They rounded the headland and saw the outpost of Amasis moments before the setting sun slid behind the mountains to the west.  At the far edge of the long sweeping beach a gleaming structure could be seen.  Its shining surface took the last rays of daylight and reflected them, casting ethereal light across the entire beach.  The tall, smooth building resembled the head of a giant axe that had been thrust into the sand.  Its front edge which faced the sea was thin and curved.  The rear of the vast building was hidden in shadow under the steep mountainside that framed the eastern edge of the beach.

          Sela put a hand to her eyes to shade them from the brilliant light.  ‘Is that a building?’ she said as she squinted at the unique structure.  ‘It seems to be made of glass.’

          ‘It’s not glass,’ Jehenna said proudly.  ‘It’s translucent metal developed by my mother.  Harder than steel.  Almost as tough as shatterstone but easier to work with.  My mother had told me that they had had some success with it, but I never dreamt that they had built the entire installation out of the stuff.’

          ‘Installation?’ asked Bormanus.

          ‘You are looking upon the Amasis Research Facility.  My mother is director of the installation and its chief scientist.’  

          The sight of the beautiful Acoran gazing proudly up the beach at her mother’s secret science facility filled Lilith with sorrow.  She had seen hints of what lay ahead and the knowledge was as poignant as it was terrible.

 

 

A short pier made of Acoran iron had been built inside the rocky breakwater that extended out from the headland.  A number of ships could be seen here, but they were derelict, either smashed up against the rocks or lying on their side caught on a sandbank which ran parallel to the shore.  

          Jehenna noticed one ship had been damaged significantly more than others in the maritime graveyard.  The hull of this vessel was split and pocked with holes, as if it had been subjected to cannon-fire.  The ship’s deck was a field of arrow shafts made of bone.  The Ghul.  They had rained so many arrows down on the craft, there was hardly a square foot of timber that wasn’t marked by their passing.  Although the hull had been broken badly, Jehenna could still make out the lettering on the side of the vessel: The Silhouette.

         Jehenna stopped dead when she saw it.  She couldn’t count the number of times she had sailed on that boat, but now it was almost unrecognisable.  The Ghul had been merciless in their attack.  There was no way anyone could have survived such an assault. 

          She sank to her knees and cried.  She didn’t care that her companions could see her.  Didn’t care that crying was a very uncharacteristic thing for her to do.  Didn’t care that she looked vulnerable and weak.  In the sight of the destruction of her father’s boat, and the likely slaughter of the rest of her family, nothing seemed to matter anymore.

          A small hand touched her on the shoulder.  ‘Your family?’ Sela asked tenderly.

          ‘Yes,’ she said and buried her head in her hands.

 

 

Jehenna had no way of knowing how long she had spent on her knees in the sand.  Time seemed to have collapsed upon itself and was now a broken object she had no interest in.  Simeon was dead.  Her parents were dead.  All she wanted to do was kneel on the beach and watch the waves lap at the shore.  She would stay where she was until the tide had risen high enough to sweep her out to the sea where she would float forever, adrift and alone.

         ‘Come on,’ Sela said with a softness that she had kept hidden until now.  ‘We must go.’

         Jehenna was vaguely aware of the Tamuan but the words she spoke did not take on any meaning.  They were just sounds.  It was as they were underwater.  It was hard to hear underwater.  The water made everything soft.  Dull.  Numb.

         ‘Jehenna, it’s almost nightfall,’ the soft voice said.  ‘The Ghul will return.  We must go.’

         Ghul.  Nightfall.  She knew these words had significance but as the setting sun fell from view, she wasn’t sure what they meant.  She wanted to sleep.  Sleep.  For a very long time.

         She felt hands take hold of her elbows and she was lifted onto her feet.  She was walking but she wasn’t sure where.  Out of the corners of her eyes, she could make out the corpses of dead Acora, stripped of their flesh by wind and sand.  Someone was talking to her once more, but the voice was not as soft as it was before.  There was tension there.  Jehenna thought the voice might shatter.

          ‘Jehenna – you’ve got to pull it together.  They are coming!’

          Suddenly her head was pulled around and the shadows of hundreds of Ghul marching up the beach towards her pulled her back into reality.  Her vision became sharp.  All sounds became clear.  It was as if a blanket had been pulled off her senses, and the chill of reality slapped against her skin, waking her from her stupour.

