Live and let Drood sh-6

by Simon R. Green

  There was no sign of any of the goblins who usually stood watch over the stairway, peering out from their comfortable niches in the stone wall. All their little caverns were empty, with not a trace remaining to show they d ever been inhabited. No bodies. No sign of any struggle. But as we went down into the dark, spatters of dried blood began to appear on the steps below us. And all over the stone wall. By the time we got to the bottom, dried blood was splashed everywhere.

  At the entrance to the War Room, the electric hand scanners had been torn out and smashed, the pieces and fragments lying scattered all over the floor. And the entire entrance door was just gone. I made Molly stand back while I stepped cautiously into the War Room. There was supposed to be a real live gorgon sitting just inside the door, doing penance for a very old crime against the family, ready to do something nasty and petrifying to anybody who dared enter the War Room without permission but there was no trace of the gorgon anywhere. Just a few scattered stone pieces on the floor that might have been a shattered human statue or two. I gave Molly the all clear, and she shot straight past me into the War Room, glaring fiercely about her. She hates being left out of things.

  The War Room was a vast auditorium carved out of the solid bedrock underneath the Hall. All four walls were covered with massive state-of-the-art display screens showing every country in the world. But whereas normally they would have been covered with different-coloured lights showing what was happening in the world and what we were doing about it, now the screens were dead and blank and silent. The whole system was down.

  I followed Molly into the War Room, looking dazedly about me while she darted from one workstation to the next, looking for something she could use. The whole room was empty, deserted, silent; the computers had all been broken open and torn apart. The scrying spheres had been smashed and cracked, all the tables and chairs had been overturned and everything useful or important had been very thoroughly trashed. There were no bullet holes here, no signs of energy-weapon fire, but there was a hell of a lot of blood splashed over everything and pooled on the bare stone floor.

  A lot of people had died down here, but there wasn t a single body to be seen anywhere. Drood or otherwise.

  Molly and I checked out the workstations methodically until we found one computer that was in somewhat better condition than the others. We couldn t get it working, so Molly just zapped the thing with some kind of spell to make it give up the last thing it had been working on. I ve never understood how she gets magic to work on scientific things, and I have enough sense not to ask. I m sure the answer would only upset me. The computer s last memory appeared on a cracked monitor screen. It showed Droods jumping up from their workstations, startled, as someone opened fire on them. Bodies were thrown this way and that, blasted right out of their workstations. Blood flew on the air and bodies crashed to the floor. There were shouts and screams. None of the Droods armoured up. There was just bloodshed and slaughter, and computer stations exploding as they were raked with gunfire. And then the computer shut down and the monitor went blank.

  Molly called the last few images back to the monitor screen, goosing the thing with magical sparks when it tried to cut out on her.

  Look at this, Eddie. According to what this screen is reluctantly showing us all the Hall s weapon systems and defences were off-line. Shut down before the attack. This has to be sabotage, Eddie; the work of the traitor inside the family. I m sorry; I know you don t want to hear this, but it s the only way this could have happened.

  Callan was in charge here, I said. I didn t see him on the screen. I can t believe all the defence systems could have gone off-line at once without his noticing. Unless someone arranged for him to be distracted. Called away. So he wouldn t be here when this went down. I looked around the silent, deserted War Room. Still no bodies. You saw my family die on that screen. So why isn t there a single Drood body anywhere in this room?

  Maybe they took your family away as prisoners, said Molly. Ethel was gone, so they didn t have their armour. Maybe your family just did the sensible thing and surrendered?

  I suppose that s possible, I said. Droods stripped of their armour would have been in shock, especially after an attack like this. Some of them might have been captured.

  So some of your family could still be alive somewhere! said Molly.

  Why would our enemies want prisoners, if they hate us so much?

  Don t be naive, sweetie. For information. Droods know things no one else does. Everyone knows that.

  They could have got far more information from the computers, I said. And our enemies went out of their way to destroy them. No. The whole point of this was to destroy the Droods forever. To take us completely off the board.

  You can hope, though, can t you?

  We always say about the bad guys: If you don t have the body, they re probably not really dead. Maybe that works for the good guys, too. If there are any survivors, Molly, if there are any members of my family left alive anywhere I will find them.

  We went back up and worked our way through the fallen Hall to what was left of the South Wing. To the Operations Room, a high-tech centre set up to oversee all the Hall s defences and protect the family from things like this. Once again the door was standing open, revealing a reasonably-sized room full of computer systems and workstations usually run by a cadre of specially trained technicians, under the head of ops, Howard. He wasn t there. Neither was anyone else. Everything in the room had been smashed to pieces with great thoroughness. Someone wanted to make sure that not one of these systems could ever be repaired or re-created. No way of telling whether anyone here had known the defences were off-line until it was far too late. There was a hell of a lot of blood, but no bodies.

  I made my way carefully through the wreckage, looking for something to give me hope. Molly stuck close beside me, watching my back and comforting me with her presence. And at the very back of the room we found the little surprise the enemy had left for us, or for anyone else who came looking, to find. Twelve roughly severed heads set on spikes. Six male, six female. From the expressions on their faces, none of them had died well. Some were still silently screaming for help that never came. I studied the faces carefully but I didn t recognise any of them. I can t say whether that made it easier or harder to bear. I knelt down and closed the wildly staring eyes, one set at a time. Because I had to do something. There were no torcs at any of the raggedly cut necks.

