In the hot steam of the sacred spring, Mary clasped her hands and pleaded. 'I'll do whatever it takes. Please, if there's anything you can do to save her...'
'You will do anything?' The Goddess was serious and contemplative. 'What does this sister mean to you?'
'What does she mean?' The question was curious and unsettling; there was so much to sum up. How to decide what one person meant when their impact on your life was complex and inscrutable. 'She means ... the future.' Once Mary had latched on to that word, her thoughts quickly fell into place. 'I've had my time - I know I've got a lot of years left, but I made such a mess of things so long ago, it's impossible to go back now. I never thought about having children. Perhaps if I had, there might have been a chance for me. If I'd made them into good people, then I'd have done something worthwhile. But I've not done anything that really matters. If I was wiped off the face of the earth right now, I'd leave nothing behind that anyone would remember. But Caitlin ... she's my daughter in all but flesh. She's my hope for the future. If I save her, and she does good, then at least I've added something to life.' The words were painful to express, but Mary recognised their abiding truth as they left her lips.
'I can help her, but what is required is beyond even my capabilities. There are rules of Existence that we all must follow.' The Goddess raised one hand and it appeared that it was night in the spring and the moonlight was streaming all around, the world painted silver and black. 'A sacrifice will be the key to unlock the door. Are you prepared to make that sacrifice?'
'Yes.' Mary's throat was dry. She thought she knew what lay ahead.
'It is the greatest sacrifice ... your life. A life for a life.'
Although Mary had anticipated the Goddess's words, the enormity of what was being asked, once it had been put into words, stunned her. She was terrified, yet she knew she had no doubts. There was no alternative: Caitlin was good and decent and deserved her chance at happiness. To save her ... that was an achievement worth dying for.
'I understand,' she said. 'A life for a life. I accept.'
'You are brave, little sister.' The Goddess raised her arms in a gesture that showed her appreciation of what Mary had overcome to make her decision. She smiled. 'What lies ahead is the greatest mystery of all. But know this: death is not the end. Do not be scared, for Existence always cares for its own. Though you leave behind everything you understand, your sacrifice is recognised. Take with you the knowledge that you have committed an act of great importance and great goodness.'
The moonlight became brighter, and briefly Mary thought she was in a verdant grove on a hilltop somewhere in the deepest country. 'Know also, sister, that you have touched my heart. To travel here along the hard road, to overcome the three tests, to give up your life for another ... you are all I could have hoped for in your kind. You, little sister - you alone - have turned me around.'
'You're going back?'
'A new age awaits, and I shall be there to guide your people through the light of the moon. I will be there, in the forests and by the rivers, on the mountaintops and by the cool lakes. There is a struggle ahead, but if there are more sisters like you, then we have hope.'
'I'm so pleased.' Mary's words didn't begin to capture the magnitude of what she felt, but before she could say anything else, she sensed movement behind her. Standing in the steam was the Jigsaw Man, her nemesis.
'He is death, and when he touches you, you shall die,' the Goddess said. 'But there shall be no pain. You shall slide into the cool night... and then the moon shall rise.'
Mary took a deep breath and steeled herself, yet she was surprised to find she was no longer scared. Instead, she was excited at what was to come. She knelt down, for it seemed right, and then said, 'And Caitlin will be all right?'
'A life for a life, little sister,' the Goddess said. The steam swirled in a gale that blew from nowhere. Blue lightning crackled all around, and as the thunder rolled out, a knight in black armour emerged from the vicinity of the stream. He wore a helmet crafted like a boar's head.
'Who is he?' Mary asked.
The Goddess merely smiled enigmatically.
The steam shifted and behind it Mary could see the storm-lashed lane leading to Caitlin's house and Caitlin hiding behind a hedge, waiting. 'When is this?' Mary asked, though she thought she knew.
'The beginning,' the Goddess said. 'And now, another beginning.'
Mary felt a cool touch on the back of her neck and her eyes fell shut, though her smile remained.
The warp field behind Caitlin came alive with crackling blue lightning, obscuring the vista across deep space. The bolts of coruscating energy sizzled like molten iron across the now-deserted chamber, the Lament-Brood long gone to who knew where. Liam danced away in shock, but Caitlin, already numb from the House of Pain's gradual transformation, only turned to stare.
From the depths of a wall of Blue Fire stepped the black knight, the fierce light transforming the boar's-head helmet into a wild beast with glittering eyes. He strode forcefully towards the throne.
'Caitlin.' His voice echoed behind the grim helmet. 'The time has come.'
Caitlin blinked once, twice, taking in what she was seeing with the languorous abandon of someone freezing to death. Yet the knight's appearance provided a brief spark that warmed her spirit.
'You can't give in, Caitlin.' His voice was clearer now than it ever had been, as if with each appearance he gained a little bit more of the person he had been.
'You've been with me right from the beginning,' Caitlin said. 'Why do you keep coming to me?' Curiosity brought more warmth. She shook her head, trying to remove the cotton-wool swathing her mind.
'You will have to wait a while for that answer. Just accept that someone has your best interests at heart. Now come with me.' He held out a gauntleted hand.
Caitlin hesitated, then took it. Blue sparks crackled into the tips of her fingers, reminding her of some of the exhilaration she had felt as she grew into her role as a Sister of Dragons. Suddenly she missed it acutely, felt almost bereft, and another part of the iciness burned away. 'Why can't you leave me alone?' she said dismally. 'I've had enough of all this. I'm so tired. I just want...'
'What? To die? To give up everything ... all life? That's not you, Caitlin. I heard you were a doctor once, caring for the sick and the dying. Caring for them more than yourself.'
