Kerry was running, running in the dark, slashing through the cobwebs that tried to hold him back, hardly aware of the walls blurring past him and the roots slapping his head.
Behind him, a raging flood snarled and bellowed, gaining on him despite his speed.
"Height," he thought, "Need to climb!"
But the burrow-like tunnel was level. He was caught here, with water at his back and nothing but shadows ahead. He ran and ran, ran for his life, biting down on the panic that threatened to swamp him just as easily as that surging flow would if it caught him.
He barged through another veil of webs. Ahead of him, the tunnel forked, left and right.
In his head, the voice spoke again. He didn't recognise any words, but it seemed to touch something real. Without hesitation he threw himself right. This tunnel was even narrower than the first, earthen walls scraping his shoulders, trying to slow him down. He hunched tight and ran on, feet thudding, heart thumping.
"Jump….!" Another wordless command.
Without thinking, Kerry leapt….and leapt clean over a yawning hole. His feet hit crumbling earth on the far side but he managed to scramble forward before he slipped into black depths. Behind him, the roar was deafening, pushing him forward with enormous pressure in this confined space.
Then, miraculously, the path began to rise. A surge of hope swelled. Maybe…just maybe he could get high enough.
He couldn't even risk a glance behind. There was not an instant to lose. Already the air was moist and he could feel a cold droplet spray on the back of his neck. Just yards behind him, he could sense the water catching up, a raging beast set to pounce.
He was up the slope, slowing down not one bit. Froth surged around his feet and he knew that in one second he'd be slammed forward, then swallowed. He screwed up his eyes in dread anticipation, forced one last huge effort from his legs…
***
Jack's head throbbed. His whole body was one big bruise, or so it felt. Carefully he uncurled. For a moment looping vertigo made his vision blur and he closed his eyes tight until it went away.
He sat up, as the horrific memory of gargoyles and the creature with great leathery wings came back to him.
Jack shook the vision from his mind, not wanting to relive that moment or the, mindless terror he had felt.
He tried to work out where he was. Corriwen and Kerry had been ahead of him, moving fast. He had run for the door, feeling the pull of that creature's will.
And then he had been falling, crashing down until everything faded. He looked groggily around, but there was no sign of his friends. He called for them by name, but heard only his voice reverberating from stone walls then fading to silence.
He forced himself to his feet, checking to ensure he still wore the heartstone, and that he still had the great sword and the leather bag with the Book of Ways inside.
Then he braced himself against a wall and took in his surroundings. He was on a wide spiral stairwell. There was no banister of any sort, and each dusty wooden tread was fixed into the wall, without any other support. It felt flimsy and unsafe.
He risked getting closer to the edge of the stairs and looked up. The stairs spiralled for an impossible distance before they disappeared in murk and dust. Vertigo made him sway on the brink and he backed away. He felt trapped and confined and totally alone.
The steps below him took several turns before they reached a stone floor. It was darker down there, but logic told him he should take the lesser distance so, hugging the wall, he descended carefully, until he reached the bottom and a blank, circular wall. A dead end.
In the centre of the floor there was a rusted metal grate with thick bars on what looked like the top of an ancient well, fastened by a single hoop. Jack approached it cautiously and peered down, expecting to see his reflection in water. But there was nothing. The well seemed to go down as far as the stairway ascended.
Yet something was down there. The heartstone squeezed against him, just as a low vibration reverberated from the depths.
Jack forced himself back, fighting a curious compulsion to stay and see what it could be. He turned and scrambled up the steps, two at a time, as the steps creaked and dipped alarmingly under his weight. When he thought he had gained enough height, he crawled forward until he could see back down.
Something hit the grate with such force the heavy bars jumped upwards. It clanged back down again and from behind them, came a ferocious roar.
Jack recoiled, wondering if there was anywhere inside Bodron's domain that wasn't haunted by beasts and nightmares. Did Megrin's brother have monsters lying in wait at every turn? Jack couldn't answer that question, but he knew he'd have to assume so, if he had any chance of staying alive in this terrible place.