          ‘I have a key!’ she shouted, and pulled out a locket that lay at the end of a golden chain she had been wearing around her neck.  A delicate press along the side of the locket popped a tiny latch on the ornament, revealing a small compartment in which lay a key.

          A bone arrow shaft splinted against the iron frame of the research facility’s doorway.  The Ghul were within range.  Another second would bring a volley of arrows that would kill them all.  

          ‘Hurry up please!’ shouted Sela who was beside herself as she watched Jehenna turning the key in the door’s tiny keyhole.

          A second passed and the volley of arrows was fired.  But the shafts smashed harmlessly against the iron doors through which the company had passed.  Sela winced at the sound of so many arrows hitting the doors.  She groaned loudly, not knowing whether it was from relief or frustration.

 

 

Dr Claudia Kallady.  It was her office.  The golden letters on the frosted glass of the door said so.  The door to the room was ajar.  Jehenna turned to her companions and said, ‘Wait out here please.’  She pushed the door open just enough to slip through and disappeared into the room.

         It was dark inside, but a cloud of shatterbugs outside the dirty windows at the far end of the office provided enough light for Jehenna to avoid walking into the furniture that cluttered the room.  There were chairs, benches and stools scattered throughout the large room.  Piles of books lay on the floor amid sheets of paper and piles of clothes.  To one side of the room a cot had been set up beside a stolid oakaen desk.  Crumpled sheets lay heaped at one end of the cot.  At the head, a pillow still bore the imprint of the head that had recently rested there.  Behind the desk, an ornate chair crafted from maroon leather and Acoran ironwood faced the garden that lay on the other side of the windows.

         ‘Mumma?’ 

          Although she had hardly spoken above a whisper, in the silence of the room Jehenna’s voice reverberated off the timber panels.  In the chaos of her mother’s office, she felt like an intruder.  

        Jehenna stepped forward just as the arm chair swung around to reveal her mother.

 

 

She looked haggard.  She wore the white scientists’ robe Jehenna had always associated with her, but it was scuffed and ripped.  Her dark skin was similarly marked by bruises and cuts.  The only thing about her that wasn’t unkempt or dirty was a small glass sphere that was suspended from a silver chain around her neck.  The sphere shimmered in the soft light filtering in through the grimy windows.

         Jehenna rushed to her mother and knelt down before the armchair.  She clasped her arms around her mother’s legs and threw her head into her lap just as she had done a hundred times before as a child.  Claudia Kallady put a soft hand on her daughter’s back and patted her gently.

          ‘Jehenna, I’m sorry to inform you that your father is dead.  I buried Jonas three weeks ago.’

          Jehenna looked up into her mother’s tear-soaked, brown eyes.  There was a time when those eyes sparkled with curiosity and desire.  Now they just looked like flat, muddy puddles.  ‘Mumma, Simeon is dead too.  I was with him when he died.’

          Claudia didn’t even blink.  She just stared back at her daughter and said, ‘I thought something like that would happen.’

          ‘Mumma?’  Jehenna was unnerved by the reaction.

          Claudia gave Jehenna a few brusque taps on the back and pulled herself out of her chair.  She gazed around the room with a guilty look on her face.  ‘I’m sorry Jehenna.  Had I known you were coming I would have tidied up.’  

          She proceeded to pick up books from the floor and place them in untidy piles on her desk.  ‘So much to do.  Never enough time in the day to do it.’

          It was erratic behaviour and Claudia Kallady was never erratic.

          ‘Please stop,’ said Jehenna as she grabbed her mother by her shoulders and swivelled her around so that she was facing her.  ‘Tell me Mumma, how did you survive?  Everyone else is dead.  How did you escape?’

          Claudia walked to the dirty windows and rubbed a hole in the grime so she could see better.  ‘Do you like my garden Jehenna?  I’ve become quite the gardener since coming to Amasis.’

          Jehenna said nothing but just gazed dumbly at the sad figure of her mother looking out onto a garden that contained more weeds than flowers.

          Claudia placed her head against the window and sighed.  ‘On the night they attacked, I was out in the garden.  I had no idea what was taking place on the beach.   It was not until the Ghul were climbing over the garden wall that I…’  She stopped.  In her mind, the terrible night replayed itself.  She could see the pallid figures of Caliban’s forces streaming over the wall like a plague of rattu.  She could see herself running through the garden, fumbling with the door of her office before the Ghul could take her.

