Thomas stared at the fallen Konnens, his head a blur of wild panic. At any moment doors would open and dozens more Konnens would come pouring out to bundle them away. They had to go. They had to run! He could only stand there, paralysed with shock, though, while he waited for his thoughts to calm down enough to plan a rational course of action.

     He was aware of Jerry and Diana standing beside him, equally shocked, and then he saw Willa peeping warily out into the corridor to see if it was over. She stared at Lord Basil with wide eyed shock, no doubt thinking he was dead, and a smile of savage satisfaction appeared on her face, but then she turned to look at the Tharians and her eyes widened with horror. She pointed at something behind Thomas and the wizard turned to see what it was. Parkus had already begun his swing and all Thomas could do was stagger back in alarm, tripping over Jerry’s foot and landing in a heap, taking the tiny nome down with him.

     Parkus continued the downward swing and Thomas rolled aside just in time, the sword shattering glazed floor tiles with a shower of tiny ceramic shards. He raised the sword again, but a pair of firebolts from Jerry’s pointing finger hit him squarely in the chest, making him double over with a cry of pain, and before he could recover he was hit by another pair from Thomas. He fell to the ground and lay there, smoke rising in little curls from the burnt patch in his chest.

     “Tom!” called out Diana urgently, and he looked up to see the cleric kneeling beside Lirenna’s blood soaked, unconscious form.

     “Lenny!” he screamed madly. He ran over to her, his heart pounding with fear, and fell to his knees beside her. “What happened?”

     “She’s alive,” said Diana with relief, turning the demi shae onto her front, tearing her clothes open and putting her hands over the knife wound while praying to the Lady of Healing. The wound closed, but there was no other improvement. She prayed more, begging Caroli to do everything she could, to send as much of Her holy power as her frail, human body was capable of channeling. Gradually, to Thomas's relief, some colour came back into Lirenna's face and she began to breathe more regularly.

     Diana breathed a sigh of weariness. “I think she’ll be all right now,” she said, wiping her bloody hands on her white leggings, leaving bloody smears on them that she ignored completely. “She’s very badly hurt, though, and I think I could pray 'till I collapse without healing her completely. Also, I want to hold some back in case anyone else gets hurt before we get out of here.”

     “We gotta move fast!” said Jerry urgently. He pointed down the corridor, to where a small crowd of maids, servants and family members had gathered, none of them, fortunately, brave enough to approach. Someone was yelling for the guards, though, and already they could hear the sound of running feet. The Tharians jumped to their feet and prepared to run, Thomas pulling the backpack from Parkus’s shoulders and slinging it across his own. He then stooped to pick up Lirenna.

     A sudden thought made him pause, however. If the attempt at secrecy was over then they might as well have the swords. He ran back to the laundry trolley, therefore, and rummaged about for them. He found one, but the other was proving elusive and the guards were getting closer. He abandoned it, therefore, and turned to run, but then he saw Willa still staring at him, her eyes wide with terror. They'll know she helped us, he thought. They’ll kill her!

     An idea came to him and he pushed her back into the reading room, out of sight of the watching crowd. “Trust me,” he said as he drew the sword from its scabbard. Her eyes were wide with fear but she nodded, so he put the blade to her throat, just above the adam’s apple, and gave her a tiny nick, just enough to draw blood. “Tell them we forced you to help us, with a knife at your throat.”

     “The ring!” wailed Willa, however. "Lord Basil's ring!"

     "Drass, yes!" Thomas dashed back out into the corridor. The guards had just reached the top of the stairs, about fifty yards away, where a man was shouting and pointing in their direction. Thomas hesitated in indecision. Did he have time? He had to! He couldn't leave Willa to have her guilt revealed the next time Lord Basil read her mind. He ran up to Lord Basil, who was still asleep and snoring gently, took hold of his right hand and pulled at the ring. It was stuck fast behind the knuckle, but he pulled harder, almost hard enough to dislocate the finger, knowing that Willa’s life depended on it.

     He was almost ready to give up and take Willa with them when, to his vast relief, it finally came free, leaving a deep circular groove in the man's finger. He slipped it into a pocket and ran back to the others, where he threw the sword to Jerry and hoisted Lirenna across his shoulders like a sack of potatoes. Then the three of them ran as fast as they could back towards the dungeons.

     The guards at the entrance to the dungeons heard the Tharians running full pelt down the stairs towards them and so were alerted and ready for trouble, but Jerry simply felled them with another sleep spell and they jumped over their bodies as they ran through the door. They closed the door, and Jerry jammed one of the guard’s swords under it, hoping that that would be enough to keep it shut for a while.

