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154 lines
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<h1>32</h1>
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<p>Paddy had called him out. She had ordered the beast to bring us back.</p>
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<p>The voice I had heard, as if from a far distance, had rebounded from the stone walls, was her scream of righteous anger.</p>
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<p>She had demanded that Cu Saeng come back and face her.</p>
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<p>And he <em>had</em> come back, bringing us with him. But he did something else too.</p>
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<p>The mass twirled and changed again. There was a flicker, and then Paddy's mother appeared. She gazed down.</p>
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<p>The thing that looked like Barbara bent towards the child.</p>
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<p>
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'It's all right. Everything is fine.'</p>
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<p>I heard the words like a scrape in my brain.</p>
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<p>'Run away!' The warning blurted out of me, before I even realised I could speak again. 'It's not your mother.'</p>
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<p>'Come to me,' the image said. 'Just take that thing off your neck. It's a <em>bad</em> thing.</p>
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<p>Paddy's hand flew to her neck and touched the golden torc, the gift from Kitty Macbeth.</p>
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<p>There's power in that, the old woman had told me. And now there truly was.</p>
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<p>As soon as Paddy touched the necklet, her hand was bathed in a coruscating white light which was the complete converse of the black force within the pit.</p>
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<p>
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'No!' Paddy screeched. 'You're not my Mom. She's in the hospital.' She stamped her foot on the rock, in real fury. 'And it was you that put her there. It was you that hurt my friends. And I
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<em>hate</em> you.'</p>
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<p>The thing that looked like her mother reached towards the child. Under the surface, I saw things twitch and squirm. Paddy stood her ground. She touched the torc again and there was a searing flash of light that caused the thing to jerk back with a hiss.</p>
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<p>'You stay away from me,' Paddy yelled. 'I wish you would just <em>die</em>.'</p>
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<p>The light flared more brightly, and the thing recoiled again. I felt the grip on me slacken. Close by, Colin struggled to get free and I fumbled for the walking stick that had fallen amongst the rocks. It was two feet beyond my reach.</p>
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<p>Paddy slipped the torc from her neck and held it up with both hands. It' pure light was almost blinding.</p>
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<p>There was a split second of silence, a frozen moment of time, then a wild force shuddered through the whole cavern. The grip that held me gave up completely and I stumbled. I heard a crackling sound, like an electrical arc. The thing in the pit swelled, gathering itself for an assault, drawing power from somewhere far below in the deeps.</p>
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<p>Electrical sparks flickered over its surface and without warning, a bolt of energy exploded from its centre, a surge of raw power, straight for where Paddy stood.</p>
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<p>Then it stopped dead. Only a few feet from her head, it seemed to hit an invisible barrier.</p>
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<p>The torc blazed its own force of pure <em>clean</em> energy that surged out to face the dark.</p>
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<p>For that moment in time, Paddy herself became the power of the ancient prophecy. Whatever was locked in that golden circlet, whatever magic had been forged into its making, was now in that little girl. The two combined in something that was greater than either.</p>
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<p>I think it was Paddy's anger that finally unlocked the key to Kitty Macbeth's gift. And now I reckon that Paddy, an innocent child, was the only one who could have opened that door and unleashed it. The power was not just in the torc. It was in her and it
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<em>was</em> her.</p>
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<p>I was reaching for the blackthorn walking stick.</p>
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<p>Paddy's shoulder twitched and the water bottle she'd carried since we escaped the nightmare in the tunnel, slid down her arm. She swung it and caught the bottle in her hand, still holding the torc up high with her other. I saw her twist the top until it came free.</p>
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<p>'You hurt <em>everything</em>,' she said. No screaming, no screeching. And no fear.</p>
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<p>'You hurt my mother and my friends and you make everything dark and bad.'</p>
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<p>Her voice seemed to smooth out, beginning to sound like someone who might live down on the foreshore, at one with the estuary and the birds and the breezes.</p>
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<p>'You tried to kill us. But we will stop you. You don't <em>belong</em>.'</p>
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<p>Her voice rose again, in a high clear battle cry.</p>
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<p>'You should just <em>die</em>.'</p>
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<p>She twisted fast and swung the water bottle by the strap, once, twice, three times round her head. Then she let go.</p>
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<p>It spun out, tumbling through the sickly green crackling energy, sending out a curve of crystal droplets that spangled in the torc's radiance.</p>
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<p>It hit the black shape and the water splashed all over it.</p>
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<p>There was an instant, shuddering recoil and an immense rending sound of pure, unearthly agony. The thing convulsed as if an explosion had blasted inside it.</p>
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<p>In the pit, the beast writhed and swelled. A green-black vapour belched out where the water had splashed. The swelling shape suddenly collapsed. It seemed implode in on itself. The ground shook.</p>
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<p>It shrank down, losing whatever impossible shape it had, getting smaller and smaller as if it fell into a deep hole into hell. There was a sudden, faint
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<em>pop</em>, like tension being released, as it dwindled to a pinpoint in the far, far distance. And it was gone.
