The Denizen stopped before what appeared to be a cliff face, a vertical section of pale yellow rock, liberally covered with the same green mould or lichen that grew on his clothes and skin.
‘Just step through, sir. It looks solid, but if you believe it to be a door, as the Carp says, then it’ll be a door.’
‘That Carp sounds like a right pain in the midsection,’ grumbled Suzy in a low voice to Arthur. ‘And a faker as well. I bet it just made the cavern entrance look like this and carried on with all that belief hocus-pocus.’
‘We won’t get that mould growing on us, will we?’ Arthur asked Jebenezer.
‘Oh, no, sir!’ the Denizen replied. ‘That’s the Carp’s special moss, that is, not mould. It takes cultivation to get that growing right, that does.’
Arthur shut his eyes and stepped forward, holding his hands in front of his face, just in case he did run straight into a mossy cliff.
After four or five paces, when he didn’t suddenly impact with rock, Arthur opened his eyes. He found himself in soft darkness, lit here and there by soft green lights. Some of the lights moved, including one close, bright clump of green lights above Arthur’s head.
‘The moss is luminous!’ he said.
‘Aye, it shines in the darkness, to illuminate our path,’ said Jebenezer. ‘As does the Carp.’
‘It doesn’t shine very well,’ said Suzy. ‘And I can’t see a path.’
Arthur looked around, but he couldn’t see anything more than a few feet away. But judging from the echo of Suzy’s voice, and the patches of both moving and static green light, he knew he had to be standing inside a huge cavern, somewhere near the top. It looked like it extended downward for a few hundred feet and back for at least as far.
‘The path to the Carp is a little difficult,’ admitted Jebenezer. ‘Even with the gift of our light. I’d better go first, and you might care to hold the back of my belt, sir. Miss Suzy, please hold Lord Arthur’s coat-tails.’
Suzy muttered something that Arthur felt he was probably glad not to hear. He reached out and hooked two fingers through the back of Jebenezer’s belt. With one leg not as nimble as it should be — though the crab armour did a great job — he didn’t want to take any risks in the dark. He felt Suzy grab hold of his coat-tails a moment later.
As a makeshift train it was a slow shuffle down. Most of the time Arthur couldn’t see how narrow the path was, or how far he could fall, but every now and then they encountered a large patch of the glowing moss in exactly the right place to illuminate the danger.
Despite these momentary flashes of light and terror, they reached the cavern floor without incident. For the first time, Arthur looked back and was unnerved to see a long line of moving green light zigzagging back up behind them. It looked as if all eight hundred-odd Followers of the Carp were coming down the path. All very quiet now, in contrast to their shouting outside.
‘We approach the Carp,’ whispered Jebenezer. He pointed ahead, indicating a straight way lit by regularly spaced clumps of luminous moss. At the far end, perhaps two hundred feet away, there was a soft, golden light that occasionally twinkled with a red glint, as if there was a distant fire caught by a mirror.
‘The Carp’s road is flat; there is no danger,’ said Jebenezer. ‘You should go ahead here, Lord Arthur, and we will follow.’
Arthur let go of Jebenezer’s belt and started walking slowly towards the gold-red light. He was having last-minute doubts with each step. Surely, the Carp had to be Part Three of the Will? But what if it wasn’t? What if it was some other powerful entity, something like the Old One in the Coal Cellar? Something strange, strong, and dangerous that was expecting some other kind of Rightful Heir, somebody else entirely.
As he drew closer, Arthur saw that the greenlit road ended and there was a band of darkness. Beyond that was a kind of sunken arena or theatre, a deep bowl with terraced sides where the Denizens could sit. The gold-red light came from inside the bowl, but it was deep enough that he could not quite see its source.
Arthur crossed the darkness and stepped down onto the first terrace. He paused there for a moment, looking down. The light came from a huge glass bowl about twenty feet in diameter, with a bronze lid that appeared to be riveted to the glass in some way. The bowl was full of sparkling clean water, and in the water was the biggest goldfish Arthur had ever seen. It was ten feet long and six feet high, with huge goggly eyes and long moustache-like tendrils hanging down from its mouth.
Arthur stepped down to the next terrace and the next. There were forty in all before he reached the lowest and stood in front of the glass bowl. The goldfish watched him approach, just bobbing up and down. It didn’t look very intelligent.