Neverwhere

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.
«The Lady Door, Lord Portico’s daughter, of the House of the Arch; Hunter, her bodyguard, and Richard Mayhew, their companion,» said Brother Sable, through bruised lips. «She bested me in fair fight, Brother Fuliginous.»
«Let them come up,» said the voice.
Hunter led the way up the bridge. At the apex of the bridge, another monk was waiting for them: Brother Fuliginous. He was younger and smaller than the first monk they had met, but he was dressed the same way. His skin was a deep, rich brown. There were other black-clad figures, just barely visible, further into the yellow fog. These were the Black Friars, then, Richard realized. The second monk stared at the three of them for a second, and then recited:
«I turn my head, and you may go where you want. I turn it again, you will stay till you rot. I have no face, but I live or die by my crooked teeth—who am I?»
Door took a step forward. She licked her lips and half closed her eyes. «I turn my head . . . » she said, puzzling to herself. «Crooked teeth . . . go where you . . . » Then a smile spread over her face. She stared up at Brother Fuliginous. «A key,» she said. «The answer is, you’re a key.»
«A wise one,» acknowledged Brother Fuliginous. «That’s two steps taken. One more to take.»
A very old man stepped out of the yellow fog and walked cautiously toward them, his gnarled hand holding onto the stone side of the bridge. He stopped when he reached Brother Fuliginous. His eyes were a glaucous blue-white, thick with cataracts. Richard liked him on sight. «How many of them are there?» he asked the younger man, in a deep and reassuring voice.
«Three, Father Abbot.»
«And has one of them bested the first gatekeeper?»
«Yes, Father Abbot.»
«And