Temple of the Winds Read online

  THE TEMPLE OF THE WINDS

  110,000 word novel

  by James Follett

  Book 1 of 3

  Book 2: `Wicca’

  Book 3: `The Silent Vulcan’

  REPRESENTATION:

  Philip Patterson

  Marjacq Scripts Ltd

  Tel: + 44 (0) 20 7563 1302

  email: [email protected] http://www.marjacq.com

  James Follett

  [email protected]

  www.james-follett.co.uk

  KINDLE EDITION PREPARED BY:

  Richard Follett

  Kindred Partners [email protected]

  Tel: 01730 819915

  Introduction to this edition

  Hitherto publication of the three novels that comprise the Silent Vulcan trilogy, this novel, Wicca and The Silent Vulcan, have only been available in editions primarily intended for public libraries. They have never been licensed for publication as mass market paperbacks. These editions are their first publication outside this limited market although the BBC have serialised readings in 24 parts for radio.

  Foreword

  ‘Filth! Out and out pornography!’ an indignant lady wrote to me about chapter 1 of this book. I’ve had such accusations levelled at me before and concluded that the lady was suffering from what I call the ‘Psycho’ syndrome. The symptoms are people who’ve seen Hitchcock’s ‘Psycho’ and are convinced that they saw Janet Leigh being stabbed to death in the shower scene. Actually they didn’t. They saw the knife flashing down and they saw a naked Janet Leigh, they saw blood flowing, but they didn’t actually see Miss Leigh being stabbed. What they actually saw was some masterly film making by Hitchcock who knew that what the eye didn’t see, the brain would join up the dots.

  I can’t make a similar claim for my writing skills but my guess is that my limited ability may be enough for my lady reader to be indignant over what she thought she had read rather than what she had actually read. A minor but flattering hazard of writing thrillers. The beginnings of this trilogy started on a truly terrifying night in October 1987 when hurricane force winds raged with demented fury across southern England. We stood outside, anxiously watching a large ash tree thrashing to destruction, expecting it to fall on the house.

  A bright, sunny morning revealed the extent of the appalling devastation: trees uprooted, houses without roofs, the roads lethal with tangles of fizzing, sparking power lines. An overhead power distribution system built up over half a century destroyed in less than three hours. Like many other villages in the area, we were without electricity for nearly two weeks.

  During that brief but memorable period our lives underwent a most profound change. We had to rise at dawn, get all our chores done during the hours of daylight, and go to bed when it got dark. We had no heating and no means of cooking. To keep warm meant sawing fallen trees into logs. There were no newspapers or telephones and, without electricity, no television. Our link with the outside world was the local radio station. There were two remarkable aspects of that period: the community spirit that prevailed with everyone helping everyone, and the unsuspected ingenuity that people drew on when it came to solving problems. A near neighbour fitted an aircraft propeller to an electric motor and mounted it on a pole to provide wind-generated electricity. I was writing Mirage at the time. My typewriter, unused since 1981, had seized up, so I rigged a small generator to run a Radio Shack Model 100 laptop. When the electricity was eventually restored, getting power back was almost as much of a shock as losing it.

  I believe it was about this time that the germ of an idea for this trilogy -- the notion of a modern community pitched back into the 18th Century and how they rose to meet the challenge -– began to form. The trouble was that the idea lacked focus. It was nothing more than an interesting concept that was relegated to my overcrowded back burner.

  The catalyst came with the realisation that Petworth, a few miles south of me, was a town with some very unusual features. Just how unusual, you can find out by reading on.

  I’m afraid a gremlin interfered with the lines of communication between me and the publisher, Severn House, with the result that 140 typos in the original galley proof weren’t corrected. Thankfully all (I hope!) of those errors have been corrected in this edition.

