Arthur Quinn and Hell's Keeper (23 page)

Ash, meanwhile, having rolled to the side to avoid a nasty downward cut by Drysi, was now on all fours, half crawling, half running from the girl. Drysi was striding after her, cackling as she approached. As Drysi lunged with her blade once more, Ash twisted, grabbing a chair that was sitting against a wall and throwing it between them. Drysi's blade plunged through the upholstery on the back of the chair. The general of the Wolfsguard swung her blade sideways, the force causing the chair to clatter away, then turned her attention back to Ash.

Ash, meanwhile, looked around desperately. She spotted two pieces of furniture further down the corridor – a large wooden chest and a coffee table across from it. Pushing herself to her feet, she raced towards them and forced her body into the tight space behind the chest, reached over the top and started fiddling with the latch on the front. It was stiff with age but, if she could just get it open, the chest lid was sturdy enough that it might give her sufficient cover from Drysi's weapon.

Drysi passed the last president and was now directly in front of the chest. She pulled her elbow back and jabbed the sword forward. A dull
thunk
sounded as the blade dug into the wooden lid. The tip ground to a halt an inch before Ash's eyes as she pressed herself back against the wall. She quickly slammed the lid shut and the sword was wrenched from Drysi's strong grip, wedged in the hard wood of the chest. Drysi growled furiously, reached down and threw the chest aside; it flew down the perpendicular corridor.

As Ash started to scramble away, Drysi kicked out, catching Ash hard in the ribs and knocking her to the side. Ash screamed and was sure she had heard something crack inside her. Drysi lashed out again but, despite the pain, Ash grabbed her foot and yanked as hard as she could, sending the girl off-balance and crashing onto her back. The crimson boot came off in Ash's hand. She dropped it aside and tried pushing herself upright, but the pain in her side was too great and she dropped back to the floor like a rag doll. Drysi, meanwhile, was up again and moving in for another assault.

‘
Drysi!
'

Arthur was on his feet. His legs were splayed wide, a stance designed to keep him stable. He was wavering slightly, still dazed and possibly concussed. His hammer was clutched tightly in his right hand, hanging down by his side. Beads of sweat popped out on his brow, mingling with the blood from the gash, turning it pink.

‘Leave her alone, Drysi!' he said in a voice that tried – and failed – to hide how nauseous he was feeling.

‘And why should I do that?' sneered the girl, standing mere feet from Ash, who was still sitting on the floor holding her ribs.

‘
Why wouldn't you?
' Arthur spat back. He had to stop for a beat to catch his breath. ‘Why would you continue to fight when it's so clear Loki doesn't care for you?'

Drysi's face flared a deep red. ‘Don't you dare speak about the Wolf-father that way! He saved me after the tower; he looked after me when everyone – my father included – abandoned me. Don't say he doesn't care for me!'

‘No, Drysi. He doesn't.'

Drysi screamed with rage and then, faster than the eye could see, she picked up a crystal vase from the coffee table and launched it at Arthur. He could feel his right arm moving by itself, pulled up by the hammer. The vase exploded upon impact and priceless crystal rained all about him. The hammer absorbed the force of the blow easily and he let it fall by his side once more.

‘He let me walk again!' she ranted at him. ‘He gave me back my legs!'

‘No,' Arthur said sadly, shaking his head. ‘That's not true. It's not true at all.'

Without warning, she was charging at him, her face contorted in fury, her hair streaming behind her. Arthur felt like a matador and she was the bull. He wanted to move aside. But he stood his ground. This was the only way she might listen to him. She grabbed him by the collar and, without so much as breaking a sweat, lifted him off the ground. His feet dangled inches above the carpet.

‘Could I do this if he hadn't fixed me?' she snorted triumphantly. ‘You dare speak of him like this?'

‘I dare,' he said as calmly as he could manage under the circumstances.

‘Then you die!'

