A chill wind blew across the top of the hill.  No mournful singing disturbed the night's silence.  Above them, countless stars shone brighter than they had ever seen before.  The silent, shimmering, shapes of the Aurora Borealis streak across the sky, casting an eerie, shifting, light over the scene.

Pepper's form wavers in front of them like a heat haze, shimmering, twisting, distorting as he walks down the corridor.  Every few yards it changes.  Rough stone walls, smooth floor; metal walkway with hand rails over an unknowable abyss; wood-panneled hallway with an Axminster runner.

"Ladies and gentlemen we are heading for what some call the Room of Remembrance."  He spun on his heel, now walking backwards.  "I like to think of it as a complete head-trip."  Spinning again, his coat flared out and snagged on a tree-root protruding from the earthen walls of that stretch of corridor.  "People have been known to have visions of past and future in this room.  The Edinburgh Psychic Investigation Society of Victorian times held regular seances in this room to great effect.  Rumour has it that there is a spirit bound to the table itself, one Armalan of Loc, though I've seen nothing myself.  It is believed to be a spirit of information, a veritable Google of its day.  Who knows?  We might be lucky.  We'll find out in about five minutes."
 

The stairs go on forever, down into the dark.  Five steps, landing, turn left, seven steps, landing, turn left, five steps...  No doors lead off the landings but bricked-up doorways.  The footsteps of Pepper, Ghost and the five tourists echo up and down.  Mist drips from step to step, pooling on the landings, undulating unpleasantly as they move through it.

They turn round and ask you to tell them the story so far
This is the story so far
And you listen with a tear in you eye
To their hopes and betrayals and your only reply
Is Slainte Mhath

Marillion - Slainte Mhath

10:30pm. The Royal Mile.

"Dave?" A deep voice, gravelly. A few too many a day.
"Aye Al?" Lighter, nerdy.
"How do you switch this thing on?"
"Wee switch at the back, doon on the left?"
"Oh, right." *click* *whirr* "Aye, that's it."

All through the flight from Newark, Lucy Talbot had been grilling the bemused man in the seat next to her about Edinburgh.  What should she see first, where should she go first, where should she stay, where should she eat, was it true that they fired a gun every day at one o'clock and no-one minded?  His initially monosyllabic answers about sleep and a lack of it in the past few days turned into long, eloquent explanations as he warmed to the subject of his adopted home town.

And so it begins...