He briefly glanced inside the Oculus and watched the projection play on the surface of the painting. “Plenty of oil and a hearty flame, Lexie. And while the kids are busy in there, we can watch for spirits.” Munro crouched down and touched one of the floor tiles that had once made up the labyrinth. “This chamber is potent, Lexie. I can feel it! We’re in the centre of a magical world, the axis mundi of Fausto Corvo’s power. The labyrinth may be gone but the spirits of all the Mariner’s Chamber’s unknown skeletons are just waiting to make themselves known this All Hallows’ Eve!”
He felt about in his waistcoat and large coat pockets and began laying objects on the table, catching the reflected light of the magic lantern: his camera, his pocket watch and a folded-up Ouija board. With trembling hands, Munro carefully spread the board out and took an indicator from his waistcoat. He ran his index finger over the letters, numbers and words printed on the board: Yes, No, Goodbye.
“There, my dear, everything is ready,” said Munro, turning to watch the projection on the wall. “When the skeletons’ spirits come, we will capture them on film.”
Lexie’s eyes blinked open and fixed on something in the dark.
A figure moved through the woods and onto Blackhope Tower’s lawn, where he blended in with a few revellers entering the castle. He waited outside the door until a large and boisterous group arrived, brandishing their tickets, and slipped in with them. The tired-looking guard, one of Jimmy’s minions, just waved the party through and they moved upstairs as a unit, giggling and insulting each other without noticing they’d attracted a straggler.
When one of the women at the rear of the group missed a step on the spiral staircase and began falling backwards, the wiry figure caught her and shoved her forwards. She turned to say thank you and her face froze at sight of her rescuer, a ninja dressed in black from head to toe, with only a horizontal slit revealing his eyes.
She gave him another spooked look as they walked from the stairs to the Great Hall and whispered something to a companion. The ninja hesitated and pressed against the stairwell wall until they were gone. After a few moments, he sneaked to the Great Hall’s entrance and cast his eyes over the crowded room, looking for two particular faces. Satisfied that they were not at the fancy dress party, he tiptoed up to the next floor, flicking on a torch concealed in his palm.
There was a faint line of amber light showing from under the Mariner’s Chamber door, indicating someone was inside. The ninja went close and put his black-clad ear to the wood, listening intently. His body tensed at the sound of a male voice saying something in a wheedling tone on the other side. Gripping the door handle with a gloved hand, he slowly turned it, on alert for any creaks, and pulled.
After three failed attempts, he gave up on the locked door. Hot anger coursed through him, and he punched one palm with the knuckles of the other hand to calm down. Stealing the guard’s keys was too risky. There had to be another way in.
The ninja’s eyes narrowed to slits when a new idea came to him. It too brought risks and would force him to emerge from the shadows, but it might work. Like a scorpion scuttling from hiding place to hiding place, the ninja headed back to the spiral staircase and went downstairs. He picked up a discarded drinks cup from the floor and sauntered nonchalantly towards the Great Hall as if he belonged there.
Chapter 15
Sunni’s high wail echoed against the Amsterdam canal buildings. Blaise’s stomach turned upside down at the sound and there was nothing he could do to help her. His sore fingers dug into the sea snake’s skin and though his feet were wedged firmly enough for the moment, his arms were tiring. This slimy beast also stank of brine and rotting fish and Blaise’s face was mashed right into it.
“Sunni!” he called out, wishing he had eyes in the back of his head.
But her wails had become whimpers and she didn’t answer. Blaise didn’t see any way out of this one and his eyes stung with sweat and tears.
“Sunni.” He could barely get her name out. “I’m sorry I got us into this.”
A series of hiccupping yelps came from somewhere behind him. He tried to crawl somewhere, anywhere, but he was splayed out like a starfish drying on a rock. Exhausted, he laid his head down and squeezed his eyes shut, sensing a rippling movement under him, as if muscles were flexing and stretching below the black thing’s surface. The ripples came in stronger waves and his body undulated with them, pushed higher and lower.
