Gamelyn followed Ulixa through the darkness. Now and again the slumbering caladrius in her hands shone a lance of light ahead. “What happened, Gamelyn?” she asked softly. “Why did you come back for me? Where are the others?”

“They’re up ahead, in the room with the doors west and north,” he told her. “Your crow-man reached us there. The glumm and gawry seem to know a few words of his tongue. With that, and hand-signs, he made us understand that you’d gone back. I thought …” He didn’t know what more to say.

Is that the mask I must wear? he wondered. The hero who dares, but cannot speak? No. Of course not.

It had been foolish of her to go back for the bird. Paradox could heal them. The caladrius was useful, true, but not worth the cost of her life, it seemed to him. Was that sentimentality?

“Thank you,” she said. Walking behind Ulixa he could not see her face. And if he could? A black mask he had not learned to read, not wholly. Not as much as he’d like. She was too still.

And will I wear the mask of her lover, after all? he wondered.

To all things their masks. That was what he knew now. Now that the shade was in him, now that he was bonded with a mask elemental. Yes, he had a mask; and so did she; and so did everyone. So did his family. A nation had a mask. An empire had a mask. Fell Gard must have a mask; but the masks of a nation or an empire or the Master Dungeon were perhaps too big to see if you were within them.

But masks were everywhere; whatever you saw was a mask, a disguise, covering one meaning with another, deferring meaning to some other mask, and then on from there. This was what he knew now, as well.

They went north-west and then west, past a locked door to their left. The passage ended at an open door; in the room beyond, Paradox of the Good Act held a torch high, smiling. Wymarc, red-faced and heavy, was kneeling before the boy, Otto of the Village Innsdene. Yune was near her, his lips pursed within his thin beard, watching with the faint yet serious concern with which he watched all things. Aura fluttered in the air, the layers of her light skirts iridescent in the torch-light; she was slender and pale and silver-haired, a wind from nowhere always stirring her locks, and her face was too lean and pointed to be mortal. Elous, just as pale as Aura but more real, stood with her arms holding herself tightly. She had a strained look, and her small mouth was shut tight, her lips pulled in. Agneta beside her looked coolly on Otto and Wymarc. It seemed to Gamelyn that her face was always a mask. Euarchy and Kwangrolar were nearby, hand-in-hand, speaking to the new arrival, the black-feathered crow-man; or trying to. A corvinus, Robert had called it. The old bard held his bagpipes before him; a pack was slung over his shoulder, over the long tattered coat he wore. Beside him was Hwitwic …

Gamelyn turned away as the cervidwen looked at him. What he is seeking for I do not wish to find, he thought. He wondered what the thought meant, and whether it was really his. He had found himself lately thinking things he did not believe were natural to him.

Perhaps my mask is that of a lunatic, he thought. Perhaps I am a mad king, wandering on a blasted heath; or perhaps I am only his fool.

“Go on, then, my sweet,” said Wymarc encouragingly. “And how did you get here?”

“I came through that door,” said the boy, pointing to the west. “There was a little man here, and he gave me a torch and he waved to me to keep going. That way!” Otto pointed to the door through which Gamelyn and Ulixa had come. “So I did. And I saw the elves running, and I followed them. Mam tells me stories about the elves.”

“Where is your mam?” asked Wymarc. “A lucky thing she must be, to have a fine young, oh, strong young boy like you!”

“She’s there,” said Otto. The boy pointed to the west again. “I want to go home,” he said quietly.

“Is there a gargoyle that way?” asked Ulixa. “A scary statue?”

“Yes,” said Otto.

“Entemena’s cursed gargoyle,” said Yune. “Perhaps it only curses elves. Well, who could blame it?” He gave an old man’s apologetic chuckle.

“I don’t think we can risk it,” said Ulixa. She looked through the western door. “Gamelyn … what do you think?”

He looked around. As Entemena had said, a third door in the room led north. “Otto,” he said, “where your mother is … are there other ways to get there?”

“She’s in a big cave,” said Otto. “I guess so. Yes! There’s the way up to the Good Boy.”

“Why, who’s that?” asked Wymarc.

Otto pointed to Paradox. “The one that looks like him.”

They all turned to Paradox. Who only smiled, a mask over not-knowing. Is he a fool, wondered Gamelyn for the thousandth time, or terribly wise? “Why do you call him the Good Boy?” asked Paradox.

