Marcel’s response was another spell, a simpler one this time. He waved his hand a second time and instantly the torch began to splutter and fade. Then it died altogether.
‘You fool! Now I’ll have to relight it when I can’t see a thing.’
Or would he? After the first shock when the torch was extinguished, it seemed they were in darkness, but as each second passed that darkness receded.
‘I can see,’ said Fergus.
‘Me too,’ joined in Kertigan. ‘Marcel, what did you do?’
‘The crystals,’ cried Bea, who had been watching Marcel more closely than the others. ‘Look, they’re glowing.’
It was true: all around them, every rock face embedded with the tiny dots of light was giving off a faint illumination. Added together in the confines of the mountain’s interior, their light strengthened and spread above, below, to the left, the right, everywhere! The light grew stronger and, with it, Bea’s awe that Marcel could do such a thing.
‘When you snapped the bowstrings of our elders, I thought it was just a trick, simple magic you played as a game. But this …’ she breathed, staring wide-eyed around her as the light grew even stronger. ‘How do you do such things, Marcel?’
‘It comes from my will. I can’t really explain. I want it to happen, I see it happening in my mind, I command the natural world to obey.’ He looked at her with a shrug. ‘The sages in Noam have written long books about it but they make no more sense than what I’ve just told you.’
‘Was that how you drove Mortregis down into the burning Book of Lies?’
‘I didn’t think about it then. I was terrified and desperate to save the people I loved — you and Nicola and Fergus. Now that I’ve learned more, I can be more … deliberate in the magic I conjure.’
‘Is there anything you can’t do?’
Marcel was strangely silenced by her question. And, after all, what a question it was. Bea had asked it out of the same wonder she felt watching the angular rocks around them bathed in the soft light of Marcel’s gift. But when he continued to stare at her, with no reply to her playful question, she saw that he simply didn’t know himself.
Were his powers unlimited, Bea dared asked herself. If so, what did she ever need to fear in the world if Marcel was her protector? A comforting thought when they were descending towards unknown dangers. Yet at the same time, such power brought a fear of its own, one she couldn’t explain any more than Marcel could explain his sorcery.
The faintest words echoed from the recesses of her mind. He does things simply because he can, Fergus had told her while Marcel slept in the Hidden Village. The words hadn’t made any sense at the time, nor the way he uttered them with a hint of dread. Here, deep within the mountain, she began to understand.
Bea’s uncertain fear evaporated quickly when Kertigan piped up. ‘Magic does have its uses then.’ He was clearly impressed and spoke to Marcel in a friendlier tone.
INSIDE THE MOUNTAIN, it was impossible to tell day from night. The body certainly knows when it is tired and hungry, though. After many more hours of rock-hopping interspersed with some plain walking, Bea was relieved when Kertigan called a halt.
‘We’ll sleep here and start again when we’re all awake.’
There was no wood to make a fire with, which left them thankful the temperature so far underground was mild and unchanging. Kertigan had anticipated this and chosen bread, cheese and some boiled turnips for their rations, nothing that needed cooking.
Since he’d brought the rocks alive around them, Marcel had seemed happier and for this reason alone Bea felt her spirits lift. They ate side by side, their backs wedged comfortably against a rock that didn’t seem so hard now that they weren’t scrambling over it towards the next one.
‘You three have been together like this before, haven’t you?’ said Kertigan, who sat watching them.
‘Like this?’
‘An adventure. In the face of danger.’
‘Is that what it was? An adventure. All I remember is the danger,’ said Fergus, and the other two nodded.
It wasn’t entirely true for Bea. There had been despair, and she had come close to death more than once, as she’d explained to Frances and Marigold, but along with such terrors had come snatches of the greatest happiness she had known in her life.
She could see more questions gathering behind Kertigan’s eyes. He was different from Ebert, who only wanted to know things about the human world if they affected the elves, or Nerrinder who didn’t want to know anything at all.
‘It was the Book of Lies,’ she said, remembering its weight in her hands, its reddish glow and the way its pages fanned back and forth when it heard a lie. ‘None of those things would have happened if it hadn’t given way to evil.’
