The Queen of sinister

Crowther was hot and irritable and the path appeared to go on for ever. The still air beneath the trees had grown oppressively muggy and even long drinks from the numerous cool streams that cut through the forest did little to ease his discomfort.

Mahalia, dealing with her grief, spoke little, but what worried him was that when she did talk, she was polite, thoughtful, almost good-natured. He was concerned that Carlton's death was an unbearable stress that could eventually destroy her.

'It might help to talk about him,' he said as he watched her kicking small stones into the thick undergrowth. 'The boy… uh, Carlton…'

'There's nothing to talk about.'

'You could tell me how you met him.'

She thought about this for a moment, then said, 'It was after I'd escaped… from the attic. I'd been living rough, trying to get food anywhere I could…' She grimaced. 'I ate some disgusting things, just to stay alive. That showed me you'd do anything to survive — anything.' She continued walking, not looking at him. 'I expect you can guess what it was like — a young girl on the street, easy target. One morning four men, four bastards…' She spat the word. '… tried to rape me. Broad daylight, on the footpath, in one of the main shopping areas. People were nearby. Nobody cared, however much I screamed. They just wanted to get on with their business. My problems were my problems.'

Crowther watched the back of her head, reading the unspoken emotions amongst her words.

'Carlton came out of nowhere,' she continued. 'Somehow he rounded up some of those people walking by — I don't know how he did it, he couldn't talk, but, you know, he had a way about him — people liked him, people followed him…' She stifled a sob in her throat, took a moment to wipe her eye, but still remained in control, still diamond-hard. 'They drove the men off… saved me. Carlton saved me. And when he came over and held out his hand to help me up, and just smiled, that way he always did, I knew I'd found a friend — someone who'd help me, someone I could help.'

Crowther watched her shoulders grow taut and her head bow. Awkwardly, he reached out a hand and laid it on her shoulders. He felt uncomfortable at making such a connection, but it did the job, for she flashed him a brief, sad smile. It made her look like a different person.

'Now we're never going to find out who he really was… or what he could do,' she said.

'Perhaps he was simply a good person,' Crowther said. 'No more, no less. Perhaps he had already done the job intended for him, and nothing more was planned for him. His work was over.'

Mahalia eyed him curiously. 'Do you believe in God, Professor?'

'I did, then I didn't, and now… I'm open to arguments.' The question unnerved him and he quickly moved the conversation away. 'So where do you come from, young Mahalia? You've been a little bit of a dark horse since we met. You've clearly had the benefit of a good education and there's an air of the well-to-do about you.' He kicked himself mentally for sounding so false, but trying to be nice didn't come easily to him. It felt as if they were two blind people groping round in the dark, trying to discover if the other was animal, mineral or vegetable.

She sighed and for a second he thought she was not going to answer. But the openness they had both displayed had worked a spell on her. 'I don't really like talking about the past,' she said. 'It's gone, dead. But… OK… I went to Cheltenham Ladies' College. A boarder. My dad and mum lived in Hampshire. He ran a financial services company. Mum did charity work, that sort of stuff. It wasn't easy to be black in those sorts of circles, but they did OK. They seemed to like it. When the Fall came and everything started going mad, I tried to get back to them. I stole a car with a couple of friends, and when it ran out of petrol I walked. Got back to the house just over a week later. There was no sign of them.'

'Do you have any idea what might have happened?'

She shook her head, but had a strange faraway look on her face, as if remembering long-forgotten facts. 'There was some food on the table, half-eaten, but they were gone — like they'd been snatched away. Who knows? Whatever… you know, the things they did… they didn't give them any sort of skills to survive in the world we've got now. In their world, they were big shots, but now… what use are people who only know how to make money?'

He raised his voice as a strong breeze rustled the undergrowth. 'You're very keen on this survival thing.'

She shrugged. 'When it comes down to it, you've only got yourself. No one else is going to look after you.'

He couldn't argue with that. Mopping his brow, he realised something curious: there was no cooling breeze, so how could the undergrowth continue to rustle? The answer came at him like a wolf, and he turned with dread. Purple light floated amongst the trees as far as his eye could see. The Lament-Brood's advance had been as silent as death, hidden behind the conversation and the background noise of the forest. He cursed himself for not being more on guard.

His shock was compounded when he saw that the army had at least doubled in size from the number that had emerged from the river. Could the Whisperers have altered some of the Gehennis, perhaps other of the forest's mysterious inhabitants? A virus, infecting, transforming, spreading exponentially.

Crowther urged Mahalia to run just as the insidious whispering grew louder. He imagined the virulent sound as snakes slithering through the vegetation, preparing to rise up once near them.

Mahalia was lighter on her feet and quickly moved ahead while the professor lumbered on behind, lungs burning, face red. Further back, but not much, the thunder of the Lament-Brood's mounts shook the ground.

Mahalia slowed when she realised he wasn't at her heels.

'Don't wait for me,' he said.

She hesitated.

'I said, don't wait for me!'

She broke ahead and he did his best to keep up, the whispering growing more intense, insinuating into Crowther's head. Black thoughts bloomed, their florid misery spreading through his mind. His legs grew leaden.

Give up. Lie down. Die.

With a rapid flick of his wrist, he smacked his staff against his forehead, and then even harder against his nose. He howled a stream of four-letter words and blood splattered on to his lips, but it earned him some respite. Ahead, he saw Mahalia veer into the trees. She'd seen something — probably a short cut, for the path was curling round upon itself. Against his better judgment, Crowther followed. Through the trees, there was blue sky; the forest's edge. Mahalia suddenly came up sharp, wobbling back and forth and trying to balance herself with flailing arms.

