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beach,’ Shem said, biting
into the soft bread. ‘Cornwall.’ He looked up at Salamiel again.
‘Where are we?’
    ‘Nowhere very exotic, I’m
afraid. This is a house in the Midlands. A friend of Enniel
Prussoe’s owns it.’
    Enniel Prussoe. The name
conjured more recollections. Enniel was a Grigori patriarch, a
member of the Parzupheim, an organisation that governed Grigori
affairs. The Prussoe house, High Crag, had been both Shem’s prison
and refuge during the time he’d been in Cornwall. He remembered the
wildness of the dark winter seascape of The Lizard: the cry of
buzzards, the lashing of raging waves against wet serpentine rock.
It had been so cold there. Now, it was summertime. ‘How long?’ Shem
repeated. ‘Months?’
    Salamiel stood up. ‘You haven’t
been asleep exactly. You’ve been able to feed yourself, bathe
yourself, but…’ He turned to the window. ‘You haven’t been with us,
Shem. Not for a long time.’
    ‘Why?’
    Salamiel shook his head. ‘We’re
not sure. Your experiences in Cornwall exhausted you, clearly.
Perhaps you needed time to recover, and to assimilate what happened
to you there.’
    Shem swung his legs over the
side of the bed, wondering whether he’d feel dizzy, but it seemed
his body, if not his mind, was used to movement.
    Salamiel handed him a towelling robe.
‘You haven’t been with us for over five years,’ he said.
    Shem thrust his arms into the
robe. It took a few moments for the information to hit him. Then he
had to sit down again. ‘Five years? Unconscious?’
    Salamiel nodded. ‘Well, in a
way.’
    ‘They did something to me.
Enniel and his cronies.’
    ‘No, Shem. Shortly after you
woke the Serpent, you became listless. Enniel had physicians look
you over, but there was no explanation. We came here, for you to
recuperate. We knew you would be back with us soon. It is nearly
time.’
    ‘For what?’
    ‘The new millennium. This is
August, Shem. August 1999.’
    ‘Where’s Daniel?’
    ‘In Cornwall with the Prussoes.
He’s gone to observe the solar eclipse with them.’ Salamiel glanced
out of the window. ‘It must have begun some minutes ago. The best
place to view it is The Lizard.’
    ‘Bring him back,’ Shem said. ‘I
need my vizier by me.’
    Cornwall
    Daniel Cranton had wandered away from
High Crag, seeking solitude. It had been five years since he’d
walked this cliff path, high above the beach. The last time he’d
been there had been as Shemyaza’s vizier, his eyes in the unseen,
spiritual world. It all seemed so unreal now. Since Shem’s
collapse, Daniel had lived a fairly mundane life with Salamiel up
in the Midlands, watching and waiting for Shemyaza to look at him
once more with intelligence in his eyes. A couple of times a year,
Daniel had come down to Cornwall, to stay with Lily and Owen
Winter, in the cottage that Enniel Prussoe had given to them, but
the holidays had not been easy. Too much had changed between them
all. Once, they’d been three teenagers leading aimless existences
in a small, English village. Then Peverel Othman had invaded their
lives, turned them upside down. The twins and Daniel had been
instrumental in awakening Shemyaza’s true being. Like many human
dependants of the Grigori, Daniel had been granted an extended
life-span, but that miraculous gift had not changed his essential
humanity. Lily and Owen had eagerly embraced the Grigori half of
their ancestry; a gulf had opened up between Daniel and the twins.
At one time, Daniel and Owen had been lovers, but now because of
past rancour, all engendered by Othman, they tended to avoid one
another. As for Lily, the carefree and rather wild young woman
Daniel had loved seemed to have vanished for ever. Since she’d
become a mother, she was too engrossed in her daughter to be much
of a confidante to Daniel.
    All along the coast, people
were gathering to watch the impending solar eclipse, which had been
heralded madly in the press for months. The best place to