THE CHILDREN SAT IN THE KITCHEN looking out of the window at a dull and thoroughly miserable afternoon. Beyond the garden walls, the trees of Whytewytch Woods lay sombre and dripping forlornly. Above them, the summit of the Warlocks Chair lay hidden beneath a layer of dark scudding clouds. It was still raining heavily and did not look like it would stop anytime soon.   

Throughout the week, whenever they had got the chance, they had searched the house for any sign of a hiding place where the Starheart might be secreted. Fortunately, it had rained on and off so it did not cause too much suspicion. Every room on the ground floor had been thoroughly examined. Panels had been tapped, bookcases searched for hidden switches, and where possible carpet and furniture had been moved and looked under, searching for secret compartments beneath the floorboards. But nothing could be found. 

'Maybe it isn't here after all,' George had pointed out after a long secret search of the special room. A special room, that according to Mum, they were not supposed to enter. Stay out of here; it's only for special occasions, she had told them on numerous occasions. Although, so far, there had not been any special occasions where it had been used.

But it too had revealed nothing. 

'It's possible it got destroyed along with the castle,' George continued.

'I think you might be right,' observed Danielle worriedly. 'If that's the case, then I don't know what to do. According to Ceridwen, we need all four gemstones to make the magic work.' 

'We will have to go and see her; let her know and see if she has any more ideas,' answered George. 

'Maybe it isn't in the house at all,' Jessica suddenly announced.

'What do you mean, Jess?' Danielle asked.

Before she could answer, the door opened and Dad entered. 'Hi kids,' he said, putting the kettle on to make a cup of tea.

'Typical,' he said, looking out of the window. 'School holidays start and it's raining every day. Never mind, another couple of weeks and we will be flying out to the sunshine, eh, kids.'

'Great, we can't wait,' Danielle acknowledged with a smile. But first, we have the trivial matter of helping stop a crazed warlock from trying to take over the world, she thought. 

'Dad,' Jessica said, a thoughtful look on her face.

'Yes, princess,' he said in his best serious voice. 'What is it that is worrying you?'

She looked at him, laughing. 'We were just sat here wondering where the oldest part of the house was.' 

'Well, as far as I know, the main house was built from scratch a few hundred years ago,' he told them. 'Under here somewhere...' He stamped his foot on the kitchen floor to emphasise the point. '...there is a cellar. But it was supposedly all blocked in, too dangerous I think. Why do you want to know?' 

'Nothing really, just curious,' Danielle shrugged, glancing at her brother and sister. 

'Mind you,' Dad continued. 'Part of the old stable block is supposed to be very old, dating back hundreds of years.' 

He made his tea and a cup of coffee for Mum then left them alone again.

'That's it, that's what I was going to tell you,' Jessica stated.

George looked at her, shaking his head. 'You're only saying that because of what Dad's just told us.'

'No, I was going to say it before that,' she said with mock anger.

'Yeah, whatever.' George teased. 'But if the stable is that old, maybe that's where the stone's hidden.'

'Come on then, let's go and have a look,' Danielle urged. 

Grabbing an umbrella from the stand by the door, they raced across the yard and into the old building that had once housed the stables.

It was gloomy inside. Faint daylight pushed through the doorway and the grimy windows, outlining the furniture stored there. But it did little to dispel the shadowy recesses.

George tried the light switch, but it was still not working.

He crossed to a cupboard. 'Dad keeps a torch in here,' he opened one of the draws. 'Yes!' he exclaimed. He flicked it on.

The beam lit up the area, consigning the impenetrable shadows to the furthest corners of the room.

'Let's start over there,' he motioned with the beam to the back wall.

He clambered up onto a large, cloth-covered piece of furniture and shone the torch along the wall. A big hairy spider scurried away from the light, but nothing out of the ordinary caught his eye. He moved the torch on to one of the end walls, playing the beam up and down. Above in the apex, two small alcoves showed the thickness of the wall, much thicker than the wall needed to be in a building of its size.  

He called out to his sisters, who were trying to move some furniture to gain a better look at the wall behind.

'This could be part of the old castle's wall, look how thick it is.' 

'You could be right,' Danielle said coming over to examine the wall more closely.

At some point, a number of heavy wooden beams had been fitted to the wall to reinforce it and hold the roof up. Fixed onto the wall about one and a half metres off the floor, were six sturdy metal rings, rusted and pitted with age. 

They were presumably used for tethering horses when this was a stable, thought Danielle. Or something much worse.

Running their fingers along the stonework, they searched for any indications of a secret hiding place. George looked closely at the metal rings, perhaps, he grasped the first one and tugged. Nothing happened. He moved on to the next one, this one was rusted solid and he could not budge it. He pulled down on the third one and could swear it moved slightly.

