Lex Trent versus the Gods lt-1

by Alex Bell

  Lex recognised the name from the story and, after a moment, he placed it. ‘The lawyer who turned you in?’

  ‘Yes,’ Schmidt said, grinding his teeth. ‘We started at the firm at the same time. Oliver was hardworking, industrious, charming… Everyone liked him. I liked him. And then, one day, I discovered what he’d been up to with the wigs. So I gave him the chance to turn himself in. He said he hadn’t known how dangerous the wigs were, that he’d only wanted to make a bit of extra money to pay off his student loans and that everything had just got out of hand somehow. I believed him and said I would help him with any charges that were brought against him. He promised to go straight to the police and thanked me for being such a good friend. The next thing I knew I had police banging on my door shouting for my arrest because Oliver had reported me as the perpetrator! I would never have believed it of him, never, for he was so convincing! A flawless performer, just like you, Lex! That’s how I was able to recognise you for what you were as soon as you walked in the door back in the Wither City. I tried to explain what had really happened, that it was all a mistake, but Oliver had been clever about it — planting evidence to incriminate me and destroying anything that could incriminate him; making sure every tiny little detail was correct. And then giving the performance of his life when I accused him, and acting every bit the hurt, mortified friend who simply couldn’t believe that I would try to shift the blame onto him. People had been injured because of the wigs and all this money had been lost… I was looking at ten years or more. So I fled and took the first means of escape I came across with the enchanter.’

  ‘What happened to Oliver?’

  Schmid shrugged. ‘He got away with it, of course. Last I heard he’d retired to the Bandy Towns with a huge fortune.’

  ‘Marvin Briggs,’ Lex muttered to himself with an incredulous shake of his head. It certainly explained why Schmidt had loathed him so much if he had once been the victim of a conman himself. ‘All right, I know you don’t have the imagination to make up a story like that. If you say this enchanter can’t be reasoned with then I believe you. I’ll just have to go down to the Lands Beneath and get Lucius out myself.’

  Schmidt stared at him. ‘You’re not serious? Lex,’ he said in as gentle a tone as he could manage, ‘it would take thousands of years to climb all the way down the Space Ladders so, even if you were able to get food and water out here, you still wouldn’t have enough years to reach the Lands Beneath.’

  ‘I’m not going to climb the ladders,’ Lex said. ‘I’m going to use the enchanter’s hat. It’s in my bag. I brought it just in case.’

  ‘Don’t be a fool,’ Schmidt said softly, cursing himself for the harsh words he’d spoken earlier. ‘Lex, what’s happened to Lucius is tragic and I’m afraid it is your fault and you’re going to have to live with that. But there’s certainly nothing you can do to fix it; it’s too late for that. Heroics will only get you killed as well-’

  ‘ Heroics! ’ Lex sneered. ‘These aren’t heroics, old man! You don’t stop being selfish just like that. I told you before — I want to die young. It wasn’t just something I made up to shock or impress you; I really meant it. Lucius is the only one I have left. He doesn’t want to die young but I do so I’ve got nothing to lose by going after him. Besides, I’ve always wondered what the Lands Beneath look like. I can’t let Lucius have all the glory by being the only human to see the home of the Gods. I’m highly competitive. You should know that by now.’

  He swung his bag off his back and crouched down beside it on the floor, rifling through it in search of the hat.

  ‘But it won’t solve anything!’ Schmidt said desperately. ‘The enchanter will know you’ve used his hat and if you ever made it back to the Lands Above he’ll be waiting for you. This is why you don’t mess around with enchanters, Lex! There are reasons for playing by the rules!’

  Lex hesitated, the hat now in his hands. ‘Well, then,’ he said with a slow smile, ‘I’ll go down and get Lucius now and I’ll deal with the enchanter when I get back. All right?’

  He stood up and put the hat on his head.

  ‘Human minds aren’t built for magic,’ Schmidt tried once again. ‘Lex, I’ve told you, you’re just as likely to kill yourself with that hat as you are to accomplish anything with it.’

  ‘Look,’ Lex said impatiently, ‘I’m not arguing with you about it any more. My brother’s down there and I’m going down to get him. Or at least I’m going to try. If all I accomplish by putting on this hat is to blow my own head off, well… then at least there’ll be one less rotter in the world, right?’