'Wait-!' she cried.

Crowther couldn't stop. He ploughed into the back of her, propelling her forward, over the edge of a cliff. He yelled out in shock, catching a branch to stop himself following her and then lashing out with his other arm. He was too late. With a scream, she went plummeting down.

Crowther could hear rushing water, glimpse the white of the rapids far, far below to his right, where the view over the lip was clear.

Panic exploded in him. He'd killed her! Ignoring the rapidly approaching Whisperers, he dropped to his knees and peered over the lip. Ten feet below, a thin ledge wound its way along the cliff face. There was no sign of Mahalia. A cry caught his attention, and away to his right he saw Matt and Jack edging their way as quickly as possible along the path towards him.

Dazed, Crowther lowered himself over the lip. He took one last glance at the purple mist drifting dreamily amongst the trees, and then he let go, not really caring if he overbalanced and was smashed on the rocks far below.

Jack yelled at him. He read the words on the boy's lips before the sound came to him: 'She's still alive!'

Perplexed, he leaned over the edge to find Mahalia clinging to a crevice not far below the edge of the path, her face bloody from a gash on her forehead. Overcome with a sweeping joy, Crowther tried to get to her, but Jack and Matt barged him to one side so that this time he almost did overbalance. Jack and Matt knelt down, reaching for Mahalia's hands, but the path was so narrow that they could barely gain any purchase.

Mahalia's arms trembled with the strain, and her face had the desperate fear of someone who knew their life was numbered in minutes. Then her wild, white eyes rolled to the right and the fear became more avid.

Crowther glanced back along the path to see one of the Gehennis, its horrific form twisted, the purple mist running through it like capillaries of smoke.

Aware of the approaching danger, Matt and Jack worked frantically, but still couldn't get leverage. Crowther stood up, braced his back against the rock and gripped both their belts. There was a brief moment of anxiety, and then they gave their trust to him, pushing themselves out over the edge and allowing him to take their weight, in the certain knowledge that if he faltered they would all go.

Crowther knew it, too, but he was determined in a way he had never been before to live up to what was expected of him. Matt and Jack lunged down to grab Mahalia's arms.

Behind the Gehennis, more of the Lament-Brood followed. The whispering even began to drown out the thunder of the water.

'I'm not listening!' Crowther roared.

With a heave, Mahalia came up. For a second they all feared they were going over, but Crowther held firm until Mahalia was on the path.

'No time to rest!' Crowther yelled. 'Move!'

Jack helped Mahalia along, though she looked fit to fall again, and Matt followed. The vividness of the experience gave Crowther a moment of startling clarity as he realised that he didn't want to die after all.

The Lament-Brood pressed hard at their backs as they edged along the precipitous ledge. Finally, the Court of the Dreaming Song came into view. They clambered up a flight of stone steps to a large flagged courtyard suspended over the gorge. An arched oak door twenty feet high led into the interior of the court. But as they hurried towards it, Matt held out his arms to stop them. 'This is a defensible position. We have to destroy the path to stop them getting in here.' 'How can we do that?' Crowther snapped. Nervously, he glanced back to see a column of Lament-Brood barely two minutes away from the steps. 'Come on,' Crowther said. 'Inside.' 'No.' Matt grabbed Jack's shoulders. 'You've got to use that thing inside you. Like you did on the boat.' Dismay seeped into Jack's face. 'I can't!' Matt shook him hard. 'You have to.' 'Leave him alone.' Mahalia tried to pull Matt's hands free, but she was still weak from the shock. 'I can't control it,' Jack pleaded. 'I'm afraid… I could set off the whole Wish-Hex! I could destroy everything!' Matt thrust Jack in the direction of the path. 'Just do it. You controlled it before-' 'That was by chance!' '-you can do it again.' Jack hovered, looked to Mahalia for support, and then with shoulders sagging, he ran to the top of the flight of stone steps. 'What if he does take us out?' Crowther yelled above the roar of the water. 'He won't,' Matt said. 'They wouldn't have put the bomb in him if it could be randomly detonated. They're not stupid — they must have some kind of military mind to do a thing like that. There has to be a fail-safe.' 'You could have told him that!' Mahalia said. 'I want him upset and angry so he'll blow that path to kingdom come.' Jack looked small and forlorn against the stone rail that ran around the edge of the courtyard. He bowed his head, then pivoted at the waist. When he rose up, a sheet of silvery light ballooned out from him. All the sound was sucked out of the vicinity until, with a pop, the bubble of light burst. Matt, Crowther and Mahalia were knocked flat on their backs by a wall of pressure. A sonic boom made their ears ache and when they looked up Jack was clutching on to the rail for support. Beyond him a cloud of dust rose up from where the path had been, and mingling with it were the last few strands of purple mist.

Matt nodded with satisfaction. 'That did the trick.'

'There is another way of looking at it,' Crowther said. 'Let's hope we get a warm welcome, because there's no going back.' 'Somebody's having fun.' Matt nudged Crowther as they examined the large, impressive doors. Jack and Mahalia sat on the rail overlooking the gorge. They were locked in a deep embrace. There was more desperation than passion in their kiss, the recognition of kindred loneliness and a hunger to fill that void.

