“It’s no use!” Mouse cried as she dragged him away. She stared wildly about the courtyard, which in the moonlight seemed bright as midday after the gloom within. Goblins poured down from the castle walls, spilling like plague rats through the gates from the outer courtyard, from every doorway. “It’s no use!”
Eanrin stood like a shining tower in the darkness, his face alight with a wicked smile. He helped the stunned Alistair to his feet, clapped him on the shoulder, then reached out and snatched the Chronicler by the shirtfront. “Are you the chosen one, heir to Halisa?” he demanded.
“What? No!” the Chronicler cried.
“Close enough.” Eanrin spun about and, with a flash of his knife, knocked aside the descending club of a goblin. The thin blade should have broken under the heavy stone. Instead, the club split in half, and the goblin stood empty-handed, a dumbfounded expression on his face. Eanrin snarled at him, and the goblin backed away, staggering into one of his brothers coming up behind.
“This way, mortals!” Eanrin cried. He sank down into his cat form and darted across the courtyard. Somehow, where he ran, the goblins were not, as though he trod a Path they could not follow. The other three fell in behind him. They should have been slaughtered, hewn to pieces. . . .
Yet they arrived unscathed at the doorway to the Gaheris crypt.
Eanrin vanished inside in a flick of his tail. Mouse didn’t hesitate to follow. But Alistair, his head still spinning, froze as though dragged to the mouth of hell itself.
It seemed to him that a voice in the darkness said: Pursue this Path, young lord of mortals, and you pursue Death.
The Chronicler, who had stopped when Alistair did, saw the goblins closing in, their faces twisted in fury, and among them the Chronicler saw Corgar.
He grabbed Alistair’s sleeve. “Come, m’lord.”
“You go,” Alistair gasped. His face had gone white as a ghost’s. “Go without me.”
But the Chronicler wasn’t one for impractical heroics, at least not in other people. He pulled. His strength was greater than his size indicated, and Alistair was weak and unbalanced. He staggered forward, and together they descended the stairs into the darkness where their ancestors slept.
At first, the stench of death surrounded them. As they pounded down the ancient stone steps, certain they felt the breath of goblins on their heels, neither could help wondering what use this mad flight might be. But the moment their feet touched the level ground, they realized they were not running on stone. The darkness, though thick, was not the blackness of a crypt. Another few paces and both realized the truth even as their senses rebelled against it.
Tall silvery stones stood in a circle around them. And beyond the stones, stretching as far as the eye could see in every direction, was a vast, unsearchable Wood.
Alistair’s yell filled the whole of the near vicinity. “What in the dragon-blazing world is this?”
But a hand reached out and snatched his. He looked down into Mouse’s strained face, and she said, “There’s no time to explain! Run!”
Alistair’s feet were moving before his brain realized what he’d heard. “Wait!” he cried. “I understood that!” Then he was running and had no breath to speak.
The cat darted ahead, his plume of tail like a beacon guiding them through the tangle of shadows and branches. All was dark—not the darkness of night but a heavy gloom cast by branches and foliage blocking all sunlight from the forest floor, which was nonetheless thick with briars and vines. They should not have been able to take more than two paces before becoming hopelessly tangled.
Yet where the cat ran, a Path seemed to emerge, just as it had through the crowd of goblins.
The goblins pursued them, roaring and cursing, crashing through the trees with hardly a pause. They evidently lacked the smooth Path Eanrin trod, yet their bulk served them well enough. The three mortals followed the cat deeper and deeper into this strange new world that had always existed behind the film of their fragile reality.
Suddenly Eanrin darted to one side, leapt into a thicket, and vanished. The mortals paused, stared at the snarl of brush, stared at one another. Then Mouse dove in after him, discovering to her relief that there was a Path still, though she had been unable to see it. It was so small that no human should have been able to follow, yet though her size did not alter, she found she could walk upright when she tried. After she vanished into the tangle of sticks and leaves, the young men had no choice but to follow. Alistair dove in headfirst.
The Chronicler looked back the way they had come. He could almost see the trees moving, drawing together to obscure their way. But that must have been the strange half-light playing tricks upon his eyes.
Then he heard a shout and saw the goblins approaching. Hating himself for fleeing yet again, the Chronicler pushed into the thicket after Alistair.
He gasped.
He stood in the doorway of a vast and shining hall of white and green stone.
15