'Professor,' she choked, 'I don't want you to die, too.'
'I know, and I'm so sorry to be doing this to you. I know you've been abandoned at every turn ... your parents . .. Carlton . .. You deserve so much more.' He fumbled around as if his vision was fading and eventually caught hold of her hand. 'You need to change your thinking, little girl. You're not what you think - you're a good person, a very good person. I know you're a crotchety, miserable young sociopath, but that's by the by. The only one holding you back is you. And I only wish I truly could have saved you, because I know you'll go on to better things.'
Her tears blinded her. 'I'm not like that, Professor—'
'You are, yes, you are.' He coughed; more blood. 'Fading fast now. What a way to go. I always dreamed it would be a Gary Cooper scenario, not slumped here like some drunken old tramp who's had his throat cut. Still, we're all heroes in our own minds, aren't we?' He pulled her closer. 'Listen to me.' His voice was so frail now. 'The only thing I can give you is a lesson. It might be the only valuable thing I've ever done, my one shot at redemption, but that will be down to you ... whether you heed it or ignore it. Not to put too much pressure on you.'
She pressed her face next to his greasy hair, smelled sweat and his own peculiar musk, not unpleasant. 'I'm listening. I'll ... I'll heed it.'
'Wait until you hear what I have to say first.' Even close to death there was still a snap in his voice. 'I made my mistakes a long time ago. I got lost, wandered away from the path I should have been following because I indulged all my weaknesses. There's a line in A Christmas Carol, where Marley's ghost is telling Scrooge where he's gone wrong ... He says, Humanity is your business! And that's true ... so true. Humanity is your business, Mahalia, not looking after your own selfish interests. Helping the people who need you, helping everyone you can. I never did that. I abandoned my family ... all the people I loved and who loved me. I did it because I thought I was weak, and if you think you're weak, you are weak. I still think I'm weak, and look at me now!' He gave a short, bubbling laugh.
'Don't...'
'No, you listen to me ... for once in your life! Your whole future is in your own hands. You can amount to something ... or you can carry on down the path you've set yourself on. And you'll carry on down it a little way and realise you can't go back, and all your future is mapped out for you. You'll just have to live it out, knowing how bad it's going to be ... like waiting for a bus that you know will never come.'
'I'll do what you say. I will!' She was crying openly now.
'No! Don't tell me now because it won't mean anything. You need to think about this, and turn it over, for days or weeks... if that time is available to you ... if you stand a chance of getting out of this mess. And you need to remember this moment... look at me - look at me, damn you! - you need to remember this moment, and how pathetic I am ... and think about what I could have been if only I'd tried. Remember that ... think about a life wasted ... by my own hand ... Nobody to blame for my fate but myself. If I hadn't got myself into this state, that mask would never have been able to control me ... and then ...' His chin dropped down and he stared into the middle distance.'... maybe everything would have turned out OK.'
Mahalia's attention was caught by movement. She looked up to see the last of the Djazeem warriors disappear down the corridor and then, a second or so later, the Lament-Brood began to move forward in their awkward zombie style.
Crowther saw the growing panic in her face. 'What's wrong?'
'The Whisperers are coming. Can you hear them?'
He chuckled to himself. 'An injection of their brand of despair would simply be overkill.' Then: 'Help me up.'
She obeyed instantly. She didn't think he had it in him to stand, but he did, and even more, he was able to walk with faltering steps.
'Give me your sword,' he said, 'foul thing though it is. Yes, I know I look like I couldn't lift a feather, but trust me, I have a reserve or two. You get inside that place ... find the others and for God's sake, save the day! Gary Cooper-style!'
'They'll take you over ...!'
'No, they won't. I'll be dead before I start blowing out that purple mist. But at least I might be able to hold them off long enough for you to get a head start.'
They made it to the doorway. Crowther steadied himself, then eased back so that the spear running through him supported him. He gave a slow exhalation of pain as it ground into his organs.
'Professor...'
'Go, you little idiot! I'm not doing this for the fun of it!' Briefly, he appeared to become delirious. 'There's some chap here with a pig's head. What's that all about? Blue sparks everywhere. What does that bastard want? Well, he won't get it!' He brought himself back and snapped at her, 'Run, damn you! Don't make me waste this last heroic gesture!'
Mahalia ducked forward and planted one last kiss on his cheek. It brought a fleeting smile to his face and then he turned towards the advancing horde. Mahalia ran into the shadows of the House of Pain, an intolerable weight on her heart.
Matt and Jack sprinted through endless corridors calling Caitlin's name, but they weren't even answered by echoes; the air was too hot and dead, the place too labyrinthine.
'We're probably just going round in circles!' Jack said dismally.
'No we're not,' Matt replied. 'I've got an unerring sense of direction, one of those skills you build up when you do the kind of job I do. We're going right into the heart of it.'
'But what if that thing's already killed her?'
'If that was what it wanted to do, it would have done it the minute we walked in here. It's after something more ... I don't know what, though I reckon it has something to do with her being a Sister of Dragons. Despite appearances - i.e. being as mad as a fish - she's someone who might be able to stop all this stuff going down. I think it knows that ... it knows what she's tied into ...'
'The Blue Fire?'
'Yeah. That's the thing that's going to win the war. She's a part of that somehow, and it wants to get at the Blue Fire through her. That's what I reckon,' Matt concluded.
Jack stopped running and stared at his friend. 'You know a lot you've not been telling.'
Matt turned, his expression dark. 'Don't tell me you can read bloody minds, too?'
'No, but...'
'Good. Now keep up.' He ran ahead, his loping gait uncannily easy.
They rounded a corner and came up sharp. A figure was spraying dripping slime as it separated from the wall. Its fluid shape gradually settled into a bulky, muscular form that was still partly human, but with the characteristics of a bull. It moved to meet them, white eyes glaring out of its broad, black face.