‘No, it can’t be blamed for everything,’ said Fergus. ‘Damon and Eleanor would still have poisoned the king’s wine. It wasn’t the book’s fault that Lady Ashlere drank it instead. Some evil just is. You can’t say where it comes from.’
‘Can’t you?’ said Marcel thoughtfully. ‘The lies, the way Starkey tricked us, even Mortregis, all came from the Book of Lies.’
Kertigan shuffled closer on his legs and bottom, forming a tight circle, two elves and two humans. The distinction didn’t matter here. ‘The Book of Lies was one of the few human things we knew about when I was an elfling. It belonged to the great wizard of Elster.’
‘Lord Alwyn.’
‘But the stories we were told … it sounded like the book was a good thing, a wonderful help to the kingdom.’
‘It was,’ Marcel answered him quickly, ‘until the lies on its pages became too much to resist. After that, everything it did was meant to play tricks, to destroy, to bring chaos. Isn’t that what evil is?’
‘Good turned to evil. You wonder how that can happen, don’t you?’ said Kertigan, obviously enjoying the chance to talk about things that elves rarely discussed.
‘I asked Rhys Tironel about it,’ said Marcel. When both Bea and Kertigan stared at him blankly, he explained about the sages of Noam, then repeated what he’d been told. ‘Rhys agreed it was a brilliant idea to begin with, but the flaw lay in the way the book wrote down every lie it heard. In the end, the weight of so much evil concentrated between the covers was always going to cause trouble. I wondered whether Rhys could make a new Book of Lies, avoiding the flaw, and you know what he said — that for all his great powers, he didn’t have the magic to create such a thing. And he’s the Grand Master of Noam, the greatest sorcerer in the Mortal Kingdoms.’
‘So how did Lord Alwyn do it?’ asked Fergus.
Marcel looked as flummoxed as the rest. ‘He’s dead now, so I guess we’ll never know.’
‘Time to sleep,’ said Kertigan.
No place was any softer than another for their weary bones so they simply lay down where they had been sitting, which meant Bea found herself beside Marcel. She looked up at the dull glow made by his magic as she felt herself slipping into sleep and knew that even so far underground and facing dangers so far unseen, she was happier than she had been since … well, that was just it. How long had it been since she was truly happy among the elves?
KERTIGAN ANNOUNCED A NEW day by rising to his feet, stretching with a yawn and a moan and saying, ‘Time to be on the move.’
The journey seemed no different from yesterday until Marcel called, ‘Wait, I sense magic.’
He stopped to inspect the sheer wall of rock that rose above the right side of the fissure they were following.
‘What’s special about this spot?’ Kertigan asked, reaching out unafraid to the granite.
The tiny flecks shone in this rock like everywhere else, thanks to Marcel’s magic, and since this rock was a hard granite, their skins reflected a pale pink when they stood close to it.
‘What are these lines?’ asked Fergus, who was examining the rock beside Kertigan.
‘Veins of quartz,’ came the elf’s answer. ‘We’ve seen them in other walls of rock.’
‘Not as straight as these though,’ Marcel pointed out. ‘Look higher.’
He increased the intensity of the light and when Bea let her eyes follow one of the lines of milky quartz, she saw it meet another above their heads, forming a familiar angle.
‘It’s like a doorway,’ she said.
‘This is it then,’ Kertigan decided. ‘The barrier Long Beard spoke about. On the other side lies Baden Dark.’
‘What do we do now?’ Fergus asked.
Bea saw that Marcel was already at work. He had placed his hands against the solid rock.
‘The wards, I can feel the magic that keeps intruders out,’ he said.
She stood with Kertigan and Fergus, expecting Marcel to take his time. Magic was a mystery to those who had none in their blood. She had seen Marcel slowly discover what lay inside him, how even the simplest things called for patience and concentration.
‘We might be here for hours, days even,’ she warned the others.
She had barely spoken the last word when a sharp crack echoed along the narrow fissure, left and right, behind them, above their heads. Marcel stared at the rock where his hands pressed against it. Then he turned towards them.
