Through the corridor, down the stairs, and into the darkness, a sphere of sea-green light forming to light the way. The glow backlit Rachel’s face strangely; she wore no mask this time, and in the greenish light her features were beautiful but cold, with little trace of feeling or warmth. Through the chapel, and now Rachel’s path curved to skirt a patch of floor. To me it looked the same as any other but to Rachel’s eyes it was the place in which Shireen had died, and a trace of her blood still stained the stone. Just for a moment I felt another presence in the ancient shrine, and I thought I heard an echo of footsteps behind us.

Through the corridors and the laboratory, past the cells and through the labyrinth. The signs of the battle still scarred the benches but the bodies were gone. Maybe the dust and ashes in the corners might have been a part of them once but no one would be able to tell, not anymore. Still Rachel walked on, her feet picking out the paths as though she’d walked them a hundred times before, until at last she came to the room at the very end of the labyrinth, the final one to have been completed all those years ago.

The room was smooth and circular, pillars supporting the ceiling, all illuminated in the green light of Rachel’s spell. At the centre of the room was a wide dais. Three black hemispheres protruded from the stone, forming a triangle. Rachel stopped a little way from the dais and waited.

Time passed. Rachel waited, paced. Twice she looked towards the exit, as though on the verge of leaving, but each time she stayed. Suddenly she snapped her head around and an instant later I felt what she did: a slow surge of magical power, growing stronger.

With a faint hiss black energy erupted from the dais, dark lightning crackling to join the three hemispheres in a triangle. At the centre of the triangle the air darkened, a black oval appearing in midair. Rachel stood stiff, as though paralysed. The black oval grew, stretched. For a moment it was almost transparent and there was the hint of something visible on the other side, then a man was stepping through, alighting on the dais. His feet touched the stone and the black lightning snapped off, the portal vanishing into nothingness. The man was ordinary-looking in every way; but for his entrance no one would have looked at him twice.

Rachel moved first, bowing her head. A complex mixture of emotions flickered across her face and were gone. “Master.”

“Deleo,” Richard said with a smile. “It’s good to be back.”

And I woke with a gasp, heart pounding in my chest.