  ‘If you really mean to go, take me with you.’

  Lex stared at him, shocked into silence for a moment. ‘I’m not making up a picnic of it, Monty,’ he managed at last. ‘I can’t think of a single reason why you’d want to-’

  ‘Employer’s liability,’ Schmidt said promptly.

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘You’re a minor and technically still my employee. If I let you go down there and you get yourself killed, I’ll be held liable for your death as your employer and sent to prison. Just because we’re not in a law office doesn’t mean my duty of care towards you is discharged.’

  ‘So fire me.’

  ‘I don’t have the authority to fire you on my own. The other partners would have to approve it.’

  ‘Then I resign.’

  ‘It’s the same thing!’ Schmidt exclaimed in frustration. ‘Your resignation has to be accepted by all the partners before it’s effective. You never know — I might be of some help to you, so just take me — assuming you’re able to get there without killing yourself with magic first.’

  ‘Fine,’ Lex said with a shrug, very aware of how much time had been wasted and unwilling to waste any more. He closed his eyes and spread his hands, the silence of space pressing in on them for a moment whilst Lex concentrated on getting them both to the place of the Gods. Then he drew a deep breath and said loudly and clearly, ‘The Lands Beneath.’

  The stories about the Lands Beneath were all wildly different and had changed constantly since the Great Divide. But most people agreed that there was treasure down there. And monsters. Some people claimed to have seen the Lands Beneath in nightmares but when these accounts were compared they all seemed to be completely lacking in common features.

  Despite his worry over Lucius, and fear at his own unbelievable stupidity in trespassing into the home of the Gods, Lex couldn’t help but feel a sense of excitement at the prospect of getting to see exactly what the Lands Beneath looked like, and mentally prepared himself to be ready for anything. After speaking the words ‘Lands Beneath’ on the Space Ladders there was a brief, slightly worrying moment of insubstantiality before Schmidt and Lex found themselves standing in the snow in… in the most beautiful place that Lex had ever seen in his life! It was a forest of crystal, set beneath a silver, star-spangled sky. And the colours! Lex didn’t even know the names of some of them! Sparkling, glittering, twinkling loveliness..

  He automatically reached out — to touch, to grab, to close his hands around the beauty that he saw… but then his nose suddenly started to bleed. Schmidt said something in a sharp, anxious kind of voice and reached out towards him but Lex pushed him away impatiently.

  ‘I don’t need your help!’ he snapped.

  And then the cornucopia of colours started to spin, reminding him of the kaleidoscope he’d had when he’d been small. He lost his balance on the lurching ground as a deafening silence rang in his ears, blocking out all the sound…

  About twenty seconds later, Schmidt was still bending over Lex trying to work out if he was dead or not when one of Lex’s eyes opened and he squinted at the lawyer in the silver light.

  ‘Am I dead?’ Lex asked.

  ‘Not yet,’ Schmidt grunted.

  ‘Oh good.’ Lex closed his eye and tried to breathe normally, uncomfortably aware of how fast his heart was beating and how cold the snow was beneath him. But after a moment, he couldn
’t help a soft, rather breathless laugh.

  Schmidt stared at him in blank incomprehension. ‘What in this whole situation,’ he said, ‘could possibly be even remotely amusing?’

  ‘I got here,’ Lex said. ‘I’m in the Lands Beneath.’ He opened his eyes and grinned at the lawyer. ‘I won’t believe you if you tell me you’re not even the least little bit excited to be here.’

  Schmidt sighed and offered his hand to help Lex to his feet. ‘I don’t think you need have any worries about dying young,’ he said. ‘It’s a miracle you’ve survived this long as it is.’

  ‘I’m lucky,’ Lex replied, dusting the snow off his clothes.

  Apart from a slight feeling of nausea, he now felt fine although he was beginning to rather dislike the hat. He considered taking it off now that he was here but decided against it. Although the enchanter could sense him when he wore it, he was most unlikely to attempt to pursue Lex to the home of the Gods. Even an enchanter would fear to do that. So in the meantime, he might as well keep the thing on although even Lex realised by now that if he used it again anytime soon it probably wasn’t going to improve his situation an awful lot. But if nothing else, at least it made him look taller.

