The boots died away. There was only silence, thick and dark, with the drip of water.
Rosetti turned on his torch.
There were footprints in a patch of sand; little footprints, with widely spread toes. But not little enough to blot out the bigger footprints of the people they had been chasing. The bigger fooprints had dents in them. The marks of Footer boot studs.
‘Look!’ said Onyx, stooping to pick something up. The thing that had made the clatter was an arrow. ‘It’s lovely,’ said Onyx.
It had a head of chipped flint, razor sharp, bound to a shaft of peeled stick with a lashing of sinew dyed red, fletched with something that Onyx instantly identified as the wing feathers of the Great Bustard. Onyx and Rosetti gazed upon it in rapture.
‘Ahem,’ said Owen.
‘Wha.’
‘What about the Cup?’
Then everyone froze. For a terrible moaning slithered out of the darkness. ‘OOOO,’ it went.
‘Could be a cave bear,’ said Onyx. ‘Stands twelve foot to the shoulder.’
‘Teeth like huge great knife blades,’ said Rosetti.
‘Ulp,’ said Owen.
‘OOOO,’ said the voice again, bestial, agonized. Strangely… muffled.
‘It’s not an animal,’ said Rosetti.
‘OOO,’ cried the Not Animal. ‘WOOOOE IS MEEE. I AM UNDONE, LACKADAY LACKADAY.’
‘A person,’ said Rosetti.
‘An Elizabethan person,’ said Onyx.
They moved out into the tunnel. The beams of the torches swept over painted herds of deer and bears and aurochs and crowds of little running men with spears and darts.
‘Let’s look!’ cried Onyx.
‘Let’s get after them!’ said Owen. ‘If we don’t hurry, the Universe ends.’
‘I think we’ve lost them anyway,’ said Onyx. ‘There’s someone in trouble in here. Let’s help!’
The Skolars’ feet rang hollow and echoing, and their torch beams stabbed into an enormous vault. They stood in the middle of the floor, their torches making a little puddle of light in a vast dome of darkness. They turned slowly round, together – it seemed important to stay together, far underground, thirty thousand years from home. They walked slowly towards the wall –
‘Eek!’ cried Onyx.
They were looking at a tiger. It had vast yellow eyes and a red cave of a mouth. Onyx found she had got behind Rosetti, who found he had got behind Owen. Owen had not moved. Actually he seemed to be… yawning.
‘Don’t make it cross,’ hissed Rosetti.
‘Funny how seeing things with their mouths open makes you want to yawn,’ said Owen.
‘Owen!’ hissed Rosetti.
‘It’s only a picture,’ said Owen.
‘Oh,’ said Onyx, braver.
‘Ah,’ said Rosetti, ashamed. ‘And look.’
Below the tiger’s paws was a painting of something yellow.
The Greyte Cup.
‘It was here,’ said Rosetti.
‘And now they’ve taken it somewhere else,’ said Onyx.
‘Ooooh,’ moaned something in the dark.
Three heads snapped round. Three torch beams followed the heads.
It was a person. A person sitting against the wall with its head in its hands. A person who lifted up his head without taking his hands away from his eyes. A person who even though he still had his hands over his eyes was looking at them. Not with a real eye, they noticed, but an eye tattooed in the middle of his forehead.
‘Trym!’ cried Rosetti. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘UWWWWW,’ moaned the Mage’s Assistant and Dovemaster, for it was he. ‘NOE! SPARE MEE, O LOVELY PEOPLE, WITH YOUR BOWS AND ARROES AND YOUR TEENY FEET! TAKE SLEE AND DAMAGE, THEY BEE STOUTER AND MORE MEATIE. Oh, ytt is ye, Rosetti. My lippes are sealed.’
‘Fine,’ said Rosetti. ‘We’ll be off, then. The little people with the arrows will be back any minute.’
‘Noe,’ said Trym in a small voice. ‘I was not borne for Sacrifyce. The tiny folke with the Arroes wyll returne and make mee a Sacrifyce to the Tyger. I was promised to them by ye Doctor, ere he took the Cupp from where he had Hyd it, hymme and hys Thugges.’
‘The Doctor?’
‘Cosm. He ys in ye Caves, Hymselfe. He took the Cupp. Then he struck me and I was mazed. Then he ran away. Ye lyttle people chased hymme.’
‘Well!’ cried Onyx, shocked.
‘Tell us,’ said Rosetti. ‘What has been happening?’
