The bottle smashed on the statue's chest, splattering the clear, clean water across the crudely carved rock, but the warm feeling of satisfaction it gave her was wiped out in a sudden blast of terror as a distant howl of pain seemed to come from it. When she raised her eyes to look at its head, the features of the statue seemed to be contorted in a grimace of rage. The cleric's legs turned to water and cold sweat broke out across her body, but when she turned to the others they seemed entirely unaware that anything had happened, and when she looked back at the statue the effect was gone.

     Had she imagined it? She tried to make herself feel relieved and angry at herself for being silly, but then she remembered that Skorvos was more than just an idol, an image raised up by ignorant humanoids. Skorvos was a true God, every bit as divine as Caroli, even though He was as evil as She was good, and He was no doubt very aware of what she had done. All of a sudden, cleansing the temple didn't seem like such a good idea, but it had been her duty as a follower of the Lady of Healing, and Her goodness, Her pacifistic nature, didn't make Her any less powerful than the war God. She would protect her from the God of Conquest. She knelt for another prayer, renewing her love and devotion, and then went to the wall behind the statue, where words in the buglin's own language had been written in blood, probably describing the power and greatness of the evil God. She fished a handkerchief out of a pocket and started cleaning it off.

     "This will have to do for now," she muttered as one horrible word after another was smeared into illegibility. "No time to do a proper job." Then she came across a loose slab of rock, though, about three feet above the ground, so cunningly crafted as to be almost undetectable by sight alone. She carefully levered it out, looked behind it, and saw a hole about a foot deep containing a bundle of rags in which something was wrapped. As she took it out, Shale ran across and snatched it from her. "What have you got there, girl?" he asked, his voice trembling with excitement. He hurriedly pulled the rags apart and, sure enough, there in the middle was a rolled up sheet of parchment that he unrolled and stared at with wide, delighted eyes. Then he laughed in joy and triumph. "The Proof of Mantellor! The pride and glory of the Granore family is restored! Now Redeye can again rest in peace!" He turned to Diana. "My family owes you an undying debt of gratitude. If ever you need anything from us, it will be our pleasure to provide it."

     The others gathered around to stare at it. It looked at first like any other sheet of parchment, a pale dirty yellow, darker around the edges where it had been exposed to the air while rolled up, but there was a sheen to it, as if it was wet, and when Thomas reached out a hand to touch it it felt smooth and slippery, as if it had been soaked in oil, and yet it was dry. The lexin, he thought. The strange substance that keeps it from disintegrating from age. The writing was also strange. It wasn’t like any other script the others had ever seen before, not even the circles and dots of trog script. There were trog glyphs in amongst it, intermingled with other symbols the others had never seen before but which Thomas recognised from the Book of Axioms the trog cleric had shown him. Suddenly he knew what he was looking at. “This is mathematics!” he said in surprise.

     “Mantellor’s proof of Skewes’s theory,” said Bluin, looking a little shaky as if unable to believe he was in the same room with it. “The problem was handed down by Caratheodory Himself as a reward for Skewes’s brilliance and devotion but it remained unsolved for centuries. It is the pride of the Granore family that it was one of us who finally cracked it. It’s to do with prime numbers. The clerics could explain it better that I can...”

     “Later,” said Shale, rolling the parchment back up and tucking it carefully into a pocket of his robes. “We’ll have time for a proper maths lesson when we’re safely back in the human town.”

     "Does that mean we can leave now," asked Shaun.

     "Yes indeed," said Shale, to everyone's relief. "There are clearly too many of them for us to handle alone. We must find Rogil's group, get out, and return later with an army. We have only to show them this," he tapped his pocket, "and every lost member of our family will flock back to us. We will return with a hundred men, and our enemies will fly before us!" He grew serious for a moment. "Who could have guessed that their numbers would increase so quickly, though. Where have they all come from?" Suddenly, he noticed that there was someone missing. "Where's Jherek?" he asked. "He should be here for this moment of triumph."

     A quick search revealed that Jherek was nowhere to be seen. They looked in all the adjoining rooms and glanced up and down the corridor, but there was no sign of him. "Who was with him last?" asked Shale.

     "Connery, I think." said Jerry. "I saw them go in there together." He indicated an adjoining room that used to be the cleric's quarters.

     "I saw him come out alone, just before the girl found the Proof of Mantellor," said one of the trogs.

     Connery saw everyone looking at him. "Yes, that's right," he said. "He heard a noise in the next room, and went to investigate. I thought he had come back again. You don't think something's happened to him, do you?”

     "Why didn't you go with him?" asked Shale.

     "He said he could handle it himself. He told me to carry on looking for the Proof of Mantellor. Stop looking at me like that! I don't know what's happened to him!"

     They looked in the room he indicated. The door in the opposite wall led into another room, which in turn led back to the corridor. There were no clues to Jherek's fate to be seen. Shale gave Connery an icy stare. "Fool!" he snorted. "Well, If he's alive, he'll just have to find his own way back to us. Let's go find Rogil."

     "Surely they should have been here by now," said Thomas. "We've gone more than half way around the village, searching every room as we went. If they've been doing the same, we should have met up with them by now."

     "Not necessarily," said Shale. "This part of the village we're entering now is the main business centre, with lots of rooms, offices, storerooms, anterooms and so on. The way we came was relatively bare, which is why we've made good time. No doubt we'll meet them before long."