Otto shrugged. “Because he is, I guess.”

“If you go that way to get to your mother,” said Gamelyn, pointing westward, “which way would you go if you were with her, to get to the Good Boy?”

Otto thought about it. “That way,” he said after a moment, pointing north.

Gamelyn tapped on the northern door. “There you are,” he said. “I think we should go north, work our way westward, and circle back south to Otto’s people.”

“Oh!” cried Wymarc. “Through unknown halls, you mean! And not even knowing where we mean to end up!”

The woman irritated him. “I don’t think we have a better choice,” he said.

“We could wait for your friends to find us,” said Robert.

“If the orcs don’t find us first,” said Gamelyn. “Or something else. The boy’s little man, for example.”

“Still,” argued Wymarc.

“Yune?” asked Ulixa.

“There is no good choice,” said the clockmaster. “If we go north, carefully …” he shrugged.

Ulixa sighed. She went to the black-feathered corvinus. “Who are you?” she asked. “Can you talk to me?” It stared at her without answering.

“We’re beginning to understand each other,” said Euarchy. “Corvinae are very good with languages. But … it will take time.”

Ulixa closed her eyes. “We’ll go,” she said. “North.”

They readied themselves and set out. Ulixa was first, with the torch, looking for traps and dangers. Above her and behind were Aura, Euarchy, and Kwangrolar. Directly beneath them were Robert and Hwitwic, then Gamelyn beside the crow-man, Elous and Agneta behind him, Wymarc with Otto behind them, and Yune and Paradox in the rear. In this order they went through the north door, and along a northern hallway to a small circular room, with a gargoyle at its centre holding a wooden puzzle-box. Halls led away to the west and south-west. The south-west hall ended at a door, which Ulixa found had a trap on it she could not disable. She said she did not understand what she had found, and Yune went to examine it; he said that if the door were opened, some creature would be called from elsewhere in the dungeon and set to attack them. So they left that door, and went westward.

They came to a hall running south-westward and north-east; a tattered flag hung at the crossroads, a black banner with the profile of a white unicorn upon it. “A good sign,” murmured Gamelyn.

“Why?” asked Paradox.

“The emblem of the unicorn’s head,” said Elous in a whisper. “The banner of Jocelyn’s Court.” Ulixa, Paradox, and Robert all seemed baffled, in their different ways. Of course, he thought, they wouldn’t know the stories. “Good King Lyn built the shining realm of Far-Gold, in the heart of Fell Gard,” said Elous. She wept, and reached out to the banner. For a moment she trailed her hand over the unicorn, and then let it drop.

Gamelyn had heard the tales of King Lyn when he was a child, also. He hadn’t believed them, not really. And yet here was a banner. Or was it, after all, only an illusion?

They went on, and he was thoughtful. He felt a touch on his shoulder: Agneta. “Do you believe it?” she whispered. He knew what she meant.

“I believe I saw a banner with a unicorn’s head,” he answered. She smiled, staring at him.

“You’re a cautious man, aren’t you?” she asked, straightening her tunic. It was a fine piece of clothing, he noticed, and she noticed him noticing. “Conradin gave it to me,” she said.

“Your former chief?” he asked.

“Before he tired of me,” she said simply. “He was warm to me, once.”

The hall split in two; Ulixa went south, and came back to say she’d found an empty room. They went westward. “Where did he find it?” Gamelyn asked Agneta. “The silk.”

“He killed a man for it,” she said. “That’s what it’s like for us, on the upper courts. You know this.” She reached out suddenly for his arm. “Tell me,” she said. “Do you think there’s hope for … this group, this band?”

“I have no idea,” he said.

She nodded. “Geoffrey and I fucked,” she said.

Gamelyn cleared his throat.

“Strong men,” she murmured. “Is it wrong of me to be drawn to strong men?”

“Why would it be wrong?” he asked. “If it’s what you feel. Is it?”

Agneta, who had looked pensive, now stared at him. “It would be wrong,” she said, “if I’m making the same mistake over and over. You’re smart enough. I’ve seen that. Tell me. Am I making a mistake?”

“What choice do you have, really?” he asked. He realised her hand was still on his arm. He looked back. Her gaze was fixed on him. Her mask, he thought. Agneta’s hand tightened for a moment.

“I could choose different mistakes,” she said, with a wry smile. She let go of him.

