Gabriel's Clock (21 page)

The moment Elgar's nose drew level with the door frame, it was as if the cat had been plugged in to an electric socket. His fur stood on end, his tail went rigid, and he let out a screech of pain as he was sent flying back across the workshop to land in a box of wood shavings.

Jonathan ran over and picked up the shivering cat. “Are you all right, Elgar?” he asked.

The cat looked at him with wide, scared eyes. “That was not fun,” he croaked. “You know that feeling you get when you lick a flashlight battery?”

Jonathan shook his head.

“Well, if you did, what just happened to me was about a zillion times worse!”

“I tried to warn you,” said Montgomery.

Elgar sighed and drooped his whiskers.

“Grimm and I are going to stay right here until Jonathan comes back,” said Ignatius. “Why don't you wait with us?”

“Because I want to go with him!” shouted Elgar. “Think of something, Monty.”

The gargoyle scratched his chin. “Perhaps if you carried Elgar?” he said to Jonathan.

“It's worth a go. You up for it?” Jonathan asked the cat.

“Well, if it happens again, then at least I get the satisfaction of landing on you,” said Elgar.

“Thanks for the support,” said Jonathan. He took a firm hold of Elgar. “Right, let's do this.” He turned to look at Ignatius and Grimm. “I'll be back before you know it,” he said.

They smiled at him.

Shutting his eyes, Jonathan put out his hand and took a tentative step forward. The second his fingers drew level with the door frame it was as if they'd suddenly been pushed into a vat of really thick, electrified syrup. Jonathan could feel the gate's resistance to Elgar. It knew the cat wasn't of Gabriel's bloodline, and it didn't really want to let him through. Taking a deep breath, Jonathan slowly and calmly reached for what he knew lay inside him. He wasn't angry or afraid, he wasn't facing a monster, but he focused on how he just wanted his friend by his side. Amazingly, he felt the gate obey. All resistance evaporated, and with Elgar and Montgomery he stepped forward into a dream.

There were stars, so many stars all close together. Their light was so bright, it hurt his eyes.

“Blimey!” said Montgomery. “Will you look at that!”

Jonathan was simply staring in awe at his surroundings. He stood on a vast, circular plain of rolling sand. High above, a shimmering dome of pale energy was all that separated him from an infinite black void dotted with countless pinpricks of silver light. Inside the dome flowed the same never-ending stream of mathematical symbols and equations that he'd seen inside his wings. He turned round and caught one last glimpse of Ignatius's worried face before the door closed. It was so odd just seeing the door there, resting on the sand without anything to support it.

“Where are we?” he whispered.

“Temporary quantum dream-state singularity,” said Stubbs confidently.

“How on earth do you know that?” asked Elgar, jumping to the ground. “And what does it
mean?
”

“Oh, Gabriel used to come talk to us about stuff when he was thinking up new things to build. I've got no idea what any of it actually meant, but it sounded very interesting.”

Jonathan shook his head, astonished at the power required to create something so extraordinary.
Could I build something like this?
he wondered. And then he saw it, far away across the sand, rising like a sword to the heavens—a massive, impossibly delicate tower of white stone, its base surrounded by a ring of flying buttresses.

“There,” he said, feeling a tug from deep inside. “That's where we have to go.”

“Are you sure?” asked Elgar.

“I'm sure.” Jonathan nodded; he could feel something calling to him, faintly, like a distant heartbeat. He checked his watch. “Look, it's gone one o'clock. We've got less than five hours until we meet with Crow, so let's hurry.”

They set off toward the tower. The quiet was absolute; there was no wind, no movement, no life of any sort. Overhead the stars wheeled through space, a constant reminder to Jonathan that time was passing, and he knew the price for failure, so every minute that ticked by pressed down upon him.

After an hour of walking, he began to see strange shapes poking up through the sand—angular pieces of metal glinting in the starlight. Some of the shapes looked strangely familiar.

“That looks like the head of a Tyrannosaurus Rex,” he said, pointing to where an enormous metal skull lay half buried. One uncovered eye socket stared blindly upward, and half its teeth were missing. A few feet away a giant claw looked like it was trying to dig its way out of a sandy grave.

