pressure then,” John mutters.
“Do you need anything? Our resources are at your disposal.”
“Information on the Orb would be handy, so we know how to stop it,” Bea says.
“Do you have any photographs?”
Bea’s expression turns sheepish. “No. The magical defences must have been interfering with me being able to think straight. I just attacked it. I can describe it to you.”
“Maybe Gawain has taken a picture?” John suggests. “Has he sent one in?”
“Not to my knowledge. I will have Merlin access his cellphone, assuming it is not too far underground for him to reach.”
“Just in case, though, it was about half again as big as a tennis ball, and had blue light coming from it, but it looked like a piece of technology, not magic.”
“Hmm. I know of devices that can be used to change the effect of a magical item, but it’s not like Strunk to use one. He is a sorcerer. Still, I will let Merlin know.”
“And it has a terrible effect on people. It made Gawain forget who he is.”
John and Maya exchange a glance. Didn’t Gawain just go so deep into his cover he wasn’t able to switch it off again?
“And it did different things to other people. Maya… And John, was… John, tell C what it did to you.”
John briefly describes what happened in the cave.
“Thank you for that,” C replies at last. “I will pass that information to Merlin. Now, do you need anything? Any equipment or help?”
“Could you get us a boat?” Bea asks.
“A boat!” John scoffs, but C does not treat this request as ridiculous.
“Of course. I shall arrange to have one sent out. Text the location you want it to be delivered. Anything else?”
“I need a knife,” Maya says. “Just a knife. Not one of Merlin’s. And we could use a couple of Maglights.”
“I understand. Again, text Field comms your requirements.”
“I’d like a cudgel,” John says. “Just an ordinary wooden cudgel. Nothing magical. Nothing enhanced. Just a heavy wooden stick for hitting things with.”
“I am sure we can manage that.”
“Can I get… What are those spikey metal balls? You know? For hitting things?” Bea asks.
“A mace?” John says.
“Yes! One of those.”
“No,” C says. “You may not. Far too much likelihood of you hitting one of your teammates.”
“Dammit. All right. A shotgun then.”
“Very well. I shall have those items sent to the location you specify. If you think of anything else, text it to the usual number.”
After C hangs up, the team spread their maps on the car bonnet.
“We’re here,” John says, his finger stabbing a point on the map. The solid beam of the torch makes the text difficult to read, and his hand throws a deep black shadow on the paper. “The hotel is here. We had been planning to try up here.” He points at a section of the cave system to the north-east.
“Yeah, but there’s no easy route to get there. It’s on the other side of the mountain,” Maya replies. “From what C says, we don’t have time. When I was with Thomson, that woman said they were doing their last practise before they attempt the ritual.”
“We could just go back to the hotel,” Bea says.
“Yeah,” Maya says. “Just push our way through.”
” I don’t think that’s a good idea after what happened last time,” John objects. “It’ll attract too much attention. We don’t know if that Figgs bloke would tell the Cult we were there.”
“True,” Maya agrees.
“What about here?” John says, moving his finger across the page to another entrance north of the hotel. “It even says it’s an entrance.”
“We’ll go there, then,” Maya replies. “We should go now. It’s at least half an hour to get there, and we need to scout it out before the Covenant delivers our equipment.”
This is the tourist entrance to the cave. Now, the digital clock on the Range Rover’s dash clicking over to 01:02, it is pitch black save for the stars overhead and a single spotlight illuminating part of a sculpture that sits like a giant arrow fletching outside the cave.
Within the gaping maw, they find a locked gate.
“Shame we broke the lockpicks, eh Bea?” John says.
“Yeah, but we’re getting new ones.”
They return to the car to wait and catch some much-needed sleep.
A couple of hours or so later, gravel crunches as a Range Rover identical to their own pulls up. It is towing a trailer. The driver gets out, cap jammed low over his face, and knocks on their window.
“Hi,” says John.
“Got any ID?”
“Our car is exactly the same as yours,” Bea exclaims. “Who else would we be?”
“We don’t have a monopoly on black Range Rovers, love,” the man says dryly.
Maya hold up her ID and her distinctive Covenant credit card. The man snaps a photo with his phone.
“Great stuff.” He goes back to the trailer, unloads a box that’s bigger than he is, then drives off without saying another word.
Maya gets out her axe and heads for the box.
“Don’t use the axe! You might puncture the boat!” John exclaims.
