Petronax watched as the priest followed after the others, wondering whether he was the last living man he would ever see, and then he turned to face the bloodstained statue.

     He waited a few minutes to make sure the others had had plenty of time to reach the safety of the keep and close the door, and he used the time to mentally prepare himself for probable death. He took the book in his hands and looked at the words. They were real tongue twisters, and he hoped he'd be able to get the pronunciation right. He'd often heard the three wizards muttering magic words over and over under their breaths, getting the pronunciation absolutely correct, and remembered Thomas telling him once how a single dropped ‘h' or a contracted ‘ing' could ruin a spell. Oh well, he thought philosophically. Either I get it right or I don't. Worrying about it won't help. Grasping the bull by the horns, therefore, he read the words clearly and confidently and then, before he had a chance to think twice and chicken out, he crossed the line and strode towards the Orb.

     Somewhat to his surprise, he made it, and he looked back to see the statue still standing passively in its place, not having moved a single finger. "Thank you!" he said earnestly to whatever Gods might be listening, and then he called the others back down again.

     "What took you so long?" asked Matthew as he reappeared from the passage excitedly. "You kept us waiting for ages! We were about to come down and see what was happening!"

     "It wasn't that long," said the soldier. "Just a few seconds."

     "It was nearly ten minutes!" contradicted the woodsman. "We thought you'd fallen asleep."

     "I was waiting for you to get to the top of the stairs," said Petronax "I must have lost track of the time, thinking about things. Don't step over the line! Just because it let me in, doesn't necessarily mean it'll let anyone else in. Better not take the risk." Matthew, who'd been about to join him next to the Orb, jumped back hurriedly.

     "How do we get it out then?" he asked. "Look at the size of it! You'll never be able to carry it all by yourself."

     "Actually, I probably could," corrected Petronax. "It's not nearly as heavy as it looks. It's hollow and filled with a special alchemical gas. We'll have to be very careful not to drop it, though. It's very fragile, and the slightest crack will make it useless."

     He wiped some of the dust off with his hand, revealing the surface of the Orb for the first time. It was clear and colourless, but lit by a dull, red glow from deep within it, indicating that it was still active and functional. A feeling of deep, heartfelt relief came over them all. That faint red glow was all that was needed to tell them that all the trials they'd endured over the past few months had been worthwhile, that it hadn't all been in vain. All they had to do now was get it back home.

     Petronax put his arms around it and very, very carefully lifted it from its pedestal. He carried it out of the circle, where Drake wrapped a sleeping blanket around it to protect it from accidental bumps and scratches, and then they carried it out of the room, along the passage and up the stairs to the keep.

     Matthew was the last to leave the Orb room, and when he was gone, the bloodstained statue was left all alone, abandoned after all its centuries of faithful guard duty. It was completely mindless, but somewhere deep inside the very core of its being, there might have been the very faintest glow of satisfaction that it had successfully accomplished the task its creator had set it so long before, and that it was now free to rest forever.

     The magic that animated it and allowed it to perceive its surroundings began to slowly leak away, dissipating into the air of the Orb chamber and the surrounding rock walls, where it briefly caused a faint glimmering aura to dance over the empty pedestal and the dead Shadowsoldiers. The display, unseen by any living creature except a few small spiders and tiny beetles, lasted only a few minutes before fading away, leaving only the four torches to illuminate the room, and soon they also burned out, leaving the room totally dark and silent. As still and quiet as a grave, which was what it now was. The grave of six evil Shadowsoldiers and one completely ordinary, lifeless statue.

☆ ☆ ☆

     Reaching the top of the stairs, Petronax lowered the Orb gently to the ground and, as soon as everyone else was out, closed the door. Once it was closed, it fitted so closely into the wall that it was almost impossible to make out its outline, and it was only because he knew where it was that he was able to do so at all. "Impressive workmanship," he muttered to himself. "Those Agglemonians certainly knew how to build secret doors."

     "What do we do now?" asked Matthew. "We can't carry the Orb all the way back to Ilandia."

     "The Shads may have gotten a cart from one of the nearby villages to carry it back on," suggested Shaun. "If they did, it'll be in the stables, where they left their horses."

     "Let's go and look," said Drake. "The rest of you stay and look after the Orb, just in case those Shads who escaped come back."

     Drake and Shaun went back down to the entrance hall and out into the courtyard. Wooden buildings had once stood around it, against the outer wall. The barracks, blacksmith’s workroom and so on, but all that remained of them now were a few piles of rotting, overgrown, fungus covered wood. The fact that even that much survived was testimony to the amazing wood preserving chemicals devised by the brilliant trog alchemists, which they supplied to anyone who could afford the prices they charged.

     One building still stood almost intact, however. A building made of clay bricks that stood against the fortress's south west wall. Its roof had almost completely fallen in and its walls were almost hidden by great hanging masses of ivy, but its door had been cleared and from within came the faint but unmistakable sounds of a number of horses.

     Making their way to it through the low but annoyingly entangling undergrowth, they found three large, healthy horses stabled inside, but no cart. "I didn't really expect to find one," said the priest in disappointment. "Bringing a few horses was one thing. They wanted to be ready for any eventuality, but there was no way they could have brought a cart through the forest.”

     "So we'll have to go into the villages," said Shaun. "See if we can buy one."