They passed a door to the north; then, a little further on, the hallway turned north itself. They went along a goodly distance, past a hallway that led off eastward, until they reached another passage branching to the west. They paused there. Otto was crying, and they were all feeling the strain. The tension.

Ulixa was arguing with Aura about what Gryselde would have wanted and what the sylph’s responsibilities were. Gamelyn found himself sitting beside Paradox, and staring at the corvinus. “I have heard of such folk,” he said to the youth, “but never seen anything like him.”

“Like her,” said Paradox.

“Ah?” said Gamelyn.

“She’s female.”

“You’re sure? She doesn’t look it,” said Gamelyn. “She doesn’t have …” he moved his hands in a curving gesture before his chest.

“No,” said Paradox. “Birds don’t.”

“Well,” Gamelyn said, “I suppose you can’t trust appearances.”

“You have to trust most things in the world,” said Paradox. “You can’t know everything absolutely.”

“I don’t know about that,” said Gamelyn. He laughed without humour. “I don’t even know who I am.” He paused. “But then, neither do you, I suppose.”

Paradox considered this. “I know,” he said. “I just don’t remember.” Before Gamelyn could mock him, Paradox shifted and said: “That woman, Agneta. When she was speaking to you before …” he paused.

“What about her?” asked Gamelyn.

“I don’t … trust her,” said Paradox with an effort. “I don’t mean she’s evil … or maybe she is. I don’t know. What is evil?” He looked at Gamelyn, unsure.

“I don’t know,” said Gamelyn. “Are you warning me away from her?”

“I suppose,” said Paradox.

“You want her for yourself?”

“Not at all,” said Paradox, firmly.

“At your age?” said Gamelyn. “You can’t tell me you don’t want to do terrible things with her body.”

Is this my mask? he wondered. The knowing man-of-the-world, companion to the brilliant youth, doomed in the end to be abandoned and left babbling of green fields? No, he thought, no it was not; and what did green fields have to do with it? He decided then that he would find his mask in his own good time.

“That’s not … me,” said Paradox.

“Suit yourself,” said Gamelyn. “Tell me something, though, if you will. Before, at the council, when we were choosing sides … you voted for Elous. Why?”

He had thought he was being quiet; but perhaps Elous had sharp ears. She cried “Yes!” and came quickly to them. A hand raised to hover before her mouth. “Why did you vote for me?” she whispered.

“You seemed nice,” said Paradox. “I thought you might want to know that someone believed in you.” She stared at him, then scurried back away.

For a moment Gamelyn wondered if the youth was attracted to her; then he had a terrible moment of clarity. This is no mask, he thought. He is just what he appears to be. His mask is his true face. But it is a weakness in me that I cannot understand him.

They went on, then, westward. And, just before the hall ended at a closed door, they came to a globe.

It was perhaps three feet across, made of ivory or bone, set in a waist-high iron frame in the middle of the hall, with a screw through it so that it could be spun about in the frame. They gathered around it, and Ulixa examined the thing closely: “I don’t know,” she whispered. “I don’t understand it.”

“I think,” said Paradox, and stopped. He gave the torch to Robert.

“I don’t like the look of it,” rumbled Yune.

Paradox reached out a hand and spun the globe.

“What?” said Ulixa, as the globe spun about. Black lines appeared on it. Paradox smiled at her.

“I had a feeling,” he said. And then he was gone.

“Paradox!” Ulixa cried. The sphere slowed. The lines had vanished.

“Gone,” said Hwitwic. The word echoed in the hall.

“I know that magic,” said Yune. “It’s a travelling charm.”

“Could we … how do we get him back?” demanded Ulixa.

“We don’t,” said Gamelyn.

“How’s that?” asked Robert.

“He made his choice,” said Gamelyn. “This is what you must expect, in Fell Gard.”

There was considerable weeping and shock among those new to the dungeon; less among those who had lived there all their lives. Ulixa sat against a wall, her face still. Unreadable, in a way which, Gamelyn had come to understand, meant that something powerful was going on behind it. He did not trust himself to console her. Eventually she stood and went to the door to the west.

The door was locked, but she opened it easily enough. Beyond was a large, empty room; but the columns were heavy, and less ornamented than elsewhere in the court. The elaborate vaulting of the other rooms was gone. The lines were simple, harsh, the stones of the walls all carefully worked. The only exit from the room was in the north-east corner, and led directly east. “Come on,” said Ulixa. “I’d rather not go back that way, if we have a choice.”

