"How do we get up there?" asked Shaun. "I did a bit of rock climbing at home, but nothing like that! Not even a professional mountaineer could climb that!"

      Thomas nodded. "Let's walk around it, see if we find anything," Nobody could think of anything better to do, so they set off clockwise around the island.

      At first they saw nothing but seaweed and driftwood lying along the high tide mark, which was only a few feet from the boulders lying against the base of the cliff. One large piece of wood had the word ‘Seaspray' carved on it, obviously the name of a ship that had been wrecked on the rocks, and Diana said a prayer for its crew before they passed on.

      When they had gone nearly halfway around the island they heard the sound of falling water, and about fifty yards further on they saw the cause of it. A steady stream of water was running from the top of the cliff, down a channel it had eroded for itself. About fifty feet up it splashed across an overhang where it turned into a waterfall that fell into a pool about ten yards across, from which it flowed in a small stream into the sea. The wind was whipping the falling water into a spray that splashed the cliff face, creating a vertical carpet of moss and ferns, plants that could only survive in fresh water.

      Thomas walked over to the pool, getting thoroughly drenched in the process, and knelt down, cupping his hands and taking a sip of the water. "Perfectly drinkable," he shouted to the others. He washed some of the salt off his face and started getting up, but then stopped, staring at something in the pool, and they saw his face turning green with sick horror. He got up and ran back to the others, wiping his mouth with his hands and spitting as if to rid himself of a disgusting taste. "There's a skeleton in that pool!" he said. "All smashed to pieces and with bits of armour scattered around it. Some poor wretch must have been swept over the cliff by the water. Gods, and I drank that water! Who knows what I might catch..."

      "Poor man," said Diana, ignoring the wizard's distress. She went to the pool, also getting soaked, and said a prayer over the skeleton before returning. On the way back she found something that Thomas had missed. A rotting leather purse almost buried in the moss and containing twenty tarnished copper coins. She threw it into the pool.

      "Why’d you do that?" asked Matthew. "We could have used that money!"

      "We do not rob the dead," said Diana firmly, strands of wet hair clinging to her face. She pulled it out of her eyes and smoothed it back over her scalp. "The Gods will provide us with any money we need."

      "They just did and you threw it away!" said Matthew. Diana gave him a cold stare and he shut up.

      "Can you die, drinking water that's had a corpse in it?" asked Thomas anxiously.

      "That water's been replaced millions of times since that poor soul became bare bones," said Lirenna, moving to stand under the waterfall to wash the salt out of her silky dark hair. She turned her face up to let the water fall on her face and grinned in delight. "It's just pure, sweet rain water."

      "You go have a drink, then," suggested Thomas, but the demi shae just gave him a look.

      "Where does all that water come from?" wondered Jerry. "To erode a pool like that, it must have been falling for years, and look, at the top of the cliff you can see where it's eroded a gully for itself. Where does it all come from?"

      "No doubt we'll find out when we get up there," said Shaun. "If we ever get up there. Come on."

      They left the pool behind, crossing over the small stream running away from it and continuing on around the island. They had almost come back to where they'd started when they found what they were looking for. A door in the cliff made of heavy wood and with a brass doorknob halfway up it on the left. It looked so incongruous there, so totally out of place, that Thomas and Jerry burst out laughing at the sight of it, and the others had to smile as well.

      "A door!" said Thomas, as he regained control of himself. "Just a plain and simple door, and if we'd walked fifty yards the other way to begin with we'd have seen it straight away. What a crazy place!"

      "Maybe it's not as plain and simple as it looks," said Shaun, however. "This whole place has been designed to be hard and dangerous to get to, a place to test our courage and resolve. I wouldn't be surprised to find that it's trapped, or leads to a dead end."

      He cautiously approached the door, turned the knob and pulled. It opened easily on smooth, oiled hinges revealing a rectangular passage carved out of the solid rock, leading inwards. Drawing his sword, Shaun entered slowly and carefully, his eyes scanning the walls and floor as he went, Vantarestin's entrance corridor fresh and vivid in his memory. There were no traps or pitfalls, though, and after a hundred yards it ended in a circular chamber ten yards across. There was no roof, and he realised that he was standing at the bottom of a shaft that ran all the way up to the plateau. He could just barely see a glimmer of light at the top and guessed that it was roofed over, allowing very little light to enter.

      He took out his trog glowbottle, added a drop of activating fluid and waited for it to reach its full brightness. He could now see that a staircase, carved out of the rock, spiraled up the side of the shaft, presumably winding round and round until it reached the top, although the glowbottle only illuminated the bottom twenty or thirty feet. It had no handrail, nothing to stop someone who lost his footing from falling all the way to the bottom, and what was more, the carved stone steps were smooth and slippery, narrow and tall, and formed an unbroken climb of what looked like several hundred yards. This would not be easy.

