“The Cornish knights are proud and fierce fighters,” Ecgbryt told him. “We will need their spears and long arms. They are kin with the giants, you know? The oldest peoples of these lands-even of the Welsh and Picti.”
Alex raised his flashlight around to look at all the stunning stalactites hanging above them. Some of them must have been twenty feet long. He was looking up, jaw hanging open, when his foot slipped and he splashed into a pool of water up to his knee. It had probably been undisturbed for hundreds of years and felt as cold as ice. “Could we not have driven a little closer to it overland?” he asked, shaking his sodden leg. They had driven to a boutique-filled village called Honiton, near Exeter, and started their trip from there. The drive had probably saved them days, but in the race they were on, every hour counted.
“I judge not. The Eastern tip’s tunnels were ancient even to the Celt peoples. They are hard to access from the surface-hard, at least, in one sense. There are many, many entrances and they form a true maze to get past. This path is the same as what you would call ‘the back door.’”
Alex swore.
“Slipping again? I do not understand why you have your light turned up so high. Meotodes meahte, but it is dazzling.”
“But why start in Cornwall, exactly?” Alex asked, stomping his foot.
Ecgbryt considered awhile before answering. “Ni?ergeard has been occupied for many years, its people captive, and possibly many of its secrets have been spilled from unwilling lips. You know how many chambers have already been discovered-it would not be worth holding out hope that those nearest the city would be untouched. However, this end of the island is densely packed with obscured places and mysteries that were kept even before Ealdstan’s time, I wist. Although there are not many knights here-the Dumnonians have ever been independent-they will be well hidden. And hardy, as I have said. Did I tell you they came from giant stock?”
“Aye. You mentioned that,” Alex said. “But it’s so out of the way. Why corner ourselves like this? What’s so special over there?”
“The Cornish kingdom,” Ecgbryt continued and Alex didn’t correct him, “is one of the thin places of this island. If anything were to leak through, this is one of the places it would first occur. We may be able to judge the extent of this island’s peril by what we find there. In any case, Cornwall is not a corner. We will need to pass through it to get to Llyonesse and points beyond.”
“Llyonesse, the sunken land?”
“Swa swa. Just so.”
They came upon their first sleeping chamber after a couple more miles. It was not hidden by any illusion or enchanted wall; it simply lay at the centre of a labyrinth made of black stone that ate the light cast by the lanterns and made it hard to tell wall from opening. Ecgbryt insisted all through the maze that he knew the path, but he led them to many dead ends before they found the sleeping circle of knights.
Or at least, what had once been the circle of knights.
On sixteen black stone tables lay sixteen white corpses, each of them held down by a web of metal chains and manacles that ran beneath the tables.
“They are all dead,” Ecgbryt said, casting his eyes over the scene. “Not one of them escaped.”
“They were stripped of their weapons,” Alex observed, examining them closer. “Then tied-quickly and skilfully, if it was done without waking them from even an enchanted sleep.”
“Here is the horn,” said Ecgbryt, walking to the centre of the ring. He looked around with baleful eyes. “Trussed like snared fowl and then awoken from their immortal slumber. They died of starvation? Or thirst? Did the yfelgopes watch them suffer? Did they torture them?”
“There don’t appear to be any wounds, apart from dried blood on the manacles,” Alex said with a sigh. “Some nearly pulled their hands and feet off trying to escape.”
“Swa swa. They would have done it if they could,” Ecgbryt said. “They were valiant warriors all, and not a one would hesitate to sacrifice life or limb for another.”
“Well, they are dead, and their spirits have left this place.” Alex thought of the massacred Scottish knights of Morven and shivered. It could be worse, he thought to himself. “Let us keep moving. We are too late for these knights; let us pray we are not too late for the others.”
But the yfelgopes had a head start of many years. It was possible there were no sleepers left on the entire island.