'Good for them,' Crowther said. 'At least someone is finding something worthwhile out of this whole miserable experience.'

'I don't know what to do about Caitlin,' Matt said.

'Yes, perhaps you should have thought of that before you blew up her one route into this place.'

'You know I had no choice.'

'Then she'll have to find another route… or not. There's nothing we can do about it.'

Crowther could see that Matt was obviously trying to distract himself from his anxiety by focusing on the matter at hand, but his fellow traveller was deeply affected.

Matt scanned the door for some way of opening it. 'I can't understand why no one has been out to us. Surely they must know we're here.'

'Triathus certainly implied they'd be eager to help us.' Crowther leaned on his staff. His back ached from the tingling insistence of the mask; its influence was growing more intense, so that sometimes it felt as though fiery fingers were digging into his spine.

'There seem to be two different forms of architecture,' Matt said, pointing to the monolithic blocks and the delicate, surrealistic detail that overlaid them.

'That's because it's the work of two different races.' Jack stood behind them, his arm around Mahalia's shoulders. 'The Golden Ones like to pretend they're the only people who ever ruled here, but there were others.' He walked over and patted one of the huge stone blocks. 'This comes from the Age of Warriors. The Drakusa were a hard, violent race — at least, that's what I heard. Not much is known about those who came before. Though before isn't really the right word in this place… you know, time doesn't have any real meaning. I suppose they still do exist, somewhere. The Golden Ones just aren't interested in finding out any more about them.'

'Did they influence humanity?' Crowther asked.

'I don't know… I suppose. It's said they had the power to shape rock, to pull up whole structures from the earth itself and mould it with the power of their minds. When I was in the Court of the Final Word, I made friends — although that isn't really the right word — with Math, the Keeper of Records. I think more than anything he was just keeping an eye on me once they'd done their work. But it gave me the chance to get into the library. They've got so many secrets hidden away in that place.'

'Sounds like you might be even more valuable to us,' Matt noted.

'More valuable than just a weapon?' Jack's tone suggested the hurt he felt at Matt forcing him to act against the Lament-Brood.

'Can we just get inside?' Mahalia snapped. 'After nearly dying I could do with a sit down. And don't for a minute think I've forgotten who almost sent me flying to my death.' She fixed an eye on Crowther, who studiously ignored her.

'Most of the great courts have doors that can be opened by anyone, if you know the right way,' Jack said. 'The Golden Ones aren't afraid of anything, so they never think anyone would be stupid enough to attack them.'

Matt eyed the professor slyly.

'What are you thinking?' Crowther said defensively.

'You could use the mask-'

'No! Absolutely not!'

'You could-'

'You saw what happened last time! Are you an idiot?' Crowther presented his denial forcefully, but he felt a feverish desire tingling throughout his entire body. The mask responded to his yearning with a gentle tug at his emotions.

'You're a smart bloke. You can control it… or you can learn to.'

'And in the meantime I risk destroying everything.'

'You're doing to him what you did to me!' Jack protested.

'I'm not trying to make anybody's life miserable, or to risk anything.' Matt sighed. 'But we're in a difficult situation with a lot at stake. Everyone has to do what they can to further our mission, even if there's a personal price involved.'

'I don't see you paying any price.' Crowther pushed past Matt and sat cross-legged in front of the door. His hands were sweating as he tugged the mask from the hidden pocket in his coat. 'You have a very unpleasant way of manipulating people to your ends. Do you like seeing everyone suffer?'

Matt dismissed the comment with a shake of his head, and went to watch the proceedings from the rail. Crowther held the mask for a second, but he was shaking with excitement and couldn't delay the gratification any longer. He held it up, and once it was near his face, the spider-leg protrusions burst from the sides and slammed into the holes in his head. There was a faint buzzing as it fixed itself to his skull.

*

'This time will he like honey.' The seductive voice of Maponus lapped around Crowther's mind. ' There will be no shocks… no fear. It will be like floating on your back downstream, watching the clouds pass by above you, feeling the warmth of the sun on your face, knowing you could sleep if you wanted. You will be at peace in a way that you never have been. And you will want this peace again. You will always want it, for the rest of your days. After this moment, you will desire to wear the mask… to connect with the greatness and wild wonder of my mind… for ever.'

And it was just as the mask said. Detached from everything that was happening, Crowther drifted in a state of pure joy and comfort, vaguely aware of the faint veins of blue that stretched across the door into a focal point three feet up from the ground and two feet in from the right outside edge. It glowed and shimmered before moving sinuously in a circle, round and round. It was a dragon eating its own tail.

Languorously, he rose, walked towards the door and placed his palm in the centre of the circling dragon. There was a fizz of blue sparks from his fingertips and the door swung open. 'See, mate, I told you there wouldn't be a problem.' Matt clapped Crowther across the shoulders.

The professor stared intently at the mask lying flat in the palms of his hands where it had dropped after it had removed itself from his head. He had tried to keep it clamped there, but it had refused his urgings. Maponus' faint, tinkling laughter echoed around his skull.

'Are you all right?' Matt asked. 'Of course. I'm absolutely hunky-dory.' Crowther walked away through the doorway so that Matt couldn't see the tears in his eyes.An enormous hall soared up into a vaulted roof filled with shadows. The main walls were constructed from the monolithic blocks of the Drakusa, but everything else, every pillar, balustrade, arch, column, buttress, ridge, rail and shelf, was carved in such an intricately detailed manner that it was almost hallucinogenic. It was impossible to take in the level of detail, for the longer they looked at something, the more that would emerge, and continually so. The symbolism was heavy and portentous, and while not obvious to them, it worked its magic in their deep subconscious. Strange, troubling thoughts blossomed, as if someone were whispering hidden information into their ears.

