
Church, Veitch, and Tom made their way slowly across Cornwall, where another manifestation of the dead Marianne made Church realize, for the first time, that she had not taken her own life; she had been murdered. That recognition was a turning point. Eventually they arrived at Tintagel, one of the legendary homes of King Arthur, and here Tom finally revealed Arthur was not a real person, but a symbol of something he called the Pendragon Spirit, the force that was encompassed by the blue fire and which bound the five of them together. The myths and legends were the secret history, he said; a code that was written large across the landscape.
From under Tintagel they took the second of the talismans, the sword. Barely had they held it in their hands than they fell under attack once more, this time from Mollecht, whose dabbling with the blackest magic had transformed him into a nexus of energy which could only be contained by a constantly swirling murder of crows. Cut off on the bleak promontory, they eventually found themselves tumbling into the raging sea.
It should have meant certain death, but they were reborn from the waves, the first of many resurrections which has served only to cement their reputation as their story became widely known. Their saviour on this occasion was Tom, a man who consistently claimed he could tell no lies, but who rarely volunteered the truth.
His reticence masked both his true worth as a person and his abilities; he had shown before that he was a font of wisdom, but they had no idea he had a smattering of what can only be called magic; an ability to control, if only in small ways, the blue fire. As they fell to the waves, he somehow focused his mind enough to move them along the lines of energy to another powerful node of the earth force.
