“For my fifteenth birthday, Skulduggery gave me a three-month course in ballistics. Some of it stuck.” She stood up. “Whatever attacked them was driven away. Doesn’t look like Foe or any of his friends were hurt.”

“At least we’re getting closer,” said Gordon. “Let’s keep going.”

Valkyrie put her torch away and walked on for another ten minutes, and then Gordon said, “There’s something up ahead.”

She advanced cautiously, tranq gun in hand, but what at first appeared to be a person lying down turned out to be a bundle of old clothes. She nudged the bundle and it rattled.

“Bones?” Gordon asked.

“This looks like the suit Anathem Mire was wearing,” Valkyrie said. She looked around. “This is familiar. Are we heading to that messed-up house of his?”

“We’re heading to the fountain,” said Gordon.

“Maybe he built his house near it.”

Gordon nodded. “That would make sense. According to his journals, the fountain is in a cavern that the creatures here stay away from. If he were going to build a house of magic, that would be the only place to do it. But then what is his body doing all the way out here?”

“He promised he’d find me,” Valkyrie said. “He was convinced I was to be his wife, or his queen or whatever, and I’d stay forever in that house that moved and changed and melted and … Anyway, I escaped, and when I was running off he was screaming at me, I’ll find you, I’ll find you, blah blah blah. I think he tried to do exactly that. I think he tried to follow.”

“So his spirit returned to his body,” said Gordon, “and he gave chase. But he was vulnerable from the moment he left that cavern, and the creatures here got him. Picked his bones clean.”

Valkyrie grimaced. “Couldn’t have happened to a nicer chap. Think his spirit is still around?”

“Without a form to inhabit, it would have dissipated long ago,” Gordon said. “Pity. I would have liked him to sign his journals. They were surprisingly well written. Come along now, the fountain can’t be far from here.”

It wasn’t. Five minutes later, Valkyrie stepped into a vast cavern. The last time she’d been here, there had been a replica of Gordon’s house in the exact centre. Now there was nothing. The ground was flat and the cavern, as far as she could see, was empty.

“Can’t see a fountain or a pool or even a puddle,” she whispered.

Gordon pointed. “That way. We can’t see it from here, but there should be an opening in the cavern wall that leads to the chamber with the fountain.”

Valkyrie chewed her lip. “Darquesse could be in there. With Foe and Mercy and Samuel.”

Gordon nodded. “We should wait for Skulduggery. Good idea. Better safe than sorry, after all.”