Chapter 058: Going Up In Flames

"In the light of the fact

On the lone and level

Sand stretch far away

In the heat of the action

In the settled dust

Hold hold and sway

In the meeting of mined

Down in the streets of shame

In the betting of names on gold to rust

In the land of the blind

Be... king, king, king, king"

Dominion - The Sisters of Mercy

    "Well, Dorian," Panther said, "shall we?" He seemed almost completely recovered from his ordeal, whatever it had been, and was determined to continue his search for the mysterious list as quickly as possible.

    "You haven't spotted any large piles of paper lying around, have you?" Boadice inquired. I frowned; she seemed serious, but why ask such an odd question? She ought be able to work out for herself that if I had seen what they were looking for, I would either already have told them or I would not, and in the hypothetical latter case I would certainly not tell them now. One would expect one's relatives to know better.

    "One would think," Panther said a trifle annoyed, "that any large piles of paper that may be here would be sure to disappear as soon as they were spotted. We could of course ask everyone whether they are perhaps carrying them on their person," he added with a brief speculative glance in my direction.

    "Look," I said with a sigh, "I haven't seen even a single scrap of paper since I've come to this castle, so why don't we stop jabbering and start looking."

    "Fine," Panther said calmly.

    "Fine. Shall we stay together or split up like the others."

    "Let us cooperate and try to devise some better method of searching this place. With the three of us together, we are bound to outsmart the others easily." Boadice shrugged depressedly at Panther's suggestion as if she didn't really care either way.

    "It may also be for the best," I said, "since if we split up, either one of you might run into Martin, Melusine, or Rinaldo, and they might just react a bit hastily to your unexpected presence here."

    "By the way, Dorian," Boa asked, "do you know of any way of leaving this Overshadow?" Was it me or did she always tend to ramble so much? I muttered something about needing to work on that too, but meanwhile I wondered about the strange trains of thought that seemed to be running through our cousin's mind.

    "Do you intend to leave so soon?" Panther smirked at her.

    "Only after we find the list and the info on the Wolves," she said.

    "Enough time wasted," I said, "let's go." Their bickering was beginning to get on my nerves.

    Just to be on the safe side Boa checked the room one last time for trapdoors or hidden panels, but she couldn't find anything.

    "Do you still want to have that globe destroyed?" she asked me as we stepped out into the corridor.

    "Later," I muttered. I was a bit annoyed that Panther was so determined on finding the list first; I couldn't destroy the globe without his help, yet he appeared unwilling to have anything else to do with the thing. A black nothing had come for him, or so he claimed. I wondered.

    Outside Panther stopped abruptly and stood there in front of us in silence for a few moments, apparently listening to something. I couldn't hear anything of interest myself save for the eerie echo of footsteps alternately growing louder and then fading away again. One pair seemed to be getting closer, though, and a moment later Martin came round a corner and walked toward us. He was carrying a small lantern which barely gave off more light than my torch; these two being the only sources of light around, the main part of the corridor was shrouded in a creepy darkness. Martin stopped a few paces away from us, a look of surprise and suspicion on his face.

    "Hello cousin," Boa said.

    "What are you doing here?" he asked.

    "Oh, we are looking for something important," she replied casually. I groaned inwardly; didn't she have any sense at all? "But never mind that," she continued cheerfully, "we were asked to deliver a message to you by his woman we met outside."

    "What woman?" Martin demanded sharply.

    "Short red hair, green eyes, said her name was Grenade." Martin looked a bit relieved at this; he must have expected it to be Filigree, back for another attempt at coercing her daughter. Martin's gaze drifted past Boa and me and came to rest on Panther. He regarded him suspiciously and got a foul look in return for his troubles. It would seem that my two dear cousins didn't like each other very much. If Martin even knew Panther's true identity, that is.

    Meanwhile Boadice had rattled off Grenade's message once again about her intentions to destroy this castle whether there were still people inside or not. Martin apeared unimpressed, though.

    "Okay, fine," he said impatiently, "you delivered your message. You can go now. Goodbye."

    "There is something weird and dangerous going on on the Overshadow," Boa continued unperturbedly. "It's got something to do with the Wolves..."

