Susan shrugged. She went back into the main bar and sure enough, there was a clock there. She was setting her watch again in vain hope it would dry out when she saw a flash of movement through the window, causing a sudden blip of fear. She ran over to make sure the windows were all latched shut, and saw the publican and the customer who’d sensibly walked straight out. They were on the far side of the road, talking to a woman in a clerical dog collar who listened intently and then all three swiftly walked away.
“I think the vicar’s gone to get help!” called out Susan.
“Traditional,” replied Merlin, coming up behind her. “Someone’s probably already used the police radio in the Granada. I should have disabled it. Don’t worry about your watch—we might have a bit more time than I thought. Viv, you on the phone?”
“Yes!” came a cry from the other bar.
“There’s a door from the kitchen,” said Merlin. “We’ll go out, through the car park, across the green to the pond. Give me the sword.”
Susan handed him the ancient sword, and he buckled it on his belt.
“Why are we going to the pond?” asked Susan, frowning.
Again, Merlin didn’t answer. This time it was because he was staring out the window.
Susan looked. The sky was darkening above the field to the east and she suddenly heard and felt a constant low vibration, the bass humming of thousands upon thousands of wings. . . .
“The birds,” she said. “The starlings!”
The full murmuration had come together again and was swooping in over the fields, tendrils composed of hundreds of birds leaping out ahead of the thousands in the main body, almost touching the ground before gliding up again, looking into every dip and hollow in the ground and behind every tree and building.
“Viv! We have to go now!”
Chapter Nineteen
How far away lies Silvermere?
A thousand leagues and none
Where shall I find the hidden way
If you don’t know, none will say
MERLIN’S SHOUT ECHOED THROUGH THE PUB AS HE GRABBED SUSAN’S elbow and dragged her away from the window, then hustled her towards the door behind the bar.
Vivien came rocketing out of the parlor bar, but Merlin hadn’t waited. He and Susan almost fell out of the back door, running across the potholed car park to the village green. The pond in the middle of the green was roughly round and only about sixty feet in diameter, its clear water edged with reeds. Susan had no idea why they were running towards it, but the swiftest glance over her shoulder confirmed what they were running away from: dense, questing tendrils composed of thousands and thousands of birds.
Merlin stopped at the edge of the pond, and knelt down. He looked back, too, and saw the probing fingers of the murmuration testing the windows of the pub, pushing down the chimney, battering at the doors. Birds stunned themselves, or broke their necks, and fell like crumbs around every searching tendril, but there were always more birds funneled down from the vast, pulsating mass overhead.
The hum had become a roar, growing louder and louder.
“I hope this works,” he said, stripping the glove from his left hand. It shone pale silver in the sunlight as he extended his fingers and thrust them into the water, at the same time muttering something under his breath.
Behind them, the vast mass of birds swooped across the roof of the pub, cascaded down into the car park, and leaped up again, tendrils rushing towards the three of them in the pond. Hundreds if not thousands of birds seemingly intent on smashing straight into them. Many of them would die, fragile bird bodies crushed, but at speed so many small tough beaks and claws would be like grapeshot, or nails exploded in a lethal cone from an improvised explosive device.
The water parted under Merlin’s hand, flung back to either side, and the bottom of the pond sank away, mud vanishing to reveal rough-worked steps cut into earth and then the totally incongruous sight of a familiar-looking door. A hotel door, with the metal numbers “617.”
Merlin’s room at the Northumberland.
Merlin ran down the steps with Susan and Vivien close behind, even as the leading finger of the murmuration reached the green, totally blocking the sun, the hum of all those beating wings now a roar, as if a waterfall cascaded down behind them.
Merlin flung the door open and reached back to grip Susan’s left hand, pulling her in. Vivien followed, kicking the door shut behind her, accompanied by a sudden drumbeat like a machine gun as starlings smashed into it, dozens of small, feathery missiles.
Then there was silence.
“Where are we?” asked Susan, looking around. They were in almost total darkness, but she had a sensation of space about them and the air, though still, had the bite of frost in it; she felt it on her face. The only light came from the silvery glow of Merlin’s hand, and a moment later Vivien’s, as she took off her glove. But this was not enough to illuminate more than their faces, and the ground beneath them. Which, Susan noticed, was not bottom-of-a-pond mud but stone.
“Nowhere,” said Merlin quietly. “Somewhere. An in-between place. Vivien?”
It was cold, and becoming colder with every passing second. Susan shivered.
“Vivien!” Merlin spoke more urgently, his breath a cloud of white.
“We are atop a low hill, in the spring, when the air is neither warm nor cool,” said Vivien, gesturing with her hand, as if indicating a vista for them to gaze upon. “Under a crescent moon in a clear sky, so bright with stars we can see our way.”
Susan blinked. The sky had lit up with stars, and a slim sliver of moon hung there, and in the sudden light she could see they were indeed standing upon a low hill, of purple heather and fallen stones. But beyond the hill and the sky there was intense darkness, a total absence of light and detail.
The intense feeling of increasing cold disappeared. Their breath was invisible now, no longer frosty billows of white.
“The old road follows the ley, the old road shows us the way,” intoned Vivien, once again gesturing. Her silver hand was brighter now, as bright as the stars and moon, while Merlin’s had dimmed to a faint glow.
A road sprang up ahead of them down the hill and across the dark void. A straight, welcoming road, of dirt and not enough gravel and numerous potholes, with wildflowers growing on the grassy verges. But to either side of the road there was nothing but the dark.
“Susan, keep holding Merlin’s hand and stay close behind me,” said Vivien. She stepped onto the road and began to walk, holding her hand up in front, as if she needed to feel the way or might come upon some unseen obstruction.
Merlin’s right hand gripped Susan’s left. She was comforted by his touch. His skin was warm, hers still icy. But she did not move.
“Where are we going?” she asked quietly.
Apart from their voices and footsteps, there was no noise here at all.
“Silvermere,” said Merlin, his voice also low. “Where the Grail-Keeper resides. It can be reached through any body of water, but usually we pass through at the lake in the old quarry at Wooten, where Merrihew fishes for the ancient carp. The Greats open the way, and lead whoever’s going there. Viv and I have never done it by ourselves before.”
“How far . . . how long do we walk through wherever this is?” asked Susan. She tried to sound calm, but she wasn’t. There was something eerie and deeply troubling about the space around them, beyond the road.