There were several doors on either side of the corridor, all made of gleaming steel, protected from rust and decay by the magics that permeated them. One end of the corridor came to a dead end, a rough wall of rock as if they were underground and the corridor was a tunnel that its builders might have wanted to extend one day. The other end of the corridor had another corridor crossing it from left to right, however, and looking down it the wizard saw that it contained more doors, as well as the entrances to more corridors. There was no way of telling how far the complex extended without exploring it completely, but it was big without a doubt and probably contained several hundred teleportation cubicles, making it many times larger than the one owned by the Fellowship of the Golden Griffin. It was lit by a soft light that seemed to emanate equally from floor, walls and ceiling.

     “I wonder where this place is,” said Jerry, examining the plaque above the door which, once upon a time, had said where this particular teleportation chamber led to. “I mean, exactly where in the world are we right now?”

     “No way of telling,” replied Thomas. “Probably somewhere within the boundaries of the Kingdom of Agglemon, though, Oh Hell!” They all looked at each other nervously as the same thought hit them all simultaneously.

     “You mean we’re within the Shadow?” asked Diana fearfully.

     “Not only that,” continued Thomas, his face growing pale. “I wouldn’t be at all surprised if we’re right in the middle of Arnor itself. I mean, when you think about it, that’s the most logical place to put the centre of the teleportation network, right? In the middle of your capital city.”

     “So why can’t we feel the effects of the Shadow?” asked Lirenna doubtfully. “If you’re right, we should all have been driven insane the moment we arrived here.”

     “Maybe we’re underground,” suggested Jerry. “We know that the Shadow only affects the surface, since part of the Underworld goes right under the Shadow and isn’t affected by it.”

     “Or alternatively I might be wrong and we’re nowhere near the Shadow,” added Thomas. “In its heyday, many of the most important parts of the old Empire were south of the Great Lake. We might be in Old Mala, for instance.”

     “I hope so,” said Douglas, “because I’ve got the feeling that we are indeed underground, it's an instinct all trogs are born with, and if we are underground there must once have been an exit from this place, when it were being built. That tunnel may have been sealed up at both ends, but it probably still exists, and if the Shads should find it...”

     “Yeah,” agreed Thomas. “Just think what they could do with a teleportation network that extends everywhere where the Empire had a province. That would include Samnia, Haldorn, Clandania, Garon, Astaro...” His voice trailed off in horror.

     “If we are under Arnor,” said Lirenna nervously, “is there any chance they could detect the use of the teleportation chambers?”

     “That depends on how far underground we are,” replied Thomas. “Since we can’t feel the effects of the Shadow, my guess is that there’s enough rock above us to hide us from any normal means of magical detection. Have you got any idea how far underground we are, Douglas?”

     The trog was looking around at the walls and ceiling and scratching his wrinkled, hairless chin thoughtfully. “Hard to tell,” he said after a while. “Two, maybe three hundred feet. Angus would be able to give you a better idea.”

     As if summoned by the mention of his name, Angus and Shaun returned at precisely that moment. “No good,” replied the trog. “It leads to a small underground chamber, and the only way out’s blocked by a rockfall. The ceiling’s unstable, any attempt to dig our way out will cause more rockfalls. There’s no way out that way.”

     The others filled them in on what they’d been talking about while they’d been gone, and after a moment’s thought Angus agreed that the conclusions they’d reached were probably correct. “All the more reason to get out o’ here as quickly as possible,” he said. “Which door shall we try next?”

     They decided to try them all in sequence, so they started at one end of the long corridor and worked their way along it, turning corners as they came to them until they came back to their starting point. Only two of them went through each door, the rest of them waiting for them to return in what Shaun had called Grand Central, ready to go to their aid if they got into trouble. They took turns to go through, though, with the pair usually consisting of a fighter and a wizard, thinking that that would be the best combination to meet whatever surprises might be waiting for them on the other side.