    "Well, there are no wolves around here," Martin cut in. "You'd better start looking for them somewhere else. You'd better be careful, though, for I know of one wolf that you certainly don't want to mess with." I smiled. He was talking about Lord Wolf of course. "But you can ask him, if you like," Martin continued. "He's not here at the moment, though." He looked as if he didn't like this whole crowd of people that was turning up here and made as if to leave, but I stopped him in time and led him into the room to show him the globe. Perhaps he could help me trash the thing, but I was also curious whether he had seen it before. After all, I had not been the first to find this room. If he had seen it before, however, he knew how to hide it well.

    "What's this?" he said and whistled softly while he studied the globe from every angle. "Interesting," he added after the first perfunctory observation. I quickly explained the globe's powers to him as far as I had divulged them, but added that there was something odd about it.

    "Panther also tried to use it," I said, "and something seemed to go very wrong then, so it might be dangerous in certain ways."

    "Of course," he snorted, "this thing was Brand's. Did you try it yourself?" I nodded. "And you're still okay?" he asked, taking a small step away from me. "Quite sure there's nothing wrong with you?" He studied me intently. I looked both hurt and annoyed.

    "Yes, I'm still okay," I said.

    "And Panther? What about him?"

    "As far as I could tell he was still okay too," I sighed.

    "As far as you could tell?"

    "As far as anyone can tell in this place." He was really getting on my nerves now.

    "Alright, alright," he said soothingly, "just checking." His expression turned back to suspicion once again. "What are those other two doing here?"

    "They're looking for a list of names," I said.

    "Or so they say?" Martin inquired shrewdly.

    "Or so they say," I concurred with a slight hint of exasperation. His paranoia was about as bad as Caine's! Martin seemed to have got the hint, though.

    "Alright," he said quickly, "I didn't mean anything by it. It's just this place, you know. It must be getting to me somehow. I want to get out of here as quickly as possible."

    "Did you find anything yet?"

    "No, nothing. I don't like it. And there seem to be more and more people cropping up all the time, all of them ready to butt in where they're not wanted."

    "According to Boadice and Panther that Grenade lady outside is quite sincere in her intentions to wipe this castle off the face of the Overshadow."

    "Oh, she can do whatever she wants for all I care. It's just that I want to find all the stuff that's in here before she decides to pull the plug, and I'm sure that she will want to do the same thing." He cursed under his breath. "There has to be a better way to search this castle. It's such a creepy place. Don't you know some kind of magic that may help us?"

    "Oh, I know a few tricks," I sighed, "but I'm not at all sure that they will work here."

    "It never hurts to try, though." Oh damn, why did I always have to be the one to do all the work? Still, he might be right; there was still a lot I didn't know about the Overshadow, and perhaps experimenting was the only way to learn.

    Before I could actually try anything, however, we heard the sound of two sets of footsteps coming towards the door. Two women appeared on the threshold, one of them rather long with very dark hair and a rather oriental complexion, the other of a more average built with stark white hair done up in a plait. Both of them looked rather young, but by now I was aware of the problems with appearances on the Overshadow. They were entirely unfamiliar to me, though.

    "Ladies," I said with a polite nod. They didn't react right away, but merely surveyed the room, casually glancing at Martin and me before looking at each other and shaking their heads.

    "Did either one of you happen to see Filigree around here?" the dark-haired one asked. I felt Martin tensing beside me.

    "I believe I have not yet had the honour," he snarled at them.

    "I'm Slive," the dark-haired woman said, "and this is Moon. The new Moon." Her serious expression belied the obvious pun she had just made.

    "Filigree was here earlier," I said, "but she left."

    "Do you have any idea where that woman's gone to?" Slive said. "We would like to have a word with her."

    "The last thing I've seen of her was that she was rummaging around on a ship somewhere." Slive looked at her companion, who nodded and closed her eyes.

    "Redbeard," she said. "But she isn't there anymore. That's where we've been before coming here."

    "No," Slive added, "I think she'll return here. It's much too pleasant here with so many nice people around. We'll undoubtedly see you later," she said to the two of us. "Goodbye." With that they left the room again. I shot a glance at Martin and shrugged. At least their intentions towards Filigree seemed to have put him more at ease.

     "Out!" a sudden cry rang through the castle, startling us from our reveries. "Now! All of you! Enough is enough, damn it!" I didn't know who this irate female was, but I felt that I didn't want to meet her here. "Do I have to get all of you out of this castle myself?" I heard her cry. "I don't know what you are doing here, but get lost!"

