Shaun and Diana led the way, walking side by side, the woodsman ready with his sword and the cleric ready to chase away any other undead creatures they might come across. She prayed she would be able to control her terror if they did meet any. When we meet any, she corrected herself. She remembered with shame her complete loss of control a few minutes before, and vowed not to let the same thing happen again. My Lady is with me, she reminded herself. To be afraid would be blasphemous. The worst thing that can happen is that I'll be killed, in which case She will gather up my soul and take me to live with Her forever. I should be joyous that it may be happening soon, not afraid.

     They had gone about fifty yards when Diana almost fell into a trapdoor that fell open under the pressure of her foot. She yelped with alarm as she began to fall but Matthew, following close behind her, grabbed her arm and, together, they teetered on the edge. Looking down, they saw that the bottom of the pit, eight feet below, was covered with long iron spikes, and impaled on one of them was a human skeleton dressed in long, black robes.

     Shaun ran forward to grab Diana's other arm and together he and Matthew pulled her back to safety. Then the three of them edged warily back to the edge and looked sheen at the corpse again, their hearts hammering in their chests as they contemplated how close they'd come to losing one of their number.

     Diana looked back down at the skeleton in the pit. That was almost me! she thought. The alternate reality in which she'd fallen and died seemed so close that it seemed she could actually hear Shaun's shocked cry of shock, horror and guilt echoing from the slimy, stone walls.

     The skeleton was wearing the black robes of a wizard, he saw. Decorated with mysterious runes and symbols sewn in silver thread. Clutched tightly in one bony hand was a yellow gemstone, about the size of a hen's egg, and in the other was a small book, a diary by the look of it. A bottle of ink and a quill pen lay nearby, as if the man had survived just long enough for one last entry. The one thing that caught his attention, however, and made him cry out in shock and surprise, was the symbol on the diary's cover. There, imprinted on the scuffed leather in faded gold leaf, was a highly ornate and stylised letter "Z".

     Diana saw it too. “By all the Gods!” she exclaimed. “Help me climb down, quick!”

     “What is it?” asked Matthew, coming up alongside to see.

     “No, don't do that!” cried Shaun as Diana sat down on the edge of the pit and prepared to drop down to the bottom. "It might be a trap, another zombie!"

     "It's not, I know it's not! It's Zebulon, I know it is! Now help me climb down."

     "No way!" said Shaun firmly. "You might hurt yourself on those spikes. I'll go."

     Ignoring her protests, he pulled her back to her feet and carefully climbed down to the bottom of the pit. He picked up the diary and the yellow gem and, at the wizards' insistence, searched the skeletal remains for a spellbook. He found it, along with a few scraps of paper that might once have been scrolls, but they had all been chewed so badly by the rats that they were now useless. The wizards were devastated. Zebulon's spellbook would have been a find of major importance. With Matthew and Thomas's help, he then climbed back out of the pit.

     "Thanks," he said. He looked at the yellow jewel. It was oval and multi faceted, and had a circle of darker orange on one side with a spot of purest black in the middle. In fact, it looked just like a human eye, complete with iris and pupil, and seemed to glow slightly with a faint golden light. "What in the name of the Nine Hells is this?" he wondered. "I've never seen anything like it!"

     "Maybe it says in the diary," said Diana, taking it from him. She opened the front cover. "Personal travelling diary of Zebulon Astwin, Wizard," she read, hanging her head sadly. "It is him, then. We've finally caught up with him."

     "If he failed, what hope do we have?" asked Jerry.

     "Plenty," said Thomas. "For all his power, he was just one man, and a simple pitfall trap was enough to kill him. If there'd been one other person with him, even a country peasant, he wouldn't have died this way. There are six of us. We may all be killed by zombies, but we won't die the same way he did."

     "Well said!" said Shaun. "We'll crack this maze, you'll see. What does the diary say, Sis?"

     She was flicking through the pages. "The first part is all about his journey into the Shadow to get the Eye of Millandar." She stopped suddenly and stared at the strange gem Shaun was holding. "Hey! You don't think..."

     "Yes, it must be!" said Shaun excitedly. "I mean, look at it, it even looks like an eye! What else could it be? By the Gods, we've really got a chance now! What was it he said in his journal? Something like ‘You will need the Eye of Millandar, or something similar, as protection against the terrible undead creatures that inhabit the Maze.' Yes, we've really got a chance now!"