  I might as well come clean and admit here and now that my Pentworth in this story is based on Petworth and that every place I've mentioned does exist although I've taken a few liberties. I've enlarged Market Square, and dignified the town with a town council rather than a parish council. It goes without saying that any resemblance between the inhabitants of my Pentworth and the real Petworth is purely coincidental, and I hope that the morris men sides around here will overlook the liberties I've taken with their Sussex tradition dances.

  The biggest change concerns the actual Temple of the Winds. Yes -- it does exist. Just as well because the strange myths surrounding it, which I've described in this book, are far more bizarre than anything I could invent. I'm actually writing this foreword on its high, legend-shrouded scarp, and I can almost hear the demon-like gargoyle, carved in sandstone by the gales of a million years, sniffing the winds that invade his temple. The spooky atmosphere here is getting to me; the irritation of Alfred Lord Tennyson's ghost at my moving of his favourite spot a few miles south to a more dramatically convenient location just has to be a product of my imagination.

  A correction: Ellen's cave, with its palaeolithic wall paintings of hunting scenes of 40,000 years ago, doesn't exist. But -- as I look out from the Temple of the Winds across the folds and humps of the sun-dappled downs of West Sussex where vast herds of bison once roamed, preyed on by cave lions, sabre-tooth cats, and our clever ancestors -- it's easy to believe that the cave is out there somewhere beneath the ancient landscape -- waiting to be discovered.

  James Follett

  THE TEMPLE OF THE WINDS

  By

  James Follett

  Chapter 1.

  VIKKI TAYLOR SAW THE LONG shadow cast across the rutted lane by the late afternoon sun and froze in terror.

  Her knuckles, gripping the handlebars of her new 12-speed bicycle that she was pushing along the rutted track, went bone white. But only on her right hand for her left hand was artificial. Such was her fear that an involuntary trickle of urine escaped and soaked into her panties. Her pounding heart felt as though it were trying to smash through her rib cage.

  She kept perfectly still and so did the shadow.

  What may have been a small creature close behind her made a metallic scrabbling noise with its claws on the loose stones. Vikki heard the sound but was too hypnotised by the terror that lay ahead to turn around.

  Run! Run! This is where Debbie French was raped a year ago! For God's sake run!

  But she was unable to move. Her legs were jelly, and if she let go of the bicycle, she would surely collapse. The cosy, familiar surroundings of the West Sussex countryside that she had known all her life underwent a profound and frightening change. The sunlight dappling through the trees and reflected from the puddles left by the storm of three nights ago became a harsh, unnatural glare, and the chatter of birds in the hedgerows celebrating the arrival of spring died away to an eerie silence.

  The cause of the shadow was a man, hidden by the girth of an old oak some 20-metres ahead. He remained motionless, like a sentinel. Despite her stomach-churning fear, this puzzled Vikki. If he were waiting in ambush, surely he could see his own shadow and realize that it gave him away?

  The sensation of dread heightened. Supposing there really had been a UFO that had landed during Tuesday night's storm? Afterall, several people claimed to have seen something dropping from the sky even though the ufologists that had descended on Pentworth the
next day had found nothing. Maybe it had left an alien behind? Maybe the UFO would return when the alien had kidnapped someone?

  She told herself not to be so silly. Whatever it was, it wasn't trying to hide. From the bold silhouette thrown on the ground she could see that he wasn't even crouching close to the tree, but was standing erect, legs apart, holding what could be a shotgun. Perhaps he was one of Asquith Prescott's cottagers? His gamekeeper awaiting a fox? But surely he would be holding the shotgun at the ready? And what sort of hat was he wearing? It was more like a headdress -- tall fronds that caught the breeze and were the only thing about the shadow that moved. Yet there was something oddly familiar about the headdress -- she knew that she had seen it before.

  Gradually Vikki brought her terror sufficiently under control to will her legs to move, and a sharp downward push on the palm of her artificial left hand caused its cleverly-articulated fingers to tighten their grip on the handlebars. Slowly, one trembling step at a time, she backed away without taking her eyes off the strange shadow for an instant...