‘I’ve done it. The wards are broken.’
Gingerly they moved forward together to peer over his shoulder. Part of the rock was swinging towards them, leaving a wedge of darkness that grew wider as the magic door continued to open. Bea remembered Ebert’s story. This was where he and Long Beard had been attacked by something that charged out of that darkness. She took the bow from over her back, then gasped in horror when her shaking hands dropped the first arrow and she had to reach for a second.
Kertigan was more assured. In an instant his left arm was outstretched, hand grasped firmly around his bow, while the fingers of his right touched the feathers of an arrow to his cheek. Fergus had his sword ready. Only Marcel stood unprepared.
‘There’s nothing in there, not close enough to attack,’ he said. ‘Come and see.’
None of the other three moved.
‘We thought it would take you much longer,’ said Kertigan, who remained tense and ready to fire.
‘So did I,’ said Marcel, his calm voice a contrast to his companions’ stiff and war-ready postures. ‘The wards were strange. The way Ebert spoke about this place, I thought they’d be a real challenge for my magic, but I’d barely started to explore the enchantments in the rock when it sprang open.’
‘Are you saying that one of us could have … that there was no magic?’ said Kertigan.
‘Oh, there was magic, just not very strong. What do we do now?’
‘We’ve come to find Long Beard,’ said Kertigan. ‘Marcel, I don’t suppose … I mean, your magic hasn’t picked up … ?’
‘If he was lying dead just through this portal, we wouldn’t need magic, just our noses. Sorry, Bea,’ Marcel added as an afterthought. And he stepped through.
No screams, no clash of steel. He seemed safe on the other side. Could this really be the entrance to Baden Dark, Bea wondered.
Kertigan went next, then Fergus, leaving Bea as the last to enter. By the time she joined the others, they were standing in the darkness, each of them waiting expectantly, it seemed to her.
‘Baden Dark,’ said Kertigan. ‘I’ve heard about it all my life. A place no one should ever go. I thought an elf would drop dead just setting foot in here. Where are the Squirrel Men? And they can’t be the only thing down here. Someone, or something, attacked Ebert and Long Beard.’
‘And someone had to put those wards in place,’ Marcel said, almost to himself.
‘Won’t those Squirrel Men escape again if we leave the door unwatched?’ said Bea.
‘You could stand guard,’ Kertigan suggested. ‘You know how to grab hold of those little things.’
Before Bea could stop it, a strangled cry of alarm escaped her throat.
Just as quickly, Kertigan’s arm slipped around her shoulders. ‘I’m not serious,’ he whispered and gave her a gentle squeeze.
The matter of the Squirrel Men was more than a joke, however. And they weren’t the only things that might escape. They had created a breach, the calamity that Ebert seemed to fear the most.
‘We have to close the door while we search for Long Beard,’ Marcel announced.
‘Are you sure you can open it again?’
‘If I’m not killed first.’
‘In that case, you now have three special guards who’ll make sure you’re not,’ said Fergus grimly.
With a wave of Marcel’s arm, it was done and immediately their world became inky black.
CHAPTER 15
Baden Dark
‘STAY CLOSE,’ SAID KERTIGAN.
The last thing Bea was thinking about was moving away from the others. Without realising, she’d reached out and taken hold of a sleeve. Kertigan’s, Marcel’s, Fergus’s, she wasn’t sure whose it was; she just needed to feel one of them was there, next to her, sharing the same darkness and the same fear that gripped her.
‘We can’t take a step without light,’ said Fergus.
‘I can probably use the same magic here,’ Marcel said.
‘Wait,’ Kertigan cautioned. ‘If you light up entire caverns like before, whoever … whatever … lives in Baden Dark will know they have intruders.’
‘The torch again?’
‘Looks like it.’
They heard rather than saw Kertigan fall to his knees and, after he’d taken what he needed from his pack, the first strike of flint against flint. A spark gave them the briefest glimpse of light, but the torch was resistant.
