Back up at the top of the stairs, the others waited anxiously for Drake and Jerry to return, peering down into the darkness and glancing nervously into all the corridors and rooms around for any sign of another living creature in the keep. Shaun went into a room that overlooked the courtyard, to keep watch for anyone moving around outside, and he saw the two archers who'd fled from them galloping away on horseback. The sight cheered him up. Two less to worry about, he thought.

Even if the others Shads were still in the castle somewhere, those two wouldn’t dare return to rejoin them after running. They would probably turn to a life of banditry or something. Become common criminals, a threat only to travelers and maybe the occasional small, isolated homestead. They were no further threat to the questers.

     Thomas went to keep an eye on the stairs that went back down to the entrance hall and up to the second floor. Several minutes went by in which all was still and quiet, the silence broken only by the wind whistling in through the arrowslits and blowing dust and leaves around their feet. It was spooky, even in the bright daylight, and Thomas hoped they wouldn't have to stay overnight. He imagined the spirits of everyone who'd ever lived here down through all the centuries flitting silently and invisibly around the castle, whispering to each other and plotting ways to get rid of these unwelcome intruders who'd come to disturb their rest. Strolling casually wherever they wanted, poking their noses into every nook and cranny, making a mockery of all the battles they'd fought defending the castle, keeping its corridors inviolate. No wonder they were furious, and even though they had no form or substance, were nothing more really than the memories of the people they'd once been, he imagined them plotting and whispering, and eventually coming up with a way to hit back at the intruders. Driving them out and back where they'd come from, or even better, killing them, so that their restless spirits would stay with them forever, helping them defend against future intruders. He imagined spending the rest of his life as an insubstantial shade, doomed to spend the rest of eternity roaming the corridors of the castle, unable ever to go home, or even set one foot outside the outer walls...

     Thomas shook his head to dispel the fantasy and went back to rejoin the others, suddenly needing the company of other living people. Once again his overactive imagination was running away with him, and he reprimanded himself sternly for his lapse of concentration. Mental discipline is of the utmost importance to a wizard, he reminded himself. A wizard who daydreams is a wizard who's going to make a stupid mistake in the casting of a spell one day, possibly a fatal one. Constant alertness was one of the most important lessons taught in the University, and Tragius had drummed it relentlessly into them week after week until it sank in. The lesson came back to him now, and he concentrated fully on his surroundings, which is how it was that he was the first to hear the footsteps coming up the stairs from the Orb chamber.

     He shook Matthew's shoulder, and the two of them strained their eyes staring down into the darkness. There was an eerie green light down there which bobbed up and down as though it were being held by the person making the footsteps, someone who was still hidden in the darkness. Matthew drew his sword, Thomas drew his knife, and Diana went to get Shaun and Petronax, who arrived a moment later, also drawing their weapons. They gathered around the doorway, and Thomas’s heart thumped madly in his chest as the figure approached. Now he could see its outline, and his terror mounted as he saw how it climbed the steps with complete self assurance and confidence, with not the slightest fear of the three well armed and alert fighting men waiting for it at the top. It wore a knee length jet black robe that didn't quite cover a suit of chain mail armour gleaming brightly in the greenish yellow light, and on its head it wore a heavy steel helmet, crowned with a crest of wicked steel spikes. The spikes gave it away, of course, and the wizard almost laughed aloud with relief as he recognised the figure as Drake, his blood red robes only appearing black in the green light of Diana's glowbottle.

     A moment later he emerged from the doorway, followed by Jerry. "It's safe to go down," he said, as he handed the glowbottle and the now empty bottle of activating fluid back to Diana. "Come on, it's not far. The cleric and the shae girl can stay here. There's nothing more to fear in this castle.” He turned and headed back down.

     "Hey, wait a minute," called Thomas as the other humans followed him down. "What did you find down there? Was the Orb there? Were there any Shads? We didn't hear any fighting."

     "You'll see in a minute," the priest called back, no longer making any attempt to move silently. "Prepare yourselves for a grisly sight. Are you coming?”

     “I'll wait here with the girls.” Diana and Lirenna both glared at him. “I mean, the women. Just in case.”

     “I'll wait here too,” added Shaun. “You can tell me about it when you come back.” Drake nodded and continued walking without looking back.

     The others had seen plenty of grisly sights over the past few months, so they took Drake's warning seriously. The light from the open doorway got steadily fainter as they got further away from it, but as their eyes adapted to the darkness, the single glowbottle proved adequate to illuminate the immediate area around them. The steps descended for about thirty feet, as far as they could tell, before levelling off into a passage carved out of the rock, but at the base of the steps was the body of the goblin who'd raised the alarm in Connistantol. To judge from the look of horror and fear on his face he'd been fleeing from something that had terrified him, but had been caught before he'd got past the first step. His head had been smashed in by a heavy blunt instrument, splattering brains and skull fragments all over the floor and walls. Matthew paled, but they'd all seen much worse things in the course of their quest so they simply stepped carefully past the unfortunate goblin, trying not to look at him, and continued down the passage.

