The others were in one of the rooms on the other side of the corridor; a rectangular room containing ten beds, each with a locker mounted on the wall above it. All the beds were bare, devoid of mattress or blankets, and the lockers were empty. The occupants, whoever they were, had taken everything with them when they left. It must have been an orderly departure then, thought the wizard. Something they’d had plenty of time to prepare for. Not a sudden, panicky evacuation. That meant that the whole place will probably be the same, with nothing interesting to find anywhere. Disappointing, to say the least.

     “So much steel!” said Matthew wonderingly, running his hand along the wall, feeling its cold, slippery smoothness. “Steel’s way too valuable to make houses out of. Why is it all steel?” He moved to a window. “And it’s thick! Look how thick it is! Just imagine what it must be worth.”

     Thomas was looking at the beds, though. “A dormitory,” he said wonderingly. “So people actually lived here.”

     “In shifts, probably,” added Lirenna. “They stayed here for a few weeks or months at a time, and then went home to be replaced by the next shift.”

     “Like a military garrison,” agreed Matthew. “These are mens beds.”

     “I don’t know,” said Shaun, though. “I don’t know why, but this place doesn’t...” He paused, searching for the right word. “It just doesn’t feel like a garrison. Somehow, it has the feel of a place a bit more, er...”

     “A bit more academic,” said Thomas. “Yes, I feel the same way. I don’t know why either, though.”

     “Is it just my imagination,” said Jerry suddenly, “or is the air a bit fresher than it was a moment ago?”

     They sniffed experimentally. “I think he’s right,” agreed Lirenna after a moment. “It’s definitely not as dead as it was. There’s a bit of life in it now.”

     “It’s just your imagination,” said Matthew. “If anything, it should be getting steadily deader with the six of us breathing it, unless...”

     “Unless there’s a door or window open somewhere!” exclaimed Lirenna excitedly. “Letting fresh air blow in, and giving us a way out. Come on, let’s find it!” She dashed out of the room, eager to find the exit, and the others hurried to keep up with her.

     There were four more dormitories next to the first, all identical, and the demi shae dashed inside each of them in turn to check the windows at their far end. They were all tightly sealed, though. Not only locked shut but with no apparent means to open them at all, as if they'd never been meant to open. They all held the same views as the first. An expanse of jagged, lifeless rocks stretching all the way to the terribly close horizon; brilliantly sunlit despite the stars shining in the sky. Lirenna gave them only a cursory glance, though, simply making sure they weren’t the source of the fresh air before leaving them behind and hurrying on.

     “Hey, wait a minute!” called out Shaun, however, grabbing the demi shae by the elbow and dragging her to a halt. “You don’t want to go tearing off like a hound after a hare like that. There’s no telling what danger you might blunder into. Let’s just take it easy, okay? If there’s a way out, we’ll find it, and hopefully without breaking our necks falling down a hole we didn’t see until it was too late, or something. Okay?”

     Slowly, the wild look in Lirenna’s eyes faded as sanity and reason returned, and she ran a hand through her silky dark hair, trembling slightly. “I’m sorry,” she said wearily. “It’s just having been underground for so long, and then all that time trapped in that steel prison when we thought we were going to die there. I thought I had it under control, but when I thought we were finally going to get out, see the suns and blue sky and breathe fresh air again, I sort of, just lost control, you know?”

     “Yeah, I know,” agreed Shaun. “We should have spent more time on that island. As soon as we’ve finished exploring this place we’ll go back. You can stroll along the beach until the trogs dig the way back home. Tell the truth, I could do with a look at the sky myself.”

     In fact, he only dimly understood what it meant for a freedom loving shae woman, or even a demi shae, to be denied the sight of the suns and stars, since the fair race was almost unknown in the dark, gloomy woodlands of his homeland. The other two wizards had a much better idea, though, having come to know a few of the shae folk during their time at the University, and Thomas put a comforting hand on her shoulder, earning him a smile of gratitude. The shae folk loved wide, open spaces, he knew. The sight of a sky full of stars, the warmth of the yellow sun on their faces and the feel of a cool breeze ruffling their hair. They suffered all kinds of psychological problems if they were confined indoors or underground for too long, even leading to madness in extreme cases. Lirenna had managed to endure their visit to the Underworld thanks to her being a quarter human, but even so it must have been hard on her and Thomas’s heart swelled with pride and admiration as he realised how brave she must have been not to give any outward sign of it. Not so much as a single word of complaint.

