by Derek Landy
Valkyrie watched him carefully. His face was pale and his eyes were wide, and she readied herself to rush forward if he passed out. But instead of passing out, Paddy pressed his lips together and nodded.
“All right. Okay. Fair enough,” he said. “You’re a skeleton.”
“I am.”
“Right so. Just making sure. And you, are you magic too?”
“I am,” Valkyrie said.
“Right. I might need to sit down.”
“Before you do that,” Skulduggery said, “I want to introduce you to some friends of ours.”
The side door of the van opened, and Ghastly and Tanith got out, followed by Fletcher.
Paddy stared at Ghastly. “What happened to you?”
“I was cursed before I was born,” Ghastly told him.
“That’d do it, all right. And you’re all magic then? Even the boy with the ridiculous hair?”
“I’m Fletcher Renn.” Fletcher scowled. “I’m the most important person in the world right now.”
Paddy looked at Fletcher, then at Skulduggery, and turned to Valkyrie. “Does magic automatically make you an insufferable pain, or am I just lucky to get two at the same time?”
“Just lucky.” She grinned.
He shook his head in wonder. “My father would have loved this. He would have really loved this. And my land is important, is it?”
“Very,” Skulduggery said, and turned to Fletcher. He told him what to do, and Fletcher looked at him skeptically, but eventually did as he was instructed. He raised his hands and walked slowly forward with his eyes closed. Skulduggery followed.
Leaving Tanith with Ghastly, Valkyrie and Paddy walked along behind.
“Do you still need to sit down?” she asked.
“I think I’m okay, thank you.”
She looked at the shovel in his hands. “Working hard?”
He nodded. “Digging. Do you have a spell for digging?”
“Uh, not that I know of …”
“That would have been handy. I wasted so much of my life digging holes with a shovel. I probably wasted so much of my life doing other things as well. Life would have been easier with magic. What’s it like?”
For a moment Valkyrie was going to downplay everything, but the look in his eyes made her tell the truth. “It’s amazing,” she admitted.
“How do you know I can even do this?” she heard Fletcher ask.
“You can do this because it’s something you can do,” Skulduggery said. “You’ll start to feel a tingling sensation when you’re at a spot where the walls of reality are thinnest.”
“Tingling?”
“Or tickling. Or burning.”
“Burning?”
“Or you might get a toothache or a nosebleed or you might have a seizure—it’s hard to say.”
“I might have a seizure?”
“Don’t worry, I’ll stop you from swallowing your tongue.”
Fletcher scowled.
“Can I ask you something?” Paddy said quietly. “When you meet the people you used to know, like other kids your age, what do you feel? Do you despise them?”
“Why would I despise them?”
“Someone who can run fast dismisses the people slower than he is. What if it’s someone who can run really fast? Then the slower people become little more than an annoyance, and then an irritation. Superiority breeds contempt.”
“I don’t agree with that at all,” Valkyrie said, shaking her head. “I can do some things other people can’t, but those other people can do things I can’t. It evens itself out.”
Paddy smiled. “But those other people might be better than you at schoolwork, or tennis, or fixing bicycles … whereas you have magic. I wouldn’t call that a level playing field.”
“Well, okay, I’d agree with that, but it still doesn’t mean that mortals have to be despised.”
“Mortals? That’s what you call us?”
Valkyrie blushed. “It’s not, like, an official term or anything. I mean, it is accurate because you’re mortal, but so are we, so …”
He couldn’t help but smile. “I think my point has been proven.”
“What? No, it hasn’t.”
“What do magic people call themselves? Magicians?”
“Sorcerers,” she said. “Or mages.”
“So magic people view themselves as mages and everyone else as mortals. And that doesn’t sound like a group of people elevating themselves to god-hood to you?”
“Sorcerers don’t believe that they’re gods.”
“Why shouldn’t they? They have the power of gods, don’t they? They have magic at their fingertips. Their affairs affect the world. If you fail in your current ‘mission,’ what will happen?”
She hesitated. “The world will end.”
Paddy laughed. “Wonderful! Beautiful! Do you see it? The importance of your work! A mortal fails at his job, and what happens to him? He doesn’t get his Christmas bonus? He gets demoted? Fired? And life continues around him. But if a mage fails, if you and your friends fail, everybody dies. Why shouldn’t you think of yourselves as gods? You hold the fate of the world in your hands. If that’s not godlike, I don’t know what is.”
“Can we change the subject?”
“To what?”
“Anything that doesn’t make me sound like a crazy person?”
He laughed, and they walked closer to Skulduggery as Fletcher announced that he was feeling something. They had crossed the yard and were standing in the long grass. Fletcher’s eyes were open and his fingers were splayed. His steps grew smaller as he homed in on the spot.
“It’s a buzzing,” he said, “in my fingers, like I get when I teleport. Okay, now I can feel it all over.” He turned slightly. “It’s there. I know it is. Right there.”
To Valkyrie, he was staring at empty space, but his voice was strong and his eyes were sure.
“What’s so special about here?” Paddy asked. “It’s just the same as anywhere else.”
