بخش 40

CHAPTER 78

A DEADLY FALL

PETER, MOLLY, AND MCGUINN heard it clearly now: men shouting, and the sound of boots—many boots—tromping heavily up the stone steps outside.

“Could it be Warders?” said Molly.

“No,” McGuinn answered, his eyes on the door. “They’re in their barracks. Nobody is supposed to be here at this hour.”

The footsteps reached the top of the stairs outside. The door handle rattled. A voice outside shouted, “It’s locked!”

“Break it down!” shouted another voice, which Peter recognized instantly.

“Slank,” he said.

“Oh, no,” said Molly. “How did he find us?”

“Who is it?” said McGuinn.

“He’s with the Others,” said Molly.

“Oh, my,” said McGuinn. He jumped as a heavy body heaved into the door behind him, the crash echoing through the vast stone room. There was another crash, then another, accompanied by shouting and cursing. The old oak creaked and groaned—but remained closed.

“It’s holding,” said McGuinn grimly. “That door was built for battle.”

“Are there any other entrances?” said Molly.

“No,” said McGuinn. “The White Tower was designed to be defended. This is the only way in.”

“Or out,” noted Peter.

There was another resounding crash as bodies heaved against the door—more cursing, more shouting.

And then a sudden silence.

McGuinn, Peter, and Molly stood still as statues, listening, barely breathing.

Then, from just outside the door came a faint wheezing sound. Tink made a noise Peter had come to know well.

“Ombra,” he said.

“The door!” said Molly, recalling the encounter with Ombra in her room. “He’s going to come under the door!”

As she spoke the cold air grew colder, and a pool of blackness began to seep through the crack at the bottom of the massive door. Tink flew to Peter’s ear, chiming urgently.

“The lantern!” Peter said. “Put the lantern near him!”

McGuinn hesitated, puzzled.

“He doesn’t like light!” said Peter. “Put the light on him!”

McGuinn brought the lantern down to the middle of the black pool coming under the doorway. Instantly it shrank back, though two dark tentacles on either side kept advancing. McGuinn swung the lantern right, then left, driving the tentacles back. But as soon as he moved from one part of the pool to another, the part he’d abandoned began advancing again. Molly and Peter watched helplessly as McGuinn moved the lantern back and forth, back and forth, his motions increasingly frantic. But it was quickly apparent that his lantern was not enough to stop the thing coming under the door.

“Wait!” said Molly. “Can’t Tinker Bell stop it again?”

Tink started to respond, but Peter cut her off: “She can stop it once, but then she’ll be too tired to do it again. It will come right back. We need something else.” He turned to McGuinn. “Are there more lanterns?”

“Yes,” McGuinn answered. “Downstairs.” He nodded to the right, not taking his eyes off the relentless seeping blackness. Peter ran along the wall and found an archway opening onto a staircase.

“Hurry!” shouted McGuinn. Peter glanced back and saw he was losing his battle with the dark shape on the floor, its tentacles protruding farther and farther into the room.

With Tink lighting the way and Molly right behind, Peter entered the cramped staircase, which descended in a tight spiral, round and round, leading them to a landing with an archway opening to another vast room. A lantern hung in the center of the archway. Peter floated up and unhooked it, then floated down. He glanced into the room and gasped as, in the gloomy distance, he saw a dozen or so shapes…the shapes of men.

“Who’s that?” he said to Molly.

“It’s suits of armor,” Molly said.

“Hurry!” McGuinn’s voice, tinged with panic, echoed down to them. “I can’t keep it out!”

Holding the lantern, Peter ran back up the stairs, with Molly right behind. As they reached the main room they saw the reason for McGuinn’s distress: Ombra was inside now, billowing upward to his full height. McGuinn, still holding his lantern, was backing away from the dark shape, which was now flowing toward him.

“Don’t let him touch your shadow!” shouted Molly.

