It was a robe. She put it on. The sleeves were gigantic, and swallowed her arms. She pushed them back to her elbows and then pulled up the hood. It wasn't as easy as it looked, getting the hood to sit just right. It kept falling down over her face. Finally, she got it to where it would stay up, and turned to Skulduggery. He stood there, the black robe flowing around him, his skull barely visible beneath the hood.

"Good G.o.d," she breathed. "You look like the Grim Reaper."

"I'll take that as a compliment."

"It wasn't meant as one."

"I'm taking it anyway. You're a regular visitor here a any advice on how we should proceed?"

She shrugged. "If anyone stops us, as long as we mumble something pretentious about the glory of death, we should be fine."

"Excellent."

They left the storage room, moving quickly but quietly. Valkyrie's heart sped up when two Necromancers hurried by, but they were too busy panicking about the Sanctuary forces outside to notice them. Occasionally she would recognise something and nudge Skulduggery to alter their course, but for the most part she hadn't a clue where they were. On all of her trips through the Temple, she hadn't really been paying attention. Wreath had been the one to lead the way and she'd been happy enough to follow along, continuing whatever conversation they were having without bothering to acquaint herself with her surroundings. She was regretting that now.

"Hey!" said a voice behind them. "You!"

They stopped. Valkyrie glanced at Skulduggery and they turned. A Necromancer stalked over to them, his hood down off his head. It was that man, Oblivious or something, the one who hadn't wanted to let them in days ago.

"Where do you think you're going?" he ranted. "We have our orders! You think they don't apply to you? You think just because our enemies are ma.s.sing at the gates, we should abandon our posts? Is that what you think?"

"Uh," Skulduggery said, "the stream of death carries us where it may."

"That may be true," Oblivious said curtly, "but we are still bound by the oaths we swore. Or have you forgotten them?"

Skulduggery shook his head beneath his hood. "My duty is to death, but death's duty is to itself. As of life, as of death, as of the stream between..."

Oblivious frowned. "What?"

"In the stream of life, we are but paddlers."

"I'm not sure I... who are you? Let me see your face."

Skulduggery looked round, made sure no one else was coming. "The sparrow flies south for winter," he said, and punched Oblivious right on the chin. He looked up at Valkyrie as he dragged the unconscious Necromancer into the nearest room. "See? It's a perfect code."

"We're paddling in the stream of life?"

Skulduggery came back out, shutting the door behind him. "I'm not very good at being pretentious. It's one of my few flaws. But there's no denying a that code worked."

"And you slipped it into the conversation seamlessly."

They carried on, managing to avoid the panicking Necromancers. Finally, Skulduggery took Valkyrie's arm, pulled her into a dark corner, and nodded ahead.

"If I'm right," he said, "the door mechanism is in there. If the door isn't unlocked in the correct way, an alarm will sound, the door won't open, and everyone will come running. So you're going to have to stay here. If I were you, I'd find somewhere to hide. This may take a while."

She raised an eyebrow at him.

"You realise," he said, "that you're wearing a hood and I can't see your face, so if you're glaring at me, or scowling, or raising an eyebrow, I have no way of knowing. You realise that, right?"

"Why," said Valkyrie, "do I have to stay here?"

"Because what I'm going to do is extremely dangerous."

"So is everything you drag me into."

"Your point being?"

"What is up with everyone? Fletcher wants to protect me, Caelan wants to protect me, now you. For G.o.d's sake, I can handle what's thrown at me, all right? I don't need to be kept safe all the b.l.o.o.d.y time."

"I see," Skulduggery said. "Well, you make a very good point and I can't argue with your logic. Except I'm not trying to protect you. If I try to open the door and I fail, then I'm going to need someone else to do it once they've killed me. You see?"

"Oh," said Valkyrie. "Oh right."

"Now, if I fail, the odds are that you'll fail too. And if they can kill me, they can most certainly kill you, in an undoubtedly horrible manner. But by then I'll be past caring."

"So... you really aren't trying to protect me."

Skulduggery placed a hand on her shoulder. "Not even remotely," he said warmly.

He moved off. Valkyrie waited a moment, then backed away, turned and hurried in the opposite direction. She rounded a corner and immediately stepped back. Solomon Wreath pa.s.sed without looking at her. She chewed her lip.

And followed.

She kept her head down as they walked the corridors. He disappeared through a door and she quickened her pace, following him in. A hand grabbed her, tore the hood from her head and shoved her further into the room. She hit the wall and spun, Wreath's cane stopping right before it met her face. His eyes widened.

"Valkyrie," he said, surprised.

"Hi Solomon," she responded. "You said if ever I needed a chat..."

He lowered the cane and stepped back, closed the door before anyone saw. "How did you get in?"

"Dragonclaw," she said.

Wreath sighed. "Oh, him. I a.s.sume Skulduggery is with you?"

"He's around here somewhere."

"Then things are probably going to get very loud very soon."

"More than likely."