Mahalia caught Jack's arm. 'Can you see it? I thought it was an optical illusion — the light making the shadows shift…'

Yet the light source remained constant, the shadows sharp and hard.

'It's the carvings… they're moving,' Jack replied uneasily.

And they were, barely perceptibly but enough to trouble the companions. The strange beasts and alien figures continually shifted slightly as if they were alive; plants and trees moved in a faint breeze that didn't exist; birds adjusted their flight patterns. The effect was of the carvings shifting their perception as the four of them walked by, to get a better view of the strangers in their midst. 'I don't like it,' Mahalia whispered, and hated herself for sounding so pathetic. She knew she could cope with hard, physical things that would bend to her will or her blades, but this was beyond her control. 'Why is it so dark here?' Matt said with irritation. 'If there's a whole court full of Triathus' people here, you'd have thought they'd have invested in good lighting. You know, nipped down to Ikea for some of those nifty little lamps on wires you can slide around.' He cursed under his breath. 'The window let the light in, but there must have been some kind of mechanism to transmit it into the depths of this place.'

Mahalia unconsciously moved closer to Jack so that he could slide an arm around her. The four of them stood huddled together in the centre of the vast hall for a long moment, drinking in an atmosphere of claustrophobia and incipient dread.

'It feels to me,' Jack began hesitantly, 'as if something happened here. I don't know what…'

Crowther had finally gained enough control over himself to return the mask to its pocket. 'Well, we can't go back,' he said, with an edge of bitterness. 'So we'd better hope there's another way out of here.'

Matt ventured towards one of the walls, wincing as the carvings shifted to watch him. Plucking a torch from a metal bracket, he struck his flint and ignited it, so that the shadows swept away; it only added to the eerie movement across the walls.

Matt walked slowly towards the darkness at the far end of the hall. The others fell into line behind him, glancing behind at the comforting sunlight that broke through the open door. The hall gave way to a maze of corridors and chambers, everywhere decorated with the disturbing carvings. They would glance up to see a horned figure watching them from above an arch, or something sinuous slither around a door jamb and into a room.

They began to think they could hear the carvings talking. What sounded like sibilant voices came and went in phased patterns. It was only after a while that they realised it came from small globes fixed high up on the walls, with holes of varying sizes bored into them. As the four of them moved, they set off air currents that passed through the holes to create the constant sounds. Once they understood the source of the noise they decided it didn't really sound like voices at all. There was timbre and rhythm and cadence; it was music, but of a kind they had never experienced before.

Crowther theorised that many people moving through the corridors and rooms would create louder, more vibrant tones so that it would appear that the entire court was always filled with soothing music. But with only the four of them there, the effect was creepy and unsettling.

In one large hall, they made out paintings on the walls, so heavily faded that only by holding the torch close could they see the design. Parts of the paintings were obscured by the carvings, making it clear that they came from the earlier age of the court, when the Drakusa occupied more spartan surroundings. There were mountains and fire and vast plains, epic forests and gushing rivers. But one section made them all pause. Here were strange silver objects like eggs with legs.

'Clearly they are the Caraprix,' Crowther mused as he examined the silver shapes. 'They are symbiotes. All the Golden Ones carry them.'

'Caitlin mentioned Lugh had one,' Matt said.

'Yet here they are huge, dominating the scenery.' Crowther was puzzled. 'Then, the Drakusa knew of the Caraprix too. Yet the way they are drawn… it's almost as if they were deified.'

He wanted to consider the issue more, for he was convinced it was of deep importance, but the others were keen to hurry along in search of daylight. The court appeared to stretch for miles, from the cliff face deep into the bowels of the earth. Flaring up in the shifting torchlight were grand columned halls with designs of brass and glass, drapes of scarlet velvet and floors of shining marble, sweeping staircases that could have taken fifty people walking side by side. There was a room where the walls were entirely made of mirrors, giving an unsettling sense of the four of them striving throughout infinity, seeking survival in endless dimensions.

The chambers cried out for a throng of people devoted to art and beauty, continually accompanied by the music of their movement. But nowhere was there any sign of life. The scuttling, chattering, whispering sound that followed them wherever they went only added to the abiding sense of loneliness.

Finally, when weariness had turned their legs to lead, they opted to rest in a smaller room where they didn't feel so exposed. Matt fixed the torch in a bracket on one wall, but its faint light did little to dispel the feeling of a sea of darkness all around, waiting to submerge them.

'Ever get the feeling we've taken a wrong turn?' Matt said as he settled down at the foot of a wall. The oppressive atmosphere had crushed all the humour out of him.

'I can't understand this at all,' Crowther muttered. 'Everything suggests this place was clearly occupied very recently. Triathus gave no sign that it was deserted. So where could they possibly have all gone?'

It was a rhetorical question, and no one even began to answer it, though it had been troubling all their minds since they had first stepped into the court.

Both Matt and Mahalia fell into sleep quickly. Crowther, who had spent much of their trek through the court struggling with his desire to wear the mask, forced himself to sit down beside Jack. Even in the grip of his addiction, other concerns were at play in his mind. He watched the boy preparing to put his head down and then said, 'So, you and young Mahalia are… stepping out, as we used to say in my day.'

