Jack's knees buckled as he hit the ground. Bodron roared again, and the cavern walls shook. He pointed the black staff and forks of orange light stabbed at Jack who twisted and rolled while flares exploded all around him. Megrin's staff bucked and juddered in his grasp as it dragged him forward, but he held on tight, even though the friction burned the skin of his hands. Kerry yelled a warning as Jack tried to dig his heels in the ground, straining against the force that pulled him inexorably towards where Bodron stood waiting in the shadow.
When he was almost under the table stone, skeletal fingers reached forward, but not for Megrin's staff.
Jack tried to squirm away when he saw the heartstone on its chain had slipped from his tunic. And whatever power Bodron exerted on Jack was also pulling the stone, for it had swung out, almost a foot away from Jack's face. Bodron's eyes blazed like headlights and Jack saw that though he might have human shape, those eyes burned with hell-fire.
"Bring it to me!" The glee in Bodron's voice was unmistakeable.
"Never!" Jack grated. He groaned with the strain as he tried to pull back from Bodron's reaching hand, and fumbled desperately for the great sword hilt. He would never give up his father's heartstone. Not without a fight.
Kerry knew the fiend wanted the Journeyman's heartstone. They had been through enough to know that if it got it, then everything was lost.
Jack Flint was the best friend he had ever had. The best anybody ever had. He had saved Kerry's life a dozen times or more. And Kerry had come through the gate to Uaine because he didn't want Jack Flint to face danger alone.
A hot anger burned inside him. If Jack ever needed him, he needed him now.
As he started to run towards where Jack struggled, Kerry scooped up a heavy piece of rock. With his free hand he unshipped his sling from his belt, fitted the rock in the cradle and swung it around his head.
Ahead of him, something on top of the table-stone caught the lightning flash and sent a blinding beam into his eyes. Kerry squinted and tried to ignore it. He braced himself, torqued his shoulders and launched the stone with all his strength.
Behind him he could hear Corriwen yelling but he ignored that too and threw himself headlong at Jack in a flying tackle that knocked him sideways. Jack landed hard, with Kerry on top of him. Megrin's staff was jarred from of his grip and tumbled away. As they disentangled themselves two pale shapes resolved into the two white goshawks that swooped down, talons agape and seized it.
The rock took Bodron between the eyes. He staggered backwards, arms flailing and as he stumbled into the shadow he lost his grip on the black staff.
Corriwen and Rionna watched in amazement as the darkness under the stone enveloped Bodron, folding around him until he vanished from sight. The ground heaved.
Corriwen saw the dark mass pulse. Its blistered surface began to swell into bloated tendrils that inflated and burst free. Where they landed, they twisted and elongated. She saw the tendrils become jointed arms and legs that flexed and straightened, supporting thin warted bodies on top of which wizened heads glared with blinkless yellow eyes.
She shrieked a warning.
Both Jack and Kerry turned and froze.
The pieces of the dark mass had become shapes from Jacks deepest nightmares. In an instant he was catapulted back to his memory to the desperate race through the forest, a baby in his father's arms, while pale-eyed shadows hounded them every step of the way towards the homeward gate.
"What in the name of - " Kerry blurted.
Those eyes fixed on them hungrily. Long arms reached out. Two-clawed toes scrabbled on stone.
Nightshades.
Behind them, Bodron emerged from the enfolding dark and Jack saw that he had changed utterly. He loomed twice as tall. His face was contorted, his skin swelling and puckering as if something inside was trying to get out. Under the cowl his eyes were aflame.
"Journeyman…" Bodron's voice rumbled. It pointed a long finger at Jack.
"Journeyman's whelp. I destroyed your father long ago and sent him where none return. But you bear that which I desire. Give it to me now and you might still have life, of a kind."
A fierce anger erupted in Jack's chest. This beast was responsible for it all. The loss of his father; the years of uncertainty and mystery. And the darkness that infested Uaine. Before he spit out a response, it spoke again.
"Or my nightshades will feast, and I will have it then."
"Not a chance," Kerry cried. "You'll have to take it from his cold, dead hands. If you can!"
"Thanks, Kerry," Jack groaned.
"No problem. I heard it in a movie. The good guys won."
The demon rumbled again. "Deny me and suffer forever. It was I who sent the nightshades to herd you to the stone gates. It was I who brought you here. You are mine."
Jack drew the great sword, unsure whether it would be of any use as Bodron and the shades stalked towards them.
"I came here of my own free will," he cried, quivering, not with fear, but anger. "You didn't bring me. The Sky Queen sent me. I came to find my father. But now I am here to take my revenge for what you have done."
The heartstone throbbed violently. Jack's sword was in his hands and surging with its own life.
"You are nothing. Just smoke and mirrors. You don't belong in any world."
He and Kerry stood shoulder to shoulder. Kerry reached a hand and clasped his arm.
"Sorry Jack. About your dad." Even as the nightshades advanced, he squeezed Jack's arm tight, a gesture of solidarity. "Let's do it for him. We're in a corner. The only way out is to do it to them before they do it to us."
"The only way," Jack repeated, nodding. His chin was set, knuckles white.
Corriwen cried out a warning. Something flicked over Jack's shoulder and hit the nearest shade between its narrow shoulders. The arrow struck with no sound. And no obvious effect. It passed through the shade and emerged on the other side to drop uselessly to the ground.
