'Looks like we've found the back door into the Halls of the Drakusa,' Hunter said.
'If the others got in, we could meet up with them.' Jack's eyes gleamed with hope. 'I was afraid we might have to go back the way we came.'
Beyond, another chamber was given over to industrial production, but here its purpose was less clear: a faint chemical smell hung over benches covered with glass bottles and jars. Bones had been swept into the corners. Mysterious implements lay abandoned on the floor and on the benches, as if the occupants had been rudely disturbed.
The floor of the following chamber was covered with runes and ritual marks, and contained an overwhelming atmosphere of threat. Hunter and Jack couldn't bear to tarry in it for too long.
Finally the booming was so painful they had to cover their ears. The source was a huge iron door set in the wall of a long corridor, but the moment Hunter grabbed the handle with both hands and dragged the door open, silence fell.
Jack futilely urged his friend not to venture into the room, but Hunter's curiosity had got the better of him.
The chamber was lit by a shaft of natural sunlight falling from an incredible height overhead. Stone steps wound around the walls up the dizzying stretch to whatever lay in the dim upper reaches. The floor of the chamber was occupied by a giant with a brutish, bare, heavily scarred torso, its head covered with a leather hood, its arms outstretched and fastened to the floor by shackles. It was stock-still, head cocked, listening.
'How long has it been here?' Jack whispered.
'The Drakusa disappeared long before the Tuatha De Danaan arrived on the scene… an age ago.'
'All that time? What does it feed on?'
'What does it feed on?' the giant repeated.
Jack started. 'It heard me. It can speak.'
Hunter pushed Jack back towards the door. As they stepped out of the chamber, the giant wrenched at its chains again and again, creating the deafening booming sound they had followed.
Hunter took them back into the chamber and it stopped, waiting.
'It's been trying to break free all this time,' Hunter observed.
'It's been trying to break free,' the giant repeated.
'Why is it mimicking what we say?' Jack asked.
'I don't think it is,' Hunter replied thoughtfully. 'Let's forget how it survived all this time. Why did the Drakusa imprison it here?'
The giant continued to listen intently.
'I don't like it,' Jack decided.
'One hundred and ninety-three cried like a baby,' the giant said.
'What's it talking about?' Jack asked before he saw Hunter staring, mouth open.
'Sixty-seven spilled blood and urine on the tiles,' the giant continued.
'Get out of my head!' Hunter shouted.
'What's it saying?' Jack asked. 'What's one hundred and ninety-three and sixty-seven?'
'Never you mind. Let's get out of here.'
The door slammed shut. A lock fell into place.
'You're here now,' the giant said.
4
The thunder of the barricaded door being torn open echoed through the halls, and was followed by a grinding, metallic sound of something being dragged over the stone flags.
'Dammit,' Church said under his breath. They were only three halls away from where he and Veitch had discovered the sign in the dust.
'Did you really think you'd be given a free run right up to the gates of the Enemy?' Tom mocked. 'They're going to be hunting and harrying you at every turn. The Void won't want to risk you getting anywhere near enough to do any damage. Everything at their disposal will have been put in place long ago to keep you away — spies, traitors, hunting parties, the kind of sentinels that can't be avoided, that never stop.'
'Why didn't you say this before?' Church said sharply.
'What was the point? You never had any chance of getting through. Better to let you keep your hopes up to the last.'
'And now you've decided to get my hopes down?'
Refusing to answer any further questions, Tom moved away, but Church was already wondering if he'd made the wrong decision to suspect Virginia. Was Tom's comment about spies and traitors a cry for help?
The grinding metallic sound drew closer. 'They're outpacing us,' Veitch said, glancing back. 'We could barricade each door we pass through, but I don't reckon it'll do us much good.'
'Better hope we get to the gate back to Summer-side pretty quick, then.'
'You think they're going to stop at the gate? We've lost any advantage we had crossing through this God-forsaken place. They're going to be straight on us the minute we crash back into the Far Lands.'
