Chapter Nineteen
----====Wesley====----
I was woken by a gentle hand on my shoulder. It was still dark outside, but there was sufficient illumination from the hallway beyond my now opened door for my eyes to make out the coven healer, Regan, at my bedside.
"What's wrong?" I asked groggily. "Another attack?"
"All is well," she reassured quietly. "Imogen has woken from her trance and wishes to speak to the three of you at the Earth's Heart. She has had visions that involve you. Get dressed in warm clothes and come downstairs."
Without waiting for an answer, she slipped silently from my room, and I heard her knock on another door and then enter.
I pushed my door shut and turned on the light. My travel clock said 4:30 AM; no wonder I felt like I hadn't even been to bed yet. I poked through the few clothes I had managed to bring with me from LA. None of them were exactly 'warm', having been purchased for the Californian climate. I opted for multiple layers and then headed for the bathroom.
Giles was just leaving the bathroom when I got there. He looked pale and tense. I wondered if he had managed any sleep at all. After his mind-boggling display of wizardry during the battle the previous evening, I imagined he must be feeling quite drained. We grunted quietly at each other in passing.
I freshened up and headed downstairs to find a solemn, near-silent group in the common room. Melisande met me at the foot of the stairs and placed a mug of steaming liquid in my hands. It smelt of freshly cut grass; a nice enough aroma in its place, but not one I wanted to drink in the wee hours of the morning.
I sat down next to Spike on the sofa, giving him a small smile. He grinned wryly in return, and offered a silent toast to me with his mug of blood. Judging by his expression as he drank from it, it was adulterated with similar herbs to those in the brew I had been given.
The vampire's face and hands were a mess of dark bruising and healing scabs. He was not pleasant to look at, although a good deal improved on the evening before. I shivered as I remembered the ferocity with which he had torn into the DH force. I'd never seen anything like it, not even from Angel during his most soul-repressed periods.
Spike's savagery and Giles' magic had left me feeling so very small and unimportant. I had decided as I laid down to sleep after the battle recovery effort was over, that the most worrying thing was that I was relieved to find this was the case. I didn't want to be important. I didn't want the things I did, or failed to do, to matter.
Reluctantly, I sipped the smallest amount from my mug. It really was disgusting -- like water someone had stewed spinach and burnt cork within. I lent forward with the intention of placing my mug on the table and then discreetly 'forgetting' about it, but Melisande caught my eye. She shook her head, frowning, and continued to glare until I straightened up again, still holding the vessel. Obediently, I took another sip and tried to control my gag reflex.
Beside me, Spike chuckled softly.
Giles and Regan entered from the kitchen. He too had a mug of the atrocious stuff, but I noted none of the women were drinking. The pair were muttering together intently, and judging by his deep frown, Giles did not appear to be in the best of moods. He looked at Spike and me with an expression that recalled to my mind several of my more unpleasant schoolmasters.
"Come on then, you two," he muttered. "Let's get this done." He gestured with his head towards the door outside.
"Uh uh." Regan shook her head. "Drink up first, every drop."
Giles gave her a thunderous look, which I found nerve-wracking even as a bystander, but the witch seemed utterly unfazed. The two locked eyes. I felt Spike twitch beside me, looked at him, and followed the line of his sight to Giles' free hand, which was fisted and held tensely at his side. Blue sparkles of magic energy danced across his knuckles.
Alarmed, I made to rise from the sofa. I was not sure what my intent was, but Spike caught my arm, and when I glanced at him questioningly, he shook his head slightly. I looked back at Giles and Regan. Their gazes were still unwaveringly locked, but Giles raised his mug to his sneering lips. He swallowed the contents down in one gulp and handed the emptied receptacle to the witch in a belligerent gesture. Regan smiled, and took it.
Seeing as I had little choice, I made myself think of pleasanter things and force swallowed the remaining concoction in my own mug. Spike's blood was already gone. Were we now ready for whatever it was we were about to do? Apparently not.
Frances appeared with lightly packed rucksacks for the three of us. Were we going on a long trek? I had been assuming that Imogen was somewhere close by. I took a quick look inside - wrapped sandwiches, bottle of spring water, a flask, basic utility items like a Swiss army knife and matches, and a tightly rolled 'Kagool' - those thin, waterproofed garments beloved of hikers and climbers the world over.
