Live and Let Drood: A Secret Histories Novel (49 page)

“Please, Edwin,” said the Sarjeant. “Not in front of strangers. Who are these people you’ve brought with you?”

Molly armoured down, and the Sarjeant blinked several times as the golden mask disappeared to reveal her features. But that was nothing compared to the look of actual shock that took over his face when he looked at the Regent, Diana and Patrick. He stepped forward involuntarily, his gaze fixed on the Regent of Shadows.

“Dear God,” he said. “It’s you!”

“Quite, Cedric,” said the Regent. “Demons in Hell are probably snowboarding even as we speak.…But, yes, it’s me. I’m back. Where is the rest of the Council?”

“Here,” said a familiar voice. “All that’s left of us.”

I looked around, and hurrying down the hallway towards us were William the Librarian and the telepath Ammonia Vom Acht. The Librarian looked his usual tall and world-buffeted self, but he was wearing clothes that actually seemed like he’d put them on himself for a change, and with his great head of grey hair and full grey beard, he looked more like an Old Testament prophet than usual. His eyes seemed sharper and clearer than they had in a long time. Ammonia Vom Acht stuck close beside him, giving every appearance that she’d been doing that for some time. Medium height, sturdy, with a broad mannish face and a shock of unruly auburn hair, Ammonia had a face so full of character there was no room left in it for anything like good looks. She was wearing her usual battered tweed suit and stout brogues with trailing laces. Her jaw protruded forward with bulldog stubbornness. I noted, with quiet shock, that William and Ammonia were holding hands.

I pointed at them. “All right,” I said, “when did that happen?”

But before William could answer, I stepped forward and hugged him hard. The Sarjeant sniffed loudly behind me.

“He keeps doing that. I don’t know why.”

I let go of William, stepped back and grinned at him. “You’re looking a lot more yourself, William.”

“Ammonia’s been helping me,” said William. “I always knew what I really needed was the love of a good woman.”

“But we couldn’t find one,” said Ammonia, “So he has to settle for me.”

They smiled at each other fondly. The Sarjeant-at-Arms gave me a
What can you do?
look but said nothing.

“The three of us are all that’s left to form a Council,” said William. “And we’ve been very busy since we arrived here.”

“Where’s Uncle Jack?” I said. “Has something happened to Uncle Jack?”

“The Armourer is down with Alpha Red Alpha,” said Ammonia. “Hitting it with the science stick, trying to persuade it to work again and get us the hell out of wherever it is we are.”

And then we all cried out and jumped back as a vicious snapping creature materialised abruptly in the hallway. Covered in dark green scales, long and Reptiloid with a great wedge head, lots of fangs and claws and a vicious barbed tail that snapped back and forth behind it. Big enough that it filled the hallway from wall to wall and from floor to ceiling, it was actually trapped for a moment, unable to manoeuvre. Ammonia pointed a single finger at the beast and scowled really hard, and all the beast’s eyes rolled up in its head. It collapsed, slamming its great length on the floor.

“Telepathic bludgeon,” said William proudly.

“Best kind,” said Ammonia.

“Yes…” said the Sarjeant. “Luckily, it appears only a very few of these things can teleport, or we’d be hip deep in the bloody things by now. Is it dead or just sleeping, Ammonia?”

“Dead, of course.” The telepath kicked the creature in the head a few times, just to be sure. “William, get this out of here, would you?”

“Of course, dear.”

William armoured up. I didn’t think I’d ever seen the Librarian in armour before. He grabbed the long barbed tail and dragged the creature briskly down the hallway to the front doors. He kicked them open and dragged the dead thing outside, where he picked the whole creature up and pitched it right through the shimmering barrier. William came back in to join us, and armoured down.

“Why am I always the one who has to take out the trash?”

“Show-off,” said Ammonia. She fixed me with a hard look. “Don’t even think about hugging me, boy. Why are you so pleased to see everyone?”

“He thought you were all dead,” Molly said briskly. “When this Hall disappeared from the world, another Hall rotated in to take its place. That Hall was a burnt-out ruin, full of dead Droods. It took us a while to figure out what had happened.”

“Wait a minute,” said the Sarjeant-at-Arms. “The whole world thinks the Droods are dead? We have got to get back. With the cats away, the rats will run riot.”

