35

THIS TIME Will was fully conscious.

As he hurtled through the air, he went into an uncontrolled spin, then came out of it only for the same thing to happen again. The G-force was so powerful that his head swam and he thought he was going to be sick. But he quickly found that if he spread his limbs like a skydiver, he could bring himself out of the spins, which made his downward passage far smoother. And by angling his arms and legs, he could precisely direct his flight, despite the encumbrance of the bulky Bergen and the weapons he was carrying, and avoid any collisions with the sides of the void.

He fell and fell and fell, and there was ample opportunity to ask himself if there would ever be an end to it, a happy end.

“What have I done?” he shouted at the showers of water that fell with him, licking his lips and tasting their saltiness. He tried to mop the moisture from the lens of his headset so he could see more clearly, but his movements caused an imbalance and his trajectory became erratic. He quickly extended his arms again. His speed was so great that everything was shooting past, a blur, but he was doing his best to look out for the submarine. He had made a commitment to Drake that he would deal with the Rebecca twins and the Limiter, and he wasn’t going to let him down.

He could see the needle flickering on the tracker in his hand, and just about hear the clicks it was emitting. His father was somewhere below.

His father …

What if Dr. Burrows had got it dreadfully wrong? What if the gravity didn’t reduce any further, or, more to the point, what if the void wasn’t deep enough for him to reach the areas where there was lower gravity?

He hadn’t thought of that!

It had seemed like the right thing to do when he’d flung himself into the void…. He had listened to his father’s words about faith, and they’d made sense to him then. For the first time in a long time, Will had really understood why Dr. Burrows had been acting so incredibly selfishly. And Will had wanted to demonstrate that he, too, had faith; faith in his father.

But now … Well, he must have been out of his head to jump. Maybe this was one grand gesture too many.

Then he noticed that the onrush of air against his face seemed to be less intense. It wasn’t snatching his breath away anymore. And, although it was difficult for him to be certain because the change had been so gradual, he could have sworn that he wasn’t falling quite so rapidly.

The tracker continued to click away merrily to itself, but there was still no sign of anything below — just the crimson glow from the incandescent rock on the sides of the void as he plummeted past. He felt the intense heat on his exposed skin for the milliseconds he sped by these red-hot rocks, and heard the hiss as some of the cascades of brine were instantly turned to steam.

Then he was absolutely sure he wasn’t falling so fast.

He could mop the moisture from the lens on his headset without going into a helter-skelter tumble. And he could study the sides of the void as he descended, take in the patterns created by the shifting water droplets accompanying him down.

Some time later, he began to feel as if he was actually floating, but he realized that this might be his brain playing tricks on him because he’d been falling for so long. It was also around this time that he began to hear a low rumbling sound. Maybe it had been there from the beginning of his drop but he’d been too preoccupied to notice it.

As he listened further, the sound seemed to be growing louder, much louder even than the rush of air in his ears. He scanned down below him.

What could be causing it?

A bizarre picture of monstrously huge cogs and gearwheels flashed through his mind — maybe it was a vague memory of some children’s story he had read when he was young. He tried to laugh it off, but the picture persisted. Perhaps he was heading toward the earth’s engine room, full of giants operating equally giant machines.

He shook his head, as if he was trying to shake himself from a ludicrous dream.

Due to the rumbling sound he couldn’t hear the clicking from the tracker anymore, but he could see that the needle was going crazy.

He scanned below him.

There!

In the corner of his eye he caught a tiny pinprick of light far, far below.

As a gust of wind buffeted him and he rotated in his flight, he lost sight of it and couldn’t locate it again. Had it really been a light that he’d seen? It wasn’t lava, that much was for sure — wrong color.

Then he spotted the light again. And when Will pointed the tracker in its direction, the display seemed to show a higher signal. He angled his limbs and maneuvered his flight path toward it.

As the light grew in size, he became less certain. Was this such a good idea? Although the tracker was indicating that his father’s radio beacon was somewhere close to the light, he also couldn’t dismiss the possibility that it might be the Styx.

By now his speed had diminished to the point that he hardly felt as if he was falling at all, more like a soap bubble being buoyed along by the wind.

The light grew bigger. It was giving off a blue glow, but he couldn’t judge how far away it was.

Making sure he had his Sten ready, he continued to glide toward the blue light.

Just as he made out a long sleek shape below him, it came up much faster than he expected, and he crashed straight into it. It wasn’t a hard impact by any means, but he banged his head and felt a little dazed.

