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.Then the stones began to fall.One of the soldiers was unlucky.Laika saw a heavy stone fall directly on his head as he struggled to get to his feet, killing him instantly.Other stones rained down around them, but none found a target, and they managed to join the others who had safely gone beyond the range of the flying debris.When Laika looked back, she saw that Castle Dirk had nearly disappeared from the earth.Only part of the inner curtain was still standing, and while she looked, that too slowly collapsed in a cloud of gray dust.Chapter 54"I felt relief, that was the first thing," Joseph said, in response to Laika's question.He was standing with her and Tony at the edge of the ridge from which they had observed the castle for so long.Molly Fraser was below with Martin Leech in the ruins, helping him oversee the cleanup by directing the large number of vehicles, MI5 personnel, and soldiers, as well as keeping out the snooping eyes of the media.The official story would be that the Scot nationalist terrorists who had been responsible for the freeing of the IRA prisoners and the attacks upon London and Stirling had blown themselves up in their own arsenal, after having been tracked down by MI5.It was a scenario highly favored by Leech when Laika had suggested it."I felt relief," Joseph repeated, looking at the calming waters of the Minch rather than the frenzied activity at the former site of the castle."There were.emotions that I could sense from the light—or the beings who had sent it.It was like, I don't know, an instant download, all this data pouring into my brain in one fell swoop.""Why relief, though?" asked Laika."Because I just felt the greatest calm and wisdom, the greatest sanity exuding from this thing.Indescribable.I mentioned to you a dream I had when we first came here, remember? Now I know it was no dream.I think it was the same intelligence then—trying to reach me.I had the same feeling then, only not as strong.But this time it seemed as if nothing could ever be wrong again, as though it had come from some far more highly advanced civilization than our own, so much so that it might easily be thought—or misinterpreted—as a god."But there was more, too.I felt that it was concerned for humanity, deeply.I felt its dismay over what had happened.And its need to.restore order.Somehow I knew that it had brought Mulcifer here—and Mulcifer's not its real name any more than that body was its true form.But the being had intended Mulcifer to be contained, held somewhere, somehow, and not ever loosed upon the world.""Were they the same species?" asked Tony."The light-thing and Mulcifer?""I think so.""But the light was calm and wise and sane, you said," Laika observed."And Mulcifer wasn't anywhere close to being that.""Maybe that's why he was here," Tony suggested."Because he was insane in his own world, and they banished him." He looked uncomfortable for a moment."Um, when I say 'world,' am I right? I mean, are we talking aliens here? Is that really what this is all about?"Joseph smiled."I can't think of any other scenario that makes sense.And so does that banishment theory.A society that advanced has probably long abolished capital punishment.""But why would they have put him on a world that was inhabited?" asked Laika."Maybe they thought it was safe.And remember, we don't know how long he was here on our world.We can trace him back to the eighth century, but he might have been here long before that.""What?" said Tony."Are you implying before there were any people?""The impression I got was that these beings are incredibly long lived, so I guess it's a possibility.""There's another possibility," Laika said."What if the misfits, for want of a better term, were imprisoned here, but underground, deep in caves that had no access to the surface? Remember, there had to be some way that Mulcifer got that nerve gas, yet the surface over the cavern was undisturbed.""Which means that they had to have gotten in some other way," said Joseph."Possibly underground, through a series of tunnels that Mulcifer already knew of, tunnels that brought them near or into the cavern." He nodded."It makes more sense that Mulcifer finally found a way out in the eighth century than it does that his peers just dropped him into a populated world.Somehow he found his way to the surface, and as far as the world was concerned, the Antichrist was loosed upon it.""Okay," Tony said, "so where does the cloth fit into this picture? When we were watching Mulcifer and Mackay's last shootout, Mulcifer said something about 'the power of the cloth of sustenance' that Mackay's father let him use to become immortal, and the implication that it was originally supposed to sustain Mulcifer.He had to mean the cloth that lined the cup.Did he mean the cloth that was dug up here, too?""Both," Joseph said."The question is where the cloth came from in the first place."Laika took a deep breath of salt air from the Minch."You give a prisoner a blanket, don't you? Well, what if this was more than just a blanket—what if it gave him warmth, but also nourishment, somehow?" She gave a small, exasperated laugh."I have no idea of how something like that could work, but I suspect the technology of these critters is a good ways beyond ours.""You're probably right," Joseph said."But that cloth provided something else, too.My theory is that it was some kind of sentinel, and its true purpose may have been unknown to Mulcifer, at first, anyway.""A sentinel?" asked Tony."Yes.The same way that seemingly paranormal acts were sentinels to the Templars that Mulcifer's powers were somehow breaking through the lead
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