     "What else does it say in the diary?" asked Thomas. "Is it definitely the Eye?"

     "I don't know yet, I'm still looking." She flicked a few more pages, glancing briefly at the crabby but elegant writing on each page. "Travelling along the great west road," she muttered to herself. "Reaching the boundary of the Shadow itself. Fear and the threat of mutiny in the army put down by the force of Rhanov's charisma alone. He speaks very highly of Rhanov. Couldn't have got this far without him, etc. Apparently, the Shadow has some kind of effect on anyone entering it, causing fear, despair, a strong desire to leave as soon as possible, etc, and only strong leadership can entice people to enter."

     "Yes, that's right," said Shaun. "A soldier was telling me, back in Ilandia. Apparently, after the last Shadowwar, the Beltharan army tried to carry the war to the enemy by entering the Shadow in force, but the Shadow had such a bad effect on them, causing fear, violence, mass desertions and even the outright mutinying of several companies, that the campaign had to be abandoned, and so the core of the Shadowhosts survived to grow again."

     Diana continued to read the diary. "Ah, what's this? Today, we finally reached the town of Skullby, where we believe the Eye is being held by the chief of one of the tribes held in thrall by the Shadowlord. Tonight, a few of us will sneak in and try to steal it, after which we will leave with all speed, much to the men's relief. Tomorrow will decide whether we succeed or fail." She turned the page.

     "I have the Eye, but the cost has been terrible. Rhanov and all the men are dead. I am the only survivor. All went well at first. I, Riddel, our best thief, and a couple of the men crept into town, located the building in which the chief was sleeping, and gained entry without arousing notice. I killed the Shadowchieftain while he slept and took the magical shayen jewel, but on the way out one of the men was clumsy and made a noise, alerting the guards. Immediately the whole town was awake, and if I had been unable to make us all invisible, I believe we would all have been dead within five minutes.

     "We might still have been able to make our escape, but Rhanov, hearing the uproar and believing us to be in danger, led our whole army in a mad charge to ‘rescue' us. I cannot blame him for his actions, as he was acting in the best of intentions and according to the information he had at his disposal at the time, but his actions led directly to the deaths of all our men, including himself.

     "The arrival of our army threw them into panic and disarray at first, but we were outnumbered by at least ten to one and soon forced onto the defensive. Surrounded, cut off, and doomed to defeat. I used my magic to help them as much as I could, but then an enemy wizard turned up and I was forced to turn all my attention to him just to survive. I killed him after a long and difficult duel and turned my attention back to the battle, just in time to see Rhanov fall before an ogre. There were only a dozen or so of us left alive by then, and almost all my magic had been used up, so I made myself invisible again and made my way to a safe spot a hundred yards away to watch the final, brave and magnificent end of our once mighty army."

     Diana turned the pages sadly, glancing down at the skeleton at the bottom of the pit. "It goes on to tell of his flight from the Shadow, pursued by a company of Shadowsoldiers. How he lost them, and then went straight on to the Emerald Oracle, and then here. There's no time to read it all now." She turned to the back of the diary, to the last entry, written while he was dying at the bottom of the pit, impaled on an iron spike.

     "I was a fool to attempt the Maze alone, and now I am paying the price. I have failed. You who come after me and are reading this, take the Eye of Millandar. You will need its power to ward off the undead. It's strange, but I believe I can almost see your faces, looking down out of the future at my mortal remains with pity and sympathy. I have just the strength for two more spells. One to protect this diary from the rats, and the other to prevent my body from being raised as a zombie. Then I will die. I bid you farewell now, you who come after me. May the Gods go with you and grant you strength and courage. Farewell."

     There were tears in her eyes as she closed the book. "Farewell, Zebulon," she said. "May you rest in peace." She tucked the diary into her backpack.

     "Zebulon did not die in vain," she said. "It was he who recognised the danger facing all civilization, he who tried for years to warn the authorities in time for them to do something about it, he who handed on to us the holy mission on which we are now engaged, and he who bravely went into the Shadow to find the Eye of Millandar and bring it to us, so that we would stand a chance of succeeding. Without him, civilization would still be ignorant of the danger, and would have been overrun without warning when the attack came. He will be remembered."

     She took a deep breath. "And now we must go on," she said. "Farewell, Zebulon, and thank you for everything you've done."

     So saying, she edged carefully past the pit trap, followed by the others, and they headed deeper into the Maze.