          ‘The actual facility was locked down before they could enter.  Everyone but me was outside.  That was many weeks ago.’

          ‘Mumma, they’re back.  We narrowly escaped them on our way in.’

          ‘Oh that’s not news to me Jehenna!’ Claudia laughed frivolously.  ‘They’ve been back every night!  They keep climbing over the walls, but they can’t get in.’

          Jehenna looked at the windows and the door leading out into the bedraggled garden.  They looked so flimsy, she was surprised that it had kept out the breeze, let alone the Ghul hordes.

          ‘They couldn’t get in here?’ she said, confusion colouring her voice.  She twisted the handle and stepped outside into the garden.

          Suddenly Claudia burst into action.  She leapt towards the door, grabbed Jehenna by the arm and swung her back into the room.

          Jehenna was stunned.  She said nothing but stared at her mother as though she didn’t know who she was.

          Claudia stepped forward and stroked her daughter’s hair tenderly.  ‘I’m sorry darling.  I didn’t mean to scare you.  It’s just it’s dangerous for you to go out there.’

          Jehenna nodded as if she understood but her eyes remained wide open in surprise.  ‘Are there Ghul out there Mumma?’

          ‘No darling.  Only plants.’  She stepped back towards the window and pointed at three purple plants that stood in the centre of the garden.  The plants were as tall as a small tree but unlike a tree they were mobile, sliding like serpents on prehensile stalks.  When Jehenna moved closer to the window the plants slithered forward.  At the end of their stalks a thick corolla quivered and then in unison, three long lurid tongues slithered out and slapped against the glass window that Jehenna was peering through.  She shrieked in shock and jumped back from the glass.

          Claudia smiled sympathetically.  ‘They are a little frightening, aren’t they!’  The tongues continued to lick at the window.  ‘They have voracious appetites.  They must have eaten over one hundred Ghul in the past week.’

          She moved over to the door and before Jehenna could do anything, stepped outside into the garden.  She walked straight up to the bizarre plants and gently herded them away from the window.  They slithered across the garden with their tongues tucked back behind their petals.

          Jehenna rushed to her mother when she came back into the room.  ‘Why didn’t the plants attack you?’

          ‘Why?  Because I’m their mother,’ Claudia replied in a teasing fashion.  ‘Until recently I fed them all the gillygulls I could shoot down.’  She smirked to herself.  ‘At least some good has come out of the Ghul’s discovery of Amasis – I bet the gillygulls are happy about it!’

          ‘Mumma, there are people outside the office who are waiting for me.  They need your help.  I need your help. We need passage north to Cephalonia.’

          ‘Of course darling.  That can be arranged.’

          ‘Mother,’ Jehenna said, adopting a formality reserved for the most serious of occasions, ‘are you alright?  You… don’t seem yourself.’  In the privacy of her mind, Jehenna scolded herself for asking such a stupid question.  Her mother had lost her soulmate.  Her husband of thirty-three years.  How could she be anything but devastated?

          ‘Oh, I’ve done some incredible work lately Jehenna.  You’ll be so proud!’ Claudia replied in a voice that bubbled with glee.  

          Jehenna frowned.  Joviality never came naturally to her mother.

          ‘Come.  I have something to show you.’  

          She walked out of the office and into the corridor where Lilith, Sela and Bormanus were waiting patiently.  Without acknowledging Jehenna’s companions, Claudia sped off down the hallway, eager to show her daughter her latest work.

          Sela and Bormanus hurried off to catch up to the scientist, but Jehenna just stood there dumbstruck.

 

 

Lilith had stayed back.  She knew what was going through Jehenna’s oppressed heart.  ‘Child,’ she said sagely, ‘you will find that people respond to death in vastly different ways.  Your mother has been all alone for weeks.  She could have been crippled by despair, but instead of allowing that to happen, she chose to cut off her emotions.  It’s probably what has kept her alive.’  

 

 

They made their way through the maze of shining, empty corridors until they came to a broad corridor that ended in a metal bridge.  On either side of the bridge lay darkness.  The sound of surging surf rolled down the hallway towards them.  Claudia stopped and addressed them as if she were a tour guide.  ‘We are now entering a part of the facility that is actually carved into the rock of the escarpment.  It took us many years to dig this out but what we have down here is very important to us.  We didn’t want to make it too easy to find.’

