by D D Everest
When he opened the door, the smell of animal dung and urine was almost overpowering. The menagerie usually smelled pungent but clean. This was something else.
The animal pens were on either side of a long passageway. Lanterns cast a golden light, but even in the gloom they could see that the place had not been properly mucked out for days. The animals were strangely quiet in their pens.
‘What on earth’s going on?’ demanded Rupert, striding down the corridor. ‘This place is filthy!’
He gestured at some overturned wooden buckets. ‘It should be feeding time now. Where’s their food? When were the creatures last fed?’ he said angrily.
Rupert was getting very worked up now. He picked up the overturned buckets and began filling them with different types of food. ‘What’s all this I hear, too, about snufflings going missing?’ he demanded. ‘I turn my back for a few weeks and the whole place goes to rack and ruin!’
‘Don’t look at me,’ said Thistle. ‘I used to come all the time and help out but Quiggley doesn’t like me hanging around. He told me to stay away.’
‘Charming,’ said Bramble. ‘Anyway, where is Quiggley?’
Just then, Rupert gave another indignant shout. ‘Never mind Quiggley, where are all the snufflings?’
At the sound of his voice, several of the small guinea-pig-like creatures appeared inside the pen and began nuzzling around his ankles.
‘They recognised your voice,’ said Bramble. ‘They must have been hiding before, so we couldn’t see them.’
‘But where are the rest of them?’ asked Rupert, incredulously. ‘There should be twice as many as this!’
He threw some food down for the snufflings and moved on to the next pen, which housed the dodo.
‘Desmond!’ cried Rupert. His call was answered by a plaintive honking sound as the large-billed short-legged bird waddled into sight.
‘He’s losing his feathers. At this rate, he’ll be extinct by the end of the week!’ said Rupert, shaking his head. He threw a couple of fish to the dodo, which caught them in its bill and swallowed them whole.
‘And there’s the dryads,’ he added, moving on to the next pen, where the tree pixies lived. ‘Oak! Ash! Elm! Are you all right?’ He threw them some nuts and berries.
The little figures caught them and hungrily gobbled them down. The dryad called Oak waved his acorn hat in appreciation.
The next pen was covered with wire mesh and had a tall gate with blacked-out glass. It contained the flesh-eating birds called stympalians, which could kill a human with one look. The sound of metal wings could be heard on the other side. Rupert approached the pen, but then thought better of it, especially if they were hungry.
The children heard a bellowing, snorting noise coming from two pens down. They recognised the sound of the Minotaur. Rupert froze in his tracks. It was only a few months ago that the bull-headed beast had got loose from its pen. Driven mad by an enchanted musical locket, the monster would have killed Rupert and the winged horse called a Pegasus. It was only Archie’s intervention that had saved them.
Rupert, though, was oblivious to the Minotaur now. He was staring at Simon the red-bellied salamander in the next pen. The great lizard looked a washed-out grey colour.
‘Oh dear, Simon,’ muttered Rupert, shaking his head. ‘Whatever is the matter with you? Been eating too many cufflinks?’ he asked, referring to the time that the salamander had swallowed his grandfather’s lucky cufflinks.
‘He hasn’t changed colour since he escaped from his pen,’ said Thistle, casting a worried look at Simon. ‘What do you think’s wrong with him?’
Rupert put down one of the buckets he was carrying and opened the door to the pen.
‘Is that a good idea?’ asked Bramble. ‘He is a dragon after all!’
‘If he hasn’t changed colour in a while he won’t be able to flame,’ said Rupert. ‘Besides, he knows me.’
He held out his hand and the salamander’s long tongue licked it. ‘All right, old boy,’ Rupert said. He looked into the lizard’s eyes, and put his nose down near its mouth to smell its breath.
‘Graves said that someone gave him a cloaking potion to make him invisible,’ said Thistle.
‘Well, he’s definitely anaemic,’ said Rupert, after a moment’s thought. ‘His blood is too thin. He needs building up. I’ll make him a tonic with some phosphor in it – that’s what dragons need to keep their blood healthy.’
