Omega (53 page)

‘I
know, I've read Margaret Murray too.' He chuckled. 'I was totting up, a week or two back, sitting angry and frustrated in Beehive - apart from my own family, there are just two Garter Knights still alive so far as we know and one of
them
is senile. .
..
Perhaps if I do ever get my job back, I'll recruit some rather more interesting new blood into it. After all, since Disestablishment stopped me being Head of the Church, I can be far more elastic in matters of religion. If anything, I have an obligation to be ecumenical. . . . Wasn't there a controversy in your Craft, oh, about forty years ago, over whether there was such a thing as a King of the Witches?'

'Quite a heated one.'

'Wouldn't it be ironical if people started calling
me
that?'

24

'What are we going to do with Bill Lazenby?' John asked, after he and Karen had been riding for some minutes in silence.

'He tried to desert, John. That can't be forgiven.'

'Of course not. He's got to be punished, as an example. But he can't be re-absorbed afterwards. He'd be unwilling and resentful and a weak link. . . . Oh, I know resentment
can
be harnessed and channelled, as a source of power -but not continuously in an operation like ours. We'd have to waste too much attention on him.'

'Of course.'

'And we can't just banish him because then he
would
escape. Join a white group somewhere - and we can't have that because he knows too much.'

'A great deal too much.'

'So we have to punish him and afterwards . . . Karen, there can't
be
an afterwards for him.' 'In other words, he's got to be executed.' John sighed. 'Yes.'

'I'm glad you recognize it, darling. . . . Come on, race you!'

She spurred her horse and was away but John was soon beside her
, for riding was one acomplishme
nt in which he equalled and even excelled her, and in his more analytical moods he sometimes wondered if she gave him opportunities to prove it as a calculated sop to his self-respect. She was his superior in magical power, in ruthlessness and in charisma - he had long accepted that - but she still needed him so she took care to nourish his pride.

He was still captivated by her, more so than ever (Joy was a ghost from the golden past, too painful to dwell on), but he could look at her reasonably objectively. Could admire, at this moment, as she galloped with streaming hair towards Stonehenge, the
brazen effectiveness of her barbarian-chieftaine
ss image which indeed he had helped her to create, for he had a good eye for theatrical effect. Always side-saddle and black-booted, from the waist down she was fashion-plate Edwardian, but she had topped it with a startlingly flamboyant, close-fitting blouse of scarlet brocade, covered in bad weather by a scarlet cloak. A sheath-knife hung from a silver belt. For ten or fifteen kilometres around, this extraordinary figure, with its long black hair unbound in-fair weather or foul, had become the symbol of the awe in which the Angels of Lucifer were held. Once she had become known, she had only to make an appearance and people hurried to do as they were told.

At Beltane, the Angels of Lucifer had lit a huge bonfire, on high ground near their village, which was visible through the night from border to border of their territory; their subjects within those borders had looked towards it uneasily, and drawn their curtains. May Day itself had dawned fine and warm and Karen had astonished them with an action which, in some way that none of them could explain, increased their superstitious fear of her still further. She had ridden the bounds of her realm, erect and regal, with John beside her and an escort behind. Skirt, boots, belted knife, and side-saddle were as always, but from the waist upwards she was naked except for a large silver inverted pentagram that flashed between her breasts. Her nipples were painted as scarlet as her lips. The total effect, which other women might have made absurd, she made terrifying.

Since Beltane, rain or shine (she seemed impervious to either) she had always ridden abroad like that. She was an intensified symbol of the Angel's power and men quailed before it. But she insisted on being its unique focus. When Jenny, the ex-Banwell nurse, riding with her one morning, had presumed to strip off her own shirt in imitation of her leader, Karen had merely looked at her in commanding silence. Jenny had flushed and replaced her shirt. Since then, no one had dared.

Today, jumping from the saddle as she arrived at the Henge a length behind John, she was the laughing warrior queen. The escort stayed respectfully beyond the encircling earthwork while John and Karen walked together among the huge sarsen trilithons, recovering their breath after the hard ride.

'I like your idea, John,' she said after a while. 'What did you call it? - "testing our heavy artillery" . . . Yes.'

'It almost frightens me,' John admitted. 'There's so much power here. Have
we
the strength to handle it?'

'Strength? After all we've achieved?'

'Even after that.'

The sun had disappeared behind a heavy bank of cloud and the lowering greyness reinforced John's doubts. His question had been almost rhetorical, fo
r until then Stone
henge had merely challenged him, not troubled him. But suddenly, in retrospect, it was no longer rhetorical. John shuddered.

Karen walked over to the Altar Stone at the focus of the bluestone horseshoe. She fingered it for a moment and then lay face upwards upon it throwing back her hair. She smiled serenely up at the sky. 'I dare anything that the Henge can do.'

'Don't try to frighten me with melodramatics,' John said, covering his unease with casualness. 'In spite of popular belief, that was
not
a sacrificial altar. The evidence is that it once stood upright.'

'A fallen phallus. All the more appropriate as an
execution
altar.'

'You mean Bill Lazenby?' John was no longer casual. 'God, Karen - we've never done
that
before.' ‘
We have
killed
before.' 'But ritual human sacrifice...'

'Bill has to die - you've said so yourself. Why not make his death serve a purpose? That would be a
real
test of our "heavy artillery".'

He looked down at her, fascinated and half-repelled, knowing that in their own terms she was right and almost despising himself for his reluctance. There were no half-measures possible, along the course to which they were committed. Yet still...