          As they approached the bridge, Sela’s nose crinkled up and a tortured expression appeared on her furry face.  ‘What’s that smell?’ she said in a pained voice.

Claudia smiled at the question but did not answer it.

          They stepped out onto the bridge and the sound of crashing water drove away all thought of the stench of sulphur.  They had walked out into a chasm.  Steep rock walls could be seen fading into the darkness and the occasional spray of salty water suggested the sea had somehow found its way into the chasm.  Jehenna leant over the tall sides of the bridge to see the white crests of waves drawing an intricate, ever-changing pattern on the shifting dark waters beneath.  The base of the chasm as far as she could see was a seething mass of ocean that squirmed about in the narrow fissure like a serpent caught in a crevice.

          A sudden wave exploded against the rock wall nearest Jehenna and the resulting spray drenched her.

          Claudia exploded in laughter when her daughter pulled her head back from the bridge’s edge.  Jehenna’s long, dark locks lay against her scalp like trodden grass.  ‘Jehenna, if you’re done having a bath, perhaps we'll move on.’

          Sela sniggered at Claudia’s comment but the sulky glare Jehenna gave her mother was more entertainment than she could have hoped for.  Claudia, spurred on by Jehenna’s petulant look, added, ‘Oh do come on, Jen!  You're leaving a puddle on the bridge.’

          The surging flood below was not enough to drown out the sound of Jehenna stomping across the metal bridge as she followed her mother to the ominous-looking iron doors that lay embedded in the wall on the far side of the bridge.

          Claudia Kallady placed her palms against the doors and pushed.  ‘I think you’re going to like this.’

          The doors swung open to reveal a circular room that was as large as any indoor space they had ever seen.  As one, they all walked through the doorway to find themselves standing on an elevated iron landing.  Walkways extended to the left and right of the landing and ran around the circumference of the room until they met on the opposite side where another set of double doors stood behind a similar iron landing.  

          The room was filled with tables covered with white cloth and illuminated by lanterns of shatterbugs that were suspended from the high ceiling above.  But it was not the tables that held Claudia’s guests’ attention.  It was what lay on them.

          Jehenna, Sela, Bormanus and Lilith all had the same expression of stupefaction and wonderment upon their faces.  They did not understand what they were looking at, but the all knew the objects on the tables were something special.  They varied in shape and were constructed of all manner of materials, although metal and glass figured prominently.  Many of the objects gleamed in the gentle light cast from the lanterns overhead.

          ‘Just what exactly are we looking at here, Dr Kallady?’ Bormanus’ oily voice articulated what the others had been thinking.

          ‘Weapons,’ she replied.  She said it quietly and proudly, the way a mother might present a sleeping newborn.  Weapons.  Jehenna realised that her mother’s work had been her only defence against the madness that follows in the wake of absolute despair.  Claudia Kallady had not only lost a husband and son.  She had lost a community.  She had built the Amasis Research Facility from scratch, made it a home to hundreds and in their isolation they had become a family.  She had watched the Ghul tear down that community.  The weapons were the only things left of that life she had known and they were the means to retribution.  

          ‘Weapons?’ Jehenna said slowly, as if waking from a dream.  It had been a long journey.  The longest of long journeys.  They had been beaten almost every step of the way.  But it didn’t have to stay that way.

          The sudden promise of something that could help them change their status of victims, help them strike back, had a profound effect upon the young Acoran.  She felt giddy.  The presence of so many tools for revenge was like an epiphany.  She knew what she had to do.  She had to adapt.  Harden her heart.  Like her mother, Jehenna had to dispense of her sadness.  Weapons were cold.  Hard.  Sharp.  The very things she needed to be.  

          ‘Can we see them?’ Jehenna asked. Despite the melancholia that had been eating at every cell in her body, the corners of her mouth crept upwards in a show of perverse delight.

          Claudia smiled back and the similarity of mother to daughter was extraordinary.  ‘Why, if you’re good, I may even let you keep an item or two!’

 

 

They made their way down two ladders suspended from the landing onto the floor beneath.  As they clambered down the ladders, the smell of sulphur rose up again, this time stronger than before.