     Three more guards appeared from another part of the dungeons, swords drawn and alert. “What’s going on?” demanded one of them, glaring at the Tharians suspiciously as he approached.

     Thomas threw Lirenna into Diana's arms to free his hands and put them all to sleep. “I’m outta magic!” he said fearfully as he took the demi shae back.

     “Me too!” said Jerry. “Let’s go!”

     The door was beginning to thump as the guards tried to get in, and was already beginning to move, the sword making a teeth grating sound as it scraped along the floor. Thomas hefted Lirenna into a more comfortable position on his shoulder and they fled.

     Their luck was in, and they encountered no more guards before arriving back at where Shaun and Matthew were waiting. “What happened to Lenny?” asked Shaun in alarm.

     “No time to explain,” panted Thomas, putting the demi shae down and leaning her against the bars of a cell. “Jerry’s got a present for ya.”

     The tiny nome handed the sword across. “Here,” he said. “Your birthday’s come early this year.”

     Shaun’s reaction surprised them, though. Instead of delighted surprise, he accepted the sword with glum resignation, as if it were a dead animal. “Er, listen,” he said unhappily. “We’ve gotta tell you something...”

     “No time,” interrupted Thomas however. “They’re right behind us, and I mean right behind us! Let’s go!”

     He grabbed Lirenna again, Jerry and Diana grabbed the water bottles they’d left in the cell, and they ran off down the tunnel, leaving the soldiers to chase after them. Behind them, Shaun and Matthew glanced at each other before following.

     Panicky though they were, though, they were forced to slow to a walk and feel their way along when they left the dim light of the dungeons behind and entered the darkness. Thomas wished for a light spell, and decided that that would be the very next spell he learned, but suddenly he realised that he could see a little after all. His huge shadow stretched out in front of him, telling him that the light was coming from behind them, and he realised with horror that it was their pursuers, carrying torches to light the way. Hell! he swore. They hadn’t counted on this! They’d always known that they’d be pursued into the caverns, but they’d been hoping for a couple of hours headstart, long enough to lose themselves in the old mines. At this rate, though, they’d be dead or recaptured in minutes, no matter how far the tunnel ran.

     An arrow flew past, bouncing off the rock wall of the tunnel ahead of them, and they all ducked instinctively, just as another two flew past. “Tom!” called out Shaun. “We could really use that shield spell of yours right now!”

     "Why?" asked Matthew with a humourless laugh. "What's the point?"

     Thomas wondered what he meant by that but there was no time for a conversation. “I'm out of magic” he just said, therefore. “Ugh! Where’d all these beetles come from?”

     More arrows flew, one of them tearing through Shaun’s bathrobe and scratching his arm. The woodsman looked behind and saw the archer about thirty feet behind them, fitting another arrow. "To hell with this!" he said. He drew the sword Jerry had given him and ran back, screaming a battlecry as he went.

     The archer's eyes widened with alarm and shot his arrow in panic, with the result that it went wide to bounce harmlessly off the rocky ceiling. He dropped his bow and drew his sword, just in time to parry Shaun’s first blow. The runes on Shaun’s sword were still glowing, Thomas saw. The fading remnants of Jerry's reveal spell.

     The archer knew nothing of wizardry, though, and was visibly alarmed by the evil, green glow coming from his opponent's sword. He staggered back away and Shaun took merciless advantage of it, slicing him open from shoulder to navel. The archer behind him also drew steel, but he froze as Shaun's gaze fell upon him and Thomas, watching from further back, was astonished to see that he was terrified. Then the guard broke and he ran, pushing his way past the dozen or so guards who were following behind.

     “Who’s next?” screamed Shaun in uncharacteristic fury. “Who wants to die next?” In the near darkness of the tunnel, the fading glow of the sword, which was now so dim that it would have been barely visible in normal light, lit up the side of his face and the folds of his white bathrobe, making him look like a tormented spirit called up from the depths of the Pit. “Come on!” he yelled furiously, waving the bloody sword eagerly. “Come on! Who’s it gonna be?”

     The guards milled uncertainly in the tunnel, none of them very happy about the idea of taking him on, until a loud voice at the back spoke up. “Fall back!” he ordered. “Fall back to the cells. No sense anyone else dying on that blade, they’re not going anywhere. We’ll starve them out.”

     Shaun was still ranting and shouting, but gradually he began to calm down and he turned to look back at the others with a look of puzzlement. The other Tharians stared back at at him with astonishment and concern but there was no time for questions. Shaun paused just long enough to snatch up the archer's bow and arrows and then he returned to the others and they ran together deeper into the tunnel.