  The smell was pretty bad.

  Did you know any of them? said Molly.

  No, I said. But then, it s a big family. You can t know everyone. Howard isn t here.

  Why leave the heads like this? said Molly.

  As a warning to anyone who came looking? Or just to mark their territory, the bastards?

  It s a sign of contempt, I said. To tell everyone that the Droods are nothing to be feared anymore. Well, they got that wrong. I m still here. I will find who did this. I will kill them all, and they will die hard and die bloody. And for that I m going to need weapons.

  And so we went down again, into the family Armoury, set deep and deep beneath the West Wing. Except when I cleared the rubble away from the floor that should have held the entrance to the Armoury approach it wasn t there. I stared down at the bare dusty floorboards, which had clearly never been disturbed, and then looked around to make sure I was in the right room. But even with all the damage and destruction, I had no doubt I was in the right place. The entrance should have been here, but it wasn t and clearly never had been. I didn t know what to think.

  The Armoury has always been in the same place ever since the family set it down below the Hall, centuries ago. Right down in the bedrock under the West Wing, as far away from the family as they could get, to protect the rest of us from the weapons development and explosives testing that went on every day, and the inevitable unexpected side effects produced by lab assistants with a whole lot of scientific curiosity and not nearly enough self-preservation instincts. Impossible.

  I had
to search through three other rooms to find a trapdoor in the floor that to my certain knowledge hadn t been there before. I kicked the last of the rubble aside, leaned over the steel-banded wooden square and studied it thoughtfully for a long moment, ignoring the threatening creaks and groans from the ceiling overhead. Molly stirred uneasily at my side.

  This room is trying to tell us something, Eddie, and I m pretty sure Get the hell out of here while you still can would be a fairly accurate translation.

  Hell with that, I said. It s taken long enough, but I think I ve finally found a clue. There s no way I could be wrong about how you get down into the family Armoury. I ve been sneaking down there to pester Uncle Jack since I was ten years old.

  Maybe they made a new entrance while you were gone, said Molly, moving quickly sideways to avoid a stream of dust falling from the ceiling. Maybe they blew up the old one.

  I haven t been gone that long, I said.

  You couldn t rush a major change like that through the Works Committee in less than a twelve-month. You don t know what bureaucracy is until you ve been part of a family that s been around for centuries.

  But the trapdoor is intact, said Molly. Which would suggest

  Yes, I said. It would.

  I grabbed the heavy iron ring set into the top of the wooden trapdoor and hauled it open with an effort. It started to slam backwards onto the floor, and Molly and I grabbed it at the last moment and lowered it carefully down. More dust was falling in thick streams from the ceiling, and I was getting a strong feeling that one good slam might be enough to bring the whole thing down. Once, I wouldn t have given a damn, but not having my armour was making me cautious. The trapdoor opening revealed an unfamiliar set of stone steps leading down into gloom. Old, scuffed steps, polished smooth by much hard use. The stairs had clearly been there a long time. I led the way down, with Molly treading close on my heels and peering over my shoulder. I was just as fascinated as she was. We were in new territory now, and for the first time I began to wonder if things really were as they appeared to be.

  The stairs gave entrance to the Armoury, which looked exactly as I remembered it. The family had set up its Armoury in what used to be, centuries earlier, the old wine cellars. The heavy, specially reinforced blast-proof door was intact, but once again it hung partway open. I squeezed through the gap between the door and the frame, with Molly pressing so close behind me that she was breathing heavily down my neck.

  The lights flickered on as we entered the Armoury proper. It s really just a long series of interconnected stone chambers with bare plastered walls, curved ceilings high above, and mile upon mile of multicoloured wiring tacked carelessly into place across the walls, crisscrossing in patterns that may or may not have meant something to somebody at some time. All the overhead fluorescent lights were working, but I realised immediately that I couldn t hear the usual strained sounds of the air-conditioning. The air was stale, but there was no smell of smoke or sign of fire damage.

  I don t see any signs of a firefight, said Molly, looking quickly about her. No bullet holes, no energy burns or anything more extreme to suggest the people here fought back

  No, I said. But there has been a hell of a lot of looting. Look at all the gaps. I m not seeing half the things I should be seeing. No computers, no weapons. Even the shooting range is empty. It s all so quiet. I don t think I ve ever heard the Armoury this quiet before. There was always something going on; Uncle Jack or his assistants working on some new way to blow themselves and everybody else up. It s eerie.

  I walked slowly between deserted workstations and abandoned testing grounds that should have been full of loud noises and general excitement as Uncle Jack s technicians happily risked their own lives and others testing appalling new weapons of mass disturbance. Nothing had been destroyed in the Armoury, unlike in the War Room or the Operations Room, but the enemy had stripped the place clean. They hadn t been interested in precious pieces of art that would have sold for millions, but state-of-the-art weapons? Those were different. I checked everywhere, but there were no golden-armoured bodies, no heads on spikes, not even a splash of dried blood. A few things had been overturned here and there, but no signs of any struggle. Which was just wrong. No matter what the odds or the threats, Uncle Jack and his lab rats would have fought to the last to keep the Armoury out of the hands of our enemies. Hell, Uncle Jack would have blown the whole place up before he d risk letting Drood weapons fall into the wrong hands. So why didn t he?