Memories of her past life surfaced, so vague and distant they seemed to belong to another person. 'Yes. That's right. So what?'
'Then you still have a job to do. I've been sent here to save you, Caitlin - or rather, to show you the path so you can save yourself ... and everyone else. Come.'
He marched across the chamber, then waited for her to follow. As Caitlin watched him, she remembered what Crowther had said about the boar-king in the Forest of the Night and she suddenly understood the symbolism of the knight's strange helmet. A boar, one of the Celts' totem animals - a messenger between humanity and the gods.
'Who's that, Mummy?' Liam's voice was a pale shadow; the House of Pain was working its dark magic in him, too.
'Someone sent to haunt me, honey. Don't worry about it.' She took Liam's hand and marvelled at how cold his fingers were.
The knight led the way through the deserted corridors. Caitlin expected the House of Pain to unleash one of its twisted manifestations to bar their way, but it had either decided she was no longer worthy of its attention, or the knight in some way shrouded their passing from the House of Pain's perceptions.
Eventually they came to a room closed off by a curtain formed from that sickening meat. Caitlin could hear a noise like a thousand rats on the other side.
'Steel yourself,' the knight said. He threw open the curtain.
It was the room with the plague egg that Caitlin had seen before. The floor was swarming with thousands of the plague demons, while others were being birthed by the minute. As the knight strode forward, the demons attacked his ankles and then swarmed over him, but his armour kept them at bay. He drew his sword, and in the darkened room it glowed with a thin blue light. The demons surged away, shrieking in fear, scrambling over each other to disappear into the far corners of the room. The knight walked up to the egg and waited. Another demon emerged into the world and then hurtled away the instant it saw the sword.
'Here,' he said, offering the weapon to Caitlin when she arrived at his side. 'Destroy the egg.'
'You do it - you're the good knight,' she replied. 'Or is this just another trick to damn me?'
'Aren't you damned already?'
His logic was impeccable. She took the sword, wavering under its weight. Not so long ago she would have wielded it as though it were nothing. Now it took all her effort just to lift it.
'This will stop any more from coming out,' she said, 'but it's not going to stop the ones already infecting people in my world.'
'The egg births them and nurtures them,' the knight said. 'Without it, none of them can survive.'
The last of the House of Pain's ice fell away and Caitlin felt a rush of adrenalin. Here was her chance finally to do something good. She heaved the sword up.
Despite their terror, in that instant the plague demons recognised what was about to happen. They surged forward as one, flinging themselves from every corner, screeching and squealing, their glittering eyes filled with murderous intent.
The knight became a blur of destruction, battering away the first wave. Still dogged by their basic fear of what the sword represented, the imps hadn't yet unleashed the true depths of their fury, but it would come.
'Do it now!' the knight yelled as Caitlin wavered in the face of the storm of activity around her.
She brought the sword down with all her strength.
It cut through the egg as if slicing through a giant mushroom. Around the room the shrieking of the plague demons became so intense that Caitlin dropped the sword and clutched at her ears; Liam ran from the room crying. As the creatures hurtled around the room in their death throes, the knight picked up his sword and forced Caitlin out of the chamber.
They didn't stop running until the egg room was far behind them, and they could no longer hear the awful cries of the dying plague demons. 'Is that it?' Caitlin asked breathlessly as they waited in an empty room that pulsed with the distant heartbeat she had heard when they first entered the House of Pain. 'Is it all over?'
The knight stood erect, resting his hands on his sword. 'The plague is over.'
'Thank God.' Caitlin wiped away a fugitive tear. 'At least
I'm not a complete failure.' She pulled Liam to her and stroked his head, feeling the weariness sweep over her again.
'You can still leave this place,' the knight said.
'I can't. Liam will die if we leave.'
'Not him. You.'
She glared at the knight. 'How can you say that? He's my son.'
'Think, Caitlin. You've stopped him from moving on. Do you think this place is good for him? Do you believe it's right to deny him what lies beyond ... whether eternal rest, or eternal life? Moments frozen in time have no meaning. Only constant change gives us perspective ... and life. Liam not growing, not having a life, is not Liam. It's just a snapshot. Nothing more.'
'Don't you dare lecture me!' she raged. 'What right do you have?'
'More right than you might think.' He appeared to steady himself, though the armour hid any sense of what was going on inside him. 'You asked why I kept coming to you, Caitlin. Here's why.' He took off his helmet. 'Because I love you ... and I'll always love you.'
The shock was so great that Caitlin staggered, and for a moment she thought she might faint. It was Grant, filled with the flush of life, looking as though he had never succumbed to the ravages of the plague, and for a moment she wondered if her devastating images of burying him in the back garden were just a nightmare.
There was a weight in her chest forcing its way up into her throat, blocking all the words that wanted to come out. Liam cried, 'Daddy!' and ran to throw his arms around his father's waist, and then Caitlin thought the rock would burst her chest open. She buried her face in Grant's neck, immersing herself in the fragrance of his skin, something that had been taken for granted for so long and now was as valuable to her as all the riches of the world. She didn't want to lose that simple aroma ever again. It brought with it a rush of such overpowering memories that she was carried away: the two of them sitting in Roundhay Park when Grant gave up his career and his ambitions for her; their marriage, seeing Grant waiting at the end of the aisle, looking so handsome, so special; Liam's birth, the baby on her chest, Grant holding her hand, tears in his eyes, too choked to speak; and more, every precious moment that had made up their lives together, now more precious than ever.
And by the end of it, all the suffering and the harrowing experiences on the road from their village to the House of Pain had been forgotten, and once again she was the woman she had been, Caitlin Shepherd, GP. Not a Sister of Dragons, not a saviour of the world. Just a person; and that was enough.