by Dave Butler
“Goodbye, my friends!” he cried.
Then, as the kobold neared the ceiling, he unclipped an object resembling a pocket watch from his belt and touched it with his other hand.
Ka-boom!
Starting ten feet in front of Gnat and running all the way to the top of the cave, the stairs erupted into billows of powdered rock. Charlie turned his face away, still unable to move his body, as rock chips struck his skin and stung him.
Gnat stopped at the edge of the cloud. Wijmoor caught up to her and stood at her shoulder; they both looked anxiously into the dust.
Heinrich Zahnkrieger escaped up the hole in the ceiling.
With a heavy scraping sound and a bang, the glimmer of light from above disappeared.
The dust settled, and the stairs were gone.
Bamf!
The cave went completely dark.
“You rotten little kobold!” Ollie shouted. “Liar! Thief! Weasel! Traitor! I knew when I first met you that you deserved to have your nose punched, and when I get out of here, that’s the first thing I’m going to do!”
When he fell silent, his words echoed a few seconds longer.
“Aye,” Gnat agreed. “Well said.”
“I had to get that off my chest,” Ollie said. “Shall I turn back into the snake, so you can have some light?”
“I don’t need it,” Gnat said.
“I can’t move anyway,” Thomas added.
“I can’t either,” Charlie said.
“He must have had a machine,” Ollie grumbled. “No way he could move that altar on his own.”
“If you give us a little light,” Jan Wijmoor said, “I’ll restore the lads. I’d do it in the darkness, only I’m afraid of falling into the hole in the floor.”
Ollie became the glowing snake again. Gnat checked the stairs and found the upper half completely gone, which made the exit unreachable. Jan Wijmoor opened a hatch in Thomas’s back and reached inside; within moments, Thomas had regained full movement. Then he did the same for Charlie.
The friends gathered at the bottom of the stairs, and Ollie returned to boy form. In the darkness, they sat and thought.
Back on the mountain of Cader Idris, Aunt Big Money had told Charlie that he had heaven and hell both within him. At the time, he’d thought those were poetic words, but now he understood they meant something rather specific, and strangely contradictory. His machinery was demonic—though from a demon whose works benefited people in amazing ways. And his spirit was from a magical stone—though one whose power could apparently be used to deprive large masses of people of their free will.
“You know, Meneer Doktor,” he said. “I thought of you as a person who had come into my story, but more and more it seems like I’m a person who has come into your story.”
“Yes?” The kobold’s face was glum.
“My story is about a boy who couldn’t save his father, and is trying to save the world instead,” Charlie said.
Jan Wijmoor sniffed and trembled.
“Nay, lad.” Gnat’s voice was gentle. “You’re far too hard on yourself.”
Charlie continued. “But your story started first. Your story is about how you tried to stop your student from breaking the Syndikat’s rules.”
“I should have lied,” Jan Wijmoor said. “If I’d lied to cover for him, he wouldn’t have been punished, and I could have won him back from the Iron Cog.”
“Maybe,” Charlie said. “But maybe not. Instead you told the truth and asked the Internal Auditor to show him mercy. But the punishment he got was too much for him, and you’ve been sad ever since.”
“I feel responsible.” Wijmoor sighed.
“That’s why you’ve been so willing to help me and Charlie,” Thomas said. “Helping us is a bit like helping your old student.”
“My story is about a teacher who didn’t protect his student when he should have,” Wijmoor said. “So when the teacher got a second chance, he jumped at it.”
“How is it, Thomas,” Gnat asked, “that you led us straight to Marburg, and the place where Heinrich Zahnkrieger was a young engineer?”
Thomas shrugged. “The dwarfs who brought my father his things told me about Marburg and the landgrave’s museum, so I knew there was a unicorn horn there.”
“Those dwarfs—they wear purple-and-white trousers—work for the Cog,” Charlie said. “So they may have heard about Marburg from Heinrich himself.”
“All true stories go in circles,” Ollie said. “A good story ends where it started, don’t it?”