The passage wound about; finally they came out into a low chamber with three doors on its north side, and another to the west of the entrance. As they came into the room, there was a clattering, and the western door was thrown open. A dancing skeleton emerged, its bones clicking as it whirled a curved sword about its head, its skull rocking about on its shoulders, grinning endlessly. Otto screamed. “Kill it!” cried Gamelyn. Hwitwic reached out with a long flint knife, and struck its head from its spine. Its jaw clattered for a moment, and then was silent as the skeleton fell all to pieces.

“What,” said Ulixa, “what was that?”

“A dancer,” said Gamelyn. “A dead thing raised up to be a servant of some power.”

The western room was small and bare. The corvinus — corvina? — took up the curved sword. Ulixa found a ring of keys at the skeleton thing’s hip-bone, and went to the three northern doors. Something shouted from behind one of the doors; something else shouted from behind another. Yune chuckled. “They want to know if something’s happened,” he said. He called back in Ibia. Ulixa stared at the doors, as the dwarf had a brief dialogue with the unknown prisoners, which Gamelyn half-followed.

Gamelyn considered the skull, which he thought must be every mortal’s final mask.

“They want out,” said Yune. “There’s a goblin in one cell. A tadigeman, a frog-man, is in another. Something else in the cell between them, they don’t know what.”

“Let’s go,” said Gamelyn.

“How’s that?” said Robert.

“He’s right,” said Agneta. “It’s none of our concern.”

“Something put these creatures in this prison,” said Gamelyn. “What?”

“A wizard,” came a voice from the central cell. “I know his secrets.”

For a moment they were all silent.

“I not understand,” said Kwangrolar. “The wizard near?”

“The wizard is far below, in the lower courts,” said the voice. “But he knew how to shape this court as it was being made, and so set his prison within it.”

“How?” demanded Yune. “Shaping Fell Gard — was this wizard Scaeva himself?”

“No,” said the voice. “But he had a book of power.”

“What book?” whispered Yune.

After a moment, the voice answered: “It was one of the lost Fell Gard Codices.”

“Who are you?” demanded Ulixa. There was no answer. “If you will swear to do us no harm, we will release you,” she said. “Yune, tell the others.” The dwarf did so, and reported, absently, that both of the other creatures swore loyalty. Ulixa let them out. The thing in the central cell was silent. Gamelyn found himself staring at the door; the door, he thought, was a mask. What did it hide?

The goblin and tadigeman both literally threw themselves at Ulixa’s feet. They were starved, slow. Unless it’s a ploy, thought Gamelyn, but the thought was habit; he didn’t believe it himself. If you look for masks everywhere you will find them, he reminded himself. But then that may be because everything is a mask, he answered himself. Or was it him that thought it? Who was he speaking to?

“Will you extort an oath from me?” demanded the thing in the central cell.

“We want to speak with you,” said Ulixa. “Have we not done well by you?”

“I will swear not to harm you,” said the creature, “if you will swear to aid me.”

Gamelyn did not like the feel of this. What sort of creature negotiated through a locked prison door?

“Aid you in what?” asked Ulixa.

“I am searching for a very old friend. Help me.”

“Will you tell us about the Fell Gard Codices?” asked Gamelyn.

The creature was silent. “When I find what I want,” it finally said. “My friend is near. I know it.”

“I’ll swear it,” said Agneta. Yes, thought Gamelyn at once, but you don’t mean it, do you? Oh, she was of the upper courts indeed, to think you could make an oath and not fulfill it.

“Don’t,” said Gamelyn. “Ulixa, don’t.” She stared at him. “There are … too many masks, here.”

“I will promise,” she called out. In a whisper, she added: “I have to, don’t you see? This is our chance, this is what we need!”

“Then I swear,” said the voice. “No harm to you.” Ulixa opened the door.

In the cell was another tadigeman; or tadigewoman, Gamelyn supposed it might be. It did not move quite like the other, though, and when it came out, the other frog-man recoiled, hissing.

“Who are you all?” asked Robert of the Word Inverse. “What are your names?” The goblin, it turned out, was called Hodekin. The first tadigeman’s name translated as Crawler-in-Dark-Water. The other tadigeman said: “You may call me Reprisal.”

“What is the name of your friend?” asked Robert of the Word Inverse. “Is he another tadigeman?”