‘It stinks even more in here!' exclaimed Sela between highly exaggerated gagging noises.  The smell was at its worst around the room’s periphery, so they were pleased when Jehenna’s mother led them through the tables to the centre of the room.

          The room was an arsenal but unlike any found in the Myr.  There were variations on conventional weapons but most of the objects on the tables were completely new inventions.

          Jehenna picked up a glass sphere that had a number of small copper dials in it.  ‘What is this?’ she asked, turning the sphere over and over in her hand, trying to get some sense of its purpose.

          Claudia beamed.  ‘That’s one of mine!’ she said proudly.  ‘It’s a sunsphere.  I designed it when I first heard of the Ghul’s weakness to direct sunlight.’

          ‘What does it do?  How does it work?’

          ‘The dials on the side control the phosphorescent intensity and the dial on the top controls the yield.’

          ‘Mumma, you’re talking like a Spriggan.  I have no idea –’

         ‘Perhaps it would be easier to show you.’

          She picked up the sphere and set its dials with the speed and casual manner of someone who literally knew the equipment inside out.  Then she lobbed the sphere high into the air.  The size of the room was such that there was no risk of the object hitting the ceiling which was over fifty feet above them.  When the sphere was at the zenith of its throw there was a loud click and then…

          It was like walking outside on a hot summer’s day.  The light was pure and brilliant.

          Sela closed her eyes and enjoyed the warmth of the light upon her face whilst Bormanus shielded his eyes.  Jehenna and Lilith continued to stare at the light, their iris’ shrinking to tiny pinpricks.

          ‘Oh my, Mumma!’ sighed Jehenna as the light faded.  ‘It’s wonderful.’

          ‘You could kill an entire squad of Ghul with a single sphere,’ Claudia said as she picked up another sphere from the table and tossed it to her daughter.  ‘The longest we have been able to sustain the blast is five seconds.  By that time I imagine every Ghul with fifty feet would be incinerated.

          ‘May I keep this?’

          ‘Of course.  We never went into production with them, but you are welcome to take the prototypes.’

          There was one other sunsphere on the table.  Jehenna gave it to Sela who smiled appreciatively at Claudia and followed her to the next table where a collection of leather vambraces lay.

          ‘These just look like arm guards,’ the Tamuan said as she picked up one of the vambraces and placed it on her forearm.

          ‘You might want to be careful with that,’ Claudia warned as the Tamuan watched the vambrace curl around her forearm.

          ‘Why?  What does it do?’

          ‘Hold your arm in front of you and twist it.’

          Sela did so and out of a small hole at the front of the vambrace shot an incredibly long black tendril.  It resembled a friggu’s tongue, only a thousand times longer and much stickier.  It whipped across the room and connected with the pommel of a triple-bladed weapon on a table fifty feet away and stuck to it.

          As soon as the tendril was fully extended, it whipped back towards the arm guard fixed to Sela’s arm, retracting at a frightening speed.  Unfortunately for the Tamuan, the tendril was still connected to the pommel of the sword which now hurtled through the air promising Sela a bloody end.

          The Tamuan was frozen to the spot, all too aware of the fearsome weapon that was about to be embedded in her skull.

          At the last second, a shield was raised in front of her face.  Expecting the shield to do nothing to stop the oncoming weapon, Sela closed her eyes and accepted her untimely death.

          Gloop!

          It was not the sound she imagined a sword would make upon colliding with a shield.  Sela’s mind reeled trying to understand what had happened.  She opened her eyes to see Claudia lowering the shield she had thrust between Sela and the sword.

          Jehenna, Lilith and Bormanus were gazing at the miraculous shield with their mouths wide open.  They had seen the sword lunging at Sela.  They had seen Claudia quickly pick up the shiny black buckler from the table beside her and hold it in front of Sela.  They had watched as the dark, glassy surface swallowed the sword in its entirety.  

          Jehenna stepped forward and peered closely at the strange shield.  She could see slight ripples on the surface of the buckler, like the skin of a pond shortly after a stone had been thrown into it.  ‘I don’t believe it!’ she said as she lifted her hand to touch the shield.

          ‘Stop!’ cried Lilith, anxious that the Acoran would lose her hand.

          ‘Oh, it’s quite safe,’ reassured Claudia.  ‘It takes some force to push through the buckler’s outer layer.’