“And there’s a part of the story in the middle,” Wijmoor added, “a part I don’t know. About how Heinrich advanced his research by manipulating your fathers, boys.”
“Aye. Until they discovered the true nature of the conspiracy and fled.”
They were silent awhile. “Speaking of stories,” Ollie said, “I don’t reckon your kobold stories know about a way out of the pit? I mean, other than the one in the ceiling.”
“No,” Wijmoor said glumly.
“Give me a couple of days, and I’ll regrow my wings,” Gnat said. “Then I can go look down in the hole.”
Nobody said anything to that, but they all must have been thinking what Charlie was thinking—there could be no exit down in the hole, and if there was, it surely went to someplace even worse than this. A demon world of some kind.
“I think I’m strong enough to push that altar aside, even from below,” Charlie said.
“Yeah,” Ollie agreed, “I reckon you are. Which is why Zahnkrieger took care to get rid of the stairs, so you couldn’t even reach the altar.”
“Could we jump?” Thomas suggested.
So Ollie became the moonbeam snake, and slithered about the chamber while Charlie and Thomas tried jumping. With a running start, Charlie found he could leap high enough to bump against the underside of the altar, but not with enough impetus to move it aside. Thomas couldn’t quite reach the altar. They took turns winding each other’s mainspring to refresh themselves after their efforts, and then they resumed their conversation in the dark.
“Could we dig out?” Jan Wijmoor asked.
“The walls are all rock,” Gnat said. “And we have no tools. I think not.”
“Maybe there’s a way for something smaller to get out,” Charlie suggested. “Such as a snake. And if Ollie could get out, he could bring help.”
“Already looked, mate.” Ollie’s voice sounded distracted in the darkness. “There’s no snake holes or rat holes or anything I can get out through, unless they’re down that pit in the floor.”
“Perhaps I could make a machine that would help us,” Wijmoor said. “Something like a mechanical lever. And if I could build it, then in two days, when Gnat has regrown her wings, she could fly the lever up to the top of the cave and use it to remove the altar.”
There was a moment’s silence.
“Build a machine out of what, exactly?” Thomas asked.
There was a longer silence.
“Well,” Wijmoor said, “I’d have to use parts from you and Charlie. I’m not sure how many. Maybe I could take both your legs, and use them to build a lever. Or at most, I think, I could disassemble just one of you; that would be enough.”
“Disassemble…” Charlie grabbed his bap’s broken pipe in his pocket and squeezed it. “And could you then reassemble me?” He said me deliberately. If one of the mechanical brothers was going to sacrifice himself, it would be Charlie. It was Charlie’s fault they were in this mess, since it was Charlie who had talked Thomas into hesitating, and not casting the spell he’d been designed to cast.
“Physically, yes.” The kobold hesitated. “I don’t really know how the white stone works. I’ve seen it inside you, and I see the connections it makes, but…once I’ve pulled it out, I’m not sure I could make it
work again.”
“I’m willing to take the risk,” Charlie said quickly, to forestall Thomas from volunteering. “Unless…there’s anything else we could try.”
“Yeah,” Ollie said. Suddenly his voice sounded very weary. “It was a wizard who brought you down here, and I reckon I know how a wizard can bring you out.”
Charlie imagined some trick with the metaphysical space that surrounded Ollie. “Maybe you could put us all where you keep the snake,” he said, enthusiastic with the hope that he wouldn’t have to die so his friends could escape, “and then push us out somewhere else.”
“I dunno about that, mate. I have a different plan. Here, I’ll give you a bit of light, and I suggest you all crouch down in the corner of the room and keep your heads low.”
“What are you going to do?” the kobold asked, but Ollie had already become the moonbeam snake.
Charlie, Thomas, Gnat, and Jan Wijmoor huddled at the base of the stairs, and then the room returned to darkness again.
“Right,” Ollie said in the darkness. “Here goes nothing.”
