Crowther pulled his hat low over his face and shuffled deeper into his overcoat, ready to sleep. His mumbled words issued quietly into the dark. 'Be careful how you treat her, boy.'
'I wouldn't do anything to hurt her, ever.' Jack tried to pierce the shadows beneath the brim of the hat, but Crowther's face was lost to him. 'You care about her, don't you?'
But all that came back was a long, low snore. They woke together, and realised some sound must have disturbed them. Matt instantly took charge, keeping them silent with a cutting motion of his hand while they listened intently. From a distance, a scraping noise came to them, faint, but in the tomblike quietness it might as well have been an alarm.
Matt grabbed the torch from the wall and they all crept out of the chamber.
The noise was intermittent and indistinct and they would often have to wait for long periods until it emerged again to guide them in the right direction. They moved along a broad corridor and eventually came to a large hall that could well have been some place of worship, for there was a strange air of sanctity present. Exquisite paintings of fantastical scenes lined the walls and in the centre of the floor was something resembling an altar — a large stone table set with objects of reverence. In that room the motion-tones took on a different texture, sombre, haunting, prickling the hairs on the backs of their necks.
The scratching sound came from the foot of the altar. As they moved closer, the torchlight set shadows dancing across the hall. The darkness unfurled to reveal a shape crumpled on the floor, and an odd fluttering movement above it.
'Don't go any closer,' Mahalia said in a weak, strained voice, tugging at Matt's sleeve. He threw her off, curious and unnerved at the same time. He had to see.
The shape fell into relief. It was one of the Golden Ones, a male, resembling Triathus with his beautiful features, faintly shimmering skin and long hair. He was twisted half on his back, occasionally clutching feebly at the altar to try to pull himself up.
Mahalia exclaimed quietly, a note of sadness in her words, for they could tell he was dying. They hurried to his side and though his throat had been slit and there were numerous other wounds in his torso, there was no blood. Instead, his body was breaking up into tiny pieces that transformed into something like moths, glowing and golden as they fluttered up to the shadows that swamped the vaulted roof. Inside him, it appeared as though he were made of nothing more than light.
Crowther pushed Matt to one side and knelt beside the dying god. At first the professor attempted to staunch the fragmenting of the body, but when it became apparent that the process was irreversible, he leaned forward and said, 'Who did this?' The god's lids snapped open to reveal shimmering eyes that ranged back and forth until they fell on Crowther's face. Then, with the last of his strength, the god reached up to grab Crowther's coat to pull him closer. His voice was a thin husk. 'They come,' he said. 'They come.'
No sooner were the words out of his mouth than his hand fell back and his eyelids fluttered shut. The deterioration of his corporeal form suddenly became intense; a cloud of fluttering golden moths soared skyward, blinding all those who watched, and when they finally cleared there was nothing left.
'That's why there's no one here,' Crowther said with horror as he stared at the space where the god had lain. 'They've all been murdered. All of them… the entire court.'
'Over here!' Jack's voice carried from the edge of the penumbra.
The others ventured over, distracted and disturbed by what they'd seen. A powerful feeling of dread crept up on them. They found Jack looking up at a standard that had been rammed into the floor with such unnatural force that cracks radiated out across the marble from the base of the metal spur. At the top hung a flag made of some kind of shimmering but ultralight metal featuring a stylised drawing of a seashell.
In the thin torchlight, Jack's face appeared to have drained of all blood. 'It's the standard of the Court of the Yearning Heart,' he said weakly.
Matt grabbed him by the shoulders. 'What do you know?'
Jack wiped his hand across a suddenly snotty nose. 'They're one of the worst of the courts. They don't care about humans… they don't care about anything.' He looked around, eyes blinking stupidly. 'They killed them all. Their own people!'
'We need to get out of here,' Crowther said. 'That poor soul gave us a warning-' A deep, sonorous tolling echoed somewhere in the depths of the court, moving slowly through the thick stone walls, spreading its warning until every room and corridor was filled with the dim pounding.
'They know we're here,' Mahalia said, wide-eyed. 'How do they know?'
Matt cursed. 'Someone obviously just killed that Golden One… a mopping-up exercise. They were probably just leaving when we arrived.' He looked around with uncertainty. 'I can't tell if the alarm is coming from ahead of us or behind.'
Their moment of paralysis was broken when they heard what appeared to be the skittering of insects. It took a second for them to grasp that it was the sound of many feet approaching from a great distance.
'An army!' Crowther said with horror. 'Bloody hell fire, there's an army of them!'
Matt propelled the other three in the direction of a large arched opening leading to an annexe dominated by a rectangular shallow pool of water. The torch sent rippling patterns of light and shade moving across the wall as they passed. Beyond lay a processional corridor lined with lush heavily patterned drapes that led on to what may have been a ballroom or a concert hall, the disturbing carvings giving way to gleaming white columns and swirling confections moving along pink walls; a raised dais lay at one end. The pattering footsteps were louder now, coming from all sides. 'It sounds like children,' Mahalia gasped. She had drawn the Fomorii sword, ready to lash out as she ran.They emerged through an open gilded gate into an enormous indoor garden of trees and well-clipped hedges, wrought iron fences and pergolas covered with flowering creepers, beds of alien blooms of red and blue and purple that released an intoxicating perfume, sheltering boulders and gravelled areas filled with tall grasses. It was designed in such a way that the paths led through it like a maze, revealing each new section only at the last moment. The most startling thing lay at the focal point: a well of sunlight streaming down through a hole in the roof, dazzling in contrast to the gloom that lay all around. A system of mirrors were fixed here and there, so that at certain times they could be turned to give light to the whole garden.
It was only when they'd ventured deep into the complex maze that they realised their mistake. The design made it impossible for them to see the approach of attackers from any direction until they would be upon the companions.
'Let's make it to the sun. It'll be lighter there and we can make a stand,' Matt said fatalistically.
It wasn't long before they realised they were surrounded. Running feet pattered by on every side in the dark, crunching on gravel, rustling past bushes or disturbing wind chimes. The sound became intense, like rain on the window in a heavy winter storm. They could just make out bodies, flashing past gaps in the vegetation and garden architecture, not human, small, smaller even than the people of the Court of Soul's Ease.
Words from a poem kept repeating in Crowther's head: For fear of little men… for fear of little men. And he did feel fear, and revulsion, and he could see it in the faces of the others. There was something in the size, and the way they scurried rapidly, that suggested rats, bringing up feelings buried since the earliest development of the human mind.
Their pursuers closed in rapidly, waiting for the moment when the four were completely surrounded. And that point came when the companions finally reached the column of sunlight, which centred on a raised platform of white marble. They thrust themselves into it, relishing the warmth on their faces, but all detail beyond the pillar of illumination disappeared into the dark and, reluctandy, they had to step back out of the column of light to see what awaited them.