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</p>
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<p>Paddy stood on the rock, staring into the hole, as the radiance flickered and pulsed from the torc. It was softer now, fading slowly to a warm glow, Paddy's face was composed, almost serene. She slipped the torc back on her neck as it's radiance became a mere glimmer.</p>
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<p>We stood there for a long moment in silence.</p>
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<p>Then I whirled as a rumbling sound came from the pit. My eyes caught a movement and I thought the beast was coming back.</p>
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<p>But it was just the void that he'd left, filling itself in again. Forces under the rock were gathering and compressing to re-fill the vacuum.</p>
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<p>Colin took Paddy's hand before I could reach her and swung her off her feet into his arms.</p>
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<p>'Quick, Nicky. We have to get out.'</p>
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<p>Just as he said that, the rock wall shuddered with a deep seismic shock. Another stalactite came crashing down.</p>
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<p>Colin was just ahead of me as we ran for it. A big stone tumbled from above and shattered in bulleting fragments. We raced for the cleft and skittered up the narrow passage, Colin carrying Paddy as once I had carried him, battered and bleeding, that first time.</p>
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<p>We never broke stride, although the walls of the tunnel juddered and heaved as the spasms of Cu Saeng's passing twisted the earth all around us.</p>
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<p>It seemed we ran for an age, through the twisting fumarole, until, at last, we saw light ahead.</p>
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<p>True light. Daylight.</p>
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<p>I took Paddy from Colin on the last stretch, again without missing a step, and her arms locked tight around my neck as I sprinted for that far bright triangle.</p>
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<p>Just feet from the cave mouth, there was a last, cataclysmic shudder that rippled through the rock in a wave that almost knocked me off my feet.</p>
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<p>But I now recalled the rock fall from the first time and I just knew, with absolute certainty, that history would repeat itself. I kept going, keeping my balance just at the last moment.</p>
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<p>All around us, rocks and boulders started peeling off the sides to crash down like bombs.</p>
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<p>I raised my arm to protect our heads, and maybe it was pure luck or perhaps the residue of the power that Paddy had displayed down in that hellish arena that got us through unscathed. Behind us the tunnel was filled with the roaring of falling rocks as if the whole twisting cavern was caving in.</p>
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<p>We came streaking out of the dark and into the light of day just as Ardmhor Rock gave a final heave and the cliff face peeled off in an avalanche that brought down tons of basalt stone. The earth shuddered under our feet, but by then we were past it and heading for the trees before the rocks hit, sealing the cave once more under a great mound of broken stone.</p>
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<p>Just at the trees, I slipped and went down, twisting once more to avoid crushing Paddy who, it seemed, I'd carried almost non-stop for the past couple of days. My breath was punched out of me for a moment and I lay there, with Paddy locked in my arms, both of looking up at a clear blue sky.</p>
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<p>Colin knelt down beside us as I got my breath back.</p>
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<p>Behind us, the rumble of falling rocks was fading away and a cloud of dust billowed out from where the cave mouth had been.</p>
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<p>Paddy loosened my death-grip, then she threw her arms around me and planted a big kiss on my lips. Then she reached for Colin and gave him the full force. She held on to us both, just a wisp of a girl, and looked very earnestly from me to him.</p>
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<p>'I love you Nick. I love you Colin,' she said. Then she hugged us tight again.</p>
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<p>In that moment, I saw her standing on the rock and facing down the beast, with white radiance all around her. I knew Colin saw it too.</p>
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<p>And we loved her too.</p>
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<p>We got to our feet and Colin stood beside me with Paddy between us. She put her hands in ours and we walked through the now quiet forest where the sunlight lanced through the branches as the light breeze sent motes of pollen dancing prettily in the beams.</p>
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<p>Behind us loomed the bulk of Ardmhor Rock. It now held no threat for me. It was just another lump of rock standing beside the estuary, the worn-down remains of a long-dead volcano.</p>
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<p>Paddy and Colin and I walked towards the edge of the trees where the fields opened up at the silver fork of Strowan's Well, and the path that would take us back to Arden in the sunlight.</p>
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