Bamf! The sulfur stink was stronger than Charlie had smelled before, and Jan Wijmoor coughed.
“I don’t know what good that will do us, Ollie,” Gnat said. “Though you’re impressive, to be sure.”
Bamf! “Give a fellow a chance, Baroness.”
What was Ollie doing?
“Nay, I’m not the baroness, and I may never become it.”
“I reckon you’ll have to,” Ollie said, “if you want to save your people.”
Bamf!
“Aye, that’s a good trick!” Gnat said. “But I still don’t see…Oh, lad, do you really think you can do it?”
Bamf! The rotting-egg smell was so thick that Jan Wijmoor gagged, retching into the corner of the room.
Ollie groaned. “This ain’t as easy as it looks.”
“It doesn’t look easy,” Charlie said. “I can’t see anything.”
“I’m changing shape,” Ollie told him. His voice was slow and heavy.
“Yeah, I can smell that!” Charlie snapped. “What are you doing?”
There was a long pause. “One more try,” Ollie said.
“Will you survive it, lad?” Gnat asked.
“Dunno. Too big a spell can kill a magician; there’s lots of stories about that. But since none of us will survive me not doing it…I reckon I’ll try. And I’ve done the research. I’m a wizard, Gnat. I’m a wizard or I’m nothing. I’ll give it a try.”
Gnat was slow to answer. “Aye, lad,” she finally said. “Do it.”
“Do what?” Charlie nearly yelled.
BAMF!
Jan Wijmoor vomited from the stench.
“By all my mothers before me!” Gnat murmured. “Ollie?”
A jet of orange flame appeared near the ceiling. It began small, but even at its smallest, it cast enough light to illuminate a vast scaly bulk, with four legs, gigantic claws, and a long, sinewy tail.
Then the jet grew longer, in a whoosh of hot air like an exhalation. Charlie saw the long neck, the thick tufts of hair on the shoulders, the batlike wings that, even folded, were vast, the head that was half horse and half iguana…
And, improbably, the tiny bowler hat perched on top.
Ollie had transformed into a dragon.
“There.” Ollie’s voice was much deeper and rumbled around the cavern, but it was unmistakably Ollie. “That feels…much better.”
“Ollie!” Charlie leaped to his feet. “You did it!”
“I’m a wizard,” Ollie roared. “And I ain’t French.”
“Be careful, lad,” Gnat urged Ollie the dragon. “If you knock down chunks of stone, it may crush us.”
“Also,” Thomas added, “you don’t want to lose your hat.”
“Yes.” When Ollie opened his mouth to speak, he revealed a ball of fire that burned steadily at the back of his throat. As Ollie spoke, that light flickered on and off in the cavern. Cautiously, Ollie raised his torso off the floor, creating a hollow under his gigantic scaly armpit that was shielded by his dragon body. His voice still sounded tired, but it also sounded enormous. It sounded elemental, as if Ollie were closer at this moment to being a mountain or a storm than he was to being a boy. “Come take shelter under me.”
They all scrambled to hide beneath Ollie’s body, but Charlie couldn’t resist crouching at the edge, most of himself protected behind the vast wall of scaly muscle Ollie had become, but his face out. So he could watch.
Ollie the dragon rammed his head up the bottleneck. In a single thrust, he knocked aside the altar and shattered the cavern’s ceiling. Chunks of stone and gold-covered furniture began to fall into the pit, and Charlie jumped back under Ollie for safety.
CRA-A-ASH!
Rubble blocked their view. Then they heard more and louder crashing sounds, then silence.
“This dragon smells a little sweaty,” Thomas said. “I’m not complaining; I’m just noticing.”
With a single sweep, the dragon’s tail wrapped itself around the rubble and thrust it aside, freeing Charlie and the others.
“Climb onto my shoulders,” Ollie told them.
They did. He was as big as two omnibuses and his scales were mostly very smooth, but Ollie lay on his side to make it easier for them. Their going got easier once they reached his spine, where there were spikes to grip, and they settled themselves in his tufts of black shoulder hair, as large as bushes.