“Here there be dragons,” whispered Montgomery.

“What do you mean?” asked Jonathan, a shiver suddenly running down his spine.

“It's something Gabriel used to say when he wanted us to stop poking our noses into things. I always thought he was joking.”

“But what is it?” asked Jonathan. “And look, there are more of them.”

The nearer they got to the tower, the more skeletons they found. Some were just scraps of metal; others were almost complete, lying exposed on the sand as if asleep. They were so big that when one blocked their path, Jonathan was able to walk straight between the ribs and out the other side.

“What was Gabriel doing here?” asked Elgar.

“I don't know,” said Jonathan. “But we don't have time to think about it. We need to get inside that tower. The nearer we get to it, the stronger it gets.”

“The stronger what gets?”

“I can't explain it,” said Jonathan. “It's like something's calling me.”

Trying to ignore the dead stares of the skeletons littered about them, he urged himself onward until he reached the base of the tower. It was then he realized that something was very wrong.

From far away the tower had looked impossibly perfect. Up close it was anything but. The structure was riven with cracks and jagged holes, and the sand beneath littered with debris. Between two crumbling buttresses, an archway led inside.

“It's falling apart,” said Jonathan. “Why?”

There was a sudden crackling from high above. He looked up and saw the energy dome flicker. As the formulae within it twisted and changed, grew jagged, the ground shook and Jonathan put out his arms to steady himself.

“Look out!”
cried Stubbs.

Jonathan just had time to see what was falling toward him when Stubbs slammed into his back, sending him sprawling. A stone block the size of a door crashed into the sand where he had been standing, right on top of the little gargoyle.

“No!”
shouted Montgomery, a horrified look on his face as he desperately pushed at the block. Jonathan staggered to his feet and joined Montgomery, but it was no use—the stone wouldn't budge. They stepped back and stared at each other, disbelief written on their faces. “He can't just be gone like that, can he?” asked Montgomery.

“I . . . I . . .” stammered Jonathan, not knowing what to say.

“Can't you use your wings to move it?” suggested Elgar.

“Maybe,” said Jonathan, but then something stopped him. He looked up at the energy dome. It had steadied, but now and again it flickered like a guttering candle. Small aftershocks vibrated the sand at their feet, and the tower behind them groaned. “I think this place is collapsing, Monty,” he said. “If I can't control my wings, then I crack that dome like an eggshell. I don't know what might happen after that, but it couldn't be good.”

“Oh.” The gargoyle sighed.

“Why is it collapsing?” asked Elgar.

Jonathan felt a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach as he understood what was happening. “It was built by Gabriel. It's powered by Gabriel. If it's collapsing, that means . . .”

“Means what?” asked Elgar.

“It means we have to hurry,” said Jonathan. “It means my grandfather is getting weaker. I need to rescue him, and Dad and Cay. We have to keep going.”

“But we can't just leave him . . .” begged Montgomery.

Jonathan felt awful. He had an overwhelming need to find the clock, to get home, to bring everything to its end. But to leave the little gargoyle behind? This was Stubbs. Brave, unhinged Stubbs, who had pummeled Raven in the face and saved Cay and her dad; this was the gargoyle who had just saved him. Abandoning Stubbs was not an option.

“I don't know what to do,” he said to Elgar.

“I think you—” The cat stopped speaking and shot into the air with a howl. “It's those skeleton things!” he cried, hiding behind Jonathan. “One of them just tried to grab me.”

Jonathan looked at where Elgar had been sitting and saw the sand sinking downward in a funnel shape. Something pointed rose up from it—a stone ear clutched in a stone paw.

Stubbs clawed his way into the light, coughing and spluttering. From the expression on his face it was obvious he was particularly annoyed. “Look at this!” he said, pointing to his broken ear. “Look at it. One hundred and thirty years without a scratch, and now it decides to fall off.”

“Mr. Stubbs!” cried Montgomery happily.

“You saved my life, Stubbsey,” said Jonathan, kneeling down to pat the gargoyle on the shoulder. “Thank you.”