     But I should have known anyway, thought the wizard, angry and ashamed with himself. All those weeks underground and he hadn't given a single thought for how she was coping. Why hadn't she said something? But, of course, he knew the answer to that. She'd known how the others would react. They’d have refused to subject her to the ordeal, either leaving her in Fort Battleaxe and going on without her or, more likely, turning down the mission altogether, and there was no way she was going to stand for that. No way! She was a full member of the team, he imagined her thinking, and she was damned if she was going to let her shayen heritage become a handicap to the others! Where they went, she went, no matter how nasty, cramped or claustrophobic. After all, she’d survived the Maze of Samnos with mind and sanity intact, hadn’t she? And if she could take that, she could take anything!

     She gently disengaged herself from Thomas’s grasp and led the way around a bend in the corridor and into the next room. It was several times as large as the dormitories but just as empty except for a few broken fragments of packing cases scattered around on the floor, so old and dry that they crumbled easily between their fingers.

     “What was this?” asked Diana, looking around distastefully. “Some kind of store room?”

     “Probably,” agreed Shaun, picking up a piece of packing crate and holding it carefully while he examined it. “Hey, look at this,” he said in surprise, finding an intact crate. The wood was dense and heavy with a dark blue, almost black colouration, the growth rings so thin as to be barely visible. “Ironwood,” he said. “Old, but still strong. Wonder what they kept in this.”

     “I haven’t seen any open windows yet” said Jerry. “I think the air’s being refreshed magically.”

     “Why do you say that?” asked Diana.

     “Well,” said the tiny nome, “if air was blowing in through an open window, there’d be a breeze, wouldn’t there?” He scraped a pinch of dust from the floor and rubbed his thumb and forefinger together to scatter it in the air. It hung there, slowly spreading out. Not being disturbed in any way by air currents in the corridor except the nome’s soft breath. “See?” he said. “The air in here’s completely still.”

     Lirenna sagged in further disappointment. “You mean we’re still sealed in?” she said.

     Thomas gave her shoulder an encouraging squeeze before they continued their exploration of the complex, whatever it was. The corridor ended at the largest room they’d seen so far. It was filled with sofas, armchairs, tables, cupboards and various pieces of games equipment, all of which were covered with dust sheets. “The day room,” mused Matthew thoughtfully. “This is where they came to enjoy themselves when they were off duty.”

     The others agreed with this reasonable hypothesis, and they carried out a brief search of the room, finding all the cupboards and drawers empty. Evidently its original occupants had taken everything with them except the largest pieces of furniture, which were too large and bulky to be bothered with.

     “This must be the habitation end of the complex,” said Shaun. “The functional end, the place where they did whatever they did here, must be down the other end of the corridor. That’s where we’ll find the answers.” He led the way out and the others followed.

     They retraced the corridor back past the storeroom, the dormitories and the room containing the teleportation cubicle, on to where it turned a right angle to the left. Past the corner, the corridor continued on for at least another sixty feet or so before coming to a dead end, and along all that length it only had three doors. Two way down near the end facing each other and a third right where they were standing. Shaun opened the door, and they all gasped at what they saw inside.

     The room was a long narrow one, ten or twelve feet wide but at least a hundred feet long, running alongside the corridor so that both the doors on the right hand side of the corridor opened into it. The long wall on the side opposite the corridor was one long window from floor to ceiling, offering them a spectacular, panoramic view of the landscape outside, and all along the window was a row of what had once been comfy leather chairs, except that the leather had long since shriveled and cracked open to reveal the wooden frame. In front of each chair was a strange looking framework of wooden spars that held a large glass lens. At least they assumed they were glass since it was hard to see them under their layers of dust. A set of hinges and pivots in the framework seemed to be designed to allow the lenses to be raised, lowered and turned in any direction.

     The thing that made them gasp in awe and wonder, though, was what they saw through the long window. In the foreground was the same barren, rocky landscape they’d seen before, so inhospitable in appearance that Thomas was beginning to doubt that they wanted to find a way out. In the background, though, seemingly some distance beyond the unsettlingly close horizon, was the most beautiful sight any of them had ever seen.