The Golem's Eye

away across the transept, narrowly avoiding several pedestals and actually colliding with a row of wooden chairs; the sound of their brattling collapse boomed back and forth across the enormous space. Passing one great pillar, then another, she slowed and, with the entrance to the tomb now a good way behind her, gave herself up to breathless weeping.
    Only then did she realize she might have turned the key in the lock.
    "Kitty." A small voice in the shadows. Kitty's heart pounded against her chest; with the knife outstretched before her, she backed away.
    "Kitty, it's me." A thin beam of light from the pencil torch. Anne's face, pale, gray-eyed. She cowered behind a high, wooden lectern.
    "We've got to get out." Kitty's voice was cracking. "Which way's the door?"
    "Where's Fred? And Mr. Pennyfeather?"
    "Which way's the door, Annie? Can you remember?"
    "No. That is, I think that way, maybe. It's so difficult in the dark. But—"
    "Come on, then. Turn off the torch for now."
    She went on at a jog, Anne stumbling after her. In the first moments of her panic, Kitty had simply run unthinkingly, with no sense of direction. It had been the foul blackness below ground that had done it—numbing her brain, stopping her from thinking clearly. But now, dark and musty though it still was, the air was at least fresh—it was helping her master her surroundings, orient her position. A line of pale windows shone high above: they were back in the nave again, on the opposite side to the cloisters door. She halted, allowing Anne to catch up with her.
    "It's just across here," she hissed. "Tread carefully."
    "Where's—?"
    "Don't ask." She stole forward a few more steps. "What about Nick?"
    "He's gone. I didn't see..."
    Kitty swore under her breath. "Never mind."
    "Kitty—I dropped my bag."
    "Well, that doesn't matter now, does it? We've lost everything." Even as she said it, she suddenly became aware that she was still holding the magician's staff in her left hand. It surprised her somewhat; throughout the desperate flight, she had not been at all aware of it. The rucksack, with the cloak and other valuables, had been lost somewhere on the stairs.
    "What was that?"
    They stopped dead, in the center of the nave's black space.
    "I didn't hear—"
    "Something scuttling. Did you—?"
    "No... No, I didn't. Keep going."
    A few steps more; they sensed a column rising high in front of them. Kitty turned to Anne. "Past the pillar, we'll need the torch to pinpoint the door. I don't know how far we've come."
    "All right." At that moment, a skittering rush sounded directly behind them. Both squealed and lurched in opposite directions. Kitty fell half against the pillar, lost her balance and collapsed to the floor. Her knife was jarred out of her grasp. As quickly as she could she got to her feet and turned around.
    Darkness; somewhere a faint scraping. The pencil torch was lying on the ground, spilling a miserly beam of light against the column. Anne was nowhere to be seen.
    Slowly, slowly, Kitty backed away behind the pillar. The door to the cloisters was somewhere close, she was sure of it, but exactly where she could not tell. Still holding the staff, she slipped forward, hand outstretched, feeling her way blindly toward the south wall of the nave.
    To her surprise and almost unsupportable relief, her fingers touched coarse wood and the cold breath of true fresh air fell upon her face. The door was hanging open, a little; she scrabbled at it desperately to shove it aside, squeeze through.
    It was just then that she heard the familiar noise; somewhere behind her in the nave. The tap-tap-tapping of a lame man's stick.
    Kitty dared not breathe; she remained frozen where she was, half in and half out of the abbey door.
    Tap, tap, tap. The faintest of whisperings. "Kitty... help me..."
    It couldn't be. It couldn't. She made to step out into the cloisters; paused.
    "Kitty... please..." The voice was weak, the footsteps faltering.
    She closed her eyes tight; took a long, deep breath; slipped back inside.
    Someone was shuffling along in the middle of the nave, tapping hesitantly with the stick. It was too dark to make the figure out; it seemed confused, directionless, wandering this way and that, coughing feebly and calling out her name. Kitty watched it from behind a column, jerking back whenever it appeared to turn toward her. From what she could see, it was the right shape, the right size for him; it moved in the right way. The voice sounded