"Now we finish," the thing said, and the terrible, gleeful voice in Sam's head made her want to smash her skull against something until she couldn't hear it anymore. "The end. Fade out. Roll credits."
"The Well!" Florimel wailed. Her voice seemed to come from half a world away. "It's sinking!"
Sam turned and saw that even the diminished light which had filled the Well was draining away into the heart of the world, emptying the great hole and pulling the empty black sky down on top of them like a rotting blanket. Now the only light in the world seemed to come from the eyes and grinning teeth of their enemy.
"Into the Well!" someone screamed behind her—Paul, Nandi, she could not tell. "It's the only place left to hide! Down into the Well!" But Sam could not tear her eyes. away from the walking darkness.
It's coming now.
The thing under the bed . . . the noise in the closet . . . the smiling stranger pulling up along the curb as you walk home from school. . . .
Orlando's hard hand closed on hers and jerked her to her feet. He pulled her toward the spot where Martine Desroubins had fallen onto her hands and knees at the edge of the pit. Most of their other companions were already scrambling down into darkness along some path Sam could not yet see. The blind woman looked as though she were shouting in pain. Orlando and Paul Jonas grabbed her and lifted her.
"Where are you?" Dread's voice whispered, flicking soft as a snake's tongue in Sam's ear, "You can't hide from me. I know you all too well."
She followed Orlando and Paul onto a ledge that ran crookedly along the inner wall of the empty pit. The two of them moved swiftly, even with Martine dangling between them. As she hurried after them Sam tripped on something and fell. By the time she clambered back onto her feet they had disappeared into the shadows below. Panicked, Sam looked back, sure that the thing with the ice-cold voice must be right behind her, and saw what she had stumbled over—a human foot. The boy Cho-Cho was lying at the side of the path, almost invisible in the deepening darkness. With her insides churned to sick horror at the thought of what must be right behind her, she only wanted to run after the others.
No, he's just a micro! I can't leave him for . . . that.
She turned against the shrieking of her own nerves and fought her way back up the slope. Cho-Cho seemed asleep, unaware of the deathly thing that was hunting them. She pulled him up into her arms, surprised and staggered by the limp weight.
"What is happening?" Sellars' phantom voice sighed from the boy's open mouth. "Who are you?"
"Everything—everything's happening! It's me, Fredericks!" She tripped again and almost went down.
"Where is Martine?"
"Just . . . shut up," Sam grunted. She fought her way down the path, struggling to keep herself upright. The walls of the pit were quickly losing the last of what had made them real; they glowed now with a strange dim light, a duller version of the liquid stars. She thought she could make out the inconstant silhouettes of Orlando and Paul just a few meters ahead on the long downward spiral.
Upside down—!Xabbu, was right! Her thoughts flitted like smoke-maddened wasps. It's the mountain turned upside down. . . !
She could see nothing behind her yet but the pictures in her head were vivid enough—the empty-eyed shadow that was Dread swollen in her mind to giant size, sifting through the shrieking refugees with immense, shadowy fingers, picking them up in handfuls, examining them, then flinging them down in crackboned heaps.
Looking for us, Sam thought. For us! He'll be coming down that path any second. . . . The horror of it made her so dizzy and scared that when she came around a bend into a wider part of the path and ran into Paul Jonas from behind, she almost blacked out.
"Sam?" he said, nearly as startled as she.
Martine was lying in the middle of the path where they had set her down, curled in a fetal ball. Orlando stepped around her to grab Sam's arm, then held it as though he didn't plan to let go. "Oh, jeez. . . ." He glanced at the limp form of Cho-Cho as if he didn't quite see it. "Frigging hell, Frederico, I didn't know where you were!"
"I . . . had to go back," she gasped. "It's the little boy—I mean, it's Sellars. . . ."
"I cannot stay involved with this." Sellers' fretful voice beside her ear startled her again. "There is too much to do. Tell Martine to keep the connection open at all costs. I will return."
"Don't go," Paul said. "That thing . . . Dread . . . he's right behind us."
"I can't do anything more here," Sellars said urgently. "I am sorry, but I still have my side of this to complete. Whatever else happens, Martine must not lose her connection to the heart of the system. She must hold on at all costs!"
"Damn you, Sellars, don't you dare. . . !" Paul began, then Sam lurched against him and almost fell off the narrow path as the small body draped across her shoulder suddenly began to thrash in panic.
"Put me down!" Cho-Cho screamed. He got a hand loose and grabbed at her face, making Sam stumble again. For a moment she felt nothing under her left foot, then found the edge of the path with her heel. She swayed, trying desperately to regain her balance.
"Let me go!" The boy's elbow hit her in the side of the head so hard that her knees went rubbery and she slipped sideways. The boy's weight vanished from her shoulders.
I dropped him, she thought, and then she too seemed to be tumbling into space until a powerful grip curled in the back of her shirt and yanked her back to the center of the ledge.
A flare of light from deep in the Well painted dim streaks of silver and blue up the side of Orlando's barbarian form. He held the still-struggling Cho-Cho clasped against his naked chest. "Are you scanned beyond belief?" he barked at the boy, then snapped his chin down hard on top of his head. Unconscious or just educated, Cho-Cho stopped thrashing and hung motionless in the crook of Orlando's muscled arm.
"You're all down there in the hole, aren't you?" It was Dread again, amused and annoyed, his words crawling through her skull like a trail of ants. Orlando was hearing it too: he grimaced in pain and disgust. "Do you really want me to come get you? Haven't you already played enough games?"
Paul Jonas had dropped to Martine's side and was trying to lift her again.
Orlando gave Sam's arm another squeeze. "Now, I might be imagining things, Frederico." His heroic imitation of a casual tone could not hide the tremor in his voice. His hand was probably shaking too, but Sam was shivering so badly herself she couldn't tell. "But our friend, Count Dreadula—is he some kind of Australian?"
Catur Ramsey burst through the door into the adjoining room in time to hear the last of Sellars' words. The old man sounded worse than ever, weak and faint, as though he were talking through a garden hose from the other end of the galaxy.
". . . I have no time to explain it all again," he said. "There are minutes only."
Kaylene Sorensen stood splay-footed in front of Christabel, fists curled, treating the faltering, disembodied voice from the wallscreen like a physical threat to her daughter. "You must be crazy! Mike, am I the only person here who hasn't lost her mind?"