switch, and he blinked, startled, when he saw a torch set in an iron wall
sconce
suddenly erupt into flame. Then he noticed that the wall was no longer brick
but
mortared stone, and that the stairs leading down were no longer wooden but
stone.
"Hey, have a look at this!" he said.
Jacqueline and Makepeace came up behind him.
"I turned on the light switch, and this damn torch suddenly blazed up!" said
Blood. "What's more, I swear those stairs were wood only a moment ago.
There's
something else too. There's a strange sort of coldness just past this door, a
sort of... icy watery feeling...."
Makepeace extended his arm past the doorframe. "Aha, what have we here?"
"What is it?" said Jacqueline.
"I believe we've hit the jackpot, my dear," said Makepeace. "I think our
friend
has just discovered a dimensional portal."
"A what?" said Blood.
"A magical doorway through space and time," explained Makepeace. "You go
through
there and you wind up someplace else. It could be somewhere nearby, or on the
other side of the world. Something like this takes a great deal of skill and
an
incredible amount of power to maintain. I don't think there can be any
question
about Lord Carfax now. Looks like we've found our necromancer."
"And something else as well," Jacqueline said, holding up a soft black
leather
roll-up case. "I found this upstairs." She opened it, displaying a lethal
collection of gleaming knives.
"Perhaps we've found our trap as well," said Blood swallowing nervously.
"Either way the answer is through there," Jacqueline said. She shivered as
she
stepped through the coldness of the portal, and to Blood it appeared as if
she
had stepped through some sort of clear, semipermeable membrane. There was a
visible disturbance in the air, an effect not unlike that of water rippling
as
she passed through, took down the torch, and started down the steps.
"After you," said Makepeace.
Blood hesitated.
"You don't have to come if you don't want to, Michael," Makepeace told him.
"No
one will blame you."