‘Wylt thou take mee hence?’
‘We’ll think about it. Tell.’
‘Alle ryghte,’ said Trym. ‘Heere Goes. Ytt was ye faulte of –’
‘Excuse me,’ said Owen, ‘but please talk properly.’
‘Oh all right!’ said Trym. ‘Well how was I supposed to know he wanted to conquer the Universe?’
‘Wha,’ said Owen.
‘Who?’ said Onyx.
‘Start at the beginning,’ said Rosetti.
‘Not till we’re out of here,’ said Trym.
‘All right.’
They marched down the tunnel, crossed the sinkhole, splashed through the icy water of the stream to the bottom of the badger sett and squeezed into the thin, chilly breeze of the Ice Age. The light was horribly bright. The dovecote was still there. A couple of arrows stuck out of the walls. Miss Davies and Wrekin Sartorius were sitting on a bench by the door, holding hands and soaking up the chilly sun.
‘There you are,’ said Miss Davies with her beautiful smile. ‘All these Cave People rushed out chasing Slee and Damage and Cosm. We did so hope you were all right, and that you’d got the Cup.’
‘How did you get rid of the Cave People?’ said Onyx.
‘Wrekin painted them. They started to worship him and he sent them away. Where’s the Cup?’
‘Cosm’s got it.’
‘Oh dear,’ said Miss Davies.
‘And Trym is about to tell us what is going on,’ said Onyx.
‘I have been so blind. I blame myself,’ said Miss Davies. ‘And at the same time I am very, very furious.’ Her golden eyes had an angry, reddish light. ‘Come on, then, Trym. Spit it out or we’ll leave you behind to be chopped up with little flint knives.’
‘But the honourable lovely cultured children said –’
‘Come on!’ cried Miss Davies in a terrible voice.
‘Ooer!’ said Trym. ‘Well. Your father the Abbot is crool hard on me. I am the greatest Dovemaster the world has ever known. But it was always Feed those doves, Trym, Mop that up, Trym, Get this chamber pot off me foot, Trym, and never mind the stink. Well, I was doing all the work and he was the Great Mage, famous, revered by all. So I was looking for a way to take my master’s place and earn big money. And there came to the House of Dagger a Queen’s man of stern mind and no humour, a tax collector, one Abanazar Cosm –’
‘A tax collector?’ said Miss Davies.
‘Aye. And when your father heard Cosm was searching for his goods so he could take them for the Queen, he hid them. And Cosm offered me money to find the Cup where your father had hid it in Time. And I agreed, and told him of the Sealed Room. Anyone would have.’
‘Anyone with the soul of a worm,’ said Miss Davies.
‘Worms have their uses,’ said Owen.
‘Well,’ said Trym. ‘Abanazar Cosm was kind to me, unlike the Abbot. He took me at my true worth, and treated me as an equal. So I took him some doves. And he by cunning art did make a copy of their minds, that he used as an engine for his device that he called a Time Table.’
‘See?’ said Owen.
‘If you have quite finished,’ said Trym huffily. ‘Anyway. With this Time Table we did travel in Time, first stealing the Cup from its Sealed Room. By now Cosm had learned from me that the Cup was the Grail, and he liked your Home Time, particularly the anaesthetics and the dentists and the loose clothes. He forgot his vows to the Queen, and decided to work for himself, not her. And now he plans to use the Cup to dominate the Universe. And as y
ou went to take it from the deeps of Time, so the Doctor took it ten minutes ahead of you, using as his soldiers two oafs called Duggan. And hid it each time further back in Time. He hath promised me Power and a Kingdom when he shall rule the Universe. Because I am worth it.’
‘All this we had already divined, except the last, which is balderdash,’ said Miss Davies, with a sniff. ‘And what we yet wish to know, so you can perhaps save yourself from being sacrificed by these small cross people, is to tell us where Dr Cosm has gone now.’
‘To hide the Cup in the Past yet further, sixty-five million years before Founder’s Day exactly, they said, before they struck my head and tyed me up and left me for Sacrifyce, curse them, traitors, dogs.’
‘I can hear it,’ said Rosetti. ‘Faint and far away. But definitely there.’
‘Dear me,’ said Miss Davies. ‘Well, we had better go and find it. I wonder if the doves will make it.’
‘Two trips in a day?’ said Owen.
