If she could just hold on, it would stop and then she would walk slowly back down the path to the tour bus and wait for the others to return.

Except that it didn’t.

Instead, the shaking grew steadily worse until the ground beneath her felt as if it were surging in great undulating waves and the tree she was clinging on to for dear life lurched sideways as the path split open with a great jagged tear.

For a frozen moment in time Manda hung on, staring down into the thick green forest that carpeted the valley wall rippling beneath her like some storm-tossed sea. Then, as she realised she was about to be tipped into that maelstrom, she let go of the tree and flung herself across the gaping path a split second before the tree, its roots and the ground to which they were attached, fell away like a stone.

She was screaming now. Seriously screaming.

She knew she was screaming because, although she could not hear herself-all she could hear was the crack and roar as the earth split and tore about her-she could feel the harsh vibration in her throat.

Lying where she had thrown herself in her mad leap for safety, her arms wrapped around her head, her eyes tightly closed, she shrieked, ‘Enough! No more, God. Stop it! Please!’

Then the ground beneath her gave way and she, too, was sliding into the abyss.

CHAPTER TWO

MANDA had no way of knowing what time it was, or how long she had been lying on cold stone. She was just grateful that the earth had stopped shaking.

After a while, though, she lifted her head, gingerly feeling for damage. Her fingers were stiff, sore as she tried to move them and there was a tender spot at the back of her head. A dull throbbing ache. Nothing that she couldn’t, for the moment, live with, she decided. And she seemed lucid enough.