I thought carefully. There was truth in what she’d just said. And she had come back for me.
‘I need to get into the basilica and avoid the trap they’ve set,’ I told Thorne. ‘I must reach that gate. Can you help me to do that?’
‘Inside the basilica, we’ll have to trust to luck. I’ve never been in there myself and the gate could be anywhere – we’ll have to search for it. But I might be able to get us inside unobserved. I do know someone who might help – truly. But you’ll have to wait here. It’ll be easier and faster if I go alone.’
‘How long will you be?’
‘As long as it takes – just wait.’
Then Thorne was gone and I was alone in the shadow of the wall, shivering in my wet clothes.
IT WAS HARD to judge the passing of time, and I crouched there, wet and uncomfortable, for what seemed like an hour or more.
I began to wonder if Thorne would ever return. Maybe she’d changed her mind again and sided with my enemies once more. Perhaps she’d been caught.
I could wait only a little while longer. There was no way of knowing how much time had passed back on earth – it could already be close to Halloween. Soon I would have to try and find my own way into the basilica.
But finally Thorne reappeared and, without a word of explanation, crooked her finger in a sign that I should follow her.
Keeping mostly to back alleys, we approached the basilica in a slow widdershins spiral. We arrived at the side of the huge building. Between us and the wall was a large paved area, perhaps a hundred paces across. Whether we faced south, north, east or west, it was impossible to say in a domain where the blood-moon remained fixed in the same position.
Thorne came to a halt, and as we dropped into a crouch, she pointed. ‘Do you see the third door from the left?’ she asked.
I counted quickly. There were five doors of varying sizes. The third, oval in shape, was the smallest of them all. I nodded.
‘That’s the best way in. I’ve been told it isn’t usually guarded,’ Thorne told me.
‘Do you trust the people you spoke to?’ I said.
‘As much as you can trust anybody who’s been in the dark for some time. The longer you’re here, the more desperate you become. I spoke to a group of people and trust some more than others. But all agreed that was the door to use.’
I wasn’t filled with confidence, but I had to take the risk. I nodded again, and Thorne pointed towards the door and put her finger to her lips before setting off immediately. I followed at her heels.
We were less than fifty strides from the the door we’d been directed to when I heard a bell begin to toll; the one that summoned the chosen to be slain in the basilica – and then the random taking of blood; now we were in immediate danger.
At the thirteenth toll of that dreadful bell, something shrieked out from above; I recognized it immediately – the raucous cry of a chyke. And it wasn’t alone. Others were swooping down towards us, a dozen or more of the bat-like creatures, their clawed hands extended to rend our flesh, their eyes glowing red like embers. Last time I had estimated the creature to be of approximately human size, but these appeared even larger.
Thorne had her blades but I had no weapons at all, and as I’d just learned to my cost, magic didn’t work near the basilica. I decided to try again anyway: I flicked at the nearest chyke with my mind – a spell of repulsion. It didn’t work. The creature continued to glide towards me, its open jaws dripping saliva.
We began to run towards the shelter of the dark oval doorway.
The chyke attacked, swooping down, and I dived forward into a roll. But not before I felt a sharp pain in my forehead. When I scrambled to my feet, blood was running into my eyes, but Thorne had returned to stand over me and, despite the pain she must be feeling in her hands, was holding two blades and trying to drive away the attacker.
I glanced about me and knew a moment of real terror. Other chykes were coming for us – too many for Thorne to fend off alone. We were about to be ripped to pieces.
I lurched to my feet, holding my arms high to protect my face. I anticipated the tearing of my flesh, but there was no pain. Instead, the claws that had been aiming for my face were gone. I looked up and saw the chykes fleeing from another, larger winged being. One was too late and, screaming in terror, was seized by its pursuer. It was quickly ripped asunder, the bloody pieces falling onto the flags behind us.
My stomach turned over as I saw the killer banking and flying towards us. The rest of the chykes had fled. Were we its new prey? I wondered. But then I recognized the predator.
‘It’s Wynde, the lamia witch who died before the walls of Malkin Tower,’ Thorne said. ‘She was a friend in life and will be so in death.’
Grimalkin had told me that she had watched from the battlements of the tower, unable to help, as Wynde had been slain by the kretch. It had eaten her heart, thus sending her directly to the dark. But the lamia witch had fought bravely, and others had to help the kretch to overcome her – amongst them the dark mage Bowker, and three witches who had speared her with knives on long poles.
Later Grimalkin had slain them all.
Wynde landed close to us. ‘Why have you, who still live and breathe, entered the dark?’ she demanded of me. ‘Why have you risked so much?’
Her voice was guttural and her words difficult to make out. Sometimes when a lamia was in the process of shape-shifting towards the feral, she temporarily lost the use of language altogether. In this final winged form it usually returned, but it was still difficult to understand what she was saying.
‘I am here to gain the means to destroy the Fiend. The gate I need to reach his domain is somewhere inside the basilica and I must use it,’ I told her. ‘There is something vital there that I must retrieve.’
‘Enemies wait for you beyond that door,’ she rasped.
Thorne scowled. ‘You’ve been betrayed again, Alice, but it wasn’t of my doing, I swear it. The friends I spoke of were witches who sometimes cared for me after my cruel father beat me. I hoped they could be trusted. I’m sorry – I’ve let you down again.’
‘You did your best, Thorne,’ I told her.
‘There is another entrance, a high one in the roof,’ said Wynde. ‘I will carry you up to it. Who will be first?’
‘Go first!’ Thorne commanded. ‘You’ve no weapons.’