Above them the ice shelf started to groan. As Lucy crawled over to the Tinker to use her gifts on the wounded shikari, Ned did as the Ringmaster suggested – he just got on with it.
He couldn’t see the bullets, but maybe that was missing the point? The diagrams and schematics he’d pored over in the Manual were all aids; a way of training the mind in structures. But how close you were to the object in question or whether you could even see it was irrelevant. The key was visualising it, then Seeing it change in your mind’s eye with crystal-clear focus.
Rifle fire sounded below and Ned shut his eyelids tight. Anything more complex would be hard to disassemble, but bullets were simple geometric shapes. He focused on the image of the lead shot, blowing it up in his mind till he imagined its microscopic ridges and curves changing to hardened ice. Metal to ice was one thing, now he just needed the ice to melt. The humming of energy crackled up his arm as his ring whirred into life. Opening his eyes, the world around him slowed and the next round of bullets speeding towards the ice shelf split into harmless droplets of water.
“That’s it, Ned!” yelled Lucy.
And just then, there was a break in the storm as fingers of sunlight crept over the horizon. Whatever magic Barbarossa had used was clearly coming to its end. The violent winds changed course taking their barrage of snow with them. With their new-found visibility, they soon spotted the unmistakable figures of Slim and his gor-balin snipers positioned behind a bank of rocks.
“Don’t stop, Ned!” shouted Benissimo.
The shikari launched a volley of arrows and the Ringmaster leapt to his feet, firing three consecutive shots from his rifle. Further down the mountain, two of the shadowy snipers fell backwards, a third narrowly escaping with his life.
The return fire came like a roll of thunder. As nine of the remaining snipers launched their cargo, Ned Engineered with everything he had.
Sweat started to pour down his strained face as he Saw the bullets in his mind, broke them down again and again, over and over, till water sprayed from the exploding bullets all around them.
But Ned was only one tiring boy and the snipers many. Eventually two of the bullets made it through, one lodging itself into one of the shikari, the other into the ice shelf above. There was an almighty crack and Lucy screamed as a pillar of ice broke free. George grabbed at it, his powerful arms using all their might to catch it before she was crushed, before spinning back to the battle in hand.
“It’s no use – there’s too many of them!” shouted Ned.
“Dig deep, boy! Dig deep!” roared back Benissimo.
And Ned would have done, had it not been for the sudden sight of Lucy’s mouth open in terror. Following her line of sight to his right he heard the unmistakable whirring of gears grinding against gears and the spinning of two large gyroscopic hearts.
The tickers walked slowly into sight, making Ned catch his breath. They were copies of the tiger he’d seen outside Fidgit and Sons, only these didn’t look like they were going to purr, and both sets of their glowing eyes were fixed firmly on Lucy.
“Don’t make any sudden movements,” he whispered.
“I couldn’t move if I wanted to!” she shrilled back.
One of the tigers roared. It was a foul rusty noise, like metal being scraped against metal. With Ned’s attention firmly on Lucy and the tickers, the snipers’ bullets struck home again, two more shikari keeling over. Then one of the tigers started towards Lucy. Ned sprang into action, pounding across the ice in a race to reach her first. As Lucy screamed in terror, Ned and the tiger both leapt, the tiger roaring, Ned shouting.
“DUCK!”
The ticker’s claws cut through thin air as Ned hit Lucy’s back, knocking her to the ground in a heap. As the two children tumbled together, Ned saw the tiger’s metallic belly fly over them, landing harmlessly on the other side. The ticker skidded across the ice, before turning, ready to strike again. This time there was nowhere to run. They scrambled to their feet to find a metal monstrosity on either side of them. These creatures weren’t like bullets. Even a seasoned Engineer would need an intimate knowledge of their entire structure to attempt any kind of really useful change. Their cogs, gears, pistons and casing were beyond complex and definitely beyond Ned. He was just wondering if he could at least reimagine some small part of them in a way that might help when somewhere at the closest one’s feet there was a tiny metallic squeak. A now fully-thawed Whiskers stood facing the brute, a tiny speck of defiant metal. Ned couldn’t help but smile – Whiskers, the most useful mechanical rodent in the world, had come to his rescue. Dear old—
Crunch.