Someone grasped his arm and hoisted him to his feet.

“Get off!” he shouted. He tried to struggle with what he thought was the Styx, then saw the glint from a pair of glasses.

It was his father. Will registered the intense blue glow emanating from behind him. Dr. Burrows had evidently set off one of Drake’s flares. And it took Will a couple of seconds to realize that he was actually standing on the submarine. He hadn’t recognized it right away because it was tipped over onto its side. Will had landed near one end of its hull, although he couldn’t tell if it was the prow or the stern.

Not knowing if he felt so euphoric because he was still alive, or because now he wasn’t alone in this remote and isolated place at the bottom of the world, Will flung his arms around Dr. Burrows. Even that small movement sent them both shooting along the hull of the submarine for quite some distance. Talk about being weightless!

As Will got back on his feet, he could almost feel himself drifting off the surface of the hull. His father was wagging his finger at him, then put his thumb and forefinger together to form a circle. Zero gravity—that was what Dr. Burrows was trying to tell him. It wasn’t quite zero gravity, but Will was going to have to be extremely careful about how he moved around or else he’d float over into the void, like a space walk gone wrong. Will nodded at his father to show he understood, and tried to talk to him, but his voice was lost under the rumbling sound. He realized then just how tumultuous it was.

Still a little dazed, Will allowed Dr. Burrows to lead him to the conning tower, which, because of the way the vessel had come to rest on its side, was sticking out into the void. Then his father was pointing at something far below them. Will leaned over. In the distance, glimmers of light came and went, like lightning on the far horizon during a thunderstorm.

Dr. Burrows attempted to tell him something, speaking directly into his ear.

Will shrugged — the noise was far too great for him to hear.

Dr. Burrows produced a scrap of paper and wrote on it. He showed the paper to Will. It was a single word.

“Triboluminescence?” Will mouthed back at Dr. Burrows, who nodded excitedly. Will knew what that was — his father had demonstrated it to him once using two pieces of rock quartz that he’d rubbed hard together. In the darkened cellar of their home back in Highfield, Will had marveled at the eerie flashes of light suffusing through the milky crystals. Although at the time it had seemed like magic, it had something to do with energy being released when the bonds are broken in a crystal. So below him, unbelievably large pieces of some type of crystal must be grinding against each other. That would explain the sound.

Will wondered if this was it — was this really the center of the earth?

The spectacle of the lights as they rippled in all directions — something like electrified cotton — was hypnotic, and father and son simply stared at it, filled with wonder. But there were other matters on Will’s mind, and he eventually pulled his eyes away from the lights and looked down at the thick metal shell beneath his feet. As he contemplated the runnels of water running over its dull gunmetal surface, he was alert to the fact that the three Styx could be inside at that very moment. Inside with the Dominion virus. Perhaps it didn’t matter anymore — perhaps there was absolutely no way for him, Dr. Burrows, or any of the Styx to get back up the void again, so the threat had effectively been neutralized. But he was here now, and he had to make sure.

He took out the climbing rope from his Bergen and knotted one end to a metal cleat he found on the side of the conning tower. Better safe than sorry — even a small slip on the wet hull might send him careering off toward the huge crystals below. Keeping a tight grip on the rope, he stepped very carefully to what would have been the top of the conning tower if the submarine had been the right way up.

As Dr. Burrows watched, Will began to lower himself over and into the conning tower. It only required the most minimal effort to make any sort of movement — the pull of gravity was almost nonexistent.

But as soon as he reached the observation platform, he froze.

Not three feet away from him, there was something disturbing stuck to the duckboard flooring, which of course was now vertical rather than horizontal given the orientation of the submarine. Two crumpled white wings waved slowly in the air currents.

“A Bright!” Will said through his clenched teeth. But as he looked further, he saw that its head and most of its abdomen were missing. In rigor, the barbs at the end of its articulated legs still gripped the duckboard, which was the reason it hadn’t drifted away.

Will had left his Bergen with Dr. Burrows back on the hull, and with it his cans of repellent. So instead he extended his Sten and prodded the Bright with the tip of its barrel. Nothing. He was pretty sure it was dead — from the Bright’s appearance he guessed that the Limiter had made short work of it, hacking the creature apart. Will jabbed it even harder, but there was still no sign of life, so he moved across to the main hatch and tried it. It was firmly shut.