He patted the salamander on its head and stepped out of the pen, closing the gate behind him.
‘I almost don’t dare look at the Pegasus,’ he said. He walked over to the biggest pen, which housed the winged horse. He whistled and there was a movement in one corner of the pen. The Pegasus had been kneeling on the ground with its wings strapped to its back. At the sound of his voice, it stood up and trotted unsteadily towards him. The once-beautiful creature looked thin and emaciated.
‘I’ve never seen the creatures look so neglected,’ said Rupert, angrily. ‘I’ll be having a word about this.’
As soon as he’d fed and watered all the animals, he stomped off to Motley Brown’s office in the Natural Magic Department with the others trailing after him. When they got there the door was closed, but Rupert barged into the office.
‘Hello, Rupert. What a pleasant surprise,’ said Brown, smiling. ‘How nice to see you. How is Orpheus treating you at the Royal Society?’
‘Have you seen the state of the menagerie?’ demanded Rupert.
Brown blinked at him. ‘Well, erm, not recently,’ he said. ‘I’ve been rather busy with one or two other aspects of Natural Magic. How is young Quiggley getting on?’
‘He’s a disaster!’ said Rupert, hotly. ‘The place is filthy and the creatures aren’t being properly looked after. The snuffling population has been decimated, and Simon the red-bellied salamander is so anaemic he probably needs a blood transfusion!’
‘Oh dear, that’s not very good. Not very good at all,’ muttered Brown. ‘I will talk to Peter. He’s obviously not coping very well. Yours are big shoes to fill, Rupert. But you have my assurance that I will put it right.’ He paused. ‘Thank you for drawing this to my attention.’
*
As the five friends made their way back to Quill’s, Rupert’s mood had not improved.
‘I can’t believe he gave Quiggley the job instead of you,’ he said to Thistle. ‘It’s madness.’
Thistle shrugged. ‘I wasn’t best pleased either. But at least Brown knows what a lazy little weasel Quiggley is now, so he’ll make sure the animals are properly cared for.’
‘Maybe,’ said Rupert, doubtfully. ‘The trouble is that Brown has got his hands full with the rest of the Natural Magic Department. He hasn’t got time to go running around after Quiggley in the menagerie. And by the look of the place, Quiggley doesn’t give two hoots about the animals.’
Rupert shook his head, sadly. ‘I’m down in London most of the time now so I can’t keep an eye on things.’
‘Well if you give me your old key, I’ll come in from time to time just to make sure Quiggley is looking after them properly.’
‘Would you?’ said Rupert.
‘It’d be my pleasure,’ said Thistle, grinning.
Rupert dropped the key into Thistle’s hand. ‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘I’ll feel a lot better knowing there’s someone looking out for them. Oh, and give Quiggley a kick for me when you see him. And make it a big one!’
‘That would be a pleasure, too,’ said Thistle.
10
Dark Dreams
That night, Archie retrieved the shoebox he kept under his bed and placed it on his pillow. Seeing Rupert again had left him feeling wistful. Removing the lid he took out a bundle of letters and postcards from his gran, Gardenia Greene. The top one had a picture of a mountain and a postmark from Kathmandu. That had been the first place she had visited after leaving her cottage in West Wittering. Since then she had sent Archie and his cousins regular updates on her travels in Ind
ia, and most recently China.
Beneath the letters and postcards was an assortment of his father’s things. There was a pen, some faded photographs, a pair of gloves and some books. One of the photographs showed a boy and a girl standing outside Quill’s. The girl was wearing purple shoes and was clearly recognisable as a young Loretta. She looked to be about ten. The boy, Archie’s father Alex Greene, was a couple of years older, about twelve.
Another photograph was of Alex in his late teens, holding hands with a pretty girl of about the same age. They were both smiling broadly. Archie recognised his mother, Amelia Grey as she had been then. It was on his mother’s side that Archie was related to Fabian Grey.
