Omega (46 page)

It cou
ld not be said that she and Gare
th
woke up
in her own quarters, sitting opposite each other with drinks in their hands. They simply became aware, abruptly and simultaneously, that they had been there for some time. Even that this was their second drink.

Brenda nearly screamed. Gareth must have realized it, for he quickly grasped her free hand in his own, holding it tightly till she was in command of herself.

'Hypnotism,' he said at last. 'The bloody woman hypnotized us, right there in front of the Chief's eyes. Christ, that
must
have impressed him!'

After a pause, Brenda said: 'It was more than just hypnotism, Gareth. She brought us out of it, together, when
she
was ready, by remote control. An ordinary hypnotist couldn't do that. It calls for telepathy.'

'Not necessarily. She could have ordered a trigger. For example - "You will go back to Brenda's room, sit down and pour yourselves drinks and when you take the first sip of your second drink you will wake up, remembering nothing of what has happened in between." This
is
our second drink, isn't it? And we've both just tasted it.'

'Yes, it is. But that's all I know. I don't remember getting here or what we've been talking about, except that we
have
been talking.'

'Me too. But you see? It could be a normal hypnotic technique, without telepathy or anything.'

'Normal! . . .
Gareth, I'm hypnosis-resistant. A doctor tried nnce and I wanted to cooperate but no way could he put me under. But
she
did it across a dinner-table, just like that. And I'm pretty sure I
felt
her command to wake up - not any trigger situation that she'd ordered but her
command,
coming through as she gave it.'

T must say, so did I. But that could be post-hypnotic suggestion. She could have told us we'd believe that when we woke up.'

'All of it
could
be. But do you know what, Gareth? I'm frightened. Scared out of my bloody wits - for myself, for you, for Reggie, for Beehive . . . Hell, I'm scared for
Britain.
Does that sound melodramatic?'

Gareth did not answer for a moment; then he shook his head, slowly.

'Dare we have another drink?' she wondered. 'Or will there be some post-hypnotic suggestion attached to that, too?'

He smiled, for the first time. 'I guess we'll risk it.'

'After all,' Brenda said as she poured, 'she's achieved her purpose. Put us in our places, shown Reggie what she can do and got him to herself.... I wish her joy of him,' she added venomously.

'That remarks sounds a little
..
. uncharacteristic'

'Yes, it does, doesn't it?
...
Cheers.'

'Cheers.'

They sat for a while, wrapped in their separate thoughts. Then Brenda asked: 'Gareth - you love me, don't you?'

He lowered his eyes. 'Yes, Brenda, I do. You know I do. I have . . . well, since about the second time I met you.'

'Then this'll
sound incredibly selfish of me. I don't love anyone, right now. But by God, I
need
your love. I need to trust you and I need you to trust me or I'll go bloody mad. . . . You're an Intelligence officer. For what we've already said and will say to each other, you could destroy me -and I could destroy you. But we won't. We need
each other.
Don't we?'

Gareth looked up again, into her eyes. 'Yes, we do. And I think we're going to have to do more than talk. We're going to have to
do
somet
hing about it.' He blushed, sud
denly young and vulnerable. 'Oh, I didn't mean . . .'

'I know you didn't,' she told him gently.

He recovered himself and went on: 'We're going to have to do something about
her.
About what's going on and what's planned. . . . You said you were scared for Britain. You know what, Brenda? So am I.'

20

'Ye Lords of the Watchtowers of the North; Boreas, thou guardian of the Northern portals; mighty Cernunnos, Lord of the forest; great Cerridwen, Queen of earth and sky; we do thank you for attending our rites and ere ye depart to your pleasant and lovely realms, we bid you hail and farewell!'

Behind her, everyone echoed ‘
Hail and farewell!' as Moira drew the Banishing Pentagram in the air above the altar with her athame. She laid the knife on the altar and turned, smiling at them and they all broke into talk and laughter. Some put their clothes back on by the row of hooks along the end wall, others, in no hurry to cover their comfortable nakedness, gathering around the big wood-burning stove. Dan began clearing the ritual tools from the table which had been placed against the north wall to serve as an altar; Greg switched on the twelve-volt lighting of which he was justifiably proud, and little Diana exercised her privilege of blowing out the candles one by one.

Eileen, perennially anxious to learn, came over to Moira and asked: 'Why do you only mention Boreas? Why not the winds at the other quarters?''Do you know who they are?' Moira asked back.

'Eurus in the East, Notus in the South and Zephyrus in the West,' Eileen answered promptly. 'And Aeolius who's the master of them all . . . That's my trouble. I collect facts but I can't always work out reasons.'

'Well, East, South and West are Air, Fire and Water, and to mention winds for all of them might make it harder for people to hold the elements in their minds. But North isn't only Earth, it's the altar as well so it's rather special; you thank the God and Goddess there, so you make it more ceremonious. Besides,
Boreas is the doorkeeper of Cae
r Arianrhod
...'

Two or three others had joined them and began asking their own questions. It was the same after every Circle now, for the coven had become something very different from the tight little group in half-forgotten Staines. Tonight, for instance, there were eighteen adults and four children crowding the Central Cabin for the regular Friday Circle: Moira's group of five plus Diana, eight witches who had joined Camp Cerridwen over the past two or three weeks with three of their children, and five interested non-initiates including Eileen and Peter. What with getting the incoming witches attuned to Moira and Dan's particular methods and customs and explaining things to the non-initiates, 'I feel more like a schoolteacher than a High Priestess, sometimes,' Moira had said to old Sally.

'Since when were the two different?' Sally wanted to know. 'Maybe we'd got too cosy, love.'

