pained. It floundered around with the sword still protruding from it.
Its rider fought to control it for a few seconds before leaping clear just as it crashed to the boulders, thrashing in its death throes. The leader of the Lament-Brood maintained perfect poise on landing, both hands coming to the sword as he moved in to attack. Caitlin was defenceless. Without thinking, Mahalia stepped forward and threw her Fomorii sword. Caitlin caught it with one hand without looking and instantly launched into the fight. She parried, struck, parried again. Their skill was so great, the others could barely see the movements of the swords, hearing only the reverberations of their clashes.
They battled for five minutes, but Caitlin's face remained impassive throughout, as though she were in some trance state, immersed in a work of art rather than a fight to the death. As the crows flapped around them in a black cloud, it became apparent to the others that she wouldn't be beaten; probably could never be beaten. Battle was her life, bloodshed her reason; she existed at the point between life and death, where both were experienced to their extremes.
And finally she ducked the Whisperer's strike, swung her sword with two hands and took off his head at the neck. It bounced down the boulders as the body crashed to the ground. Purple mist swept out of it, enveloping them all before being blown away across the battlefield.
Caitlin turned to the others, drenched from head to toe in blood and looking like hell itself. She waved for them to follow her before leaping up the boulders towards a flat area in front of a door resembling a gaping mouth.
Mahalia's anguished call made Caitlin turn back. Crowther was slumped on his knees on the rocks, the Lament-Brood leader's spear rammed through his body. The front of his overcoat was already soaked in blood. The distressing sight drove the Morrigan back and brought Caitlin as close as she could be to control. Awkwardly, she clambered back down to where Mahalia, Jack and Matt were attempting to aid the professor. His head had lolled forward on to his chest; the mask's power had retreated inside it.
Jack went to pull the spear out, but Matt cautioned him. 'You might do more damage,' he said.
The warriors of the Djazeem had followed the five of them along the tunnel of bodies and had now fanned out around the base of the rock on which the House of Pain stood.
'Let's get him up to the top,' Caitlin said.
They lifted the professor over the boulders to the flat surface, where they propped him against a rock. Matt pulled Caitlin to one side, searching her face to see if there was still any sign of the woman he had known. Satisfied that there was, he said, 'He's dying. There's nothing we can do.'
After all the suffering she had seen, Caitlin felt drained of emotion. She looked back at the billowing purple mist and replied, 'We can't take the risk of staying here with him.'
'I know.'
'I don't want to leave him to die alone.'
'He's probably not aware of anything in that mask. It's pretty much taken him over.'
Mahalia sensed what they were discussing and came over. 'I'll stay with him.'
Caitlin eyed her coldly; she could feel the Morrigan stirring at the back of her head, the frantic fluttering of black wings.
Mahalia saw what was happening in Caitlin's face and said, 'I've done bad things, I know, but this isn't the time to punish me. You can do that later, after he's gone.'
Without acknowledging Mahalia, Caitlin nodded to Matt and set off back over the boulders. 'What's going on between you two?' Matt asked the girl. Mahalia waved him away and turned back to Crowther, the only thing on her mind now.
'I'll stay as well,' Jack said when she returned.
'No. We need you.' The tone in Matt's voice suggested there would be no argument.
'Go on,' Mahalia said. 'I'll be here when you're done.' They both knew it was a lie. They hugged and kissed briefly, almost blase, so that they could pretend it wasn't going to be the last time, and then Jack hurried off with Matt in pursuit of Caitlin. As Caitlin approached the door, the familiar smell of burned iron drifted into her nostrils and lightning bolts crackled through the air. The knight with the boar's-head helmet stood to one side of the entrance, pointing with his sword for her to enter the House of Pain. Now Caitlin could see the truth: he belonged in some way to that awful power and everything he had done had been to draw her there. She considered attacking him, hacking open that ghoulish boar's head, but it was pointless; she should save her rage for what lay within.
'Enter, Caitlin Shepherd. Your destiny awaits you.' His voice seethed with the same lightning energy.
As she passed, she pointed her sword at his throat; he didn't flinch.
'What did you do that for?' Matt asked as they moved into the shadows beneath the porch of gleaming obsidian that overhung the door.
Caitlin looked from Matt to the knight. 'You can't see him?'
Matt stared at her blankly.
Her own personal demon. Without a backwards glance, she plunged through the area of shadows, into the House of Pain. Mary's footsteps echoed hollowly as she ventured across the large tiled entrance hall of the Roman Baths. The foliage that swamped the outside of the building covered the external windows and made the interior very dark, but once her eyes had adjusted she could see the ticket desks and beyond them the doors through to the baths themselves.
Mary's heart beat wildly. She knew something was here, but she had no idea what it was. Arthur Lee could feel it, too; the cat pressed tightly against her calves, his fur prickling.
Cautiously, she walked through the next set of doors into blazing sunshine. There was a walkway running around a square, open area. Peering over the edge, Mary could see the green water of the ancient stone-lined baths on the floor below.
The atmosphere of sanctity she had felt the moment she entered the town was even more potent here. It was almost alive, breathing. With her footsteps echoing in the still air, she moved along the walkway until she came to some steps.
They brought her out next to the pool where Romans had bathed nearly two thousand years before. The echoes were even louder there, rippling out across the water and bouncing off the stone that had been uncovered during the excavations in the earlier part of the twentieth century. Much of the original baths remained, and it wasn't difficult to imagine life going on there all those years ago.
But the Romans had only been one of many peoples who had used the naturally warm, mineral-heavy water. From the earliest days it had been a place of pilgrimage, as though the water flowed from the next world to this one, carrying with it some of the flavour of the beyond.
The tranquillity that lay across the baths was seductive. Mary knelt on the edge and dipped her fingers into the water. It was warm and oddly soothing, yet as the ripples ran out, the water appeared to take on an odd viscous quality. At first, Mary had been able to see the stone flags on the bottom, not far below the surface, but now it looked as if the water went down for ever.
The change to the water was hypnotic and Mary found herself peering into the dim depths to see what was happening. There was movement. Someone was in there, immeasurably deep, swimming. Back and forth the figure went, coming up tirelessly, rolling over like a dolphin, the skin gleaming white, the hair long and grey.
Finally it stopped just a few inches beneath the surface and rolled on to its back so that it could peer up at her. Mary found herself looking into her own face. The shock made her pull back, but the swimming Mary remained at peace, her eyes big and wide.
'Who are you?' Mary asked.
The lips of the Swimming Mary moved and somehow her lilting voice sounded above the water level. 'I am you.'
Mary steadied herself; the sensation of looking into her own face was weird, but there was no sense of threat. She had the strangest feeling that the water wasn't water at all, rather that it was a window between two worlds.
'We are the same,' the Swimming Mary continued. 'All things are joined.'
'Is the Goddess here?' Mary asked.
There was a long pause before her double replied. 'If you wish to enter Her presence, you must first prove yourself worthy.'
