Eloise was able to sit on one of the sofas in the library, but Will had still failed to get any further response from her. He’d put on one small lamp, but Eloise stared ahead as if blind to everything around her, not blinking, registering nothing.
Will heard a car approaching, coming to a stop on the gravel outside; he heard their voices and the light knocking on the main door. He didn’t want to leave her at all, and not just because of the fragile state she was in, but because he still couldn’t be sure that Wyndham’s attacks had ceased.
He had no choice though, and crouched in front of her, saying, “I’ll be back in a moment. I’ll be able to hear if you call.” Her eyes stared through him.
He walked quickly through the house and opened the door. It had been the only choice, the only thing he could think of, and ironically, he had never been happier to see them. Chris and Rachel stood there, both looking equally concerned.
Chris stepped through the doorway first, saying, “What’s happened?”
“Please tell me she’s not hurt,” said Rachel.
Will closed the door and said, “She’s not hurt, not physically. Do you need more light or can you see well enough?”
“We’re fine,” said Chris.
“Then follow me. I don’t want to leave her alone.”
As they walked, Will explained briefly what had happened. And when they reached the library, they stopped together just inside the doorway, all looking at Eloise where she sat on the sofa, as blank as the ghosts of Will’s victims had been.
Rachel said, “She hasn’t said anything at all since it happened?”
“She said, ‘I saw’, but couldn’t tell me what, and has said no more since.”
Rachel walked across to Eloise and the others followed. She knelt down in front of her, took her hands, looked into her eyes. Will noticed Eloise’s hands holding on to Rachel’s, responding to her touch in a way they had failed to do to his. This is why he’d called Rachel and Chris, because she needed people with human warmth, people who could coax her back, but it only served to remind him again of how inadequate he was.
Rachel’s voice was almost a whisper as she spoke to Eloise. Will and Chris looked on, then Rachel turned to them and said, “It might help if the two of you left us alone for a little while. Let me talk to her.”
Chris looked around the room as if to ask where they could go, but Will said, “Come, I’ll show you where it happened.”
It didn’t matter now if Chris was working in Wyndham’s interests. The sorcerer already knew everything and more of what Will knew. Perhaps too, if Chris saw Wyndham’s determination to hurt Eloise, it might make him question his allegiances.
That was all on the assumption that Chris had betrayed him. If he hadn’t, showing him the tunnels would reinforce in his mind that Will trusted him. And Will did want to trust him because this incident had proved that his own powers were unlikely to be enough on their own.
They entered the first secret passage and found the wall to the second still open. Chris hesitated, looking at the steps.
Will went first and said, “Come.”
Chris followed him, along the tunnel and into the labyrinth proper where he immediately stalled, poring over the inscriptions and pictures that covered the walls. Will didn’t slow down, but hesitated at each turn or junction to ensure Chris was still behind him.
“This is incredible,” said Chris, his interest in the paranormal taking over. “From an archaeological point of view of course, but in terms of the occult, this could add so much to the field of knowledge.”
Will didn’t respond directly, but said, “Look how solid these walls are, how the tunnels appear to be carved out of the rock itself, yet walls moved down here, blocking off tunnels, closing in on chambers. They moved as easily as you might open and close a door. Wyndham did that, I’m certain of it.”
Chris looked uneasy, perhaps only concerned that his expression shouldn’t make him look guilty when he wasn’t, and he said, “You think he’s been attacking her?”
“I know he has – the witches told me as much. Three times so far, each different, each equally disturbing. And I fear he hasn’t finished with her yet.”
Chris looked astounded and said, “Once again, if the Wyndham I met is the same person, and I still find that unlikely …”
“It’s him,” said Will. “However unlikely, it’s him.”
“But the person I’ve met just doesn’t seem capable of things like that – I don’t mean the magic, I mean attacking a defenceless girl.”
“Have you seen him since we spoke?”
“No. As it happens, I contacted Breakstorm after that because I wanted to meet him again, knowing what you’d said about him, but they told me he was away.”
“Busy perhaps, but not away.” They turned a corner and Will pointed ahead to the demolished wall. He knew his own strength and yet still he was surprised to see the damage he had inflicted in his desperation. “This is where he trapped her, beyond that wall. I only wish I knew what she saw in there, what he made her see.”
Chris approached and stared across at the small chamber from the edge of the broken wall, apparently nervous of stepping inside. Then he looked at the wall itself.
“You broke through this?” Will nodded. “Wow.”
“You can climb through the gap – it’s stable enough.”