Still giving the Bright carcass wary glances, he began to rotate the wheel in the center of the hatch. As the wheel reached the open position, he checked his Sten to make sure the safety was off. This time he was ready for the twins. This time there would be no hesitation — he was going to open fire the moment either of them, or their pet Limiter, popped their heads up. He closed his eyes for an instant, steeling himself.

Then, just as he was about to yank the hatch open, a small hand seized his wrist, stopping him.

He jerked his head up.

It was Elliott.

He couldn’t believe it. Had she followed him down because of Drake’s orders? He couldn’t imagine any other reason she would have jumped into the void after him. Straightaway he looked behind her to see if Chester had come, too, or Martha for that matter, but neither of them was there.

Indicating to Will that he should move aside, she opened the hatch the tiniest fraction, then ran her fingers around the inside. She was suddenly very still, then shot a tense glance at Will. She delved inside her pocket and took out a length of twine, which she carefully attached to something just under the rim of the hatch. Not paying any attention to the dead Bright, she tied the other end of the twine to one of the slats of the duckboard flooring just beside it. After making sure the twine was drawn tautly, she produced a pair of rusty clippers, which she nosed under the hatch and then used both hands to operate. It was only then that the tension left her face and she allowed herself to relax.

Will brought up his Sten as Elliott very slowly swung the lid of the hatch open. She directed his attention to something just inside it, a package the size of a brick, with a wire extending from it. Or at least what was left of the wire after Elliott had attached the twine to it and cut it, rendering it harmless. Will didn’t need to be told that the package was some form of explosive device. The Limiter had rigged up a booby trap, probably putting it together from chemicals he’d found on the submarine. There was no other explanation.

Will followed Elliott inside the conning tower, where she mouthed the words “Wait here,” then slipped outside the submarine again. Clinging to the ladder, Will kept on his guard, watching out for the Styx. Elliott was gone for less than a minute, reappearing with both Dr. Burrows and Bartleby, who she was tugging behind her on a leash. She closed the main hatch, and they all crept along the ladder to the submarine’s bridge. Now that they were inside, the rumbling sound was considerably reduced, giving them the opportunity to talk.

“That was a close call,” Will said, shaking his head. “Another second and I’d have set that bomb off. Thanks.”

Elliott held her finger to her lips. “Not so loud,” she whispered, looking cautiously up and down the gangways at either end of the bridge. “And don’t touch a thing!” she hissed at Dr. Burrows, who had begun to inspect the banks of equipment. “There might be a second trap around here somewhere.”

“Chester? And Martha?” Will asked. “They didn’t come with you?”

Elliott shook her head. “Just me and the Hunter.”

She used Bartleby to make a thorough search of all the compartments, checking for trip wires as she went. Will followed behind, covering her with his Sten. The orientation of the submarine and the fact that they couldn’t use the gangways didn’t matter, because they were able to float along in midair, like divers swimming through a submerged wreck. As there was no sign of the twins or the Limiter, they made their way back to the bridge, where Dr. Burrows was waiting.

“I never expected you to come after me,” Will said to Elliott, in a half question. “You didn’t need to.”

“Lucky for you I did,” Elliott replied, but didn’t offer any sort of explanation.

“And Chester — do you know what he’s going to do?” Will asked her.

“No, he didn’t really say, although I think he might try to go to his Topsoil home. But he did say the next time he saw you he’d knock the living daylights out of you. He said you should’ve at least discussed it with him before taking a flying jump over the edge like that.”

“I was afraid he’d try to stop me,” Will muttered.

But Elliott was already thinking ahead. “So the Styx aren’t here, but because they rigged the explosive on the main hatch we know that at least one of them survived. So they’ve either hidden the virus somewhere in this submarine, or —”

“Or they’ve got it with them,” Will interrupted her.

“Correct,” she said. “So our job isn’t done yet.”

“I bet this was one of the new generation of subs with stealth drives the Russians and Americans were both developing,” Dr. Burrows suddenly piped up. “Maybe the Russians were using it to spy on England from the North Sea, and as a subsea plate shifted it was sucked down into this void.”

“Smoking Jean … I’ve named this void Smoking Jean,” Will said.