Jack's brow furrowed. 'Stepping out?'

'An item. A couple. Romantically intertwined. You really have led the ultimate sheltered life, haven't you?'

'I love her.' Jack's eyes sparkled in the semi-gloom. 'Really. Sorry to burst your bubble, but it's only infatuation. You're awash with hormones. It's a genetic process designed to facilitate speedy bonding for continued propagation of the species.' Jack stared at him blankly. 'I know what I feel.' 'No, you think you know what you feel. That's what all this mess is about — everything is an illusion and the truth lies somewhere behind it. Tell me about love when you've been with someone for years, cared for them when they're ill, put up with them when they're miserable or grumpy, taken the sharp side of their tongue and still come back.' He looked away into the dark, and added quietly, 'Tell me about love when you've acted quite appallingly, and the other person has still accepted you.' 'Why are you so concerned about us, Professor Crowther?' Crowther snorted. 'I'm not concerned. Ridiculous.' Jack eyed the gentle rise and fall of Mahalia's chest. Occasionally, she would twitch and half-heard words would spring to her lips. His attention was caught by Crowther fumbling inside his coat, and for a second Jack thought the professor was after the mask again. Instead, he pulled out a dog-eared picture. 'What's that?' Jack asked as he shuffled closer to peer at the snap. 'A painting?' 'A photograph.' Crowther's voice was strained. The picture showed two teenage girls, long, blonde hair, wide smiles, sparkling eyes. Anyone other than Jack would have recognised the fashions of the early nineties. 'Who are they?' Jack asked. 'My daughters.' Crowther's face was shrouded by shadows. 'What are their names?' 'Sophie. And Stacia.' 'Where are they now?' 'You ask a lot of questions,' Crowther said grumpily. He tapped the photo gently with the tip of his index finger. 'I have no idea where they are. They left home. Never really got in touch much.'

'That's not very nice.'

'No, it's not their fault,' Crowther said firmly. 'I wasn't the best of fathers. Quietly obsessed with my own life, you see. Children were a distraction.' He fell silent for a moment, then added quietly, 'It seems to be true what they say — you never really know what you've got till it's gone.' He tucked the photo away.

'Well, I know what I've got with Mahalia,' Jack said adamantly.

Crowther pulled his hat low over his face and shuffled deeper into his overcoat, ready to sleep. His mumbled words issued quietly into the dark. 'Be careful how you treat her, boy.'

'I wouldn't do anything to hurt her, ever.' Jack tried to pierce the shadows beneath the brim of the hat, but Crowther's face was lost to him. 'You care about her, don't you?'

But all that came back was a long, low snore. They woke together, and realised some sound must have disturbed them. Matt instantly took charge, keeping them silent with a cutting motion of his hand while they listened intently. From a distance, a scraping noise came to them, faint, but in the tomblike quietness it might as well have been an alarm.

Matt grabbed the torch from the wall and they all crept out of the chamber.

The noise was intermittent and indistinct and they would often have to wait for long periods until it emerged again to guide them in the right direction. They moved along a broad corridor and eventually came to a large hall that could well have been some place of worship, for there was a strange air of sanctity present. Exquisite paintings of fantastical scenes lined the walls and in the centre of the floor was something resembling an altar — a large stone table set with objects of reverence. In that room the motion-tones took on a different texture, sombre, haunting, prickling the hairs on the backs of their necks.

The scratching sound came from the foot of the altar. As they moved closer, the torchlight set shadows dancing across the hall. The darkness unfurled to reveal a shape crumpled on the floor, and an odd fluttering movement above it.

'Don't go any closer,' Mahalia said in a weak, strained voice, tugging at Matt's sleeve. He threw her off, curious and unnerved at the same time. He had to see.

The shape fell into relief. It was one of the Golden Ones, a male, resembling Triathus with his beautiful features, faintly shimmering skin and long hair. He was twisted half on his back, occasionally clutching feebly at the altar to try to pull himself up.

Mahalia exclaimed quietly, a note of sadness in her words, for they could tell he was dying. They hurried to his side and though his throat had been slit and there were numerous other wounds in his torso, there was no blood. Instead, his body was breaking up into tiny pieces that transformed into something like moths, glowing and golden as they fluttered up to the shadows that swamped the vaulted roof. Inside him, it appeared as though he were made of nothing more than light.

Crowther pushed Matt to one side and knelt beside the dying god. At first the professor attempted to staunch the fragmenting of the body, but when it became apparent that the process was irreversible, he leaned forward and said, 'Who did this?' The god's lids snapped open to reveal shimmering eyes that ranged back and forth until they fell on Crowther's face. Then, with the last of his strength, the god reached up to grab Crowther's coat to pull him closer. His voice was a thin husk. 'They come,' he said. 'They come.'

No sooner were the words out of his mouth than his hand fell back and his eyelids fluttered shut. The deterioration of his corporeal form suddenly became intense; a cloud of fluttering golden moths soared skyward, blinding all those who watched, and when they finally cleared there was nothing left.

'That's why there's no one here,' Crowther said with horror as he stared at the space where the god had lain. 'They've all been murdered. All of them… the entire court.'

'Over here!' Jack's voice carried from the edge of the penumbra.

The others ventured over, distracted and disturbed by what they'd seen. A powerful feeling of dread crept up on them. They found Jack looking up at a standard that had been rammed into the floor with such unnatural force that cracks radiated out across the marble from the base of the metal spur. At the top hung a flag made of some kind of shimmering but ultralight metal featuring a stylised drawing of a seashell.

