Live and Let Drood: A Secret Histories Novel (16 page)

“One step at a time, Molly,” I said. “You have to have faith.…”

“How long ago was this Egypt thing set up?” she said suddenly. “How far back are we talking about?”

“Oh, centuries,” I said. “At least. My family’s been around long enough to think up plans and responses for pretty much every situation you can think of. Everyone knows some of them, and I know more than most because I used to run this family. But I’d never heard anything about this particular backup plan until Uncle Jack took it upon himself to tell me.…Apparently not everyone else thought I needed to know. They didn’t think I’d be in command long enough for it to matter. And as it turned out…”

“Are you sure this thing is still there?” Molly said bluntly. “I mean, hidden in Egypt for all this time?”

“If it isn’t, we’re screwed,” I said. “So think positively.”

I held the Merlin Glass up before me, and Molly and I both regarded it thoughtfully. It looked very much like the hand mirror I remembered, but there was definitely something different, even…off, about it. I remembered my uncle Jack telling me he was half-convinced there was something, and perhaps even someone, trapped inside the mirror. And that whatever it was could be glimpsed sometimes in the background of a reflected image. An extra face in a group, or peering out from behind something…I looked carefully, but all I could see was Molly and me looking dubiously back at ourselves. So that…was a problem that could wait for another day.

Just as long as it didn’t turn out to be some blond-haired Victorian child called Alice. I’d already encountered a giant white talking rabbit in the Old Library.

I reached out cautiously to the Merlin Glass through my torc and told it where we needed to go. My torc now had rogue armour in it, and this wasn’t the Merlin Glass I was used to, so it did occur to me that all kinds of things could go wrong…but in the end the Glass jumped out of my hand just like always, and grew to the size of a door in a moment. It hung on the air before Molly and me, dangling unsupported above the grass. Our reflections were gone. Instead the Glass showed nothing but an impenetrable darkness. Molly edged closer very cautiously and peered into the dark.

“That…is not exactly promising,” said Molly. “Where, exactly, are we going in Egypt, Eddie?”

“To a very secret hiding place,” I said. “Which I don’t feel comfortable naming out loud.”

“Oh, come on!” said Molly. “Look around you! There’s no one here. We’re on our own, deep in the Drood grounds. Who could possibly be listening?”

“You heard the Road Rat,” I said. “All our shields and protections are down. So, theoretically, anyone at all could be remote viewing the
Hall and its grounds and listening in on our every word. Very definitely including Crow Lee.”

“I think we should get going,” said Molly.

“After you,” I said.

“Through an unknown Glass, into complete darkness and a place you can’t even bring yourself to name? Do you ever want to see me naked again, Eddie?”

“I’ll go first,” I said.

I stepped briskly over the bottom frame and through the Merlin Glass into pitch-darkness, and then stepped quickly to one side so I wouldn’t be run over by Molly as she came storming through right after me. She liked to make her point, but she never wanted to be left out of anything. Immediately both of us began to cough and choke. The air was bad. It smelled strongly of spices and rot, and air that had been left undisturbed for far too long. I should have expected that. I called my golden face mask out of my torc, and the moment it slammed into place over my face, I could breathe again. I looked quickly round at Molly, but she’d already conjured up a bubble of fresh air around her head. The edges of the magical field shimmered in the gloom. She glared at me, and I shrugged apologetically.

Bright sunlight streamed through the open Merlin Glass behind us, summer sunshine falling through from the Drood grounds, illuminating an enclosed stone chamber no more than twenty feet square with no obvious door or other openings and an uncomfortably low ceiling. Dust thrown up by our sudden arrival swirled back and forth in the stream of light. I asked Molly to call up some witchlight, and she nodded quickly. A few muttered Words later and a warm and cheerful amber light radiated from her left hand, held up above her head. I immediately shut down the Merlin Glass. It fell back to its usual size, cutting off the sunlight, and I tucked the Glass away in my pocket. Molly’s witchlight illuminated the chamber well enough.

And I didn’t want something as powerful as the Merlin Glass announcing our presence to anyone who might be watching.