Chris started to shake his head slowly and said, “I’ll pass on that, I think. I don’t know what it is, but there’s a strange atmosphere in there, something … I don’t know, but something sinister.”
Will stepped over the broken wall and looked around, putting his hands on the stone here and there, and said, “I don’t feel anything.” It was true now that he thought of it; the previously uncomfortable atmosphere that had filled the labyrinth had disappeared.
“Maybe I’m just giving myself the creeps, but something definitely feels wrong down here.” Chris looked down at the rubble. “Couldn’t you just smash your way through to wherever the gateway is?”
“I could. But I would probably complete Wyndham’s mission for him by burying myself in rubble. He has moved these walls around so comprehensively that I would have to destroy half the labyrinth before finding the chamber I need, if indeed anything remains of it – we saw the walls close in on one chamber until it disappeared completely.”
Will stepped back through, saw his sabre where it had fallen on the floor and picked it up. Idly, he inscribed shapes in the dusty floor.
“If there’s a gateway, and if that gateway leads where I hope it does, I must find another way to access it.”
Chris put his hand on the wall nearest him as if to test how solid it was, and said, “But you said yourself, you can’t get back to where it was.”
Will smiled. “This gateway is not, as far as I can tell, a physical thing – it is something else entirely. If it is tied to a physical place, then you’re right, we have no choice but to find a way back through the labyrinth.”
Will hadn’t given up on the labyrinth yet, but he doubted Wyndham would have left anything to chance given the enormous forces he had deployed in moving these walls. But he would explore further once he was on his own again.
He was still treating Chris and Rachel with caution, but Chris confused him even further by suddenly becoming enthusiastic as he said, “We could go in from above! The ley lines come together here, so maybe that’s over the gateway you’re talking about. All we have to do is find the central point of that triangle, which has to be in the abbey ruins somewhere, then we dig down and find the chamber you were looking for.”
Will was impressed in some way, not by the optimistic leaps and assumptions, but by Chris’s enthusiasm, by his determination to find a solution to a problem that was not really his. But if Will had learned one thing over the centuries, it was patience.
“It’s worthy of consideration, but digging up the grounds of an ancient monument might bring more attention than we would want.”
“I hadn’t thought of that.”
Nevertheless, Will smiled and said, “We’ll think of something. But we should go back to the others.”
They made their way back to the library and this time Will closed the wall at the top of the steps. Rachel looked up when they came in, but her expression suggested she was at a loss as to what to do. Eloise still sat staring blankly in front of her.
“I think we should get her to a doctor.”
Chris said, “I don’t see how that will help. There doesn’t seem to be anything physically wrong with her.”
Rachel looked into Eloise’s eyes, then back to Chris and Will. “No, but she’s traumatised in some way, beyond anything we can do for her.”
“Traumatised by something that’s also beyond the knowledge of the medical profession.”
“Chris, she’s a young girl, with a family who need to know what’s happened to her.”
“She has no family,” said Will. “Only me.”
He’d said it before he realised what he was saying, but Rachel didn’t question his words and merely said, “Then what do you think we should do?”
“She needs to be kept safe, and she needs to rest. If rest doesn’t bring her back to herself, then you may be right, but I fear if she doesn’t come back to us of her own accord, no doctor will be of help.”
“OK, we’ll take her back to our place for now.” Will was about to object, but Rachel said, “Where else can she go?”
He had thought to take her back to his chambers beneath the church, but it made sense now that he thought of it; she would be better with them, in the warmth, somewhere that she would be less likely to be haunted by whatever it was she had seen.
“You must promise me that one of you will stay with her at all times.”
“Of course,” said Chris.
Rachel said, “What about the school – we don’t want them thinking she’s gone missing again.”
Will thought back to his wanderings around the school in the hours he’d spent waiting for Eloise to appear. Several times he’d stared in at the headmaster working in his study, long after his secretary had left, usually while the rest of the school was at dinner. It would be easy, Will thought, to speak to the headmaster without being seen by anyone else, to plant in his thoughts some memory of Eloise visiting family.
“I’ll deal with the school. And I will come to you tomorrow evening.”
“We can pick you up.”
“No, you stay with Eloise.” As an afterthought, he said, “But how will you do that? You have your establishment to run.”
Chris looked about to speak, but Rachel said, with no room for argument, “No, the café stays closed tomorrow.”
It was decided. Will carried Eloise to their car and watched as they drove away towards the city with her. She had to get better, there was no other possibility. She had to get better because without her he was defeated, in every way.