Firestar (5 page)

His mind reeled from the shock of it all as he realized that he was now weak, helpless and totally dependent on the stag.

Tall, turreted and elegant, Morven Castle had, in times past, stood up bravely to the onslaught inflicted by warring clans. Over the years,
however
, the weather had also taken its toll and, like many of the other old houses and cottages of the glen, the castle was now showing signs of wear and tear. Nevertheless, thought Chuck appreciatively as he walked towards it in the gathering dusk, it retained an elegance rarely found in modern
buildings
. He drew his jacket more closely round him for although it was April, the wind was bitterly cold. He turned as he reached the cavernous front door that gave onto the main reception hall and, pausing with his hand on the huge handle, looked again at the towering peak that was Morven.

Although he had been pleasantly surprised at the gentle, comforting sweep of Glenmorven, a feeling of acute depression swept over him at the sight of the mountain. He pressed his lips together in sheer frustration as his eyes scanned its steep slopes. There was nothing for it, he reckoned. He was just going to have to wait until Powerprobe locked onto Morven again before he made his next move — aliens or no aliens! For the truth was, he thought disappointedly, that neither he nor any of the geologists and climbers, had discovered
anything
. He just couldn’t believe it. They had been over the mountain again and again with the
proverbial
fine toothcomb and in all the time they’d
been there they hadn’t found a thing that was
suspicious
. The Geiger counter readings were normal, the rocks were normal, the mountain itself was normal; in short, there was absolutely nothing to account for Powerprobe’s massive reaction.

The only thing that wasn’t normal, as far as he was concerned, was the castle itself for although things had initially gone quite smoothly there had been several strange incidents of late that had made him wonder if the building
was
, actually, haunted. He hadn’t believed Lord Robertson when he’d hinted at it but, he reflected, the castle was certainly old enough to house a few ghosts.

He entered the Great Hall and relaxed
imperceptibly
as his eyes swept over a relatively homely scene. By common consent, they’d made the hall both their living and working area. A long,
mahogany
table and a dozen chairs had been moved in from the cold vastness of the dining room and a collection of sofas and armchairs, drawn from
various
parts of the castle, now clustered round the huge fireplace that dominated the hall. A fire had been lit and the logs burned and crackled, sending a welcoming wave of heat through the huge room whose high, panelled walls were hung with a
variety
of shields, spears, ferocious looking claymores and the odd blunderbuss. As castles went, he thought, it was proving to be remarkably cosy.

Seated round the huge table in the middle of the hall were the group of young men that Mrs Ferguson had objected to so vehemently. Although they looked a pretty motley crew they were, he knew, professional to the core and it was here,
he thought as he shrugged off his heavy, padded jacket and slung it over an antique coat stand, that the trouble lay. They didn’t believe in ghosts and the unexpected advent of the supernatural had given them the jitters.

“Hi, Chuck,” a murmur of greeting ran round a table that was piled high with a variety of dishes. Chuck took his place beside Shane and as they all started eating, the conversation inevitably turned to the strange events of the past few days.

Sam started it. Young and impressionable, he added a lavish amount of ketchup to an enormous hamburger, replaced the sauce bottle and, fitting the top half of the bun in place, looked across the table at Jake. “I don’t care what you say, Jake,” he said, preparing to take a mouthful, “but
I
reckon the place is haunted.”

Jake frowned. “You’re not serious, are you?”

“How else do you account for it, then?”

“You slipped on the stairs.”

“I didn’t slip,” Sam protested vigorously. “I tell you, I was pushed!”

“Nobody pushed you, Sammy. I saw you on the stairs and there was nobody anywhere near you!”

“That’s what I mean,” Sam said irritably. “It must have been a ghost.
And
I felt cold all over. That’s what happens in haunted houses. I saw it on a TV programme. There’s always a cold feeling around.”

“What do you expect?” scoffed Jake. “Castles are draughty places … all the rooms are huge for a start.”

Chuck frowned slightly but made no comment for he, too, on occasion had felt sudden waves of
freezing cold air sweep over him for no apparent reason.

Shane’s tone of voice was indulgent. “Re-lax,” he grinned. “Y’all are going to be plenty warm enough tonight.”

Chuck, who had asked for fires to be lit in all the bedrooms, made a mental note of the mockery in his voice and curbed his irritation with an effort. He’d done his best to like Shane but was finding him hard going.

“I agree with Sammy,” another geologist said, looking up from his plate and glancing
suspiciously
round the hall. “I think there
are
ghosts. This castle’s old enough to have hundreds.”

“Ghosts don’t exist, Steve,” Jake said, glancing round the table of half-excited, half-fearful faces, “and if one of them dares come into my bedroom, well, I reckon I’ll just take one of those
blunderbusses
from the wall and pump it chock full of lead.”

