Forest Kingdom Trilogy 1 - Blue Moon Rising

back to normal. A sudden darkness swallowed the lanternlight, and she could hear voices crying out in fear and anger, but only faintly, as if from a great distance. She felt she had to keep moving, but every step seemed harder than the one before, and her muscles ached with the effort it took to press on. A hideous pressure built within and around her, trying to force her back, but Julia wouldn't give in. That wasn't her way. The pressure reached a peak, but Julia could feel there were people in the darkness with her, helping her to fight back. She drew on their strength, and they drew on hers, and together they threw themselves forward. And then the light came back, and the world was steady again.
    Julia sank on to her haunches and breathed harshly as her head slowly cleared. She was exhausted and wringing with sweat, as though she'd been running for hours on end, but when she glanced around she found she was still in the same dark corridor. The only light came from a single lantern, held by a guard crouching beside her who looked almost as bad as she felt. Julia frowned suddenly, and looked back the way she'd come. The Seneschal was leaning weakly against a wall, glowering at one of his maps, but there was no trace of the other eleven guards.
    'What the hell happened?' demanded Julia, climbing shakily to her feet after waving away the guard's proffered hand, 'and where are the other guards?'
    'The South Wing is trapped inside some kind of barrier,' said the Seneschal thoughtfully, as he carefully refolded his map and tucked it into his coat pocket. 'Presumably set up when the Astrologer's spell backfired.' He glanced down the corridor, but the impenetrable dark gave nothing away. The Seneschal sniffed, and turned his back on it. 'The other guards must still be on the other side of the barrier. Typical.
    Damn guards are never around when they're needed.'
    Julia fought down an impulse to grab the Seneschal by the shoulders and shake some sense into him, and smiled at him reasonably. 'Sir Seneschal, we can't just leave them there . . .'
    'Oh, they'll be safe enough, we can pick them up on our way back. It's their own fault, anyway. We broke through that barrier because we refused to be beaten, and because at the end we worked together. The other guards weren't up to that. A pity, but never mind. We've made it into the South Wing, and that's all that matters. The first people in thirty-two years . . . Well, come on. There's no point in standing about here, there's work to be done.'
    And with that, the Seneschal grabbed the lantern from the guard's hand and stalked off down the corridor without even a backward glance, leaving Julia and the guard to hurry after him. Julia studied the guard covertly as they followed the Seneschal deeper into the South Wing. He was short and stocky, with a compact muscular frame and heavily muscled arms. All in all, he looked rather like a giant who'd been cut off at the knees. He couldn't have been much more than forty, but there was a certaingrimness to his face that made him seem a lot older. His broad, heavily boned features were capped by close-cropped hair of so light a blond as to be nearly white, and there was a wary watchfulness to his eyes that Julia found reassuring. Whatever happened, this guard wasn't the kind to be caught unawares.
    'My name's Bodeen,' he said suddenly. 'In case you were wondering.'
    'I hadn't realised I was staring,' said Julia.
    'You weren't,' he assured her, 'but there's not much I don't notice.'
    'Keep that attitude,' said Julia, 'and we may all get out of this alive.'
    They both chuckled quietly, but there was more tension than humour in the sound. The Seneschal stopped, gazed thoughtfully at a side turning, and then plunged into it. Julia and Bodeen followed. The Seneschal led them through a baffling series of twists and turns, down corridors and up stairways, in and out of cobwebbed doors and passages, until the Princess had lost all sense of time and direction. She began to feel strangely disorientated, as though she was standing still and everything else was moving around her.
    Bodeen padded silently at her side like a cat on the prowl, his eyes constantly searching for possible dangers. Anywhere else, Julia would have found such behaviour intensely irritating, but ever since she'd entered the South Wing she'd had the feeling someone was watching and waiting in the dark beyond the lantern's light. No matter where she looked, or how quickly she turned