The City of Guardian Stones

by Jacob Sager Weinstein

  Dasra and Little Ben gasped. They must have seen the flames, even if they couldn’t see the ghosts.

  The cloud swooped to the other side, but the circle there, too, erupted, and the cloud bounced off again.

  The moaning grew louder. Back and forth the cloud flew, faster and faster. The circles of flame stretched out further and further, becoming cylinders, until finally they met in the middle of the room, surrounding the cloud. There was an eruption of light and noise –

  – and the cylinder of flame split again, each half arcing down until it met the surface of the crushed stone mass. For a moment, the stones shook with energy, and the moaning was deafening, and then –

  – silence. The cloud was gone. The flames were gone.

  Something shiny and metal hung in the air, in the dead centre of the room. It floated for a moment, and then dropped downwards at an angle, flying straight into my hand.

  It was a small chisel. It looked like one of the tools the ghosts had wielded, but it was solid and real, as if the flames had forged it into something physical.

  I slipped it into my pocket. The ghosts were gone, and their work was destroyed – but I was not going to forget them.

  CHAPTER 42

  “What just happened?” Little Ben asked. “Where did that chisel come from?”

  “I don’t understand why you couldn’t see them,” I said. “The room was full of —”

  “Shh!” Dasra said.

  When the tide of stone had settled, it had revealed two doorways on either side of the room. There were footsteps coming from the one on the right.

  I crawled back under the slab, with Little Ben and Dasra close behind.

  We had just made it under the slab when it floated up above our heads. So did all the smashed rubble.

  Minnie was here.

  As long as we were under the veil of crushed stone, we were blocked from her view. We could crawl under it without her seeing us. But which way should we go? The rational choice was the empty left-hand corridor. She’d never know we were there, and we could wait until she headed out and then follow her, and we could get some sort of proof that she was guilty and we were innocent. After staying out of her sight all this time, there was absolutely no reason to go right.

  But I wanted to avenge the ghosts of all those artists and craftspeople. I wanted to make her pay for her crimes against creativity.

  I should go left, I thought.

  I went right.

  When you’ve got a rough, damp brick floor beneath you, and a ceiling of crushed stone hovering above you, it’s not pleasant to crawl quickly, but I was fuelled by anger. I zoomed, ignoring the scraping I was giving my knees and the repeated bumps I was giving my head.

  “Wrong way,” Little Ben whispered. I ignored him, too.

  Now that I was nearly at the door, I could see Minnie’s legs beneath the hovering stone. I slammed my shoulder into them, and she went toppling backwards.

  Like I said, I was too clogged up with anger and grief to think clearly. So not only did I ignore a bunch of reasons I shouldn’t knock Minnie over, I didn’t even think of the biggest one. The rocks were levitating because she had her finger pointed at them, which meant that when she flew backwards, her finger made a wild arc, and the previously orderly bunch of floating rocks flew up in the air.

  And as she fell completely backwards, her finger pointed completely away from the rocks, breaking the magical connection and letting them plummet back to the floor …

  … where Dasra and Little Ben were still crawling.

  They jumped to their feet and sprinted for the doorway, making it out as several tons of crushed London architecture smashed behind them –

  – and several pounds of it fell on my head.

  The hallway spun and filled up with clouds. I closed my eyes, leaned against the white brick wall, and took a deep breath. When I opened my eyes again, the room wasn’t spinning and the stars were gone.

  But the clouds were still there. No, not clouds: masses of stone, pouring out of the bascule chamber as Minnie hurried them along with urgent gestures.

  Oh, and they were coming straight at me.

  I ducked.

  Her left hand busy levitating stuff, Minnie pointed her right hand at the floor, and jets erupted from her fingers. She floated up, the river of mineral debris parting around her. Riding it like a magic carpet, she shot away.

  We chased her into a round brick chamber, ten storeys high, with a metal staircase spiralling along the wall. After all the running I had done since I arrived in London, I was in pretty good shape, and even using magic, dragging along a couple of tons of stone seemed to slow Minnie down. Although she flew straight up through the centre of the room and we had to run up the staircase, getting dizzier and more breathless as we went, we weren’t too far behind her when we got to the top.