Ruth had overheard their conversation as she helped Miller and Virginia, who were flagging. 'We have to stop them here. It's the only way.'
Ahead, Tom and Shavi conferred intensely. 'We both feel we are near to the gate,' Shavi said, 'but we cannot find the way.'
'The warrior said we had to find the Heart of the Drakusa if we wanted to get to the Groghaan Gate.' Church peered around the gloomy chamber, but it appeared to be as bare and forlorn as all the others.
The line of sight through the great doors of the chambers revealed flickering lights in the distant dark.
'Now would be a good time for inspiration,' Laura said.
Everyone except Church rushed to search the chamber with urgency, dragging blocks of masonry aside, brushing the thick grime and cobwebs from crumbling murals, sweeping away the dust covering the flags. The echoes of the metallic grinding filled the room.
'The heart of a warrior,' Church mused aloud. 'The heart. Brave. Fearless. Aspiring… no, no, reaching… for greatness…' A connection was made. Quickly, but methodically, Church began to investigate the walls, trying to see into the shadows that clustered overhead.
As Church moved the lantern, it brought a subtle shift in slivers of shadow on the stone near him: revealing protrusions only a few inches wide. Broadly spaced footholds wound up into the dark, invisible to the casual eye. He called the others over as the lights drew into the adjoining chamber.
'I'll go,' Ruth said, handing her spear to Church.
'No, you'll break your neck.' Veitch tried to pull her back. 'No one's gonna get up there.'
Ruth threw him off. 'I'll go,' she said fiercely. 'I'm lighter, more agile-'
'And if anyone's going to break their neck it ought to be her,' Laura said.
Pressed flat against the wall, Ruth put one foot on the lowest step and reached for the next. She had to stretch her fingers to find even the flimsiest handhold, and then, with a shaky, precarious step, she leaped to the next stone. When she almost fell from the fifth step, now well above their heads, Veitch had to look away.
'Get underneath to break her fall,' he said to Laura as he turned to join Church facing the approaching lights. 'We're going to have to fight.'
'If we can hold them off, at least the others can get through.'
'We're doing this all the way to the Enemy?'
'Probably.'
From the shadows emerged a figure, eight feet tall with rusty iron plates on chains at the front and back of his body, muscular arms smeared with blood. He wore a helmet of smaller iron plates bolted together haphazardly. The now-deafening grating came from an enormous sword that he dragged behind him. Church and Veitch recognised the Iron Slaughterman from the description Mallory had given them of his encounter with the being in Ogma's library.
In the flickering torchlight, twenty figures swarmed around him, keeping low. They had the heads of wolves and rats but the bodies of men, snapping at the air in a hunting frenzy. Behind them, Church could just make out further movement, like clouds of smoke unfolding towards him.
'How are you doing?' Church called out.
'Still clinging on, if that's what you mean,' Ruth shouted back.
Without slowing his step, the Iron Slaughterman began to swing the sword, which was as big as he was. Veins bulged on his straining sinews and the rusty, bloodstained sword began
to gather speed in an arc.
'He's never going to hit us with that big bleedin' thing,' Veitch mocked.
The sword swung round and round over the Iron Slaughterman's head as he ran. At the last he lowered the angle so it drove towards Church and Veitch, who leaped out of the way. The sword hit the flags with such explosive force that chunks of stone hurtled through the air. Church and Veitch were thrown from their feet, and a massive fissure opened in the floor.
Snapping and snarling, the wolves and rats attacked. Church rolled back to his feet, bringing Caledfwlch up sharply to bisect one from groin to shoulder, and then taking the head off another. Veitch had already despatched three, but the others were darting and retreating, trying to get past Church and Veitch to their more vulnerable companions.
Heaving his sword off the ground and whirling it in another slow, powerful arc, the Iron Slaughterman attacked again. Church ducked beneath the whistling blade at the last second and it crashed through a marble pillar, bringing down part of the ceiling in a cloud of billowing dust.
