The Third Door

11 - The Pit

He woke in the dark. He woke to raging thirst, to the smell of dust and decay, to a sense of ancient evil so strong that for a time he could only lie shivering without thought, listening to the sound of his own ragged breaths. Then slowly, slowly, his mind began to work. Little by little he remembered what had happened to him, where he was …

And who he was.

‘Rye,’ he whispered aloud. Suddenly his time as Keelin, the stranger, seemed like a dream. The shadows that had darkened his memory were still there, but they were clearing in patches that broadened every moment.

Sonia, Rye thought. Dirk. Sholto. Where are they? Why did they not come for me? Are they safe? The wings of terror fluttered briefly at the edges of his mind, but he brushed them away. He could not afford weakness now. And surely he would know if Sonia, Dirk and Sholto were in danger or dead.

Cautiously he moved one hand, then the other. He tested his feet, his legs. He sat up, wincing at the pain in his head, and the light debris that had covered him fell away in a chinking, rattling shower.

He felt for the bell tree stick. By a miracle, it was still in his belt, and unbroken. In another moment he had found that the bag of powers, too, was safe.

The wave of warmth these discoveries gave him did not last long. Soon the evil-smelling darkness was pressing in on him again, and his skin was crawling at the thought of what might be lurking within it. He pulled the light crystal from the bag. Its brilliance was a blessing, but so dazzling that at first he had to shield his eyes. Squinting through slitted fingers he peered around him.

He had fallen onto a heap of dust and ash thick with small, blackened twists of metal and crumbling objects that looked horribly like human bones. Grimy stone walls rose all around him. It was like being at the bottom of a huge well.

His stomach churning, he looked up and saw a jumble of wood and stone wedged into place high above his head.

Then he understood. He had fallen into a great pit in the ancient foundations of the museum—a burial pit, by the looks of things. Now that his eyes had become accustomed to the light he could see that some of the metal pieces looked like belt buckles, buttons and a brooch that might once have fastened a cloak. Beside him was a round object that he feared was the top of a skull. Gingerly he touched it and it crumbled into dust very similar to the dust on which he sat.

Shuddering, Rye looked up again. Part of a wall had fallen over the top of the pit, sealing it and so protecting him when the rest of the building collapsed.

There were small gaps in the seal—places where wood crisscrossed, and massive stones lay at an angle. He could squeeze through one of those gaps, he was sure of it. But who knew what was above? There might be nothing but more stones, more huge beams, and no way of escape. But he had to find out, for what other hope did he have?

Rye took the feather from the bag. As he shakily crawled to his feet, something that had been lying beneath him caught his eye. It was the little book that Carryl had pulled from her pocket—the book she had begged him with her dying breath to save. He had forgotten it. But there it lay, pressed wide open, its fragile pages creased by the weight of his body.

He picked it up. An old, frayed ribbon bookmark trailed in the fold between the pages. Perhaps that was why the book had fallen open at that place. As the light of the crystal passed over it, a section seemed to leap out at him from the end of the right-hand page. Some of the words were underlined, as if Carryl had thought them particularly worthy of note.

And so the great charm was forged and the chieftain, well satisfied, put it close to his heart and rode away from the forests with his bride. Once home, he ordered a gold casket to be made, and when the casket was ready he put the charm inside it and hid it away where no enemy could find it. For all the years that followed he guarded the secret of the hiding place jealously, telling it only to his eldest son, who was his favourite. At the end of his life he died peacefully, believing that what he had done would keep his people safe forever. But the future was not to be as he would have wished. And so it happened that in time the secret of the hiding place was lost, and the gold casket has never been seen by human eyes from that day to this.

Rye stared, his heart beating fast. So this was what Carryl had wanted Farr to see! The tale of a lost treasure—Fellan, by the sound of it. Carryl had come to believe that the casket was hidden somewhere beneath the museum, and she had been working night and day to find it. Perhaps she hoped that Farr could use the charm inside to combat the enemy by magic, and so avoid bloodshed.

Rye could just imagine how Councillors Manx, Barron and Sigrid would have greeted such an idea. And even Farr, fond of the old chieftain as he might have been, would surely not have been able to accept her story. Farr was a supremely practical man.

But Rye, shivering amid the bones of the long dead, haunted by the creeping sense of evil that seemed to seep from the very stones that surrounded him, knew that Carryl’s claim could not be dismissed out of hand.

And he knew something else that Farr did not know. The Enemy was the Lord of Shadows.

Rye groaned aloud as all the urgency he had felt in the time before he had lost his memory came back to him in a great rush.

Why was he standing here when time was racing by—when so much time had been lost already? Farr might be even now raising his army, driven to furious action at last by the attack on the museum, Zak’s narrow escape, and Carryl’s death. Almost certainly, he believed that ‘Keelin’ was dead too.

