The Dark Tower reached into the red sky. The closer they got, the more the heartstone shuddered. With every step, Jack was overwhelmed by a feeling of oppression.
It stood, bleak as a tombstone. Around it, purple clouds swirled, and from high ledges, bat-winged things swooped and shrieked.
"It is waiting," Jonathan Flint said, "because it knows the heartstone is near."
"Then maybe we should take it as far away from here as we can," Kerry said.
"No," Jack countered. "The Book said we had a chance to defeat it. With staff, book and heart, prevail. We've faced so much we can't give up now."
His father gave him a measuring look, true pride shone in his eyes. "Perhaps not much of a chance," he said. "But a chance all the same. Remember those petrified heroes, turned to stone by its dead eyes, long ago. As I was. I fought it and beat it back, again and again, and each time it came out to do battle it was stronger. It has the strength of all the souls it has stolen. "It will use everything it has against us."
When they finally reached the great bastion, standing in its shadow, Jack saw that the walls were not as featureless as they had appeared. Their surface was intricately carved with thousands of human skulls, row upon row, blindly leering at all who approached.
Kerry stretched out his hand to touch one of the carvings and then jerked back with a cry of alarm as the skull's gaping mouth suddenly snapped shut.
Corriwen's hands were shaking. She clasped Rionna's hand, feeling a powerful sense of dread swell inside her.
"I feel its foulness," she said. "Like death. Like disease."
"There's no way in," Jack said, scanning the walls.
"Good," Kerry muttered. "Whatever's in there should stay there."
"But I must find a way," Jonathan Flint said. He strode towards the wall, and stabbed his long spear into a hanging jaw. The skull rolled out onto the ground at their feet, jaw opening and closing as if trying to speak.
For a moment nothing moved and then, without warning that part of the wall collapsed in a roar of skull grinding on skull. Jonathan Flint turned fast and swept them away from an avalanche of bone.
A white dust took several minutes to clear. Corriwen and Rionna kept their arms over their mouths and noses so as not to breathe any of it in. Before them was a gap that cut through the skull wall.
"I think a way has been opened for us," Jack's father said. He bent down and looked at them all. "I have to go in there, but you should wait here."
Jack shook his head, though his heart was pounding. "No. If you're going, so am I. We've come this far."
Kerry stood with him, shoulder to shoulder m.
"And I go with Jack," he said. "Always have, always will."
"And I too," Corriwen declared. Rionna said nothing. She held tight to Corriwen's hand and nodded silently.
Jonathan Flint took in a slow breath, turned, and walked into the fissure that led inside.
Beyond the wall, nothing felt right. Jack felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end and shivers ran down his back. Kerry's face was pale he looked as though he might faint. Corriwen muttered under her breath and Jack knew she was trying to ward off evil with a chant from Temair. This place reeked of rot and decay. All around them, they could hear a low moaning, the sound of a thousand people in despair, but they walked on. Jonathan Flint led the way, with the great spear on his shoulder, ready for battle. Kerry had loaded his sling and held the short-sword in one hand.
Four is one... Jack repeated the words from the Book to himself. And now five. They had to stay together, because whatever waited for them, waited with foul intent. And it wouldn't wait long.
Jack concentrated his thoughts on his mother, whose face he could not even recall. Please let her be alive, he whispered. His father clamped a hand on his shoulder. Despite his fear, despite the apprehension that clenched his stomach, that one touch gave him strength.
"You have grown to be the man I always hoped," Jonathan Flint said in a soft voice. "If I don't get the chance later, you should know that now."
Jack nodded, but he was too tense, too scared, to feel anything at all.
The breach in the wall opened into a vast amphitheatre, surrounded by a maze of passages. In the centre of this arena, a dark mound rose like an ancient tomb. Red light flickered, the only illumination. Rasping whispers invaded Jack's thoughts in words he could not understand. Corriwen clamped her hands to her ears, to block out the voices, but to no avail.
Jack followed close behind his father, as they worked their way through the maze, with Kerry at his shoulder, keeping Corriwen and Rionna behind them. As they walked the whispers became a low moaning as if the walls had soaked eons of suffering and pain.
The sound increased with every step and troubling images flickered across Jack's consciousness: images of blood and death; of shadowy things grinning from corners; of some dark beast hunched and turning to fix him with dreadful eyes.
Kerry shuddered. "I'm getting awful nightmares. I think I'm going mad."
"It is toying with us," Jack's father said. "Wearing us down."
Corriwen clapped her hands to her eyes. "Get out of my mind…get out of me!"
When she took her hands away, her cheeks were streaked with tears. Rionna put her arm around her shoulders. To Kerry, she seemed the least affected, and he knew it was because she spent her life protecting herself from dark forces.
The black mound hunched in the distance as they walked from the maze into the open.
Without warning, three hooded shapes came at them from nowhere, shrieking like banshees.
Nightshades . In an instant Jack was back at the Major's house while the living dark flowed through the rooms like a disease. Shadowmasters.
In seconds, the spectres were amongst them. Jack felt their numbing cold as he leapt to the side, instinctively swinging his sword. He glimpsed a wavering shape that seemed almost insubstantial, and within it, a skeletal face. The hand that reached for him was long and bony.
"Don't let them touch you!" The darkness had touched him when he first fled through the ringstones, a foul contagion that had had to be burned out of his flesh.
