As the last chime ended, its silvery clarity almost painful,. the door opened and the Warden came in. His dark frockcoat was strapped with a belt and two firelocks. He wore a sword, and his eyes were grey points of winter.
‘Stand up,’ he said.
Keiro lounged to his feet. ‘No minions?’
‘Not now. No one enters the Heart of Incarceron but myself. You will be the first — and last — of its creatures to see Incarceron’s own face.’ Attia felt Rix squeeze her hand. ‘The honour is beyond expression: the magician muttered, bowing.
She knew he wanted the Glove from her, right now. She stepped away, towards the Warden, because this decision would be no one’s but hers.
Keiro saw. His smile was cool, and it annoyed her.
If the Warden noticed anything he made no sign. Instead he crossed to the corner of the room and tugged aside a tapestry of forest trees and stags.
Behind it rose a portcullis, ancient and rusted. John Arlex bent and with both hands turned an ancient winch. Once, twice, he heaved it round, and creaking and flaking rust, the portcullis rose, and beyond it they saw a small, worm-eaten wooden door. The Warden shoved it open. A draught of warm air swept out over them. Beyond, they saw darkness, pounding with steam and heat.
John Arlex drew his sword. ‘This is it, Rix. This is what you’ve dreamt of.’ As Finn came into the study Claudia glanced up.
Her eyes were red-rimmed. He wondered if she had been crying. Certainly she was furious with frustration.
‘Look at it!’ she snapped. ‘Hours of work and it’s still a mystery A total, incomprehensible mess!’ Jared’s papers were in chaos. Finn set down the tray of wine Ralph had insisted he bring and stared round. ‘You should take a rest. You must be making some progress.’ She laughed, harshly. Then she stood so quickly the great blue feather propped in the corner lifted into the air. ‘I don’t know! The Portal flickers, it crackles, sounds come out of it.’
‘What sounds?’
‘Cries. Voices. Nothing clear.’ She snapped a switch and he heard them, the distant, faintest echoes of distress.
‘Sounds like frightened people. In some big space.’ He looked at her. ‘Terrified, even.’
‘Is it familiar?’ He laughed, bitter. ‘Claudia the Prison is full of frightened people.’
‘Then there’s no way of knowing which part of the Prison that is, or …’
‘What’s that?’ He stepped closer.
‘What?’
‘That other sound. Behind...’ She stared at him, then went to the controls and began to adjust them. Gradually, out of the chaos of hissing and static, emerged a deeper bass, a repeated, double-pounding motif.
Finn kept still, listening.
Claudia said, ‘It’s the same sound we heard before, when my father spoke to us.’
‘It’s louder now’
‘Have you any idea …’ He shook his head. ‘In all my time Inside I never heard anything like that.’ For a moment only the heartbeat filled the room. Then from Finn’s pocket came a sudden pinging that startled them both. He pulled out her father’s watch.
Startled, Claudia said, ‘It’s never done that before.’ Finn flicked open the gold lid. The clock hands showed six o’clock; the chimes rang out like tiny urgent bells. As if in response the Portal chuntered and went silent.
She came closer. ‘I didn’t know it had an alarm. Who set it?
Why now?’ Finn didn’t answer. He was staring gloomily at the time.
Then he said, ‘Perhaps to tell us there’s only an hour left till the deadline.’ The silver cube that was Incarceron spun slowly on its chain.
‘Take care here, both of you.’ Jared climbed over the rooffall. He turned and held up the lantern so that Caspar could manage. ‘Perhaps we should untie his hands?’
‘I wouldn’t advise it.’ Medlicote prodded the Earl with the firelock. ‘Quickly, sire.’
‘I could break my neck!’ Caspar sounded more irritable than worried. As Jared helped him over the pile of stones he slid and swore. ‘My mother will have both of you beheaded for this. You do know that?’
‘Only too well.’ Jared peered ahead. He had forgotten the state of the tunnel; even when he and Claudia had first explored it it had been in a state of collapse, and that had been years ago. She had always meant to have it repaired, but had never got round to it. There was nothing false about its age or the frequent crumbling of its walls. A brick vault loomed over him, green with dripping slime and infested with mosquitoes that whined around the lantern.
‘How much further?’ Medicote asked. He looked worried.
‘I think we’re under the moat.’ Somewhere ahead an ominous plopping noise told them of a leak.
‘If this roof comes down … Medlicote muttered. He didn’t finish. Then he said, ‘Perhaps we should go back.’
‘You may go back any time you wish, sir: Jared ducked through hanging webs into the dark. ‘But I intend to find Claudia. And we would do well to be out of here before the cannon start firing.’ But as he pushed on into the stinking darkness he wondered whether they had started already, or whether the pounding in his ears was just his own heartbeat.
Attia walked through the small door and staggered, because the world was tilted. It straightened itself under her feet, so that she almost fell, and had to grab Rix to keep her balance.
He, staring upwards, did not even notice.
‘My god!’ he said. ‘We’re Outside!’ The space had no roof, no walls. It was so vast it had no ending, nothing but steamy mist through which they couldn’t see.
In that instant she knew she was tiny in the face of the universe; it terrified her. She edged close to Rix and he grasped her hand, as if he, too, was moved by that sudden giddiness.
Swirls of steam curled miles above them like clouds. The floor was made of sonic hard mineral, the squares of it enormous. As the Warden led them forward their footsteps were loud across the shining black surface. She counted. It took thirteen steps to reach the next white square.
‘Pieces on a chessboard: Keiro voiced her thoughts.
‘As Outside, so within,’ the Warden murmured, amused.
And there was silence. That was what scared her most. The heartbeat had stopped as soon as they passed the door, as if they had somehow entered its very chambers, and here, so deep within itself, no sound lived.
A shadow flickered on the clouds.
Keiro turned, quickly. ‘What was that?’ A hand. Enormous. And then, a beam of light moving over feathers, vast feathers each taller than a man.
Rix stared up, bewildered. ‘Sapphique,’ he gasped. ‘Are you here?’ It was a mirage, a vision. It hung in the clouds and rose like a colossus into the sky, a great being of white shimmers and drifts of steam; a nose, an eye, the plumage of wings so wide they could enfold the world.
Even Keiro was awed. Attia couldn’t move. Rix muttered under his breath.
But the Warden’s voice, behind them, was calm.
‘Impressed? But that too is an illusion, Rix, and you don’t even spot it?’ His scorn was rich and deep. ‘Why should mere size impress you so much? It’s all relative. What would you say if I told you that the whole of Incarceron is actually tinier than a cube of sugar in a universe of giants?’ Rix tore his eyes from the apparition. ‘I’d say you were the madman, Warden.’
‘Perhaps I am. Come and see what causes your mirage.’ Keiro pulled Attia on. At first she was unable to stop staring back, because the shadow on the clouds grew as they moved away from it, rippling and fading and reappearing.
Rix, though, hurried, after the Warden, as if he had already forgotten his wonder. ‘How tiny?’
‘Tinier than you could imagine.’ John Arlex glanced at him.
‘But in my imagination, I am immense1 I am the universe.
There’s nothing else but me.’ Keiro said, ‘Just like the Prison, then.’ Ahead of them the steam cleared. Alone in the centre of the marble floor, pinpointed by a ring of spotlights, they saw a man.