“No, you won’t,” Chuck interrupted, sternly, “firstly, because I don’t want us to be landed with bills for bullet holes in the panelling and, secondly, just in case you’ve forgotten — ghosts happen to be dead already.”

Chuck, nevertheless, was worried, for he himself had had an alarming experience that he hadn’t mentioned to the others. The castle was large and, not unnaturally, full of unexpected flights of stairs, odd hallways and long corridors. Despite this, it hadn’t taken them long to find their way around, so Chuck hadn’t been unduly worried when he’d suddenly found himself in an unfamiliar corridor.
Retracing his steps had proved fruitless and only made him more confused. In the end, however, the experience had a nightmare quality that sent his brain into overdrive; staircases led nowhere,
corridors
stretched endlessly and, when he turned to look back, he found that he’d passed doors that he didn’t even remember seeing. And then, to his relief, he’d heard voices and recognized a familiar flight of stairs. Shane had made no comment when he’d come clattering down the stairs at a run but Chuck knew he’d been curious for he hadn’t been able to hide his anxiety or the look of relief that had swept over his face as he’d seen them in the hall.

Later that evening, as he crouched on the
patterned
Persian carpet in front of the roaring blaze, prodding the logs tentatively with a poker, Shane looked speculatively at Chuck, who was leaning back thoughtfully in a very old armchair of
enormous
proportions. “So everything that’s been
happening
has a reasonable explanation, then, has it?” he enquired calmly as they all sat round the fire.

“Of course, it has, Shane,” Chuck answered,
trying
to raise a smile. “Surely educated people like us don’t believe in ghosts in principle?”

And, as though someone had been listening to every word that had been said, a sudden wave of icy-cold air swept over them. Despite the heat from the blazing fire, it left them staring at one another, their teeth chattering like castanets.

Sir James Erskine sat up so abruptly that the rest of the committee looked at him in surprise. “Sorry,” he apologized, colouring slightly, “I … er, didn't quite catch what you said, Alex.”

Pale April sunlight streamed through the
windows
of the Scottish Parliament building at the foot of the Royal Mile in Edinburgh and slanted across a small room where five men sat round a polished table that was littered with maps and documents.

Alex Crawford looked across at him and smiled. “I know it sounds ridiculous,” he said, looking again at the letter he'd picked out from the sheaf of papers that lay in front of him, “but that's what it says here. Apparently a crofter reported seeing a stone giant walking down the side of a
mountain
.”

“Was he sober?” Duncan Fletcher asked, amid laughter.

“It would seem so,” Alex allowed. “There was a storm at the time and he saw it in the lightning flashes. He says it was the size of a house.”

“Where was this?” queried Sir James.

Alex looked at the address. “Sutherland,” he said, “that's in your constituency Malcolm, isn't it?”

Malcolm MacLeod looked up and nodded. “Stone giants, eh! Well, well! The last time I heard of
them
was in story books when I was a wee lad.”

“Did anyone else see it?” Duncan asked. “I mean to say, stone giants the size of houses must be pretty noticeable.”

“It's a lonely glen. There
is
another house there but apparently the people in it were all fast asleep at the time.”

“And where did it go?”

“According to the letter, it seemed to disappear. He only glimpsed it for a second or so, but by the time he got down to the road, it was gone. The storm had caused a landslide, though, and blocked the road completely. Not only that, it broke a bridge, dammed a river and took down the
telephone
line as well.”

“Have they cleared it yet?”

“I don't think so. It's a pretty isolated area and not very high on anyone's list of priorities. By my reckoning, there are at least fifty glens currently cut off by landslides, broken bridges and the like. The storms have been playing havoc all over the Highlands and it's causing real problems!”

“Climate change?” offered one of the committee members.

“It would seem so. At the moment we're
inundated
with demands for support from community centres across the Highlands. There are so many people in need of temporary housing that they just can't cope.” He sat back in his chair. “You've all seen the media coverage. It's a serious situation. People are having to sleep in schools, libraries and town halls all over the north.”

“Do we have a map of the damaged areas?”
queried
Sir James. “I'd be interested to see it.”

“I'll put it up on the screen. Hang on a minute.”

Several of the men pushed their chairs back to get a better view as a map of the Highlands clicked up on a wall-mounted screen. It was dotted here and there with red crosses.

“The red crosses mark the glens that have been cut off by landslides,” he said, “and you can see just by looking at it, that the damage is widespread.”

“Are the crosses just a general indication of
damage
in the area or do they actually pin-point the landslides?” Sir James asked.

“They pin-point the landslides,” was the reply.