‘Listen to me, Drysi,
listen
!' He put his free hand around one of hers. ‘He didn't heal you. He probably could have but he didn't. He just let you think you were healed. It's a trick, just another trick. He uses people. That's all he does. That's all he ever does! Once he no longer needs you, the magic will fail. You'll see the trick for what it is.'

‘Lies!'

‘It's the truth! I bet he barely speaks to you now that he has what he wants. I bet you hardly ever see him. You thought it would be better with Loki in charge, but it's not, is it? You're useful to him. You keep his army under control. You do his bidding. But he's practically forgotten about you, Drysi. If he wins – if he truly wins – he'll discard you. But this time, without Fenrir, you really will be alone.'

Arthur just had time to glimpse the wetness in her eyes before she threw him backwards. He slammed into a wall, destroying some of the stucco, and slid to the ground. In two great strides, Drysi was on him again, her hands curled into fists, ready to pummel him.

He shielded himself with his arms and shouted up at her. ‘Drysi, look at your foot, look at your foot!!'

She stopped abruptly when she saw what he was seeing. Her bare, bootless foot was covered in ragged little cuts. Shards of crystal stood out along the side of her foot where she'd walked over the pieces of the broken vase. She lifted it and saw that even more punctured the sole. Some of the gashes were so deep that blood poured liberally from them, seeping into the carpet beneath her. She stepped away from Arthur, her mouth gaping in shocked silence.

‘If you were truly healed,' he said sadly, ‘if it wasn't all a trick, you'd feel that. But you don't, do you?'

They looked at each other quietly. Drysi was shaking her head. It was such a subtle motion that Arthur barely noticed it. Her cheeks were glistening with tears now and the redness drained from her face, replaced by a pallid, sickly yellow.

‘Why–?' was all Drysi could utter before a green light burst from her chest.

‘How are you?'

‘I just need to rest a few minutes,' said Arthur, collapsing onto an antique sofa. ‘What about you?'

‘I think she broke a rib or two,' Ash said, using one hand to lower herself down carefully next to him, the other clasped to her side. ‘But I can move at least.'

They looked at Drysi. After the green light had dissipated, she had appeared back in her wheelchair, slumped over and unconscious. Arthur had wheeled her into an empty room adjacent to the corridor. There was butter-yellow wallpaper patterned with gold on the walls, more thick carpeting on the floor and more antique furniture than Arthur had ever seen in one place. A broad white marble fireplace punctuated one wall and there was even more stucco work on the ceiling, covered in gold leaf.

‘How did you know?' asked Ash, keeping her eyes on the still-unconscious Drysi. ‘About her?'

‘In the same way I knew about the World Serpent. I suddenly saw the truth of the situation. I saw her as she really was,' he tapped his eye-patch, ‘and I knew what I had to do.'

Just then, Drysi's head bobbed up. Her eyes opened, looked around to take in the new surroundings and noticed the wheelchair. Realisation set in.

‘You did this,' she cried, not daring to look at them and opting to study the carpet instead.

‘No, we didn't,' said Arthur. ‘And you know we didn't.'

‘Why?' She looked up at him. ‘Why did he do this to me?'

‘He needed you for the time being. He needed the order you brought to the army to maintain his chaos.'

‘But why wouldn't he heal me properly? He has the power to do so.'

‘Loki is a god of mayhem, of chaos, of mischief. Why do you think he's known as the Father of Lies? He prefers tricks to actually helping someone. He prefers illusions to actually caring about someone, even his own children. He would never have healed you. He just gave you a temporary trick. And now that you've seen through that trick, the spell is broken.'

‘I can't believe he used me like that,' Drysi said, mostly to herself. ‘I betrayed my own father to help him. I would have done anything for him.'

‘I'm sorry, Drysi,' said Arthur, leaning forward and reaching for her hands. She yanked them away and clasped them tightly on her lap.

‘We both are,' added Ash.