I wondered briefly if there was significance in the colours of the rucksacks we had been given. Mine was blue, Giles' was green, and Spike's bright yellow. He raised an eyebrow at its fluorescence, but thanked the woman politely, nonetheless.
Finally, Regan offered Giles a tall staff cut from a twisted, pale wood. A quite beautiful object, but Giles did not seem impressed. "I'm not some kind of ancient cripple," he growled at her.
"Rupert, do you really believe that I think you are?" she asked with an ironic smile.
"How the hell should I know what you think? You've told us sod all about this journey." He took the stave and all but stormed out the door.
Spike strode after him, grinning at Regan as he passed her. I ran my face through my hands, swallowed down the intense unease that was besetting me, and followed. The door shut behind my back. The three of us were alone.
Outside, it was chilly and damp. The mist was thick on the ground. I pulled on my blue Kagool, not having either Spike's leather jacket or Giles' long Barbour coat, to keep me dry. The sky was beginning to lighten; but I felt we had an hour or so before we needed to worry about Spike's combustibility. Giles stalked off through the courtyard without a word to us. It was clear he knew where he was going, so we followed behind like Mary's little lambs.
The 'ancient cripple' set such a ferocious pace to start with that conversation was not practically possible, but as we left the valley for the moor, and the gradient increased, we settled into a more reasonable gait. Spike lit a cigarette, and said,
"I didn't know rabbits were nocturnal."
"They're not," I said. "Although there does seem to be rather a lot about, I agree." The hillside abounded with the small, brown forms.
"Rabbits always come out just before dawn," stated Giles, bluntly. "We need to hurry."
Spike grabbed my wrist and turned it, to look at my watch. "Relax mate," he smiled at Giles. "Forty-five minutes before dawn. Surely that's enough time."
"If we can find the entrance, yes."
"So where are we heading, Rupert?" I dared to ask.
"The caves," was the entirely inadequate reply.
"Caves? Oh, bloody great." Spike took a long inhalation of cigarette smoke.
I sighed. "Rupert, it's impossible not to notice that something is bothering you."
He turned and glared at me. "Oh, I'm sorry if my mood is causing an unpleasant atmosphere. I'll just try to put on my happy face, shall I?" I took a step back, alarmed by the anger in his eyes.
"I... I'm sorry. I was trying to express concern and a desire to help if I can. I'm sorry."
The fierce eyes dropped from mine and I breathed easier. He said, "It's too late to ask me about that now, Wesley. I would suggest you concentrate on sorting your own mess out." He turned and continued the trudge up the hill.
Spike patted me on the back sympathetically and walked on. I remained where I stood. I realised that I was shaking. If Giles had to be a father figure to my subconscious, did he really have to act so very like my real father? Why not a paternal symbol that I would actually want for once?
...As he had been, I admitted to myself, over the past few days.
I really couldn't fairly accuse Giles of bad pseudo-parenting. But it seemed that he could perhaps accuse me of being a poor friend. I remembered the conversation as we walked to the Magdalen Bridge together in Oxford. Giles' confession about the power within him, long repressed, but now apparently irrepressible. It suddenly seemed to me that failing to talk with him about it, especially after his explosive use of power last night, was a dereliction of friendship.
He appeared so in control all the time, so confident, and I really hadn't questioned that he knew what he was doing, even after yesterday's displays. But now I wondered if inside he was maybe a very frightened man indeed. I wished I had the faintest idea of how I could help him.
I stopped walking and sat down in the damp grass. My head was spinning.
I didn't want to be here. I didn't want to be on this hillside, heading for an encounter in some dank, Devonshire caves with a mysterious, oracular witch. I didn't want to be with these two men of power, who I suddenly felt I knew nothing about: virtual strangers really. I wanted to be home in my grey LA apartment, curled in my stained, grey sheets, my arms around my evil lawyer bitch girlfriend. Waiting for her to wake and for the pain/pleasure to start again.
Spike noticed my absence first and, calling ahead to Giles to stop, he trotted back down. He sat beside me, companionably, took a breath as if to say something important, and then he giggled.
Shocked by the incongruity of the sound, I looked at him. He appeared as surprised as I was at his action. "Sorry," he shrugged, with a grin and further chuckling. "I think those sodding herbs they put in my blood are having an effect."
"Ah," I nodded. "That makes sense." It explained a lot. I wondered how much of my own bleak mood could be blamed upon the herbs; certainly the hazy feeling in my brain could be.