  ‘This place is stunning!’ he said, looking round himself properly.

  A hundred different colours dappled about them where they stood on the forest floor — for all the trees were made entirely out of crystal. The trunks and branches were white but the leaves were a mixture of bright colours. In fact, no leaf seemed to be the exact same shade. They ranged from emerald green to saffron yellow to peacock blue. The effect was enchanting beyond anything Lex had ever seen before.

  The place was utterly silent. There didn’t appear to be anything or anybody around. Lucius certainly wasn’t there, nor was there any sign that he ever had been. The crystal forest did not move or sway in the breeze — even the smallest leaf was absolutely still. It was cool without a sun but it was not uncomfortably cold, partly because there was not even a breath of wind. The air itself was still and beautifully, wonderfully fresh as if no one had ever breathed it before. It was as if they were polluting it just by being there.

  Lex and Schmidt could make out a clearing through the trees so they started to walk and came out of the forest within moments. Lex stared around at the new scenery, sure that his eyes must be almost popping out of his head at what he was seeing. He was used to forests, for there were lots of them in the Lands Above, even if they weren’t made of crystal. So whilst he hadn’t exactly felt at home in there, he had at least not felt as if he were on a different planet altogether. But the forest really had been nothing more than a small glade put there for recreational or aesthetic purposes and they weren’t actually in the countryside at all. They were at the edge of a huge city, the likes of which Lex had never dreamt of.

  Towering before them were huge glass skyscrapers that must have been well over a hundred storeys. Considering the fact that neither Lex nor Schmidt had ever seen a building higher than five or six storeys before, this was an awe-inspiring, terrifying sight to them. There was a white monorail running quietly between the tall buildings but other than that there was no sound or movement at all. Gazing up at it all, Lex couldn’t help but feel discouraged. ‘It’ll be a nightmare finding Lucius in that lot,’ he said hopelessly. ‘Especially now that Lady Luck has abandoned me.’

  ‘She hardly abandoned you,’ Schmidt pointed out. ‘You double crossed her.’

  ‘Well, it’s the same thing,’ Lex snapped irritably.

  He stalked across a snow-swept path leading away from the crystal forest and towards the city. Schmidt hurried after him and, falling into step beside him, said, ‘What’s your plan?’

  Lex glanced at him. ‘Why do you always assume I have a plan? I’m just going into the city to see if I can find some Gods.’

  ‘Is that it?’

  ‘That’s all I got,’ he said with a shrug.

  As Lex had suspected, finding the Gods did not prove to be problematic. Most of the Gods were not omniscient, but they were sharp-eyed, and forbidden trespassers in their realm were not likely to go unnoticed for very long. Lex and Schmidt had only just started to walk down one of the skyscraper-lined streets when two startled-looking Gods appeared in front of them in human form. Lex recognised them from their statues. One was Deryn, God of Music and the other was Saydi, Goddess of Beauty and owner of Lex’s favourite sun.

  ‘No, no, no!’ Deryn exclaimed in a distinctly whiny tone as Lex and Schmidt automatically bowed. ‘You’re ruining the Race!’

  ‘What Race?’ Lex asked, straightening up from his bow.

  ‘ This one,’ Saydi said, waving her arm to encompass the city and glaring at them. ‘It’s ongoing! It’s the longest one in our history and you humans are ruining it. You’re not supposed to be down here!’

  Lex glanced at the transparent buildings and gasped as he realised, for the first time, that there were people moving about in them and, like the buildings themselves, they were made entirely of glass.

  ‘Are they alive?’ Lex asked, still staring at them.

  ‘They’re half alive,’ Saydi snapped, then she paused and stared at Lex. ‘You look just like the other one,’ she said. ‘Except you’re wearing different clothes. And you’re not bleeding so much.’

  ‘You’ve seen my brother?’ Lex said eagerly. ‘My brother, Lucius? Is he okay? He got down here by mistake. We’ve just come to get him and then we’ll gladly be on our way.’

  ‘No, no, no; we simply cannot have humans down here; it just won’t do! You must be made examples of,’ Deryn said irritably.

