by Glenn Dakin
‘What about that last one? I think it was wounded, but it got away.’
Magnus frowned. ‘Who knows? But the fact is, we are discovered. Chloe’s idea that we stay put is no longer an option.’
‘Good,’ grinned Sam. ‘Anyway, with Theo’s powers we may get out of this yet!’
Theo wasn’t so sure.
Magnus beckoned the others over to the Vigil Station.
‘Get out of this?’ he echoed. ‘I think we may do a little more than that. The screens are all telling the same story. The network has been sealed for a special purpose. Water levels inside are rising – probably through a sluice connected to the Thames. In the main network, everyone is making their way to the surface!’
Magnus looked perplexed for a moment as a dark shape, resembling a big cat, loped across one of the screens. He fiddled with the focus for a moment, then ignored it.
‘That means – apart from rather a lot of stray creatures that seem to be trapped down here – the only ones left behind in the network will be us … and a few smoglodyte guards.’ There was a twinkle in his eye. Was it happiness, inspiration or complete madness? Theo could not tell.
‘And as Theo has just demonstrated, we have no need to fear them any more.’ He grabbed the boys around the shoulders, supporting his skeletal frame between them.
‘I think we can get through to Dr Saint now,’ he said. ‘I believe we may yet stop him with just an old man and two boys. I actually think, my dear comrades, that after all these years, the Society of Unrelenting Vigilance is going to win!’
Chapter Twenty-three
Deep Waters
‘It was kind of you to bring me along, sir,’ said Mr Nicely. He spoke as quietly as he could because he didn’t like it when the smoglodytes’ ears pricked up and they looked at him. ‘But I rather feel a squad of muscle-bound Foundlings would have been more help.’
They were standing on the great garghoul monument at the bottom of the network. Dr Saint, in a stained and crumpled charcoal-grey suit, watched the smoglodytes as they busied themselves digging.
‘I don’t need mindless brawn, Mr Nicely,’ Dr Saint said. ‘That’s what I released this tribe of devils for.’ He flashed his white teeth, but it seemed to the weary butler that it wasn’t the reassuring smile of old.
‘I need someone who will walk beside me, behold my every action, smile at my every deed, and still report back to the world that I am a wonderful human being.’
Mr Nicely nodded, but in a spirit of dejection. It was difficult for him to get used to this new version of his employer. For a start, Dr Saint’s face had become inclined to drip; at the moment, the corner of his mouth was melting away, revealing rather more of tooth and gum than was usually acceptable in society.
‘I need someone by me who will do exactly as I say, without question, because he is terrified of me,’ said Dr Saint.
Mr Nicely frowned, then swallowed hard. ‘All, err … extreme kindness is rather awe-inspiring, sir,’ he said. ‘You could call it an element of fear,’ he conceded.
‘Oh, drop it, man!’ Dr Saint sneered. ‘We don’t have to act any more – not in front of these vermin!’
Mr Nicely looked away. All around them the industrious imps were scurrying, bending and scraping. The butler did his best to ignore what they were actually doing.
Dr Saint strode down among the stone markers. He climbed over a pile of freshly dug ashes and stared down into the ground at his feet. There, sprawled out in a shallow pit, a metre taller than the biggest man, was the enormous body of an urughoul, the fearsome warrior class of garghoul.
Its eyes stared up blankly, yet there was a curious intensity about that sightless gaze, as if it could hold you and keep you spellbound for eternity. Its horns were glittering and sharp, like black diamond. Its skin was shining and crystalline, as if chipped out of obsidian. The magnificent, terrible creature was but one of hundreds, each being unearthed from its own separate burial mound.
‘He is impressive, is he not, my lord?’ wheedled a small voice next to the doctor. It was Gank, the smoglodytes’ tribal leader.
‘Oh, yes,’ sighed Dr Saint with studied nonchalance. ‘The urughoul could rip a human being apart as if they were made of wet paper.’
‘And you – oh great Philanthropist – will wisely bring them back to life?’ the little smog asked in a querulous tone.
‘That is the noble purpose of the Liberation,’ Dr Saint replied coldly. ‘To release the poor, forgotten ones who were left down here, and give them Good Work to do.’