The tiger dragged his foot through the metal entrails of Ned’s now flattened pet mouse and started pacing towards them once more. On the other side, the second tiger blocked their escape. The rest of their party was now completely pinned down by Slim and his snipers’ gunfire.
“Ned, quickly, do something,” breathed Lucy.
Ned looked at what was left of Whiskers and bit his lip. Now more than ever he needed focus … not Feeling. He struggled for a moment, fighting an inner urge to let rip with his power, scared of the damage it might do, or what he might become … But as the approaching monstrosity neared, a memory triggered in his brain. A frustrated afternoon of trying to fix a remote-controlled car, taking it apart and putting it back together repeatedly to no avail until he’d discovered the single missing screw that had rolled under his dad’s toolbox. Ned didn’t have to destroy the ticker – he just had to stop it working.
If he could change metal to water, then he could easily change the ice beneath the ticker to metal. The tiniest amount would do. He closed his eyes and focused hard. His ring hummed. And a slither of frost rose up from the ground and spun in the air, turning itself to a centimetre-wide metal ball bearing, perfectly round and hard.
“Hurry, Ned!” yelled Lucy again, as the tiger tensed to pounce.
Where there was one ball bearing, there were now a dozen. Ned Told them to rise up into the tiger-machine’s ribcage, and the ball bearings answered. Almost instantly, there was a loud tearing sound of metal on metal as the balls found their way to the ticker’s gyroscopic heart, lodging themselves like brakes in its rotating cogs.
“Screeee!”
It froze, convulsed, staggered forward and back, before falling to one side, in a crash of metal and ice. But Ned barely had a moment to celebrate his victory before the other ticker roared in clockwork fury and propelled itself forwards – only to be met by a bellowing George.
Ned’s great-ape protector lolloped in front of the two children, leathery nostrils flared.
“I’ll not have an oversized toaster hurting my friends!” he roared.
The ticker launched himself at the ape, and George swung his hammer of a fist. The sound of bone crunching on metal was sickening as they landed on the ground in a twisting pile. Ned called out a warning as above their heads the ice shelf shifted again, threatening to fall at any minute.
“Aaaaark!”
A piercing screech came down from the sky. High up in the air, in the eye of a now visible sun, Ned saw the black silhouette of Aark’s two heads and huge wings tearing towards the snipers. And Aark was not alone – beside her was another giant hawk, but with the body and head of a man and a wingspan as wide as two. The second hawk let off a shriek that pierced their ears and echoed down the mountain. As the two creatures dived, Ned yelled in excited disbelief.
“It’s … it’s Finn! Finn’s got … wings?!”
The tracker had thrown off his long coat, revealing a bare, sinewy upper torso and two vast black and brown wings. With his true form revealed, Finn flew down at the enemy as a vision of raw fury. The gor-balins scattered as Finn’s wings struck at them relentlessly and Aark clawed at their faces. Seeing their chance, the remaining shikari leapt up from their defences and charged at Slim.
“Bene, get them to the ledge, while you still can!” roared George as he wrestled with the tiger.
The great ape had managed to get the ticker in a headlock, but its metal casing was hard to grip and it was starting to claw itself free.
“The path’s clear; we have to move,” ordered Benissimo. Lucy nodded and moved towards the ledge.
“But what about George … the others … we can’t leave them like this!” argued Ned.
Beyond the narrow icy path there was a final volley of gunfire and a pained roar from one of the yetis. Then silence.
“Go, Ned, I don’t know how much longer I can hold it …” yelled his furry protector, with his stupid, lovable, apeish grin, before returning his focus to the metal tiger clawing at his arms.
But as Benissimo dragged Ned and Lucy away, the Tinker following close behind, their eardrums erupted.
KAROOM!