‘We may be lucky,’ said Miss Davies. ‘Granted, that’s two trips on one recharge. But we have the greatest Dovemaster in the world with us.’ (Here she smiled flatteringly at Trym.) ‘Anyway, it’s a risk we have to take. If they open the chamber and find it empty in front of the whole Skool, the world will change and the Dread Thing will happen. Fingers crossed, everyone.’
Everyone climbed in and squeezed into the chair. Miss Davies prodded the basket with the pole.
Flap. Squawk. Nests in head.
Suddenly everyone was coughing.
‘It’s hot!’ said Onyx.
It was. The air was thick and wet and smelled like a compost heap. There was a buzzing and a humming outside. Something huge bumped into something solid and walked off with a step that made the ground shake. Miss Davies peered into the dove basket. The birds were lying on the bottom, unmoving.
‘Are they dead?’ said Owen.
‘Trym?’ said Miss Davies.
Trym sucked his teeth. ‘Not dead. Only sleeping.’
‘Good,’ said Owen.
‘Good if they wake up,’ said Miss Davies. ‘Open the door, somebody.’
Outside, something roared.
Rosetti said, ‘You sure?’
‘No open door, no get Cup,’ said Onyx. ‘Ooer.’
For Owen had already done the job, and stepped out.
Into a rather alarming place.
The dovecote was in a little grove of trees, except that they were not trees, but things that looked like ferns with stalks.
‘Cycads!’ said Onyx.
‘Owen! Duck!’ cried Miss Davies.
Owen ducked. A dragonfly came droning through the branches: a dragonfly with wings two metres from tip to tip and jaws that clashed together where Owen’s head would have been, spraying him with greenish spit. Beyond the grove was a cone-topped mountain, leaking smoke from its summit.
Rosetti said, ‘Something’s weird.’
Onyx said, ‘Well it is the Cretaceous, silly!’
Owen said, ‘Everything’s got two shadows.’
Everything had. The sun was leaking through the water vapour and volcano smoke, throwing the black shadows of the fronds on the dead-leaf floor. But each leaf had a second shadow, fainter, slightly red-coloured. An orange streak shone horribly bright among the clouds.
‘What’s that?’ said Rosetti.
‘It’s a meteor,’ said Owen. ‘In a decaying orbit.’
‘The Chicxulub meteor,’ said Onyx.
‘The wha?’
‘It’s so interesting!’ said Onyx. ‘It wiped out the dinosaurs. An enormous –’
‘A Dread Thing,’ said Owen. ‘How very interesting. This is what happens when you bring the Cup back into a Time when it doesn’t exist and never could have and its actual presence disturbs the normal course of events.’
‘So I think we should find the Cup and leave,’ said Miss Davies, over a crashing in the cycads. ‘I think the dinosaurs have… maybe twenty minutes to live. Look out!’
A greenish creature the size and general shape of a kangaroo bounded into the glade, gnashing its vast teeth.
‘Help!’ cried Onyx, clutching Rosetti’s arm.
Miss Davies said, ‘Back in the dovecote!’ But as she opened her mouth, a sound came from the cycads at the end of the grove. Not a roar, this time, but a shout. Not precisely a human shout, but a shout as close to human as you got from Slee or Damage Duggan.
The green kangaroo thing swung its awful head towards the sound and bounded away into the trees, clashing its teeth. There was another Duggan shout and a thud, and the noise of something kangaroo-shaped and heavily battered dragging itself away through the trees.
‘WE EATS DINOTHINGS FOR BRECKFUS,’ roared a Duggan voice, to the tune of John Brown’s Body.
‘Right,’ said Rosetti, and started into the grove, swatting enormous insects with his cricket stump.
‘Hey!’ cried just about everybody else. Then they went after him, Onyx first, bouncing, for she felt that something amazing was going to happen.
She was right.
She found Rosetti in a little glade. He was not alone. Also in the glade were the big table and chairs of grey metal that Owen and Rosetti had last seen in the High Energy Physics Lab. Round the table sat Dr Cosm, Otto, Slee and Damage.
‘Morning, all,’ said Rosetti.
‘Wha,’ said Slee.
‘Wha,’ said Damage.
‘Eh?’ said Otto.
‘Aha,’ said Dr Cosm, his little black eyes glinting among their suety folds. ‘The pigeon fanciers. And Trym, I see. Welcome to real Time Travel.’ He made a sweeping gesture of his hand. ‘And to the Time Table.’