          Bormanus approached the shield, amazed by what he had just witnessed.  ‘Outer-layer?’ he asked.  ‘Just how many layers are there?’

          ‘We’re not sure.’

          ‘Not sure!’ he exclaimed.  ‘You made it didn’t you?’

          Claudia shook her head and laughed frivolously.  ‘Actually, I had little to do with this wondrous shield.  Someone else was responsible for this amazing piece.’

          ‘How does it work?’ asked Sela creeping around to the front of the shield, still shaken by the incident.  She was fumbling with the arm guard, terrified that any slight movement would release the tendril again.  ‘Where did the sword go?’

          ‘I really can’t tell you.  It was once explained to me, but the science of it is beyond even my comprehension.’

          ‘Science?’ Bormanus said with great surprise.  ‘You mean it’s not magick.’

          Claudia smirked.  ‘Young man, just because a thing can’t be explained does not make it magick.  Or divine.’

 

 

Claudia spent the next hour taking the group around the room, showing off such wonders as glass-steel swords capable of cutting through iron and suits of armour that were lighter than cloth.

         ‘But Mumma, with all these weapons, how is it that the Ghul defeated you?’

         Claudia’s face darkened.  ‘They knew when to strike.  Four weeks ago, Amasis was hit by a dreadful storm.  A number of ships, including your father’s, were blown against the sandbar.  We had to move them as they were taking on water.  On the night the Ghul attacked, we had everyone out on the breakwater helping move the marooned vessels.    I was in the garden, picking some pok poks for everyone to eat when Caliban’s troops appeared.  Their timing was impeccable.  Not a single Acoran was inside the facility.  The Ghul had filled the beach before we were even aware of their arrival.  We were cut off from the very weapons we had been designing to fight them.  We were easy pickings for them.  They just stood on the sands firing volley after volley at us.  There was nowhere to hide.’

         A long silence followed.  No-one knew what to say.  Finally, unable to endure the awkward speechlessness, Sela asked, ‘Did they get inside?’

         ‘No.  Fortunately we have security protocols that denied them the access they were seeking.  The facility went into lockdown as soon as the last Acoran stepped outside to rescue the ships stranded on the sandbar.  It stopped them that night, but it is only a matter of time before they claw their way in.’

 

 

Suddenly, the double doors on the landing above burst open and a battalion of Ghul troops spilled in.  They quickly spread out across the iron balcony encircling the room.  As each soldier entered, he or she raised a bone crossbow and trained it on the Myrrans below.  Soldier after soldier filed in until the entire balcony was packed thick with Ghul.

          A small gap appeared in the troops on the nearest landing.  A heavily armed Ghul officer wearing a horned skull as a helmet marched through the gap and stepped up to the edge of the landing.  He held his left hand aloft as a signal to his troops to hold their fire.

          Through the eye sockets of the bone armour, Jehenna could see the officer’s eyes twitching, waiting for any sign of movement from the floor beneath him.  He sneered at them revealing long yellow fangs which curved back into his mouth like bent nails.  Jehenna could tell that he was barely holding back his bloodlust.  He wanted to drop his hand and give the signal to his battalion to fire.  He wanted an excuse to riddle the bodies of the five Myrrans before him with the hundreds of bone shafts that were nocked and ready to fly.

          ‘My name is Corporal Golagg and I claim this facility in the name of Caliban.  Move and you will be fired upon.’

          Anxiety cascaded through Jehenna’s veins.  Her fear was not so much for her own life but for her mother and her life’s work.  Jehenna expected to see anger on her mother’s brow.  Or outrage.  Or fear.  But Claudia Kallady’s face hosted no such emotions.  She was calm.  She stared back at the Ghul officer with eyes so untroubled, she could have been gazing upon a friend.

          ‘Mumma?’ Jehenna whispered nervously.

          ‘We always knew a day like this would come,’ Claudia breathed back.

          ‘Silence!’ screamed Golagg, eyeing mother and daughter in such a way that they thought his next comment would be the order to shoot them.  But what came next was neither a threat nor an order to execute.  ‘Caliban has watched the progress of this research facility with great interest.  He commends you on your efforts Claudia Kallady!’   

          ‘Do you know this creature?’ asked Bormanus suspiciously.

          ‘No,’ rasped Claudia, not liking the inference Bormanus seemed to be drawing.  ‘Do you?’