     The passage ran for about twenty yards, and as they approached its far end the sickly sweet smell of death got stronger. At the end, the passage widened out into a circular chamber about ten yards across, dimly lit by the flickering light from a single torch standing in a metal bracket. Drake stopped before entering, holding his arms out from his sides to block the way. "Before we go in," he warned, "look out for a circle carved into the floor, about six yards wide, that surrounds the Orb itself in the centre of the room. Whatever you do, don't go inside that circle. So long as you stay outside, you're safe, but go in and we've all had it. Understand?"

     They said they understood, so the priest led them in. The circle was right where he'd said it would be, about two yards in from the circular wall, and they took care to stay well outside it. Several more torches had been placed in wall brackets, but they'd all burned out, a wisp of smoke rising from a couple of them. Drake replaced them with fresh torches brought down by the Shadowsoldiers, lighting them with the single torch still burning, and soon the room was brightly lit once more. The questers gave a gasp of shock at what they saw.

     In the centre of the room, standing on a stone pedestal, was the Orb itself, three feet across and hidden beneath a thick layer of grey dust. All around it, lying twisted on the floor or slumped against the wall, were the bodies of the last six Shadowsoldiers, all crushed and broken by heavy blows from some massive blunt weapon. A soldier stared sightlessly up at Matthew, half his face caved in and a six inch hole punched almost completely through his steel breastplate and chest, and a sholog lay face down in front of Petronax, his spine snapped almost at right angles in the middle of his back.

     The soldier walked halfway around the room to where the wizard lay, his neck and right arm broken and a broken wand lying a few inches from the fingers of his left hand. He recognised the wand and picked it up, putting the two broken ends together as he remembered how it had hurled bolts of freezing death at his friends in the Beltharan army. "I wanted to kill you myself," he muttered, "but it's enough to know that you died horribly. You've paid for what you did." He dropped the broken wand back where he'd found it.

     As he walked away, Jerry carefully searched the wizard's body for other magical items. His spellbook had disintegrated, as Shadowwizard spellbooks always did when their owners died, to prevent them from falling into enemy hands, but he found some magically encrypted documents and maps which Drake took, intending to turn them over to his superiors on their return home. Fort Battleaxe's wizards would try to decipher them, hopefully without triggering the booby trap spells that would almost certainly be protecting them, and maybe they would learn something useful about the enemy's future battle plans.

     Matthew carried a torch around the outside of the room towards another of the dead Shadowsoldiers, searching them for money and other valuables while grinning at the thought that Diana wasn't there to stop him. As he approached the corpse, his torch illuminated something they hadn't seen before, partially concealed in a large alcove opposite the entrance corridor. It was the stone statue of a soldier in Agglemonian uniform, eight feet tall and carved from dark granite. It was chipped and scratched as though people had been hacking at it with swords, and had a cluster of small melted spots in the middle of its chest where several firebolts had struck it. It carried no weapon, but its hands were covered with dried blood, hair and fragments of bone. It had no expression on its face, but an unmistakable aura of menace emanated from it, making the travellers back warily away, back towards the door.

     "That, I presume, is what killed them," said Drake. "My guess is that it's activated when someone steps inside the circle, which means that we're safe so long as we stay outside it."

     "What is it?" asked Matthew fearfully.

     "Either a stone slave or a living statue," answered Jerry. "It doesn't really matter which, because we haven't got a hope of defeating either. If it's activated, we're all dead."

     "So how do we get the Orb?"

     "Search me."

     "Is there anything in the book that might help?" Drake asked Petronax.

     "No," replied the soldier, who'd studied the book carefully during the journey from Connistantol. "Just a description of the Orb itself, a brief summary of its function and powers, and some funny words that I can't make head or tail of."

     "What words?" asked Jerry. "Let me see."

     Petronax produced the book, opened it at the relevant page and handed it over. The tiny nome studied the strange, tonguetwisting words in silence for a few minutes, removing his conical hat for a moment to scratch his head. "They're not magic words," he said at last. "I thought they might be the words of a spell to deactivate the guardian, but they're not. I think they might be pass words. Words to tell the guardian that the Orb's rightful owner has come to claim it and that they're to be allowed to pass."

     "How do we find out?" asked Drake.

     Jerry shrugged. "Speak them aloud and then see if it lets you approach the Orb. Give me a chance to get well away from here first, though."

     "You'd better all go," said the priest. "Go back to the top of the stairs and close the door. It only killed the people in the Orb chamber last time, so you should be safe up there."

     "What about you?" asked Matthew.

     "Nothing could please me more than to die in the service of My Lord and go to my glorious reward," replied the priest. "Now go. I'll call you back down if the words work."

     "No," said Petronax firmly. "This is my quest, so I should take the risks. You've all risked your necks to help me get this far, and I'm very grateful to you, but it's my show from now on, so if there're any risks to be taken, I'll take them. Get on up there with the others, Rob, and no arguing. Go on, Get!"

     The priest gazed at him thoughtfully for a few moments, then nodded, and the three of them left the chamber, none of them liking the idea but unable to think of anything better. Drake was the last to leave. He paused at the entrance to the passage and looked back. "Good luck," he said. "May the Gods be with you."