Giles reached us and hunkered down into a crouch, leaning on his staff. "I'm sorry, Wesley," he said simply. The anger seemed gone from his eyes, and he was once more the gentle, erudite man I'd first known.
"It's ok, Rupert," I reassured with a weak smile. "Spike worked it out. I think we're all being affected by the concoction they made us drink."
"Quite." He smiled wryly and stood, offering me his hand. I took it and allowed myself to be pulled up. He said, "On the plus side, I am feeling considerably restored. How about you, Spike?"
"Yeah, loads less bruised and battered, Rupes. Tasted foul, but bloody good stuff, eh?"
We set out again, and it was only when I reached the summit of this particular hill that I remembered that Giles' anger had been with him before he touched the Witches' brew. Well, whatever had caused it, it seemed passed now.
We stood on the hilltop and looked down towards the dim river below. The fact that we could see it at all meant that dawn was getting dangerously close. Spike seemed unconcerned, and was balancing like a surfer on a loose, flat boulder on the top of a pile of similar black granite slabs. He back-flipped and landed perfectly on the grass beside me with a grin.
Giles laughed at him and said, "Come on, tosser, you too, Wes. I can see where we need to be, let's get there before we have an unpleasant dust related incident." He set off down the hill using long strides, his staff indenting in the soft earth as he went. Spike bounded after him like an excited puppy. I almost expected Giles to whistle the vampire to heel. Laughing softly at that image, I followed.
My head was still a little giddy, but my mood was more uplifted. I took care not to stumble on the way down, but also allowed myself to enjoy the distractions, such as the dawn chorus of the birds and the huge and fascinating orange slugs that were becoming visible within the grass as the light improved.
We reached our goal just as the eastern sky was turning shades of vibrant pink and red. Giles had led us to the edge of a hole in the ground, about five feet deep and a few yards across, within which stood the upright dolmen entrance into an area of darkness. Spike immediately hopped down into the ditch, placed one hand on each of the standing monoliths of the dolmen, and stuck his head under the capstone into the black space beyond.
He pulled back out. "This here's a tomb, mates. I know a dead-house when I see one."
"Correct, Spike," said Giles, as he sat down on the edge of the hole and then dropped in. "It's an ancient burial chamber, but it leads into a network of caves beyond apparently. I have been given the key to open a gate to them."
The vampire looked at us both dubiously, "So exactly how are you two intending to see in there?"
"Via electric light," Giles said, and walked past him into the chamber. There was a creaking noise and then he re-emerged carrying two upturned plastic helmets with lanterns attached. He passed one up to me. Inside the helmet was a belt and battery pack.
Giles said, in the tones of someone resigned to being very fed up with a situation, "Regan said we would find these in here. That information and the gate key is all the help she was prepared to offer beyond 'go to the prehistoric burial chamber at the foot of Cralech Tor'."
I remembered all the 'outward-bounds' courses from my student days. They were a necessary part of Watcher training, but I neither excelled at them nor enjoyed a single second spent in the darkness under countless tons of heavy rock. It was too late to back out now, of course. I strapped the helmet to my head and belted the battery pack to my back. Spike harrumphed and I looked down at him.
"So it doesn't matter if *my* grey matter gets splattered all over the sodding shop by falling rocks then?"
"Git," said Giles, "there's a helmet for you too if you want it. *Do* you want it?"
"Nope," grinned the vampire. Giles rolled his eyes, and replaced his Barbour coat over the top of his now fastened battery belt. I slipped into the hole to join them, and we headed inside.
The walls of the tomb were pocked with small dugout holes, and etched with primitive spirals and zigzags. I noticed Spike looking at the images nervously, and fingering his topaz pendant. I tried hard not to think of rats. At the back, there was a wrought iron gate blocking us from a narrow tunnel beyond. Giles opened the padlock on the gate with a key on a small ring. We passed through and he locked it behind us once more.
The twin beams from our lanterns bobbed along the tunnel in front of us. Spike prowled off ahead, clearly able to see more efficiently beyond the extent of our lights. I risked talking to Giles again as we walked cautiously along the tunnel, uncomfortably crouched over due to the low ceiling.
"Do you, er, know whereabouts in here we are heading?"
"Approximately," he said, a little grimly. "Very approximately. These caves have something of the nature of the Minotaur's labyrinth, according to local legend."
