Dorian was puzzled. He’d expected tears, anger, perhaps some kind of hysterical outburst. He’d expected her to blame him for running away-certainly he blamed himself-and the need to confess it to someone had been a part of his reason for coming to the parsonage in the first place. Dorian had never had much time for Nat Parson, but that didn’t mean he should have abandoned him to his fate. The same was true of the others, he thought, and as for Adam-his own nephew, for Laws’ sakes-he was deeply ashamed at having run.

“They went into the Hill, lady,” he said at last. “No doubt about it. Your husband too. They were tracking someone-”

“The Smith girl,” said Ethel, pouring tea.

“Aye, and her friend. The one who escaped.”

Ethel nodded. “I know,” she said. “I’m going after them, Mr. Scattergood.”

“After them?” Now he knew that she was mad. In a way it reassured him; her strange calm had begun to make him uneasy. “But, Mrs. Parson-”

“Listen to me,” said Ethel, interrupting. “Something happened to me today. Right here, in the courtyard. It was done in a flash, like a bolt from the blue. One moment alive, the next slipping away into darkness. I’ve seen things, you understand. Things you’d scarcely warrant, not even in dreams.”

“Dreams?” said Dorian. Dreaming was not a pastime respectable folk admitted to in Malbry. He wondered whether Ethel Parson had received a knock on the head and wished he hadn’t called on her. “Perhaps you were dreaming,” he suggested. “There’s funny things-dangerous things-can happen in dreams, and if you don’t happen to be used to it-”

Ethel made an impatient noise. “I was dead, Mr. Scattergood. Dead and halfway to the Underworld before the Seer-folk brought me back. Do you think I’m afraid of a few bad dreams? Do you think I’d be afraid of anything?”

By now Dorian’s unease had deepened into anxiety. He’d never had much experience with madwomen and, being unmarried himself, had little idea of how to deal with one now.

“Er-Mrs. Parson,” he said feebly. “Naturally you’re distraught. Perhaps a rest and some smelling salts?”

She fixed him with a pitying look. “I was dead,” she repeated gently. “People talk around the dead. They say things they shouldn’t. They pay less attention. I don’t pretend to understand all of what’s happening here. The affairs of the Seer-folk are not our affairs, and I wish none of us had been caught up in them, but it’s too late for wishes, I’m afraid. They healed me. They gave me my life. Did they really think that I would return to it as if nothing had happened? Needlework, cooking, and the kettle on the hob?”

“What are you saying?” said Dorian Scattergood.

“I’m saying,” said Ethel, “that somewhere in World Below, my husband and your nephew are still alive. And that if we are to find them again-”

“Find them?” said Dorian. “We’re not talking about a piece of lost knitting here, Mrs. Parson-”

Once more she chilled him with a look. “Do you own a dog, Mr. Scattergood?”

“A dog?”

“Yes, Mr. Scattergood. A dog.”

“Well-no,” he said, taken aback. “Is it important?”

Ethel nodded. “By all accounts there are hundreds of passageways under the Hill. We’ll need a dog to find their trail. A tracking dog with a good nose. Otherwise we may spend the rest of our lives wandering about in the dark, don’t you agree?”

Dorian stared at her, astonished. “You’re not mad,” he said at last.

“Far from it,” said Ethel. “Now, we’ll need a dog, and lamps and supplies. Or I will, if you’d rather stay here.”

Dorian protested less than she’d expected. For a start he welcomed the opportunity to redeem himself for his behavior on the Hill; secondly, whether Ethel was mad or not, she was clearly determined, and he could hardly let her go alone. Borrowing the parson’s horse and trap, he left her to get ready-hardly daring to hope she would change her mind-and returned within the hour with two packs containing food and essentials and with a small black potbellied sow on the seat beside him.

Ethelberta regarded the black sow with some uncertainty. But Dorian was adamant: pigs were his livelihood and he’d always believed in their superior intelligence. Black Nell, the potbellied sow that had caused the scandal years ago, had been a famous truffler in her day, faithful and clever, guarding the farm as well as any dog.

This new sow was descended from Nell herself, though Dorian had never mentioned the fact or declared the broken ruinmark that adorned her soft underbelly with a patch of white. Instead he had used pitch to conceal the mark (as once his own mother had used a hot iron and soot to conceal the mark on her new baby’s arm), and he had never regretted it.

“Lizzy’ll lead us right,” he said. “She’s the best tracker I’ve ever had. She can sniff out a potato at a hundred yards, a truffle in a mile. No dog can match her. Take my word for it.”

Ethel frowned. “Well, if that’s the best you can do…”

“Lizzy’s the best. No doubt about it.”

“Then in that case,” said Ethel, “we mustn’t waste time. Show her the trail, Mr. Scattergood.”

Ten minutes later, plus several bribes of apple and potato and many sniffs of Nat Parson’s discarded overcoat, and Fat Lizzy was fairly straining at the leash. Her eyes gleamed, her snout twitched, she gave little barking grunts of excitement; it was the closest Dorian had ever seen to a talking pig.

“She scents the trail,” Dorian said. “Listen, Mrs. Parson. She’s never let me down. I say we follow her, and if I’m wrong-”

“If you’re wrong, then my husband and your nephew may be wolf meat before long.”

“I know that.” He looked at the potbellied sow, who was practically dancing with excitement. “But I know my Lizzy. She’s no ordinary pig. She’s one of Black Nell’s line, and I never had a pig from that brood that wasn’t twice as smart as any other. I say we give her a chance-it’s more chance than we have without her, anyway.”

And so it was that Ethel Parson and Dorian Scattergood followed Fat Lizzy down the road and across the fields to Red Horse Hill and that before noon they had already entered World Below and, lighting a lamp to show their way, had set off along the sloping path into the unknown.

7

On the threshold of another world, Loki and Maddy were facing the shortest hour of their lives. All around them lay the river Dream, a vastness so broad that neither side could be clearly seen but dotted with islets and skerries and rocks, some drifting, some static, the largest of which housed the Black Fortress of Netherworld.

Above them, purple clouds were gathering like wool on a spindle.

And at their feet lay the Black Fortress, which, Maddy now saw, was no fortress at all, but a huge crater, lipped with steel, from which a thousand thousand galleries dropped and yawped, each gallery lined with barred doors, cells, oubliettes, chambers, dungeons, stairwells, forgotten walkways, dank grottoes, flooded passageways, cavernous spaces, and colossal engines of excavation, for Netherworld is the sink of every evil thought, every submerged terror and neurosis, every war crime, every outrage against what is hopeful and good-and it is always expanding its territory, going deeper and deeper into the dark heart of the World toward an inexhaustible mother lode of sickness.

From the crater, the sound of those engines was like an army of giants cracking boulders with their teeth; above it the voices of the countless dead made a sound like Jed Smith’s forge, but infinitely greater.

“Gods,” Maddy said. “It’s so much more than I ever imagined…”

“Yes, and you don’t even have all that much imagination,” said Loki, putting his hands in his pockets. “Try to picture how I saw it, in the days after Ragnarók; if you think it looks bad from up here, you should try going in deeper-let’s say, twelve hundred levels or so. Believe me, down there, things begin to get seriously imaginative-”