          ‘He knows your name.  He knows what you’ve been doing,’ Bormanus hissed back.

          Seeing this exchange, Golagg turned to a soldier near him and stripped him of his weapon.  He aimed the crossbow at Bormanus and fired.  Before anyone had realised what had happened, Bormanus was screaming, his hand split by a six inch long bone shaft.  His long, shrill scream echoed off the chamber’s curved wall as he collapsed to the floor.  

          Before Jehenna could move to assist him, Golagg barked, ‘Do not move!’  He had cocked another bolt and this one was aimed directly at her head.

          ‘I’ve had quite enough of this!’ Claudia growled.  Her hand shot up and ripped the glass pendant from her necklace.  

          ‘What are you doing?’ Jehenna screamed as Golagg shifted his aim so that his crossbow as pointed directly at her mother.

          No answer was given.  The glass orb was slammed into the steel floor of the room with a most surprising result.  As the glass shattered, a cracking noise split the air.  It was like being inside a lightning bolt.  Jehenna felt hear heart skip a beat as the sound sliced through her body.

 

 

For the briefest of moments, it looked as through the explosion of sound had no effect.  And then everything changed.  The walkway upon which the Ghul were standing suddenly dropped beneath their feet.  At the same time, the floor underneath the walkway slid back to reveal a glowing moat of sulphurous, amber liquid.  The moat was about five yards across – wide enough to swallow the walkway in its entirety and with it, the Ghul.  When the metal walkway hit the moat, a sizzling sound filled the air.  Caustic, black fumes rose from the moat’s surface as the metal was consumed.

          The Ghul had no chance of escape.  Everything was happening too quickly.  By the time they realised what had happened they were up to their waists in the bubbling, orange liquid.  They did not scream but their frantic movements indicated they did not want to die.  As she watched the Ghul’s pathetic struggles, Jehenna thought of something Azazel had said.

          ‘Sunlight and shatterstone are probably known to you but we are vulnerable to other attacks.’

As the Ghul lay suffering in the boiling moat, Claudia Kallady ran from burning soldier to burning soldier taunting them.  ‘Not so immortal now are you?’  The calm, restrained shell had been cast aside leaving nothing but the raw skin of emotion. She spat at them, laughed at them and abused them.  Much of what she said was incomprehensible and in their death throes, none of the Ghul was aware of their ranting executioner.  Finally when all the Ghul had faded from view, swallowed up by the boiling molten rock, Claudia collapsed on the floor.  ‘And my little boy gone too.  All is undone.’

          Jehenna picked her mother up by the shoulders and held her tenderly.  ‘No Mumma.  The fight is not yet finished, but you have given us hope.’

          Suddenly the door at the other end of the room buckled as if a great spear had been rammed into it.  The sound of the impact reverberated around the weapons room.  A patch of dread silence was followed by another explosive noise as the entire door was belted off its hinges.  It flew across the room followed by a large black shape.  The Morrigu had come to Amasis.

          The sight of the Morrigu catapulted Claudia into action.  She pulled a small, thin device from her belt and clicked one of a series of buttons that ran along it.  A heavy groaning noise sounded at their feet and for the second time that day, a section of flooring in the room fell away.  Claudia took her daughter’s hand and ran to the new hole in the floor.  Inside it, a spiral staircase wound its way down into the darkness beyond.  The sound of waves crashing against rock could be heard below.

          The Morrigu swooped down upon the group, its talons raking the floor in an attempt to stop the Myrrans from escaping.  Sela shoved Lilith forward down the stairs and jumped in behind her.  Bormanus also slipped down in to the hole, but Jehenna jumped away from the hole and rolled under a table near the centre of the room.

          ‘Jehenna!’ screamed her mother.  ‘What are you doing?  This is no time for heroics.’

          The Morrigu swivelled around in mid-air trying to snag the lithe Acoran as she dived across the room.  It screamed in frustration as Jehenna eluded its long, thin claws.  The talons carved grooves in the floor as the great monster tried to turn in the cramped space.  Tables went flying along with numerous objects and weapons.  The sound of strange objects detonating as they were scattered about the room was all the impetus Jehenna needed to head back to the spiral staircase.  Before the Morrigu could snatch her, she tumbled down the stairs and collided with her mother.