“You can’t see it,” Fletcher said scornfully, “but I can feel it. It’s amazing. I can open it right now.”
“No, you can’t,” Skulduggery said. “But well done for finding it.”
“No, I can do more than that,” Fletcher insisted. “I can go through.”
“You can’t, and I wouldn’t advise trying,” Skulduggery said, and he’d barely uttered the last word when Fletcher disappeared.
Paddy jumped back. “Good God!”
Valkyrie spun to Skulduggery. “Could he have done it? Could he have gone through?”
“I … I don’t know,” Skulduggery said.
Valkyrie’s hand flew to her mouth. “If he did go through, he’s in there with the Faceless Ones. They’ll tear him apart.”
Skulduggery shook his head. “He didn’t have the Isthmus Anchor. Without that, there’s no way to open the gate, let alone go through. No, it’s impossible.”
“So where is he?” Paddy asked.
Valkyrie’s phone rang, and she put it to her ear.
“Hey, Val,” Tanith said on the other end, “did you happen to lose something? Not too bright, vacant expression on his face, silly hair? Ring any bells?”
Valkyrie sighed in relief. “Skulduggery, he’s back at the van.”
“I’m going,” Skulduggery said as he strode quickly past her, “to kill him.”
They got back to Dublin, and Fletcher still hadn’t said one word. Skulduggery had spent close to five minutes berating him for what he had tried to do, and by the end of it, even Fletcher’s hair had wilted into a sullen pile. It had been the most fun Valkyrie had had in ages.
Ghastly needed to return to Kenspeckle for a checkup, and Tanith agreed to go with him. Now that the two of them were back in the game, Skulduggery was feeling better about keeping Fletcher at the labs. When he said this, Fletcher narrowed his eyes and spoke up for the first time in half an hour.
“This is feeling a lot like everyone is babysitting me.”
“That’s because they are.” Valkyrie smiled.
They left the labs just as Fletcher was asking Tanith if she’d tuck him in tonight.
“What’s our next move?” Valkyrie asked as they walked to the Purple Menace.
“We have to prepare for the worst,” said Skulduggery. “If, despite our best efforts, they get the gate open and the Faceless Ones return, we’re going to need the only weapon powerful enough to kill them.”
She frowned. “Which is?”
“The Scepter of the Ancients.”
He got in behind the wheel, and she climbed into the passenger side and buckled her seat belt. “Skulduggery, you broke the Scepter.”
“No, I broke the black crystal that powered it. In theory, all we need is another black crystal and we have a weapon capable of killing a god.”
“Do you know where to get another black crystal?”
He started the car and they moved off. “Not exactly.”
“Do other black crystals exist?”
“Almost certainly.”
“How do we find one?”
“Research, my dear Valkyrie.”
Her shoulders slumped. “I hate research. It’s almost as bad as homework.”
“When was the last time you did homework?”
“I always do my homework.”
“Your reflection does your homework.”
“But I still have to suffer through the memory of it. That’s practically the same thing.”
“I hear millions of schoolchildren around the world crying in sympathy for you.”
“Oh, shut up.”
“But don’t worry, your research will be fun.”
“How do you work that one out?”
“Your uncle was planning to write a book about the Scepter before he died. Knowing Gordon, that means he made quite a lot of notes.”
Valkyrie’s mood lifted. “So all I have to do is read through his notes?”
“You read his notes, I’ll do some research of my own in the library, and we’ll see who comes up with an answer first. Agreed?”
Valkyrie kept her grin to herself. “Oh, all right,” she said, trying to sound irritable. Her uncle had been dead for two years, and he’d had a treasure trove of secrets locked away behind his study in his old house—the house he had left her in his will. Valkyrie loved going through the secret room, and she welcomed any opportunity to do so.
Besides, she hadn’t talked to her dead uncle in weeks.
Twenty-one
OPPORTUNITY RINGS
THE SEA HAG heard someone ringing her bell and rose to the surface of the lake. She poked her head out, making sure it wasn’t the skeleton and the girl, back to inflict more pain.
She emerged from the lake and looked down at a man standing by the shore. “Who disturbs me?” she demanded.
“I do,” the man said.
“What is your name?”
“I am Batu.”
“That is not your name.”
“It is the name I have chosen, and so it is my name.”
The Sea Hag sighed. “Why do you disturb me?”
The man, Batu, looked at her. “You have been wronged, my lady. Fifty years ago I gave you a corpse, allowed it to slip beneath your waters; and now it has been stolen from you.”
The Sea Hag snarled. “I am aware of what happened. What concern is it of yours?”
“I can offer you an opportunity,” the man who called himself Batu said, “an opportunity to repay the ones who have wronged you.”
“How?”
“It would mean moving you from this lake to the sea, my lady. Would you be interested in such an opportunity?”
The Sea Hag stared at him. “You would move me back to the sea? You could do that?”
“The world has changed since you were first trapped here. There are water tanks big enough to hold you and vehicles powerful enough to transport you. I ask again, my lady: Would you be interested?”
“Yes,” said the Sea Hag, smiling for the first time in a hundred years. “Oh, yes.”