"Ah. Should we not have attached some thread to the gateway then?" Water dripped from the ceiling and ran unpleasantly down the back of my neck. I pulled the hood of my Kagool up a little way to stop it happening again.
"I think the problem may be finding the centre, not the exit."
"And the centre is where Imogen awaits us?"
"Presumably," he shrugged.
"Isn't she going to be, um, cold?"
"I doubt very much that she has been in here throughout her trance. The coven is very attached to matriarchal symbolism. We have to quest in the earth's depths for the undoubtedly cryptic knowledge she wishes to impart to us."
"Will it help us? I mean, is it your experience of this woman that she has genuine ability?"
"Inarguably. And I'm sure that whatever she has to say will seem doubly significant after this little adventure," he snorted.
Spike came back. "The tunnel ahead splits," he informed us.
"Whichever path we take now, we must keep taking," said Giles. It sounded a good deal more portentous than he had perhaps intended.
"Always left or always right, eh, Rupes?" Spike clarified.
"Quite. Unless we find ourselves going in a circle, anyway. The path to the centre of the caves is based upon the sacred spiral, I've been told. Willow had to journey alone to the centre while she was here."
"Poor cow," Spike commented, genuine sympathy in his voice.
"I just wish I'd listened more to what she told me afterwards," Giles replied.
We arrived at the T-junction. Spike and I looked to Giles to make the decision. When he realised what we were waiting for, he sighed loudly. "Pair of bloody imprinted lame ducks, you two."
"Hey!" Spike protested, while I looked a little desperately from one path to the other, trying to spy criteria by which to judge the correct choice. They looked identical to my lantern beam.
Giles sighed again and stood in the centre of the junction, about five feet away from the wall, which he faced. He held his stave before him and said, "Sinister or dexter, which shall it be?" Blue sparks skittered from his fingers and down the wood of the staff which he then let fall, taking a step back. The wood clattered to the rock floor, quite clearly pointing left.
"Sinister it is then," said Spike, and stalked off in the lead once again. Following him, we headed deeper and deeper under the hills, taking the left turn whenever a choice was offered. I couldn't help but notice that more often or not, the choice was also for descent rather than ascent.
Some indeterminable and increasingly claustrophobic time later, we reached a scree-carpeted cavern with ceiling high enough to stand up straight within. As I stretched my stiff muscles, my stomach gurgled, and I realised I'd consumed nothing since rising, apart from the hideous, and apparently mildly narcotic, herbal tea.
"Would you mind if we paused here?" I asked. "I need to eat something."
"We have food?" Spike asked, surprised.
"Look in your backpack, git," laughed Giles.
I sat on a rock and carefully ate two of my four sandwiches. They seemed to contain alfalfa and some kind of pate; mushroom perhaps, or ground nuts. They were not unpleasant, although Giles was predictably rude about his. Spike had not been given any, so he was rude about Giles' too. I had already decided that vegan food somehow insulted their red-blooded masculinity. I guessed it didn't say much for mine that I quite liked the diet.
Spike had blood in a flask to drink, and did so. The human oriented flasks contained strong black tea. *Real* tea. Giles and I gratefully guzzled. Then, feeling significantly refreshed, we continued on our way.
To escape the chamber we were in, we had to squeeze through a narrow, horizontal slit, which would of course have been easier before the meal. I sternly quashed any panicky, claustrophobic feelings that arose in me. Then there was more of the ubiquitous stone corridor. Lots more.
Spike took out a cigarette and put it in his mouth. Giles took it from him.
"Hey, wanker, give it back!"
"Not down here, idiot. Never smoke underground, there could be explosive gas pockets."
"I've bloody lived underground in Sunnydale for years and somehow managed to avoid going boom each time I lit a fag! Anyway, vampire nose here, I'd smell any gas."
"Some of the most dangerous gasses are odourless, Spike" I told him.
"To you nasally challenged humans maybe," he grunted, but he put his lighter away. His fingers went back to the cord around his neck.
The next location of interest was a dripping wet, high-ceilinged chamber containing some fascinating mineral deposits.
"I think we might be getting close," said Giles. "Willow mentioned something like this, although nothing more helpful."
We all looked around, marvelling at the strange grottoes as we ducked under the stalactites and around the stalagmites. It was rather magical, albeit soaking wet and with a faint sulphurous smell. Spike found a humorously rude figure formed from the accident deposits of calcium over the ages, and we spent a few moments chuckling at it.