Without a word, Maya carefully uses her sharpened axe to first lift then slice through the plastic strapping, and they unpack the box.
Inside are a pair of collapsible canoes. Each comes in three parts, the parts nested inside one another. There is a wrapped bundle containing the other items requested, including a sawn-off shotgun and a sledgehammer handle.
John and Maya decipher Merlin’s instructions, which appear to have been written as a stream of consciousness in his native Norwegian while he was drunk, then translated into English using Google by one of his crew. Once the two craft are assembled, they have two Canadian-style canoes, with cargo compartments doubling as buoyancy in the fore, aft, and forming the middle seat. Each boat is light enough to be carried easily be any one of them.
“God’s teeth, these had better not be magical,” John mutters.
After shoving all the packaging into the car, they portage the two canoes to the cave entrance, where they pick the lock and file inside.
The first cave is filled with reproductions of the early cave art found in the depths below. Dim lights at ground level offer just enough light to see by. They stick to the walkway, then find another door at the end of a long, artificial tunnel. Bea unlocks this, and they descend into the deep.
They find water quickly. It is cold but doesn’t have the bone-freezing chill of a melted glacier, and there is nothing ominous or oppressive that they cannot ascribe to merely being deep underground. Bea and John climb into one of the boats, Bea taking up her station at the prow with a Maglight and her shotgun. Maya has the other boat to herself. They find caving helmets with lights in one of the cargo spaces, the high beams picking out the gnarled surface of the rock.
They set off into the cave.
Time loses its meaning. John grumbles, but it is only his stomach complaining about not having had much more than a bag of crisps and a ham and cheese sandwich. The only other sounds are their own breath, the splash of the paddles, and the soft lap of water against the hulls.
They gradually become aware of a blue glow beneath them, and sparkles dancing in the air. The glow is dim, not enough to see by, and the sparkles are widely separated, like stars seen through high, thin cloud on a moonless night.
Suddenly, the boats bump into a wall, the collision nearly sending Bea into the water. Below them, the blue light shines brightly from what looks like a gap in the rock .
Maya rummages in the cargo holds and finds a slick, grey outfit. It resembles a wetsuit, but is both more flexible and yet somehow more robust. She also finds a mask with a tube sticking out the top like a snorkel, and an inner mask that seems to go over the mouth and nose.
“Looks like we’re going in,” she says.
John finds another couple of suits in a cargo space in his and Bea’s boat.
“This doesn’t seem like a very good idea,” he says.
“I don’t see what option we have,” Bea says. “We’re not going to be able to get in via the Cult’s estate. God knows what’s going on with Gawain. The hotel’s a write-off and only gets us to water in any case, and the other entrance is on the other side of the mountain.”
John pushes his boat away from the wall. After a few seconds, it once again bumps against the rock. A current definitely flows into the gap below them.
“Well, I’m going,” Maya says, wrapping her phone in a waterproof pouch. John holds her boat while she strips off and wriggles into her suit. “What about you, Bea?”
“Oh yeah,” Bea says, holding up a rubbery garment. “This looks like it should fit.”
“What about you, John? Are you coming, or are you going to sit here in the dark by yourself and wait for us to come back?”
“You know, that’s not my only other valid option,” John protests, but he takes off his shoes and, once Bea has finished struggling into her suit, he takes off the rest of his clothes and works the other suit over his body.
Bea finds a larger drybag and seals her shotgun inside, while Maya forms a loop in the end of a length of Merlin’s light, thin rope. John packs another length into the same tow-bag that Bea is using for her shotgun. Fixing the loop around a rocky outcrop, Maya slips into the water.
“Should we try to bring one of the boats?” Bea asks.
“We’d have to flood a couple of compartments,” John says, “And I don’t fancy trying to get it out at the other end. We need to move fast and light. Better off leaving it here.”
Maya pulls her mask down over her face and ducks under the water. The other two follow suit.
The gap is a narrow tunnel. There isn’t enough room to turn around, and they have to move through the space with their arms out in front of them. Maya goes first, then John, followed by Bea. The masks have bone-conductor speakers built into them, and the inner masks are rebreathers fitted with mics, so they can talk to one another, but mostly all they can hear is the rasping of their own breath and the occasional grunt of exertion.