     They returned to the tunnel street and continued along it as before, still checking every room as they went. Suddenly Lirenna cried out and pointed to a dagger lying on the floor near the wall. It was stained with buglin blood, and a large pool of half dried blood lay near it. Shale bent down to examine it, then picked it up to examine it more closely. It was a trog knife, similar to the ones he'd given the three wizards. "I don't like the look of this," he said. He bent down to examine the floor of the corridor over a wider area and found several other bloodstains along a twenty yard long stretch, along with several other odds and ends that were identified as belonging to one or another of the people in Rogil's group.

     "I think we should get out of here, right now," said Shaun. "I don't think there's much point in looking for Rogil's group any more.

     Shale glared at him in sudden fury, but said nothing. "He's right, Shale," said Hamlode. "It's obvious what's happened here. We've got to get out of here before the same thing happens to us."

     Shale looked grief stricken and shook his head. "No," he said. "Not Rogil! I've known him for fifty years! We were in Howligh together! I knew his father! He can't be... Can't be..."

     "Shale!" repeated Hamlode, more urgently. "We'll all be dead if we don't get out of here right now!"

     His words finally got through to the Manir and he nodded numbly. "Yes," he said. "Yes, you're right. Let's move." He led the way on, moving as if in a daze.

     No longer bothering to check rooms, they moved ahead to the intersection where they had last seen Rogil's group. As they made for the guardroom, however, the door flew open and at least twenty buglins burst out at them, screaming in battle fury. The expedition stopped dead in surprise, momentarily paralysed in shock and horror. Lirenna screamed and Thomas threw up his hands as if to hide his face. They lost a crucial couple of seconds simply reacting to the sudden appearance of so many enemies, and in that moment of indecision Hamlode paid with his life, a buglin's shortsword slashing up into his stomach, spilling his life's blood out into the hard stone floor. Diana screamed at the sight, unable to take her eyes off the splashing, steaming blood, a sight that was burned into her memory for ever after, and as trogs and humans scrambled for their weapons another dozen buglins and a few goblins appeared behind them from one of the rooms they hadn't bothered to check, along with a few more in doorways to either side of them. The expedition members formed a circle with the wizards and Diana in the middle and they swung their weapons in a desperate defence, but it was obvious that they weren't going to last long.

     Lirenna's thoughts were a single long scream of terror, but in the midst of it her University training formed a solid anchoring point she could cling to and she remembered Tragius Demonbinder telling her class that they could well expect to find themselves in situations like this at some point in their lives. "You will be wizards," he'd told them, looking out over the sea of young faces. "The mundanes will look to you for leadership and protection, and to provide it you will have to remain in control of yourselves. If you give in to panic, you will die. It really is that simple. Panic, and die, but remain calm, calm enough to think, calm enough to cast your spells, and you'll have a chance for life." The demi shae nodded, her eyes squeezed shut to block out the fighting and the dying, and then she opened them, forcing herself to assess their situation, to look for the one chance they might still have.

     There were fewer enemies behind them than in front, she saw, and so, without waiting a moment longer, she aimed her sleep spell in that direction. She dug into one of her pouches for a handful of sand, threw it at the tiny humanoids and spoke the magic words, calling upon every ounce of self control she possessed to keep her voice calm and level. Her desperation must have given her extra strength because seven of them collapsed unconscious, more than her spell had ever affected before, and the remaining humanoids stared in sudden terror, suddenly realising that they were facing a wizardess who might be about to aim more spells at them. Lirenna saw this, and knew that they had an opportunity to escape, but only if they moved fast. If she just stood there, the buglins would know she had no more spell energy left and their confidence would return. "This way, quick!" she shouted, therefore, drawing her knife and jumping over the unconscious humanoids. "Quick!"

     The others only had a vague idea what was happening, they'd been too busy fighting to see what she'd been doing, but at her shout they realised there was a gap in the enemy's ranks and turned to follow her, cutting down the few remaining goblins that stood in their way. It pained Shaun to run from buglins, the shame of it would remain with him until his dying day, but he reasoned that it was vastly preferable to being killed by them. How could he stand before his grandfather, who'd died during the last Shadowwar in battle with four ogres, two of which he'd killed before falling himself, and tell him he'd been killed by a bunch of buglins? He'd never be able to live it down!

     As they ran, they gained a little on the monsters, whose tiny legs weren't able to carry them as fast. They raced back the way they'd come, past the site of Rogil's last stand, past the temple and past the assorted offices and storerooms until they reached the residential areas again. There, they heard dozens of little footsteps coming from up ahead and realised that the buglins were using the same tactics against them that they themselves had used, dividing themselves into two groups to trap the enemy between them. The exhausted explorers knew that they would not survive the battle, so Shale opened a door and ushered them through. "Quick, in here!" They piled in and shut the door, just as the buglins appeared around the corner. Then they froze, trying to control the shuddering gasps of their breathing as they heard them running past, their bare feet flapping noisily on the bare stone floor.

     As the sound faded into the distance, Shaun leaned against the slimy, damp wall and let out his breath in a great gasp of relief. "Phew, that was close," he said, trying to stop his hand shaking enough to wipe the cold sweat from his forehead.

     "It's only a temporary reprieve," said Shale. "It's only a matter of minutes before they find us. We've got to figure some way out of here, quick."

     The others stared at each other, their eyes wide with fear, as they heard their enemies milling around outside and waited for the door to open…