The toad-thing looked at him. Gamelyn did not like the look in the bulbous eyes; there was too much cleverness in them. He knew, suddenly: this is another mask.

“Nil,” said the tadigeman. “My friend’s name is Nil. If you find Nil you will know Nil.”

There was no other way out of that room, and no choice but to retrace their steps back to the east, and try to go further north. So the mismatched company set out, cervidwen and corvinus, tadigemen and glumm, dwarf and goblin.

They were all very surprised to find, when they opened the door back to the hall with the globe, that Paradox of the Good Act was waiting for them, along with four other people.

“What?” said Ulixa. “How —”

Paradox smiled. “I had a feeling,” he said.

As he explained it to them, the globe had sent him to a far part of the dungeon, several courts away. He had come to a set of rooms, in one of which had been a group of nolls — tall, strong, dimwitted things like hairless apes. He had avoided them, and in another of the rooms found a library. In the library had been a door, and beyond the door the four people now with him, hiding from the nolls. “Sybil is a wizard,” he said. “In the library was a text that could reverse enchantments. She cast it on me, returning me back here, and the spell brought them along, as well.” One of the four with him, a scrawny girl no older than Paradox looked, gave an ironic curtsey; she had dull brown hair, overlarge eyes, and clothes of black spidersilk all tattered at the edges. Beside her, there was a tall lantern-jawed youth in hide armour, with big hands and flashing green eyes under tow-coloured hair, who gave his name as Spyrling; a sneering shaven-headed girl not quite as old as Domini had been, but short where Domini had been tall, and wearing the robes of a monastic, who said she was named Scholastica; and a dwarven girl. Or woman; it was hard to tell. She had hair like lichen further down her cheeks than mortal women, and wore a fine coat of hide or leather. Her name, it seemed, was Alkahest. “They are lost,” said Paradox, “and I thought they might travel with us, until they find their way home.”

Gamelyn watched as they all discussed what was now best to do. In the end they did as they had planned: went back to the west, and then northward. They found a large triangular room, where a snake burst out of the earth to attack them. It narrowly missed Ulixa, and then Hwitwic killed it. They went on, along another hall to the north, until Ulixa found a trap. They waited while she and Yune set to work to disable it.

Gamelyn was unnerved, watching Ulixa work on a danger he did not understand, and which could strike her at any moment. He went to speak to Paradox.

“How did you know?” he asked. “You said you had a feeling, when you spun the globe. How did you know what would happen?”

“I didn’t,” said Paradox. “I just felt … it would all work out.”

Gamelyn sighed. “You’re a very annoying person. Do you know that?”

Paradox smiled. “I’m sorry.”

“This shouldn’t be happening,” said Gamelyn. “All these people … every time we go wandering about, it seems, any of us, we find other people, needing help. This doesn’t happen, in Fell Gard.”

“Maybe it’s because this is a new Court,” said Paradox.

“Hmm,” said Gamelyn. “Tell me something else. When you were wandering around in the dungeon below. Did the nolls have torches, lanterns?”

“No,” said Paradox.

“So you can see in the dark?” asked Gamelyn.

Paradox shrugged. “It looks like it.”

He might have asked something more but the trap — a haunting music, said Yune, that would have played from nowhere and driven listeners mad — had been disabled. They went on, northward, to a room where a suit of hard leather armour, helm and moulded cuirass and gorget and shoulder plates and gauntlets and faulds and codpiece and and poleyn and full greaves and many more pieces, was mounted on a frame of wires. They debated taking it, but decided for the moment to leave it be, and went down another hall in the south wall of the room; that hall turned north-westward and led past a locked door. They paused again while Ulixa disabled another trap (that would have sent metal spikes clawing up through slits in the floor), and went on until the hall turned directly west and widened. Ahead of them, in the torchlight, they could make out a shape on the far side of the room. As they drew closer, they saw that a room opened up ahead of them, to the south and west, while the hall itself continued on westward, narrow again and with a floor made of bone. And they saw that before the entrance to the room there was a large wagon, and sitting on the wagon was a boy who looked exactly like Paradox.

“Don’t be afraid!” the youth cried out to them. He was dressed in a white tunic, of a material Gamelyn did not know.

“The Good Boy!” cried Otto.

“Who — who are you?” asked Ulixa. “Paradox — do you know him?”

“What’s happening?” muttered Spyrling. Paradox shook his head.