John is claustrophobic, and for a while he wrestles the burgeoning panic into submission, but when they have been working their way through the tunnel for at least twenty minutes, it starts to get the better of him. He slows down, breathing in short, hard, panting gasps. His rebreather starts gassing out, and bubbles drift from the snorkel above his head, covering the tunnel roof in rippling patches of liquid silver.
As Maya tries to talk John out of his impending panic attack, they hear something underneath her voice. Or is it in the water? It sounds like… A cello?
Dun DUN. Dun DUN. Dun DUN.
Bea twists her head to look over her shoulder as far as she can. She thinks she sees a swirl of movement out of the corner of her eye. It’s a shadow where no shadow should be, something making the dim blue glow surrounding them dimmer still.
There’s a tale, a story, a rumour told by Hunters who have been fortunate — or unfortunate — enough to have encountered Merlin’s particular brand of support. A tale told in bars, when they should happen to find themselves sharing war stories, or to amuse each other on long flights to obscure places. A tale of a Hunter unit once dispatched to infiltrate an island fortress, or to recover a mysterious object from a sunken ship, or to dispatch a sea monster in its watery lair. These Hunters were given equipment to enable them to operate underwater. Rebreathers.
Only, as is so often the case with Merlin’s equipment, there was a fatal flaw.
The rebreathers summoned sharks. Even where sharks could not possibly exist.
Especially where sharks could not possibly exist.
“I don’t want to worry you guys,” Bea says. “But MOVE!”
She pushes against the tunnel walls with her feet, and shoves John’s feet with her hands. Ahead, Maya accelerates, using fingers and toes to push, pull and thrash her way to the tunnel exit.
The three of them emerge into a vast pool of ultramarine. John strikes for the surface in a frantic scramble of powerful but clumsy breaststroke. The suits maintain neutral buoyancy, and Bea turns to watch the tunnel as Maya swims up to John at a more leisurely pace.
John has ripped his mask off and is gasping in deep, wheezing breaths.
“Bloody fucking MERLIN!” he swears.
They are in an underground lake around 200m in length by 50 in width. It glows with an intense, pure blue. Above them, in the air, silver sparkles dance in drifts like mayflies made of mica. The water is deep, and goes right to the cave wall, apart from where there is a dark, irregular slash at the far end.
Bea pops up a metre or so away. John turns, alerted by the noise, and behind Bea he sees a dark shape; a fin in the water.
He drops his mask and sprints for the other end of the lake in an untutored front crawl. His mask, transparent silicone, is quickly lost as it drifts down into the light.
Bea looks round and sees what might be a moderately sized sturgeon breaching the surface before diving back down into the water.
“Is there such a thing as a cave shark?” she asks.
“Maybe,” Maya asks. “And if there wasn’t, there is now.”
They follow John to the other end of the lake, keeping hold of their masks.
When they get there, John is lying on his back on the gritty, fine silt of the beach.
“There had better by a way out of this cave that doesn’t involve going in the water. I am NOT going back,” he says.
He picks himself up, and they follow a narrow, tall gash in the rock until it opens out into a vast boulder field. The sparkles are growing denser, but the light here is more orange than blue. At the far side of the boulder field is a steep slope up to a ledge, and the shadow above the ledge suggests there might be a way through.
They pick their way across the boulders but find that the rubber booties of their suits lack enough grip to climb the slope . The ground there is soft and slippy. It’s like trying to climb a hill covered in knee-deep, damp talcum powder.
Bea takes the other rope from her drybag and then, with Bea on the bottom, Maya in the middle, and John on top, they form a tower against the slope, giving John just enough reach to get his fingertips around a rocky edge and pull himself up.
The sparkles swarm him like hungry mosquitoes, but this time he somehow is able to brush off their influence. He finds a sturdy looking stalagmite and ties the rope around it, then throws the loose end down the slope so Maya can haul herself up.
When she gets to the top, the sparkles swarm her. She tries to brush them away, almost squealing, then runs in a mad panic further into the cave, just as Bea approaches the top herself. The swarm attacks Bea; Bea heaves and heaves on the rope, somehow not managing to make progress, until suddenly she overcomes whatever is holding her and sprawls onto the ledge.
The shotgun tied to her waist had become trapped between two boulders. The waist strap snapped, and now her shotgun is still down at the bottom of the slope.
“We have to get Maya!” John says.
“I’m not leaving without my gun!” Bea yells, and starts slithering back down the slope.