‘Let me,’ said Marcel and instantly a flame brought the torch to life. ‘That’s the first spell I taught myself.’
‘Can you do it when the kindling is wet?’ asked Kertigan, as he admired the strengthening flame.
‘I can do it underwater.’
‘Must scare the fish,’ said Bea, surprised that she could manage a laugh in such a place. Perhaps fear didn’t have the firm hold on her that she supposed, not with Marcel’s magic ready to meet every challenge.
Fergus stopped them with a sharp hiss. ‘Quiet, I can hear something.’
In the silence that followed, they all heard it: shouts, cries, high-pitched and low, all deliberately loud, but as yet some distance away.
Kertigan jumped to his feet and kicked dust onto the flame, killing it quickly. ‘Whatever it is, it’s getting closer.’
‘And it wants us to know it’s coming,’ said Fergus with a soldier’s perception.
‘I don’t think it’s just one thing. There are separate voices,’ whispered Marcel.
He was right, Bea soon realised. They were all right. A whole army was approaching, noisy and not afraid to be heard.
A voice boomed out from amid the cacophony. Find them, find them. Baden Dark is breached by the living. Find their bodies!
Their weapons were ready in their hands when the first hint of light appeared on a distant rock face. Then it came in a rush — a great cloud that created its own faint illumination, like morning mist on the mountainside before the sun has risen high enough to catch it. The mist swirled around the corner and headed straight towards them. Bea wouldn’t let herself scream, she wouldn’t.
Then a face formed out of the mist only an outstretched arm from where she stood. It was too much. She did scream, a long girlish shriek that rose above the deeper wails and taunts and moans until it found the far points of the cavern and returned as echoes.
‘Stay close,’ shouted Kertigan, and this time he had hold of her to make sure that she did.
More faces gathered around their tight circle, then bodies began to emerge as well. None of them were deformed like a nightmare’s demon and the faces weren’t contorted in rage, but they were ghosts and knowing this with utter certainty made the blood freeze in Bea’s veins. As though this wasn’t enough, a voice spoke in her ear.
Baden Dark is for the dead and for those not yet born.
Since you have already been born, you must join the dead.
She saw the faces of her companions reflected in the spectral light of the mist. They had heard similar threats and, wide-eyed with terror, they began to fight. Kertigan released his grip on Bea’s shoulder to fire off arrow after arrow; Fergus swung his sword. They were wild, as frightened as she was, and more dangerous to their own kind than they could ever be to these attackers.
‘Duck,’ she heard Marcel cry and, obeying without thought, felt the breeze from Fergus’s blade rustle her hair. He’d spun round too quickly to see what he was swinging at and might have … well, she put her hand to her throat and tried not to think about it.
Saved by Marcel’s timely cry and steadied somehow by the near miss, Bea got her bow working without the fumbles of before. But the arrows simply passed through her targets, no matter which part of the swirling bodies she tried for or how accurate her aim.
‘Stop, stop!’ Marcel cried. ‘You can’t kill them. Ghosts are already dead!’
A new danger threatened. They were being driven apart in the frenzy of battle, and even when they struggled close together again, their eight legs scuttled across the dust like a spider, taking them well away from the wall through which they had entered.
Finally, Marcel called to them all. ‘Here, stay close behind me.’ They weren’t as ready to obey his second command: ‘Throw down your weapons.’
Bea let the bow slip from her hands, then Fergus tossed his sword at his feet and, lastly, reluctantly, Kertigan did the same. The ghosts gave a roar of triumph and formed up in rows around them. If this apparent surrender was supposed to save them, it wasn’t going to work.
But Marcel had something else in mind. He was deep in concentration and, as the ghostly faces closed in, the magic began to work. The cavern around them brightened. This was the magic he had already conjured on their way through the tunnels. Bea felt her heart sink. Surely this wasn’t enough. Undaunted, Marcel made the light grow, well beyond the dim illumination he’d cast around them before. She found her hand rising to her brow, shielding her eyes. Then she had to close them tight to keep out the dazzling glare. She imagined she could feel the heat of such brightness on her skin, when it was surely an illusion.
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