The shockwave of the explosion knocked them all to the ground. It felt as though the mountain itself had cried out in anger. And the ice shelf above them groaned its reply, like some vast waking beast …
Clinging to the relative safety of the ledge, Ned, Lucy, the Tinker and Benissimo watched on in horror as George and the ticker were swept away by a crashing wave of ice and snow, the shikari hunters, Slim and his gor-balins tumbling after them. Only Aark, with her two heads for seeing and two wings for flying away, was able to break free. Her less agile master Finn had not been so lucky. He too was swept down the mountain on a roiling sea of snow.
“My brother,” screamed Benissimo over the roar of the avalanche, “he must be blasting his way to the Source.”
Ned felt his heart explode.
“NOOOO!” cried Lucy, as their friends disappeared down the mountain.
But there was no answer. The battle on the slopes had come to an end.
The Source
In the wake of the explosion and with Barbarossa’s storm gone, Annapurna was eerily quiet. They moved inch by careful inch along the narrow mountain ledge. Despite Grandpa Tortellini’s training and his new-found ease with heights, Ned was well aware of what lay between their thin track of ice and the rocks below.
Nothing.
But nothing was not on his mind. All he could see was the image of his brave, banana-loving friend, being swept away by snow. Every step forward felt like a betrayal; George would never have left anyone behind. Benissimo on the other hand was a different creature entirely. There would be no going back.
When they reached the other side of the ledge, they came to a large flat shelf carved into the side of the mountainside, and barely visible from anywhere beyond the ledge.
“He’s forced his way in,” said Lucy. “This is where the Source lies. I can feel it.”
At the far end of the ledge two perfectly carved doors of stone lay blasted and broken, the dust still settling around them. Behind them lay the entrance to an immense opening, at least a hundred storeys high and bordered by giant columns as wide as a house.
The doorway had been lovingly hewn from rock and was decorated with intricate carvings of gods mixed with gods, prophets with saints, angels with heroes, from every story, myth and legend imaginable. Amongst them, Ned spotted something else – intricate markings, one on top of the other, vaguely familiar yet somehow altered.
“Those symbols … they look like the ones on the front of my Manual.”
“Similar, but not the same,” replied Benissimo. “These are the primary signs of power, Ned. They were made by the First Ones – the same beings who made your rings also created the Source.”
Remarkably, thick vines and flowers lined the Source’s cavernous entrance. They were withered and weak, but not from the force of the blast or the mountain’s cruel climate. To Ned the veins of black creeping along their foliage looked like some kind of disease, like they were dying from a sickness of their own. To one side of the rubble, they saw several motionless figures strewn on the ground. The butcher’s explosives had killed both his enemies and, in equal numbers, the gor-balins he had led into battle. And the guardians of the Source too – the yetis – who were indeed identical to George, except for their white fur, now stained red with blood. Like the oversized gorilla they were born protectors, and had given their last to protect Annapurna’s secret.
As Ned and his companions approached the collapsed doors, there was a kick of powdery snow. It twirled and twisted gracefully, growing thicker and more colourful, till the corkscrewing shape of Mystero took form. His eyes fixed intently on Ned and Lucy.
“Nothing will stop you will it, boy?”
“Huh?” Ned frowned. Mystero looked different. An altogether more menacing version of his usual, clammy-skinned self.
“I tried, you know, for your father’s sake,” went on the Mystral, while eyeing Benissimo warily. “I tried to frighten you away with the weir and collision course with the boeing, but you wouldn’t take the hint, would you? You wouldn’t be turned, and you wouldn’t follow me through the mirrors. If you’d just come back to Barbarossa then, none of this would be necessary. I thought Wormroot’s tonic would do the trick till your little dream ruined it all, and I nearly had you last night, but then I didn’t know about Gorrn. Dear old Kitty got her last laugh there, didn’t she? So much like your father, such stubborn Armstrong goodness, so wasted, so naive.”
Ned couldn’t process what he was saying. The man had saved his life more than once, had turned over every bunk and trailer the Circus of Marvels had, and all to find …
“Miz?” Was all Ned could muster.
“Yes, Miz … Miz the spy, Miz the traitor.”
Lucy gasped and Benissimo’s hand went to his whip, which had miraculously appeared at his hip.
