The rules must be different here – as I was starting to find out. This was the dark, and the dead here needed blood. How then could I judge or blame Thorne? She was just doing what was necessary in order to survive.
Although I was still some distance away from the lake, I realized that I could already feel warmth on my face. It was giving off far more heat than could be accounted for by the hot water flowing into it. Maybe there was volcanic activity directly below it? What if it suddenly exploded in a great surge of fire and boiling water?
I came to a halt. Suddenly I was afraid of the bubbling, churning lake. I sniffed quickly three times, trying to find out what threat it posed. I’ve always been good at sniffing things out. Some witches are better at it than others, but the skill came easily to me. It was one of the few things that seemed to impress Bony Lizzie when she first began my training. This time I was having difficulty gathering information. I tried again – three more quick sniffs.
I still couldn’t find precisely what the threat from the boiling lake was: I felt that something might emerge from it at any time.
Then, as I watched, some small creature came crawling out of the lake towards me. How could that be? How could anything actually live within water of that temperature?
Another of the creatures emerged, and then another. Within seconds there were at least a dozen, all heading in my direction.
That was when I realized that they were not small, after all. The lake was much further away than I had thought. The creatures only appeared small because of the distance between us. But they were moving fast, and getting larger and larger – which meant they were getting steadily closer.
Suddenly I knew what they were. The fact that they’d been some distance away and had crawled out of a boiling lake had delayed that realization.
They were skelts too!
I turned and ran back towards Thorne. ‘Skelts! More skelts!’ I shouted at the top of my voice.
She looked up from where she was still feeding from the skelt’s head, and at first did nothing but stare. I knew she was looking towards the lake beyond me. She too would be able to see the creatures.
Slowly she came to her feet but stayed where she was. She was brave, Thorne, and I knew that she would wait until we were level before running herself. She was truly loyal – Grimalkin had made sure of that – and would not flee while I was still in danger.
I was right. As I came alongside her, Thorne gestured towards the plateau, and we sprinted towards it stride for stride. We ran hard, and soon the breath was rasping in my throat – though Thorne seemed full of energy, her breaths still coming easily. Was that a result of the blood that she’d just drunk?
I glanced back a couple of times, but although the skelts still seemed to be following us, they were not gaining on us. I needed to catch my breath, so I paused at the edge of the narrow ravine, pulling Thorne to my side, and looked back.
The skelts seemed to have abandoned their chase. They had turned and were slowly moving back towards the steaming lake.
Why would they give up? Perhaps they didn’t want to venture too far from their home?
Thorne and I turned and continued at a brisk walk.
‘They came out of boiling water,’ I puzzled. ‘Skelts couldn’t live in such conditions back on earth.’
‘Things are different here,’ Thorne reminded me. ‘These are skelts that died back on earth. Different rules apply . . . Now that they’ve retreated, we need to climb again. We need to look for signs of the gate.’
I didn’t know what she meant. ‘Are we looking for another wall of rock and a cave to take us back onto the path between the domains? Is that what you mean by a “gate”?’
‘No – getting out of a domain is not the same as getting in. An exit gate is so full of magic it usually gives off a beam of maroon light. It’s easy to see in the dark, but very difficult if a domain is well-lit. Don’t suppose it ever gets that light in this one, so we shouldn’t have too much trouble. But we’ll see it more easily if we’re higher up.’
Soon, after crunching up a windy, steaming path of volcanic rock, we did indeed catch sight of it. Thorne spotted it first, but had to point it out twice before I saw it. It was a thin vertical beam of maroon light.
We took careful note of its position, then set off down the slope towards it. We were both nervous that the owner of the domain might find us before we could get away.
‘Sniff it out!’ Thorne commanded. ‘And tell me what it smells like.’
I sniffed three times, and instantly got the direction of the beam, which was invisible from our present position. There was a strong stench of rotten eggs.
‘Eggs!’ I cried, wrinkling my nose. ‘It’s like stinky eggs!’
‘That’s right, Alice. So remember that smell – it’s another way to locate a gate. Sometimes you can’t see the maroon light.’
As we approached the gate, Thorne led me to the left and we approached it at an angle. What had been a vertical line changed first into a crescent, gradually giving way to an oval shape. When we were standing directly before it, I saw its true form.
The gate was made up of three concentric rotating circles of maroon light floating in the air at about waist height. Through it I glimpsed another landscape – something very different to this volcanic wasteland.
Its position made it difficult to access. I approached it nervously.
‘You have to dive through without touching the edge,’ Thorne instructed. ‘Catch it by accident and you could lose a limb. The edge of the gate is sharper than one of Grimalkin’s blades! You go first. I’ll follow. Once you’re through, go into a forward roll.’
So I prepared to dive through the gate – into who knows what.
I THREW MYSELF into a forward roll, as Thorne had told me, and hit soft ground. She came to her feet behind me, clutching her blades, looking ready for anything.
It was night, but the air was warmer than the County on a summer’s day: there was that same damp feeling, as if, despite the clear skies, rain wasn’t far away. It was quite a relief after the dry heat of the last domain. The sky was black and seemingly clear of cloud, though I could see no stars.
Directly ahead of us was a grassy slope; without speaking, we began to climb it. As we came to the summit, I saw a full moon low on the horizon.
It was blood-red.
I had witnessed such a moon before, on the night the Pendle witches brought the Fiend through a portal to our world; the same night the Malkin clan had sent their witch assassin to hunt Tom Ward down and kill him.