‘Hang on.’ He places her fingers on the edge of the giant sandstone cube. ‘Grip tight. I need to climb up another level, then I’ll—’
The words shrivel in his mouth.
He can see what she can’t. See the shape behind her.
179
Gideon moves too late to stop the stone blade slicing into Caitlyn’s calf.
She screams and almost loses her hold on the giant sandstone cube. Gideon grabs her arm and hoists her up a level.
The Master sweeps the knife again. Too low. It misses. He pushes himself closer. Slashes again. He’s closer now but not close enough. He ignores the pain in his leg and hoists himself on to the bottom layer of the archive cube.
Gideon is pushing Caitlyn up and around the side of the block. Edging her out of harm’s way. He’s looking the wrong way. The knife slices into his shoulder. He tumbles from the cube.
The Master lurches after him. This is personal. Pride. Honour. Everything to live — and die for. He attacks again with the blade.
The gun is back on the cube and Gideon has no chance of reaching it. His eyes are locked on the lethal blade in his father’s hand.
The Master hobbles and stabs. It’s an unbalanced lunge that falls short of its target. Gideon sees the weak spot. Blood is dribbling down the Master’s right leg. He launches a wild kick.
The Master howls with pain. The knife drops. Gideon could finish him. He could go back for the gun and shoot him. He doesn’t.
He turns and climbs up towards Caitlyn.
‘You’re a fool!’ shouts the Master, lying on the stone floor clutching his leg. ‘There’s no way out. You can’t get away.’
Gideon pulls himself up on to the top of the centrepiece and helps Caitlyn climb the last half metre. As they stand on the apex of the giant sandstone block, he sees that his father is right. There is no way out.
180
The Master hobbles back from the Crypt of the Ancients. He knows there is still time. If he can reach the Bearers, the Lookers, then the sacrifice can be recaptured. The hour is late but it is not yet impossible to complete the ritual.
He’s weak, dizzy, losing too much blood. His thigh is twitching and cramping. He stops, quickly refastens the tourniquet. Already nerves are deadening. Every step up the sloping passageway is a form of torture. But as he reaches the middle landing, he sees Grus with three Lookers.
‘Here! Over here!’ It’s the best he can manage as he slumps to the ground.
‘Get a medic, quickly,’ shouts Grus. He turns to two of the men. ‘Help me get him to his chamber.’
‘No,’ protests the Master. ‘My son and the sacrifice are in the Crypt of the Ancients. Get her. Get her now.’
‘Watch him,’ says Grus to one of the Lookers. ‘Don’t let him pass out.’ He looks down at his friend. ‘There’ll be a doctor here any minute.’
‘Go!’ shouts the Master. ‘They were climbing the centrepiece. Do whatever you have to, to bring the girl back.’
181
The Master is laid out on a stone table in his chamber.
‘You’ve lost a lot of blood,’ says the man tending him.
‘I know that,’ he snaps. ‘Just fix me.’
The medic nods. He waits for the ice and alcohol to come from the fridges in the operational area. He’s going to have to cauterise the wound with heated metal. Battlefield improvisation. Something he’s done before.
The Master’s mind is elsewhere. If he can’t complete the ritual, there will be repercussions. The power of the Sacreds will wane. Perhaps critically. It will be disastrous for so many people.
But if the sacrifice and his son escape? He shudders.
The Craft will be exposed. He cannot let that happen. He will have no option but to take the ultimate sanction. One that has been prepared. One that only his word can execute.
182
The top of the centrepiece in the crypt is solid. Gideon feels no break in the giant sandstone except for a thin square shaft that runs straight down the middle. He can see no obvious use for it. Was it designed to let something out? Drain away water or gasses? Or let something in?
He looks down the bottomless hole. Did it once house an even taller centrepiece that connected to the roof of the crypt? The shaft is about the width of a waterwell. It’s barely wide enough for him to fit into. But it’s all there is. There’s no sign of anything else that could constitute an exit.
At the edge of the block, Caitlyn sits nursing the gash to her leg. He looks again down the shaft, down into the terrifying darkness. The Lookers will be in the room any second. He sits and dangles his legs into the void.
Caitlyn stares at him incredulously. ‘What are you doing?’
‘I don’t know. Ancient structures seldom make sense. You just have to feel your way around them to discover their purpose.’ He lowers himself into the hole, so he is resting on his elbows. His gashed shoulder barks pain.
Gideon scrapes a foot against the wall. He can feel something. A tiny foothold. A gap in the sandstone. He wriggles his bare toe in and stretches his other leg down, searching for a second foothold. After arcing it back and forth, he finds one.
Caitlyn watches him disappearing into the shaft and drags herself over. She’s not going to be left here alone. Only his fingers are now visible from the top. He calls to her. ‘There are cut-outs in the side of the walls. It’s like climbing down a ladder. Feel your way down.’
His hands disappear and in the dim light she can only just see the top of his head. She gets on her knees and lowers herself into the blackness. Back into the dark hole. Her mind rebels, her body freezes. She can’t do it again. She can’t go into the hole.
But she has to. She has to follow Gideon. Has to trust him.
Her once-beautifully manicured toes rub against the rough sandstone until she finds the gaps and descends into the dark unknown.
Her left foot hits an unusually solid foothold, a knob of stone that protrudes from the wall. It enables her to shift her weight from her gashed leg and move down more confidently.
As soon as she’s done it, there’s an awful noise. A sound like a train trundling through a tunnel above her head.
‘What’s that?’ Gideon shouts from below.
She has no idea. She looks up.
Something is sliding across the top of the shaft. A stone disc cutting off the remaining light. Caitlyn watches it fill the gap above. There’s a clunk. A deathly halt.
They are sealed in. Trapped.
183
As the medic ties off a wrap of elasticised bandage around the Master’s wound, Grus repeats his awful news: ‘The crypt is empty. We searched it from top to bottom. If they were there, they’re not now.’
‘They were on the centrepiece.’ His voice is thinned by pain. ‘They were in there, I saw them climbing it.’
‘Do you think I ignored you?’ says Grus. ‘We searched everywhere. Including the centrepiece.’
‘I climbed it, Master,’ adds one of the Lookers. ‘To the very top. The roof above is unreachable. There is no way anyone could have escaped from up there.’
The Master swings his legs down from the stone table and sits up. The rush of blood makes him dizzy. ‘Then they’re still in the room.’
Grus leans close to his old friend. ‘Believe me, they are not. We would have found them.’
‘Then they must have slipped out of the crypt behind me.’ He stands down and flinches.
‘You should really rest,’ says the medic. ‘The cauterisation is fresh and you shouldn’t traumatise the wound any more.’