Jonathan Flint's spear jabbed, once, twice, fast strikes. The spectre screamed and when Jack's father pulled the spearpoint out, it folded in upon itself, disintegrating to fluttering scraps.
Kerry and Corriwen were twisting and turning, Kerry hitting where he could and Corriwen trying to strike with a deadly arrow. The spectres were fast, but the pair were faster, keeping just out of reach.
Corriwen drew Jack's bow and aimed. The arrow caught the spectre in its centre, slowing it down just enough for Kerry to slash down with the short sword. Purple sparks ran up and down his blade and he cried out in pain. Jonathan Flint stepped in and slammed his spear deep within the writhing figure. He pinned it to the ground, savagely twisting the weapon until it stopped moving.
The third assailant came screeching at Rionna. She raised Megrin's staff and a jolt of blue light stopped the attack in mid-flight. Jack stepped past her and lashed out with the great sword. When the blade sliced, he felt a shock run up his arm, followed by an icy sensation of deep cold. He pulled the blade out and the nightshade imploded with a hiss.
As they stood together, breathing hard, the shrouded figures on the ground crumpled into tatters that swirled around as if stirred by a wind and then drifted away.
That's just the start, Jack thought to himself.
His father turned to him. "It was too easy. They were here to hold us up."
Jack nodded. It had been just the start. Before he could say anything, Kerry cocked his head.
"Something's coming."
"I hear it, " Corriwen said. She looked around wildly. Jack heard a faint scratching noise, like insects scuttling in a cellar. They all drew together, trying vainly to hear where it was coming from. The noise got louder with every second.
Kerry saw it first. Jack though he could see grey shadow sweeping across the tangle of passageways. The heartstone throbbed, even more powerfully than before. Jonathan Flint raised his arm protectively to push them behind him.
Then Jack saw it was no shadow, but a tide of creatures leaping and clambering along the walls of the maze, like a swarm of rats, but much bigger, and too fast for rats.
"I don't like this," Kerry muttered, reaching again for his sword. "There's millions of them."
Creatures came streaming like ants from all around, and there was nowhere to run. They were all shapes and sizes. Some with great pale eyes and some with no eyes at all, or mouths in the middle of thin chests. Some had two legs, some four and some six. Some had scales and others had slimy, oozing skin. But they all had one purpose and that was to destroy the five people who stood facing them.
Jack drew his sword with one hand. His left clutched the heartstone but as soon as he touched it a clear voice spoke, deep inside his head.
Heart of my heart…soul of my soul.
The words the Sky Queen had used rang in his mind. His heart thudded. The voice was clear and gentle, like the Sky Queen's, but different. He opened his fingers and stared at the heartstone. It rippled with light. Vibrant colours spangled under its polished surface. Despite the approaching wave of horrors, he couldn't draw his eyes away. The light held him.
Corriwen was saying something to him, but barely heard her. The sound of the advancing creatures had faded to the background. Colours flashed in front of his eyes and in their midst a face began to form.
It was a heart-shaped, slender face with long, spun-gold hair. As majestic as the Sky Queen had been on Tara Hill, but younger.
You returned. My journeyman. The voice came from deep inside him.
She was beautiful.
Her eyes were closed, as if she was in deep sleep, but her voice, clear as crystal, tugged at him. A powerful sensation of love swept over him, and in that moment he knew that this was his mother.
With a great effort, he dragged his attention away from the vision. The repulsive swarm of contorted creatures was still pouring towards them, shrieking and hissing. Jonathan Flint stalked forward to meet them, spear at the ready. Jack ran after him and grabbed his wrist.
"She called me!"
His father stopped in his tracks. His attention had been fixed on the advancing horde, but he turned to his son. Jack gripped him tight.
"My mother. She called me. I must find her."
Before Jonathan Flint could reply, Jack pressed the great sword into his free hand.
"Stay alive," he begged. "I will find her. For us."
With that he spun on his heel, not waiting to see his father's reaction or risk him holding him back. He hurried towards his friends. Corriwen and Kerry were staring at the multitude, tense and ready to fight. Rionna watched the three of them, lit by the soft glow from Megrin's staff.
"I have to go," Jack told them. "Watch his back. Don't let them get him, not now."
"You can't leave us now," Kerry protested. "Where are you going?"
"My mother," Jack said. "She is alive."
"How do you know?" Corriwen kept her eyes on the advancing monsters.
Jack raised the heart. "She spoke to me. I saw her."
"Then go," Corriwen said resolutely. "Find her. End your quest."
Kerry agreed. "Yeah, Jack. Don't you worry," he said, with more bravado than certainty. His voice was shaky. "The things under my bed were ten times worse. We'll maulicate these boogers."
"We stand here," Corriwen said very seriously. "Friends to the end."
Jack hugged them both hard, stepped towards Rionna who had Megrin's staff braced in both hands.
"I need light," he said. Rionna closed her eyes. He heard that faint clear note and the staff suddenly blazed with its blue fire. Rionna offered the staff to Jack and he took it in his hand and walked towards the squat stone mound in the centre of the amphitheatre, clutching the heartstone in his other hand.
When he touched it, the wall dissolved under his fingers, shrinking from his warmth.
He stepped forward and time seemed to stop. Behind him the cacophony of the approaching creatures slowed to a deep rumble and faded to silence. All Jack could hear was the beat of his own heart. For a few seconds he was in total darkness, then Megrin's light flared bright, illuminating a small circle around him.