“Well, yes, quite right, Sarjeant,” said William. “But first things first. The Armourer really was very clear and most upset when he told us that Alpha Red Alpha couldn’t get us home again. That we were, in fact, trapped in this shithole of a world. And it was very nice of you to come and join us, Eddie. But have you brought anything useful with you? Something to help us get back home?”

“I’ve brought along a few useful items,” I said. “I’ll take them down to the Armourer.”

“I still want to know who all these other people are!” said Ammonia, scowling at the Regent in particular.

“Ah yes,” said William. “I should have got around to that, shouldn’t I? Sorry, everyone. My mind isn’t what it was.”

“Though we are working on that,” Ammonia said quickly.

The Regent smiled gently at the Librarian. “Do you remember me, William? I’m your uncle Arthur. First husband to Martha. I’ve been away for a while, but I’m back now in your hour of need. Because that’s what I do.”

William just nodded vaguely. He clearly still had some way to go. The Sarjeant nodded heavily.

“The Regent of Shadows. Never thought I’d see the day…Welcome home, Great-uncle.”

“I and my associates here are just along for the ride,” said the Regent. “It’s Eddie’s show, really. And Molly’s, of course.”

“The infamous Molly Metcalf,” said the Sarjeant-at-Arms. “And wearing Drood armour…There’s a story behind this, I’m sure, and I’m really not going to like it. Am I?”

“Almost certainly not,” I said.

“Then it can wait. Get down to Alpha Red Alpha and do what you can to help the Armourer. Those things out there are getting closer all the time. We don’t have any of the Hall’s usual exterior defences; they didn’t travel along with us. Most of the family are out manning the perimeter, doing what they can with all the weapons we could find in the Armoury, some of which are being field-tested for the first time even as we speak.” He scowled briefly. “We’ve lost some good people.
And a lot of the weapons are running out of ammunition. I don’t want to open the Armageddon Codex, but I will if I have to. I will destroy this world before I let it destroy us.”

“Spoken like a true Sarjeant-at-Arms,” I said.

The whole hallway was suddenly full of a rose red glow as Ethel manifested, bestowing her peaceful and calming presence on us.

“Hello, hello, hello, Eddie!” said the familiar disembodied voice. “I’m so glad you caught up with us at last! Isn’t this an absolutely fascinating world? I’ve never seen creatures this ugly before, and I’ve been to dimensions you don’t even have concepts for! I’m sure if some of these things would only stop trying to kill us, just for a moment, we could have some really interesting conversations!”

“You can talk to them?” I said.

“Well, no, not as such,” Ethel said reluctantly. “I keep trying, but all I get is this mental static.…They’re just so different! I’ll keep trying, though. But first things first. You need your armour back, Eddie.”

And I cried out loud in relief as armour poured out of my torc and formed around me. I’d forgotten how good it felt after the cold embrace of the rogue armour. I revelled in the feeling for a moment and then reluctantly armoured down again. But before I could say anything, the rose red glow seemed to concentrate around Molly, as though Ethel was studying her closely.

“That’s a very interesting torc you’ve got there, Molly,” said Ethel. “Where on earth did you get it? It’s not one of mine. I can see it contains armour, but it’s not strange matter. It tastes funny. I don’t like it.”

“I don’t like it, either,” said the Sarjeant-at-Arms. “Only Droods are supposed to have armour.”

“This was a special case,” said Molly.

“I needed armour,” I said steadily. “And you were gone with the Hall, Ethel. So I went with the only armour that was left. The armour in the hedge Maze. Moxton’s Mistake.”

The Sarjeant just frowned, but William’s head came up immediately. He looked at me sharply, and I thought he was going to say something, but he didn’t.

“Still doesn’t explain why she turned up here wearing it, and not you,” said the Sarjeant.

“It’s complicated,” said Molly.

“I want to know what it is!” insisted the Sarjeant.

“It’s rogue armour,” I said. “Created by a previous Armourer to be intelligent, self-aware and to operate on its own. It rebelled and killed a whole bunch of Droods. That’s why it was imprisoned in the hedge Maze for so long. But I made a deal with it: service in return for freedom. And since I spoke with Drood authority, Sarjeant, you will abide by my decision in this matter.”

The Sarjeant scowled at Molly’s torc but said nothing.