  I stopped and looked about me in frustration. This would have broken Uncle Jack s heart, I said finally.

  To see his precious Armoury stripped bare

  Molly nodded understandingly. The Armoury was always his pride and joy. Eddie, the information in his head would have made him invaluable. Do you think?

  I don t know, I said. I don t know what to think anymore. Hello. What s this?

  I knelt down beside a workstation. Something had caught my eye, but I wasn t sure what. It turned out to be a small black blob on the floor. Molly crouched down beside me, looked at the blob and then looked at me.

  All right; I ll bite. What s so significant about a small black blobby thing? What is it?

  It s a portable door, I said. Uncle Jack used to hand them out like travel-sickness pills to every agent going out in the field. Just slap one of these against any flat surface, and hey, presto! Instant door!

  So why did he stop handing them out? said Molly, instantly cautious.

  Something about unacceptable side effects, I said, weighing the blob in my hand. And if the Armourer thought they were unacceptable This must have been overlooked.

  Take it anyway, said Molly. We re going to need all the help we can get.

  Damn right, I m taking it, I said. I slipped the thing into my pocket, straightened up and looked around me. It s useful, but it s not a weapon. I want something that goes bang! in a horribly destructive and disturbing way.

  And then my head snapped round suddenly as a Voice said Eddie! I looked back and forth, but there was no one else in the Armoury. I looked at Molly.

  Tell me you heard that, too.

  Of course I heard it! Someone said your name in a seriously spooky way. But I scanned the whole place before we came in here, and I am telling you we re the only ones here. No other life signs anywhere, and that includes lab specimens. So who Wait a minute. Wait a minute. I m getting something.

  She moved slowly between the empty workstations, turning her head back and forth, scowling fiercely as she searched for something she could sense but not see. I was concentrating on the Voice. It had definitely sounded familiar but I couldn t place it. I knew I d heard someone call me by my name in just that tone of voice before, but Molly stopped suddenly before a pile of junk on the floor and cried out triumphantly. She knelt down and stuck both hands into the pile before I could stop her, and pulled out the Merlin Glass. She jumped up to show it to me, brandishing the small silver-backed hand mirror.

  Result! This is more like it, Eddie!

  Could you please stop waving it around so heartily, I said carefully. That is a very powerful and very dangerous object, and this is the Armoury, after all. The Glass was worrying enough as it was, before it got broken in Castle Shreck, and God alone knows what state it s in now after Uncle Jack s been tinkering with it.

  Molly sniffed airily but wasted no time in pressing the Glass into my hands. I accepted it cautiously and looked it over. The Glass had been created for the Drood family by Merlin Satanspawn, way back in the day, and it had many useful properties. But it had been very badly damaged during the Drood assault on the Immortals at Castle Shreck, to the point where it didn t work at all anymore. The reflective surface had been cracked from side to side, and given that a whole lot of people thought there might be something or even someone trapped within the reflection, I made a point of handing the damaged mirror over to the Armourer first chance I got, with strict instructions to drop it somewhere secure, like a black hole, if he couldn t mend the t
hing and make it safe to use. Frankly, I d never expected to see the thing again.

  But here it was, back in my hand. And completely uncracked. The Glass was clear and unmarked, as though it had never seen any damage at all.

  I didn t know the Merlin Glass could speak, Molly said doubtfully. Let alone call out to you.

  Maybe it never had anything to say before, I said. But this is a magical instrument, after all, made by Merlin himself.

  You said the mirror was cracked. Now it isn t. Could it have repaired itself?

  Who knows? I said. I don t think anyone in the family knows for sure anymore why Merlin gave the Glass to us in the first place. Or what it was supposed to do. I never did get around to reading all the instructions Uncle Jack wrote out for me. I have to say I don t think the Armourer did this. I mean, he s good, yes, but he s no Merlin Satanspawn.

  I hefted the hand mirror thoughtfully, turning it back and forth and checking every detail. Something about it didn t look right, didn t feel right. I d held it often enough, used it often enough, to know that the weight and heft of it in my hand now was subtly, unnervingly different. Wrong. I said as much to Molly.

  Are you sure? she said immediately. I mean, it has been repaired. There are bound to be some differences.

  It s not that. I ve handled the bloody thing often enough to know that something s not right about it! It s never something you just take for granted; with an artefact this powerful, it s like juggling a live hand grenade every time you use it.

  I turned the hand mirror over and studied the design on the back. The silver scrollwork was definitely different. I showed it to Molly, and she traced the raised edges with a fingertip.

  There s some kind of inscription worked into the design, but I m damned if I can make head or tail of it, she said finally. Not Celtic, not Sumerian not Kandarian or Enochian It is vaguely familiar, but I can t get my head around it.