Creature in the well crashed again at the grate and Jack was convinced it was only a matter of time before the old metal gave way. He needed to get some more distance.
Jack continued up the stairway for another ten turns before he risked stopping to look up, hoping to see a doorway or a landing. But there was nothing. Only the flimsy spiral steps going up and up until they disappeared in the distance.
Far below he heard the gate snap open and crash back against the floor and the trapped beast, now free, bellowed in triumph. Almost immediately, Jack heard the hard thud of its weight on the treads. It sounded more like hooves than feet, but he didn't chance looking down. Ahead of him the staircase climbed impossibly high and he knew he couldn't keep running forever.
He suddenly recalled Megrin's warning
Don't believe what you see, or what you hear. This is no earthly place, that's for certain. We'd say it was weird-bound.
Think, he ordered himself - though not daring yet to pause on the stairs, because behind him he could hear the clatter of hooves on the treads and they sounded even louder than before. Think……!
"Don't believe what you see or hear." He spoke the words aloud. "She means it's not real."
What he'd seen in the great chamber, when it turned to look at him, it had felt real. It seemed to reach inside his soul.
Jack caught his breath and listened. The clatter of running hooves was closer now. He shouldered the satchel, grasped the hilt of the sword and started climbing again, as fast as he could, and then he forced himself to stop. Quickly he unhitched the satchel and drew out the Book of Ways, placed it on a step, and tried to ignore the thud-thud-thud from below.
The Book opened words began to scroll across the page.
As Jack bent to read, the letters squirmed and changed, a jumble of characters impossible to read. He tried to focus on them, but it made his head ache. The letters spun and separated, crawling over the page like ants.
Almost desperately, he reached into his tunic and drew out the Heartstone, cupped both hands around it, and looked at the open book through the smoky fireglass.
The lines on the page jumped into clarity and he read:
Journeyman finds all confusion
Caught in snare of bale illusion
Friend is lost in shadow land
Testing time is now at hand
Spellbind storm approaches swift
Heart will summon friend adrift.
He stared at the words, willing them to make sense. They always had before, even if the message was at first unclear. Below him, the beast on the stairs howled and its clattering hooves sent shudders up the wooden steps.
The book snapped shut.
All confusion…bale illusion.
And Megrin's words were fresh and clear. Don't believe.
He closed his eyes, pressed the heartstone on his forehead, feeling its heat. He pictured himself, with Kerry and Corriwen together in sunlight on the lush grass of Uaine. The heart beat in time with his own pulse.
"I believe…in my friends. I believe in the sword…..and in the Book of Ways!"
His voice rose: "I believe in the Sky Queen. I believe in the Heartstone. All of them are real."
He turned on the stair, eyes closed, but now facing down the spiral.
"But I don't believe in you!"
The howl soared to a scream.
"I… DON'T… BELIEVE!"
A wave of pressure blasted up from below, rattling the flimsy wooden steps, and a rumbling vibration shuddered the walls.
Jack pressed the heart tight on his skin.
"Corriwen," he cried aloud. "Kerry! Can you hear me?"
The stone wall beside him wavered like the surface of a pool. Above him, high overhead, the walls convulsed and a section of the stairway popped free and came tumbling down.
"Corriwen!"
And suddenly he could see her in the gleam of the heartstone, stumbling in a mist that was up to her chest, a mist that seemed to stretch to the far horizon and keep going. She cocked her head, as if she heard him too.
Jack concentrated hard. He imagined he heard her voice, thin and muffled in the mist.
And behind that voice, the sound of something that growled like predator.
Corriwen was turning around wildly, trying to locate the sound that Jack had heard.
"Run..Corrie. Run to me!"
Under his feet, a powerful tremor shook the staircase and it began to disintegrate. The treads vibrated like springs and some of those higher up began to work themselves free. They simply dropped, one on another, like dominoes.
Jack opened his eyes and saw them plummet towards him in an avalanche of dusty wood. A noise like thunder swelled louder and louder as they slammed into lower ones and knocked them free, until all he could see was a mass of broken wood falling so fast it swept everything away.
And there was no way for him to escape.