'Bastard's going to bring this place down around us.' Veitch coughed as he and Church took the opportunity to retreat a few paces, unseen. When the dust cleared, Church saw a figure floating a foot in the air behind the attackers. Bone-white skin framed by black hair, becoming black skin and white hair, and back. Janus, the god of doorways and new beginnings, raised his golden key and ironwood stick, one to open the path, the other to drive away those who had no right to cross the threshold.
'Brothers of Dragons,' he said in a scraping voice. 'Your doors shall be closed for ever.'
Above them, they heard a cry of exultation from Ruth, and then a door ground open in the wall behind them.
'You see, that's irony,' Church said to Janus.
'This place is winding down, and all places joined to it,' Janus continued. 'The lamps are going out. The doors are closing one by one by one. You cannot hold back the dark.'
'We're the ones who carry the light,' Veitch said defiantly. 'A little blue spark, and that'll never go out.'
As the rats and wolves circled, Church said to Janus, 'You're a god. You're not controlled by the Anubis Box — you've still got free will. Why did you choose to side with the Void and the Army of the Ten Billion Spiders?'
'I am not just a god. I am Divom Deus, the gods' God. The first. I am one of the Oldest Things in the Land.'
Before Church had a moment to reflect on what Janus had said, one of the rat creatures darted under his guard and flung itself into the newly opened doorway to block their retreat. It had only backed a few paces into the space beyond the door when the tubular corridor began to revolve and axes swung like pendulums at intermittent spaces along the way. One blade planted itself firmly in the rat creature's chest. With a strangled, bestial cry, it fell to the floor in a gout of blood and began to revolve and fall, revolve and fall.
'That was a spot of luck,' Veitch said.
'The warrior told us the path to the gate had been booby-trapped.' Church retreated with Veitch to the door. 'This might only be a part of it.'
Ruth joined them in the entrance to the revolving corridor as the Iron Slaughterman launched another attack. The sword ripped through wall and floor, bringing another deluge of masonry from the precarious ceiling.
'Let me go first! Follow my steps!' Ruth shouted above the roar of falling stonework. Darting into the revolving corridor, she performed intricate steps to dodge and duck the pendulum axes while fighting to keep her balance. Church held his breath as more than one came within a hair's breadth of her, but then she was through to the other side, urging Shavi, then Laura to follow.
The rat and wolf creatures leaped, snarling, only to be cut down by Church and Veitch. Another assault by the Iron Slaughterman tore through the walls on either side of the door, forcing Miller and Virginia to fall to their knees screaming as Tom dived into the revolving corridor.
Resonant creaks and groans warned them that the entire stone ceiling was about to come down. Once Tom, Miller and Virginia had made it through the axes, Church and Veitch followed, dancing amongst the blades with such balletic skill that they made it appear effortless.
Ruth waited at the foot of a winding stone staircase. She held up a hand to halt Church and Veitch, then jabbed her spear up the stairs. Blades shot out from both walls and snapped back into place; they would have sliced off the legs of anyone climbing them.
With the sounds of pursuit drawing closer along the revolving corridor, Ruth yelled, 'See the gaps in the walls from which the blades extend? If you're careful, you can go over and under.'
'We haven't got time to be careful,' Veitch barked. 'Move!'
Almost rigid with fear, Virginia was helped by Ruth and Miller. The others followed as quickly as they could. The ka-ching of the blades became a steady, terrifying beat as they worked their way up the steps. A cry rang out as one clipped Tom's boot and he sprawled, narrowly missing another blade. His stream of abuse told everyone he was all right.
A quaking at the foot of the steps warned Church that the Iron Slaughterman was close behind, the sound of shattering blades revealing how he was putting his sword to good use.
Freezing air, brilliant white light and the dying blizzard greeted them as they stumbled from the top of the steps onto a stone terrace on the side of the mountain. Across a dizzying gulf, on another rocky slope of the range, they could just make out what had to be the Groghaan Gate, a soaring arch of gleaming gold. A bridge had once spanned the gulf between the two peaks, but it had been shattered at intervals so that sections were suspended on either side of columns that dropped down into the white wastes below.