He picked through the books until he found an old scrapbook with some newspaper cuttings that Loretta had kept. He idly flicked through, reading the headlines.
There were several local news stories about Quill’s. One article said there had been a substantial refurbishment and the café was reopening to the public. Archie smiled when he saw his father and Loretta at the front of the queue for hot chocolate.
Another headline caught his eye:
CROCKERY VANDAL CHARGED
WITH SMASH AND GRAB
It was the story about Woodbine being taken to court for breaking antique china at an exhibition in Oxford. It was the incident Peter Quiggley had referred to when Archie’s uncle had opened a popper releasing a rhinoceros spell, which had led to Woodbine being asked to leave the museum.
Woodbine Foxe, a resident of Houndstooth Road, Oxford, was fined £500 and bound over to keep the peace. Foxe apologised for the breakages and promised to be more careful in future. He added that stories about a rhinoceros being loose in Oxford were wildly exaggerated. A neighbour told reporters that the Foxes were a strange family who mostly kept to themselves and that the more respectable residents of Houndstooth Road preferred it that way.
The story included a picture of a contrite-looking Woodbine leaving the courthouse wearing a tie and a badly fitting suit. A woman was covering her face in embarrassment. Archie recognised Loretta.
The final headline read:
FIRE AT OXFORD COFFEE HOUSE
It was a report of the fire started by Arthur Ripley in the museum thirteen years earlier when he’d tried to open the Terrible Tomes. Archie read the first couple of paragraphs.
The fire started in the early hours of Saturday morning. Aurelius Rusp, an Oxford resident who was passing at the time, raised the alarm. Local historian and book antiquarian Arthur Ripley is missing and believed to have died in the inferno.
But Archie knew that Ripley had not died in the fire. He had hidden at Ripley Hall, the Ripleys’ family house in Cornwall, planning the Greader plot to release Barzak from The Book of Souls. After that Ripley had been locked up in the asylum for the magically ill but he had still managed to write to Katerina Krone to convince her that The Grim Grimoire was her inheritance. Ripley had disappeared when the Alchemist’s Curse plot failed. Archie wondered where he was now, but the next paragraph drove the thought from his mind.
The whereabouts of Ripley’s assistant Alexander Greene remains unknown. Greene and his wife disappeared two weeks ago and have not been seen since.
So his parents had gone missing about the same time as the fire. Archie hadn’t made this connection before. The mystery book had said that if they were trapped inside a book it would have to be a drawing book, but which one? The mystery book had said it would try to find out for him. He wondered if it had made any progress.
He was putting the things back in the shoebox when he caught sight of his father’s reference book, Magical Greats: The Good, The Bad and the Ugly. It seemed a very long time ago now that he had first looked at it. He was just discovering magic then. So much had happened since. Archie smiled to himself and opened the book.
A familiar title caught his eye.
The Book of Yore: An ancient codex that contains the history of magic, including many secrets about the past. The Book of Yore is sometimes included with the Books of Destiny, but strictly speaking it has no power to predict the future. Rather, the secrets it reveals about the past may alter the fate of those who discover them. The Book of Yore may be consulted by asking it a direct question, although what it reveals may not seem immediately relevant. The book never lies but it has a dark side, which makes it dangerous.
‘You can say that again,’ Archie muttered under his breath, remembering how it had trapped him in the burning Library of Alexandria. Hawke had rescued him with the book hook, a magical staff, but he’d had a very narrow escape. He didn’t trust The Book of Yore. Could it have trapped his family, too?
Archie knew that his father had consulted another drawing book, The Book of Prophecy. That was how he had discovered that Archie had a forked fate. It meant that, like Fabian Grey before him, Archie’s destiny and the future of magic depended on which path he chose to follow at critical moments in his life.
The Book of Prophecy had helped Archie before, but it, too, had a dangerous side. It had nearly driven Fabian Grey mad. Perhaps it had trapped his parents and his sister?
He looked up another entry.
