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cylinder
    The first drops of rain splashed down on our perch, exploding on impact like miniature bombs. The others huddled together against the rock wall as far from the edge as possible, taking what little shelter they could from the twisted tree. Three miserable faces peered from beneath their hoods, another, smaller one peeking out at me from the folds of Kenta’s cloak. It seemed as if they were all looking to me for answers … and I had none. My heart, already close to rock bottom, clunked down another notch.
    I couldn’t see a way forward. Even under cover of darkness, and assuming the rain continued, there was no way we could get across to the castle unseen. And even if we did, the guards weren’t about to open the gates and lower the drawbridge for five strangers, no matter how bedraggled and harmless they might look.
    Richard was beside me; I slid a glance at his face. Deep in the shadow of his hood it looked stern and grown-up … and something about the determined set of his mouth gave me courage. We might look like five helpless kids, but we weremuch more than that. We’d come this far, and nothing was going to stop us now. Like Hannah always said, there had to be a way. It was just a question of finding it.
    The thought of Hannah with her sparkly confidence put a smile into my mind, and with it came another thought — Jamie’s watchword, and one that finally got me moving: When in doubt, eat.
    I shuffled cautiously over to the others and reached for my pack. Dug inside, feeling for the packet of energy bars I knew was in there somewhere. My fingers brushed the softness of leather — Zaronel’s diary — and the smooth surface of the mysterious cylinder I’d found with it. Below it I could feel the crinkle of cellophane … impatiently I pulled the cylinder out and set it to one side.
    I’d forgotten about the slope. The second I let go, it began to roll … and everything sped up like a movie on fast forward. I grabbed at the moving blur, but it hit a bump and twisted away from my clutching fingers; another flash of lightning blinded me and I spun round, off balance, one hand still jammed into the neck of my pack. As I turned I caught a flash of the others’ faces, mouths open in shock, eyes staring … then I was throwing myself forwards in a desperate lunge, fingers scrabbling for the tube before it vanished over the drop. Too late. Time crunched from super-fast-forward into slow motion; spread-eagled on the brink of the void I watched the shining shape slowly spinning as it fell.
    Then the flickering flare that had lit the disaster was doused in darkness. I lay staring uselessly downwards, cursing my clumsiness, listening for the distant crash of the cylinder shattering on the rocks below.
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    None of us had the faintest clue what the cylinder was — I’d come across it by chance, hidden in the wall of the exit from the Summer Palace — but the simple fact that it had been there, secret and safe, told us it was precious.
    Squeezing my eyes tight shut I could picture it as clearly as if it wasn’t in a zillion pieces on the valley floor below: bluish-grey, with a strange metallic lustre; as thick as my thumb, and rounded at both ends. Like a test tube at school … And suddenly I knew. It hadn’t seemed heavy enough to be solid because it wasn’t. It wasn’t a cylinder, it was a tube. It was hollow, and it held something.
    We’d been blind not to see it before. It had been right there in front of us; I’d read the words myself, written in Zagros’ bold handwriting.
    â€¦ a secret passageway through the wall of the palace … a hidden store of potion that will render us invisible as we make our way to the forbidden depths of Shadowwood …
    The cylinder had held the potion of invisibility. The one thing that might have got us into the Stronghold of Arraz. And now it was gone, thanks to me. The old