In the thin torchlight, Jack's face appeared to have drained of all blood. 'It's the standard of the Court of the Yearning Heart,' he said weakly.

Matt grabbed him by the shoulders. 'What do you know?'

Jack wiped his hand across a suddenly snotty nose. 'They're one of the worst of the courts. They don't care about humans… they don't care about anything.' He looked around, eyes blinking stupidly. 'They killed them all. Their own people!'

'We need to get out of here,' Crowther said. 'That poor soul gave us a warning-' A deep, sonorous tolling echoed somewhere in the depths of the court, moving slowly through the thick stone walls, spreading its warning until every room and corridor was filled with the dim pounding.

'They know we're here,' Mahalia said, wide-eyed. 'How do they know?'

Matt cursed. 'Someone obviously just killed that Golden One… a mopping-up exercise. They were probably just leaving when we arrived.' He looked around with uncertainty. 'I can't tell if the alarm is coming from ahead of us or behind.'

Their moment of paralysis was broken when they heard what appeared to be the skittering of insects. It took a second for them to grasp that it was the sound of many feet approaching from a great distance.

'An army!' Crowther said with horror. 'Bloody hell fire, there's an army of them!'

Matt propelled the other three in the direction of a large arched opening leading to an annexe dominated by a rectangular shallow pool of water. The torch sent rippling patterns of light and shade moving across the wall as they passed. Beyond lay a processional corridor lined with lush heavily patterned drapes that led on to what may have been a ballroom or a concert hall, the disturbing carvings giving way to gleaming white columns and swirling confections moving along pink walls; a raised dais lay at one end. The pattering footsteps were louder now, coming from all sides. 'It sounds like children,' Mahalia gasped. She had drawn the Fomorii sword, ready to lash out as she ran.They emerged through an open gilded gate into an enormous indoor garden of trees and well-clipped hedges, wrought iron fences and pergolas covered with flowering creepers, beds of alien blooms of red and blue and purple that released an intoxicating perfume, sheltering boulders and gravelled areas filled with tall grasses. It was designed in such a way that the paths led through it like a maze, revealing each new section only at the last moment. The most startling thing lay at the focal point: a well of sunlight streaming down through a hole in the roof, dazzling in contrast to the gloom that lay all around. A system of mirrors were fixed here and there, so that at certain times they could be turned to give light to the whole garden.

It was only when they'd ventured deep into the complex maze that they realised their mistake. The design made it impossible for them to see the approach of attackers from any direction until they would be upon the companions.

'Let's make it to the sun. It'll be lighter there and we can make a stand,' Matt said fatalistically.

It wasn't long before they realised they were surrounded. Running feet pattered by on every side in the dark, crunching on gravel, rustling past bushes or disturbing wind chimes. The sound became intense, like rain on the window in a heavy winter storm. They could just make out bodies, flashing past gaps in the vegetation and garden architecture, not human, small, smaller even than the people of the Court of Soul's Ease.

Words from a poem kept repeating in Crowther's head: For fear of little men… for fear of little men. And he did feel fear, and revulsion, and he could see it in the faces of the others. There was something in the size, and the way they scurried rapidly, that suggested rats, bringing up feelings buried since the earliest development of the human mind.

Their pursuers closed in rapidly, waiting for the moment when the four were completely surrounded. And that point came when the companions finally reached the column of sunlight, which centred on a raised platform of white marble. They thrust themselves into it, relishing the warmth on their faces, but all detail beyond the pillar of illumination disappeared into the dark and, reluctandy, they had to step back out of the column of light to see what awaited them.

From their vantage point, they had a view across a larger part of the garden. Small, scurrying figures were everywhere, stretching back into the deep dark, a writhing, squirming sea of rodent life. The nearest ones revealed the previously hidden forms: pale skin, long limbs, squat bodies, nasty eyes and brutish brows.

Crowther couldn't believe that these people had once appeared as the stately, graceful Golden Ones. They had regressed to some point far, far back on their path of evolution, a state that spoke of viciousness and bestial urges, scratching out an existence in the dark places beneath the earth, only emerging at night with murder on their breath and hatred in their hearts.

And as he looked, with the fear swelling like an ocean inside him, he thought he understood why. They appeared to his perception as they truly were, no longer the aloof godlike Golden Ones, but the scrabbling creatures of humanity's darkest nightmares, broken by defeat and bitterness, desperate to prevent men from reaching the next stage of spiritual evolution, filled with all the basest urges. The more they gave in to hatred and murder, the more devolved they became.

They were all carrying tiny knives that glinted in the light. Crowther guessed they could gut and dress a body in minutes, seconds if they fell on a victim in numbers. This was it, then. Mahalia, Matt and Jack braced themselves for any attack, weapons at the ready. Half-heartedly, Crowther raised his staff.

The seething throng parted as a figure moved forward from the darkness at the back. As he neared, they could see that he stood more erect than the others, though he was just as small. He had a long grey beard, but his eyes had the same black, hateful essence as his fellows'. Once he reached the front of the throng, he eyed them with cold malice. 'Fragile Creatures,' he said contemptuously. 'What do you here in the Far Lands?'

Matt stepped forward. 'We're not concerned with whatever war you've got going on amongst your people. We're not going to interfere. We just want to get on our way, and to deal with our own business.'