     The sword’s luminescence continued to fade as he went, as Jerry’s spell faded away, but as they got further away from the guard’s torches and re-entered the pitch blackness of the tunnel, the very faint glow the runes continued to emit enabled them to see the way ahead. They could see the barest outlines of the walls, floor and ceiling ahead of him, so that they were able to hurry along at some speed, almost running in fact. After a while, though, Shaun grabbed Diana's arm to bring her to a halt. The others stopped with her.

     “They’re not following,” gasped Shaun. “They’re just guarding the tunnel in case we go back.”

     “Not following?” said Thomas in dismay. “Then they know that the tunnel doesn’t go anywhere.”

     “Yeah,” agreed the soldier. “I came down here while you were away. It comes to an airlock with vacuum beyond. There’s no way past.”

     Silence fell over the small group, and they slumped to the ground, sitting with their backs against the wall while the insects rustled and scratched all around them. Finally, Jerry spoke up in a small, timid voice. “So, what do we do now?”

     Thomas put an arm around the unconscious demi shae, whose head was resting on his shoulder, and brushed some loose hairs away from her face. “I promised Lenny I wouldn’t let them take her alive. You know what’ll happen to her if we go back.”

      Shaun nodded, thinking of Lokus. “We’ve got no future back there either,” he said. “They’ll never trust you to fight for them again after this. They’ll just kill all of us.”

     “How does this sound?” said Matthew. “We sit here until tomorrow morning, until you wizards have gotten your magic back, and then we go back fighting! Get as many of ‘em as we can before they get us.”

     “No!” replied Diana however. “No more killing. There must be another way.”

     “None that I can think of,” replied Matthew. “You know, it’s funny, isn’t it? We keep on finding ourselves in situations like this, trapped in a confined space and forced to choose between a quick and a slow death. First in the Underworld’s teleportation room, then in Grand Central, then in the observatory and now here. We always think this is it, this time we’ve really had it, and then we suddenly find a way out.”

     “Not this time,” replied Shaun, lifting up the still faintly glowing sword to illuminate the cave. Now that their eyes were adapted to the darkness they were able to see quite well, and they all shuddered at the sight of the floor, literally crawling with insects. Except near the centre, where there was a patch of blackness, perfectly circular and about three feet across, in which not a single insect was to be seen. His heart leapt into his throat at the sight of it, and he had to force himself to remain calm. It might be nothing more than a shallow depression, just a few inches deep. He couldn’t afford to allow his hopes to be raised again. In all probability they would only be crushed once he got a closer look.

     He got up, went over to it and reached into the hole with his hand. The sides were smooth and glassy, and to his growing excitement he couldn’t reach the bottom. Calm down, he told himself, his heart hammering in his chest. Don’t get carried away. It still might be only a few feet deep.

     By now the others had seen what he was doing, however, and were gathering around to look. “What is it?” whispered Jerry.

     “A hole,” whispered back Shaun, thinking of the guards back at the cells and wondering what the acoustics of the tunnel were like. “I missed it before. I felt all around the walls, but it never occurred to me to check the centre of the floor. What do you think it is?”

     “It reminds me of the wyrmhole we came across on the way to the Underworld,” said Thomas. “It’s got the same smooth, melted sides. Maybe it was made by a similar kind of creature, but much smaller. It must have come up here, thought it had reached the surface and went back down again. By the Gods! Imagine if it really had gone all the way up to the surface! All their air would have escaped and the whole city would have died.”

     “Maybe that’s what happened on the other side of the airlock,” speculated Shaun. “By the Gods, it could happen again any time! Those fools back there don’t understand what a knife edge they’re living on.”

     “This must have happened recently,” mused Thomas, fingering the smooth inner surface of the hole. “The Konnens never come down here, so they don’t know about it yet. Well chaps, this is our way out. Shall we take it?”

     “We don’t know whether or not it connects with the caverns,” pointed out Shaun. “It may go nowhere, and the creature that made it may still be down there. And look how smooth the sides are. We’d never get back up again.”

     “We’ve got no choice,” replied Jerry. “We’re dead if we stay here, and we don’t know how long we’ve got before they come in to get us. I’ll go first.” So saying, he swung his legs over the edge of the hole, let go and vanished.

     The others followed one at a time. Matthew went next, followed by Thomas and Lirenna, the wizard holding the demi shae in his arms so that they went down together. Then Diana went, leaving Shaun all alone in the cave. He looked down the tunnel back towards the cells one last time, making sure that the guards still suspected nothing and weren’t coming in. If necessary, be was prepared to make a solitary last stand, to give the others time to get away.

     It turned out not to be necessary, though. There was still nothing but the soft mutterings of low conversation from the distant guards. He sat on the edge of the hole, therefore, holding the sword safely away from his body, and allowed himself to slip down into the unknown darkness.