          They stood up and faced one another.  A look of annoyance appeared on Claudia’s face.            ‘What were you thinking Jehenna?’ she scolded.

          ‘I wanted to grab a few things before leaving.  I didn’t want the opportunity to go to waste.’

          ‘What things?’ Claudia asked.

          Jehenna smiled mischievously and held up the strange black buckler and the glass-steel sword Claudia had shown her earlier.  Wrapped around her forearms were the amazing vambraces Sela had looked at earlier.

          ‘You are too reckless,’ Claudia commented.  ‘It will get you killed.’

          ‘Or keep me alive,’ Jehenna retorted as she looked lovingly at the small arsenal she had gathered in the few moments she had.  She held up a small glass vial she had snatched from a table.  ‘What is this?’

          ‘It’s called angelfire.  It burns hotter than a Kheperan day.  One of my scientists was once an apothecary.  We were hoping to produce this on a large scale, but that little bottle was all we could manage before the Ghul came.’

          ‘Would you mind if I took it?’

          ‘I’m sure you will find a use for it.’

          A shadow fell across the pair and Jehenna shoved her mother away from her a split-second before the Morrigu’s beak slammed down into the stairwell like a giant nail.  ‘I think we should go!’ Jehenna said with a wry smile.  Claudia took her daughter’s hand and led her down a narrow hallway that led away from the base of the stairs.  The sound of the crashing waves filled their ears.  At the far end of the hallway, diffuse natural light leaked across the passageway, hinting at a nearby exit from the facility.

          Jehenna and Claudia skittered around a corner to find Sela, Bormanus and Lilith standing on a platform that overlooked a wide cavern.  The mouth of the natural chamber opened out onto the Sea of Mists.  The ocean waters swirled around the cavern, lapping at its steep walls and creating pretty reflections upon the slate ceiling above.

          Tethered to thick bollards that dotted the water below the platform were numerous water-craft made of silver metal.  These bobbed up and down in the waves that pushed back and forth across the cavern.

          Sela pointed down at the strange craft below her.  ‘What are they?’ she asked Claudia who drew up next to her on the platform.

          ‘Sea chariots.  That’s how we’re getting out of here.’

          ‘But how?  There are no engines.  No sails.’

          Claudia reached over and struck a small bell that hung in a recess on the wall next to Sela.  A thin, timorous note rang out across the cavern.  Claudia turned back towards the sea chariots, eyeing the waters expectantly.  Sela followed her gaze but when nothing changed after a short time’ she exclaimed impatiently, ‘What exactly are we waiting for?’

          As if on cue, the waters around the closest chariots were disturbed as twelve nep’gii broke the surface and formed two lines of six in front of the craft.  They had inserted their bodies into harnesses that had been dangling just below the surface.  These harnesses were connected to a long leather strap which was in turn tethered to the front of the chariot.

          Claudia laughed.  ‘That’s what we were waiting for – our team of sea snorses!’

          Claudia ran down the steps to the sea chariot and jumped on board, followed by Sela and Lilith.  Before Bormanus could move off after them, he felt his arm being held by Jehenna.  ‘Not so fast, Bormanus,’ she said.  ‘I need to tend to your wound.’

          She gazed down at the bloody mess staining the sleeve of his silk shirt.  Bormanus had pulled the sleeve down over his wounded hand, as if to stem the flow of blood.

          He pulled away from her.  ‘It’s okay.  Really.  I’ve looked after it.’

          She pulled him back towards her.  ‘No Bormanus, that arrow hit hard.  Let me see your hand.’

          He frowned at her and stepped back.  ‘Jehenna, I’m okay,’ he said sharply.  ‘We have more pressing matters.  If we leave straight away we can hide ourselves in the Sea of Mists before the Morrigu finds us.  We’ll be safe there, but we have no time to waste.’

          ‘Very well,’ she said slightly petulantly.  ‘Let’s go.’

 

 

Jehenna climbed into the sea chariot and placed herself beside her mother in the driver’s seat, a small bench that was situated at the front of the carriage.  The nep’gii in front of the tiny craft pulled at their harnesses, obviously keen to return to the open sea.  Claudia took the reins firmly in her hands and when Bormanus, Sela and Lilith were seated, she said, ‘Hold on!’

          With a snap of the reins, the nep’gii lunged forward and hurtled out into the Sea of Mists.