    Right. I was not going to wait around till she found us. Quickly and silently I slipped out of the room, with neither a glance nor a thought for Martin. My course of action turned out to be the wrong choice, however, for once in the corridor I found myself face to face with the woman who I had seen before directing the army of howlers from the outcrop outside and she seemed to be in a downright dreadful temper. The surprise at seeing me stopped her in her tracks, though.

    "Dorian," she cried out, "what are you doing here? Don't you know that this is not a very healthy place for you to be in?" Well, at least she appeared to know me, and I guess that I knew her too, after a fashion, for unless I was very much mistaken this had to be Grenade. I had no idea what her real identity was, however, but why spoil everything by letting her find that out?

    "I have already noticed as much, thank you," I replied calmly. "And believe me when I tell you that I'm not here for my pleasure."

    "What are you doing here anyway?" she insisted. "According to my latest info you should not be able to come here at all."

    "Not without assistance, no," I admitted, "but when people decide to bring me here..." This Grenade had to be someone fairly close to me, considering the familiar tone she adopted towards me.

    "But you don't really have any pressing business here, do you?" she asked. Hesitantly I shook my head. "Good. I'll see to it that you get back to Amber, no problem. Just wait outside till I've levelled this castle. Just one more attack will do the job, I'm sure. I know that you mean well, but you shouldn't get involved in this kind of business. It's much too dangerous." Hmm, that way of bossing me around reminded me very much of my own dear mother. On the other hand, however, auntie Fiona also had this attitude problem. Yes, it had to be either one of them, no doubt about it. I would just have to wait for that single clue that would give her true identity away. Meanwhile Grenade's notion of getting me back to Amber pronto had its merits. I felt rather fed up with this whole scheme, and I believed that I could trust in Grenade to destroy this place with everything inside. Never mind any of that stuff that Martin believed to be still lying around; actually, it was better to forget about that completely.

    "You will be careful with any of the others that are also in here, won't you?" I asked.

    "Sure I will," Grenade said grimly. "I'll personally throw them out. If you will only help me, we shall be finished in no time. So is it a deal?" I nodded. Considering that I was either addressing Fiona or Deirdre, going against her would be a bad move, I felt. "Good," she said, "come along."  And off she went, never even checking to make sure that I was following behind. I glanced back one last time at the room where Martin was still hiding, then I shrugged and headed after Grenade. She did seem the first person here who clearly had a fixed goal in mind and a means to achieve it too.

    "Where are the others?" Grenade asked.

    "I have no idea," I said. "Actually, there seem to be more and more people arriving all of the time."

    "I just ran into a couple of them," she said pensively. "One of them I recognized as Slive, but the other was unfamiliar."

    "Beats me. It was the first time that I saw either of them." Grenade shrugged, taking it all in her stride.

    "Did Panther give you my message?"

    "In his own way, yes. He seems to have business of his own in here, though."

    "That's not important right now." Yes, definitely Fiona or Deirdre. I guess I'd see later.

    Suddenly we heard a faint sound echoing through the castle, coming from outside: the sound of thousands of howlers getting ready to attack. Grenade stopped dead in her tracks and seemed to concentrate for a while.

    "Somebody is messing with my troops!" she cursed. She snapped her fingers and all of a sudden the two of us were standing on that same outcrop where I had seen her before. We weren't the only ones there: with a complacent smile Filigree looked up from the spot where she was busy redirecting Grenade's army.

    "Oh, quite charming," she purred. "A bit primitive as soldiers go, but still..." She and Grenade sized each other up for a while, then they both looked at me. I shot them an innocent smile, urging them to continue without minding me.

    "Dorian," Grenade said, "it might be better if you were to return to the castle for a while. I'll be right with you." She snapped her fingers and I was back inside on the same spot where we had been earlier. Neat trick, that. Shame that they had not let me stay there, however, for I would not have minded hearing what the two ladies had to say to each other. It would perhaps have given me a clue as to their real identities, which in the case of Filigree would have been more than useful.

    For a while I just wandered through the corridors, checking rooms here and there, but not finding anything important. Finally I found myself back at the room with the globe. Martin had long since departed, however, and there was no telling where he had gone to. While I was considering whether or not to use the globe to determine the whereabouts of any of my cousins, I felt the stirrings of a Trump contact. I blocked it; the chances of it being someone whom I didn't want to talk to still outweighed those of it being a friend. If people really wanted to speak to me, they could bloody well try to reach me the hard way.