We squeezed through into the tunnels beyond and were taken completely by surprise to find a girl in there, apparently waiting for us.
"Hello, love." Spike was the first of us to recover. "You here to show us the way?"
I recognised the girl, I thought. One of the youngsters I had seen about the coven, presumably a daughter of one of the older witches. She was dressed utterly impracticably for the caves, in a simple white cotton dress. She smiled, and said,
"The oracle awaits you at the other side of the next chamber. To get to her, you must pass the tests."
Giles laughed sarcastically. The sound echoed from the rocks. "Bloody marvellous," he muttered.
Alarmed, I realised the girl was looking at me. She said, "Two tasks; you must allocate them to your friends. Remember, it must be your decision."
"W... what?"
She smiled sweetly at me, and waved her hand in a large circle. The lights on our helmets went out and we were in total darkness.
Spike swore. "Ouch, bloody ouch!"
"You all right, old son?" Giles asked him.
"Yeah," he said ruefully. "She threw something in my eyes or something, but they're clearing now. I think she's gone."
I fiddled with the wires that connected the battery pack to the lantern on my helmet, and tried turning it repeatedly on and off; it didn't help. "Well, I'm glad one of us can see," I said testily. I didn't like the idea that I had to make the momentous decision in these tests. What a wonderful opportunity to show my new friends exactly how all encompassing my capacity for failure really was.
Spike said, "Can't Rupert the Grey here do a bit of hocus-pocus for you both?"
Giles growled, and slammed his staff down hard. "Fiat Lux!" he declared, and a bright ball of illumination appeared above us, lighting the whole cavern. I blinked.
"Nice one," grinned Spike. Giles gave him a filthy look, but then relaxed into a sheepish smile. I said nothing, not wanting to cause Giles further embarrassment. I noticed he had started to tremble a little. The vampire waved his head, "C'mon then, time to do or die." He strode boldly away from us down the corridor.
"Who would true valour see, let him come hither," quoted Giles quietly, and set off after him, the ball of light bobbing along behind. Dragging my feet somewhat, I too followed.
The corridor ended with a drop into a huge cavern, filled with huge standing stones and naturally formed pillars, and strewn with broken rubble. Spike sprung down, and then offered his hands to us, to help our less graceful descents. Giles directed his light ball to the centre of the chamber, and bid it grow brighter. It hung above the scene like an internal sun, bringing daylight where it didn't belong. We stood together and looked at what was before us.
Other than the way we arrived, the only exit seemed to be at the other end; a cave mouth half way up the opposite wall. There seemed to be no way up to it. In the centre of the chamber, beside a pool of glinting water, were two prominent objects. A tall white needle of stone, on the top of which sat some kind of plate or disc, and a large monolith carved into a vaguely humanoid shape.
"Our two tests, one assumes," said Giles.
"Get allocating then, Wes," winked Spike. He seemed unnecessarily full of joie de vivre, considering the situation.
I walked cautiously towards the pool. "Well," I started, knowing I had to say something. "I assume there is something upon the disk up there that we have to collect, and that this stone animates somehow and must be fought."
Spike said, "So Rupes magics down the plate contents and I kill the big rock, peasy."
"It's Wesley's decision, Spike," Giles cautioned. I so wished it wasn't.
I looked very carefully about, noticing the floor around the tall thin needle, the runes painted on the underside of the plate, the strange markings on the face of the carved stone figure, and the glinting objects at the bottom of the pool.
I swallowed, and prepared to lose two more friends should my decision be faulty. I prayed that I would lose them only to disappointment in me, and that the Witches wouldn't truly be setting us potentially fatal tasks. I pushed my hand in my trouser pocket and pulled out a dime.
"Gonna flip a coin to decide, mate?" the vampire laughed.
In a voice that I hoped was one of authority, I said, "Spike, you will get to the top of the needle and take whatever is up there. You will need to work very quickly, and don't forget that there is water here if you need it. Rupert, the Somanti Demon is yours." I flicked the coin in the air over the pool and let it fall into the water with a soft splash.
With a loud, echoing crack, the stone broke apart and fifteen feet of winged Asian Somanti Demon unfolded itself.
"Bugger that!" yelled Spike, and started towards the gold and red creature.
