The Midnight Palace (Niebla 2)

‘We should separate into groups of two. This place is immense,’ said Ben.

‘I don’t think that’s a good idea,’ replied Seth, who couldn’t get the image of the collapsing bridge out of his head.

‘Even if we did split up, there are only five of us,’ said Ian. ‘Who would go alone?’

‘I would,’ replied Ben.

The others looked at him with a mixture of relief and anxiety.

‘I still don’t think it’s a good idea,’ Seth insisted.

‘Ben’s right,’ said Michael. ‘From what we’ve seen so far, it will make little difference whether we’re five or fifty.’

‘A man of few words, but always so encouraging,’ Roshan remarked.

‘Michael, you and Roshan could search the upper levels,’ Ben suggested. ‘Ian and Seth can check this floor.’

Nobody seemed prepared to dispute the assignment of locations. One area seemed as unattractive as the next.

‘What about you?’ asked Ian, already guessing the answer. ‘Where are you going to search?’

‘In the tunnels.’

‘On one condition,’ said Seth, trying to impose a modicum of common sense.

Ben nodded, listening.

‘No heroics or any other such nonsense. The first person to notice something must stop, mark the place and return to look for the others.’

‘Sounds reasonable,’ Ian agreed.

Michael and Roshan also nodded.

‘Ben?

’ Ian asked.

‘All right,’ Ben murmured.

‘We didn’t hear you,’ Seth insisted.

‘I promise,’ said Ben. ‘We’ll meet back here in half an hour.’

‘Let’s just pray you’re right,’ said Seth.

SHE WOKE INTO a nightmare. As she opened her eyes, Sheere vaguely remembered her vain attempts to free herself from the relentless grip of the fiery shape that had pulled her through a maze of narrow passageways. She also remembered Ben’s face as he lay writhing on the floor of a familiar-looking house, although she didn’t know how long ago that had been. It could have been an hour, a week or a month.

As she regained consciousness and felt the bruises the struggle had left on her body, Sheere realised that what she could see around her was not part of a dream. She was inside a long deep room, flanked on either side by rows of windows which let in enough murky light for her to be able to make out the wreckage of what seemed to be a narrow lounge. The broken skeletons of three glass lamps hung from the ceiling like withered branches. The remains of a cracked mirror shone in the half-light behind a counter that once might have been part of an elegant bar.

She tried to sit up. She worked out that the chains binding her wrists behind her back were fastened to a narrow pipe, and instinctively understood where she was: inside a train stuck in the underground galleries of Jheeter’s Gate.

Straining her eyes, she scanned the mass of fallen tables and burnt debris in search of a tool that might help her free herself from the chains. The interior of the carriage didn’t seem to contain anything but the useless remains of scorched objects that had miraculously survived. She struggled, but only managed to make the chains tighter.

Two metres in front of her a black shape that she had taken to be a pile of rubble suddenly turned towards her. A luminous smile on an invisible face lit up in the darkness. Sheere’s heart skipped a beat as the figure came within a breath of her face. Jawahal’s eyes shone like embers in the wind and Sheere detected the acrid penetrating stench of burnt petrol.

‘Welcome to what remains of my home, Sheere,’ he murmured coldly. ‘That is your name, isn’t it?’

Sheere nodded, paralysed with terror at the presence before her.