  ‘What’s the point in separating the Lands Above and Beneath if humans are going to contaminate both? You’re too unpredictable — you ruin the Races,’ Saydi complained. ‘It’s like trying to play chess with chessmen who won’t follow the rules — it undermines the point of even playing at all.’

  ‘Well… what is a Race?’ Lex asked, giving the glass city a puzzled look. If this was a sort of Game then where were the castles and dragons and other mortal perils?

  ‘It’s a Race of Progression,’ Deryn said. ‘It’s taken our men hundreds of years to get this far. They started out living in caves but just last year they built their first spaceship and started exploring the orbiting underworlds. You humans will never reach such a level because you squabble with each other all the time and it hinders your progress. If one of our glass men comes into contact with you they could be infected with unstable emotions and the entire Race would be in jeopardy then. They wouldn’t do what we told them to any more. They’d start thinking for themselves. Come along. We’ll put you in with the other one.’

  And Lex and Schmidt found themselves plucked from the ground by the Gods and deposited some way from the city before a huge, hulking monster of a crystal tree that stood all alone. This was what Lex had seen when he’d had that funny moment out on the Space Ladders. The alarming amount of scarlet blood splattered around the base of the tree was in sharp contrast to the snow, and Lex’s heart seemed to lodge in his throat at the sight of it.

  A crystal ladder fixed to a branch near the top joined up with the lowest Space Ladder and led on past the twilight sky into dark space above them. The Lands Above couldn’t be seen beyond the great mass of Space Ladders but they knew it was up there. Unlike the crystal trees they’d seen in the forest with multi-coloured leaves, the leaves of this tree were all golden — pale and beautiful like they’d been painted with sunshine. There were other snow-covered cities in the distance and Lex guessed that other Gods were playing their own Progression Races in these although there was a still, unbroken silence all around them. In the distance was a sparkling crystal mountain where the Gods lived when they weren’t playing Races with the glass men in the glass cities.

  Tearing his eyes away from the incredible sights on the horizon, Lex turned back to the tree. The trunk itself was at least twenty feet in diameter and curled up in the middle of this was Lucius, head ben
t over a bloody ferret that was clutched to his chest and seemed to have gone rigid with fear. In another moment, Lex and Schmidt had been put in the crystal tree with him.

  ‘Lucius, are you all right?’ Lex asked, striding over to him, trying to work out where the blood on his arms and on the ferret was coming from.

  Lucius jumped at the sound of his brother’s voice. After a moment of stunned surprise he scrambled to his feet, clutching the ferret with one hand and flinging his other arm around Lex’s neck in a suffocating hug.

  ‘Oh, Lex. I hoped the enchanter wouldn’t find you too. I’m sorry he got you but I’m so glad to see you!’

  For once Lex allowed himself to be hugged — even hugging Lucius back for a moment before pushing him away and running a sharp eye down him.

  ‘Who’s bleeding? You or Zachary?’

  ‘It’s me.’ Lucius awkwardly held out his arms. ‘When I arrived here I fell on the crystal flowers at the bottom of the tree out there.’

  Lex glanced out of their tree prison and saw that the blood outside was indeed staining the remains of the broken crystal flowers responsible for the deep cuts on Lucius’s arms. Lex rolled his eyes. It was just like Lucius to fall straight over into the deepest patch of jagged crystal he could find as soon as he arrived.

  ‘I just put my hands out automatically when I fell,’ Lucius said, looking at his worst arm miserably and turning even paler at the sight of the blood dripping from it.

  ‘Don’t hold it out like that,’ Lex said impatiently. ‘You need to stop the bleeding. Here, use the weasel.’

  Lex took the unresisting ferret out of Lucius’s hand and pressed him over the deep cuts on his brother’s arm.

  ‘Hold him there,’ he ordered. ‘For God’s sake, Lucius, do you want to bleed to death?’

  Lex, Lucius and Schmidt all jumped as Deryn knocked on the glass trunk of their prison. ‘Hey! Humans!’ Although the trunk of the tree was thick, they could all hear the God’s voice as clearly as if he were standing right beside them. ‘We can’t leave you here like this,’ Deryn went on. ‘We don’t know whether to turn you all into glass people and let you stay down here or whether to kill you and send you back to the Lands Above as a warning to the others not to come. Any preferences?’