The Way Between the Worlds by Alys Clare

be safe in there, wouldn’t I? I bend and creep inside, but the soft earth crumbles around me, falling on my face, in my eyes, in my mouth, and I forget about having to hide and scream because I think I am being buried alive. Then there is a figure in a cloak with a knife in his hand, and he leaps on the back of a bull and slits its throat, and the blood spurts over me, warm, pulsating with each beat of the mighty beast’s dying heart  . . .
    I woke up.
    I was lying on the floor of the crypt beneath Gurdyman’s house, wet with my own sweat, hot with the fever of my dream and yet shivering with cold. Gurdyman was crouching over me. He had a thick blanket across his shoulders, and he removed it and wrapped it tightly round me. It was warm from his body. I realized I was sobbing and, with an effort, made myself stop.
    I looked up into his kindly, concerned and – I had to admit – fascinated face. I understood something about Gurdyman then: he would always look after my welfare, but his overriding interest in me was because he recognized some potential in me that as yet neither of us fully understood.
    I was a little disappointed. But it was better to know, then I would not expect more than he could give.
    ‘You have been sleepwalking,’ he said. He moved away from me slightly, going to sit down on his low cot. ‘Clever of you,’ he added in a light tone, ‘to have negotiated both the ladder down from the attic room and the dark steps into the crypt without mishap, but then it’s said that sleepwalkers rarely come to harm in their own houses.’
    ‘How did you know I was down here? Did I – did you hear me screaming?’ I was very embarrassed to think that again I’d woken him with my noise.
    ‘I did, but I was already on my way to find you. I had dozed off in my chair out in the courtyard.’ That was why he’d been wrapped in the lovely, warm blanket. ‘There was a disturbance in the air, and that was what woke me.’
    A disturbance? I wondered what that meant. Had the power of my dream shaken the whole house? The idea scared me.
    He was watching me, his expression unreadable. ‘I think you had better tell me what you saw,’ he said softly. ‘The spirits do not send a dream of such resonance unless they seriously expect you to pay heed.’
    I drew a deep breath, gathered my courage and then made myself go back to those awful scenes. I spoke even as I thought; I knew that if I hesitated, I might not dare put them into words.
    ‘Tell me more about this pit,’ he said when I had finished. ‘You have seen it before, I think. With an occupant, as I recall.’
    ‘Yes, that’s right. It – the body isn’t there any more. It was empty when I – when I went inside.’
    ‘Is it close to the ruined building?’
    I pictured it. ‘Yes. It’s beside a structure that looks like a hearth, and there’s a stumpy, square pillar nearby with marks carved into it.’
    Gurdyman was nodding even before I had finished speaking. ‘Yes, yes, it all fits,’ he muttered. Then he looked down at me and gave me a beaming smile.
    ‘You know this place, don’t you?’ I whispered.
    ‘I believe I do,’ he agreed. ‘The terrain that you describe is familiar to me.’ He paused, frowning, and I sensed his attention had momentarily gone far away. With a small shudder, he brought himself back. ‘I told you yesterday about the soldiers’ religion, Lassair. These same soldiers were sent to guard the great wall that their emperor ordered to be built up in the north, and there they made the caves where Mithras was worshipped. Everywhere they went, they kept their god close. I told you too about the ordeals that the men endured in order to progress to higher degrees. Fire was frequently required, and sometimes the ordeals involved being buried alive in order to be reborn into a better, more refined state. I think you saw a certain Mithraeum on the great wall. You saw the hearth, and you saw the altar: what you described as a