Rye’s stomach churned. He had to get to Farr—tell Farr what he knew. He had to stop the attack that could lead only to disaster.

As he snapped the book shut, the title written in gold on the front cover seemed to wink at him slyly. The Three Brothers. No wonder that title had stirred him when he first saw it! The coincidence still gave him a strange feeling. How could he have forgotten he was one of three?

Yet somehow he had forgotten. For the long days of his illness he had been Keelin, alone. And strangely, despite his physical weakness and the shadows that still veiled some things in his past, he felt stronger than he had before.

He pushed the book into his pocket and held the feather high. The light of the crystal gleamed on the stone walls as he rose to the top of the pit.

He felt a slight draught on his face. It seemed to be blowing through a gap between two great blocks of stone. Cautiously, trying not to think about what would happen if the blocks shifted, he eased himself through the gap.

He found himself crouching in a small cavity in the rubble. A wedge of fallen wood and stone loomed low above his head. Every now and then there was a slight grating sound, and dust filtered down in a tiny shower.

When Rye put the crystal gingerly to the rock above him, he could see nothing but more stone, more wood. There was no escape that way. He was buried deep. But he could still feel that tiny draught of air wafting from somewhere behind him.

Carefully he turned round. He wet his finger and felt the little breath of air cool on his skin. The draught was coming from a hole at the base of the wall of rubble, where a stone pillar had collapsed at an angle over a thick slab of rusty iron—a door that had fallen from its hinges long ago, by the look of it.

Rye lay flat, shining the crystal light through the gap. The glow was a little fainter than usual, no doubt because the iron slab weakened its magic, but the golden beam was bright enough for him to see something that made his heart leap. Beyond the gap there was clear space and the edge of a low doorway.

He had to get through to that doorway—he had to! But the triangle framed by the pillar, some lumps of stone and the metal door was far too small for him to squirm through.

If only I had the power to pass through solid objects, Rye thought desperately. Or shrink at will! Or if I had the strength of a hundred men, even for a few moments, I could lift the pillar high enough to be able to slide underneath it!

Suddenly he remembered the wrapped honey sweet—the only charm he had not yet used. Perhaps its power was strength! Bees had to be strong to work from dawn till dusk collecting pollen and carrying it back to the hive.

With rising hope, he found the sweet, unwrapped it and slid it into his mouth. It tasted exactly like a honey sweet he might have bought any day at the Southwall market. And however hard he tried, he still could not move the pillar by so much as a hair.

At last he gave up, wrapped the sweet again and put it back in the bag. The sweetness of honey lingered on his tongue, but his disappointment was bitter. The air wafting through the gap beneath the pillar seemed to mock him. He turned his face away from it, fighting despair. He had no wish to die alone in this tomb, but even worse than the thought of dying were the other thoughts that were crowding into his mind.

Sonia, Dirk and Sholto, his mother, would never know what had happened to him. The quest to save Weld was lost. Farr and his people were lost. And the little bag of powers, which should have helped to save them all, was lost, buried and lost, because it had fallen into the wrong hands. His hands.

The future is in your hands …

Who had said that? It was Farr, talking to his workers at Fell End. Rye stirred. He looked down at his clenched fists, so grimy with dirt and ancient ash that he could hardly see the speed ring on his finger.

Magic had failed him this time. But he still had his will, and his own two hands.

Slowly, stubbornly, he began to clear away the rubble that lay between him and the gap. Of course it would be impossible to move the iron door that formed the base of the triangle, but if he could dig out some of what lay beneath the door, he might be able to press it down a little—just enough for him to squeeze between it and the pillar.

He dug. He dug till his nails were torn, his fingers were raw, and his shoulders ached with the strain of reaching forward. His mouth was as dry as sand and his eyes were stinging when at last he felt it was time to try to force the iron door down.

Without much hope he leaned forward, placed his hands on the nearest part of the rusty surface, and pressed down with all his weight.

And the door shattered—simply shivered into dust.

For an instant, as rusty fragments showered into the hollow he had made, Rye thought the honey sweet had worked after all. Then he saw the truth. The impressive-looking door had been so eaten away by rust that it had been just a shell, holding together by a miracle.

Even so, its collapse had made a difference to the fine balance of the ruins. The pillar moved, very slightly. There was an ominous rumble from above. Dust sifted down as massive blocks shifted and wood splintered beneath their weight.

Out! Get out!

Rye’s heart seemed to leap into his throat. He dived into the newly enlarged gap and squirmed through it. Gasping, covered in flakes of rust, he jumped to his feet. The stone-edged doorway gaped before him, framing thick, whispering darkness.

He did not hesitate. He hurled himself into the darkness and ran. He ran, sobbing and laughing by turns, as behind him a mountain of stone caved in and again a voice, a well-remembered voice, rang in his mind, drowning all other thought.

Rye! Oh, Rye, at last! This way! This way!