Chapter 1 of The Fatal Gate

Book 2: The Gates of Good and Evil

1
NO ONE COULD HELP HER

‘Gergrig wants the child,’ said Yetchah, the weathered boards creaking as she moved around the circle of Whelm. Her dark eyes, touched by the firelight, blazed with longing. ‘If we give her to him, he will surely agree to be our master.’

Every hair stood up on Sulien’s head, and her throat went so tight that she could scarcely draw breath. The Whelm were going to betray her!

‘Gergrig wants her dead!’ grated Idlis. ‘And we swore to protect her with our lives.’

‘You swore to protect her,’ said Yetchah. ‘The rest of us vowed, after our incomparable master Rulke was slain, that we would do whatever it took to gain a master his equal.’

‘Oh perfect master!’ sighed the other eleven Whelm in the circle, and they raised their bony arms to the sky.

‘The life of a nine-year-old girl is a small price to pay to gain such a master,’ said Yetchah.

‘We made Sulien into a little Whelm,’ choked Idlis. ‘Would you send one of us, a child, to a cruel death by torture?’

For a moment Yetchah looked uneasy, then the ecstasy flooded back. ‘No outsider can ever be one of us,’ she cried. ‘No one matters more than our new master.’

Sulien, crouching in the shadows, clenched her fists helplessly as they shuffled sideways in a ring around the fire. The crude stone fireplace was set on the boards of a long-abandoned village built on stilts at the centre of a chilly coastal lake. The flames roared shoulder high, the sole source of light on this winter night, but no warmth reached her. What could she do? Where could she go? The Whelm knew this cold southern land, which they called Salliban, and she did not.

She had lived in fear for months now; every day and every hour she kept watch for an enemy determined to see her dead. The attack could come through a mental link to burn out her mind, a blow from a stranger or poison slipped into her mug, and now from those who had sworn to protect her. Terror was crushing her; every day she felt smaller and weaker and a step closer to death.

‘Yes, yes, yes!’ they chanted.

Sulien had attempted a link to Karan many times, but it was as if her mother no longer existed. Had the Merdrun’s evil old magiz killed her? She choked back a sob. If she had, no one could help Sulien now. Not even Idlis, the strangest of all the Whelm, could defy their collective will.

He stood outside the circle, licking his flaking lips. He was trembling; he desperately wanted to join his people. How long before he betrayed her too?

The rest of this chapter, and Chapter 2, here.