Neverwhere

"Pea-soupers," said Door. "London Particulars. Thick yellow river fogs, mixed with coal-smoke and whatever rubbish was going into the air for the last five centuries. Hasn't been one in the Upworld for, oh, forty years now. We get the ghosts of them down here. Mm. Not ghosts. More like echoes." Richard breathed in a strand of the yellow-green fog and began to cough. "That doesn't sound good," said Door.

"Fog in my throat," said Richard. The ground was becoming stickier, muddier: it sucked at Richard's feet as he walked. "Still," he said, to reassure himself, "a little fog never hurt anyone."

Door looked up at him with big pixie eyes. "There was one in 1952 that they reckon killed four thousand people."

"People from here?" he asked. "Under London?"

"Your people," said Hunter. Richard was willing to believe it. He thought about holding his breath, but the fog was getting thicker. The ground was becoming mushier. "I don't understand," he asked. "Why do you have fogs down here, when we don't have them up there anymore?"

Door scratched her nose. "There are little pockets of old time in London, where things and places stay the same, like bubbles in amber," she explained. "There's a lot of time in London, and it has to go somewhere—it doesn't all get used up at once."

"I may still be hung over," sighed Richard. "That almost made sense."

The abbot had known that this day would bring pilgrims. The knowledge was a part of his dreams; it surrounded him, like the darkness. So the day became one of waiting, which was, he knew, a sin: moments were to be experienced; waiting was a sin against both the time that was still to come and the moments one was currently disregarding. Still, he was waiting. Through each of the day's services, through their scant meals, the abbot was listening intently, waiting for the bell to sound, waiting to know who and how many.

He found himself hoping for a clean death. The last pilgrim had lasted for almost a year, a gibbering, screaming thing. The abbot regarded his own blindness as neither a blessing nor a curse: it simply was; but even so, he had been grateful he had never been able to see the poor creature's face. Brother Jet, who had cared for the creature, still woke in the night, screaming, with its twisted face before him.

The bell tolled late in the afternoon, three times. The abbot was in the shrine, on his knees, contemplating their charge. He pulled himself to his feet and made his way to the corridor, where he waited. "Father?" The voice was that of Brother Fuliginous.

"Who guards the bridge?" the abbot asked him. His voice was surprisingly deep and melodious for such an old man.

"Sable," came the reply from the darkness. The abbot reached out a hand, grasped the young man's elbow, and walked beside him, slowly, through the corridors of the abbey.

There was no solid ground; there was no lake. Their feet were splashing through some kind of marsh, in the yellow fog. "This," announced Richard, "is disgusting." It was seeping through his shoes, invading his socks, and making a much closer acquaintance with his toes than Richard was entirely happy with.

There was a bridge ahead of them, rising up out of the marsh. A figure, dressed in black, waited at the foot of the bridge. He wore the black robes of a Dominican monk. His skin was the dark brown of old mahogany. He was a tall man, and he held a wooden staff as tall as he was. "Hold fast," he called. "Tell me your names, and your stations."

"I am the Lady Door," said Door. "I am Portico's daughter, of the House of the Arch."

"I am Hunter. I am her bodyguard."

"Richard Mayhew," said Richard. "Wet."

"And you wish to pass?"

Richard stepped forward. "Yes, we do actually. We're here for a key." The monk said nothing. He lifted his staff and pushed Richard gently in the chest with it. Richard's feet slid out from under him, and he landed in the muddy water. The monk waited a few moments, to see if Richard would swing up and begin to fight. Richard didn't. Hunter did.

Richard pulled himself up from the mud, and watched, mouth open, as the monk and Hunter fought with quarter-staves. The monk was good. He was bigger than Hunter, and, Richard suspected, stronger. Hunter, on the other hand, was faster than the monk. The wooden staves clacked and whapped in the mist.

The monk's staff made sudden contact with Hunter's midriff. She stumbled in the mud. He came in close—too close—as he discovered that her stumble had been a feint and her staff slammed into him, hard and precisely, on the backs of his knees, and his legs no longer held his weight. The man tumbled into the wet mud, and Hunter rested the tip of her staff on the back of his neck.

"Enough," called a voice from the bridge.

Hunter took a step back. She stood beside Richard and Door once more. She had not even broken a sweat. The big monk got up from the mud. His lip was bleeding. He bowed low to Hunter, then walked to the foot of the bridge.

"Who are they, Brother Sable?" called the voice.