"Spike! Stop!" I said in my best Watcher's voice, and to my complete surprise, it worked. "You have your own task, do it." I told him firmly. The demon spread its wide wings and energy crackled across its form.
"Bloody hell," swore Giles. The Somanti extended a claw downwards and directed a bolt of red-black magic at the ground. A small flare of fire flared where the bolt hit, which then started travelling in a big circle around the needle, following the spiralling grooves I had observed in the floor.
"Hurry up, Spike," I warned. He startled into movement and attempted to scale the needle, but slid immediately back down. Giles, in the meantime, pointed his staff at the demon and released a bolt of blue energy at it, which dissipated harmlessly across the Somanti's scaled skin. It flapped its great wings, and in complete disregard for the laws of physics, took to the air.
"Spike, you'll need to jump to the plate," I called out, as I backed hurriedly away. "Giles, it's a Somanti; remember?"
"Yeah, I remember," he growled in the voice I was beginning to think of as 'Ripper'. "But I dunno what the buggering hell I'm meant to do about it!"
"You have to hit it with directed magic right in the centre of that small black spot on its chest." I instructed, in case he didn't really remember. He called me something obscene, which I pretended not to hear, and backed up towards me as the demon started raining down dark red magic upon him. A clear blue shield domed out from the top of his stave, covering us both and turning milky whenever a bolt struck home. He said quietly,
"I don't have that level of control, Wesley." My heart sank at his words, but I said,
"The Witches clearly think you do. You are the only one here with the hope of killing it. You have controlled this magic inside you for decades; all you need to do now is to learn to control it in a different way."
He laughed darkly, but sprinted away from me, his long coat flaring out behind him. He pulled the demon's fire with him using magic artillery of his own as the lure.
I looked to see how Spike was doing. At first I couldn't see him at all. The spiral fuse around the needle was halfway to the centre. Then I noticed him off to one side, high on an unsteady pillar. As I watched, he leapt inhumanly far, clasped onto a stalactite, then, as it began to crack, he leapt again.
Giles sent a long thin line of sparking blue at the demon, but his great effort was wasted by the creature's rapid dodge to one side. He swore, and hid behind a pillar to avoid the Somanti's next attack.
Spike landed in a crouch on the top of a high pillar. This was the closest he was going to get to the needle, but it still left him an impossible distance to jump. I couldn't see how he was going to make it. There was only three yards approximately of fuse channel left for the flame to buzz around. I wasn't sure exactly what would happen when it reached the centre, but I was convinced we would lose whatever was on the plate.
I watched as he shut his eyes and held his pendant as if praying. And then using legs stronger than any mortal beast, he leapt.
A loud rumble to the right made me direct my attention to Giles again. He was running towards the next pillar, magic shield in obvious effect, as the rock he had hidden in the shelter of crumbled to rubble behind him.
I looked back at Spike. He had missed the disk with his feet, but caught it with his fingers. He pulled up to the top just as the fuse-flame reached the centre.
"GET OFF THERE, NOW!" I yelled, putting every smidgen of every moment of Watcher training into my words. As Spike pushed himself away from the disk, there was a whoosh of flame, and the entire surface he had just been crouched upon blazed up like a beacon. He hit the floor and rolled. I rushed towards him.
"Show me," I instructed, once I could see he was largely unharmed. He uncurled a hand to reveal a small, dull green stone. "A lodestone! Get that to Giles, now!" Spike was immediately up and sprinting with vampire speed towards where Giles and the Somanti were engaged in a fairly classic firefight.
Spike rolled under a red bolt from the demon and jumped up before Giles, placing the stone into the magic-wielder's hand. Giles looked at it briefly, and then threw it at the demon with the words, "Terram cadi!"
As the stone hit the fiery coloured scales of the beast, the demon released a desperate cry, which echoed cacophonously around the cavern. Its wings folded up and it hurtled to the ground.
"We've got to keep it down," I shouted to Spike, and we both ran over to the huge fallen demon, which was struggling to its feet. Spike reached it before me, crackled into game face, and sprung at the Somanti's head, ripping and tearing with his hands. I rugby-tackled the clawed feet, and as it staggered backward from the ferocity of Spike's attack, my feeble grip was sufficient to trip it to the stone floor.