"In that case," Wreath said, "now that we have a minute, I'd just like to say that I'm sorry for what happened. If I had known, if I had even suspected, that Melancholia might go after you, I would have-"

"You would have what?" Valkyrie asked. "Grounded her? What could you have done? Everyone's saying she's more powerful than anyone alive today. If she wants to slice me half to death, she's going to slice me half to death, and there's nothing anyone can do about it."

Wreath shook his head. "This isn't how it should be."

"You're right. She should be on a leash."

"No, I mean she shouldn't have this power. It should have been you. At least it would have come naturally to you."

"What do you mean?"

Wreath rubbed his face. He suddenly looked very tired. "Craven did something to her. He's been studying the languages of magic for years. He can't be as expert in the art as China Sorrows, but he'll be good, nonetheless. You've seen the scars on her face, right? They're all over her body. He says they're to protect her, but I think he carved those symbols into her skin to heighten her power during the Surge."

"Is that possible?"

"In theory. Of course it's highly dangerous, and extraordinarily unstable. If that is indeed what he did, he stood a higher chance of killing her than succeeding."

"But you think he did succeed."

"Yes I do. It doesn't matter, of course. All the Death Bringer is, all it ever has been, is a Necromancer with a certain degree of power. No matter how she got there, Melancholia does seem to have reached that level."

"She said something while she was kicking my a.s.s. She said, if you're not on my list, you don't get saved."

"I doubt she was making any sense at all. With that much power reverberating inside her head, I think we can expect her to babble every now and then."

"What is the Pa.s.sage?"

"I'm sorry, Valkyrie, there are things we don't share with-"

"Solomon, for G.o.d's sake. You never give a straight answer to that, yet it's supposed to be a wonderful thing where the world is saved and made a better place. Why do you need to keep any of that a secret?"

"Because some people aren't going to understand."

"What people? People who like being miserable? I'm sure they'll get over it. What's she going to do? What happens in the Pa.s.sage?"

"The walls are broken down-"

"Between life and death, yes, I know. That much you've told me. The energy of the dead will live alongside us, and we will evolve to meet it. That's what you said. I haven't a clue what that means, but that's what you said. We're going to evolve, are we?"

"In a manner of speaking."

"Solomon, you have the Death Bringer. Whatever is going to happen is going to happen. So why not just tell me? Should I be worried? How much will the world change? Will everyone know about it? Will my family suddenly know that magic exists? Will people still have jobs? Will we still live in houses? Will people still be people?"

"It will be better, that's all you need to know."

"No, Solomon, it isn't. The fact is it's a pretty scary prospect. It's made even scarier by the fact that not even your average Necromancer knows what's going to happen. Only you guys. Only the High Priests and the High Clerics. Only the people who run the Temples. Why don't you tell the others? What is so awful that you have to hide it from your own people?"

Wreath looked at her. "How much is a better world worth to you?"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, what would you sacrifice? Look at this world. Look at it. From the moment mankind took its first awkward step, it's been a long road to disaster. We hate each other. We fear each other. We're going to kill each other. One of these days, someone's going to go too far, and every single one of us will die."

"What do you care? You're a Necromancer. Life flows into death and flows back into life, right? That's what you believe."

"That is what we believe, yes. But it's not what we want."

Valkyrie frowned. "What?"

"Our souls, our life force, flow through that never-ending stream a but not our minds. Not our memories. When I die, my essence will move on, but this man you see before you, this mind, this personality, this being, will be gone. I'll become something else. Someone else. But it won't be me."

"You're... you're scared of death?"

"We all are."

"But you're Necromancers! You embrace death!"

"We study Necromancy because we're trying to defeat death. That's what this is all about, Valkyrie. This is all it's ever been about."

"So what does this mean? You want Melancholia to break down the walls between life and death so that you'll never have to die? What was all that about evolution? We will evolve to meet the dead, or whatever it was."

"Society will evolve. It'll have to. Evolve or perish. We figure it's worth the risk."

"Solomon, what the h.e.l.l is going on? What does the Pa.s.sage mean?"

"The energy stream that flows through this world, this reality, it links up with the next reality, and the next, and it loops around again. It's a natural force and a natural system."

"OK. So?"

"So we want to stop it. We want those alive today to remain alive for ever."

"So no one dies? What about new life? What about babies being born?"

"No life leaves. No life enters."

Valkyrie stared at him, and immediately thought of Alice. "You can't do that. Are you insane? You can't do that."

"Society will adapt to the new way of living."

"No more babies? Solomon, come on! That's nuts! It's a biological need!"

"Having children is a biological need only because we are mortal a even sorcerers. We die. And we know we're going to die, and so we have children, to continue our bloodline, to continue our legacy, to try to ensure our own immortality. But when we are immortal, we won't have that need to procreate."

"That's... my G.o.d, Solomon, please tell me that you know this isn't right."

He sighed. "This is the kind of reaction we feared."

"People aren't going to accept this. The whole world will be after you."

"No. Not the whole world. Half the world."

"What?"

"In order to stop death, we have to block the flow. We have to dam the energy stream."

"And how are you going to do that?"