Something powerful is drawing Ward back to Devil's Island. Something he thought he had forgotten. He must evade vicious lighthouse keeper George Jaggles in order to rescue it, but Jaggles will soon be the least of his worries. Because an assassin is...
They were undeniably teeth. He recognised the smooth enamel that coated them, and the spaces between them, as surely as if they had been his own. The skull, for that was clearly what it was, clacked away over the floor. He waited for his heart to slow again.
He had to find a way out. He did not fear getting lost, for he was already hopelessly lost. He figured if he headed upwards he would come eventually to the surface of whatever world this was. It was as good a plan as any.
He set off carefully into the dark, trailing a finger along the wall to his left as he went, soon coming to a doorway to another chamber. He figured that if he kept a wall always to his left he would not become disoriented and wander aimlessly. He tried not to think what would happen if he came to a drop-off. He wondered what else might be down here. The place was oddly devoid of life. He came across no spiderwebs, and there was no scurry of snokeys to be heard.
He found more skulls. There must have been hundreds of them. They seemed to line the shelves in every room. He wondered if they were from the Plague. What had happened to all the people who had died in the Plague anyway? Had they been burned? Or were they all interred like this? The skulls had clearly been placed here, unlike the skellingtons he had seen in the carriages under Bareheep, which lay where their owners had died. It was an ossuary. But Bareheepians cremated their dead – he knew this. They kept the ashes in urns in their houses, or spread them over the sea, or buried them in their gardens and planted trees there. There was the ancient cemetery to the city's north, beyond the Wall, but nobody went there.
Ward knew by the ease of his progress that he was not climbing. At best it was level. He stopped for a minute and thought about what he should do. He didn't want to go deeper underground. He considered retracing his steps. No, he would keep going. He could not be certain that he was descending after all, and he could at any moment come to a staircase or tunnel that climbed to the surface of whatever world this was.
It suddenly occurred to him that he could use the dice to get out. Why hadn't he thought of it before? He took the pouch out of his pocket and tipped the dice into his hand. Did he need to be able to see them to make them work? He didn't know. He stared into the darkness at the place where his hand was, trying to conjure up the images in his mind. Nothing. He ran a finger lightly over the faces, and although he could feel the lines that were etched into the faces he could not determine by touch alone which symbols they belonged to; it occurred to him that he might be touching the Bear, and he drew his finger hastily away. He put the dice back in the pouch and the pouch back in his pocket. Somehow he had known it wouldn't work anyway.
He realised he might be stuck down here a long time. He had no food or water. He knew people could live a long time without food, but water? He licked his lips. They already felt dry. If he made the wrong move, took a wrong turn, he would die down here.
If you're not already dead.
Now there was a thought. What if the Brother had killed him on the shelf above the sea, driven the knife into his heart? What if everything afterwards had been the afterlife? The cave, the ring, the author, and now this – it all had the feeling of a dream. The Hattoists painted a dreary image of Eden, a dark place where shades moved about in endless loneliness and time stretched out like an ocean. Maybe they were right.
He pressed on.
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Then he woke up and realised it had all been a dream. The End.