  Which meant we weren’t too far behind her as we chased her into what must have been the control room for the bridge – a narrow chamber filled with huge levers and polished brass dials. The dawn sun streamed through the windows, and I wondered briefly how long it had been since I got out of bed the previous morning, but I didn’t think about it for long. I had a more urgent concern:

  Minnie was riding a smashed stone lift down to the river. As the rubble reached the water, it reassembled itself into a barge fit for Cleopatra.

  CHAPTER 43

  I gave a moment’s thought to jumping after her, but I knew immediately that would be madness. If I landed on the boat, I’d break my spine. And if I landed in the water – well, I had seen somebody fall into the Thames once, and she had very nearly drowned. I wasn’t going to take that risk.

  So as the boat took off upstream, my only option was to run along the bank of the river after it. I’d never keep up with it, but I had to try. I turned around and was nearly run over by a bus.

  Wait – not a bus. A giant pig in a bus costume, with a replacement carpetbag in his mouth.

  “Oaroboarus!”

  “Climb aboard,” Mom said. She was sitting on Oaroboarus’s back.

  “Mom? How’d you find me?”

  Hungerford bounded up. “I, I, I’m delighted to take the credit for this happy reunion. The city’s Coade stone guardians told me where to find this, this stunning specimen of the porcine breed, and they also tracked the van in, in, in which you so bravely travelled.”

  Little Ben climbed up onto Oaroboarus. Oaroboarus looked back and forth between me and Dasra.

  A day ago, I would have gladly left Dasra behind. But with the whole saving-each-other’s-life thing, I was starting to warm up to him a little.

  Not enough to let him go unsupervised, though. “You ride Oaroboarus with my mom and Little Ben,” I told him. “I’ll take Hungerford.”

  “With pleasure, I, I, I shall—”

  I wouldn’t have thought a statue could blush, but Hungerford turned the colour of red marble. “That’s, that’s, that’s… Well, I suppose that’s probably merited.” He held his mouth up to Oaroboarus’s nose and exhaled.

  “Oaroboarus! She’s getting away!” I said.

  I knew that arguing with him was only going to waste more time. Fortunately, Hungerford seemed willing to do whatever Oaroboarus asked. The lion was cowed by the pig. He walked forwards a few steps in his usual stumbling, overeager gait, but he managed to walk straight.

  Oaroboarus nodded, although he still looked sceptical.

  Hungerford knelt. I grabbed his mane and pulled myself up as Dasra climbed on Oaroboarus.

  If Oaroboarus had asked me what our next move should be, I wouldn’t have said, “Jump over the side of the bridge”, but he didn’t ask. He just jumped. Little Ben whooped with excitement as they vanished over the side, and a moment later, Hungerford followed. We plummeted a good twenty feet down onto a walkway that ran along the river, Hungerford’s feet smashing the pavement beneath him into fragments.

  In the time it had taken to get us moving, Minnie had progressed further along the r
iver, but she hadn’t got as far as I would have expected. She was gliding along at a leisurely pace, waving at the early-morning joggers along the path.

  We were attracting plenty of attention ourselves. Hungerford hadn’t bothered with a disguise, and Oaroboarus was getting a lot more staring and pointing than he had before. Maybe it was harder for people to convince themselves that he was a real bus when he was accompanied by a massive stone lion and a tattooed girl on a rubble barge.

  “How come you don’t have to wear a disguise like Oaroboarus?” I asked Hungerford.

  “We Coade stones are part of the, the very architectural fabric of the city, and as such, the authorities trust us to, to pass entirely unnoticed,” he roared as he smashed into a coffee stand and sent it crashing into the river, while the barista ran screaming away.

  Up ahead, Minnie’s barge came to rest in front of London Bridge. Oaroboarus locked his legs and glided to a perfectly smooth stop. Hungerford tried to imitate him, toppled over, and sent me flying.