‘Yes,’ said Gank dejectedly. ‘They eat us,’ he added, looking up at Dr Saint with a pitiful smile.
‘I know,’ replied the doctor. He looked around to check he was not observed, then laid a hand gently on the smoglodyte’s shoulder. He watched with satisfaction as Gank popped out of existence.
‘Too much going on in the mind of that one,’ he remarked to nobody in particular. Satisfied with all he had seen, he headed back to the stairway, Mr Nicely struggling to keep up in his galoshes.
‘Careful, Sam!’ warned Magnus. ‘One false move and we’re all done for!’
‘Don’t be such an old worryguts,’ said Sam. ‘Theo’s plans aren’t allowed to go wrong!’
Getting out of the bunker had been trickier than expected. Water had risen up over the main entrance, so they had been forced to use an overhead hatchway. A narrow crawlspace had brought them back to the required tunnel, but this was flooded too – with hot, foul, smoking water.
It had been Theo’s idea to prise a gigantic fungus globe apart and use the glass dome as a boat. Now that Sam had clambered aboard, the three of them were speeding down the flooded passageway with ease, instead of having to wade and swim through poisonous waters.
‘It’s this Ascendancy thing,’ Sam chuntered on. ‘Now that Theo’s got his powers he’s a new man – a real hero! I bet there’s a magic ring and stuff that goes with that costume of yours!’
Theo groaned. ‘I’m still the same me,’ he protested. ‘Just because Magnus dug out an old moth-eaten costume –’
‘Which you are not wearing,’ Magnus observed.
Theo wiggled his fingers to show he had donned the vintage-edition Candle Man gloves. They were more supple than the cumbersome gauntlets Dr Saint had made him wear. Those old gloves only reminded him of his miserable years of confinement anyway.
‘I’ve borrowed Lord Wickland’s gloves, but I haven’t earned the right to be Candle Man yet. I’m no hero,’ Theo mumbled.
‘It takes courage to admit that,’ said Magnus, huddled deep in the dome.
‘Heroic courage,’ added Sam warmly.
Theo sighed. All these years the Society of Unrelenting Vigilance had wanted a new Candle Man to help them fight their foes. Now they were determined to have one – apparently whether Theo liked it or not.
‘What’s more, I am beginning to think Theo’s theory is correct,’ Magnus murmured. His long frame was squeezed awkwardly in the boat, and his bony left elbow was jutting into Sam’s soft stomach. Theo was in the stern, perched on Magnus’s bulging backpack. ‘The Society has always assumed that the network is merely a subterranean highway used by secret groups to avoid the police and the attention of the unsuspecting populace above. Hurrgh!’
‘Hit him!’ Sam shouted, and Theo did his best to whack Magnus in the small of his back and get his antique inner workings back in line again.
‘Honestly,’ Sam groaned. ‘How can anyone so short of breath be so long-winded?’
Magnus gasped and spluttered a bit, then carried on. ‘But this “machine” theory of yours, Master Wickland, is rather compelling!’
The dome-boat struck some floating debris and became lodged against an archway. ‘Now we’re up the creek!’ Sam said. Theo, who was freer to move than the others, dragged a wooden post from the water, nearly tipping everyone out in the process. With all his strength he thrust the post against the wall and sent the inverted dome spinning elegantly back
into the main current.
‘Candle Man to the rescue,’ cheered Sam.
‘Well, I suppose it’s just like steering a coracle,’ Theo replied, pleased with himself. ‘Page two hundred and six, Inland Waterway Navigation: a Visual Record. I’ve often wanted to try riding in one.’
‘We are making excellent progress,’ Magnus said, peering ahead.
‘Towards what?’ Theo asked. In the dank, steaming gloom he could hardly see a thing.
‘The centre of things,’ Magnus replied. ‘Yes, it all adds up!’ There was a spark in those sunken old eyes. ‘The original enemy of our Society, the Philanthropist, was an alchemist. It is well known that he performed some of his experiments down here. But it never occurred to me – or Mr Norrowmore – that the entire network could be one single device.’
Magnus dipped his fingers in the filmy waters and pulled them out sharply.