“After Celia’s sister … How very appropriate.” Dr. Burrows grinned momentarily, then he was off again on his theory. “And maybe no one knows this sub has been lost because the Russian government would hardly want to publicize th —”

“Focus,” Elliott cut him off sharply. “We need to focus. There’s absolutely no point hanging around here. I’m going to set a charge to blitz everything inside this sub, in case they’ve left the virus behind. Then we need to find out just where they’ve gone.”

“But how? In this place?” Will asked her, then glanced at Bartleby, who was cleaning his nether parts. “Use Bartleby the Traitor to sniff them out?”

She nodded. “We’ll do a full three-hundred-and-sixty-degree search around the submarine,” she proposed. “It’ll be faster if we split up — I’ll take the area below the submarine. Will, you can take the shelf and the areas on either side, and —”

“No way,” Will countered immediately.

“Why not?”

“Because every time they do that in the movies something terrible happens. We stick together. And we make sure Bartleby stays with us, because whenever the cat runs off and someone has to go and fetch it, that’s really bad news, too.”

“You’re your mother’s son,” Dr. Burrows commented wryly.

Elliott glanced from Will to Dr. Burrows. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, but if it makes you feel better, we can keep together,” she said with a sigh. “Now make yourselves scarce while I set the charges.”

Once she had returned outside, Elliott linked them all together with the climbing rope. Will watched her as she was doing this. Although she had risked everything to reach this phenomenal depth in the earth, and there might be no going back, there was a grim determination about her. She was set on doing her duty and finding the Styx. Will drew strength from this. Maybe he’d acted on a rash impulse when he jumped after his father, but he was proud that he’d also risked his life to do what he had to do. Just as Drake would have expected of him.

They made a thorough search of the fungal ledge around the submarine. Bartleby didn’t pick up any trails there, so they began to climb down the inclined side of the void underneath the ledge, on the lookout for any caves or openings, or any evidence that the Styx had gone the same way. As they reached another fungal shelf below, Bartleby was becoming increasingly agitated. Will didn’t know if the constant rumbling was putting him on edge, but whatever it was, he didn’t seem to be finding any trace of the Styx.

As they climbed still farther down the void, they found that there were no more fungal ledges below them, and were forced to cling to the bare rock face. The biggest risk remained that if one of them made a sudden movement, they might all be sent careering off into the void.

When Elliott’s charges in the submarine finally detonated, they had covered quite some distance, and heard nothing of the explosion over the unceasing rumbling. Nevertheless, as they all paused to watch the brief blaze of light above, Will felt a little strange, because with the submarine gutted they now had nowhere they could return to. They were very much alone in this alien environment, where trying to find three Styx was tantamount to searching for three needles in the biggest haystack imaginable, and in the darkest of nights, too.

After a while Elliott drew them to a halt and indicated that they should reverse direction. She obviously thought they’d gone far enough and that it was time to search higher up the void.

It was exactly at this moment that one of the group made an overzealous movement.

Before they knew it, they were sailing away from the wall at some speed and out into the middle of the void. Will could see Elliott’s panic-stricken face and her open mouth as she screamed, then he realized he was doing exactly the same. But he couldn’t hear anything except the jaw-rattling rumbling, and there was nothing that he or any of the others could do but grab tightly on to each other, with a very anxious Bartleby trailing several feet behind them on his tether.

Eventually their momentum diminished as the air resistance brought them to a halt.

But it wasn’t quite a halt. They were still drifting through the nothingness at the center of the void, similar to when the engine of a boat fails and it’s left to the vagaries of the currents.

Thoroughly confused, Bartleby hadn’t stopped thrashing his long limbs in an attempt to get back to the side. Now Will and Elliott joined in with him, paddling with their hands and kicking out, anything to get themselves into motion again, but it was all to no avail. As the hours passed, the three of them attempted to communicate with each other, but what could they do? There were no fungal ledges to aim for, and even if there were, they had no means of reaching them. And while Will and Elliott remained in a state of panic, Dr. Burrows appeared strangely composed.

They gravitated toward a large boulder, which was spinning slowly on its axis, and were eventually able to seize hold of it. Its surface was pitted and rusty, like that of an asteroid. They clung to it for a while, then, at Dr. Burrows’s suggestion, they used it to push themselves off, precisely as though they were three divers jumping into a pool. Equal and opposite forces, Will thought as they went one way and the boulder the other — although it really didn’t get them anywhere. Using his headset, Will continued to check the space around them, hoping and praying there would be something else to help them. They bumped into pieces of rock and sometimes encountered small cloudlike formations of gravel, but nothing substantial. Will was still scanning all around them when, with a start, he realized he could no longer see the sides of Smoking Jean. They seemed to have disappeared altogether. Looking over his shoulder, he spotted them at some distance behind, growing smaller by the second.