  While the others climbed down from Oaroboarus, I scrambled to my feet. Meanwhile, on the river, Minnie lifted her hands, and her barge disassembled itself, long streams of rubble arcing into the river, until only half of it was left above the surface.

  “Ooh, I know what she’s doing,” Little Ben said. “That’s how they made bridges in olden times. They started by dumping a bunch of stone debris into the river to make a base.”

  “She’s making a bridge?”

  “Not just any bridge. She’s laying the foundations exactly where Old London Bridge was.”

  Even if I’d known what to say to that, Little Ben wouldn’t have been able to hear me, thanks to the sound of the helicopter that rose up from behind a nearby building. On London Bridge (the one that was already there, that is), Brigadier Beale leapt to his feet from a camouflaged hunting blind, and a bunch of Corkers popped up, slingshot guns in hand.

  If I had trusted Beale, I would have been glad of the reinforcements. As it was, I mostly just didn’t want him to notice me. I sank out of sight behind the low wall that stood between the path and the river. Little Ben did, too, and even Mom took the hint and crouched down.

  Hungerford, meanwhile, stood there in full view, talking in his usual roar. “Who is, is, is that visibly stout-hearted military man? Do you suppose he, he —”

  Oaroboarus shoved Hungerford with his snout. “Careful there, old friend, you, you might not have realized —” Another shove. “Oops! We, we seem to be moving at cross-purposes —”

  Oaroboarus pushed Hungerford harder, bulldozing him towards a path that led away from the river, between two buildings. As the two of them vanished, I could hear Hungerford’s voice growing fainter. “Why are we, we quitting the field of battle? I would love a, a, a private conference, but this is neither the time nor —”

  Fortunately, two more helicopters swung into view, and the noise of their rotors drowned out Hungerford’s protests.

  Beale’s intense eyes stayed focused on Minnie, who had been hovering in place above the river, as if waiting for him to make the next move.

  He made it.

  He lifted a walkie-talkie and barked a single word into it. I couldn’t hear it over the helicopters, but based on the fact that every Corker raised his weapon, I was pretty sure that the word was “Ready”.

  Seemingly unfazed, Minnie raised both hands high in the air. Was she surrendering? But as her tattoos swirled more urgently than ever before, the remains of her barge shot upwards, splitting into multiple columns.

  Beale barked another word. The Corkers aimed their slingshot guns. Similar weapons on the helicopters whirred to life, ready to bombard Minnie with —

  Oh, no, I thought. Suddenly, I knew why Minnie’s progress up the river had been so slow and so dramatic. She wanted to be seen. She wanted Beale to show up. She wanted him to fire at her.

  I leapt to my feet. “Stop!” I called. “Whatever you do, don’t —”

  Beale didn’t even notice me. He yelled another command, and the air exploded with projectiles. Pebbles from the machine guns smashed into Minnie’s debris, but they simply bounced off and froze into high arches joining the columns. It was like watching a super-fast, super-heavy connect-the-dots, and within seconds, the entire picture took shape: nineteen stone arches, spanning the river from bank to bank. A new bridge, hovering in the air above the Thames.

  The firing stopped. Whether it was because Beale finally realized he was playing into Minnie’s hands or just because they ran out of ammo, I didn’t know.

  Hungerford chose that moment to burst back from the path, dragging Oaroboarus, who had the lion’s stone tail clenched in his mouth in a futile effort to pull him away. “Don’t shoo me away at this, this, this critical juncture! That pig has no, no, no sense of appropriate timing!” Hungerford roared, his voice booming out across the newly silent river.

  That got Brigadier Beale’s attention. His face, already tight with anger, grew almost purple. “GET THEM!” he yelled.

  A dozen Corkers bounded towards us.

  CHAPTER 44

  With a dramatic flourish, Minnie let her creation drop.

  As the arches plunged into the Thames, the newly made bridge somehow stayed perfectly intact. The buildings already on the riverbank were not so lucky. Across the river from us, the bridge crashed into a building near an old church, splitting it in half. And the near end of the bridge crashed into the base of a modern office tower above our heads. We dove out of the way as shards of glass and chunks of concrete smashed against the ground where we had been standing.