     Unfortunately, though, most of the teleportation chambers turned out to be dead ends. The Agglemonians had evidently feared that Arnor might be raided or even invaded by enemies who’d managed to seize a teleportation chamber in some outflung outpost of the Empire, and so had hidden them all deep underground, accessible only by long flights of stairs that had presumably once been guarded at both top and bottom. Almost all of these staircases were now blocked, though, either with rubble from collapsing buildings at their top ends or by rockfalls further down. The trogs said that, as a last resort, they could try to clear them with their pickaxes, but they repeatedly emphasised that this ran the danger of causing further rockfalls, possibly causing injury or even loss of life, and that they wouldn’t attempt it so long as other doors remained unexplored.

     One staircase that remained unblocked led up to the ruins of a small city, heavily overgrown with greenery and surrounded by dense forest. Thinking that they’d finally found the way out, Matthew and Jerry had run excitedly back to get the others, but shortly after they’d all climbed up to the surface they discovered that they were on a small island, completely uninhabited and surrounded by rough, angry ocean. They returned to Grand Central in disappointment. Shortly afterwards, they came upon another staircase that led up to a deserted city surrounded by burning desert. There was no way out that way either.

     Very few doors were left now, and the despair they thought they’d left behind in their steel prison began to creep back. What if they couldn’t get out through any of the teleportation cubicles? Maybe they’d only escaped from the tiny prison to find themselves in a larger one. Still, thought Thomas, trying to comfort himself, at least we’re not faced with the prospect of a slow death by dehydration any more. If the worst comes to the worst, we can live on the island as castaways. It’ll be a lonely life, but at least we’ll survive, and maybe one day a ship’ll come by and pick us up. Always try to look on the bright side, that’s what I say.

     After twenty more dead ends, though, and with only a dozen more doors left to try, Shaun and Lirenna returned in great excitement saying they’d found another one that led somewhere, although they weren’t at all sure where. They all went through, and were surprised to find that, unlike any of the others they’d seen so far, the teleportation chamber at the other end was not deep underground. It was right on the surface and opened directly into a series of rooms and corridors made of gleaming steel, the most steel any of them had ever seen in their lives.

     Angus took one sniff, though, and announced that they were wasting their time there. “The air’s dead,” he said gruffly, looking dubiously around at the metal walls surrounding them. “Can’t you smell it? There’s no fresh air getting in here. We’re breathing the air that came in with us, and if we stay here for long, we’ll suffocate.”

     “How can that be?” asked Thomas in disbelief. “Look, there are windows, you can see out. I don’t believe this place can be completely airtight, and even if it was, all you’ve got to do is open a window.”

     “Angus is right,” replied Douglas, however. “Trust the instincts of the trogs. There’s something very wrong with this place. Come on, we’ve got some more doors to try yet.”

     The others decided to take their word for it, so they returned to Grand Central, but an hour or so later they’d discovered that all the remaining doors were dead ends. That left them with just four ways out of Grand Central. They could go back to the Underworld and try to find another route back to the surface, possibly running into more kimmats and Llanoks on the way. They could go to the island and resign themselves to a life as castaways (no-one even suggested trying to cross the sea on a raft. The huge beasts that inhabited the oceans were legendary). They could go to the desert city and try to cross the desert (maybe one day someone will find our bones, thought Thomas gloomily), or they could go back to the mysterious system of rooms and corridors, the place with the 'dead air'. They talked and argued about it at great length, each of them having a different idea of how to get out of their present predicament, but they were unable to come to any agreement and ended up sitting around sullenly, all of them angry and frustrated with their failure to bring the others around to their point of view.

     “That place with the dead air,” said Thomas after a few minutes. “I’ve been thinking. We didn’t explore it properly, in fact we didn’t explore it at all, and I think we ought to go back. Even if it is airtight for some reason, there must be doors or windows big enough to crawl through, and even if they’re all locked, I’m sure we could break one open. I’m sure that that place offers the best hope for getting out of here.”

     “I don't like it, I tell you,” insisted Angus. “There’s danger there, I could feel it. There’s something very wrong with that place. I think we should stay well away from it.”

     “Have you got a better idea?” asked the wizard.