“I don't know if it's by accident or design,” Malcolm pointed out, “but don't you find it
interesting
that the landslides seem to be quite …
strategically
placed?”

There was silence as five pairs of eyes scanned the map thoroughly.

“You're right, you know, Malcolm,” Alex Crawford said slowly. “I didn't think of it like that before, but you're right.”

“It surely can't be deliberate … can it?” someone asked.

“What are you implying?” Duncan frowned. “Landslides don't fall to order … they're a natural occurrence. There's no rhyme or reason to them.”

“The fact is, though,” Sir James said, “that each and every one of those landslides blocks a road or breaks a bridge at a vital point. That's why
people
are having to leave their homes and stay with relatives and friends — because they can't get in or out of their own glens. And in most cases, the phone lines are down as well.”

“They could use mobiles, surely?”

Malcolm smiled ruefully. “You're a Lowlander, Duncan. If you'd lived in the Highlands for any length of time, you'd know that quite a lot of people don't have television sets, far less mobile phones. The mountains block out any signal there is.”

“It might be my imagination,” Alex said, taking charge of the conversation, “but if you look at the crosses, you can see that there's a sort of eastward trend. There are lots of crosses in the north and west but very few in the east.”

“That's true,” agreed Malcolm. “You can almost tell which glens will be cut off next.”

“Another thing is that so far no one has been hurt, no houses have been damaged and as far as I know, no livestock has been killed.”

“Yes, it is strange, isn't it? The only damage so far seems to be to the roads, bridges and telephone lines.”

“Do you think the landslides are being caused by explosions, then?” Duncan said worriedly. “I mean, if they're being triggered deliberately then the storms would provide good cover. Thunder would disguise the noise of any explosion and nobody would be any the wiser.”

“But why would anyone want to do a thing like that?”

“Well, there are so many weirdos around these days, you just never know.” He gestured vaguely. “It could be some maniac that wants to restore the Highlands to their natural state.”

“That's not as far-fetched as it sounds,” Sir
James said thoughtfully, indicating the papers in front of him, “for that's actually what's
happening
. Look at the statistics we've been given on the numbers of refugees that have moved to coastal areas. To a great extent, the Highlands are being cleared of people!”

Alex Crawford looked at the crosses on the map and regarded Sir James with alarm. “Good
heavens
,” he said, “you could be right, at that!”

“Havers,” one of the men snorted. “I just can't believe that people are going round causing
landslides
all over the place. They'd be spotted for a start! Strangers in the Highlands stand out like sore thumbs, especially shady looking characters!” He leant back in his chair and looked round the table. “There's still the odd bit of cattle rustling that goes on from time to time and the farmers are wary. Besides which, mining the hillside so that roads and bridges are blocked wouldn't only take a lot of skill — it'd need unbelievable luck!”

“It's much more likely to be the Cri'achan,” agreed Malcolm MacLeod with a laugh.

“The who?”

“The Cri'achan,” Malcolm repeated, “the stone giants.”

“You must be joking!”

“That fellow in Sutherland said he saw one …” Malcolm said reasonably.

“Faery tales!” snorted Duncan.

“Come, now. Haven't you ever heard of the Old Man of the Mountains?”

“Well, yes, vaguely …”

“He was King of the Cri'achan, the stone giants,”
Malcolm explained. “The story goes that they walked the Highlands for hundreds of years until they tired and when they slept, the mountains captured them, covered them with soil and rocks and made them part of themselves. But legend has always had it that the Cri'achan are still there, asleep on the slopes of the glens and that one day they'll wake and walk the mountains again.”

“And you think that one of them has woken up?”

“More than one, by the sound of things,” Malcolm said.

“This is altogether ridiculous!” Duncan said loudly. “I can't believe that we're all sitting here listening to such a load of old … er … nonsense. I don't believe a word of it! Stone giants! Whatever next, for goodness sake!”

Many of those around the table looked doubtful and the chairman, too, shook his head in
disbelief
.

“I don't know,” Sir James said, “crofters are generally a pretty hard-headed lot. I think he definitely saw something. Maybe it wasn't really a stone giant but it could have been an accident of the weather that loosened the side of a hill and made him think there was one.”

“You're probably right, James,” Malcolm
admitted
, “and, really, I was only joking about the Cri'achan.”

“Let's keep it that way,” the chairman said brusquely. “If the press gets wind of stone giants tramping through the Highlands, there would be panic everywhere!” There was a nodding of
heads. “And can you imagine the media?” he added. “They'd milk a story like that for all it was worth!”

“What was the name you gave them, again? The stone giants, I mean?” asked Sir James.

“The stone giants?” Malcolm repeated. “In the Highlands, we call them the Cri'achan.”