He managed to look round but saw no sign of her. What if she was dragged under and trapped? What if she’s… drowned?
Suddenly the snake shifted. Clinging on even more tightly, Blaise stared blankly at a white thing that had floated out across the black water. It was Sunni, her legs churning up and down as she propelled herself away.
Blaise let go and rolled off the monster’s back. After thrashing through the water, he managed to reach her and grab hold. Sunni jerked at his touch, begging him to leave her alone.
“It’s me,” he breathed, holding her arm tight.
“Get away from it,” Sunni gasped, struggling against him, trying to get further out into the canal.
He glanced back and in the muddy light he saw the giant sea snake with several sets of barbed wings studded in its sides, writhing and undulating. Its thinner tail end had merged with the top of one house, while its head and neck were embedded in the foundations of the house opposite.
“Let’s get out of here,” Blaise sputtered, “in case that thing gets loose.”
“Over there.” Sunni pointed at a partly submerged doorway a few houses down from the sea snake. “Get inside that house.”
He coughed up some water. “Okay.”
They dog-paddled through the inky water and felt their way along the house’s rough bricks. Blaise got a toehold on the doorframe and grabbed the handle. He managed to yank it open and crawl inside as canal water flooded over him and into the room. Sunni struggled in after him and together they waded up into the corridor.
Sunni, whose streaked make-up and streaming hair made her look like a drowned zombie, stumbled out into the cobbled street first, panting.
“We’re all right,” she kept repeating.
“This is messed up,” Blaise said, hanging his head. “Sunni, I am really, really sorry. You almost died.” Water streamed from his shoes, trousers and Munro’s sodden shirt.
“So did you,” she gasped. “For only about the hundredth time.” She wrung her hair out and shook water droplets from her gown. “Come on. We’ve got to go!”
“Yeah.”
They moved quickly through a street that was half midnight and half sunset, with a sulphurous ochre light that made long shadows everywhere. Arcadia’s tree roots pushed up the cobbles and foliage grew from bricks. Flower-lined dirt paths disappeared into the walls and birds warbled from invisible tree branches in the sky. Like the canal, this lane curved round but petered out wherever the woods had appeared.
Blaise thought he recognised these swaying groves as they bushwhacked through. They were from one of the under-paintings below The Mariner’s Return to Arcadia, near to a sculpture garden, a tangerine-coloured lake and a palace that had been lit by torches of pink light.
He was startled from his memories by a thrashing sound nearby. A man’s dim outline staggered from tree to tree, moaning. Without a second thought Blaise advanced towards it, wishing there was more light.
“Careful,” Sunni hissed.
The figure doubled over and fell to the ground, shrouded in a dark cloak like a bat huddled inside its wings.
“Don’t go any closer,” she whispered. “Could be a trick.”
Blaise halted and called out, “Who are you?”
A deep voice rasped a string of words he could not make out.
“I can’t understand…” Blaise moved closer.
The man moaned and said more foreign words before gasping, “Your Imperial Highness…”
“Corvo’s clone.” Blaise was by his side in a flash, rolling him over.
Sunni hunched down. “Is he bleeding?”
“I don’t think so,” said Blaise. “We are your friends. What happened?”
“I do not understand. This is wrong,” the double murmured. “The shadowlands… all wrong.”
Something dropped from the double’s body and Sunni felt about for it on the ground.
“It’s round and metal with a lump in the centre,” she said to Blaise. “We saw this in Prague. A pickpocket tried to steal it.”
Blaise took it and held the object close to his eyes, tracing the deep indentations around its edge. “Yeah, I remember.” He pressed the metal disc into the double’s palm and closed his fingers around it.
“What is this thing, sir?” he asked.
“The cipher disc…” Corvo’s double breathed and let go of the disc. “For His Majesty…”
“Cipher disc?”
“To find his treasures…” The double began babbling in other tongues, his body jolting and shivering. The only word Blaise could make out sounded like ‘rabanus’, but he wasn’t sure.