    A bit aimlessly I wandered out of the room again. I was still looking around for anything noteworthy, but I realised that my heart wasn't in it. What was the whole point of this exercise anyway? If only I had some clear idea of what it was that everyone was looking for, aside from that list of Panther's of course. Everything seemed so very vague, there was so little concrete info to go on. Perhaps that was why I had followed Grenade right away, for she at least seemed sure of both what was going on and of her own role in the proceedings.

    I had been walking through the castle like this for a few minutes, when I came upon Panther and Boadice, or rather they happened to come across me.

    "Have you found anything yet?" Panther asked.

    "No," I said, "just met a lot of people, that's all."

    "Well," he said, "we seem to have located a vault or storage room of some kind. We only need to open it. Would you mind coming along to take a look at it?" I shrugged. Why not? It was as good a job as any while I waited for Grenade to return. I followed them through a series of narrow corridors to a part of the castle where my wanderings had not taken me before. Suddenly we came to a dead end, but Panther merely concentrated a little bit and the wall turned into a staircase leading down. He seemed to be fairly sure of where he was going. I wondered how he did that, for I found that I had trouble telling one corridor from the next myself. I shivered. It was still freezing in here, but that was not all: the eerie atmosphere of the castle was getting even worse as we went further down. It reminded me of those bad horror movies back on Shadow Earth, where you always want to warn the protagonist that it's the wrong thing to go down into the cellar alone and they know it too, but still they go. Of course I was not alone, but I could have had better company than this.

    Meanwhile the howling outside had stopped again, but there were other sounds, creepy sounds, all around us. I don't know what ghosts were being stirred back to life by our trespassing here, and I hoped that we wouldn't actually find out. Suddenly I realised that in between all the sighs and scrapes I could make out some whispers too. There appeared to be two voices, but there was no way of telling where they were coming from or even who the speakers might be.

    "That bitch Slive suspects something," I heard the first voice say. "Who is she?"

    "If you can't find that out for yourself, I'm not going to tell you," the second one replied.

    "Oh, you're such a great help. Don't ever forget that I introduced you to your Helgram friend."

    "How could something like that ever slip my mind?"

    I listened for more, but there didn't seem to be anything else forthcoming. Weird. Familiar names, yes, but without any idea of the right context I was lost. I wondered whether this was some real conversation that had by means of some freak echo effect found its way to us, or were they indeed ghost voices of some bygone time? I glanced at my companions to see whether they had heard it too. Boadice still seemed rather depressed, but she showed no signs of having noticed anything odd; I was fairly sure that she would have mentioned it otherwise. Panther on the other hand had halted for a fraction of a second when the voices first appeared, just like I had. He didn't say anything, but that didn't mean that much with him. Yes, I sensed that he had heard it too, but was deliberately keeping it from Boa. I didn't know why he did this, but I decided to play along for the time being. If she needed to know about this later on, I would tell her, but not before.

    We had reached the bottom of the stairs and were faced with a huge stone door, when a second pair of whispered voices sounded in my ears. As with the first pair, there as no telling who it might be. In fact, while it sounded like two voices to me, it could just as easily have been one person talking to themselves, so much alike they were. I cast a quick glance at Panther and saw his ears twitching slightly. He casually looked back at me and we nodded to each other. Just as I thought.

    "I'm cold, father," the first voice said.

    "We shall leave soon," came the reply. "First show me that you understand how the key works. That's a good boy. But don't tell anyone. Not even your mother, do you hear?"

    "Why can't I tell mom?" the first one asked.

    "I'll tell you when you are older," the second voice sighed. "Come."

    Hmm, I wasn't entirely sure, but I'd say that these were indeed ghosts instead of living voices echoing to us from some other part of the castle. It would cerainly explain why Boadice wasn't hearing them in any case, but this last snatch of conversation between father and son reminded me of a little boy who had come to this castle with his parents a long time ago. It fitted, true enough, and if my guess was right, we would need Rinaldo to open this door for us. If he still remembered how the key worked, that is.