     "Yes," agreed Drake. “Requisitioning one and promising to pay for it later isn't likely to work this far from civilization, though. Distasteful though it'll be, we'll have to search the bodies of the other dead Shadowsoldiers in the hope of finding enough money. I noticed that our friend here already took care of the bodies in the Orb room.” Matthew hung his head uncomfortably.

     They searched through all the saddlebags in the stables but, as the priest had suspected, the Shadowsoldiers had left little of value in them, not wanting to risk it being stolen. Everything of value they owned, everything they'd stolen and looted along the way, they'd been carrying on their person, where they could keep an eye on it, so they returned to the others back in the keep.

     The pile of money they ended up with wasn't big. It consisted of the equivalent of about seventeen Beltharan crowns in small coins of various denominations from many different countries and a few unimpressive pieces of jewelry. "Looks as though Shads aren't very well paid," mused Shaun. "Will that buy a cart hereabouts?"

     "It might, if we're lucky," said Petronax. "Money tends to buy more in these out of the way places than it does in the middle of civilisation. I'll handle the negotiations, I've had plenty of experience dealing with unsophisticated peasants. I'll get us a cart and make them think they're getting a bargain."

     "We won't cheat them," said Diana sternly, giving him a hard look."

     "No, of course not," agreed the soldier hurriedly. "I just meant I'd get us a good deal, that's all." He scooped up the money and put it in his pouch. “We'll probably be gone for a few hours. You can be attending to Lirenna. Getting that arrow out. Hopefully, by the time we get back, she'll be all healed and ready to leave with the rest of us.”

     They left the Orb in the empty storeroom on the ground floor, since this room was near the centre of the keep and therefore had no exterior walls or windows. They covered it with sleeping blankets and buried it beneath a pile of dead leaves to hide it from direct view, just in case any of the surviving Shadowsoldiers were still around, before Drake and Petronax got ready to leave. "I don't think for a minute that those two who got away are still hanging around,” said the priest. “I should think they're half way back to the Shadow by now, but just in case they do decide to come back and make more trouble, the Orb must be guarded at all times. Two of you must stay here, by the door of this room, where you can see all along this corridor. Diana, do you think you can tend to Lirenna here?”

     “Good a place as any,” the cleric replied. Thomas had been sharpening his knife and now he handed it to her. Then the cleric began helping the demi shae remove her upper clothing.

     The others averted their eyes and moved away. “Two more of you must patrol the rest of the keep,” added Drake. “The other two must keep watch on the battlements, where you can see all the countryside around. Stay alert, stay in touch with each other, and remember that getting the Orb back to Fort Battleaxe is more important that all our lives put together."

     The others agreed, and Matthew and Jerry decided to man the battlements. "Make sure you get one with good suspension,” the tiny nome said as they accompanied Drake and Petronax across the courtyard. “We want to spare the Orb as many bumps and jostles as possible."

     "Right," agreed Petronax, waving back without turning around.

     He and Drake headed straight for the main gate on the other side of the courtyard, while Jerry and Matthew went off to the right, to where there was a flight of stone steps leading up the inner wall to the battlements. They were about halfway across, right out in the middle of the courtyard, when there was a sudden wild gust of wind that knocked them from their feet, and a roaring whoosh as something massive swept up into the sky from its hiding place behind the keep. Something that moved so fast that it was only a blur of brick red until it was past them, climbing high into the sky and banking around for a second pass. They watched paralysed with terror as the dragon turned its massive head to look down on them with its evil, slitted eyes, its teeth bared in anticipation of the sweet revenge it was about to get for the humiliation it had suffered in Connistantol. It half folded its wings as it completed its banking turn, angled downwards and began its dive, holding its neck and tail straight out from its body and fixing its eyes on the tiny targets down below.

     The four travellers, caught out in the open, turned and ran back towards the keep, where Shaun and Thomas screamed at them to run faster, but they all knew it was useless. The keep's main doors were forty yards away, and there was no way they could get to them in time. Perhaps on flat level ground they might have made it, but there was no way they could make any speed through the dense, tangling undergrowth that kept catching around their feet and slowing them up. Matthew tripped over a clump of wild dogrose and landed flat on his face in the grass, winding himself. Gasping for breath, he tried to climb to his feet, but as he did so he caught a glimpse of the monster diving at him like the incarnation of death itself. All his willpower left him and he could only lay there, staring at it with hopeless resignation.

     The dragon opened its massive jaws and took a deep breath, and as it dropped below the height of the tall dragonpoles, from which dragonwires had been strung in centuries past, it stretched out its wings and flattened its dive so that it would pass over the courtyard in level flight. A single blast of flame would do the job, it thought as it sped toward the castle at a speed no other creature in the world could have matched. A single blast of flame to wipe out the memory of its humiliation in the ruined human city.

     Jerry was ten yards from the safety of the keep when he realised that Matthew was no longer with him, and looked back to see him lying on his back, staring up at the diving monster as if hypnotised. He started to run back for him, and Thomas, Shaun and Drake all yelled at him at once. "No! Run! Get inside, quickly!"

     Thomas ran out after him, intending to carry him inside by force if necessary and trying to convince himself that he'd have time to do so, even though he knew there was no chance. The dragon was already passing between the dragonpoles, and the wizard was no more than five yards from the doorway before being dazzled by a massive gout of flame and feeling a blast of searing heat on his hands and face…