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Tension pervaded among the slaves, many of whom could sense an anxiety in their captors. They staggered on long after dark, walking across a barren wasteland littered with scree, and only stopped for brief respites - when it suited Bogavus, which was seldom. It was consequently not surprising that Pallenne, exhausted and barely able to concentrate on where she was going, should stumble and fall against Dagan.
"Whoa - steady on there," he told her, catching her under her arms. "I'm sure we'll stop sooner or later."
Pallenne picked herself up, ran her fingers through her tangled dark hair and sighed loudly. "I hope so, Dagan," she said, her voice heavy with weariness. "I don't think I can take much more of this - we haven't rested properly for two days now."
Feryl overheard what Pallenne said and understood how she must be feeling. "Listen, we're all exhausted," he told the others. "But it probably means we're near wherever we're going and something tells me it won't be pleasent. So keep an eye out for a chance to escape and . . ."
Galadria sighed inwardly. Feryl could be rather headstrong at times, but now was not the time for foolhardy actions.
"Feryl, forget it," she said. "Remember what happened last time? If we escape again, we'll only get ourselves killed - what would that achieve?"
Feryl knew Galadria was right, that - if they hadn't surrendered outside the cave - Bogavus would have thrown his spiked weapon and they would not be having this conversation. But that did nothing to quell his feeling of unease, the overwhelming dread of what he and the other slaves would be used for once they reached their destination - the best he could do was try to avoid thinking about it.
"I guess it wouldn't achieve anything," he said at last. "Leoric's our best hope now . . ." He paused as he remembered the terrifying encounter with the Strangle Vines. " . . . if he survived that forest."
"Wait!" Pallenne called. "What's that tree over there?"
The others turned to look in the direction she was pointing - sure enough a solitary tree grew on the horizon, the only vegetation visible for miles around. Galadria, Arzon and Feryl eyed it with unease as all three recalled the last time they had seen that particular tree.
"The Lost Shrine," Arzon said, finding his voice. "But - but Leoric destroyed its magic."
"Aye," Feryl added. "What does Bogavus want with a defunct Shrine?"
He soon found out. While the slaves slept that night, a column of black-clad men emerged from beneath the strange tree and surrounded them. A short distance away, Bogavus greeted their leader and prepared to hand the slaves over to their new masters.
"How many did you bring this time, Bogavus?" demanded the bald man with a dagger-and-heart tattooed on his scalp.
"Twenty in total, Kromos," Bogavus replied. "Eleven males and nine females - all young and ready to work until they drop."
Kromos frowned slightly; according to his notes, Bogavus had brought twenty-six back from his last slaving expedition. Still, twenty was a reasonably good haul and Sanofainus was planning to send the wizard out again in a few days' time. In the meantime . . .
"Bring your gang into the Shrine, Bogavus," he instructed. "My army will see to the slaves."
Feryl was jerked awake as one of the men in black unclipped the fastener that kept him attached to the slave-chain and roughly hauled him upright. Half-asleep, the young knight looked around in bewilderment, wondering who the men in black were and what they were doing. Something about them set Feryl on edge and he would have attempted to break away from them had he not been outnumbered by three to one. The nearest guard leaned closer to whisper in Feryl's ear.
"Do not resist - do not make a sound," he warned him in a harsh voice that made it clear any attempt to fight the strangers would be a serious (and possibly fatal) mistake.
Once all the slaves had been removed from the chain, Kromos ordered six of his soldiers to pick it up and take it inside until it was needed again. Holding a lantern above his head, he led the way, escorting the twenty young prisoners through the secret entrance that he and his army had used to make their sudden appearance.
The corridor was just wide enough to allow three people to walk abreast, but the torches placed on the wall brackets at intervals gave scant illumination and threw up terrifying shadows. Even so, the three Spectral Knights were able to see just how much the Lost Shrine had changed since their previous visit. Back then, it had housed a magical zoo whose guards had seized the Visionaries as they shapeshifted and flung them into cages, a fate which only Leoric - warned by the Owl of Wisdom - had avoided. But all that was gone now - replaced, they would soon learn, by something far more sinister.
From somewhere in the distance came the sounds of endless chinking and clattering interspersed by voices, the words inaudible, and the occasional swishing sound that sounded suspiciously like a whip being cracked. "What is going on down here?" Fletchen asked in an awed whisper, but the others were equally puzzled.
"Quiet, wench!" ordered one of the guards escorting her. "Another word out you and you'll feel my cat!" He patted the nine-stranded whip in his belt and grinned evilly.
The source of the noises became clear when they reached the apex of the underground kingdom. This consisted of what had once been the Shrine's inner sanctum, a vast room lit by flickering torches which also served as the private living quarters of Sanofainus, the future Master of Prysmos - or at least he believed he would be. An altar had been placed in a prominent position, ready to house the Crystals that were hidden somewhere deep in the Lost Shrine.