     "I think I saw something move," Boa said suddenly, her voice sounding rather unnatural in these surroundings. We looked in the direction she was staring in, but we couldn't see anything. "I'm sure I saw something," she insisted. Her voice sounded a little more upset now. "Don't you see them? They're crawling right towards us." She started waving her torch around, but still all we could see were some shadows that were shifted around by the faint firelight. "Don't you see them? They're there on the floor, swarming!" She was nearly hysterical now. "Look out! Why don't you open this door? Open this blasted door!" Boa shrank back against the stone door, torch pointed at the empty floor in front of her feet. What had come over her? Was it the influence of the castle? I had felt its eerie presence working in on me for quite some time, but I had been able to ward most of it off. Had Boa not been so fortunate or was it something even worse than that?

    Boadice started stamping on the floor and lashing out with her torch at some unseen and imagined menace. I looked at Panther, but he seemed as nonplussed as I was. A sudden look of concern flashed in his eyes and I swiveled round to see Boa using her torch to set fire to her own trousers. Damn, this had just become a lot more serious. She was clearly hallucinating and whatever it was that she thought she saw crawling towards her was apparently bad enough to make her display such a disregard for her own well-being. I immediately tried to sneak up on her from her left side with the purpose of knocking her unconscious, hopefully with a single blow. Before I could reach her, however, she whirled around and lashed out with her torch, hitting my right wrist with a painful blow. Whatever had taken hold of her had certainly not affected her reflexes. I quickly withdrew to a safe distance, but she didn't heed me anymore. Instead she was once again busy waving her torch at her imaginary assaillants. Her trousers were entirely ablaze, making her look like some sort of manic demon. Panther sternly called out her name, but she didn't react to him.

    I glanced down at my arm and saw that the sleeve of my shirt had started to smoulder, no doubt lighted by mad Boa's magical wand of pest control. I briefly started to beat out the fire, but then I stopped. What a fool I was! There was a much easier way to do this, if only I put my mind to it. I took a deep breath, calmed myself, and started concentrating. Within a matter of seconds I had extinguished my own shirt, after which I did the same with Boa's trousers and her torch. Let's make sure that she wouldn't harm herself anymore.

    Boa was far from grateful, though. The fire had been her only weapon against her nightmares and now I had left her completely unarmed. She pressed herself against the door and cried and whimpered hysterically, madly striking out all around her. Right, I really had to make sure that she wouldn't come to further harm. Perhaps I could summon some chains from the walls to bind her. As I started to forge the stuff of the walls, I noticed for the first time a certain aura around Boadice, shimmering and reverberating in time with another presence. This made me hesitate a moment, and fortunately so, for it took me only a moment to realise that this other presence was that of the castle itself. Cautiously probing it from afar I sensed that it was like some huge part of a person's subconscious, probably that of its creator, and it was very, very powerful. It was certainly influencing Boa's behaviour and I could not be sure of Panther. Boy, had Grenade been right when she had insisted on destroying this monstrosity!

    I refrained from my efforts to bind Boa physically and began looking for a way in which I might distort and hopefully sever her link to the castle. It would require a lot of careful study and engineering, I realised. Unfortunately I didn't get the time for that, for the stakes were once again being raised: first there was only a black shimmer, but then a genuine swarm of vicious black scorpions, spiders, and other assorted nightmare creatures appeared crawling all over Boadice's body. That was bad enough, but the swarm also started appearing on the floor and it began to move straight towards me. Damn! Boa was meanwhile kicking the door behind her in a vain effort to force her way in, but the only thing she was accomplishing was getting her legs all battered and bruised.

    I took a few steps backwards and summoned a ring of fire around me that would burn to a crisp any of the critters that dared to approach me. There, that would at least buy me some time, or so I hoped. However, Boadice was also still convinced that fire was the only way of getting rid of her pests, and when she saw my defenses she let out a muted whoop of joy and leapt right into the middle of the ring. Standing so close to her I could see the thousands of insects literally forming themselves right on top of her, like a swarm of tiny summoned demons. Boa was shaking herself wildly, trying to get all of them off, but as soon as she had managed to get rid of a few a whole horde would grow out of nowhere to take their place. That girl was somehow making these creatures herself! Her mental powers must have kicked in, making her delusions take shape to haunt us all. My perfect ring of fire was little protection against the onslaught: the whole ground inside it was a creeping carpet of insects.