'Interfere?' The little man laughed hollowly. 'My name is Melliflor, first lieutenant to the Queen of the Court of the Yearning Heart,' he added, regarding them slyly. 'And we do not like Fragile Creatures here in the Far Lands. You have your own home, Son of Adam, and now you have ventured far beyond the fields you know.'

The crowd of little men behind him was like a tidal wave, waiting to break upon the four standing near the light. They surged and pressed, but Melliflor held them back by the force of his charisma while his cunning weighed the situation. He removed his own little knife from his belt and proceeded to clean his long, dirty fingernails in an ostentatiously threatening manner.

One of his army couldn't hold back any longer and darted forward, grasping towards Mahalia's foot. She lashed out savagely with the Fomorii sword and took his arm off at the elbow. He howled in pain, rolling backwards across the floor. A hiss whistled through the assembled army and they rose up as one, ready to strike. Matt, Mahalia and Jack steeled themselves.

'No more sunlight for you,' Melliflor said with false sadness. He raised one arm; the little men prepared to move.

The constant itching that assailed Crowther's back became at that moment a full-scale rush of molten iron in his veins. Even if he had fought he wouldn't have been able to prevent his hands from darting to the secret pocket and removing the mask. If he was about to die, he wanted to do it in the luxurious, stimulating, cocooning world of the mask, the only place he had ever known true pleasure and true acceptance. But the moment he brought out the mask, the sunlight gleaming off its silvered surface, the little men drew back as one, as if they were about to be burned, their nasty little eyes grown wide with fear. Matt saw their response and clutched at Crowther's arm. 'Don't put it on — just hold it out,' he hissed.

With trembling hand, Crowther just about resisted, though it edged slowly towards his face.

Melliflor recovered first, his eyes filled with a hungry gleam that Crowther knew only too well. 'Give me the mask. It is too dangerous for Fragile Creatures. Give it to me and you shall be allowed to leave here.'

'How can we trust you?' Matt shouted.

'You have my word — on the weft and weave.'

'A promise?'

'A promise. And we do not give our word lightly, Fragile Creature.' Melliflor appeared hypnotised by the light dancing off the mask, desperately yearning and fearful at the same time.

'Give it to him,' Matt whispered to Crowther. 'We don't have any choice. Even if we can't trust him, it might cause enough of a diversion for us to get out of here if you throw it right into the heart of them.'

'No.' The word was quiedy spoken and steely hard.

'Don't be stupid!' Matt dug his fingers into Crowther's arm. 'What's wrong with you?'

'Do you have any idea what they could do with this mask?'

Matt searched Crowther's face. 'That's not the real reason. What's going on?' Matt didn't wait for an answer, instead lunging for the mask. Crowther elbowed him sharply in the face and stepped away so he could turn defiantly and clamp the mask on to himself.

An exclamation of terror rushed through the army of little men like a wind on a stormy night. At the back there was frantic movement as some of them turned and fled; others scurried for cover, while the ones near the front were paralysed with fear.

Melliflor looked ghastly pale in the light coming off the mask. 'Good Son, forgive us,' he said in hushed, desperate tones.

The second the mask had attached itself to Crowther's face, Matt, Mahalia and Jack noticed a change in the atmosphere. A terrible weight bore down on all of them; sound became muffled and light, what little there was, became distorted.

Behind the mask, Crowther cried out. His hands rushed towards his face to tear the mask off, but then they suddenly fell limply to his sides, and he turned to face the little men. Melliflor was already backing away into the crowd. The little men scrambled and attacked each other in their desperation to escape, but their numbers were too great.

The mask fixed its attention on Melliflor with those cold, unseeing eyes. He dropped to his knees beneath the weight of the stare and clutched at his face, his nails biting deeply into his sallow skin. There was a slight nod from Crowther, and in the blink of an eye, Melliflor turned inside out. His organs and musculature appeared outside his body in a sticky mess. His eyes, still staring, registered an instant of surprised horror, and then his body disappeared in a frantic cloud of moths. This time, however, they were of the deepest black.

The atmosphere of tension broke as the frantic little men scrambled hither and thither, hunting for ways back into the dark places where they could hide. A route opened up towards the other side of the garden.'You can take the mask off now!' Matt yelled, but Crowther was lost to the surging power. The air around him shimmered and became like glass, ballooning out across the garden. Escaping figures were thrown into the air wherever it passed, limbs falling away as if they had been severed by surgical knives, organs pulled free and dismantled with a lazy curiosity by invisible hands. Soon the air was thick with black moths.

'He's lost it!' Mahalia said.

'Let's get him out of here!' Matt ordered. He grabbed one arm and Jack took the other, both of them fearful that the powers the mask was exhibiting would soon be turned on them. As they hurried out of the garden, the devastating attack by the mask continued in full force, lashing backwards at the fleeing little men, plucking up the stragglers, disappearing into passages, drains and culverts where some hid.

But once the three of them led Crowther into the rooms beyond, the power became less aggressive, though still potent. Psychedelic colours painted the walls or surged in fountains in the air. Briefly, Mahalia's hand became like crystal. The motion-music burst from the walls with the force of a hundred orchestras, beautiful melodies and wild, percussive rhythms fighting for space, so loud they could barely hear themselves think, the compositions brilliance and madness in equal measure.