Sanofainus was a tall imposing man in late middle-age with greying brown hair and cold grey eyes and, even though he was mortal, his garments were reminiscent of those typically worn by wizards. He wore a long royal-blue gown with a black cape over it, the latter fastened at the neck with a buckle shaped like a phylot's head. In fact, if it hadn't been for the lack of any magical paraphernalia of the sort Merklynn kept at Iron Mountain, Galadria, Arzon and Feryl might have assumed that he was indeed a wizard.
"Take them to the window," he ordered Kromos after the slaves had been forced to kneel before him. "Let them see those who already seek the Crystals of Power."
A long spiral staircase led down to the workings where ragged slaves, some as young as six years old, laboured endlessly, even though most were clearly exhausted. The reason for their constant labour in the face of fatigue soon became horribly clear - the overseers were all armed with cat-o'-nine-tails, which they used at the slightest provocation or at no provocation at all. At one point, a chain-gang of four maidens slipped and fell as they struggled to haul a wheeled sledge piled with broken rocks. The slavers lashed at them, but one young woman did not get up; she had found the one escape route from this realm of nightmare.
"See, my slaves," Sanofainus said, joining his prisoners. "Now you must join them and . . ."
Feryl, realising what Sanofainus meant and deciding that he was having none of it, broke free from the guards who restrained him and turned on the tyrant. "You're drunk!" he said with barely controlled disgust. "Drunk on power - I know your sort! Well - thanks but no thanks; as a Spectral Knight I can't do anything that aids evil!"
Sanofainus locked eyes with the defiant youth. "I'm afraid, you impudent whelp," he said in a deceptively calm voice, "that you are not in a position to say what you will and will not do." With that, he nodded to Kromos, who stepped back a pace and flailed his cat-o'-nine-tails hard against Feryl's back. Feryl didn't even flinch, not wanting to give Sanofainus the satisfaction.
"Kromos?" Sanofainus said once the slaves had been led down to the workings. "That young man, the knight who spoke out - I've been trying to think of his name."
"According to Bogavus, he's called Feryl," replied Kromos.
"Well have . . . Feryl watched - he's obviously a troublemaker," Sanofainus ordered before dismissing his second-in command. No-one had ever been allowed to get away with crossing him in his underground realm before and, knight or not, Feryl was not going to be the first.
The eleven Visionaries plus Gawalar and Atla had stopped off at the Fullmoon Inn. The small tavern with a painting of a full moon over the door was a popular meeting place among the inhabitants of Dalevore, a small town located less than a mile from the Lost Shrine. Or at least it had been - tonight the only other customers were an old woman and two men playing cards in the far corner. The innkeeper and his wife both moved with hunched shoulders as if they were grieving for something.
"So you've come to confront Sanofainus," said the innkeeper's wife, whose name was Zarla. "I've been wondering when someone would . . ."
"Just who is Sanofainus?" asked Cryotek as he leaned across the bar. "I've heard the name before, but I was very young then."
"Sanofainus is scum!" Zarla spat, her dislike of the name obvious in her voice. "About twenty years ago he had this . . . racket going - he embezzled hundreds of companies. Then, when the police got on his tail, he just disappeared and was never heard of again."
"Until now," Ectar added, recalling that the case had still been open when he joined the police force several years later.
"As if I need reminding!" Zarla said bitterly as she paced up and down. "Nearly eight months ago, he and his thugs rode into town and carried off every young person they could find. And that includes my own son and daughter-in-law, who had been married barely a year . . . They were only nineteen years old!" she sobbed, burying her face in her hands.
Atla understood the woman's pain; since losing Yilly to Bogarvis, she had never been entirely able to shake her fears for her safety. "I'm so sorry," she said. "I lost my own daughter too - so I know how you must feel, never knowing if they're alive or not . . ."
Zarla looked at her, a slightly ironic smile on her face. "You don't get it, do you?" she said bitterly. "Ubon was - I hope he still is - my only child. I was so happy when he wed Ranita - and then . . . those brutes had to come along and ruin everything! I - I . . ." She threw up her hands, unable to continue.
There didn't appear to be any family in Dalevore, or any any other town that Leoric and his party had passed through since reaching the Anarchy Zone, who had not lost anyone to Sanofainus. Dalevore was a town devoid of youth; those young people not captured in the first raid had either been seized during subsequent attacks or had fled with their families. Leoric's determination to do something was evident in his words as he took up position in the centre of the room to explain their mission.
"People of Dalevore," he announced, raising his Power Staff as he spoke. "My companions and I came here with two objectives - to free those who have been enslaved and put an end to Sanofainus once and for all. It will not be easy, but we will try - this is my solemn promise."
"Aye!" Witterquick shouted, leaping onto a table. "Down with Sanofainus!"
But it was that night that Darkstorm chose to play his hidden ace. Excusing himself, he beckoned to Mortdredd and the two withdrew to where they were less likely to be overheard.
