Jack started towards the centre of the circle. The copperplates hung suspended, each polished surface facing him. The sword was still in Jack's hand and the heartstone vibrated against his ribs.
The beauty of the gleaming metal plates and the intricate patterns etched on their surfaces drew him in to their core. He was helpless to resist.
When as he stepped within the circle, everything beyond the Copperplates faded away. He could sense immense power surging around him.
Jack looked in the surface of one of the plates. For an instant he saw himself reflected in its depths and his vision blurred. He felt a sudden dizzy sensation and without warning a blinding pain exploded between his eyes. He cried out as everything went black.
He floated up to the surface, struggling for breath. Behind him the falls of Temair thundered to foam. He gasped a breath and went under again, searching for Kerry who had fallen with him. Down into the depths he swam, while slender creatures with wide eyes swam around and he felt amongst the weeds until he found something. He grabbed at it, pulled himself lower…
Kerry's pale face swayed in the current, mouth wide, eyes colourless, staring at him with contempt.
Jack jerked back in horror, swallowed a mouthful of bitter water…
…and he was on the shifting slab on the brimstone flow in Temair's badlands. Corriwen reached for his hand to help him but he didn't risk taking it and she slipped backwards into the fire. Steam hissed and he saw her flesh burn away as she sank into it until all he could see were her accusing eyes…
He cringed from the sight, then found himself at the bottom of the stairwell in the Major's house back home. The Major's shotgun lay rusted beside a pile of bones. A skull glared blindly at him, and a babble of voices clamoured in his head.
"You let me drown!" Kerry's voice was cold and watery.
"No! I'd never let you !" The words formed in Jack mind but wouldn't come out.
"You could have saved me…" Corriwen was a whisper in his ear.
"Please. No!"
"You brought the darkness into my home…" The Major accused him.
Jack moaned and clapped his hands over his ears to banish the voices. Something punched him in the belly. Punched again. Hit a third time.
His eyes opened….
And he was out of the nightmare, still on the table stone. Now the Copperplates were spinning around him in a slow a circle, like parts of gleaming carousel, matching the swirling storm high overhead. Jack could feel their collective power shunt around him and through him.
A fourth blow to the stomach almost knocked the wind from him and he raised himself up on two hands.
The satchel was jerking violently, kicking hard just under his ribs. The straps had worked themselves loose.
"Nightmare!" Jack tried to tell himself. Rionna had told them that the dark power fed on the fear it created in human minds. Within the ring of the Copperplates, that power seemed magnified a hundredfold. It had reached into his mind, seeking out his worst terrors and made them real.
Whatever controlled these ancient talismans had the power to drive a world to the edge of madness. He had to stop Bodron.
Jack scrambled away, not wanting to see what might crawl out of the bag. But as he stood up, he saw Bodron twist away from Megrin and point his black staff up at him. As he did so, the Copperplates began to whirl faster and faster, like shining blades cutting the air and worse, the circle was shrinking, squeezing in on him.
At the edge of his vision, the gargoyle creatures were now clambering over the rim of the table-stone. The Nightshades had found him again
He was trapped. As the copperplates closed in, he realised he was helpless. Jack sank to his haunches, sword drawn, ready to roll under the whirling plates, even if he had to face the Nightshades. As he did so, his bag bucked again.
The Book of Ways tumbled out. Its old leather cover flipped open.
Without warning, the whirling Copperplates broke formation. Overhead a jagged fork of lightning stabbed down into the stone. Jack was almost hurled off his feet. One plate came slashing towards him. He rolled and it sliced a bare inch past his head. Thrown off balance, Jack tried to steady himself. His hand landed on The Book of Ways.
The heartstone throbbed with a power that surged through Jack and arced between his fingers and the pages of the Book.
Another of the Copperplates lanced in at him, straight at his eyes.
The Book bucked in his hands, pages whirring, but he was hardly aware of it as the Copperplate spun in like a blade whistling toward him through the air.
Before he could move, the Book of Ways leapt up and snapped shut on it with a sound like a hammer-blow. The force pushed Jack backwards, but he managed to hold on to the book's spine. It bucked again, like a living thing, almost throwing him off balance and when it opened again, Jack saw a flash of gold that quickly faded to white. The Copperplate's symbols stood out starkly on the page and then sank into the surface, leaving it clean and white again.
The Book suddenly felt heavy in his hands, as if it had absorbed a great weight. Jack's fingers tingled. Another copperplate came streaking towards him. The Book opened to meet it and it vanished into the snapping pages.