Ollie’s hat was battered and dusty now, but it was still on his head. “Where shall we go?”
“To London!” Charlie called.
Ollie craned his long neck around to look at his friends and nodded. “Hold on.”
Then Ollie the dragon straightened out his neck and body. The hole above them had become large, and Ollie had apparently smashed part of the palace, too, because Charlie looked up along the dragon’s neck at the full moon.
He heard shouting, which the Babel Card quickly organized into “Foreigners! Subversives! Criminals! Kill the beast!”
Ollie leaped into the air. He might have been as big as two omnibuses and tired to boot, but he was fast and strong, and in a single bound he was out of the pit and two stories above the earth. Guards in bearskin hats raised rifles and pointed them at Ollie.
He flapped his wings, and the rush of wind knocked the guards flat—
and launched Ollie high into the air.
In the moonlight, Ollie glowed bright yellow.
“Ollie!” Charlie cried, yelling over the wind in his face as the lights of Moscow grew tiny below him. “You’re made of gold!”
Ollie roared wordlessly, breathing a column of fire into the cool night air.
Soon the lights below them disappeared entirely, leaving only the moon and the stars.
When the sun rose, it was at their backs, and before them lay the mouth of the Thames and London.
“Maybe we should land somewhere out of the way,” Charlie suggested as Ollie began to descend. “Somewhere outside the city, for instance, and ride in on a train. So as not to attract attention, you know.”
Ollie laughed, a boom so loud it shook Charlie’s body. “Oh, we’re going to attract some attention. I’m going to Westminster, mate. Straight to Parliament, and we’re going to set everything right.”
Charlie gripped Ollie’s shoulder fur tight and leaned out to look at the city below. He thought he recognized Whitechapel, including Irongrate Lane and maybe even the Gullet. Then he saw the dome of St. Paul’s Cathedral.
“Stop!” Charlie cried.
Ollie flapped his wings once to brake and rise, circling slowly back. “What for?”
“I saw Grim,” Charlie said. “On Ludgate Hill. By the cathedral. He was with…I don’t know, he looked very official.”
“Grim?” Gnat l
aughed. “Nay, that doesn’t sound right.”
“Who is Grim?” Jan Wijmoor asked.
“He was Charlie’s lawyer.” Ollie laughed, a sound like rolling thunder.
Ollie settled on the stone wall over Ludgate. As the crowd babbled and stared, he lowered his long neck so that Charlie and the others could climb down it and onto the ground, onto the steps of the cathedral.
Down the street and on the other side of it, smoke belched from the broken front window of a shop. A band of fire bobbies in their helmets and long coats pumped water through the front window.
Some of the fire bobbies wore conical masks, like the beaks of birds. Something about that seemed familiar to Charlie, and troubling, but he couldn’t immediately figure out what.
Two police carriages, a dozen policemen, and a somber group of people who looked like lawyers stood interviewing a shopkeeper in the shop next door to where the fire burned. Holding back the crowd of spectators was a handful of rough-looking trolls in long brown coats.
Two of the serious people were hulders, and one of them was Charlie’s friend.
“Grim!” Charlie cried.
But something about the scene made him hang back. Grim looked haggard, and reluctant, and even from behind, Charlie thought he knew the other hulder too.
Grim turned. “Charlie.” Grim’s face looked tired, his eyes red. He crossed the street to Charlie. “When did you get back to London? Where are Bob and Ollie?”
“We just landed.” Charlie pointed at Ollie the dragon.
Grim frowned. “Gnat, what happened to your wings?”
“What are you talking about, Grumblesson?” Gnat crossed her arms over her chest and glared.
The other hulder strolled in their direction, steam puffing from his shoulder. It was Egil One-Arm! Charlie stared, and Grim sighed.
“Yes,” he said. “Many things have happened in a short time. Maybe you shouldn’t have come back. Egil and I work with a committee to—”