Even the attunement process required care, for although all the witches realized the importance of harmony in their embattled situation, it was of the nature of Wicca that every coven had its own character and was a law to itself; so unless differences were examined and adjusted, misunderstandings could arise. Most bewildered, sometimes, were

Sam and Elizabeth Warner, who were Traditionals trained in a very different set of rituals from Moira and Dan's Gardnerian/Alexandrian ones, but their determination to work with the majority was fortunately aided by a healthy sense of humour.

'Cheer up,' Dan told them. 'We'll put out an astral call for more Traditionals, then you'll be able to do your own thing in parallel with us.'

'What?' Sam exclaimed in mock horror. 'All this re
-
education for nothing? Besides, I rather like holding two passports.'

Altogether, Camp Cerridwen now numbered twenty-four adults and six children. Father Byrne even had a congregation, for one couple with a year-old baby were Catholics; they had come in with the husband's brother and sister-in-law, who were witches. 'I'm past being astonished,' Father Byrne had said, smiling, when Dan informed him that a little chapel now had high priority on the building programme, immediately after the minimum sleeping accommodation.

Building was, in fact, going ahead well, for more hands meant more efficient working, and Bruce Peters, the quiet young builder who had arrived with Fred and Jean Thomas, had proved to be knowledgeable and ingenious. The Central Cabin, kitchen and three family cabins were all finished and three more were at framework stage.

Camp Cerridwen was becoming a village.

Liz Warner had proved an asset in another way: she was a schoolteacher and as soon as she arrived she started daily classes for the children - who, leaving out the Catholic couple's baby, ranged from five to thirteen years old. But within a week, she and Geraint Lloyd, the New Dyfnant schoolmaster, had arrived at a better arrangement. A pony-cart was found for Liz and her five pupils and every morning she drove them down to Geraint's little school. Geraint, who had been coping single-handed with seventeen children of various ages, was delighted. He took charge of the older ones and Liz of the younger. 'Now we might actually get some teaching done instead of just keeping the little devils quiet,' he told her happily. The New Dyfnant parents obviously appreciated Liz too, for she rarely returned to camp without gifts of vegetables, eggs or cow's milk, sometimes put anonymously in the pony-cart while she was busy teaching.

Camp Cerridwen's own little farm was making fair progress, all things considered. Much winter sowing had been done, goats and poultry were thriving, some soft fruits had been planted and the bees in their six hives seemed to be hibernating healthily (since they were newly installed, some of the camp's precious and dwindling sugar had been allocated to their autumn settling-in feed). But with winter closing in, first priority had to go to seeing that everyone was housed and warm, so there was a limit to the amount of time that could be devoted to farming. And it would be many months before the planting produced food or the hives honey. The half-hectare of vegetable garden in New Dyfnant which had been earmarked for their use was a considerable help and the cave in the woods still held useful stocks of food; but with the camp's population growing and perhaps more recruits to come, old Sally as ration-organizer kept an anxiously watchful eye on the reserves.

An extra hazard had arisen once the Madness was over. With movement much safer, occasional nomad pilferers appeared. Organized bands, strangely enough, were not the danger. A couple of raids had been tried on New Dyfnant but the villagers, themselves well organized and favourably, sited, had dealt with them firmly and word must have got around for no more attempts were made, although more exposed communities in the neighbourhood (and according to Geraint's ham-radio contacts, in other parts of the country) suffered sporadically. But lone infiltrators were another matter. One had been shot while trying to steal a goose on the outskirts of New Dyfnant, and two hens had disappeared during the night from Camp Cerridwen itself. Peter O'Malley, who still ranged as much of his beloved forest as his share of the camp work allowed, occasionally came across signs of what he called 'fly-by-night bivouacs', never of more than one to
three people, and always abandoned
by the time he got there. Though once he had shouted after a man running away through the trees a couple of hundred metres from him. The man had gone on running and vanished.

'If the bloody fools are hungry, why don't they come and ask if they can join us?' he grumbled to Dan.

'Natural cowards or natural thieves. Or both. Or maybe they've heard we're witches and they're scared we'll turn 'em into frogs.'

'Only thing that really worries me is the cave,' Peter said. 'If one of them finds that, we could be in trouble.'

Dan agreed and the evening meeting discussed the matter. Reluctantly, they earmarked a newly finished cabin as a store, and next day transferred the contents of the cave to it; even more reluctantly, with so much work to be done, they kept one man at a time, night and day, patrolling the camp as an armed sentry.

One of Peter's dudes fitted in well with his forest-ranging. They were almost out of tinned meat and there was no fresh to be had from livestock, for both camp and village had banned all slaughtering - even of poultry -till the spring brought renewed breeding. So Sally had asked Peter to supplement the rations by regular hunting, helped when possible by such good shots as Angie; only good shots could be allowed to hunt, for their stocks of ammunition, though not yet dangerously low, were still not limitless. Peter had agreed and had supplemented his gun by snares (which he hated). The result had been a fairly steady flow of rabbit, wood-pigeon and the occasional pheasant; and also a renewed withdrawal from Peter by Eileen, who had been beginning to relax in his company.

Angie, exasperatedly observing her young cousin's behaviour had for once thoroughly lost her temper. 'My God, Eileen, I wish we had a damn shrink in the camp - because that's what you need, my girl. You've got the nicest man in the place following you around like a puppy-dog and you bite his head off because he's keeping us fed. What the hell do you think you're up to? A bloody psychiatrist's couch is the place for you - if the word "bloody" doesn't trigger off this stupid obsession of yours.' She could see the tears in Eileen's eyes but she couldn't stop. 'For Christ's sake, none of us enjoy killing. I don't.
Peter
doesn't. And that's another damn stupid thing. When I kill a rabbit, you just look the other way. When
he
kills anything, you crucify the poor bugger.'