“Now now, my friend, I wouldn’t do anything hasty if I were you. I only need to take the children; your brother must be allowed to finish what he’s doing, the laying of explosives is such delicate work,” warned Mystero.
The Ringmaster looked saddened. But to Ned’s surprise he did not look in the least bit shocked.
“I didn’t want to believe it at first. Your Mystral mind was always just out of my Kit-Kat’s reach, not that she’d ever have tried to read you. How could someone so trusted, so loved, turn so completely?”
“I’ve taken no pleasure in it, Bene, none at all. But we’ve been fighting a losing battle ever since Terrence and Olivia left us. The Demons, the Darklings, they’re coming, whether you like it or not. Barba can control them, the fair-folk could rule the world with the Darkness at its side. It took years for me to see it, to really understand what your brother wants. Now I know he’s right. It’s time for the Hidden to come out of the shadows. We don’t need to live in fear any more, not if we stand together. It’s time for the rest of the world to fear us. I spared Abigail for old times’ sake, and because I knew that she’d see the truth once the Veil falls, they all will. But you, Bene, you’re a lost cause. No one can protect the world from itself, not even you.”
“That’s not for you to decide.”
“Nor you, old man. A new day is dawning, my friend, all you need to do is step aside and let your brother bring it.”
Benissimo cracked his whip straight at Mystero’s face. It struck at his image with pinpoint accuracy, pushing him into inky clouds, before he drew himself back together.
“Really, Bene, is there any point?”
“I was just making sure, old friend.”
“Making sure?”
“Making sure it would work. It took a while for the Tinker to figure it out. Riding the wind’s messages in your mist form was inspired. It wasn’t till Whiskers spied on you using our air-modulator that we were sure, sure that the very form you used to hurt us would be your undoing.”
“I can’t be undone, Bene, you of all people must know that by now?”
“You couldn’t be undone, not until the Tinker had finished building his device. The poor man’s been working his little fingers to the bone. It’s been hard these past few days keeping you close and saying nothing – but it was a necessary evil. Tinker, I’m afraid now would be the time.”
There was a loud whirring noise from behind Mystero, as the Tinker switched on the device strapped to his back. His precious cargo was, in fact, a converted vacuum cleaner, with added Hidden-made enhancements. The Mystral’s face fell, but his realisation had come too late.
Ned watched Mystero as a funnel of mist was sucked out of his back and into the Tinker’s machine. He clawed at the air frantically, like a spider being pulled down a plughole.
“Stop! Stop this, you can’t do this to me! I am a Mystral! Nothing can hold me … NOTHIiiaaarrrghhh …”
It turned out that there was one thing that could hold him. The airtight crystal chamber in the Tinker’s ‘wind-wrangler’ made a large shlupping noise and the last of Mystero the Magnificent, Benissimo’s trusted friend and adviser, was sucked into his final prison. The sight of his twisted face being pulled into the chamber, along with his accompanying cries, made Ned’s stomach heave. But justice had been served.
The Tinker stayed behind to message the reinforcements, while the other three pressed on through the great doorway. Benissimo didn’t look back once at what was left of his old Mystral friend.
Inside they found a giant staircase that spiralled deep into the mountain. The walls of the great cavern were covered in detailed carvings. The deeper they went, the more angular the patterns. Ned started to see something in their grand design, the way the shapes and lines flowed and twisted, converging into one and leading them ever downwards. It was like a puzzle of complex circuitry, or the charted inner workings of some vast machine. The vines and plants that they’d seen outside were everywhere. They followed the carvings’ curves and corners, entwined themselves around its spirals, as if somehow drawn to a power within the stone sketches. But the sickness the plants carried was in evidence also – in the withering black veins that crawled across the leaves and along the vines. It seemed to feed off the plants themselves.
As they continued their descent, it felt as if the walls were stirring, as if the carvings sensed Lucy and Ned, shifting almost imperceptibly towards them as they passed, till finally the walls started to glow. With their every step, pulses of light shot through the circuit of patterns, shimmering into the distance before fading away.
Circus of Marvels Page 23