      After satisfying himself that there were no traps, the sheer difficulty of the climb being the only deterrent needed, he called the others in. They were appalled by the magnitude of the climb before them but, as Diana pointed out, a few minutes earlier they'd been faced only by a sheer rock face. "Let us be grateful for what the Gods have provided," she said, and the others were forced to agree. Deciding that it wouldn't get any easier by staring at it, therefore, they started up.

      Jerry had the hardest time of it, his short legs only just able to manage the high steps, and he was exhausted before they'd gone more than twenty yards from the ground. "I don't think I'm going to be able to make it," he puffed, dejectedly. "You go on without me. I'll wait at the bottom."

      "No way," said Thomas. "We might need you at the top. Come on, I'll carry you."

     After a bit of argument, Jerry agreed to sit on his shoulders for part of the way, hanging on around his neck, until the human wizard complained of backache and the little nome climbed a little way by himself. Shaun then carried him a little way, Matthew took him a bit further, and by then Thomas had recovered enough to carry him again. In this way they were all able to make their way up together with no further problems, except for a deflating of Jerry's ego.

      When they were half way up, they were all so exhausted that they had to sit down and rest for a while. The light from the top of the shaft was fading, from which they knew that night was falling outside, but they were able to continue by the light of their glowbottles and did so as soon as they were rested, wanting to get their ordeal over with as soon as possible.

      They didn't rest long enough, though, and were not fully recovered when they decided to press on. After having climbed another hundred yards or so Lirenna, climbing fourth in line in front of Thomas, slipped on an especially damp, mouldy patch. She flung out her arms in a desperate attempt to regain her balance but it was hopeless and, with a shriek, she fell over the edge. Thomas gave a cry of horror and made a grab for her, but caught only the edge of her sleeve which tore off in his hand. "No!" he cried helplessly as he watched her glowbottle fall and smash on the steps below, her screams echoing up and down the shaft as she fell into darkness.

     The others looked round at his cry and cried out as well when they realised what had happened. "No, My Lady, please!" cried Diana, clutching her silver caroli flower so hard that she almost tore it from her neck.

      "Lenny!" screamed Thomas as they all stared down in horror at the glowing patch of scattered glowfluid, fading rapidly as it evaporated. Diana closed her eyes and shrieked, tears streaming down her cheeks, while Shaun put his arms around her and hugged her close. Jerry said nothing, but his chin was trembling and his eyes were wide with disbelieving horror, making him look more like a tiny child than ever, a child with a red, bulbous nose and a neatly trimmed beard. Thomas stood on the very edge of the drop, holding his own glowbottle out over the edge as if he could see all the way down to where she lay, and he shouted her name over and over again until Matthew took his arm and pulled him gently back to safety.

      Thomas started back down the stairs, running so fast down the treacherous steps that he risked a fatal slip with every step, but he was brought up short by a voice calling faintly up from below. "Hello? Can you hear me?"

      "Lenny!" shouted Thomas, his voice full of disbelieving surprise and joy. "You're alive?"

      "Yes!" she called back, her faint voice echoing around in the shaft. "I'm floating down like a feather! It's incredible!"

     “Floating?” said Thomas, as if his shocked brain was having a hard time processing the word. “Floating? What do you mean? How can you be floating?”

      "An Autumnleaf spell, it must be," said Jerry in astonishment, his hands still clutching silver hairs from his beard. "But how? None of us knows that spell."

      "It must be the ring!" cried Thomas joyfully. "That ring she got from that fat old fool of a wizard, what's his name? Mikos. It must be an Autumnleaf ring. That old fool was good for something after all!"

      They made their way carefully back down the stairs, taking care that no-one else fell, and half way down met Lirenna coming up, one arm bare where her sleeve was missing. Thomas handed it back to her and then gave her a tearful, bonecrushing hug, thanking every God he could think of for her safe delivery. They all took turns to hug her and say lots of emotional things that made her blush with embarrassment, and then the two wizards examined her ring with renewed interest. "An Autumnleaf ring," mused Thomas. "That could really come in useful."

      "You're telling me!" agreed Lirenna with feeling. "I really thought I'd had it that time."

      "We all did," said Thomas. "You really scared me! If anything happened to you, I..."

     He broke off, realising he was about to say something he would rather say later on, in private. Shaun and Matthew exchanged knowing smirks, which Diana saw. She thumped them both.

      After another, much longer rest, they carried on climbing, and it was with vast relief that they finally reached the top. They found themselves in a square, stone building with a wooden roof. It had one small window in each wall and a single door of heavy oak. It was pitch black outside, late at night, but how late they couldn't tell as they had lost all track of time. They were all so exhausted from their long climb that, without a word being spoken, they spread their bedrolls, lay down and went to sleep.