“He’s losing it. I don’t think this was in the script,” said Blaise miserably, stuffing the metallic object into his own trouser pocket. “I don’t know what to do.”
Sunni grabbed his arm. “Nothing we can do.”
At first Blaise resisted, but when he heard the sounds coming from the shadowy trees beyond he leaped after her and hunkered down behind some bracken.
Two caped shadows slid from the gloom and fell upon the semi-conscious double. They shook him, talking at him in hushed tones, but their victim only groaned and fell back, limp. Cautiously, like animals sniffing the air for intruders, the pair got up and took a few unsteady steps towards the bracken. From his burly shape and short legs, Blaise guessed one was Zago and the other might be Magno.
They also teetered around, muttering and holding their heads, and with a final prod at the double’s body they lurched back the way they had come.
“Shh,” whispered Blaise. “Follow me.” They edged away, slowly at first, and then breaking into a run when they plunged back into the midnight darkness of the Amsterdam street.
“So you don’t think that was supposed to happen?” Sunni asked, breathing hard.
“No.” Blaise fingered the metal disc in his pocket. “The clone was definitely malfunctioning.”
“I think Zago and Magno were malfunctioning too. They’re part of this video diary and its magic is getting screwed up because of Munro.”
The street was studded with highlighted fragments hanging in mid-air, as if someone had torn up photos taken at sunset and glued them onto this night scene. Blaise and Sunni dodged a sandaled stone foot on a fragment of plinth, the rear haunches and tail of a lion and part of a sphinx’s face.
“That’s too creepy! I recognise that sphinx. Pieces of the sculpture garden in Arcadia are bleeding through,” Blaise said, with one eye behind them for Zago and Magno, just in case.
“Same as that giant sea snake,” said Sunni ruefully.
“This place could look totally different in five minutes if the worlds keep merging. We need to get up really high and see everything. We’ll get a better chance of spotting Soranzo and Mr B.”
“Top floor of a house?”
“No, higher. But Amsterdam is as flat as a pancake.” He paused. “Wait. If Arcadia’s sculptures are bleeding through, maybe its hills are too.”
“Maybe,” she said, nodding to the right. “Wouldn’t they be that way from the sculpture garden?”
“One way to find out.”
They hastily felt their way past the stone fragments as the sun slid down behind the rooftops.
Blaise thought of something his father said sometimes. “When I have a problem, my dad says to climb up a hill and look down on it. And it’s true. Problems seem smaller when you’re up there. And even if there’s no hill to climb, I imagine I’m up there looking down and that helps too.”
Sunni let out a breath. “Hope your dad’s right this time.”
The sky was blood red behind the sunken higgledy-piggledy roofs, but lit at the same time by the full moon above. One roof had morphed into a huge misshapen lump and was taking over several of the roofs adjoining it.
“Here,” said Blaise, putting his shoulder to a door that had a tree growing sideways from it. He pushed hard against it, meeting a springy, scratchy resistance. Managing to open it wide enough for Sunni to get through, he urged her into a dark entrance.
“It’s pitch black in there,” she protested. “Great.”
“I’ll go alone if you want.”
“No way.”
Blaise pressed through the door and into a space tangled with brambles and thorns. Past caring what this would do to Munro’s shirt, he raised his arms overhead and headed for the place he guessed a staircase might be.
Tripping onto crooked steps half-covered with pebbly soil and scrubby grass, he scrambled up, with Sunni just behind, and wound round a path that led upwards onto rough ground and vegetation. A few signs of human life popped up, buried in the shrubbery. A pewter tankard gleamed on the path and a scrap of cloth was caught on a thick vine.
The roof had been shucked away by the tremendous heap of dirt, stones and branches that rose under it. Blaise picked his way to an exposed outcrop at the top and directed Sunni, who sank down onto the rock next to him.