‘Almost boiling!’ he remarked. ‘These canals – obviously mixed with forbidden oils – complete the picture perfectly. Alchemists perform their dark miracles by combining earth, air, fire and water in secret combinations.’
Theo had to fend the dome away from the wall again as they were pushed to the side by more and more floating debris.
‘The water,’ Magnus theorised, ‘well, we’re sailing on that now. The air, of course, we are breathing. The earth – minerals – I believe are in the chemicals that Theo and Chloe saw the Society pouring into the canals last night.’
‘And the fire?’ Theo asked. But he had a horrible feeling he knew the answer already.
That was when they crashed. The coracle smashed into a sluice gate and hurled the three of them into the midst of a smoglodyte guard post.
My deeds will go down in smoglodyte history, Skun reflected as he crawled upside down along the tunnel roof, towards the Inner Sentry Station. This guarded the way up to the Well Chamber – where Dr Saint was.
Given the almost impossible task of tracking one lost boy in a London that had swollen to dizzying size, he had found Theo twice. This time, the boy was right here, in the network. All he had to do was explain his mission to the guards, then report directly to Dr Saint. At last his task would be over, his fame assured.
‘I’m back,’ he cried out, dropping lightly to the floor. He grimaced as the landing hurt his shrivelled leg. ‘Skun – the hero!’ He winced bravely.
The other smogs gathered round him eagerly. ‘What’s the news, Skun? What have you done?’
Skun took a deep breath – but suddenly all hell broke loose.
‘Attack! We’re under attack!’ screeched a voice through the mists. From over by the sluice gate, the smoglodyte guards had started screaming. There was a series of explosions and they screamed no more.
They had been caught completely by surprise. The enemy had penetrated almost to the Well Chamber by cunning use of the canal system. In a brilliant attack they had launched three desperate agents from a fast-moving craft that had smashed into the sluice gate under the cover of the hot mists.
‘Human scum!’ shrieked Lurk, a wrinkly old smog. The battle was drawing closer. Skun could already see figures darting here and there through the vapours. He ducked to avoid the flying bits as someone he vaguely knew burst into a ball of gas and giblets.
‘There’s three of them!’ Lurk screamed. ‘And they’ve got a special weapon!’
Three of them, Skun realised with a sinking heart. It was them. The humans were trying to escape him again!
‘Get back!’ he cried to his tribesmen. He couldn’t believe his rotten smoglodyte luck.
‘It’s the Candlehand!’ old Lurk suddenly wailed. ‘The hour of doom is nigh!’
Skun shrank into a crevice in the rock. The Candlehand? Was that the answer? Was that why his triumphant hunt had ended in such disaster? Was the boy they had been seeking really their most terrifying myth come back to life?
‘Back to the Well Chamber!’ Skun cried, leaping towards the stairway. But his injury slowed him down. ‘We must warn the masters!’
Crack! A blast of buckshot pierced his hide, and he flew out of control like a deflating balloon and slapped into the stone wall.
‘But we don’t want you warning anyone,’ croaked a tall, ancient human, stepping forward and lowering an enormous gun.
‘They’ve retreated!’ Magnus shouted.
Theo glanced around nervously, his hands still glowing. Being hurled out of the coracle had shaken him up a bit, but he was determined no harm would come to his friends. Now he watched with relief as the remaining smoglodytes scattered in the gloom.
‘They’ve returned to the – hurrghh – foul elements that spawned them!’ Magnus crowed. Then, flushed with triumph, the cemetery keeper leant on the blunderbuss, laughing and gasping for breath at the same time.
Completely mad, thought Theo. He frowned at Sam, who was dancing some kind of jig.
‘We did it!’ Sam said. ‘We won!’
‘Just like the old days!’ cried Magnus, reloading the gun with trembling fingers.
Theo was not celebrating. He felt afraid. Every victory took him closer to an encounter with Dr Saint, the man who had lied to him, imprisoned him, controlled him all his life. Hundreds of people were at his command; supernatural creatures did his bidding, and he had the power to influence the police and the government. How could you beat a man like that?
Then there was Mr Nicely. The so-called best friend who had laughed and grinned and twirled his umbrella while Theo’s life was wasted, strangled, betrayed every single day of his existence. Would Theo’s hands glow when the jolly-faced butler came into view? Could Theo use his powers against the only people he had ever really known?