  Ten paces... Twenty paces...

  She reached the spot where the lane's asphalt ended, where she was forced to dismount each day on her way home from school. It would be easy now to jump onto her bicycle and pedal furiously away. The track was slightly downhill towards the safety of St Catherine's -- whatever it was behind the tree would never catch her. But there was a strange compulsion about the shadow. She continued staring at the old oak and the figure that lay beyond. Her thumping heart merged with a new, distant sound that caused the ground to shake in unison with the primeval, savage beat. It was a sound she had never heard before in her fifteen years and yet she knew what it was: a full impi -- 500 warriors beating their assegais on their ox-hide shields and stamping -- the slow, insidious beat of the main cohort -- the buffalo's head -- designed to focus the attention of the enemy while the horns spread out through the long grass to complete their deadly encircling manoeuvre.

  The heavy beat quickened -- there would be one beat for every spirit being avenged by the war party, followed by a burst of hollering cries, a sudden unnerving silence, and then the pounding of spears on the inside of shields and the stamping would resume.

  How do I know this?

  But she did. Just as she knew that the impi was an izimpohlo -- a brigade of unmarried warriors. They were a mile away and about to wipe out a Butelezi kraal -- the hated enemy.

  The rich, storm-soaked colours of the English countryside swam around her -- a crazy kaleidoscope of colours and patterns. The lines of chestnut fencing posts and hedgerows that divided the fields on the storm-sodden plain that bounded the northern slopes of the South Downs dissolved into a vista of yellowing elephant grass and red soil. What had been broad oaks were now a group of scrawny thorn trees, cowering under a blistering sun.

  He's still there!

  She began walking towards the trees, not noticing the sharp stones beneath her bare feet or that she no longer had her bicycle. She didn't even notice that the customary dead weight of her artificial left hand had also gone; her entire consciousness was fixed on the motionless shadow. The pounding and stamping stopped suddenly. The buffalo's head would start closing in now, shields held forward at an angle and the warriors packed tightly together to make them appear fewer in number than they were. The enemy would be fooled -- they always were -- and would send an inadequate defence force to meet the approaching menace. Suddenly the buffalo's head would spread out, stabbing spears flashing out from shields abruptly turned square on, the attacking army would seem to double in size in an instant. The effect would be devastating. The enemy, having hurled their spears and now weaponless, overwhelmed in a few bloody moments of savage carnage.

  How do I know this?

  But she ignored the corner of her reason that was trying to retain a firm grip on reality and concentrated on placing one foot before the other -- not looking down -- eyes fixed straight ahead to where the owner of the shadow would soon come into view. Her steps faltered at the sight of the powerful fist clutching the assegai, and then the warrior was before her. She stopped, raised her eyes to his face, and the beauty of his fine, aristocratic, chiselled features caused her to breath to spasm in her throat. It was a face that she knew: the man made flesh.

  `Dario!' she whispered in recognition.

  It was the name she had given him when she had first seen him several weeks before; it had seemed in keeping with his height and majestic bearing.

  `Dario!' she breathed again and went closer.

  Not a muscle moved in that perfect body; the large, liquid eyes watching her were neither threatening or welcoming. Apart from the crane feather headdress, he was naked because that was the mighty king's ruling. No strings of crocodile teeth or ornaments that an enemy might hear; no armlets that might catch the sun; no body decorations to identify individual warriors because the king's rigorous training suppressed individuality. Unit markings on shields, coloured headdresses for the benefit of the commander directing the battle from a nearby hillside with signals, and that was all.

  Vikki's terror gave way to wonder such was the hypnotic power of those bewitching eyes. But she could not keep her gaze from the splendours of his magnificent body. She was now close enough to touch him had she the courage. His skin was the colour of Inspector Harvey Evans' sunflower honey, gleaming like polished ebony under its sheen of ox-tallow. The long, pointed shield that he held in front of him was covered in the finest leopard skin, the broad blade of his assegai sandstone-polished to glinting perfection, the stabbing spear's short haft a matt sheen from its treatment with hot beeswax to improve grip.