As he took in what lay below the multi-coloured sky, he went quiet. The panorama was stunning but disturbing too. It looked like Corvo’s recreation of Amsterdam had been a small, self-contained island in a vast ocean of blackness, a compact replica city made up of interlocking streets and canals in concentric circles – but that was before Munro had merged it with The Mariner’s Return to Arcadia. Now the sky above it was a light show of rising and setting suns, the full moon, mist patches and stars. The heavenly bodies performed all these functions over a city that had now been invaded by forests, islands and sea monsters. Somewhere, in all of that, Soranzo held Lorimer Bell prisoner. Finding them was a big enough problem, but now, as he gazed downwards, Blaise saw they had another one.
“Oh man,” he said, pointing down at lights moving in the gloom. “New arrivals!”
Chapter 16
Lexie sat perfectly still on the bench in the Mariner’s Chamber, scanning the dim room as if she were following an invisible flying bug. Her master had turned away from the Oculus and was watching the dark corners with her.
Shadows were always full of activity, but not the kind that most people were happy to abide with. They contained watchers and hunters, sounds and smells, but what Munro loved most were the hidden souls who came from the darkness because they knew he would see them. When he was little, he’d seen them hovering at the bottom of his bed or floating in the curtains at his window. They’d never scared him – they’d just made him sad. If spirits resorted to visiting a small boy, it must be very lonely where they lived. So Munro had talked to them when he should have been asleep and they sometimes seemed to answer in whispers.
When he got older he described them to his father and was slapped down for talking nonsense. There were whispers in his village that Munro had the ‘second sight’ and these were quickly smothered. But sometimes someone would give him a clue about who his spirits might be. A neighbour might mention the story of the ghostly old lady he saw digging in the garden of a deserted, tumbledown cottage, or of the long-dead farmer who still roamed the nearby fields. And then Munro would have something he could talk to the spirits about, even if they didn’t answer.
After Munro grew up, he left home and went to the city. The spirits didn’t come to him so readily any more, so he began hunting for them. By chance, he saw one through a stained-glass window and set about making special spectacles and goggles with amethyst-coloured lenses. It was no longer good enough to see the ghosts and talk to them. He needed to record them, collect them and keep them forever. That was when he bought his first camera, then a second and a third. Munro liked expensive equip
ment, antiques and fine clothes, even if he sometimes had to cheat or steal to get them – and spend a bit of time in jail to make up for it.
One day a strange-faced cat appeared on his front doormat and walked in as if she belonged there. When Munro realised that the cat saw the same spirits he did, and many more that he did not, he bought her a collar and some food and gave her a name, assuming the spirits must have sent her to help with his mission.
In a small black notebook Munro wrote the names of places where there were spirits he wanted to meet and capture on film. Over the years he had ticked off many names on the list, but one remained there, fascinating above all others. Mariner’s Chamber, Blackhope Tower, Braeside.
And here he was. The managers at Blackhope Tower gave him whatever he wished in return for bringing the Oculus to their festival. But they had no idea why he really wanted access to the Mariner’s Chamber – so he might find out the location of Corvo’s three lost paintings from its spirits. And now Sunni and Blaise were blazing a trail through the slide projections, doing that dirty work for him, just in case.
Munro glanced at the magic lantern and the projection that lit up the huge painting on the wall. There was no sign of the two teenagers there yet, so he turned away.
“Yes!” he breathed, as something brushed round his feet, like a minnow exploring one’s ankles in a tidal pool. “Come forth!”
These spirits were hesitant perhaps, lodged for so long among the chamber’s old stones, and unused to being noticed. But Munro knew they were there: the ghosts of spies and bounty hunters who had sought Corvo and his paintings in Arcadia and, over the centuries, had escaped the under-paintings only to die and appear on the labyrinth as skeletons.
“Come forth, gentlemen,” he said, because he knew all the skeletons, except the last one, had been men dressed in rotted clothing of the distant past. “You all ventured into Fausto Corvo’s painting and paid with your lives. Who were you, and what are your stories? I want to know your names and honour your memories!” He summoned them again in simple Latin and Italian and even in French.
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