insect, almost lost beneath the echoes off the cobbles.
She stopped sharply. 'Who's there?'
No immediate reply came, but her instincts were sharp enough to make her move quickly away. Yet after a few yards, the sound of her name made her glance back again. At the end of that section of mews was the knight with the boar's-head helmet who had pursued her at the Rollrights, his gleaming black armour almost lost in the shadows.
Caitlin didn't wait to see any more. She ran as fast as she could through the labyrinthine streets, not even pausing to see if the knight was in pursuit. Yet in her keenness to escape, she missed her turning and found herself in an area she didn't recognise, and soon after that she came up sharp against the end of a twisting cul-de- sac.
Her hopes that she would have time to retrace her steps were dashed when she heard the clatter of the knight's approach. He appeared around a bend and stood in the centre of the street, arms at his sides.
'What do you want?' Caitlin said defiantly.
'Caitlin Shepherd.' The same fizzing voice, distorted, like high-tension wires. 'None of this is real, Caitlin Shepherd.' There was an awkwardness to his intonation, as if he wasn't used to speaking.
'What do you want?' Caitlin repeated.
'You.' The word chilled her. 'I want you.'
A nearby door opened with a loud creak and a short man with wild white hair emerged carrying a box of empty bottles. Caitlin saw her moment and dashed through the gap, almost knocking the man over. His curses rose up behind her as she scrambled through a dark, dusty back room into what appeared to be an apothecary's shop. Bottles and jars of herbs and coloured liquids filled shelves on every wall.
She burst out of the front door on to a main thoroughfare and continued to run for several minutes, only resting when she was sure the knight had not followed her. The experience troubled her immensely. It wasn't only the Whisperers who were tracking her incessantly. Who was the knight? What did he want? And why did she feel so scared by his presence? Caitlin finally found Crowther sitting at the back of the Sun tavern. The place was deserted, but he looked happy enough. She'd spent most of the morning scouring the rain-swept backstreets, ignoring the uncertain glances of the strange, gloomy residents, poking into bakeries where the scent of fresh bread almost turned her head, or strange emporia filled with disturbing and magical objects that appeared to have been lost from the pages of a fairy-tale.
'Hail and well met,' Crowther said tipsily, raising a foaming mug.
'You're in a good mood.' Caitlin sat opposite him on a rickety stool.
'And why not? Food whenever I call for it, good beer — and all for free. What more could a man want?'
'How about survival for his fellow man?'
He made a flamboyant gesture of weariness. 'Please, don't get on that moral high horse. I've done my bit. I got you here.'
'We need you, Professor. Wherever we have to go, it's not going to be easy, and the more help we can have on the road, the better.'
'That may very well be the case, but I'm not your man.'
'Why? Are you afraid?'
'Of course I'm afraid. At my age you're afraid of everything… afraid of dying from some hideous illness, afraid of spending your last days eking out a miserable existence, afraid of… of… loneliness.' He stared into his beer for a long moment, then flapped the thought away with a hand.
'You don't need to be afraid…'
'Really? And I should be taking life advice from someone who hasn't crossed thirty, why exactly?'
'You don't gain wisdom just through years. You get it from experience, and tragedy…'
'And I've had my fair share of that, believe me.' He slammed his pint down so hard beer slopped across the table. 'Listen to me. We move from innocence, hope and joy to compromise, disillusion and misery,' Crowther said. 'Why do you think no one wants to grow up?'
'I don't believe you,' Caitlin said.
'Of course. Because you haven't grown up yet. It's waiting for you, make no mistake.'
The happiness had drained from his face once again, and in the harsh lines that remained, Caitlin saw hints of what lay behind his posturing. 'What tragedy, Professor Crowther?'
His eyes misted, the repressed emotion released by the alcohol. 'Just the usual. Wife taken in the Fall. Children missing and grandchildren…' His shoulders loosened and sagged so that he appeared to diminish in stature. 'You're never happy with what you've got until what you've got has gone. I had no time for them, no time for anything apart from myself. The whole family taken, and I couldn't do a thing about it. Useless, you see. All my life being an academic… wasted time. It didn't help me one jot. My whole ethos has been pointless.'
'That's not true-'
'It is true.' Caitlin leaned across the table and grabbed his wrist supportively. He flinched as if he'd been burned. 'You don't have to feel this way. I've suffered loss too and I-'
'Ah, but then you're stronger than me, you see.' He pulled himself free of her and took up his drink.
'You were brave enough to come here.'
'Brave enough?' he laughed bitterly. 'This is my refuge, my escape from the world of tears. Here I don't have to face up to anything. I can live for ever, or near enough, free of fear. I can just… be.' He looked deep into her eyes and forced a smile. 'I needed you to help me cross over here. Most people can't activate the transition unless they have the untrammelled force of the Blue Fire in them. And you're one of them, one of the few. I went to the college in Glastonbury with the explicit aim of gaining the abilities to seek you out. And once I'd done that, I left, taking with me all I needed to find you.'
Caitlin pulled back as his meaning slowly dawned on her. 'Then you lied to me — I wasn't some chosen one destined to cure the plague. You just needed me to get you here…'
'See what a horrible person I am. You really don't need me around you any more.' He sucked in a breath of air. 'That's not true. You are the one. I simply saw a confluence between what I wanted and what was expected of you.'
Caitlin stood up, but it was Amy who surfaced to speak their mind. 'I really am disappointed in you, Professor Crowther.'
He thought he would be inured to her words, but that little-girl voice from Caitlin's place of innocence hit to the very heart of him. Caitlin/Amy saw it in his face, but made no attempt to comfort him. She left the tavern as quickly as she could. Mahalia and Carlton had spent hours trawling along the twisting, dark corridors of the palace. They had seen many secret places and overheard whispers of great importance, but still hadn't found the object of their quest.
'Maybe they executed him,' Mahalia said. 'That could have been why he'd got the hood on, and the chains…'
Carlton shook his head and pressed ahead.
'Haven't we been down here already?' But the words caught in her throat when she noticed an unfamiliar tapestry hanging on the wall between two sizzling torches. It showed five people — humans by the stylised design — joined by the sinuous coils of what appeared to be a serpent. Other illustrations surrounding the central motif appeared to tell a story that, at first glance, ended in some great disaster, but before she could examine it closer, a voice called out clearly, 'Who's there?'
Mahalia dragged Carlton into her protective grip. He fought free and advanced quickly along the corridor with Mahalia at his heels until they came to a heavy oaken door with a small barred window set into it.
'I know you're there. There's no point hiding.'
Cautiously, Mahalia approached the window and peered into a small, dank cell. Straw was scattered on the stone flags, and pinned to the far wall by chains was the hooded prisoner. Surely, Mahalia thought, he must be a real danger to be secured so forcefully. She ducked away when she saw those brilliant eyes fixed on her through the holes in the hood.
'Don't go.'
His voice, though clear, was faintly pitiful and she couldn't help coming back to the window and that hypnotic gaze. 'You're not one of them,' she said.
'No. I'm one of you.' He rattled the chains for her attention. 'Can you get me out of here?' Though he was