John hesitates for only a moment before running after Maya. There is a short, wide, low-ceilinged tunnel, then another great cavern. The floor of this one is perhaps ten metres below the balcony ledge on which he stands. The whole cave is flooded with light coming from his right. Instinctively, he heads in that direction, and finds Maya standing in an opening in the cliff, looking out over the estate.
He takes in the view. The sun is low on the horizon, but already blazing yellow white with the promise of a warm day. The birds are singing in the trees, which shiver and rustle in the wind. John has never heard as sweet a sound as the territorial avian yelling and the gentle psithurism; nor felt anything as glorious as the warmth of sun on his cheeks. This is his way out, even if it does mean going back for the rope.
“Got a message on my phone, ” Maya tells him. “It says, ‘We have lost your signal. We are unable to reach you. We have pertinent information. Contact ASAP.’ I haven’t got a signal, Is yours any better?”
John’s phone is Covenant standard, rather than Maya’s Nokia 3210. He fishes it from inside his suit, and it starts buzzing.
“Same message here,” he says. “But I want to go and get Bea, first. She’s freaking out as well. Turns out she suffers separation anxiety when she doesn’t have any weapons.”
They head back into the cave. As they make their way along the balcony, they spot Bea lowering herself over the edge, as if she’s found a way down to the cave floor.
“Bea!” John shout-whispers. It echoes around the cave, weirdly distorted. BEAbeabeabeabeabeabea.
Bea looks round. Stones scatter as she adjusts her grip. She makes no attempt to climb back up. John realises she has the rope. He can see it bulging at the top of her pack.
“BEA!” he yells.
BEAbeabeabeabeabeabeabeabeabeabea.
“John!” She starts climbing back up, and he hurries over to help. “I got the rope. I bet you’re glad I went back for my shotgun now.”
“We could have got the rope anyway!” he tells her. “We’re all at the top of the rope. You don’t need to climb back down a rope to retrieve it. You just reel it in. Good grief, those sparkles must be eating your brain!”
He takes her by the elbow and all three of them go back to the opening in the cliff face.
“Wow,” Bea says. “Is that the estate?”
“Yeah, ” Maya replies. She points with one finger. “That’s the tree where I met Thompson.”
Bea’s phone buzzes as it finds a signal, and, remembering he is to call in, John hits his speed dial. Jane Darling picks up before the phone has had a chance to ring.
“John!” she exclaims, her voice oddly muffled. “Sorry, I’m just eating a pancake. I’m so pleased to hear from you. We were worried. You’ve been dark for hours.”
“We’ve been in a cave,” John says, putting her on speaker. “It was indeed very dark. I got a message saying there is pertinent information.”
“Let me see what comes up against your team… Right. Information flag. Says Merlin retrieved a single photo from Bert’s data. Has identified what appears to be an adaptogenic casing around a portal orb. He has heard of similar devices found in Russia, which is where they last had a confirmed sighting of Strunk. Such a casing can be used to modify the target of whatever magical item is inside. His best guess is the orb is meant to provide access to one thing, but this will change that to another thing. Like opening a door and finding Penge instead of Mornington Crescent”
“Well, that sounds terrible.”
“Is there anything you need?”
“Information on how to stop this orb, with or without the casing, would be helpful.”
“Apparently these casings can be vulnerable to strong magnetic fields.”
John remembers his baseball bat, currently back at the car where he’d left it as the useless lump of Merlin crap he’d thought it was. “Grrreat.”
“Anything else?”
“Yes!” Bea exclaims. “How do we deal with the sparkles?”
“Sparkles?”
“Yes! They’re like mosquitoes, but magic.”
“There are magic mosquitoes?”
“No! They’re not mosquitoes. They’re like little sparkly things. They do things to your brain. I think they’re the things that got Bert.”
“Very well. I shall pass a message to Merlin that you need advice on… magic brain-eating mosquitoes that may or may not have affected Gawain. Anything else?”
“No,” John says tiredly. “Not right now. Just tell C that we’re heading back into the cave, so if you lose signal, we’re underground.”
“Wait, John. Don’t you think you should stay where you have a signal until I can get the answers to your questions from Merlin?”
John and Maya exchange a glance. John looks at the sun. They don’t know when the ritual will take place, but if the rehearsal was at night, surely the main event will be too? It can’t be much after 7am.
“Sure, Igraine,” he says. “We’ll wait until you call. Just… Be quick, aye?”