  When I finished screaming and leaping, I was actually kind of relieved, because the new bridge now stood between us and the Corkers.

  My relief didn’t last long. With a sproing, a bouncing Corker came flying up from the other side. But as soon as he was above Minnie’s new bridge, the sproing was replaced by a bzzt, and he crashed into some invisible magical shield, like a bug flying into an electrified fence.

  That bought us some time, but I was sure they’d figure out a way over the bridge soon.

  “Oaroboarus!” I said. He knelt down, and Mom, Little Ben, and I climbed up.

  “You can go with Hungerford,” I told Dasra. This was totally because he was now in as much trouble with Brigadier Beale as we were, and therefore I knew he’d stick with us, and not at all because, if Hungerford happened to knock him off, Dasra might benefit from a little undignified falling to the ground. (OK, maybe it was a little because of the falling-to-the-ground thing.)

  We took off down the side passage. As we did, I heard a series of splashes from behind us. I glanced over my shoulder to see Corkers popping out of the river and onto the shore. Even if they couldn’t go over the bridge, it seemed, they could go under it.

  As we ran out of the passage, we nearly crashed into a tall man who was running into it. With astonishing agility, he somersaulted out of the way, drew a sword from a back scabbard in mid-air, and landed, brandishing it dramatically.

  “I bid you welcome to – oh, bother.” Before he could finish his proclamation, the scabbard tumbled off his back and collapsed at his feet, a mass of bright yarn.

  And just like that, as he bent down to collect it, I knew who he was. “You’re Roger Lock’s husband,” I said.

  “How’d you —”

  “No time. My name’s Hyacinth. He said you’d help us. We’ve got to hide.”

  His expression switched to intense focus. “Right. Follow me.” He spun on his heels, led us down a nearby staircase, and pushed open a battered door. “Through here.” The humans ran in. Although Oaroboarus was wider than Hungerford, the giant pig made it inside without damaging the door, while Hungerford cracked the wood on the doorway as he squeezed through.

  The man followed us in and shut the door behind him. “You’ll be safe here,” he said. “But how did you know who I was?”

  “Roger had a scabbard exactly like yours.”

  I don’t know if opposites always attr
act, but it was certainly true in this case. Unlike Roger Lock, this man had the most expressive face I had ever seen. It showed equal parts annoyance and affection at the mention of the scabbard. But when he spoke, it was in a clipped, neutral tone, as though his voice didn’t know that his face was giving everything away.

  “Scabbard was gift of Roger’s mum. Matching set. Not entirely practical.” He extended his hand. “Chapel’s the name. Roger told me about you. As much as he could. His oath and all. Knew you’d turn up at headquarters sooner or later.”

  We looked around at the dingy room, decorated with a few ancient tapestries that were mostly hidden behind a stack of stained cardboard boxes. An old TV sat in a back corner, muted but tuned to a news report. The overall effect was not particularly impressive. “Headquarters?”

  “Oh, yes. Never finished my greeting.” Chapel straightened, and his face glowed with pride. He spoke what was, for him, a remarkably long speech. “I bid you welcome to the ancient headquarters of the Brethren of the Bridge, protectors of London’s bridges.” Then the pride sank away and he looked embarrassed. “HQ used to be the whole city block,” he said neutrally. “Only basement now.”

  “Lady Roslyn once told me that when the secret rivers reach the Thames, they all get mixed together, and their powers are diluted,” I said.

  “True. But not the whole story.”

  “That seems to be kind of a theme with Lady Roslyn,” I said.

  “Millennia ago, Peter de Colechurch figured it out. A priest. Founded the Brethren. Built a bridge with tons of arches – enough to separate out the power of each river.”

  “So if Little Ben is right and Minnie has rebuilt Old London Bridge … will it give her control of all the rivers that flow into it?”

  “Possibly,” Chapel said. He pointed to the stained cardboard boxes. “Answer might be in there. All the Brethren’s records.”

  “Oooh, files!” Little Ben said. “Can I look through them?”