'We're never going to get across there,' Veitch said, peering over the lip of the first section of bridge. Vertigo made him wobble and he took a step back from the edge.
'Then we make our stand here,' Church said.
5
In the chamber in the depths of the Halls of the Drakusa, Jack frantically wrenched at the door handle, but it remained resolutely closed.
Standing his ground before the chained giant, Hunter's face revealed the strain of keeping the creature out of his thoughts.
'Who are you?' Hunter asked.
'Who are you?' the giant said.
'Okay, we could keep doing this all day, but it's already getting old.'
'Getting old.'
Wiping away a dribble of blood from his left nostril, Hunter continued, 'Clearly the Drakusa saw you as too much of a threat to leave you wandering around. Are you responsible for all the bones in the basement?'
'Bones.'
'Of course, if that's what remains of the Drakusa, it doesn't explain who chained you up here.'
Hunter became aware that Jack was no longer rattling at the door in panic. The boy now watched Hunter with hooded eyes, his body held in an odd posture with one shoulder slumped. Before Hunter could ask what was wrong, Jack attacked in a murderous rage, screaming and attempting to tear at Hunter's flesh, throat, eyes.
It was an effort even for Hunter to hold him off, but as he wrestled Jack back, an insidious darkness crept into the back of his head. He saw himself pressing his thumbs into Jack's throat and squeezing the life from him before tearing off his skin, ripping out his eyes, brutalising his body beyond all recognition. His head swam with the last, desperate expressions of all the people he had killed, their fear of what was to come on the other side of death, their grief for the ones they were leaving behind, the terrible sight of the intelligence winking out in their eyes. And then he was hanging himself from a short rope in the corner of the room, his face turning black, the skin decaying, the insects moving in.
For anyone else, the creeping infection of morbidity would have destroyed them, but death had been Hunter's companion for too long. He wasn't scared of it; nor did it revolt him. It was simply a necessary if distasteful part of life. He snapped himself back from the flood of oppressive images and forced his thoughts to right themselves.
Jack rolled on the fl
oor, gasping for air, his throat still bearing the red marks of Hunter's fingers. The death-images assaulted his mind, driving him slowly insane.
The giant cocked his hooded head towards Hunter. 'I am El-Di-Gah-Wis-Lor, the final judgement of the Drakusa, the dark at the end, the breath of the grave,' he began. 'I am death, and I bring death. Brought into being for one purpose, to end the plague of the Caraprix, I was not allowed to fulfil my destiny. And so I have waited, and waited, and my urge for death has risen with each season. And now you are here, and I will have my way.'
Blood flew in droplets as Hunter shook his head to clear his mind. 'All well and good, except you're unfortunate to have the wrong person in here. You see, I am death, and I'm a bigger, badder death than you.'
Hunter tore open his bag and rammed his hand into the Balor Claw. It sang eagerly when it bonded with its master. 'Now we'll see. Skull for skull and bone for bone.'
From beyond the door, he could hear the low, rumbling sound of the approaching Fomorii. Jack whined, spat blood, drawing them closer.
Bounding at the giant, Hunter tore off the hood. Red eyes that had not seen in an age rolled in a devastated face that resembled a melted candle. When they fixed on Hunter, he saw within a monstrous intellect, unknowable, uncaring, whose sole purpose was to destroy him, destroy every living thing. For the first time in his monstrous, debased life, he shuddered.
And then he brandished the Balor Claw in front of the giant's face and said, 'This is worse than death. It can reduce you to nothing in an instant. Do you understand?'
Hunter wanted to look away when those hideous eyes revolved back to him. 'I have learned your words. I know your mind. We are death.'
Despair washed through Hunter when he heard his worst fears given voice. 'Leave the boy alone,' he said.
The red, staring eyes focused on Jack, then snapped away as if they were removing a hook and line. Jack rolled onto his back, gasping and crying.
The door throbbed with a ferocious pounding that would rend it open within seconds. Hunter glanced at the stone steps winding around the chamber walls, but then a notion struck him.
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