     “Yes, I have. Me an Douglas’ll go back to one o’ the blocked staircases and try to open it with our picks. When two trogs start swinging, they can get through anything, given enough time.”

     “But you said that that ran the risks of starting another rockfall! You could both be killed!”

     “We said we wouldn’t do it while there were still doors to try, but now we’ve tried ‘em all and there’s no better way. It’s a risk we’re prepared to take.”

     Thomas turned to Shaun for support. “Tell them, Shaun,” he cried. “Tell them we’ve got to explore all the possibilities before we take such a risk.”

     The soldier looked thoughtful, however. “I don’t know,” he said eventually. “Trogs are the experts at underground tunnelling, and if they say it’s a risk worth taking, I think we should trust that they know what they’re talking about.”

     “And if they’re both killed?”

     “Like I said, they’re the experts. How would you like it if they tried to tell you not to cast a particular spell because, in their opinion, it was too dangerous? You’d soon tell them who the expert at spellcasting was, wouldn’t you?”

     “That’s not the point!” exclaimed the wizard, but then couldn’t think of anything else to say and was left spluttering helplessly. “Oh all right,” he said resignedly, “but while you’re risking your necks up there, I’m going back to the dead air place to explore it properly. I’m not going to take the risk of missing a perfectly obvious way out simply because nobody bothered to look.”

     Shaun nodded. “All right, I suppose you may have a point. In fact, I think I’ll come with you. A bit of exploration certainly beats being stuck in here getting bored stiff.”

     The others all felt the same way and so, after wishing the trogs luck the other six stepped through the teleportation chamber to the strange place with the steel corridors and the stale smelling, lifeless air.

     The first thing Thomas did was go to one of the windows and look out. “Desolate looking place,” said Jerry who came to stand beside him, standing on a centuries old packing crate to see.

     Thomas could only agree. They could see nothing but broken, jagged rocks, so sharp and angular that they must (they thought) have been recently formed, or else the processes of erosion would have smoothed and rounded them off somewhat. They were so bright it hurt the eyes to look at, but at the same time the shadows they cast were the darkest, inky black they'd ever seen. It was a purely black and white landscape without even any shades of grey to take the edge off it. There wasn’t the slightest hint of green anywhere. Not a single blade of grass or the smallest patch of moss. Nothing but broken boulders all the way to the horizon. Not only that, but the horizon seemed to be unnaturally close, much closer than it would have been if they were on a flat plain. We must be on a hill, thought Thomas. A big hill. The horizon isn’t that close.

     “You know what it reminds me of?” said Jerry thoughtfully. “I once visited a village located near a volcano that had recently erupted, and a mate of mine took me to see one of the old lava flows. It looked quite a bit like that out there. The volcanic rocks I saw were dark grey and looked, sort of crumbly, if you know what I mean. I suppose those rocks out there might be a different kind of volcanic rock.”

     “If there was a volcano nearby,” mused Thomas, “then it can’t have produced any lava flows in this direction recently or this place would have been engulfed. Those rocks must be at least five hundred years old. And yet, if they’re that old, how come they haven’t been covered by vegetation yet?”

     “And another thing,” continued the tiny nome. “How come we can see the stars?”

     Because it’s night of course, Thomas almost said, but just before the first word left his mouth he realised that the nome was right. On Tharia it was normal to be able to see perfectly well at night, with light being shed variously by the red sun, three moons and any number of bright comets, but the light falling on the jagged rocks outside the window was nothing less than the full light of the yellow sun, meaning that it must be in the sky somewhere, even though they couldn’t see it from their present position. Nevertheless, the stars were clearly visible overhead, blazing with a brilliance rarely seen through Tharia's light polluted sky.

     What a crazy place! thought the wizard, his interest and curiosity flaring up inside him again and making him vow to stay until he’d solved the mystery. The terrible thought suddenly struck him that the trogs might break through the blocked staircase and that the others would want to leave immediately before he’d found the answer, and he felt a sudden need for haste, to discover as many clues as possible before his time ran out. He fled from the window, therefore, and hurried down the corridor after the others.