Rosetti’s eyes had travelled to the middle of the table, where two things stood. One was something roughly the shape of a pigeon’s head, encased in glass and giving off a strange, headachy light. And the other was the Greyte Cup for Achievement, otherwise the Holy Grail. He said, ‘Hand over the Cup, Abanazar Tax Boy.’
‘Tax boy?’ said Dr Cosm. ‘Tax boy? Nyaha.’ His voice was cold as the clatter of ice cubes. ‘I have changed. I have left my Tax shell, and my gorgeous wings are open. Call me rather “Master”.’
‘That’s right, call him rather “Master”,’ said Otto.
‘Shut up.’
‘Stop bickering,’ said Rosetti. ‘The Cup.’
‘Hah!’ cried Cosm. ‘In five minutes, the time will be ripe for us to return to the Skool, humiliate that fool of a Head, and bring the Cup before the Governors with our own hands. Meanwhile you will be here, and the Star will fall –’
‘Excuse me,’ said Onyx. She did not much like looking at Dr Cosm’s bulging eyes and suety skin, so she had been concentrating on other things. In particular, she had been concentrating on a sort of shaking in the ground, as of mighty footsteps. ‘But I think a Dread Thing is about to happen. Because of you altering History and all that.’
‘Nonsense.’
Onyx actually found Cosm, Master of the Universe, rather frightening. ‘But,’ she said, ‘even if you don’t believe in actual Dread Things, I think, well, that is, something’s coming.’
‘Nonsense!’ cried Cosm again. ‘Nothing can stand in my waAAIIEEE!’
At this point, the following things happened.
1. The footsteps had got heavier and louder until the actual ground was trembling, and there was a crashing in the grove as if something enormous was marching through the branches, and Otto and the Duggans were peering dully into the double shadows.
2. The ground was shaking because of the footsteps (see above). But another shaking was starting. A tooth-rattling shaking. Bigger. Much bigger.
‘Earthquake,’ said Rosetti nervously.
‘That,’ said Owen, ‘would be the gravitational pull of the large meteor that is about to wipe out eighty-five per cent of life on Earth for several million years, providing a fresh start for History. Which is what Dread Things do.’
‘Ah,’ said Rosetti, not consoled.
3. Whi
le everyone was being nervous and peering into the shadows, Trym was scowling and grinding his teeth. Suddenly he twitched the cricket stump from Rosetti’s slack hand, leaped on to the Time Table, bashed in the glass pigeon’s head, scooped up the Greyte Cup, leaped off the table again and rushed to hide behind Owen. There was an explosion. A small pink mushroom cloud rose from the pigeon’s head. A clock chimed four billion in many invisible places.
‘NOOOO!’ roared Dr Cosm.
There was a short, thick silence.
‘So,’ said Miss Davies. ‘The Time Table is stuck in the Past. But it also exists in the Present, and it is quite big, and not at all mythical. Skolars, this may explain the things we saw in the Examinator in my father’s house. Without this idiot, the Cretaceous might have gone on forever. So tell me, Taxman Abanazar Cosm, how does it feel to be the man who wiped out the dinosaurs?’
Being slow on the uptake, Slee and Damage did not get what was going on and were still gazing into the trees, where the footsteps were getting louder and had actually become a rhythmic crashing.
‘Prolly a Trannysaurus,’ said Slee.
‘Trannysaurus Wrecked,’ said Damage.
‘Soon will be. Hur hur,’ said Slee.
The crashing got practically deafening. Several trees fell over. Twenty metres above them, a green head the size of a bus opened a black mouth the size of a garage lined with yellow teeth the size of lamp posts.
‘Ooer,’ said Slee.
‘Get us out of here,’ said Damage.
Cosm said nothing, being busy sprinting for the trees.
‘Wha,’ said Slee.
‘Run,’ said Damage.
Down came the head. Wide gaped the mouth. Clash went the teeth, missing by inches. ‘Arrghrr,’ went the huge voice of Tyrannosaurus maximperator, the biggest meat-eater of them all (just because no fossils have shown up does not mean it never existed), as it set off in pursuit of beefy Slee and meaty Damage.
Perhaps the Duggans could have eaten Tyrannosaurus rex for breakfast.
But it was a definite fact that Tyrannosaurus maximperator could eat Duggans for breakfast.
Suddenly the clearing was full of people sprinting towards the dovecote.
Silence fell, except for the rumble of earthquakes, the roar of erupting volcanoes and the bellow of great beasts minutes from extinction.
Abbot Dagger's Academy and the Quest for the Holy Grail Page 12