McGuinn looked down. The lantern was in his right hand, casting his shadow to the left. Ombra was gliding that way.

“Hold the lantern in front of you!” shouted Peter.

McGuinn quickly swung the lantern forward. Ombra flinched, stopping just for a moment. The lantern was now between Ombra and McGuinn—and McGuinn’s shadow. McGuinn was still backing toward Peter and Molly, now standing only a few feet away in the archway leading to the landing.

“Look out!” shouted Peter, as Ombra, moving with astonishing quickness, darted to McGuinn’s left. McGuinn swung the lantern that way, but as soon as he did Ombra was swooping right, like a giant bat. McGuinn stepped back quickly toward Peter and Molly, the three of them now moving onto the landing. With nowhere else to go, they started backing down the steep spiral staircase, McGuinn and Peter keeping the two lanterns in front of them, and their eyes on the relentless dark thing coming toward them.

Then it happened. In the jostling on the staircase—three bodies, two lanterns—McGuinn’s shadow wound up on the outside wall for an instant. In that instant, Ombra pounced.

“No!” shouted Molly, seeing the dark shape darting to the shadow. McGuinn saw it, too. He lurched backward and, awkward in his unbuckled shoes, missed a step. As Ombra touched his shadow, McGuinn screamed and jerked away, flailing the air and letting go of the lantern. It smashed on the stairs, spewing oil, which burst into flame, filling the staircase with light. Ombra recoiled from the flames, detaching from McGuinn’s shadow and oozing back up the stairs; at the same time McGuinn, unconscious, went over backward and, before Peter and Molly could grab him, fell down the steep staircase, his head hitting the stone with a sickening sound.

Molly screamed and ran down to McGuinn; Peter, still holding the lantern, followed.

McGuinn’s eyes were open, but his head was at a terrible angle.

“No,” Molly said. “No.” She touched McGuinn’s lifeless, out-flung hand, then began to sob.

Peter put his hand on her shoulder, unable to think of anything to say.

Tink had no such problem.

We need to get out of here, she said.

From upstairs came the sound of shouting, the thunder of feet. Ombra had opened the door; the men were inside. Peter looked back at the staircase. The lantern fire was still blocking it, but the flames were lower now.

“Come on, Molly,” Peter said softly but urgently, pulling Molly to her feet. “We have to go.”

“Where can we go?” said Molly, her eyes still on the fallen McGuinn.

The shouting of the men was louder now.

“I don’t know,” said Peter. “But we can’t stay here.” CHAPTER 79

THE SILENT STRUGGLE

“SILENCE,” SAID OMBRA, in a voice that, while not loud, was heard by every man in the cavernous room. Instantly the shouting stopped. Slank, Nerezza, and the men gathered around the dark hooded figure who had just let them into the White Tower.

“Two men will remain by this door,” Ombra said. “The boy and the girl are downstairs. They have blocked the stairs with a fire. Captain Nerezza, take four men and extinguish the fire, then search the lower floor. Mister Slank, there is another staircase at the far end of this room. You will take the rest of the men and go down that way.”

The men were divided and—eager to win the gold sovereigns—ran off in search of Peter and Molly. They left Ombra standing alone in the center of the vast dark room. He was motionless, but not idle: inside his dark form an intense, silent struggle was taking place between Ombra and the last flickering flame of the life that had once been Senior Starcatcher McGuinn.

Ombra, forced by the lantern fire to let go of McGuinn’s shadow, had been unable to absorb it completely. The part that Ombra now possessed, unable to survive in fragmented form, was dying. It was also, in its death throes, resisting Ombra’s efforts to extract the information he most wanted: the location of the starstuff, and the site of the Return.

McGuinn—or what was left of McGuinn—fought hard against the cold blackness enveloping him, absorbing him. But he was weak, and Ombra was strong. McGuinn had given as little as he could, but as the last spark of his being died, Ombra was satisfied that he had obtained just enough.

Now he wanted the children.