As he gazed, the sun broke through, bathing Karen and the Altar Stone in unexpected light. It was surely a sign, an endorsement of her intent. But could she draw the others along with her? . . . Most of them, yes, without hesitation, but one or two might baulk. His own support, he knew, would swing the balance; together they could command the Angels of Lucifer, as they had done from the start. If he failed her now, what breaches would he open?

'Very well, Karen. Tomorrow at dawn? New moon's the day after tomorrow, so it'll still be in the waning phase.'

'Tomorrow at dawn,' Karen said.

The eastern horizon was clear, with only the thinnest gauze of morning mist hugging it, so
there
would be no difficulty about timing the sacrifice. The
Angels
of Lucifer, their bodies glistening with the belladonna 'flying ointment', insulatory and hallucinatory, which Stanley Friell had prepared for them, danced in a wild ring widdershins between the outer ring and the horseshoe, keening and yelping; they
had
been
at
it for half an hour, enraptured and tireless, a dynamo of power that built and built, a charge awaiting detonation by the sacrifice, and ready to detonate in turn the vastly greater power locked in the ancient stones.

Inside the great horseshoes of trilithons were only Karen, John and Sonia the Maiden, grouped around the victim spreadeagled on the Altar Stone. There had been no need to bind him, for Stanley had prescribed for him too, with a dose that paralysed his limbs but left him conscious and wide-eyed. The Maiden stood behind him, stroking his head and shoulders, crooning to him, whispering flattery to him, telling him what a fine man he was, what a worthy sacrifice, filling his field of view with a last inverted vision of the living. John faced East across the Altar Stone, awaiting the first glimpse of the sun, ready to give the command to Karen as she stood opposite him, ceremonially astride with the knife held high.

A sliver of golden fire flickered on the horizon, and John cried: 'Now!'

As the blood pulsed on to the Altar Stone, Karen led them to join the ring of dancers, the red knife still in her hand, laughing in exultation as the earth shook beneath them and the towering megaliths groaned.

'The epicentre was in the area of Salisbury Plain,' Professor Arklow told Harley. 'A strange phenomenon. It could be felt as
a
slight physical sensatio
n in the Cardiff and
Manchester Beehives - and, as you know, here in London -but not apparently in the more distant Beehives. And yet I've had no reports of actual damage. Have you, Sir Reginald?'

‘
Not so far, Professor. All the Beehives reported at once, of course - that's an established drill whenever the seismo-graphic duty officers report a sizeable tremor. All negative, except that as you say Cardiff and Manchester felt it. But agents on Surface within reach of radio points in the area have been reporting all morning, as well. They all say the same; considerable public alarm, naturally, but only trivial damage
..
. What's your prognosis? Are we in for more?'

That's what I mean by a strange phenomenon,' the professor said. 'After the past few months, we pride ourselves on having become more skilled than ever on reading the signs. A tremor of that magnitude
should
have given us warning. It did not. I've even been back over the last few days' recordings to see if we'd missed anything but there was nothing. The tremor did not fit into any normal pattern nor has it been followed by any normal aftermath. It just
happened,
Sir Reginald. And to be frank with you, as a scientist I find that most disturbing. I keep asking myself: "Why?" - and finding no answers. . . . What's so unusual about Salisbury Plain?'

I have a very good idea, Harley smiled to himself. But if I told you, my dear professor, you would not believe me.

Moira sat bolt upright in bed, jerked awake by a vertiginous awareness of evil. Her movement woke Dan, who sat up beside her, looked puzzled and grasped her hand.

'Did you feel it?' she asked as the wave subsided.

'I felt
something.
Something very nasty. From over there.' He pointed south-east and Moira nodded. Although Dan was less psychically s
ensitive than herself, she knew
from long experience that he had a better sense of direction. 'Savernake Forest?'

'Could be.' He was already out of bed and pulling on clothes. 'Hadn't we better call Tricia? If it's Karen and John, we need all the facts we can get.'

'If it's them and strong enough to wake us up,' Moira said grimly, 'we need the Elders.'

Within a quarter of an hour they were all gathered in the kitchen, the warmest place in that early dawn; the High Priestesses and High Priests of all fourteen covens, Tricia Hayes their best clairvoyant and old Sally who had heard them moving about and had got up to stoke the fire and make them a hot drink. Dan and Moira had not had to rouse them all; Tricia herself and several of the others had also been wakened by the psychic shock-wave and were already getting dressed.

'Well, Tricia?' Moira asked. 'What can
you
tell us?'

'Blood,' Tricia said. 'That's what I got first. And tall stones - megaliths. Then I pulled myself together and tried to be calm - it wasn't easy, I'd been overwhelmed at first
...
It's the Angels of Lucifer.'

No one asked 'Are you sure?' because they knew Tricia. If she was not sure, she said so.

'Megaliths,' Dan said. 'Stonehenge and Avebury are both on their doorstep.'

'It's not Avebury,' Jean Thomas insisted, a little unexpectedly because she was seldom emphatic about her own . clairvoyance. 'We know Avebury inside out and we love it. If it
had
been Avebury, we'd have picked it up. Wouldn't we, Fred?'

"Yes, I think we would . . . Could it be Stonehenge, Tricia?'

'I've never been there, oddly enough,' Tricia told him. 'Let me try . . .' She closed her eyes and everybody kept quiet, waiting. 'I suppose it must be. Nothing else could be that
big.
...
A road with a tunnel under it . . .'