'Give me a hand with this one, Dan,' he said to his sister.

Together they pulled at the ring. It had moved, just a little. He thought he heard a click behind the wall, but still nothing happened.

'It's too rusty,' he said. 'Hold on a minute.'

George walked over to the cabinet where he had found the torch and looked in it again. They heard him rummaging through Dad's tools.

'Oil,' he exclaimed, holding up a can.

He squirted a generous amount into the rings wall mount, and they waited a short while for it to do its job.

Again they tugged at the heavy ring, once more it gave slightly. George braced himself against the wall and both pulled with all their might. With a click it released. Behind the stonework, there was a whirr of cogs and gears. As they watched, a section of the wall slowly slid to one side. A blast of stale cold air belched out at them, it smelt of dust and decay.

'Urgh,' choked Jessica. 'I swallowed most of that.'

George stepped forward and shone the torch into the opening. It was a narrow stairwell. It led downwards, then curved out of sight beneath the floor they stood on.

'Shall we?' 

'I think we are going to have to go,' Danielle nodded towards the opening. 'If the Starheart is here somewhere, then down there is our best bet.'

Grabbing their weapons, just in case, he led them into the stairwell.

For an adult, it would have been a tight squeeze, but for the children, it was just right. The torchlight picked out the massive stone blocks that formed the walls of the stairwell. Underfoot the steps were dusty and dry, clearly, they had been undisturbed for some time.

George's torch fought back the shadows as they rounded the curve in the steps, moving deeper into the earth beneath the house. Then just ahead the stairs ended in a short passageway. They discovered the way forward blocked by a heavy wooden door, studded and barred with iron. George shone his torch across the doorway. At the top and bottom, two huge deadbolts secured the door. 

George reached for the topmost one, but Danielle's hand on his shoulder stopped him.

She bent closer and whispered in his ear. 'Do you think that's a good idea?' 

'Why not?' George asked.

'Well, it's bolted on the outside; maybe to prevent something getting out,' Danielle told him. 

'If we're going to find that gemstone, we're going to have to search whatever lies on the other side of this door. Besides, if anything is locked inside it's been there for a long, long time.' 

George slid both the bolts, noting that although they had most likely not been used for centuries, they were not rust or damage. Nervously he pushed on the door. It creaked open, another blast of stale air rushed out to greet them. Cautiously he entered the room; sword held out in front, ready for anything that might leap out of the shadows. 

At first, nothing happened. Then a barely perceptible shimmering disturbed the air around them.

'Did you feel that?' George asked anxiously.

'I think we just disturbed some more magic,' Danielle murmured, thinking back to the day in the woods when they had passed through the veil.

George quickly swung the torch into the darkness. The light picked out a long, low-ceilinged room held up by great arched pillars, built of the same massive stone blocks used in the stairwell.

George used his sword to cut away great dusty cobwebs that spanned the spaces between the arches, scanning the area for any sign of scuttling spiders. A thick layer of dust on the floor showed that no one had passed that way for countless years. They moved farther into the room.

'This must stretch right under the house,' George said quietly.

Jessica looked around. 'But Dad said it had all been filled in.'

'Perhaps that's what they told him, it might even be partly true. Look.' Danielle indicated along the cellar.

George swung the torch in the direction she was pointing. Between the pillars at the far end of the cellar, deep in the shadows lay a great mound of rubble. At some time in the past, it looked as if the roof had caved in filling the cellar with a jumble of stone blocks and earth which had tumbled from above. 

'Ceridwen said the old castle got destroyed. That...' George indicated the pile of rubble. '...must have happened then.' 

'And years later they must have filled in the hole and built the house on top of it,' stated Danielle quietly.

George moved the torch from side to side as they walked further into the darkness. It was a large room with alcoves branching off on either side. He shone the light into the murky shadows, hoping to find some sign of the gemstone they were searching for. But found each one blocked with more of the fallen earth and stonework.

They reached the end of the cellar; the pile of collapsed stone prevented them from going any further.   

'Well, there's nothing here,' Danielle said disappointingly. 'Not unless it's buried under this lot.'  

They were about to retrace their steps when Jessica noticed a gap to one side of the rubble. 'Look, up there,' she pointed to a dark opening among the heavy slabs. 

George clambered up to check it out, careful not to dislodge any of the stones and bring the whole lot tumbling down. Shining the light into the hole, he peered in. 'I think there's another room behind this,' he said.

'Can you get through,' Danielle called up to him.