'What is it?' Jack gasped.
'It's this place,' Matt said, 'whatever's here ... whatever intelligence. It takes on these forms to communicate with us ... in a manner we can understand.'
'Goooooo bacckkkkkkkk ...' The crackling words were so alien they were almost incomprehensible, but they got the gist of it from the thing's threatening posture as it positioned itself in the middle of the corridor.
'Well, that's a good sign,' Matt said. 'We must be getting close to somewhere important if it's telling us to go away.'
Jack clutched at his arm. 'Aren't you scared?'
Matt gave a defiant smile that raised Jack's spirits. 'Let's see if it can be hurt.' He gripped his sword with both hands and rushed the beast. His first blow slammed into the middle of that broad head with a sticky crunch as if he were chopping rotten wood. The beast didn't respond in the slightest. It stood there, staring with eyes of cold maleficence, as Matt wrenched the sword free and attacked again. For ten minutes, he hacked at it until there was nothing left. And still the pieces with the eyes stared at him. They said: You cannot harm me. You cannot defeat the House of Pain.
Matt rested on the sword amid the gruesome remains and mopped the sweat from his brow. 'Well,' he said between deep breaths, 'I suppose the answer is no.'
Jack ventured closer, dismal once more. 'What are we going to do?'
'We're not going to give up, so don't even think it.'
A soft susurration crept along the corridor from behind them. Matt looked towards the sound, his mind racing. Purple mist, still thin at that point, drifted into view. 'Looks like they got through,' he said quietly. There was no way back.
'Mahalia,' Jack said desperately. He started to move towards the mist until Matt caught his shoulder.
'Don't even think it. You won't be able to do anything. Besides, she's smarter and tougher than you. She'll be one step ahead of them. She's probably taken one of the side tunnels.'
Jack looked up at the man he now trusted more than any other adult, and wanted to believe.
'Come on,' Matt said. 'The only way is further in.'
They jogged down the corridor with Jack throwing backward glances as they ran. The further they progressed into the structure, the hotter it got, until they felt as if they were closing on some enormous furnace. A rhythmic thudding could be heard dimly through the walls, the vibrations running up through their legs and into the pits of their stomachs. It echoed the thunder of several thousand legs behind them, marching down the endless dark tunnels.
'Matt?' 'Save your breath.' Sweat burned Matt's eyes, and however much he wiped it away, more flowed down.
'No, it's important. Whatever happens, don't let anyone take me prisoner again. I couldn't bear it ... not after all that time in the Court of the Final Word.'
'What do you expect me to do?'
'Whatever you have to. Will you promise me that, Matt? Will you?'
There was a silence so long that Jack thought Matt wasn't going to answer, but then he said, 'Yeah. 'Course. You can count on me. Now ... no more fatalistic talk, all right? We've got a job to do.'
The darkness ahead slowly unveiled a figure. Matt came up sharp, holding out an arm to stop Jack running into it.
'Gooooooo bacckkkkkkkk...'
This beast was shaped like a giant spider, but still with human characteristics at the centre of its eight spindly legs. It skittered around the corridor, white eyes glaring.
'Jesus H. Christ, how many of these things am I going to have to chop to pieces before we get to where we're going?' Matt muttered bitterly.
'It can see into us, can't it?' Jack said. 'Part of it's human, to communicate, but the rest of it is something it knows will scare us.'
'It doesn't scare me.' Matt brandished the sword again. 'To answer your earlier question.'
But just as he was about to attack, he sensed movement in the shadows behind the spider-thing. 'What's there?' he asked himself.
The motion was at ground level, like the tide rolling in, but it was impossible to pick out detail from the darkness. Watching it approach, so chaotic, so relentless, made them shiver.
The spider-thing gestured with a human arm attached to its torso. 'Disssseeeeeeeeeeeaasssse ...'
'Disease,' Matt repeated, his mind turning rapidly.
The plague demons swarmed around the feet of the spider-thing, not slowing, but dancing, twisting, cruelly in every aspect of their tiny forms.
'Back!' Matt whispered, mesmerised by the sheer number of the approaching demons.
'What?' Jack said, dazed.
'Back!' Matt thrust the boy the way they had come. 'Don't let them touch you. They're something to do with the plague.'
'The Whisperers—'
'I know!' Matt snapped. 'But I saw another way ... I think.'
They ran as fast as they could until Matt halted at a slit in the meaty walls.
'What is it?' Jack asked.
Matt stuck his hands into the slit and pulled back flaps to reveal a gap. Jack hesitated, but the sound of the swarming plague demons approaching rapidly concentrated his mind. He forced his way into the slit and pressed on, the meat folding around him. Matt followed.
They emerged into a chamber filled with a pale grey light emanating from a source they couldn't see. Instantly, the atmosphere in the room hit them like a wall. They both experienced a grief so deep it felt as if their hearts were being torn open. Tears welled up in their eyes unbidden, burning tracks down their hot cheeks.
In a sudden rush, Jack had an overwhelming sense of his mother, though that memory was impossible. He felt her joy at his birth, swooping, swirling, transcendent, and then the bitter, brutal comedown into devastating misery when he was stolen from her by the gods. Bereft and directionless, her death came soon after, violent and pitiless. Every negative emotion cut him like a knife. He saw it through her eyes, felt it as she did, and in some way he was convinced he was responsible for it all. The full force of the emotion came like a storm; he wanted to kill himself.
Matt gripped his arm so tightly he squealed. 'Focus on me. Don't feel anything. This is why they call it the House of Pain.' Matt dragged him across the room.
When they reached the other side they saw plague demons forcing their way through the meaty flaps. They weren't going to give up, ever.
'We don't stand a chance,' Jack whined.