The Kinsfolk swarmed forward with inhuman speed and strength, and the next moment they had overpowered Josh and Cal, holding them down with sharp flint knives pressed against their throats. Then the leader raised his arm to hurl his spear into Cal’s heart, as his people chanted, “Death! Death! Death!”

“No!” I screamed, and threw myself blindly at the leader’s feet. “Stop! You mustn’t do this, please, I beg you.”

The creature paused and turned the black slits of his eyes on me. “It is a blood payment for the Kinsfolk warriors. It is our right. The Spirit Woman gave these men to us.”

“I’ll give you something better if you spare their lives,” I said wildly.

“What?” he demanded. “What will you give?”

“I—I’ll be your queen,” I stammered. Images flashed into my mind, of Maria sobbing, and long hands grasping for me in a glare of red smoke. I heard the drums, I felt the stab of the knife, and I thought I was going to be sick. Terror pulsed through my whole body, but I couldn’t turn back now. I had led my friends into this, and I had to help them. Fumbling in my bag, I dug out the bronze circlet. “Here, this is yours. Take it and take me. But you must release my friends.”

The creatures gibbered with excitement at the sight of the coronet, but Cal groaned, “Sarah, you can’t. I won’t let you!”

“They’ll kill you if I don’t! What choice do we have?”

“We are all free to make our choices,” said Helen, as though seeing a vision. “Sarah has chosen a hard path. But we can’t stop her. None of us can. It is her time. It was written—S for Sarah.”

Evie looked white and unhappy, but she whispered, “I believe in you, Sarah. I trust you to make the right choice.”

“Accept my offering,” I implored the leader, handing him the circlet. “And let my friends go free before the Priestess returns.”

“You will do this for the Kinsfolk?” he asked. “To save your own people?”

“Yes,” I replied. “I promise. And I never break my promises.”

“You bring the lost crown back to the Kinsfolk,” the creature said with a low bow. “We will defy the Spirit Woman and release the others. But you must stay in the earth kingdom with the Kinsfolk, and wear their crown. This is your promise? Agreed?”

“Agreed,” I said. “But you must let my friends go quickly so they will be safe.”

“The Kinsfolk will show them the secret path. It leads from the earth kingdom to the stone circle in the sky world.”

“I can’t leave you here, Sarah,” Cal said in anguish.

“You have to! The whole point is for you to get out. When Mrs. Hartle comes back, she’ll kill you and Josh and make Evie and Helen her slaves—and me. I have to do this. At least it gives the rest of you a chance. Go! Just go!”

“Sarah’s right,” said Josh reluctantly. “She’s our only hope now. We have to do as she says.”

I hugged them one by one, and finally Cal.

“You’ve given me so much,” I whispered. “Enough for all eternity.” His eyes met mine, and I understood everything. Cal was the one who knew me, right the way through. The one I had no secrets from. The one who loved me. Not for being good or strong, but just for being me, all of me, good and bad. And now I had to keep my promise. I had to let him go.

“I love you,” I whispered. “This isn’t the end for us.”

“It can’t be,” Cal said. “I won’t let it be the end. I’ll wait for you at the standing stones—I’ll be there for you—when you get through this—” His voice broke and he couldn’t speak.

“I’ll get through it,” I said. “Wait for me.” I smiled, then turned from him to hide my tears. Josh gently pulled Cal away, and there was nothing more to say.

It was time.

I was ready.

“You must take the secret path,” said the wizened leader to Josh. “My folk will guide you.” Two other tough-skinned creatures, bent and wiry, led the way with torches in their hands. They pulled on one of the stalactites, and with a great rumbling an entrance opened up in the cave wall. This was the way back to the light, but only for Josh, Helen, Evie, and Cal—they were all leaving me behind.

I didn’t watch them go. I closed my eyes until the sound of their footsteps had been swallowed up. And then I was alone in the deep places of the earth, and I had to fulfill my vow.

The rest of the creatures dragged me to the far side of the cavern. A huge pillar of rock spread out in fantastic shapes like a tree of stone. Simple red lamps hung from its branches. The leader lit the lamps with a torch and they began to smoke. A heavy, drowsy smell filled the air. And then it began. The drums. The chanting. The long cold hands reaching for me, tearing at my clothes and tugging at my hair. Maria had known this and been terrified. Sebastian had rescued her, but I had to bear it. Then the leader’s fingers brushed against the Talisman, which was still hanging around my neck, and he sprang back. “Aaeee! The girl wears a stone of power! She has great magic!”

Their drumming and singing became even wilder until the music echoed through the cave. One of the Kinsfolk took a long, coarse piece of cloth from his bag and tied it around my shoulders like a robe. Then they bound me to the tree of stone and began to whet their knives and sharpen their spears. Every instinct made me want to scream, but the heavy smoke crept into my mind, whispering of ancient stories and deadening my terror.

Listen to the drums.

Until now, I had listened to those drums with my head, not with my heart. I had heard only what I thought I would hear—fear and savagery and the dreadful unknown. But now, at last, in that deep place under the sacred earth, I listened with my secret soul. I listened, and on the other side of my fear, I finally understood. The drums were a call to life, and a lament for the Kinsfolk’s long servitude, not a war cry. They were beating in rhythm with my own heart, and I understood that another fate was unfolding in this secret cavern, not simply my own.