'Yes, no problem. Are you coming too?' he asked, a hint of worry in his voice, he did not relish the thought of going through on his own.

The girls climbed up to him. 'Go on then,' said Danielle brusquely.

Quickly he pushed through the hole. The torch thrust ahead of him. It was cold in here; he could see his breath clouding in the torchlight. This room was a smaller version of the one they had just left. But unlike it, this one was not empty.  In alcoves around the walls, caskets and boxes lay open and smashed, whatever contents they had once held, now long gone. The torchlight picked out rows of weapons stacked along one wall. Swords, spears, bow and arrow all pitted with rust and age.

But it was not any of this that attracted their attention.

A large wooden table and benches, thick with the dust of ages, dominated the centre of the room. Dishes, platters, jugs and goblets lay scattered around, possibly the miserable remnants of the last meal eaten by the occupants of the table. Slumped on the benches, probably sat in the positions they had died in, were a dozen skeletons of differing sizes. Some of them wore remnants of armour, others the tattered remains of the clothes they had once worn.

At the very back of the cellar, more of the large stone blocks formed a raised dais. All around it lay another group of armoured skeletons, sprawled where they had fallen many long years ago.  

In the centre of the dais sat two ornately carved thrones, once carefully painted with gold leaf, now both faded and coated with a layer of grime. Slumped in one, still dressed in fragments of what had long ago been an elegant gown and cloak, was the skeletal form of a woman. Strands of long dark hair still hung from the skull, which stared hollow-eyed out from beneath the cloak's hood. Long bony fingers still gripped the arms of the throne as they had for countless years.

The second throne supported the figure of a man. The skull sagged forward, shadowed by the long white hair, that hung from beneath a once elaborate horned helmet. Like the breastplate it wore, the helmet was pitted and tarnished with time. Wasted limbs, skin the colour of ash, dangled from the ragged clothes it wore beneath the armour. One withered hand gripped the throne as if to steady itself, the other clutched something tightly to its chest.

 'It's very creepy,' whispered Jessica, gripping Danielle's arm. 'I don't like it one little bit.'

'You're not the only one,' her sister whispered back.

George directed the light onto the figure reclining on the throne. 'Is that what I think it is?'

'The Starheart!' gasped Danielle in wonder.

The stone glowed with an unearthly crimson light from between the skeletal fingers that held it. 

George climbed onto the dais, carefully picking his way through the skeletons of the long dead occupants of the cellar, that had become their tomb. 

'Hurry up, I want to get out of here,' Danielle called to him.

He turned slightly and carelessly bumped into one of the armoured warriors. With a crash that echoed around the silent tomb, it collapsed. Dark unseeing sockets stared up at him from the helmet as it rolled to one side.

He shivered. 'I'm being as fast as I can.' 

Standing before the figure, George played the light over it. For some reason, this one didn't seem as decayed as the rest. Unlike the other remains, there was no covering of dust on this body, and he could see ropey muscles and tendons under the skin that still covered the bones. 

He reached tentatively for the hand that gripped the stone. It was icy cold beneath his touch, and he could see the light from the stone shining through the grey paper thin skin. He half expected it to snap off when he shifted it to get at the stone. Long yellowed fingernails held on tight as he tried to prise it lose. 

Something ruffled his hair. A breeze? No, a breath. He froze. From deep inside the figure's chest, came a long low moan. There was a loud snapping as long atrophied muscles and ligaments creaked into use. With a deep wheezing breath, the thing lifted its head.

George looked up. Straight into the cold sunken eyes of the seated figure. They glowed with the same fire that radiated from the gemstone. Skin stretched tight over the skull, its lips drawn back in a terrible rictus grin, the man things jaws moved. It was trying to speak. 

It coughed, a deep rasping sound came from its throat.

George jumped in horror. Scrambling backwards, he fell into the skeletons which littered the dais. 

With a terrible groan, the figure rose stiffly from the throne. Standing tall, it stretched, flexing its gaunt limbs. The hand holding the gemstone rose in front of its face, it studied the strange glowing stone.

As if trying to remember. 

The torches on the walls suddenly flared to life flooding the cellar with a flash of dazzling brilliance.    

It glanced around the vault. A look of overwhelming sadness flashed across the cadaverous visage as it gazed at the skeleton of the woman.

'Illeanne... my love... What has become of us?' Its voice was dry and brittle. 

Then its eyes settled on George sprawled amongst the bones.

'Well, what have we here?' it wheezed. 

Drawing a large broadsword from the scabbard that hung at its waist, the figure lurched forward. 

George gulped, his mouth suddenly dry with fear.

Baron Etran Darkiron still lived and was prepared to guard his treasure.