“I don’t imagine he would,” said the new youth. “Well, all you people have to know for the moment is that you’re going the right way. You’ll find Otto’s home soon enough. The westward passage turns south after a while, and it’s a nice broad path from there. Congratulations; you’ve made your way to where you had to go.”

Gamelyn had a very bad feeling.

Some of them called out, Ulixa the loudest. “I don’t understand,” she cried. “Who are you? What are you doing here?”

“What am I doing here?” repeated the boy. “Why, I’m feeding those in need.”

“Otto’s people?” asked Wymarc.

“And others,” said the boy. He took up a sack from the wagon. Out of the darkness in the room beyond came half a dozen cobolds. The boy laughed, and threw them the sack. “As for who I am,” he said, more serious, “I can tell you that, if you like. And you’re right to think that the one you call Paradox is of my kind. But I’m afraid that what we are … well, we set hard tests. This is one of them, now. You see, I could tell you who I am, and who Paradox is; and certain things will happen, if I do. Paradox will want to go a certain way. And there’ll be some good to come out of that. Or: you could keep going, and find out who we are a little later, though after much difficulty. More good will come of that, I think.”

“That’s … quite a choice,” said Ulixa. “But we will find out? We will all survive?”

The Good Boy shook his head like a bell tolling. “Nothing is certain,” he said.

“Could you tell some of us, and not others?” asked Yune.

“Well,” said the Good Boy thoughtfully, “I don’t think that would work. Most of you, if you learned the truth, would feel obligated to tell Paradox, I think. Those of you who wouldn’t, probably shouldn’t know.”

Ulixa looked at Paradox. “What do you think?” she asked.

“Also, it’s not his choice to make,” said the Good Boy. “Or yours either, Ulixa.”

“How —” she started, and then said, “Whose, and how do you know my name?”

This, thought Gamelyn, will not end well.

“I know because it’s my nature,” said the Good Boy. “And Gamelyn is the one who must choose.”

“Why me?” he asked. The Good Boy smiled on him, sadly. As Paradox sometimes smiled.

“Oh,” he said, “that question … it’s the only one that ever seems to matter, isn’t it? The truth is, there are two reasons. The first is that you stand to gain the most, if he does learn right now who he is. Events would very shortly lead to you becoming free of the mask. If that is what you want.”

“Of course it’s what I want,” said Gamelyn. “What’s the second reason?”

“Because you don’t know who you are,” said the Good Boy.

Gamelyn sighed. “But you, it is your nature to know,” he said.

“Gamelyn,” said Paradox, “if you don’t want to — you don’t have to.”

Gamelyn realised then what the answer had to be.

Of course, he thought. It all fit. Why Paradox would not fight, or only against demons; why he wore no mask; those first words of the Good Boy. And if it was as Gamelyn guessed, then any good person would tell Paradox what he was.

Unless he had been warned against it.

Gamelyn closed his eyes. This is why I have to be the one to choose, he realised. Because I’ve guessed it. He tried to think through the meaning of it all. He saw only his own shadow, in a laughing mask. He could not see past the paradox. The paradox, he thought, of the good act.

No, he did not know what he wanted.

How could he be free of the mask? How could anyone, ever?

Masks were everywhere. Surely he knew them well enough. Surely he knew his own mask, by now.

Surely?

He thought of the skull. He thought of Paradox, smiling.

He thought: The mask you wear is the only mask you cannot see.

“Do you know what I say, Paradox?” he asked. “Do you know what I choose?”

“I don’t,” said the youth.

“Live in mystery,” said Gamelyn. “Accept that you don’t know yourself. Then you won’t know what you can’t know. You won’t know who you aren’t, or what is wrong, or where your responsibilities lie.” He looked at Ulixa. “You won’t know who you can love, or who you can’t. You won’t know who you hurt, or who you don’t. You can be free. That is what mystery will do for you, Paradox.”

“I don’t care for myself,” said the youth. Gamelyn looked at him.

“Let it be,” said Gamelyn. “Let’s go.”

The Good Boy nodded. “You’ll see me again,” he promised.

So they went on to the west, and the floor underfoot was bone, and they passed a wide hall that led away to the north, and then the hall turned to the south and grew wider and was floored with stone again; and it went on ahead of them a long way, past doors and branching corridors, and Otto began to run, because he recognised the hall; and so they came to his home.

And they were all surprised by what they found.

 

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