Drysi blinked her eyes and turned away from them, staring at the ceiling until the tears stopped. Minutes passed in silence as she studied the stucco. Eventually she said, ‘See that plasterwork up there?' Arthur and Ash followed her gaze. Among all the floral patterns and curlicues were four depictions of different animals.

‘They show some of Aesop's fables,' Drysi went on. ‘Look at the one with the stork and the fox.' Arthur followed her pointed finger. The stucco showed a fox sipping water from a bowl, while a stork stood by, dipping its long beak in the pan. Drysi told them the fable.

‘There was this fox, a wily trickster fox. And he had a pan of water. He invited the stork to drink from the pan but she couldn't. She couldn't sip the water because the pan was too shallow for her beak. The fox had all the water and laughed at the trick he had played. He'd won.' Drysi pointed to another part of the plasterwork, which also showed the fox and the stork but in a different position.

‘So a few days later, the stork invited the fox to drink some of her water. She had it in a long bottle and was able to sip up the water easily with her slender beak. But the fox's tongue couldn't reach the water so he went thirsty. The stork had tricked the fox.'

Drysi looked right at Arthur. ‘That's what you'll have to do,' she said. ‘You'll have to trick the fox. It's the only way to stop him.'

‘Where can we find him?'

‘Go back out to the corridor and go through the door at the end. Then head upstairs. You'll find yourselves in another long corridor. He'll be through the very last door. He always has Hel there by his side. She's been unconscious since working the spell on you, Arthur. And … and he keeps the prisoners there as well.'

‘Drysi, thank you.'

She turned away from them.

‘Just … just trick the fox.'

The upstairs corridor was longer and narrower than the downstairs one, forcing them to walk in single file. The rugs were as lush as everywhere else in the Áras, the walls painted pristinely white and the ceiling a complex mass of stucco curlicues. Doors lined either side of the hallway, all covered in an ivory gloss that matched the walls. Arthur went first, keeping his eye fixed on the door dead ahead. It was just like all the others save for the brass plaque hanging on it that read in flowing calligraphy ‘Throne Room'.

They'd left Drysi in the golden room on the ground level, still in shock over Loki's trick. Ash was leaning on her staff for support – almost totally stripped of wood by now. The cut over Arthur's eye-patch had stopped bleeding, but a large purple and green bruise was flourishing around it. He stopped a stride away from the door and turned to Ash. She put her free hand on his shoulder and squeezed. He looked at the door again and could see his reflection in the plaque. His face was drawn and even more exhausted-looking than he felt.

He turned to her and raised his eyebrows weakly, too tired to speak.

She smiled feebly back and shrugged: as good a ‘let's go' as he was likely to get.

Arthur gripped the handle and turned.

He had expected a room around the same size as the one where they'd left Drysi. But this was not what he was met with.

Inside was a cavernous hall with a vaulted ceiling that reached so high he felt a wave of vertigo just gazing up at it. Brass chandeliers hung down, filled with candles burning with huge flames. The walls were sandstone, windowless but with long tapestries adorning them at every available spot. They depicted Loki in a variety of heroic poses: riding the Jormungand, battling a giantess, wrestling a bear, standing topless at the edge of the Grand Canyon with the sunlight gleaming behind him and a plaid bandana tied on his head. The floor was covered in a mosaic of tiny marble tiles, arranged to portray Loki's massive grinning face.

The hall had been alive with noise when Arthur had pushed the door open but now, as they stood on the threshold, the silence was so sudden and so thick he would be able to hear a pin drop.

Members of the Wolfsguard stood on either side inside the door and one slammed it shut as soon as Arthur and Ash stepped into the room then returned to his position. But it was the other occupants of the room that had Arthur and Ash staring. To the left was a gigantic domed cage hanging between the chandeliers. It was like an oversized birdcage, complete with a pan of water, a tubular feeder full of seeds and nuts and a hanging iron bar for the birds to roost on. As soon as Arthur and Ash had appeared in the doorway, the gigantic birds had flown off the roost and flocked to the base of the cage, squawking agitatedly at Arthur and Ash. These weren't ordinary parrots or budgies, however. They were Loki's prisoners. Arthur spotted his dad there, with a bright yellow beak replacing the lower part of his face, wings for arms and claws for feet. Everything else – the torso, the legs, the clothes and, worst of all, the eyes – were Joe's. Ash's family were there too and the Lavender siblings and even Fenrir – all transformed into man-sized birds. Arthur heard Ash gasp next to him.