    Right, that did it! If she wanted fire to get rid of her pests, fire was what she would get. Before I fully realised what I was doing, I had summoned a huge pillar of fire that surrounded Boadice's entire body, searing her skin and all of the creatures that were forming upon it. The smell of charred flesh somehow brought me back to reality and I immediately extinguished the flame. What had I done? Where Boa had stood before, there was now only a black husk, still vaguely humanoid in shape, but only barely so. The smell was terrible, but even worse was the look of absolute relief and delight that glittered in her eyes, accompanied by the white-toothed smile that spread across her face. She was even thankful to me for having done that to her! Disgusted with her, myself and the whole situation in general I slumped into a corner and puked my guts out. What a mess... A soft tap on my shoulder made me look up, right into those bright eyes of Boadice's in that horribly mutilated face.

    "There, there," she croaked, "it's alright." Alright?! Nothing was alright at the moment. I shied away from her with warding gestures. Unicorn, she ought not even to have been able to move around in that state. Help... Yes, I needed help and quickly. Grenade... Yes, she could help us. I had to reach her.

    Right away I concentrated on establishing a link between me and the place were I had last seen her, in order to send her a message. To my surprise and dismay, however, this worked out differently than planned. I managed to establish a link, yes, but instead of merely sending part of my consiousness to that spot, I accidently transported myself completely to that outcrop, just like Grenade had done before. Damned, that wasn't what I had meant to do. Instant karma, I guess, and worse was about to happen, for by teleporting myself out of the castle I had also put myself beyond its shielding influence. Apparently Grenade had shielded me before, but no such luck this time. The Overshadow equivalent of a ton of bricks crashed down on top of me, slamming me onto my knees. Ouch!!

    Gasping for breath, trying to keep myself alive somehow, I was still rather amazed at the sight before me. Filigree and Grenade were right in the middle of a fight that had been going on for quite some time by the look of it, and boy, it was nasty! They were using every trick in the book, not even shirking nails and teeth. Of course they were much too busy to notice me, and I spent some agonizing moments of eternity stretching out my hand in a feeble attempt to catch their attention. Finally, finally, Filigree caught a glimpse of movement out of the corner of her eye and she glanced in my direction. Grenade immediately took advantage of her opponent's distraction by viciously kicking her in her stomach. After this she turned towards me as well, curious to see who or what had come to disturb their little tiff.

    "Oh," she said with a frown when she saw me. "I told you to stay in the castle, didn't you?" Well, there was no denying that. Actually I couldn't say anything at that moment, crushed as I was by the weight of the Overshadow. "What?" Grenade snapped impatiently. Then she realised what was wrong and re-established my defenses. Phew, that had been close. "Who sent you here?" Grenade demanded while I caught my breath.

    "Err..., I did it myself, I believe," I replied sheepishly.

    "Well, get yourself back to the castle, right away."

    "We have a slight problem back there," I ventured, "with Boadice."

    "Look," she said, clearly at the very end of her patience, "I have no idea what Boadice is doing here, or any of you amateurs for that matter, but didn't anyone ever tell you that this place is dangerous?" Behind her I saw Filigree nod in agreement, their quarrel apparently forgotten for the moment.

    "I never actually saw any tourist information leaflets for the Overshadow, no," I said calmly. If nobody would take the trouble to explain things to us, then they shouldn't be surprised if we messed up like this.

    "Such a dreadful travel agency," Filigree said. "Next time, dear, you just come to me and I shall personally give you a tour of the whole place."

    "You would like that, wouldn't you?" Grenade sneered. "You'd better forget about it right away."

    "I won't be ordered around by the likes of you," Filigree replied indignantly.

    "We'll see about that," Grenade said and once again she stormed towards her opponent, forgetting all about me in the process. Fortunately I had the presence of mind to teleport myself out of there before Grenade accidentally dropped the shield again.

    Back in the castle I found Panther standing over the curled up black heap that was Boadice. He looked rather pleased with himself and acknowledged my return with a smile.

    "I think it would be best if we hurried a little with trying to open this door," he said casually. I glanced at the stone door, then back at the charred body of Boadice that lay in front of it. That smell was still there of course, and together with the sight of her it nearly made me sick again. I summoned a checkered red blanket to hide her body from sight and some pine tree scented air refreshener to mask the overwhelming stench. It helped a litle bit, but not much.

    "Oh, by the way," Panther said, "in case you had not yet noticed, she has gone around the bend all the way, so to speak."

    "Oh, really?" I muttered. Why was I not surprised? Maybe it had been that hallucinations that had given her away? Either that or her apparent happiness at being reduced to a human cinder. It had to be one of those two.