And wherever they went, the air appeared to peel back to give views over alien landscapes, or into deepest space where cold stars glimmered, into other worlds, other dimensions. People came and went in a flash, faces that appeared vaguely familiar, some old friends, others strangers, but behind it all was an unnerving sense of meaning, as if they were seeing the structures of reality laid bare. Jack saw a Fabulous Beast soaring high over London, its jewelled scales glinting in the burst of fire that erupted from its mouth on to some dark tower. Mahalia glimpsed a desperate man who'd done desperate things shoot himself in the head, dead, dead as a doornail, and then later running with a sword through what appeared to be a cathedral, though the order of the visions made little sense to her. And Matt, he saw generals and spies and dead-eyed men sitting around a table plotting some big lie to deceive a population, only for that lie to become reality. And they all saw someone reading a book, painting mind-pictures from the words, creating more realities with every thought, making them hard and fast and real. Existence was fluid, everything was changing.

They rushed onwards, dragging Crowther between them, while the chaos and the madness of the warp surged all around, so that after a while their minds began to rebel, not knowing where they were or what they were doing.

The court was a vast maze, and in the heavy darkness it was impossible to tell if they were doubling back on themselves. They began to feel as if they would be in there for ever, trapped in an awful purgatory.

But then they discovered that Crowther was beginning to lead them, at first subtly suggesting changes in direction with a shift of his body weight, then increasingly pulling them along with him. They hurried down extravagantly decorated corridors, through vast, ringing halls, until they came to an arch big enough for three buses to pass through side by side. Over the top was a carving of a coiled, bewinged Fabulous Beast with sapphires for eyes, and beyond lay steep steps winding down into darkness.

'This looks like the way out,' Jack gasped breathlessly. He let go of Crowther's arm; the professor stood quietly, the mask now silent. 'Why's he suddenly calmed down?'

'Don't hang around talking,' Mahalia pressed. 'I just want to get out of this creepy place.' She headed through the arch without giving the others a chance to debate. The stairs were broader and more grand than the secret way out of the Court of Soul's Ease. Celtic spiral patterns in mosaic lined the walls, suggesting that the route was perhaps ceremonial. After fifteen minutes, they opened into an enormous cave with a small beach and the river lapping against it. Through the cave mouth they could see the late-afternoon sun on the slow-moving water and, beyond, the thick forest pressing heavily against the far bank.

'Looks like we bypassed the gorge and the rapids,' Matt said, with definite relief. 'I don't want to tempt fate, but we may be able to pick up Triathus.'

'Blind luck,' Mahalia said. 'It's about time something worked out in our favour.'

They helped Crowther as they picked their way over the slick rocks around the cave mouth, and after splashing through the shallows with the refreshing sun on their faces, they eventually pulled up on to the bank and lay amongst the trees at the river's edge.

'I thought we were dead in there,' Mahalia said, one arm across her eyes, the rise and fall of her chest gradually calming.

Jack sat next to her, unable to resist gently stroking her hair. 'Professor Crowther saved us. If he didn't have the mask…'

'I don't reckon it's as simple as that,' Matt interjected.

Mahalia looked up at the dark tone in Matt's voice. He was watching the professor uneasily, who sat against the base of a tree, unmoving, the mask still clamped to his face.

'Why doesn't he take it off?' Mahalia asked.

Matt grimaced. 'I don't think he can.' Caitlin marched through the night, the world red and black. Birmingham was far behind her. Lightning surged through her arteries, blazed across her mind; she was supercharged, glorious, almost floating above the land as she walked. At times her own mind was present, though hyper- aware, with none of the doubts that had torn her apart before. The clarity and confidence only added to her sense of ultimate wellbeing. At other times, the Morrigan's dark presence wove its way through her consciousness, like the thrashing of a murder of crows, and then there was only chaos and fragmented thoughts, like glimpses of a terrible battle through the drifting smoke of destruction.

Caitlin had covered miles in her energised state; she had no idea where she was going, but the Morrigan certainly did. The Midlands landscape had rolled under her feet. She neither tired nor paused for rest over a day and a night, gaining sustenance only from the fruit and wild vegetables she found on her route. Now she was passing through the lush Leicestershire countryside, a place of overgrown fields and a rampant, once well-tended forest that had spread almost magically across the area.

She came to a village called Griffydam, so named, according to myth, because its water supply had once been guarded by a griffin, the legendary half-eagle, half-lion creature. Crowther could have told her that such ancient stories were a code, denoting places where the barrier with the Otherworld was thin and where strange things often crossed over. But Caitlin knew this instinctively.

As she approached an old stone-lined well beside the road, thin lines of blue slowly rose to the surface of the ground beneath her feet, growing brighter and stronger as they rushed towards the well, casting a sapphire glow across the hedgerows and walls in that dark time just before dawn.

At the base of the well, cold blue fire blazed up higher, then formed lines of coruscating energy that rose up and up, crossing over, building a structure like a church with the well at its heart, as visible as a beacon across the surrounding countryside.

A burst of thunder shook the ground and continued to roll out all around as blue sparks fizzed and crackled in the ionised air. Caitlin stopped and stared in a moment of clarity brought on by the awe and the wonder, but then the familiar, urgent cawing of the Morrigan rose up once more.

Standing nearby, though he hadn't been there before, was the knight in the boar's-head mask. In her detached state, Caitlin half-made to speak to him, still not sure if he was there to help her or torment her. But all he would do was guide her towards the crackling blue light with his pointed sword.

She cast one last, wary look at him, and then the Morrigan propelled her into the blue.