blocks lining the vault and into the ground beyond, a mixture of subsoil and rubble used for the cathedral’s foundations. She moved on, her perception continuing to quest through the walls.
‘Found it!’ Jula had to shout over the hammering at the door. She lifted her lantern in one hand, in the other a fat book bound with black leather.
‘Wrap the others. Put them back,’ Nona shouted.
‘I don’t know how long this door will hold!’ Markus had the ladder wedged against it and was struggling to move one of the smaller free-standing shelves, books spilling to the ground as it lurched and wobbled.
The door looked undamaged to Nona. She hoped they’d take hammers to it and that by the time another key was found the lock would be jammed or the door panel too warped to open.
On the wall opposite the entrance Nona found what she was looking for. A void beyond the stone blocks. The space beneath the cathedral would have housed store chambers, vaults, sewers, drainage channels, and catacombs where the rich and the holy were interred. Nona wished she had the talent to tell how far off the void was, whether it led anywhere, and what lay between her and it. All she could say was that it was a reasonably large space and probably not more than a yard from where her fingertips pressed the wall.
Nona didn’t want to follow through with her plan but their options had narrowed to almost none. Joeli had done this. Nona felt sure of it. She had thought that if the Namsis girl discovered their actions she would wait longer, eager to unravel more of their plan and unmask them before the abbess. But even if Joeli missed out on seeing her enemies come to grief this way, she would undoubtedly relish the idea of having them caught like rats in a trap, bottled up in the very room they had tried so hard to enter.
Something hit the door with considerably greater force than any previous blow. Nona glanced back at Jula and Markus’s shocked faces and the great dent in the door behind them. The ladder clattered to the ground and the shelf shed more books.
‘You should stand back and cover your ears,’ Nona said.
She had only to picture Joeli’s face to summon the anger she needed. Nona shut her eyes and against the red mist she saw the bright line she sought, burning through her vision. The door shuddered again, another mighty blow reverberating around the vault, and without hesitation Nona leapt at the Path.
As always the Path’s touch lit her whole being, as if the Ancestor had reached out and plucked her like a harp string. The power that thrilled through her brought with it such unalloyed joy that it threatened to wash away all trace of the necessary fear that would allow her to fall from it again. Fear that even as the Path’s energies burned through her they consumed from within, fraying the fabric of her being. Fear that on returning to the world she would neither be able to hold or shape what she had taken. Fear that with insufficient care she might never again find Abeth but fall into the dark places Sister Pan warned of, places from which there was no return.
Jula’s scream brought Nona tumbling from the Path, building up an awful velocity as she fell back into her flesh. For an instant Nona stood, shuddering with power, light bleeding from her skin to fill the vault with crimson and shadow. In the next moment the Path’s momentum caught her up and flung her at the wall like a stone from a sling.
Nona lay sprawled and smoking. With a groan she stood up, still armoured in the Path’s strength, half-deafened, shaking off rock and dirt, chunks of both still falling behind her. Back through the dust-filled tunnel she had made she could see the glow of Jula’s lantern.
‘Come on …’ Her voice escaped as a hoarse whisper. ‘Hurry!’ Louder this time.
Jula came running through, head down, Markus behind her, bent low, stumbling across the rubble. Another blow rang out from the vault, followed by the sound of an iron door crashing to the ground.
Nona glanced around as Jula’s light started to reveal the space about her. They were in a brick-lined tunnel with a low arched ceiling. Rectangular recesses punctuated the walls, places where coffins might have been slid for eternal rest, prior to their relocation when the cathedral closed.