“How did you get here, Eddie?” said William. “How did you find us?”

“The Merlin Glass, combined with some useful information I picked up along the way,” I said. “Which I really do need to get to the Armourer. Defend the Hall, Sarjeant. Buy us time to get the dimensional engine working again. Regent, Patrick, Diana: You come with me and Molly. You’re about to see a part of the Hall we don’t normally show people.”

“Not back in the Hall ten minutes, and already you’re barking orders,” said Molly.

I led them all down to the Armoury, that great stone cavern set deep in the bedrock underneath the West Wing. It felt weird, hurrying through deserted workstations and abandoned firing ranges, with not a single overenthusiastic lab assistant to be seen, doing something unwise with something dangerous. It reminded me too much of the deserted Armoury in the ruined Hall. I found the trapdoor lying open at the far end of the Armoury, and we all gathered around it. Nothing to be seen but the top part of the iron ladder leading down into an impenetrable darkness. I didn’t give any of them time to think about it, just started down the ladder without looking back. I was quietly pleased that one by one they followed me down, without saying anything. There was no light anywhere, and several times I had to stop and feel for the next rung in the ladder with my foot. The ladder seemed to descend for
ages, long enough that my leg muscles had begun to cramp painfully by the time I reached the bottom. The moment I stepped away from the ladder, a bright light flared up, dazzling me for a moment. The others quickly joined me, and then we all waited patiently as the Regent took a moment to quietly massage his old leg muscles.

We had arrived in a truly massive stone cavern stretching away in all directions. It looked to be bigger than the whole Hall itself, and I wasn’t even sure exactly where under the Hall we were. The huge stone walls were covered with line after line of carefully delineated mathematical symbols, none of which meant anything to me. The Armourer had called them mathemagics, the bastard child of supernatural equations and description theory. When people start telling me things like that, I usually just nod and move on because I know that even if I do ask questions, I’m not going to understand the answers.

Strange machines rose everywhere, set out in no obvious pattern, packing the great cavern from wall to wall and from floor to ceiling, with only narrow walkways left in between. Technology so advanced that none of it meant anything to me. Just brutal and ugly shapes, with no obvious function or controls. Some of the machines appeared blurred or indistinct, as though human eyes couldn’t properly perceive or understand them. The result of one Armourer’s mad wisdom. Along with gifts from other worlds, dimensions, realities. Our best and craziest Armourers have always been pack rats, putting things we pick up along the way to good use. Drood knowledge is older and weirder than most of us care to admit. Mile upon mile of colour-coded cables held everything together and hung in a complicated web between the upper levels of the machines and the uneven stone ceiling. Sometimes they twitched dreamily, like a dog’s legs kicking in its sleep.

I called out to the Armourer, and his voice rose from deep back in the cavern.

“Over here! Whoever you are. Unless you’re a monster, and then I’m out. Leave a message.”

I headed for his voice, past colossal machines whose intricate workings were constantly moving, rising and falling, turning this way and
that in endless variations, in pursuit of unknown purposes. Some of the structures seemed to lean and slump against one another, half melting, combining into some new and even stranger thing. Some changed shape right before my eyes, as though unable to settle, humming loudly to themselves in complex harmonies. And all the time I had the feeling of being watched and studied by unseen cold and thoughtful eyes. The cavern was comfortably warm and well-lit, but there was a bristling static in the air and the smell of iron filings and something burning, and I couldn’t escape the feeling that I just wasn’t welcome.

None of the others said anything. They just stuck very close to me as I led them through narrow wandering walkways. Just as well, because I didn’t know what I could have said in return, except,
Yes, I know. It creeps the hell out of me, too.

And finally, at last, we came to Alpha Red Alpha itself, which looked just as complicated and disturbing and overwhelming as I remembered it. Big as a house, bigger than most houses, rising all the way up to the ceiling, so you had to bend your head right back to see the top of it. It looked mostly like a plunging waterfall of solid crystal with glowing wires running through it like multicoloured veins. Etched all over with row upon row of inhuman symbols. And all of this surrounded a massive hourglass, some twenty feet tall or more, fashioned from solid silver and glass so perfect you could barely see it. The top half of the hourglass was full of shimmering golden sand, with not one golden mote falling down into the lower half.