One by one, while thunder roared and nightshades hovered, ready to pounce, the spinning copperplates whirred in at Jack and the book rose to meet them and swallow them in its pages.
When it had captured the last of them, the Book's weight forced Jack to his knees. For one last time, the cover opened again, the old pages now blazing with a searing white light. The Book lifted from his hands as it shot out a blinding beam which speared upwards towards the centre of the swirling black storm overhead.
For a second, the air around him seemed to crystallise. Then whole world exploded
The blast was so bright, Jack could see the bones of his hand through his skin and flesh. A sound like a hundred jet engines cracked the solid rock high overhead.
The nightshades were caught in a blast of intense heat and turned to vapour in the blink of an eye.
Huge stalactites lanced down and shattered to a million flying shards. Jack looked up and saw an enormous spear of rock coming straight for him. He jerked backwards and it struck the table stone with such force the platform cracked in two.
Jack felt the whole structure tilt slowly. Instinctively he leapt off, sword in one hand, Book in the other and landed on solid ground as the massive stone structure collapsed. All around the great chamber, the rock walls began to melt and flow.
Bodron screamed in impotent fury. His back arched and his mouth yawned like a cave. Behind him the table-stone slumped into the dark pit. From every fissure in the shattered rock of the great cavern, shadows streamed out and flowed into the ever widening crater.
The Journeyman's sword vibrated in harmony with the heartstone's steady pulse. Jack ran to where Kerry huddled with Corriwen and Rionna as huge stones tumbled from on high to be swallowed by the dark. The ground bucked and heaved and he and Kerry held tight to the two girls to keep them on their feet.
Megrin was chanting now, her green eyes locked on Bodron's.
"Back to the pit where you belong!" Her voice gained strength. "Beast of the darkness. And never return to the world of light!
"Hag! I will take you with me." Bodron roared. His eyes blazed as he raised his staff.
Jack saw his chance while Bodron's attention was fixed on Megrin. This was the beast, the demon that had killed his father. The monster that had sent the nightshades after them.
When he started forward, Kerry realised what he was about to attempt and tried to hold him back. Jack twisted out of his grip and ran. He leapt over mounds of fallen stone, dodging tumbling rocks, his eyes fixed on the demonic face.
The sword flashed as he thrust upwards and stabbed with all his strength. The blade went through the black cloak, up under the ribs until its bloodied point came through the shoulder of Bodron's raised arm. The demon's claw hand jerked open and the black staff fell to the ground.
The burning eyes widened in shock and surprise. They turned away from Megrin swung down to where Jack stood, both hands on the sword's hilt. They fixed on him with such malevolence and hatred that Jack felt it shudder through him.
He shrank back from the power of Bodron's fury and the blade pulled free.
Megrin's staff flared and as the others watched, its light spun around Bodron as he tottered backwards. Around him, a dark aura began to form, oozing from his eyes and mouth, and as it intensified, so he shrank. As the aura writhed and swelled, Bodron's form withered and crumpled.
The shadowed shape oozing from Bodron's withered body was being sucked towards the dark pit and Bodron sagged to the ground.
All the life-force was draining out of him, his hands little more than papery skin and bones. His cowl slipped back and Jack was close enough to see a wizened face with sparse white hair and eyes sunk deep into hollows.
He turned his head to look beyond Jack and those eyes found Rionna. There was no recognition in them. There was nothing left of the man who had once been her father.
The ground lurched again and the darkness from the pit expanded outwards to swallow Bodron completely. As Jack ran back to the others as the ground began to sink under him and suddenly there was nothing solid under their feet.
Megrin cried a warning. Jack tried to stab the sword into the ground to stop them from slipping, but Kerry slid into him, dragging Rionna with him. Corriwen lost her footing and they all began to slide towards the yawning crater. Jack snatched desperately for Corriwen's hand.
Megrin was too far away to help. She saw the darkness expand and consume them. In one last desperate act she threw her staff with all her strength. It soared up and then plummeted into the centre of the black maelstrom into which her young friends had disappeared.
There was a blinding flash and the rock walls all around disintegrated and turned to dust. To Megrin's amazement, the black hole began to close. In an instant it shrank to a single point, then it shut completely. All noise died.
Megrin found herself standing alone on a barren moorland in the far west of Uaine. Above her, the sky was clear and blue and the sun shone bright and warm.
There was no sign of Jack Flint, Kerry Malone or Corriwen Redthorn, or of her niece, Bodron's daughter Rionna.