  The eyes gazing down at Vikki softened, strengthening her returning courage. Compelled by the aristocratic perfection of his features, she reached up on tiptoe and touched his chin, automatically using her real hand as she always did. He made no move. Emboldened, she traced the line of his forehead with her fingertip and drew it down the bridge of his finely-sculptured nose. The contact sent thrills of an intensity such as she had never experienced before coursing through her.

  A mile distant the cries of battle were over. It was finished hardly before it had begun. And now the real killing started: the slaughter of the old men, women and children. The mass murder was not mindless but to ensure that the secrets of the mighty king's military tactics did not spread. Babies would be spared -- they would not remember, and in twelve years the males would make warriors of the Fasimba children's regiments -- the `Haze' -- because their slight forms enabled them to move unseen when the grass was short and enemy kraals would not be expecting an attack.

  Dario was a picket: one of perhaps twenty or thirty warriors surrounding the village at a distance to ensure that no one escaped.

  This time Vikki did not worry about her strange acquisition of knowledge; all her attention was focussed on her right forefinger that was stroking Dario's lips, daring him to accept the invitation by opening his mouth. He wouldn't, of course -- the unmarried girls in her village often made this ancient, teasing offer of ukahlobongo to returning hunters whom they had singled out as future husbands. It was an invitation to practice imitation sexual intercourse using the girls' arms, thighs and even feet. The king's law forbade sexual intercourse during a campaign for even his married warriors, but ukahlobongo sex play was regarded as acceptable and even encouraged, although many warriors refused, believing that the inevitable outcome of such delightful encounters drained their strength.

  But Dario did accept!

  His beautiful lips parted and Vikki's mischievous, teasing fingers were gripped between dazzling, bark-scrubbed white teeth, sucking gently, releasing a liquid warmth that suffused the centre of her being. She gave a little gasp at her boldness and its inevitable consequence. To withdraw the offer to a king's warrior could bring shame and a hideous punishment if he felt slighted. The village duenna whispered the fate of such girls who were sent north to the royal kraal at Bulawayo. It was said that a terrible operation was performed o
n them: girls that had denied pleasure would never know pleasure -- therefore a mixture of custom, ritual, fear and a good deal of curiosity overruled Vikki's inhibitions and guided her hand to his chest.

  Dario lowered the shield a little so that she could span her fingers across several ribs. She marvelled at the sleek hardness of his muscles beneath the smooth, oiled skin. His half smile was reassuring. She moved closer, her breasts now pressing against his shield, and crouched slightly so that she could slide both hands around him and caress his iron-hard buttocks and realized with a distant shock that she had feeling through the prosthetic fingertips of her left hand.

  He suddenly seemed indifferent to her presence, his eyes scanning the veldt, but this was part of the game of ukahlobongo. He might appear indifferent but the wondrous tensing and relaxing of his gluteus muscles beneath her sensually-exploring fingertips told a different story, especially when she teased the little hollow at the base of his spine. Her heartbeat quickened when she felt him lowering the shield. For the first time she looked down and saw that her striped school blouse and tie, and sensible Marks and Spencer bra were gone. She was surprised but not alarmed to see that her skin was the same colour as his, her breasts much fuller than normal, her nipples dark and prominent.

  But what held her fascinated attention was IT... So dark and slender, vein-laced, and rising up, forcing its way into the valley between her breasts with a bewildering, insistent strength. She instinctively knew what she had to do even though the village girls who had practiced ukahlobongo had not gone into details. She squeezed her breasts together against him and began moving them up and down, gently at first and then more quickly to keep pace with his breathing. That her left hand was now real and not a brilliant creation in titanium and silicon seemed perfectly normal.