The magistrate had said it begins, and if her calculations were correct they had some hours yet, so likely the Bell was only the start of a ritual they should yet be able to stop. She was about to question the magistrate further when he at last managed to break from their grip and run. Slowhand leapt after him, but halted as he saw countless soul-stripped heading towards him. Slowhand, Kali and Freel stared at the approaching horde open-mouthed, as they passed through the thorns — and through them, too — insubstantial and translucent, leaving them with a feeling that somebody had walked over their graves.
"What's happening to them?" Freel asked. "They're like ghosts."
Kali had wondered how Redigor intended to bring the soul-stripped to Bel'A'Gon'Shri across the sprawl of the Sardenne. And now that she knew, she didn't like it one bit.
"He's using a different plane of existence to phase them to the necropolis," she said.
"But if he has the power to do that, with such numbers?" Freel calculated. He did not need to voice the next question for Kali to answer.
"Once he brings his people back, he can send them anywhere, right across the peninsula."
Freel kicked a tree-root. "The bastard's one step ahead of us all the time! Tricked us into forming a line at the Sardenne. And for nothing. Miramas, Volonne, Andon, Fayence, and Vos beyond — they're all but defenceless. We'll never make it back in time."
"Then we'd better make sure we get to Redigor in time," Kali said.
Slowhand and Freel stared as she stepped into the stream of spectral figures and, absorbed by the mist-like cloud wreathing the figures, began to walk amongst them.
"Hooper, what the hells are you doing?"
"Going along for the ride. Can you think of a better way of getting where we want to go?"
Freel smiled and joined her. "This, I take it, is the 'making things up as you go along'?"
"Aha. But be careful. We'll be in direct contact with the Pale Lord and he could sense us, so try to empty your mind."
The pair concentrated while Slowhand, too, stepped into the stream.
"Empty your mind, Liam."
"Done."
"What?"
"Mind. Empty. Done it."
"Are you taking the pits?"
"Hooper, I'm ready, okay. Now are we doing this thing or not?"
They did the thing, now reduced to phantasms, staring at each other in wonder as they moved. Whole swathes of the Sardenne, including the thorn barrier, passed in instant blur as they, along with all the soul-stripped who had no choice in the matter, were drawn ever closer to Bel'A'Gon'Shri.
Redigor's enchantment did not take them right to the necropolis's door, however, but to a deep, creeper-lined gorge on the approach to it, and there the soul-stripped began to return to corporeality. As they did, some turned to stare curiously at Kali, Slowhand and Freel.
"Redigor's getting his eyes back," Kali warned.
"Then it's time to break ranks," Freel said.
Kali and Slowhand trailed the Faith enforcer as he walked to the side of the gorge and took cover behind a dense wall of creeper. From there, the three of them watched the soul-stripped file in, emerging only when all of them had finally passed by. Then, after waiting a few more seconds, they followed some distance behind.
"Oh, crap," Slowhand said.
Freel stared. "Lord of All."
Carved out of the gorge's end, soaring above them, was the entrance to Bel'A'Gon'Shri. A threshold of utter blackness punctuated only by the occasional circling, cawing shrike. It wasn't the entrance itself that was disturbing but what surrounded it. Angled away from her, rising up on either side of the blackness to the twin horns tolling the Time of the Bell, great rock ramparts had been sculpted into a grotesque statuary which, decrepit and strewn with creepers, loomed malevolently over everything below. Great, winged creatures — the hags Kali had seen in Fayence — thrust stone claws at the world, while sweeping carvings of the black coaches that had come for Makennon and the others raced around and between their malformed limbs. Most unnerving were the screaming faces that covered every remaining space on the ramparts, which whispered as the wind blew past them, murmuring half-heard warnings not to approach, to leave this place while they still could.
"Bloody hells," Kali said at last.
"Not exactly welcoming, is it?" Freel added.
"It's going to be less welcoming in a second, if we don't move it." Slowhand nodded towards the top of the threshold.
While the three of them had been examining the necropolis, the ranks of soul-stripped had continued to file towards it, into it, and now the very last of them were being absorbed by the blackness within. The entrance began to seal, a mountainous stone slab rumbling slowly down. The three of them were still some two hundred yards away from it.
"Shit!" Kali cried, and began to run, Slowhand and Freel hot on her heels.
Negotiating the tangled floor of the gorge at speed was not easy, however, and the entrance was half closed before they had covered a third of the distance.
Kali continued to pound along the gorge, shouting to Slowhand and Freel to move, move, move! The two men were already slowing behind her. Kali struggled for a few more steps before she, too, was forced to accept that the attempt was hopeless, and she roared in frustration. As the last of the soul-stripped vanished, the slab closed with a rumble of ground-shaking, deafening finality. She pounded on the door as the others caught up.
"Hooper, it's useless…" Slowhand said.
Kali continued to pound, staring up at and around the slab as she did. "Dammit, I will not be stopped now!"
"Miss Hooper, I fear the archer is correct."
"No! There's a way. There has to be a way."
Slowhand slumped with his back to the slab. "Well, we're open to suggestions…"
Kali stared at him, hot, angry, and breathing hard. She was about to bite his head off when she suddenly turned away from the slab, staring back down the gorge, toward the forest.
She began to stomp off, Slowhand giving her a curious glance.
"Hooper, where the hells are you going?"
"Redigor's not going to stop me now," Kali reiterated. "You two stay here, do what you can."
"And you?" Slowhand shouted after her.
"Plan C!"
"Which is?"
"We have a locked door, right?" Kali yelled. "Then what we need is a key!"
Chapter Fourteen
Slowhand and Freel watched Kali work her way back down the gorge and into the undergrowth with a mixture of puzzlement and concern. The archer thought he caught sight of her a few minutes later — of all things, climbing trees — but he couldn't be certain and his attention was caught by Freel, anyway. The Faith enforcer had been studying the huge, statue-covered frame of the slab, apparently working out a way to climb the incline. Now he seemed to have decided where to start and lashed his whip upwards so that it wrapped around one of the lower statues, then, with a grunt, began to pull himself up towards it.
"Where the hells are you going?" Slowhand said.
"Doing what I can. Looking for another way in."
"Hooper will get us in there, Freel. Trust me."
"I believe she will try. But in all truth this whole operation has been a disaster so far, though through no fault of your Miss Hooper. And now she's out in the Sardenne, alone. Face it, archer, there's no guarantee she'll be back."
"She'll be back. She always comes back."
"And if she doesn't come back this time? Like Jenna didn't?"
The question completely threw Slowhand. "I — "
"I knew Jenna had been assigned to the Drakengrats," Freel said. "And I didn't know why, or for how long. But you sense, somehow, when it's been long enough, and then you start to wonder. I wondered, in fact, until Makennon summoned me, with news. The news came from the one survivor…"