Then suddenly behind Jack and Kerry, something exploded. When Jack spun around, ready to defend himself he saw Megrin was on her feet. Her face was expressionless and calm.
The stone hands that had pinned her down were flying away in fragments. She had her staff in her hands and blue fire ran up and down its length. The two white birds wheeled above her.
Corriwen was on one knee. She drew Jack's amberhorn bow back as she searched for another target. Before she could shoot, Megrin touched her on the shoulder and made a sign over Jack's quiver of black arrows. A dazzling light arced between the staff and the obsidian arrowheads.
"Fight darkness with light," she said softly. "It is always so."
Corriwen nodded. She drew back until the feather-flights brushed her cheek and let loose. A blue streak that flashed between Jack and Kerry as the arrow took the nearest nightshade in its bulging eye. It screamed. Black fumes poured out from its eye and its head melted like tar.
Behind it Bodron snarled in fury.
Corriwen aimed again, feeling a strange sense of energy pass from the glowing arrow, through the bow, to her fingers. More nightshades surged forward, claws reaching for Jack and Kerry.
Jack attacked the horde, slashing his sword right and left. As he sliced down on the crown of the nearest nightshade, it felt as if he hit solid stone, but the blade didn't falter. It made a sickly crunch and drove right down between the eyes. The two halves of the hideous head fell apart like a cut fruit.
Kerry tried to launch a heavy rock but as he swung back, a claw reached for him and grabbed his wrist with inhuman strength. A shock of cold riveted up his arm and then all sensation faded, and the sling dropped from his numb fingers. His arm was still outstretched but as rigid as wood.
Jack whirled to help him and in one fluid motion, severed the claw that gripped Kerry's arm, then spun away to face the rest of them. Kerry sank to his knees as the cold surged through his veins.
Rionna rushed to him, oblivious to the danger. She snatched the claw that still gripped Kerry's arm, tugged it free and let it drop to the ground. It hit with a wet splat and collapsed into shiny black rivulets that soaked into cracks in the stone. She put her hands round Kerry's chest and tried to drag him away.
Bodron suddenly leapt at them and his mighty hand clamped on Rionna's head. He lifted her effortlessly up to his eye level.
"Traitor!" His voice was a vicious snarl. "The spellbinder's own spawn betrays him."
Bodron swung its staff down with deadly force.
Kerry yelled out, still on his knees. He drew his short-sword left-handed and stabbed upwards into Bodron's armpit. As the point struck its mark, Kerry was smashed backwards and fell to the ground, twitching. He lay unable to move as baleful orange light rippled over him in fiery snakes.
Rionna's eyes were wide with terror as she faced her father. He was now unrecognisable as anything human. The black staff swung towards her.
Then Megrin's staff shot out and stopped it, inches from her face. Sparks of brilliant light exploded where the two staffs touched. Bodron's grip on Rionna's head opened and she fell away.
Jack desperately slashed at the nightshades. From beyond the melee, Corriwen launched arrow after arrow, watching the creatures implode and melt, and Jack began to think they might have a chance.
But he was backed into a corner, jabbing and hacking and with every strike, the nightshades shrank back only a little, and then surged forward, barricading him tightly against the chamber wall.
Corriwen stopped shooting. Despite her skill with the bow, there was now too much of a risk of hitting Jack as the nightshades crowded in on him. She drew both knives and ran forward to fight by his side, but before she reached him, they suddenly pushed forward until Jack was completely lost from view.
Jack was surrounded by glaring eyes and hooking claws, squeezed in tight against the stone and without enough space to swing the sword. Long, bony fingers reached for the heartstone.
Corriwen's heart kicked and she screeched a warning.
Reacting on pure instinct Jack suddenly launched himself over the heads of the nightshades. Corriwen saw him suddenly appear over the mass of attackers as they closed in. Thin arms, quick as striking snakes, tried to hook him from the air, but not quick enough. One claw shot out, but it only snagged the satchel that swung from Jack's shoulders. Something ripped, but his momentum powered him on.
Rune's boots made Jack fly like an acrobat, tumbling through the air. The sword-blade reflected the blue and orange light from where Megrin and Bodron were locked together in blistering streams of their own power.
Jack landed, light as a cat. He turned fast, expecting to see nightshades surging after him and it took him a second to realise that he was not on the ground.
He could see Megrin and Bodron far below him. Corriwen was running towards Kerry and Rionna. Jack was high above them, high on the flat table stone supported by the three immense rock pillars.
Whatever had almost blinded him before now glinted in the corner of his vision and when he turned he saw a circle of burnished metal pages each etched with intricate figures and strange script.
The Copperplates.
He knew they could be nothing else.
They blazed with supernatural power. Twenty-one gleaming plates of copper. Not standing, but somehow hovering in a perfect circle. Directly above them, the dark storm spun slowly, crackling with lightning.
Jack stepped forward towards the centre of the table-stone.
***
Coriwen reached Kerry and Rionna. She pointed up at the great table stone.
"Bodron's too strong," Kerry cried. "Can you shoot him?"
"They are too close," Rionna said. "She is binding him….it."
But Corriwen ignored them, still pointing up at the stones.
"Look…up there."
Kerry and Rionna raised their heads and saw Jack high on the table-stone. He held the great sword out in front of him. Around him, polished metal gleamed. They saw him walk forward, towards the centre of the stone.
And then he disappeared completely.