    "But as for this door,"Panther continued as if nothing was wrong, "it apparently has decided to stay closed and we have to find a way to convince it otherwise. However, trying to establish mental contact with it would be a bad idea, as I am sure you have noticed by now."

    "I have noticed as much, yes." Hmm, there had to be another way to do this. "You also heard those whispered voices just now, didn't you?" I asked.

    "Yes, they seemed to be memories of some sort, or rather brief flashes of memories. I think they belong to you-know-who. However, we need to get past this door, of that much I am certain."

    Okay, so I had not been hallucinating when I had heard those whispers, what a relief. Hmm, a solution seemed to present itself to me, but it might be a bit of a long shot, and I wasn't sure that Panther would agree to it. Still, he couldn't object to anything that I didn't tell him.

    "I'll be right back," I said, snapping my fingers and willing myself to the room with the all-seeing globe. It worked too. Funny how easy these tricks were once you got the hang of them. I concentrated on the globe as I had done before and thought of Rinaldo. If I was right, he would be the one who could open that door for us. Using the globe's powers hadn't become any easier, though, for I had become much more aware of the overwhelming presence of the castle itself which also stretched into this artifact. It took every ounce of willpower to keep myself safe from that madness, that sickening sensation that would surely drive me completely insane, just as it had apparently done with Boadice.

    Ultimately I managed, however, and an image appeared before me of my dear red-headed cousin searching in some dark room elsewhere in the castle. With this image firmly in mind I cut the connection to the globe and teleported mysef to his side. I appeared right behind him in the room and my sudden presence must have really startled him, for before I knew it he was holding the point of his sword to my throat. When he recognized me, however, he relaxed a little bit and lowered his weapon.

    "Oh, it's you," he sighed. "You shouldn't sneak up on me like that, you know." He looked very weary and definitely ill at ease. I guessed that the castle was getting to him too. We didn't appear to have much time left here, so I warned him that I was taking him elsewhere and that he need not be afraid. I lightly touched his shoulder and teleported the both of us back to the door where Panther was patiently waiting for us. Rinaldo was only a bit disoriented by the trip, but he soon recovered.

    "What's that?" he inquired suspiciously, pointing at the blanket that covered Boadice's prone form.

    "You don't really want to know," I sighed, "believe me."

    "And what's this smell?" he continued with a disgusted frown. It was unfortunately true that the pine tree scent that I had conjured up only disguised the terrible stench to a certain degree, but that couldn't be helped. I guessed I had to tell him something, though, or he might become too suspicious and we still needed his help.

    "Alright," I said, "underneath that blanket you'll find Boadice, or rather what's left of her. Believe me, it's not a pleasant sight. She became completely hysterical. She nearly went up in flames too." Yes, a slight omission, but what else could I tell him? That I had panicked and torched our dear cousin? I didn't think so. And besides, Panther had witnessed it all, and he didn't bother to correct me.

    "Maybe there is something I can do to help her," Rinaldo ventured. "With a spell or something?"

    "I don't think it would be a good idea to mess with her in her present condition," I said quickly.

    "That all depends, doesn't it?" I looked at him inquiringly. "Well," he explained, "I assume that you brought me here to help her, didn't you?" He looked at both me and Panther in turn.

    "I should think not," Panther replied calmly. "Actually, I have no idea why you are here at all." With that he looked at me, clearly expecting me to clear up things right away. Rinaldo seemed to be quite confused by now and he too regarded me expectantly.

    "Take a look around you," I said to him. "Doesn't this place seem familiar to you?" He did as I had asked him and carefully took in his surroundings. At first he seemed somewhat uncertain, but after a few moments I sensed that he did remember a few things.

    "It could be," he admitted, "but there are other parts of this castle that also seem to remind me of earlier visits."

    "How about this door?" I said, directing his attention to the huge stone oblong. He followed my gaze and frowned.

    "It looks familiar," he muttered. "Is it a door? Yes, it would appear so. Isn't there a keyhole...? No,that's right, there isn't." Yes, he did remember. Perfect.

    "But there is a key, isn't there?" I urged him on.

    "I'm not sure...," he began, "but I think this is the way to open it." He stepped forward and carefully placed his right hand in the middle of the door. I felt how he began to focus his willpower on it and saw a blue glow appear round his hand, spreading out to cover the entire surface. And slowly, yet silently the door swung open.

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