Magnus had reloaded his museum-piece and handed the backpack to Sam. They walked ahead, side by side, through the abandoned sentry post, towards Dr Saint’s secret centre of operations.
‘This is it,’ Magnus whispered. ‘The reason we’ve been vigilant all these years. To stop the enemy returning and winning the war. To restore the Candle Man, so there will always be a light to dispel the darkness of the underworld.’
Theo had hardly been paying attention. He followed them like a sleepwalker. He was listening to the distant booms, the surging of vapours in hidden pipes, the seething of energy that echoed all around them. He suddenly knew what it reminded him of.
The network, he told himself, is a giant Mercy Tube.
Chapter Twenty-four
The Well Chamber
It was beyond anything they had expected. They emerged from the tunnel on to an iron gantry that ran all the way round an enormous circular chamber. In the middle was a dark tower, rising from a gulf of mists like a mountainous stalagmite. Bright lights glittered at its peak. Four narrow iron bridges linked the tower to the surrounding chamber, and below them was a drop that seemed to go down forever.
‘Your monitors never showed us this,’ Sam breathed.
‘No,’ confessed Magnus, his eyes streaming with tears from the stinging vapours. ‘We never got a spy-camera in here. It’s the Philanthropist’s old centre of operations. Legend calls this place the Well Chamber. We are the first Vigilance agents ever to set foot in here – hurrgh!’ Magnus paused to gasp for breath. ‘It looks like the evacuation has left it almost deserted – except for whoever is in the control tower at the top.’
‘Look,’ Theo said, his keen eyes picking out a fragile framework that rose from the top of the tower, disappearing into the darkness overhead. ‘Some sort of Otis shaft.’
‘Normal people call them lifts,’ said Sam.
‘I’ve never seen a lift before,’ Theo replied, ‘or a normal person for that matter.’
‘It would appear,’ Magnus said, ‘that Dr Saint has his own express elevator into the heart of this place.’
‘Yeah – and out of it,’ noted Sam.
Behind them, the rising waters had churned up through the tunnel and were now spilling over the gantry, threatening to wash the three of them over the edge.
/> ‘We’ve got to move,’ Magnus said. ‘Dangerous or not, that tower is now the safest place to be! To the bridge!’ he cried, his walking stick skidding on the slippery iron surface.
Sam was about to step on to the bridge when he was hit by a flying black blur. A final smoglodyte guard, hidden by the vapours, sprang straight at his throat, its spidery hands seeking a death hold on the soft flesh. But it was the smoglodyte that didn’t have a chance. Theo reached out and exploded the astonished creature with one swift touch. A small, foul drizzle spattered Sam, and a little dark cloud spread out across the paler mists of the chamber.
‘Yuck,’ said Sam, smearing the smog-stains off his cheek and on to his shirt. ‘Thanks for the save, Candle Man!’
Theo avoided Sam’s gaze as he stepped on to the narrow bridge, still awkward at the faint hint of hero worship. But he couldn’t deny he felt different now. He wasn’t just a bewildered escapee – as he had been at first – or a generally useless passenger, as he had felt with Chloe. Now he was part of a team and, looking at the sagging, bony Magnus and the red-faced, anxious Sam, he began to feel like he might have to emerge as the leader.
They continued the crossing in silence. Clouds rose from the depths below and drifted around them like enormous phantoms. Theo hoped that the very vapours created by Dr Saint would be his undoing – enabling a small group of determined enemies to creep into the heart of operations unseen.
Suddenly an ear-splitting bang made them jump.
‘What was that?’ Sam yelped.
Bang, bang – all around the chamber, the jarring sounds rang out. The trio froze, uncertain. Then the bridge began to tremble. Suddenly they heard a rapid clack, clack, clack – as if an invisible train were approaching.
‘Move!’ Magnus shouted. ‘That way!’ He pointed towards the tower.
Theo glanced backwards to see a shocking sight. The metal bridge was retracting. It no longer reached the gantry behind them. It had been automatically released and was being reeled in. Clack, clack, clack – the grey slats vanished into each other.