The Pale Writers: servants of the Dark Flame of Pandemonium. The Pale Writers were once great magic writers who turned to writing dark magic. By writing The Book of Night they summoned the Dark Flame from the underworld of Pandemonium. They thought they could control it but its power was too great and they became its servants instead, each trapped within the book by his own weakness: the first by doubt, the second by dread and the third by despair.
Archie gave a start. A terrifying notion had just occurred to him. What if his family were trapped inside The Book of Night? He felt his blood run cold as he read the next paragraph.
Cursed for all eternity, the Pale Writers seek The Opus Magus – the primary spell of magic that will give the Dark Flame dominion over the Flame of Pharos. Legend has it that when The Book of Night is opened and the Pale Writers are released, the final battle between the two flames will begin.
‘Cursed for all eternity!’ That was a very unsettling thought to go to sleep on.
*
Archie lay awake for a long time. Through a gap in the curtains he could see there was a new moon in the sky that gave off very little light. When he finally fell asleep he dreamed about the raven again, but this time he was the raven.
In his dream, it was night-time and he was flying over the rooftops of Oxford. He could hear the wind and the beating of his wings as he soared over the ancient college buildings. There was barely any light from the moon, but his keen raven eyes could see the neatly tended lawns in the courtyards and the dark shape of the spires that punctuated the skyline. Arrow-straight he flew until he reached a dark, brooding house set back from the street. A single light flickered in a downstairs room with a large leaded-light window. He made straight for it, landing on the windowsill, where he could observe.
The windowpane was dirty but through the grime he could see a group of cloaked figures. Standing in the centre of the circle was another figure in black, holding a thick book with a dark cover, who began to chant.
‘Darkest of the two
We pledge ourselves to you
By the power of the Flame
We blacken magic’s name!’
Uttering the final words of the spell, the hooded figure opened the book.
A flame smouldered inside the pages. But this was no ordinary flame: it burned with a black fire. Three white phantoms rose like smoke from the book’s pages. Their bodies were semi-transparent, their features distorted, and their eyes blazed with a hungry dark fire. They turned towards the window and Archie felt a sudden terror grip him like an icy hand on his heart.
The cloaked figures watching sank to their knees and held out the palms of their left hands. The one holding the book passed among them. The first of the figures thrust his hand into the book’s dark flame and Archie heard him cry out in pain. As he did, a symbol appeared on his palm. With his kee
n raven eyes, even from outside, Archie could see that it was not like any firemark he had ever seen before. It looked like a black dragon.
He felt goosebumps at the sight of it. The ritual was repeated as each of the kneeling figures put a hand in the flame.
‘The Dark Flame has chosen you, and you have taken the oath,’ said the one who had opened the book and was clearly their leader. ‘More will rally to our cause once it is known that the book is open. Until then, use the concealing potion to hide the firemark.’
Archie woke up covered in sweat and gasping for air. For a while he lay awake, his heart still racing. He tried to tell himself that it was just a bad dream. But he knew that it was more than that. The Book of Night had been opened and the Pale Writers released. They had sensed him watching. His new firemark was glowing an angry red. The tears falling from the eye had turned black.
*
Fifty miles away, Horace Catchpole examined the package tied with leather twine on his desk. He had retrieved it from the Folly & Catchpole cellars, the place known as the dungeon. Now he sat looking at it, trying to make up his mind what he should do.
He reread the entry in the ledger.
Property of Fabian Grey.
Do NOT remove.
Owner will collect.
Horace had been working with the magical realm long enough to know who Fabian Grey was. He had a feeling that whatever was inside the package was important.
This put him in a difficult position. Should he obey Folly & Catchpole’s first principle and mind his own business? Or break the centuries-old tradition and tell someone about the package – and if so, who?
The instruction was very clear: the owner would collect. Since the owner had left that instruction over three hundred and fifty years ago, in the normal run of things he should be long dead and therefore unable to collect. But a number of Folly & Catchpole’s best clients were deceased. And Horace knew from experience that ghosts could get very cross if their instructions were ignored.