Alchemy, Book Two of the Mercian Trilogy by K. J. Wignall Page A

bright as those he regularly encountered in the city. The pain, which was still considerable, even helped take his mind off his hunger,and slowly he adjusted until his vision was unimpaired. It was a small gesture, perhaps even petty, but it was his way of throwing the gauntlet back at the sorcerer, making clear that he would need more than electrical trickery to defeat William of Mercia.
    He closed the wall behind him and descended the steps, listening, inhaling deeply, ready to strike first at whomever or whatever he encountered.
    At the bottom of the steps he followed the connecting tunnel to the beginning of the labyrinth proper, then turned left instead of right, aiming to cover all of the remaining tunnels in Eloise’s absence. If there were hiding places or signs that others were also here, he wanted to find them.
    The decoration was the same everywhere Will looked, the runic writing and other even more archaic scripts, the symbols, paintings of men and fantastic creatures. It had undoubtedly been a massive undertaking, and that made it seem all the more significant that the pentagonal chamber had walls that were almost bare.
    Something else was the same throughout, that brooding sense of menace he’d experienced the first time. He walked in silence. The air carried only the smell of dust, but he was so certain he was heading towards something that he felt himself tensing with each corner or opening he approached.
    Yet, as with the first visit, each turn revealed nothing, just the gloomy tunnel leading away to another corner, another junction. It didn’t matter how many times he failed to be confronted by someone, didn’t matter that he sensed nothing living, he still expected the next turn to bring him face to face with … he knew not what.
    Finally Will reached the pentagonal chamber, coming to it from one of the other four lit entrances. There was the fifth tunnel too, still in darkness, and as Will moved about the chamber, he tried to keep it in his line of sight, never turning his back on it.
    He looked at the bronze relief on the floor, the boar’s head medallion and the four swords, each leading out to a point on the walls where those runic names had been inscribed. He crouched down and touched the boar’s head, almost expecting it to be warm as the medallion had been warm around his neck – it wasn’t, and now when he reached up, he realised there was no longer any warmth coming from his own fragment of bronze.
    He stood again, looking at the walls. Had those ancient artists left this room bare to highlight the four names, the four swordsmen? A thought sprang into his mind and he immediately wished he hadn’t left Jex’s notebook in the city – could these four names, these four swords, represent the four kings Jex had spoken of in his book? And if so, was it possible that one of theseinscriptions was an ancient form of the name Lorcan Labraid? He had read it in the notebook, he was sure – Lorcan Labraid was the Suspended King, one of the four. If Will was right, this chamber was the closest he had been to finding him.
    He walked around the room, touching each of the names in turn, a token gesture, wanting to touch the name of the evil that had done this to him, wanting in some way to bring himself closer to the destiny that had been mapped out for him that night so long ago. And now that the thought had planted itself, he stared again at the relief in the floor, seeing a new meaning in it. The boar’s head represented Will and his family, the Mercian Earls who had been so cruelly treated, held prisoner by the swords of these four barbarian kings.
    He heard a noise, and looked up, immediately readying his sword. Had it been a footstep? He took in the air, picking up nothing, but he had heard a noise and it had come from the one place he had known he would have to face sooner or later, the darkened tunnel.
    Will took a step towards it and then stopped again as the lights flickered on along its