‘Dad …?' he croaked. The birds all cawed piercingly in response.

‘
Silence!
' ordered a hundred voices together.

The hall was laid out for a banquet, with several large round tables arranged throughout the room. Each table was covered with a white tablecloth, golden cutlery and candelabras. A wild boar, spitted and roasted with an apple wedged in its mouth, was on the centre of each table. The diners were sitting on gilt-covered chairs, watching Arthur and Ash carefully. There were men and women, boys and girls, all of them in their finest garments and all of them with Loki's sneering face.

The birds quietened when the hundred Lokis shouted.

Beyond the banquet, next to a golden throne near the opposite wall, was Hel. Her arms and legs were splayed and she hovered a few feet above the ground, held suspended in a spherical, glowing green vortex. Her eyes were shut and Arthur knew by looking at her that she was unconscious; Drysi had told them the truth. Despite her resting state, there was no softness in her features; her face was still the twisted and craggy thing he'd seen in the graveyard.

I have to get to her, he thought. That's what I have to do.

‘Hello, Arthur,' said the hundred Lokis in one voice. ‘What a pleasant surprise!'

Arthur didn't respond. He walked forward, heading straight for Hel.

‘Arthur, wait!' called Ash, running after him.

‘It's OK,' he whispered to her. ‘You stay here.'

‘But the Lokis–'

‘They're just tricks, illusions.'

He turned and kept walking in the direction of the banquet.

‘Don't we scare you, Arthur?' the voices said together.

‘Not any more.' He weaved between the tables. The Lokis looked up at him with those grinning expressions.

Suddenly, one of the Loki-women in front of him stood up. It was strange to see the Father of Lies in a billowing ball-gown – a sight that would have sent Arthur into a fit of laughter under normal circumstances – but he had no time to appreciate the get-up before being punched backwards. He soared onto the nearest table. The boar toppled away from him and onto the tiled floor. The Lokis around the table all stood up and grabbed for Arthur, twenty hands all reaching forward to pull him apart.

Two hundred clawing fingers scrabbling at him.

And all the voices repeating his name as one.

‘Arthur. Arthur. Arthur.'

Before their fingers could even reach his neck, he had the pendant out. He flung it at the nearest Loki face and, with a blinding flash of green, they were all gone.

Arthur climbed down from the table, retrieved the pendant and looked around. Only one Loki remained – the real one. He was sitting on the throne next to Hel's weird vortex, his fingers tapping impatiently on the golden wolf armrests. He was wearing the pinstriped suit he'd been so fond of in Arthur's world and a golden antler-shaped crown, with emerald gems embedded all over. He watched Arthur closely, a wry smile fixed on his face.

Slowly, deliberately Loki started clapping his hands. The sound echoed against the stone walls. He stepped off the throne and walked in Arthur's direction.

‘I feel like I should congratulate you,' he said.

‘For what?' Arthur took a step back, bristling.

‘For still being alive, to begin with, and for making it here … to this reality. I don't know how you managed it, but you did. Who helped you?'

‘Nobody.'

‘Somebody did. Somebody gave the world the dream about Hel to help you. Didn't work, though, did it? You didn't find her soon enough. And then somebody brought you back to reality, despite Hel's best efforts. As you can see, it took quite a lot out of her. Somebody's been helping you all along. So I'll ask you again. Who?'

The Norns!
Arthur realised suddenly. They must have planted the dream. He kept his facial features even, hoping he wouldn't give anything away to Loki.