Will knew then that they had gone beyond the void.

He pointed frantically in an effort to tell his father, but Dr. Burrows just shrugged in response. Slowly but surely they seemed to have floated into a totally new area. Into the area where the triboluminescent flashes came and went.

Will broke into a cold sweat as he saw that ahead of them was an infinite darkness. It was as though they had been shot beyond the stratosphere and into outer space, but this was some kind of inner space at the center of the earth.

All they could do was watch the triboluminescence as they gradually approached a continuous belt of what appeared to be floating mountains of crystal. As these crystals trundled ponderously around against each other, the evanescent but regular bursts of light zipped through the belt, allowing Will to make out that it stretched as far as the eye could see to the left and the right. The closest thing he could compare it to was the satellite photographs he’d seen of the rings of Saturn. There was a dreamlike quality to the lights, and as he stared at them, he found he was becoming almost mesmerized. This must be one of the wonders of the planet, he thought to himself, knowing that he might not be around long enough to tell anyone about it.

And it was impossible to judge distances. Wave upon wave of nausea washed through Will, and this wasn’t solely due to the effect of the zero gravity on his stomach. It was because he had the impression he was falling toward the lights from an incredible height. And at other times his mind played tricks on him; he really believed the lights were in touching distance and would try to reach out to them. They became a string of Chinese lanterns flickering on and off. But as he regained his sense of perspective, he knew that there was probably a vast distance between where he was and where the belt of crystal mountains lay. Will wondered if they would simply die of hunger as they drifted there, marooned in the night-black darkness; or if they ever did get as far as the rotating crystals perhaps they’d be crushed to a paste between them.

Then Dr. Burrows gathered them together and tried to explain something by scribbling on a scrap of paper and motioning with his hands. In the end, he gave up and simply took Will’s Sten gun from him. He slipped off the safety catch and, without any warning, he shot it. It was as though a retro rocket had been fired. Bartleby was startled by the muzzle flash from the weapon and Elliott had a heck of a job restraining him, but they were on the move again. The recoil from the Sten had propelled them at some considerable speed — not back toward the void, but deeper into the space where the crystal mountains were slowly turning.

For the life of him, Will couldn’t understand what his father was hoping to achieve, but he didn’t attempt to stop him. At least he seemed to have a plan. Dr. Burrows continued to fire the Sten, Will and Elliott reloading the magazines for him each time he emptied the weapon. Sometimes the shots made them wheel dizzily around as they went forward, but more often than not Dr. Burrows got them just right and they sped straight ahead.

Will found he’d completely lost track of time. They hadn’t eaten anything or slept for what seemed like ages, but the whole scale of the place was so mind-blowing and so terrifying that none of them dwelt on this for very long.

And words such as up or down, left or right held little meaning in this place — there was only the crystal belt to orient themselves on.

It may have taken them as much as a day — Will really couldn’t tell — but they entered an area where dust particles and water droplets hung in the air, making everything hazy. Many hours later, it seemed to Will, they’d passed through this area and were moving away from the crystal belt. Just as he was wondering if the dust they’d traveled through was at the very edge of the belt, he thought he caught a glimpse of what his father was aiming for.

Dimly visible in the distance, he spotted a beam of light. It was different from the triboluminescence — it was constant. And it gave them all hope.

With each shot from the Sten, the beam of light was coming that little bit closer. And when Will looked back, they definitely seemed to be leaving the crystal belt behind. But as Dr. Burrows fired the weapon time and time again, Will began to worry that they’d run out of ammunition. Then he found they were actually in the beam of light. There was a quality to it, a warmth, that prompted him to think it could be sunlight, but that notion didn’t make much sense to him.

At one point, Dr. Burrows stopped using the Sten and became terribly animated as he jabbed a finger toward the crystal belt. The column of light penetrated it like a searchlight, enabling them to see that it was not only composed of the huge rotating crystals. No, between them were suspended large bodies of water, like huge raindrops, but these suggested the size of lakes, seas, or maybe even oceans. And in these bodies of water, there appeared to be moving objects. It may have been a trick of the light, but they all swore later that they had caught sight of huge snakelike creatures and fish as large as whales.

