LITMIR.BIZ

       38 THE CASTLE

      he last time Valkyrie had seen this castle she had been running from it. They had just rescued Skulduggery and Serpine’s Hollow Men had been closing in from all sides.

      “I rescue you a lot,” she muttered.

      “Sorry?” Skulduggery said, looking back.

      “Nothing.”

      Every ground floor entrance had been bricked up, so they got in through a window on the first floor and worked their way down. It was quiet and cold. Skulduggery went first down the stone stairs, then Fletcher and Anton Shudder. Valkyrie and Ghastly brought up the rear.

      The stairs to the basement level were cemented over.

      “Spread out,” said Skulduggery. “We’re looking for any sign of recent activity.”

      They split up. Valkyrie went to the back of the castle. Here and there were items of old furniture, dust-covered, standing alone in otherwise empty rooms. She stepped into a drawing room with an ornate fireplace, turned to go, then stopped. She looked at the way the light caught the grooves that had been scraped into the floor in front of the fireplace. She knelt by them, running her fingers along the worn edges. Valkyrie was no expert, but she reckoned that these shallow grooves that curved in a uniform pattern had been here for about as long as the castle had been standing. Something heavy had been repeatedly moved across this area over the years – but had it happened recently?

      Valkyrie stepped on to the fireplace’s base and ran her hands along the mantle. The right corner was the only spot free of dust and her fingers drifted lightly over the stone. She felt something give and the fireplace rotated silently, swinging her around and through the wall into a cold corridor. The fireplace completed its rotation with a soft click. Valkyrie didn’t move. The corridor was dark and made of stone, lit by torches in brackets along the walls. To her left was a thick chain, trundling up from a large gap in the floor through a big hole in the ceiling, like it was part of some huge pulley system.

      And no more than two metres away, standing with its back to her, was a Hollow Man.

      The torchlight flickered off its papery skin, catching the stitches and the strains where its arms were pulled down by its heavy fists.

      Valkyrie tried activating the switch again, but the mechanism was locked. The Hollow Man twitched its head as if it had heard something. Valkyrie reached out to the thick chain and gripped it with both hands. It carried her off her feet and up through the gap in the ceiling. As she looked down, the Hollow Man turned, too late to catch sight of her.

      She passed up through the gap and checked around quickly before letting go of the chain. She took out her phone and checked the bars. The signal was blocked. She’d pretty much expected that. She hurried down to the end of the corridor, keeping tight to the wall, doing her best to make sure that her shadow wasn’t going to give her away. She reached an intersection and peeked out and saw Springheeled Jack.

      Valkyrie dropped back and hunkered down. Three strides took him abreast of her, but he passed without glancing down. Once she started thinking again she counted to ten then added another five before getting up. She peeked out, but he was gone, moving along some other corridor. She crept in the opposite direction, putting as much distance between them as possible. If she had to run from Hollow Men, she figured she could do it, but running from him? She wouldn’t get three steps.

      She heard a man talking. There was a laugh and it wasn’t nice. The further she crept, the clearer the voice became. She still couldn’t make out the words. The voice reached its clearest as she passed a door, but when she put her ear to it, she couldn’t hear any better. Valkyrie frowned and stepped back, following the sound, her eyes dropping. On the ground beside the door was an opening. A ventilation shaft. She heard Kenspeckle’s voice, but still couldn’t hear what was being said.

      Valkyrie got to her hands and knees and peered in. It was dark. Very dark. She flattened herself to the floor and crawled into the shaft. She let her eyes adjust, feeling the thick layer of dust under her hands. She moved forward on her elbows, banging her head against the roof of the shaft and gritting her teeth against the pain. She could hear the words now.

      “…nice of them to give me a plaything, don’t you think? So thoughtful. They don’t want me getting bored, you see.”

      Valkyrie moved on, feeling a cobweb break against her face. With a controlled franticness she cleared it away, trying to dam her mind against the images of spiders scuttling in her hair. Ahead of her was a junction, a break in the darkness, where the ventilation shaft opened into the room where the voice was coming from. Valkyrie squirmed up, laid her face against the cold stone and peered in.

      Tanith wasn’t chained up or shackled to a wall, as Valkyrie had expected. Instead she was sitting in an armchair, hands flat on the armrests, legs crossed. An old man sat opposite in an identical armchair. His white hair stood out in clumps and he had dark rings under his eyes. It took her a moment to recognise Kenspeckle.

      Beside both chairs was a small table. On Tanith’s table were a cup and saucer, and on the table beside Kenspeckle was a teapot and a bowl of sugar cubes. The room was stone, but the armchairs were on a rug and there was a frayed tapestry hanging on the wall. There was a lamp, minus a lampshade, in the far corner of the room. The bulb was broken. It was a feeble attempt at introducing warmth and normality to the stark and bizarre, and it was even more unsettling for it.

      Kenspeckle drank his tea and returned the cup to its saucer with a delicate plink.

      Tanith’s face was strained and wet with sweat. Her eyes were unfocused and her body rigid. Valkyrie searched for a shackle or a sign that Tanith’s powers were being bound, but she couldn’t see anything.

      There was a small pool of dried blood beside the armrest closest to the ventilation shaft. Valkyrie followed the course the blood would have had to have taken, and noticed for the first time Tanith’s

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