‘Not going to tell me?' he said when he saw Arthur's fixed expression. ‘No matter. As you will see I kept an insurance policy for just this sort of eventuality.'

With one loud clap, there was another blinding flash of green. When Arthur could see again, the prisoners were no longer in the cage, nor were they still bird-people. But they weren't normal either – their mouths had been sealed shut. Where their lips should have been was just smooth flesh, as if they had never had mouths to begin with. They were all in stocks, bent over with their heads and hands poking through the tight holes. They tried to pull themselves back out but a padlock on each stock held them firmly in place. Above them, a giant curved blade swung over and back from the ceiling. With each swing, it descended an inch closer to their necks.

‘
No!
' screamed Ash, rushing to pull at the padlocks. ‘Let them go!
Let them go!
'

‘I might set them free if Arthur tells me who's been helping him,' said Loki, keeping his eyes trained on him.

Arthur whipped around to face him. ‘Fight me,' he fumed.

‘What?' For the first time, Loki seemed genuinely surprised.

‘I said fight me. If you beat me, I'll tell you who's been helping me. But you have to free them first.'

‘Why should I?'

‘Because they're worth nothing to you. What you really want to know is who's been helping me. If you know that, you can stop them and then you'll have won. For good. But if you kill our families, you'll never find out. Never!'

‘Arthur, no!' Ash shouted.

Loki stared at Arthur as if considering his offer and all the while the pendulum-blade continued to fall. In a few more minutes it would slice through the prisoners' necks.

Arthur ignored Ash and said to Loki, ‘It'll be a fair fight. At least on my part.' He held up the hammer and pendant in one hand and then threw them behind him. They landed next to the pair of guards.

‘Heh,' said Loki. ‘I like the odds. Guards, take those things out of my sight!'

As the guards did his bidding, Ash ran to Arthur and grabbed him by the shoulders.

‘Arthur, he'll kill you!'

‘Trust me, Ash, just trust me.'

‘But–'

She was cut off when he gave her the smallest of winks.

Arthur looked past her at Loki. ‘You have to free them first. That's part of the deal.'

The god rolled his eyes. ‘Fine!' He unhooked a full hoop of keys from his belt and flung them at Ash. They slipped out of her grip as she tried to catch them, but she hurriedly snatched them from the floor and ran back to the stocks.

‘I've been looking forward to this for a long time, Arthur,' said Loki.

‘You're not the only one,' Arthur replied. And without another second passing, without another swing of the pendulum, without another beat of his heart, the boy ran at the god.

The edge of the blade glinted on each rotation as it swung ever closer to the prisoners' fragile necks. Ash ran right to the nearest stock, which held a man she didn't recognise. His hairline was receding but he had the same jawline as Arthur so she guessed this must be his dad, Joe. She rattled the hoop of keys, looking through them, trying to work out which was the right one for this padlock. There were dozens of keys, of various lengths, colours and designs. Joe thrust his head about in the stock as much as he could, his eyes wide, and grunted in the back of his throat as if to get her attention. She looked at him quizzically as he nodded in the direction of the padlock and then back at the keys.

‘I'm trying my best,' she said.

He shook his head as if to indicate that wasn't what he was trying to say. He squinted furiously at the lock, forcing Ash to take a close look. It was a thick and heavy brass construction with the keyhole in the front. After examining it for a few seconds, she came to understand what Joe was trying to say. If the padlock was old and brass, then the key probably matched it.

Ash looked at the hoop again and counted eight tarnished brass keys just like the lock. She chose one at random and tried twisting it in the hole. She was met with resistance. Keeping one finger wrapped around that key so she wouldn't lose track, she tried the next brass one. Again, the same tight resistance. She held onto it, put the third key in the hole and turned. The padlock clicked open. She knocked it to the ground. Joe immediately pushed upwards and the top fell sideways. As soon as he stepped away from the stocks, the flesh above his chin split open into a mouth once more. One down, seven to go. Ash moved to the next stock and started the process all over again.