I heard a deep laugh behind me and rolled over. Giles, sizzling with wild power, put his staff in his off hand and pointed a single finger at the struggling demon. A pencil-thin, blue light, like a laser-beam, emerged from the finger and hit the Somanti directly in the small black circle in the centre of its chest. A whisper of smoke snaked up from the spot, and the demon shuddered once and lay still. We had done it.
"Er, well done, everyone," I said, knowing I wasn't really the right one to say it, but Giles was staring at his finger as if he'd never seen it before.
"Jesus, I have to sit down," he said, and collapsed to the floor. He bent over, his head slumped into his shaking hands. I removed my backpack and found the bottle of spring water, which I opened and passed to him. He took it gratefully.
Spike grumbled, "Bloody Witches nearly killed us all. What the hell do they think they were playing at?"
"The Siege Perilous, I imagine," Giles muttered.
"The chair that only the 'chosen' knight could safely sit on?" Spike asked.
I nodded, "Meaning, I assume, that these tasks were given to us because we *could* do them."
Giles laughed softly, ran the fingers of both hands through his hair, and then said in a humorous tone, "Shall we get to the end then, Sir Wesley, Sir William?"
Glad to give the reins back to the man that most deserved them, I smiled and helped him back up. We walked to the far end of the cavern to discover a rope ladder had been unrolled from the cave entrance above. One by one we clambered up, and found ourselves in a dead end.
Confused, we looked about. Spike spotted hole above our heads, where another rope ladder dangled. "Up there I think, mates."
Wearily, we climbed up until we came to a wooden trap door. Spike, who was in front as usual, pushed it open. And then swore loudly, extendedly, and in more than one language. He went up through the door and vanished from view.
I was next, and when I entered the space above, I appreciated Spike's invective. We were in the basement of the coven house.
Giles merely laughed when he too rose through the hole and saw where we were, I don't think he was totally surprised.
When I thought about it, I laughed too. Soon all three of us were chuckling in helpless amusement of what we had just been put through for no obvious reason.
The door opened from above, and the girl in the white dress came down the stairs. She smiled and said "Well done." None of us seemed to have a polite reply for that, so she added, "This way, Imogen will see you now."
We were led up and into a study type room that I at least had never seen before. Sat in a soft armchair by the unlit fire was a middle-aged woman with curly, salt-and-pepper hair. She was dressed in practical slacks and a hand-knitted sweater. There was something very strange about her eyes, behind her trim spectacles. I realised with a shock that she had no irises.
The girl left, and the three of stood there, looking at the oddly eyed matron, waiting for her to speak. Eventually Giles said, "Imogen? We're here."
Her head swiped round to face him. The room seemed to darken about us and when she spoke, her voice was deep and chilling. "Do not underestimate the power of three. The Morrighan washes three sheets at the ford." Spike and I took a step back in shock at her voice, and even Giles wavered. She spoke on,
"Three heads must fall from the hydra for the battle to be won. Apart, yet together will the path to victory be walked." Her head turned in Spike's direction. "Man of might, dead thing; once dark, now your sword burns gold. You will make the ravens merry. Your task is threefold. Guard the maw of Annwn. Behead the hydra. Find balance, forgive, know thyself."
Spike swallowed, sighed hard, and then bowed impulsively to the prophetess. 'Annwn', my memory provided, was the Welsh mythological name for the Underworld. In other words, he was perhaps being told to protect the Hellmouth. Her attention moved back to Giles.
"Man of power, game player; long dormant, now awoken and will not again be quieted. You will play the King of Spades. Your task is threefold. Unmask the foe that hides within. Behead the hydra. Find truth, forgive, know thyself."
Giles raised his eyebrows as he took in her words and nodded once when she finished, his face betraying little. The King of Spades would presumably be the King of Swords in tarot - a judge in the biblical sense. Imogen turned to me, and I tensed nervously.
"Man of wisdom, lost and homeless, betrayer and betrayed are you. Saviour you will become. Your task is threefold. Enter the service of Gwyn ap Nudd. Behead the hydra. Find belief, forgive, know thyself."
I flinched at the 'b' word and then shuffled through my memories for the identity of Gwyn ap Nudd. The ruler of Annwn, perhaps. I had seen a copy of the Mabinogion on the shelves here, I would check later.
Imogen shut her eyes. When they opened again, I saw that she had greenish-grey irises and looked, well, very normal.
"Hello dears," she said, in a pleasant northern accent. "Anyone fancy a cup of tea?"