“S'all right.” Stubbs shrugged. “Look after this, will you?” he said, giving Jonathan his broken ear. “We can fix it later. Right, where were we?”

Smiling at the sheer indestructibility of the gargoyle, Jonathan got to his feet and turned to face the archway that led inside the tower. “Let's go,” he said.

They walked into the cool, dim interior. It took Jonathan's eyes a while to adjust from the glare outside, but when they did his heart sank even further. All around him was evidence of grinding decay. Starlight poured into the cavernous interior of the tower through holes in the ceiling, and more blocks of stone littered the floor. The silence and desolation were absolute. All Jonathan could hear was the sound of his own labored breathing and the gentle crunch of sand beneath his feet.

“Where are you?” Jonathan whispered as he peered into the gloom. And then he saw it, something glowing on what looked like an altar on the far side of the tower. Something that sang to him. He ran forward until he could see it clearly.

Floating just above the carved stone surface of the altar was a glass sphere the size of a goldfish bowl. It pulsed with muted bursts of multicolored light, and inside it a mechanism of mind-boggling complexity ticked quietly.

“That's it,” said Jonathan. “That's Gabriel's clock! That's the back-door key to Heaven.”

“My whiskers agree with you,” said Elgar, his eyes narrowing in thought. “But would Gabriel have just left it sitting there?”

“I don't care!” shouted Jonathan. “Let's just grab it and get out of here.” He took another step forward.

A rumbling began to echo around the empty shell of the tower. Dislodged by the vibration, trickles of sand sifted down from the ceiling high above. A long, torturous screech of metal on stone assaulted their ears, and from out of the darkness behind the altar a terrifying shape uncoiled itself. With whiplike speed the sinuous body of an enormous dragon rose up and lunged forward, slamming its forelegs protectively to the ground in front of the clock. The floor heaved as claws tore into the stone, sparks flying in all directions. Knocked off balance, Jonathan toppled backwards to land in a heap between Elgar and the gargoyles.

The flaming blue eyes of the dragon fixed upon him as he huddled, shaking, between his friends. Rearing up, it thrust its head forward, opened its jaws, and roared like thunder.

Utterly terrified, Jonathan sat frozen to the spot.

“I think I know what those skeletons outside in the sand were for,” said Montgomery with a squeak.

“What?” whispered Jonathan.

“Practice for creating that!”

Jonathan felt the voice begin to call from inside him again. He shut his eyes and willed his wings not to appear. If he let them out, they'd split this pocket universe of Gabriel's wide open, probably killing them all. Then again, this dragon would probably kill them anyway.

He opened his eyes and forced himself to be calm. The dragon hadn't moved. It just sat between them and the clock, its huge head swaying gently. The seconds ticked by, and, swallowing hard, a dry-mouthed Jonathan slowly got to his feet. The dragon snorted and shifted its bulk but made no move to attack.

“Why aren't we all in mangled pieces?” mewled Elgar.

“Why would my grandfather just send us here to be eaten?” said Jonathan. “This dragon is guarding the clock; we just have to figure out how to get past it.”

Trying to stop his heart from beating its way out of his chest, he moved closer until he came eye to eye with the dragon. It shifted position again, and as it did so the shafts of starlight that pierced the ruined tower played over the massive body like so many torches. The scales that covered the dragon were actually thousands of overlapping metal plates, held in place with tiny rivets. Where the starlight brushed them the plates shone a deep burnished silver.

Jonathan looked up and saw two vast wings, outstretched and gleaming. The delicacy of their construction was extraordinary—flexible metal panels hammered so thin, they were almost translucent, held in place by a complex framework of struts and pins. The creature was a work of art. And there on the dragon's chest was a polished metal plaque with the word
BRASS
engraved on it, followed by a small capital
G
.

“So you're Brass,” Jonathan whispered in astonishment. The dragon snorted, and Jonathan assumed this meant yes. “And Gabriel built you and asked you to guard the clock?”

Another snort.

“Gabriel is my grandfather,” said Jonathan. “He's a prisoner of the archdemon Belial, and he sent me here to fetch the clock. I have to take it to Gabriel or Belial will kill him, my father, and my friend Cay.”