There was nothing in any way interesting about the stone chamber the Glass had delivered us to. Square, dusty, entirely enclosed. No obvious way in or out. Thick dust jumped up from the floor with every small movement Molly and I made, forming clouds in the air before falling sullenly back again. The four walls were completely bare, featureless; just basic blocks of dark stone put in place God alone knew how long ago. My family hadn’t made this place. We just took advantage of it.

“Are you sure we’re in the right place?” said Molly. “I’m not seeing anything useful. In fact, I’m not seeing anything worth looking at.”

“I gave the Glass the right coordinates,” I said. “The place isn’t important; it’s just a repository for what we’re looking for.”

“Then…where are we?” said Molly. Her voice, and mine, sounded very flat and very small in the ancient enclosed surroundings. “I am officially not impressed by any of this or the fact that I’ve got to maintain a goldfish bowl of fresh air around my face. So, tell me exactly where we are right now or I am divorcing you.”

“We’re not married.”

“
Eddie!
”

“We are in the Valley of the Kings, where ancient Egypt buried their most revered dead,” I said. “Or at least we are currently deep underground, underneath the Valley of the Kings. In a secret compartment of an undiscovered tomb. And, no, I don’t know whose. There are still quite a few undiscovered tombs buried deep under the shifting sands, ready to be dug up.…And given some of the things the old-time pharaohs had to bury or imprison—everything from djinn with bad attitudes to animal-headed gods that had got a bit above themselves—it’s probably just as well that no one’s found them.”

Molly looked at me for a while, realised that I’d said all I was going to say on the subject and gave me one of her looks.

“You really do get on my tits, sometimes, Eddie. You know that? We’re here somewhere, in someone’s tomb, looking for something.…I’ll bet my sister Isabella knows more about this place than you do. More than your whole family, probably.”

“I wouldn’t doubt it,” I said generously.

Molly sniffed and looked about her, trying to find something worth looking at. “Isabella would love this. Much more her thing than mine. Louisa; who can say? Wait a minute.…Did you say
deep underneath the Valley of the Kings
? How deep, exactly?”

“Probably best not to think about it,” I said.

I stepped up to one of the bare, featureless walls and studied it carefully. Molly moved in beside me, holding the witchlight up to give me better lighting. I moved quickly along the wall, searching for Drood sign. Dust was falling from the ceiling in slow steady streams. Almost certainly not a good sign.

“I still don’t see anything,” said Molly. “No hieroglyphics. No loweroglyphics. Not even any Egyptian graffiti, like
Cleopatra does it with ducks.
And I certainly don’t see any trace of a very useful Drood item. I don’t know what your family left here, Eddie, but it is clearly long gone. Somebody else got here first and beat you to it.”

“Not necessarily,” I said. “According to what my uncle Jack told me, this chamber was deliberately left empty, to give just the impression you’ve described. To discourage anyone who might have stumbled on our secret location. Now…if I remember correctly…”

I went over the whole wall, studying it from top to bottom, through the expanded and augmented Sight of my golden face mask. Top to bottom and side to side, and then on to the next wall. Where a brief flash of light finally caught my golden eye; a sign left for Droods to see. I leaned in closer and there, barely halfway up the wall, a small but very significant sign had been delicately carved into the rough stone. I gestured to Molly and she squeezed in beside me. She picked out the sign even faster than I had. Molly’s a first-class witch, and she’s always been able to See more than me when it comes to the hidden world.

“Is there a curse attached?” she said suddenly. “There ought to be a curse attached. You know, something like, ‘Death shall come on swift wings to all those who seek to steal that which belongs to Droods!’ That sort of thing…”

“Almost certainly not,” I said.

“Ought to be a curse,” said Molly, pouting. “It’s not proper tomb robbing unless there’s a curse involved.”

“We are not tomb robbing!” I said. “We are simply recovering something that my family happened to leave here long ago. For safekeeping. Now, there should be a second stone chamber, right next to this one. On the other side of this wall.”

I armoured up my right arm from shoulder to fingertip. The golden metal slipped down from my torc and encased my whole arm in just a moment. I was getting used to the cold. Hardly shuddered at all. I flexed the fingers of my golden gauntlet. I felt strong, capable, ready for anything. Like I could punch a hole through steel plate, never mind an old stone wall. Molly looked at me thoughtfully.