“Who are you?” I asked. “Where have you come from?”

“I am Kundar,” the leader said. He touched his scarred chest. “I am the head man. We are earth people. Slaves. The new queen will set us free.” He reached into his pouch. It was full of red powder like ground clay. He spat on his fingers and made a stiff paste with it, then drew a shape like an eye on my forehead. “See with Kundar’s eyes. See like the Kinsfolk.”

The smoke and torches and the cavern vanished and I was standing on Blackdown Ridge. The farms and homes of Wyldcliffe were no longer there. The towers and gables of the Abbey didn’t exist. The only landmark that was familiar was the ring of standing stones. Down in the valley below, I saw some wooden huts thatched with straw. Riding across the land was a group of men; short and stocky but strong and free, galloping on their shaggy hill ponies and shaking their bronze spears in the sunlight. Their hair was dark, tinged with red. As they came closer I could see that some of them were wearing intricate necklaces and armbands, and their clothes were made of skins and woolen cloth. Women and children rode clinging behind them and young men ran barefoot alongside the riders, almost as swiftly as the horses.

When they reached the stones, the riders dismounted and the whole tribe stood in a circle. They carried green branches, which they waved in the air as they sang and chanted. Then a young girl, of maybe fourteen years old, was picked out from the crowd. A cry of excitement went up. The people threw the branches to the ground. The girl stepped forward, looking pale and frightened, but proud. A fine metal circlet was placed on her head. “Down into death!” they cried. “The new queen goes down into death! She brings back life for all!”

Then the picture changed with a swirl of color. Now I saw the people sitting together, sharing a meal around a fire outside their huts. A woman was milking a goat. Children played and tumbled in the grass. The next moment the place was filled with screams as yellow-haired men on horseback galloped through the village, scattering the food and slaughtering the men, who had been caught unawares. They snatched the women and children, hauling them away and throwing them over the backs of their horses. Sounds of lamentation filled the air.

The last picture showed a band of the men who had been defeated by the invading tribe. They were roped together and wore chains around their wrists and necks. Dead bodies were heaped up at the edge of the peat bog on the moors. The victorious tribesmen threw the corpses into the black mud, where they sank slowly into the marsh. Then the living prisoners were also thrown into the bog, weighed down by their chains, sinking, slowly suffocating, swallowed up by the earth.

“No . . . ,” I protested, coming back from the vision. “It’s too cruel, I don’t want to see any more. . . .”

“It is a true sight. These things happened. We were cursed by the men who killed us and took our women. We could not die and pass to the land of fathers. So we slept in the earth and changed to bog men, caught between this world and the next. Every hundred winters we wake for a little time, and dwell in the caves of the earth kingdom. We feel pain and shame. We look for the new queen, but we do not find her. But now the Spirit Woman has bound us with fire and magic. She makes us slaves.”

“She wants to make all of us her slaves,” I said.

“She is an evil spirit. Not like our queen. Only the queen brings life to the Kinsfolk.”

“How?” I asked, my heart racing. “What do you want me to do?”

“The queen goes down into Death. She finds the living Tree that never dies. She comes back with a gift from the Tree. It is a sign that the Kinsfolk are safe, for many winters. Then the queen is safe too.”

“And what if she doesn’t—doesn’t find the Tree?”

“Then she is not the real queen,” Kundar replied simply. “She stays in the earth with Death.”

Now I knew the truth about the Kinsfolk, and this truth would either lead me to triumph, or to destruction.

Kundar raised his hands high over my head, holding the bronze circlet. I looked up at it, and it seemed to me that even in that lightless cave the sun shone through the leaves. Mother Earth, help me, I begged silently. Great Creator, protect me.

I looked at Kundar’s strange, deformed face, which somehow still had an air of tired dignity. His eyes were black and brilliant in the torchlight. The drums began. His face changed to a grinning mask. But his eyes were full of love. They were the eyes of an untamed boy with a proud, deep heart, someone who knew me, good and bad. . . .

“I’m ready,” I whispered. “I’m ready.”

Kundar placed the circlet on my head, and the creatures of the Kinsfolk rushed forward to strike with their polished stone blades. Pain stabbed though me, such pain—

I fell.

I was falling, falling like a leaf in the wind.

I was in a deep trench that had been dug in the ground, lying on my back. I opened my eyes. Far away, stars glittered overhead. I saw Cal in the stars, then my mother’s face, then the shape of a white swan. Pain was pinning me down. I was bleeding. My life was pouring away into the wet earth. Someone came to stand at the edge of my grave. It was Kundar. He threw a handful of dust onto me and said sorrowfully, “Down into Death.”

Then I saw Evie, looking down at me sadly. “For your long voyage,” she said, as she threw a handful of earth into the tomb. The stars turned again. Helen took Evie’s place. “For the way ahead,” she said, and she threw in a faded garland of flowers. Then the earth began to crumble from the sides of the grave, filling up the space as rapidly as water floods a stricken boat. I was drowning in the earth, I couldn’t breathe, there was dust in my mouth and death in my lungs. The Tree, I thought faintly. I never found the Tree. Then panic engulfed my mind as the black earth smothered me, and every light and sense and sound was extinguished forever.