Dr. Burrows continued to use the recoil from the Sten to drive them toward the source of the light, which grew so strong that Will switched off his headset. He saw that Elliott was smiling, and then he realized why. They seemed to have left the huge area and entered a new void. The illumination allowed them to see its walls around them. They were still moving toward where the light was originating, moving deeper inside this void. And little by little, gravity was returning. And the rumbling sound was diminishing, too.

It was hard to tell because of its scale, but the new void appeared to be conelike, with steeply angled sides. Dr. Burrows drove them closer to one of the sides, where they could see no sign of the ubiquitous fungus, but something much more surprising. They began to notice small specks of green in among the rocks: alpine plants growing together in clumps in the scree. These specks of green became more numerous the farther in they traveled, until eventually they were joined by gnarled, knotty trees — sorry-looking specimens with twisted trunks and very little foliage that gave the impression they were hanging on to the steep sides for dear life. And when, finally, Elliott spotted a ridge on the sidewall, Dr. Burrows took them over to it.

Like survivors washed up from a shipwreck, they crawled a little way and then just lay there, panting and more grateful than it was possible to express that they were back on terra firma. Elliott had the presence of mind to rope them to one of the trees — the last thing they wanted was to drift off again.

They passed around a canteen of water, and although the rumbling sound was at more bearable levels and they could hear each other, they barely exchanged a word, because none of them knew quite what to say. But they were alive, and as they realized this, their sheer fatigue overtook them and they slept.

“And do the Princes fade from earth, scarce seen by souls of men,” the old Styx declaimed as he stood by the very edge of the Pore in the Deeps.

A little distance around the perimeter, ranks of soldiers in formation were lining up and leaping from the edge. As these Limiters deployed their parachutes, they resembled wind-borne seeds drifting gently down into the wide expanse of darkness. Each soldier was loaded with equipment, and a number had large bundles dangling below their feet, which writhed and growled.

“Takin’ the dogs with them, too?” said a perturbed voice. “Why are so many of yer soldiers takin’ the plunge? Either this is a suicide mission, or yer know something I don’t.”

“But tho’ obscur’d, this is the form of the Angelic land,” the old Styx continued. He turned slowly to regard the misshapen human form, its head draped with filthy cloth, that had materialized beside him. “I wondered how long it would take for you to show up, Cox,” the old Styx said.

Cox was silent for several seconds, and when he spoke there was indignation in his voice. “Nobody told me ’bout this. What are yer Limiters up to? And what’s with the dogs — why do they need stalkers with them?”

“We have recently learned that the twins are still alive.”

“Down the Pore?” Cox gasped. “No, can’t be.”

“It can be — our information is indisputable. So there’s every chance we can recover the Dominion phials.”

“Ah, that’s good. So —” Cox gushed, but the old Styx silenced him with a flash of his obsidian eyes.

“Let me finish. Not only did the twins survive, but also the Burrows child and so, it transpires, did Elliott.”

“Burrows? Elliott?” Cox gulped. On hearing this, his head twitched like a bird’s and he took a hasty step back from the old Styx. As nebulous as his body was, from the way he was holding himself there was no doubting that this piece of information had made him acutely nervous.

“Yes, they’re both down there somewhere,” the old Styx said, rubbing his chin absently. “And if I recall correctly, your side of the bargain was to deliver up Will Burrows and anyone who’d had contact with him, and in this you have failed us singularly. And to add insult to injury, Drake is loose Topsoil, where he’s been a minor but very real irritation.” The old Styx raised his black-gloved hand and a pair of Limiters immediately appeared on either side of Cox, hoisting him into the air between them.

“But I am not without compassion.” The old Styx grinned, showing rather too much of his teeth. “I’m prepared to give you the opportunity to honor your commitments.”

“No, please, no, no,” Cox gibbered as it dawned on him what the old Styx was saying.

“Isaiah, chapter twenty-eight, verse fifteen — ‘We have made a covenant with death, and with hell are we at agreement,’“ the old Styx quoted.

“You don’t want to do this, not to yer old friend Coxy.”

“Deal’s a deal,” the old Styx said simply. With that the Limiters heaved Cox into the Pore. As he corkscrewed downward, his filthy black stole flapped in the wind behind him, making him look like a particularly hideous warlock short of one broomstick.

“Rough justice — wasn’t that what you said, Cox? Rough justice?” the old Styx yelled, his voice echoing around the Pore.