“Why aren’t you wearing your complete armour, Eddie? Normally, you can’t wait to slip the whole thing on and do your superhero thing. So why settle for just the one arm now? Eddie, are you afraid of your new armour?”

“No,” I said immediately. “I’m just concerned that a display of Drood power in such an out-of-the-way place might draw unwanted attention. I don’t want anyone knowing we’re here.”

“Are you back to that unseen-watchers bit?” said Molly. “We are not at home to Mr. Paranoia! Who could possibly know we’re here?”

“Good question,” I said grimly.

I turned away from her and struck the stone wall a good solid blow, and my golden fist punched right through the stone and out the other side. Molly cheered and clapped her hands loudly. I laughed out loud at the sheer ease of it. Jagged cracks radiated out across the wall from the hole I’d made, but the wall itself remained, holding itself together. I wriggled my wrist around, but the hole didn’t widen. I tried to pull my hand back and found I couldn’t. My wrist was stuck in the hole. I was glad I had my mask on, so Molly couldn’t see how embarrassed I felt. I struggled to pull my hand back, but it wouldn’t budge. It was wedged in place.

Out of the corner of my eye I could see Molly trying hard not to laugh.

“Really not a subject for humour, Molly,” I said sternly. “If I get this wrong and bring the wall down, this whole chamber could collapse around us.”

“I am reminded of a little Dutch boy…” said Molly.

“Don’t go there,” I said. “Really. Don’t.”

I raised one foot and planted it firmly against the wall and pulled steadily on my trapped hand, throwing all the armour’s strength against the hole. And soon enough my golden hand jerked back out. I stepped back and braced myself, ready for the wall to decide enough was enough and just fall to pieces…but apart from a few more radiating cracks, everything was still. Some more dust fell from the ceiling, but I was getting used to that. Egyptians knew how to build things to last in those days.

I went back to the hole in the wall and carefully worked the edges, a few inches at a time, crushing the stone with my powerful fingers and throwing it aside. And inch by inch the hole grew bigger.

“You are sure it’s in there?” Molly said helpfully. “Whatever it is we’re looking for that you still won’t talk about.”

“There is quite definitely another chamber on the other side of this wall,” I said patiently. “The object in question was sealed in there. For protection.”

“I’m not Seeing any magical protections.”

“Well, that’s probably because there aren’t any. The feeling was that any magical shields in such an out-of-the-way location would only draw people here to find out what there was that was worth protecting. We just have to hope that the traitor in my family didn’t give up the secret of this location to our enemies. Though he might not have known about it; this was one of our most important and most restricted secrets. We can’t be sure what the traitor does or doesn’t know until we know who he is.”

“First things first, sweetie,” said Molly. “Do you think you could speed up the wall destruction just a bit? I really would like to get out of this tomb sometime this week, preferably.”

“Why the rush?” I said. “Somewhere else you have to be?”

“I don’t like it here,” said Molly.

There was something in her voice as she said that…so I armoured up both arms, and widened the hole with savage speed, tearing chunks of old stone away from the edges of the hole, while still being careful not to do anything that might bring the wall or the ceiling down. Even with my full attention focused on the task, on the wall, I could still feel Molly watching me. I knew what she was thinking, but she was wrong. I wasn’t afraid of my new armour. That wasn’t why I was doing it this way. I was just being cautious.

Finally, I stood back and studied the larger hole I’d made. I’d opened up a good-sized gap some three to four feet in diameter. It had felt good to be breaking something, to smash the stone in my golden hands. To inflict my will on the world and make it follow my needs…I clamped down hard on that feeling. I couldn’t trust my feelings while I was wearing any part of the rogue armour. I couldn’t hear its voice in my head or sense its presence looking over my shoulder…but I had no doubt it was still there. I wasn’t afraid of Moxton’s Mistake. I had no doubt my torc gave me control over it. But I was afraid of what I might do…if tempted. I still remembered what I’d done that night in the Wulfshead when I struck down old friends just because they were in my way. When I beat the Indigo Spirit half to death because he wouldn’t let me do what I needed to do. I’d done my penance at Castle Shreck. That had to count for something. But I was damned if I’d ever give in to that kind of anger again. So I had to be careful when using the rogue armour. I had to be…cautious.