How long he had been toiling underground was something Feryl could not guess at. He could see Dagan, Pallenne and Yilly working elsewhere at the rock-face - all three had been attached to different chain-gangs - but none of the slaves were allowed to leave their work stations or even speak to those on other chain-gangs. Arzon, who had been assigned to pushing wheelbarrows, approached Feryl's group at intervals, but the two knights dared not speak to each other; they had already been beaten for doing so.
Exhausted from lack of sleep and overwork, he moved like an automaton, methodically taking rocks from his neighbour - a youth named Jonitrus - and placing them into the wheelbarrow parked next to him. Then something happened to snap him out of his zombie-like state.
It occurred just as one wheelbarrow-pusher left Feryl's chain-gang and the next, a young dark-haired woman in faded brown trousers and a red blouse, hauled her barrow towards them. She was barely ten feet away when she collapsed from exhaustion, sending the nearest guard hurrying over, his cat-o'-nine-tails raised ready to punish her. Seeing the bully about to beat the defenceless maiden was all it took to arouse Feryl's defensive instincts. Without stopping to think of the consequences, he hurled a rock at the guard's head, knocking him unconscious, and, dragging the rest of the chain-gang with him, ran to check on the fallen woman.
"Are you all right?" Feryl whispered as he knelt beside her. "Can you get up?"
She groaned slightly but managed to stagger to her feet. "I think so," she mumbled groggily. "But we'd better get back to work before . . ."
"What's going on over here?" It was Kromos himself come to investigate the cause of the disruption. "Why aren't you at your work station?"
Feryl adopted an air of nonchalance as he made up an excuse. "Oh, she . . ." He nodded towards the young woman. " . . . looked a bit tired, so I thought I'd just check she was all right."
"That so?" Kromos said sceptically as he recognised Feryl as the one Sanofainus had warned him to watch. "Then maybe you'd like a double dose of the cat - I assume you're the one who knocked that guard out."
"Thanks, mate," said the young woman once Kromos had stalked off in search of more trouble. "No-one's ever stood up to Kromos like that before."
"What else could I do?" replied Feryl as he loaded her barrow. "And don't call me "mate" - my name is Feryl."
"Sorry . . . Feryl," she corrected herself with a wry smile. "I'm called Casiusa, but you can call me Cassie."
"I think Casiusa suits you better," Feryl told her as he studied her closely. She appeared to be around his own age, or a little younger, and her hazel eyes held a mischievous look that belied the hardship she had endured as a slave in the Lost Shrine. "What's going on down here, anyway?" he added, hoping she might be able to provide some answers, some information on what Sanofainus thought was so important he had to make goodness only knew how many slaves dig for it.
"We're supposed to dig for the Seven Crystals of Power that were hidden here in the First Age of Magic - or so they say," Casiusa replied. "Sanofainus - he's the one who dresses like a wizard, even though he's not - has this thing about getting hold of them so he can become Master of Prysmos . . ."
"Sounds like a real megalomaniac," Feryl remarked. "I bet Darkstorm . . ."
Before Feryl could complete his sentence, a guard caught him with his cat-o'-nine-tails, putting the full force of his arm behind the blow and knocking the Spectral Knight sprawling. Then, before Feryl could pick himself up, he gave Casiusa the same treatment. "What have you been told about talking?!" he demanded harshly.
Using his Beetle Totem, Mortdredd had managed to slip into the Lost Shrine undetected - now all he had to do was deliver Darkstorm's message to Sanofainus. Rounding a corner in his human form, he managed to crash straight into Brother Turel, who had been on his way to a meeting with Sanofainus. Hopefully, the slaver-monk thought, this meant rewards or even promotion for successfully delivering the new workers. For now, though, he had an intruder to deal with.
"Who on Prysmos are you?" he demanded as he stood with his strap raised.
Mortdredd seemed taken aback for a moment but answered in his usual servile tone. "I bring a message from the mighty Lord Darkstorm," he explained. "He wanted me to deliver it in person, which of course I was only too pleased to do." Even though Darkstorm was not present, Mortdredd made sure to emphasise what a pleasure it was to carry out his orders. It did not matter what menial task the Darkling Lords' leader came up with, his chief lackey was invariably the first to volunteer.
"Tell me your master's message and be on your way!" ordered Turel, annoyed at the delay. He was supposed be having an audience with Sanofainus momentarily and did not want to incur his wrath by being late.
Mortdredd held a scroll above his head. "Sorry," he said with a triumphant smirk on his face. "Darkstorm said this was for Sanofainus's eyes only; it says so on the back. But perhaps you'd like to deliver it for me - I'll wait here until you let me know what Sanofainus has to say."
Sanofainus read through Darkstorm's message with mounting fury that someone - anyone - would seek to scupper his well-laid plans. Then, regaining his composure, he rolled the scroll back up and calmly burnt it on one of the flaming torches that lit his quarters.
"So?" he smiled wickedly, staring into the flames. "Some upstart knight thinks he can defeat me, does he? Well, Leoric - or whatever your name is - I think you're the one who'll be defeated, you and your band of meddlers."
He watched as the paper was reduced to ash and vowed to let nothing which stood in the way of his plans for world domination live.
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