Twenty-two
CONVERSATIONS WITH A LATE UNCLE
THE PURPLE MENACE pulled into Gordon’s estate, and Valkyrie took the door key from her pocket and slid it into the lock. The alarm beeped insistently until she entered the code.
Gordon’s house—for it would always be his house and never hers, not even on the day she turned eighteen—was big and quiet and empty.
“I’ll start in here,” Skulduggery said, walking in behind her and heading for the living room. “If you want to start in the study, hopefully we’ll find something by morning.”
“Hopefully,” Valkyrie said, and climbed the stairs.
She went into the study, closed the door behind her, then made straight for the large bookcase along the wall. She pulled back the false book, the bookcase swung open, and she passed through into the small room beyond. For once, she didn’t even glance at the objects and artifacts on the shelves around her. The Echo Stone in the cradle on the table started to glow, and a slightly overweight man in shirtsleeves shimmered into view. He grinned.
“Hello there,” he said. “I take it, by the serious look on your face, that this is business and you haven’t just dropped by because you miss your dear dead uncle?”
Valkyrie raised an eyebrow. “Is that who you are now? You’re Gordon? Not just a recording of his personality?”
“That’s who I am,” Gordon said proudly.
“And you’re sure about this? You’re not going to change your mind halfway through this conversation?”
“I have come to a decision. The flesh-and-blood Gordon may have imprinted me onto this Echo Stone, but I continue to learn, to experience, to evolve. I make my own memories now. I am as real a person as he was, and because we were the same person, I am now him, now that he’s not. It all comes down to philosophy really. I think, therefore I am, I think.”
“That’s good to know.” Valkyrie nodded. “To be honest with you, I see you as my real uncle too.”
“Well, that’s that then.”
“Does this mean I can tell Skulduggery about you now?”
“Ah,” he said. “Not yet. I … I’m not ready for other people to know what I have been … reduced to. But it won’t be long now before you can share me, I promise.”
“Well, good. I don’t like keeping this secret.”
“I understand and I appreciate it. So tell me, how are your parents?”
“They’re good. It’s their anniversary tomorrow, and they’re heading to Paris in the morning.”
“Ah, Paris,” Gordon said wistfully. “I’ve always felt a real affinity for the French, you know. One of my books was set in France, among the cathedrals and along the Champs-Elysées.”
She nodded. “Braineater. It was one of your best. Gordon, have you ever heard of a man called Batu?”
“I don’t think I have, no.”
“We think he’s behind a series of murders, and he wants to use a Teleporter to open a gateway between this reality and whatever reality the Faceless Ones are stuck in.”
“Is that possible?”
“Skulduggery seems to be taking it seriously, so I imagine it is.”
“What can I do to help?”
“If the Faceless Ones return, we’re going to need the Scepter to stop them.”
“But didn’t you tell me that Skulduggery broke it?”
“The crystal doesn’t work anymore, but if we got another crystal …”
“Ah. And you want to know if I found out anything about the black crystals in my research.”
“Exactly.”
“Well, you’re in luck, because I found out a lot.”
“Do you know where we could get one?”
“I do, as a matter of fact.”
“Really? Where?”
Gordon pointed down, and Valkyrie frowned.
“In your shoes?”
“In the caves.”
She blinked. “Seriously? There
are black crystals in the caves beneath this house? Mind telling me why?”
“This house was built over the mouth to the caves hundreds of years ago, by a sorcerer named Anathem Mire.”
“Skulduggery told me about him. He used to throw his enemies into the caves and let the monsters at them.”
“He was not, as you can imagine, a very nice man.”
“Did he worship the Faceless Ones?”
“No, but he studied them. He studied the literature and the history of the Faceless Ones and the Ancients because he wanted power. He bought the land, built the house, and made some tentative efforts to explore the caves. He wanted the secrets the caves hold, and they do hold a lot of secrets.”
“Like what?”
“Why are the creatures down there unaffected by magic? Is it something in the air? In the rocks? Is it because of the mix of minerals? Is it something else? There is no explanation for it, Valkyrie. We simply do not know. According to his journals, Mire made seven expeditions into the caves. The first had a ten-man crew. Mire was the only one to return. In the second, fifteen sorcerers were lost. Again, Anathem Mire was the sole survivor. He realized that the larger the group, the fiercer the attacks. The creatures were drawn to the magic.
“Once he made this discovery, the expeditions became smaller and more successful. Mire continued to be the only one to emerge alive, but only because he was killing his colleagues to make sure they kept their mouths shut.
“On his sixth journey into the caves, he found a vein of black crystals. He instructed one of his party to take a sample, but when the sorcerer laid one finger on an exposed crystal, he was consumed by what Mire described as ‘black lightning’ and turned to dust.”
“Do you know where this vein was?”
“There’s a map in the last of his journals, on one of the shelves in here. That’s the journal that prompted me to buy the house in the first place. I wanted to explore the caves for myself. I never got as far as the black crystals, mind you. Because I had no magic, I was largely ignored by the creatures, but even so, there were a few close calls that convinced me to leave the adventuring to the adventurers.”
“That guy who tried to take a crystal was killed. How are we supposed to get one?”